Abby apparently hadn't been idle as I dozed away until mid afternoon, as soon as she had seen the grin on Brooke's face it was easy to put two and two together. She had waited to confirm with Brianna that she was at least competent in the use of sidearms then with Dani's approval (who had claimed the role of financial controller), had taken her massive eight wheeler and spirited the new girl away to help with a pick up.

I was sitting at a bench in the garage workshop, the large roll up doors half open out to the compound as I awaited their return. I had decided to at least make an attempt at being useful and was stripping down and familiarising myself with the new hold out pistol that called my cybernetic leg home when the unmistakable grumbling of the big twenty cylinder engine echoed down the street, bouncing off the facades of the blocky factory buildings nearby and rattling windows in their frames as though warning of an apocalypse, announcing their impending return from some distance away.

Abby swore in disgust as she shut down the big trucks engine, jumping down and climbing around underneath the engine compartment behind the cab without even a glance my direction. She'd probably just blown another exhaust manifold if the noise was anything to go by, why she had decided to both turbo and supercharge a truck that was already blown and could tow just about anything you cared to think of in its standard configuration was beyond me.

Brooke was a little slower at climbing down from the cab, clearly not used to the higher ground clearance of military vehicles. As soon as her feet touched the ground she waived excitedly at me over her head then quickly spun back around, jogging along the side of the truck before climbing up onto the flat bed to make sure her new baby hadn't been damaged in transit.

The Harbin light VTOL gunship had clearly seen better days, it looked absolutely garish in the gold and blue livery of its previous corporate owner. There was a pod tied down to the front of the trucks tray in similar colours, which I assumed to be the simulator cross drone cockpit that would allow remote operations without requiring the pilot to be on board. At a cost of eighty thousand for both the gunship and the pod it was apparently a steal. Dani had assured me it was still airworthy, combat ready, and had all the armaments (less munitions) that Brooke would need access to for her accreditation.

The gunship was sleek, tiny, and lightly armoured. Sporting a chin mounted 30mm single barrel electrically driven chain gun for the main armament, and two pods slung under each wing containing fifteen 70mm FFAR rockets each. The rockets packed a punch but where unguided, meaning the pilot would need to point the gunship at the target. At the end of each stubby wing were the pivoting engines that provided both thrust and lift.

Perhaps because the Harbin's were unforgiving of mistakes when being flown, the pilot sat in a completely enclosed and sealed off armoured cockpit located in the center of the hull with access via a rear ramp. If forced to eject the little gunship basically disintegrated around the cockpit. In a pinch, if the pilot didn't mind a bit of climbing and swearing to reach the controls, you could throw in a square meter or two of cargo, or perhaps use it in emergencies for the dust off of injured personnel. Which wasn't really that surprising, at least to me, the thing was small enough to look like a heavy drone that someone had decided to throw a blind cockpit on to see what would happen.

None of that seemed to dampen Brooke's enthusiasm though, seeing us looking up into the rear ramp for the pilots access via one of the viewing screens in the cockpit she spun the seat around.

"It's still smells brand new in here! They must have only ever done remote ops." She grinned like a fool.

She walked down the short ramp and stood looking down at Dani and I before sitting and opening her legs trying to drag me in for a cuddle with her booted feet. "I can't believe you spent this much money... thank you."

With a barely pecked kiss on my forehead she was up again and heading forward to check out the pod.

"Looks like you made a friend for life." Abby waddled out from under the truck and pulled open the access to get the lifting drones she had left behind prepped to clear the load.

"Wait until she..."

Brooke slammed the door of the pod closed and ran to the side of the truck, bent over double and dry retching the whole way.

"Oh she found it."

"Huh?"

"They didn't empty the bio bags when they took it offline, and one of 'em split." She grinned.

The three of us couldn't help but share a chuckle at the young girls misfortune, 'cause we sure as shit weren't cleaning it up. Bio bags were used for human waste during long ops.

"It smells like someone died in there." She wailed to no one in particular still trying not to loose her lunch.

"Not it." Bri smirked as she headed over with a tab' in hand, passing it to me.

