Chapter 2: Saoirse

In Which there are Introductions, Flashbacks and Mal’s Cooking

**

Bayboro Alliance Supply Depot

Greenleaf

Nine years earlier

“Saoirse, this has got to be your dumbest idea yet!” Private First Class Saoirse O’Malley just grinned at the sergeant’s whispered rebuke as she chucked another MRE packet into her duffle. Mal didn’t like playing lookout, even when the take was this good.

“C’mon, Sarge, you know what they say. ‘An army marches on its stomach.’ And pretty soon we’ll be down to throwin’ rocks without proper ordinance, so.” Mal glanced back at her from his post by the cracked door and gave her the patented ‘You’re an idiot’ glare that any non-com perfected eventually. He went back to watching the purplebellies by the front door in the next room as Zoë and Saoirse silently passed full bags of rations, ammo and a few explosives out the back to the three men waiting outside. As Zoë was strapping one of the last loads to her back, Saoirse tossed another at the private closest to the door. She turned away as she let it fly, grabbing up the last two bags in her left hand. She froze as she heard the unmistakable thud and clatter of fifteen boxes of .45 ammunition hitting the concrete floor.

“Cao!” The Hibernian lilt in her voice made the Chinese vulgarity sound nearly pretty as she whipped around to see the private scooping up ammo and shoving it back in the bag with both hands. “You gou cao de idiot!” The deafening rattle of Mal’s submachine gun drowned out any further insults as he kept the purplebellies who had jumped to their feet at the ruckus bottlenecked in the doorway.

“All right, O’Malley time to cut and run!” Zoë herded the others away as the sergeant covered their escape.

“Aye, Corporal, three seconds,” Saoirse’s short red curls flashed as she climbed on a crate to reach the package she had hastily taped to the gas line near the ceiling before they had started loading up. At five feet, two inches tall she was nearly too short to tap the three buttons that st