ΔV Pt. 02

That?

That was enough.

The cock that had teased her in this dream slammed into her. It slammed into her so hard and so fiercely that her whole body rocked and trembled. She gasped in heavily, her eyes opening wide in the darkness. Then she felt his hands cupping her ass, squeezing her. His fingertips were so cold – and part of her felt a keen despair, a knife thrust into her heart nearly as deep as his cock filled her pussy. This chill was her own subconscious reminder. No matter how intense her dream, no matter how deeply she wished...

The dream was just a dream.

And even in her dream, Vidya knew that Sukhdeep was dead.

And then he thrust into her. His cock bumped against her deepest places, and she felt the chill of his member spreading through her – and somehow, rather than bringing numbness, the chill spread a throbbing pleasure with it. Her back arched and she opened her mouth in desperate, hungry want. And then, as her pleasure mounted, her eyes opened for real and her back arched and she felt her sex twitching around her fingers. She moaned in her tube and shuddered and twisted – and felt her sex clenching again and again and again around her fingertips...

And then she cried.

And she cried.

And then...when the morning came, she was floating in her tears and her arousal – and, as if the curtain had parted, she had no more tears to try. She had no more wails to clench back to her chest. She had nothing but a great, hollow emptiness inside of her. It was the space where feelings would have gone. But, darting through that empty space, there was just enough of her left to sit up. Get up. Push herself out of her nook and finally, get to work and actually do something other than sit there.

When she came to the work station, she found Mohammad was already there, quietly tapping at the console, bringing up the latest information burst from command. He glanced at her – and she at him. Their eyes met...and her eyes widened. "Mohammad, what happened to you?"

A few seconds later, Vidya felt like total shit. Because while Mohammad's face was a mass of bruises, they were all aged like fine wine, inching from purple to splotchy yellow and brown. They were old bruises, healing, and within a few days, she was pretty sure he would be back to his handsome, dazzling self. The fact that his bruises only left him more ruggedly handsome made her guts knot with guilt, piling atop the guilt she felt for not having noticed the bruises. Mohammad gestured to his face and shrugged one shoulder. "These?" he asked. "Nothing, nothing. I know that this past-"

"Raj," Vidya said, the pieces clicking together. "I knew he hadn't been bothering me for a reason."

Mohammad sighed. He looked at the screen. "So, the new data from the wormhole-"

Vidya put her hand on Mohammad's shoulder. She squeezed gently. "Mohammad," she whispered, her voice very soft. "Thank you."

Mohammad shrugged his broad shoulders. Then, quietly, he said: "Oh. Raj and I's disagreement was...entirely unrelated to you. As I told the captain...it was a matter of philosophical debate. We both got quite heated in our debate, and he ended up glancing off the wall, fracturing his elbow. I bruised myself in my...eagerness to assist him."

Vidya bit her lip. A flicker of something buzzed in her guts. She wasn't sure if it was happiness, pride in the idea of Mohammad taking on the tough and powerfully built Raj, or something else. She smothered it, pursing her lips. "Well. Next time you debate, Mohammad?"

"Hm?" He glanced her way.

"Bring a chair. To sit upon." She tapped up the information and tried to ignore Mohammad's huge smile – and the buzzing feeling it sparked in her stomach.

The Sparrowhawk was currently preparing to decelerate towards Janus. It would be a two hour long burn, the same length of time they had spent accelerating previously. It would bleed away velocity until, at last, they were in a stable orbit within ten thousand kilometers of the Chinese ship. The United States and Russian ships were nearly there as well – she could check their course via tabbing through the open net on the computer systems. The Russians had sent an entire fleet – three drone carriers and two cruisers – while the Americans had only slung a single aging ship. But as this Enterprise looked to be heavily armed and large enough to support artificial gravity...it might have been a farier fight if anyone came to blows.

That left the Chinese and the Indians at a disadvantage – there were other Indian ships approaching, but none would make the three month window that the Chinese had set for their ultimatum.

The Chinese hadn't been particularly big on sharing anything but the most simple observations – that the top secret research that Sukhdeep had been working on had born fruit, that the anomaly was, in fact, a wormhole into another solar system. What the other solar system was like came out in fits and busts, squirted their way through the Chinese laser antenna, and doubtlessly the result of more haggling in the UN. Each tiny nugget left Viyda more confused than the last. First, the portal emerged in the orbit of a similarly sized gas giant to Saturn. That struck her as unlikely – unless the portal's wormhole geometry was tied to gravitational fields. Maybe Saturn was the right 'size' to serve as an anchor point for a wormhole?

She didn't know. She wasn't an astrophysicist. She was a geologist. But Mohammad and her pored over the numbers anyway, no matter how little they understood it. Then the data came in that the solar system on the other side of the portal had four gas giants and at least five rocky planets.

That data hung on the screen for nearly two minutes, with Mohammad and Vidya looking at it in silence.

"It's quite a coincidence." Mohammad had spoken first.

"Yes, quite," Vidya said.

"There are solar systems we've observed with this array of planets," Mohammad said. "Several dozen, in fact. Some have more, like Trappist..." He trailed off.

"Does the gas giant on the other side have rings?" Vidya whispered.