Brianna had always liked to draw and doodle, I'd even gotten her a genuine paper art book as a gift once that she only used on rare occasions. I looked at her most recent masterpiece, a half human half tiger skull split vertically down the middle. At first I thought it was a tribal sort of design in the details, looking closer I had to actually zoom in to pick out the figures of women in various states of undress that made up the shapes of the hybrid skull. It was incredible work, the various open robes or discarded clothing looking like the flesh of the creature peeling away, between its teeth was clamped a red rose, on the forehead in raised bone was a winged dagger reminiscent of the SAS emblem.

"Woah." Daniela looked over my shoulder sounding suitably impressed with the talent on display.

Brianna smiled at the compliment and swept her finger across the screen. "It's either that or this one."

The new image was similar to the first, women in various states of undress forming the shape of the incredibly detailed skull, the loose and discarded clothing looking like skin flaking away from the beast, the same bone shape of the winged dagger in the center of the forehead and the red rose in its teeth. Only difference being this one was all tiger skull.

"For what?" Dani asked as I simply admired Brianna's art. She was certainly talented.

Bri rocked forward on the balls of her feet with a grin and slid her finger across the screen once again. This time we were looking at a simulated unit patch design, the tiger skull version being chosen, clearly Bri's favourite. Draugr was in a half circle above, in slightly larger letters than the word Wildcats in a half circle below.

"Eight wildcats and their two vehicle crew, plus the seven of us, going by the stupid grin Brooke had after her 'interview'..." She hip checked me with a sly grin before continuing. "... we qualify for a unit patch now, amongst other things, what do you think?"

"I love it." Dani said approvingly.

"Absolutely baby girl, it's awesome. Thank you." I leant down and pulled her in for a gentle hug, careful not to stress my ribs to much.

"So I can submit?" She said with a happy, hopeful smile.

"You better." I grinned at her. She skipped off to the mostly unused administration ground floor to get the paperwork underway, stopping briefly to show off her work to Brooke as she passed.

"Alpha Gil huh? Congratulations, but I thought with me there were only seven of us?" Brooke enquired as she approached.

With a mock look of surprise and sheepish grin Dani batted her eyelids at me, she had already done the math and was just waiting for me to figure it out for myself. Once a tiger cell hit ten members, (and we had just hit seventeen in one foul swoop), the Alpha was given an actual officers commission in the military. Alpha Gil. Primarily meaning that during combined OP's regular army units would actually do what they were told rather than conveniently having comm issues or a conflict of orders if asked to do something they didn't like. The rank was below even Lieutenant, so pretty much on the bottom rung so far as officers went, but the rank still held the full authority of a military commission. There were other little perks and responsibilities that came with the job as well of course.

"Ah... yeah. I guess? Thanks." I said a little stunned, realising that my own little world of being responsible only to my girls was crumbling down around me. Although, nothing has really changed I guess? I hope. This was new territory for me.

"Aww don't be like that." Dani cooed, gently pushing the small of my back to guide me inside, Brooke walking with us nearby.

"Oi!" Abby called out as we walked.

"Where you think your going fly girl?" She dropped the gunships remote pod by a fire hose.

"Pod ain't gonna clean itself." She grinned.

Brooke put on a sad frown and slumped her shoulders before trudging over to the happily grinning spanner.

:// Ahh shalom, Alpha?

A voice I didn't recognise called over the Draugr comm network. I wouldn't call the accent sexy, more... intriguing.

The girls in the compound all stopped what they were doing to look at me with little frowns or a shrug of their shoulders.

:\ This is Draugr Alpha, please identify.

I think it was the first time I had actually maintained some semblance of a standard comm syntax on our private channel. This was unusual to say the least.

:// Oh. I'm Wildcat Alpha.

Her voice was a little distorted with the electronic spin that encryption put on long distance voice comms.

:\ Hey there, sounds like you girls are all sorted, you on your way in for a meet and greet?

:// Yes. No. We were. We have been called out to monitor an exchange and will be several hours behind schedule as a result. I thought you would like to know.

:\ No worries, thanks for the heads up. Look forward to meeting you all then.

:// As are we Alpha. Talk soon, lehitra'ot.

"Sounded like the poor girl didn't know if she was coming or going. Was that hebrew or arabic?" Brianna asked as we joined her inside, she was busily dragging around and clumping various monitors and screens together... just because she could I guess.

