"Fix the tank. Fix the tank. That's all I'm good for. Hit me."

"That ain't all you're good for, Bren." Jill gave me a sideways grin and threw a seven on top of my six.

"Might as well be," I muttered. "I'm broke"

I tossed my cards. Black Jack sucks anyway with just two people playing. It seemed pretty pointless, just like everything else around the place.

"What time you got?" I asked her, looking at my watch. "Fucking maple piece of shit."

"Fourteen oh seven." Jill dropped her cards and leaned back on the crate she used for a chair.

"I got this watch off a dead Canuck." I frowned, unsnapping the stainless band so I could set it for the third time that day. It ran slow, like everything in Canada.

"That'll teach ya then," she replied, lighting up.

"Yeah," I agreed. "They shoulda been back by now."

"They're comin'." Jill blew out a cloud of smoke. "Hey, you got any pills?"

"Shit," I snorted. "I ain't had any pills in two weeks."

"I took my last one yesterday," she said, biting her bottom lip.

"Don't sweat it." I shrugged. "It ain't like it's gonna matter anyway."

"I don't wanna have a kid out out here." She spit some tobacco off her tongue. "Army's big enough already."

"Don't worry, you get knocked up I'll take care of you," I promised, winking at her.

"You?" Jill rolled her eyes. "Fuck."

"I took care of Karen last week. Ask her, I can fix anything," I said, grabbing the cards off the barrel and shuffling them for something to do.

"Yeah, maybe," she sighed. "My boyfriend finds out..."

"Hey! You two, we got some Chop-Drop coming!" The First Sarge stuck her head inside the tent. "Let's move it, poon!"

"Oh man," I groaned, giving her back the finger.

"Right on fuckin' time." Jill tossed her butt in the red smoke bucket and we got up together.

"Maybe they sent some pills," I offered, trying to see the bright side.

"More like rats, I bet." She shook her head, meaning combat rations. Like we didn't have enough of that shit already?

I'd been there 18 months and six days, halfway through my tour. Jill was a month behind me, so we'd pretty much partnered up the way people do around there. You sort yourself by time in the field because that's all that counts. The short timers don't wanna know you anyway and nobody likes the bootcampers. So it was me and Jill and a couple others against the world, against the war and the lifers and the Socialist Plague.

I guess every war's like that, huh? But who would know, except maybe a general or two. There weren't a whole lot of stars on the casualty lists that I saw. Just a lot of grunts like me. One war was gonna be enough, I knew that much, and if I got out of this one alive, I'd move to fuckin' Mexico before I ever went to another.

"Hustle up! We got seventeen incoming!" Sarge yelled, pushing all of us mechanics towards the drop.

The boys were off fighting it out, the girls were burning the home fires, you know. Seventeen helicopters loaded with ammo mostly. Fuel came by truck in the middle of the night, since there just wasn't any other way to do that. A cold Polly would burn through a hundred liters just lighting off, after that it got about half a mile to the liter, right on the button. Leastwise mine did, and she burned clean and mean.

We humped our asses off unloading those choppers, cause they were in and out quick. There were angels way up high, some F-27's maybe, or the new 29's flying suppression so we'd have half an hour of good airspace, but I didn't know a whole lot about that stuff.

I knew tanks, that was my deal. I was just 19 years old, but I knew more about the M4A6 Powell Main Battle Tank than any of the cross-eyed bastards who'd designed it back in Motown. I could tear one down and put it back together with my eyes closed. It's what I'd been bred for, if you believed the hype.

Personally, I figured I'd been bred for fucking, since I'd done about as much of that as anything else during my stint here. They sure as hell didn't tell you that at the recruiter, or even in basic, and they really didn't say shit about it at mech school. Didn't need to be scaring us, you know. We had enough on our minds being away from home and all.

But as soon as you got to the lines, you were in it. I was in it, and deep too. I was probably pregnant as hell right then, but there wasn't no way of telling until I missed my period, or started puking my guts out after breakfast, and I did that sometimes anyway. You couldn't scrounge a condom if your life depended on it; those things were just too damn useful for other stuff. Using a condom just for fucking? That was plain stupid. I'd gotten my BC shot along with all the other stuff, like mumps and malaria and all the shit we'd never catch, but there weren't no boosters on the lines.

"Fuck." I was hot and sweaty, and I wiped the salty dampness out of my eyes.

"No shit." Jill slumped down beside me, sitting in the shade of the mess tent. We could hear the cookies rattling pots and pans, but it didn't smell too good.

"I'm gonna get a shower," I thought aloud, sucking my top lip.

"Water hours." My friend had her eyes closed. "They catch you and it's gonna be lashes."

"Be worth it."

"You think?" She turned her head like I was serious maybe.

"What? You wanna?" I looked at Jill. If we got caught we'd be looking at ten strokes with the Top's bullwhip and that hurt.

"Ain't nobody around," she whispered, smiling cause a shower sounded good.

"Come on," I decided, making up our minds. We walked around the camp slowly. Everybody else was taking nooners after that ammo hump.