That question hung between them all the way till the burn completed and the Sparrowhawk assumed its nervous, attentive orbit. The crew did gunnery drills for what seemed like hours – time ticking away as the American and Russian forces decelerated. Vidya watched it all from her chair in her science station, her knees drawn up into her chest. What passed was a furious bust of laser communication from each flagship. She could see the data passing and wondered which captains were being reasonable. Which were being petty. Which were being stupid.

She ducked her head forward and felt a wash of sadness building inside of her. She bit back a sob. Mohammad, wordlessly, placed his hand on her shoulder. Vidya placed her hand on his, lifting her head. She looked at him – and was suddenly aware, for the first time in many months, of just how small a room on a starship was. Her heart hammered and she darted her tongue out to wet her lips. She knew she should open her mouth to say something. Anything. But before she could, the PA cracked.

Captain Lata's voice came over the PA. "Dr. Rachna and Dr. Mayur, please report to the shuttle at once."

Mohammad nodded. "I believe sanity may have won out."

Captain Lata was, like most women who joined the IAF, small and slight. She had a small caste mark daubed on her forehead, like Vidya, no matter how little caste mattered out here in the depths of space. Small traditions, no matter how meaningless, had a way of making the void of space feel smaller than they might have been. She nodded to the two of them as they came. "We've been invited to the American ship, the Enterprise," she said. "It's large enough to hold a delegation from every power – and their Captain, Rickenbacker, believes that a face to face discussion will help us all when it comes to deciding what to do next with the Anomaly. I have checked with command and they agree." She nodded. "You will accompany me, of course, being our scientific team."

Vidya, despite the microgravity they hung in, felt the weight of the situation press on her shoulders. Mohammad nodded, curtly. "Aye, Captain."

The Sparrowhawk's shuttle used solid fuel rather than packing its own nuclear thermal rocket. This made the burn harder, sharper, shorter – and left Vidya floating against her restraints in the narrow confines. She looked out the window, at the sweep of Saturn, and tried to see Janus. And for just a moment, she swore she spotted it: A rippling, puckering dot of a distortion, more visible for how it bent light around it than for the shape itself. Her guts knotted and she, again, felt Mohammad's hand on her shoulder. Again, her hand went to his and she squeezed. Then the dot became blurred and she clapped her hand to her face.

Tears in microgravity were a hellish nightmare to deal with.

Docking and entering with the Enterprise took longer than she would have liked. The Russian shuttle, a box Soyuz mk XII, seemed to be carrying almost a platoon of people considering how long it took them all to get off. And then, before the Sparrowhawk's shuttle could dock, the Chinese shuttle docked – and it took took ages for people to disembark. Vidya wondered, idly, if the Chinese shuttle she was glaring at was the same that had dipped into and out of the portal five times – or if this was a different one.

Finally, though, Captain Lata, Mohammad and her all emerged from the shuttle. They were met by a senior officer from the American ship in the cramped, tight entry bay – and now, Vidya could see how it might have taken so damn long for everyone to get out. The senior officer chuckled. "Glad you guys listened to our request to send the minimum number of people. Come on. we've knocked together a meeting room."

The meeting room was not quite pandemonium. The Americans had done a fairly good job of deconstructing several interior walls, then setting up chairs and tables for people to sit in – complete with a large projection screen at the far end of the room, in case someone had to present anything. But the seats were clearly cheap and recently pulled from rooms across the ship, giving the place a college campus attitude, rather than the United Nations proper. Vidya and Mohammad took seats that they were offered, while Captain Lata shook hands with the American captain. He was a short, stocky looking Hispanic man, despite the name DuPont, and he looked glad to see Lata.

The Russian captain was a blond woman who looked as if she had met an incendiary weapon up close and personal. Either she had foregone reconstructive surgery on the sprawling scar on her cheek, or she had been a true nightmare after her injury and the surgeons had done a remarkable job. She had been joined by officers from each of their fleet – and a single man with glasses that looked like a scientist. The Chinese delegation was similar, save that it had less highly ranked officers and included no scientists as far as Vidya could tell. There was a man in a uniform that screamed to Vidya's, admittedly suspicious eye, 'political officer.'

But the thing that Vidya was noticing most was the gravity. It felt amazing to be pressed down by something – even if it was just spinning.

"All right, everyone," Captain DuPont said, his voice cheerful as he walked up to the front of the room. "Thank you all for joining. The Janus incident seems to be the exact kick in the pants we needed to put aside our differences. At least for now." He nodded. "Lets first cover the basics: The Janus wormhole leads to another solar system. Each of us have been getting data shared by our friends in the PLAA..." he nodded to the Chinese captain – another woman, who completed the gender skew. Vidya wondered if it had something to do with how women handled microgravity better.

"But we need to tear off that bandage now," Captain DuPont said, tapping a button on his uniform's wrist.

The screen behind him flicked on to the familiar map of the solar system. Earth, the gas giants, the big asteroids, everything marked as Vidya had...wait. Her brow furrowed. Several asteroids she knew had been moved to the Earth/Sun's L5 point were in the Belt.

"This," Captain DuPont said, his voice serious. "Is the other solar system."

Now the entire room exploded into pandemonium.