It was a fair question, the world was definitely a multilingual environment, just amongst the Draugrs we had the girls randomly throwing in french, spanish and a latino/portuguese mix when they either lost their shit or were being amorous. I was picking up a little as we spent time together but I would never be fluent.

"Shalom is hebrew, so my vote is that. Also, I just have that effect on women." I said sitting down with a chuckle.

Brianna rolled her eyes but rather than respond, ran around behind the screens she was messing with, cables running everywhere in a haphazard and hardly safe manner. Daniela and I shared a few looks wondering what she was up to but mostly just watched in silence. Standing with a satisfied smile she leaned back and hollered up at the roof.

"Clea, Lilou, get your sexy butts down here. Now!"

"On our way my love." Clea called out from a couple of rooms down. Her english was definitely improving.

Brianna looked at me as if to say hurry up, I looked back at her blankly as Clea entered the room, pulling down one of my shirts over her head. Lilou trailing behind her sister with a blissful expression to her features.

"Oh great Alpha Daddy Gil of the Draugr Wildcat Harem! Mighty commander of beautiful and exotic women! Please bless us with your insight on this most joyous of days!" She put on a really over the top preachy tone to her voice, providing a rather theatrical display, bowing and groveling as she did so.

With a chuckle and a grin I understood her meaning. I closed my eyes to focus, hadn't done this before so could be interesting. I mentally scrolled through the cell roster, and as I came across the names I didn't recognise I used the authority of my newly granted promotion to transfer a direct visual feed from the wildcats HUD's, one to each screen that Bri had setup. I collated and assembled the feeds, setting the status to active before opening my eyes to see the results.

Immediately a newly familiar voice asked over the comms.

:// Alpha, is that you watching?

* * *

Anika couldn't help but wonder if they had done the right thing. Regardless of wether or not the rest of her team had agreed, she had been the one to voice the thought that was on everyone's mind, it was her weight to bear. She was proud of her team and all they had accomplished, she was also proud of her homeland, Israel, but things could be so much better. She would be fooling herself if she didn't think the conditions at home were a big part of the reason why her team had so readily agreed to denounce their heritage, their families, their lives... to stay here in Australia. The freedoms enjoyed in this country were something worth fighting for, not because they had been ordered to, and not because they felt a sense of obligation, it was the right thing to do, it meant something. She had never felt that for her own country.

Her saba had told her stories when she was young about the freedoms enjoyed in her homeland, it didn't sound so very different from here. But that's all they were, stories. It was so hard to think that everyday life could have been so very different there. Saba had also told her exactly when things started to go wrong, Israel relied on America as an ally heavily in the old days. When the super power died, so had Israel's hopes. They had been beset upon from all sides, their enemies intent upon dividing the country amongst themselves. It was a long, hard, bloody, and terrible war that exacted a horrible price. But they had won, and then closed their borders, turning their backs on the outside world. Over time their government had become bitter with the international community for not coming to their aid and drifted down the path of totalitarianism. Complete obedience to the state was demanded in the name of survival, with the closing of the borders it was perhaps natural that over time entry conditions were tightened to the point where it was a very rare day indeed where a non citizen entered the country.

As wildcats her team regularly patrolled outside of Israels borders, tracking down, keeping an eye on, and occasionally neutralising threats before they could materialise. They had potentially saved the lives of thousands upon thousands of innocents. With her team having a demonstrated track record of actually returning home and not simply melting into the night to flee the oppression, she had been asked to lead her team in an exchange program with a foreign power. Although 'foreign power' may have been taking it a little far, it was a corporate backed assignment which was perhaps the only reason it had been approved.

Back home they had been tasked primarily with surveilling PLO and PRC threats that had persisted for over one hundred years, recently there had been a significant spike in the quality of arms at their disposal. They had started fielding advanced chinese weapons systems, such as the wolf warbots. Anika and her wildcats had been sent to Australia to determine if the supply channels might be interrelated. The wildcats had been in country now for close to nine months, long enough to feel a little homesick, but also long enough to feel right at home and welcome the freedoms of their new normal with open arms. Then two days ago, without explanation, they had been ordered to return home.