"Hurry up..." Jill said, lifting the heavy canvas so I could crawl under.

We were sneaking into the showers from the back side and it wasn't much. A floor made out of pallets, half sunk into the mud, but clean anyway. A half dozen shower heads with spring valves and chains, like it was a hundred years ago. Some make-shift curtains shoved out of the way, cause nobody gave a shit about privacy. Yeah, nothing to write home about, but that water was gonna be hot. The water tanks had been soaking up the sun all morning and half the afternoon. It was gonna be good.

"We're fuckin' crazy!" Jill giggled and I shushed her.

"Get your clothes off, hurry up," I breathed, already pulling my t-shirt over my head.

My pale skin took on that weird green glow of the sun shining through the tent. I had tan arms and neck and face, real tan, but the rest of me was white as snow, just like Jill, and we were smiling cause this was so bad if we got caught. My smallish breasts moved as I got my boots off one at a time and I looked at her tits, bigger than mine, but just as hard. I liked her long, dark nipples a lot.

"You got any soap?" she asked me, like I'd carry some in my pocket just in case.

"Who needs soap? I just want water!" I grinned and we were naked in a hurry.

Jill had black hair, pretty short like mine and just covering our ears. Mine was dirty blonde, like my pubes. We were about the same size, small all around really. Not much over five feet and lean, muscular even. But that's what it's like on the front. Everyday you get a workout and all they feed you is protein and carbs. We had firm tits and tight asses and flat stomachs, hard like everything else in the army, and we were checking each other out.

I wasn't queer, but you gotta get love where you can and wasn't none of the tankers gonna love me. Not like I needed, they just played it up so they could bang you quick. It was the combat, made those guys a little hot for it. So I did a lot of trading favors with Jill cause that's what we did. Sometimes like that, in the shower, other times in our racks, maybe. We'd work most of the night, catch some sleep in the morning maybe, hump all afternoon and stand a perimeter watch after chow.

It didn't leave a lot of time for the other stuff.

"I miss my boyfriend." Jill had big brown eyes and she was frowning.

"I know. Come here." I got her under the water, holding her tight and letting the girl close her eyes, pretending I was some guy a million miles away when I kissed her.

She pulled the chain and that water was hot, but good even so. It would have been better cold, but fuck it. Wet was wet and that's all we wanted. I pushed my tongue into Jill's mouth, reaching down with one hand to squeeze her ass, sliding my fingers between her cheeks. I could feel her nipples hard on mine, our tits rubbing as I played my finger around her asshole. A second later I pushed inside, just a bit, so she'd get a little tighter and give me a deep-throated moan.

Jill held my head with her other hand, digging her fingers into my hair while we kissed. She was dreaming of that boy and dumping water on us every few seconds, not a lot, but enough. I moved my hand lower. Her cunt had grown wet inside, excited and greasy for my fingers and I fucked her slow from behind the way she liked it. She opened her legs for it, lifting the left and sliding her foot up and down my calf. I gave her my thigh, letting her ride me as I pushed and pulled, doing her nice.

I'd get her off if I could. Sometimes it happened, sometimes it didn't. I might even get off myself, but best for me was when Jill went down in the dark. She'd eat me out with my legs over her shoulders. I could pretend she was one of the guys I knew back home, one of the kids I'd played with in my daddy's barn, rolling in the hay. That was my fantasy; my dreams of home.

Jill liked the kissing, making out and getting fingered, so that's what we were doing. It was her turn and I didn't mind.

"Well, what the fuck have we got here?" It was one of the staff sergeants from supply.

"Shit," Jill breathed, mostly cause she'd been so close.

"Lesbian cluster fuck, eh?" she teased, grinning at us.

"We was just..." I started saying, like I had anything to say at all. We were busted.

"Got a chit for that water?" The lifer stared at me.

She was ugly too, with her face scarred up like some Canuck had taken a flame thrower to her head. She didn't get no love, except what she could steal. All the ugly people ended up working supply, like it was a magnet for pimps.

That made the rest of us, girls like me and Jill, nothing but whores when we needed something. Or got caught doing something we weren't supposed to.

"I guess I gotta write your asses up, huh?" the Sarge said, still grinning and looking bigger, like growing right in front of us. She coulda been a tanker, except for her cow tits.

"Hey, Sarge..." Jill said, smiling back cause she knew the drill. "You ain't gotta do that. We were just having some girl fun."

"Little rock 'n roll, you know?" I played with my tits for the bitch, cause I knew she liked blondes. "Ain't gotta write us up for gettin' a little wet."

"Not when we could do some extra duty maybe." Jill bit her lip. "You got anything, you know ... special for us to do?"

"Shit." The Sarge smiled and shook her head. "Get your asses outta there before somebody else comes along."

We got dressed quickly. Not drying off or anything, but just putting on our clothes before the Sarge led us back to one of the supply tents. We were gonna be doing extra duty, that was for sure. We'd been there long enough to know all the lifers and they had their favorites. So, it coulda been worse, but the Sarge wasn't in a sharing mood.