Compile:Quest

Chapter 6: Go Fish

Sergeant's Rec Room, Rooivalk Military Bunker,

African Continent

Jinx took a long drag at her cigarette, her eyes narrowing as the smoke curled over her face. Her hissing exhalation broke the hush in the room. Spent smoke collided with the cards in her hands and jettisoned up to join a dingy cloud suffocating the ceiling.

"Is this going to happen tonight, Jinx?" She looked up into the ebony face of Quinn and nibbled her bottom lip.

Quinn sighed, his chair creaking as he leaned back. Jinx's fingers toyed with her cards.

She smiled. Her voice was quiet and deep. "Go fish."

Quinn rolled his eyes and turned to Pearce. "Do you have a five?"

Pearce shook his head. "Go fish."

"I hate this game," Hodges muttered.

The top of his cards peeked out behind massive arms crossed in front of him on the table. His chin rested on his curled up hand.

Hodges glanced up at Jinx and Pearce. "Why can't we play poker?"

"Because no one can agree to the rules, and we all end up bliksemming each other." Pearce's eyes touched Jinx before returning to Hodges. "Like last night. And the night before."

"Still more fun than this," Hodges muttered. "Real fishing would be more fun than this."

"If your idea of fun is fishing in a radioactive swamp and pulling out something that resembles your grandmother." Jinx lifted her hands before she'd finished the sentence. She grinned at him around her cigarette.

The man grumbled under his breath. He sat up and twisted his neck until it creaked with exactly the same sound as Quinn's chair.

"Hodges, you have a five?"

"Go fishing," Hodges rumbled in reply to Quinn.

"It's go fish," Pearce said.

Hodges nodded, arms crossing over his chest as he glared at his collection of cards. "Yeah. He can go fishing."

Pearce shook his head and turned to Jinx. "So what did Vanbuuren talk to you about?"

If the room had been hushed before, it was a vacuum now. Jinx dragged at her cigarette, attempting nonchalance by staring at her cards with a thoughtful expression on her face.

After a few seconds, Pearce leaned forward. "Jinx?"

"Huh?"

Pearce took an audible breath. "I said, 'what did the Major have to say—'"

"Oh that? Nothing." She felt a blush work its way up her neck. She cleared her throat and extinguished her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray on the table, breaking eye contact with Pearce. "Hodges, it's your turn."

Hodges stared at her. "I want a queen."

"Don't we all," Quinn said, bursting into laughter.

Hodges joined him a few seconds later. Pearce hadn't shifted his gaze from her. Jinx smiled at the two chuckling men before turning to Pearce and lifting her eyebrows.

"What?"

Pearce's voice was strained. "If it's nothing then just tell me."

She shrugged. "He wanted to know what you idiots had been up to while he was gone."