As soon as Anika had told their cypher liaison of their orders, and their intention to remain regardless, a game of political hot potato had begun. She didn't much like the end result of her team being reduced to a mercenary company, but she could understand the reasoning behind the decision. The Australian government could not of course be seen to be supporting their decision so it had quickly been decided they would join an existing 'ringer' group, tiger cells they were called. The very idea that the crazy Australian's had managed to somehow setup an established system that enabled them to respond with significant tactical force on the fly to almost any threat within minutes was something that she was finding hard to wrap her head around. Apparently it was a common occurrence where these teams had never even trained or worked together previously, at least in the case of standard ringer teams. Simply amazing.

But their cypher contact, true to his word, had done the best for them that he possibly could in the time frame available. The wildcats would at least be placed under the command of someone that knew what they were doing, a former special forces operative if she understood correctly. He also had first hand experience with wolves, Anika was looking forward to exchanging notes. The Alpha was someone that in the cypher's words, was uniquely qualified to ease their transition and accommodate their desires both during and after the transfer... Anika wasn't sure what he had meant by that part about desires. Sure the girls on her team (herself included), had all been... frustrated of late, surely he didn't mean... but that should be the furthest thing from her mind at the moment, she needed to focus. They had just picked up their new Spearhead APC, apparently their new commander was connected, and she had to admit she was impressed. Oh crap, speaking of which.

:\ Ahh shalom, alpha?

Anika hoped she wasn't making a fool of herself, she had been told that her new commander wasn't very strict on comm protocol over the private tiger cell network that the Wildcats now had access to.

:// This is Draugr Alpha, please identify.

The sound of his voice made her heart skip a beat, she could listen to that deep gravely tone for hours and never get bored. But here she was, three words in to their first meeting and she already felt foolish at his formal response.

:\ Oh. I'm wildcat alpha.

Now flustered, her voice worked of its own accord. You never left a comm request unanswered unless you were in combat and she had simply replied without thinking. Heat rose to her cheeks in embarrassment at how she was handling herself.

:// Hey there, sounds like you girls are all sorted, you on your way in for a meet and greet?

Anika melted at his cool response. Then suddenly remembered that everyone from tiger cell Draugr could hear her being an idiot, including the Wildcat team she commanded. She flicked her eyes up to her second, Neta. She currently had her nose scrunched up and was biting her lower lip in sympathy, knowing exactly what was running through Anika's mind at the gravely voice over the comms, their new Alpha.

:\ Yes. No. We were. We have been called out to monitor an exchange and will be several hours behind schedule as a result. I thought you would like to know.

Anika covered her face with her hands in embarrassment. She opened her fingers to peer at Neta who, as soldiers were want to do, currently had on her best orgasm face and was pushing her index finger through the hole of her clenched fist and nodding faster as she picked up the pace. The other girls in the squad quickly picked up their own individual rendition of obscene sexual innuendo and gestures. Adding heat to the flame in Anika's blushing face.

:// No worries, thanks for the heads up. Look forward to meeting you all then.

At his response some of the women in the APC nodded with raised eyebrows and frowns of thought as they tried to picture the man behind the sultry tones in their heads. But all froze their ridiculous hand gestures and looked to Anika, waiting to see how she might embarrass herself this time.

:\ As are we Alpha. Talk soon, lehitra'ot.

Apparently she did good, because there were only a few teasing looks as the wildcats returned their attention to checking over their new gear. She had to admit she felt a little thrill at calling the guy Alpha, hopefully he wouldn't be a balding forty year old fat guy. Anika let out a long sigh to release the stress and embarrassment of the brief conversation. She wondered if her and the girls were just in sexual overdrive due to the segregation on base. The Australian's had separated the wildcats from the general population because it most definitely was not common place for men and women to share facilities in Israel, unlike here. At least back home they had been able to leave the barracks to find a release for their pent up frustrations, but other than mingling with the opposite sex when on duty they had little time to encourage the attentions of the local men.

Anika didn't think she had dozed off, but she couldn't be certain, the seats of the spearhead were new but they were far from comfortable. She flicked open her eyes to see Neta leaning over her and gently shaking her shoulder as she tapped the side of her head, indicating that someone was watching. Anika frowned, wondering who it might be, then opened up the Draugr channel, it could really only be him, her Alpha.

:\ Alpha, is that you watching?

She asked, her lips suddenly feeling very dry.

:// It is. I thought I might check you out, you and the other wildcats. I'm impressed.

Anika didn't know what swooning was exactly, but she was pretty sure she was doing it now.