ΔV Pt. 13

Annie bobbed her head hurriedly as Dale added a finger to his tongue. "S'Fine!" She squealed. "Glad! Bye!" She forced herself to sit up, tightening her belly muscles to do it. She looked down at Dale, who was grinning up at her, his insolent smirk visible through her faintly transparent body. Dale drew his head back, through one of her interlocked thighs, then murmured.

"Talking to our constituents?" he asked.

When she had returned from her deathbed to the world of the living, Annie and Dale had both been dragged into a meeting. Ancient NASA employees returned from the dead, specifically for the purposes of managing Dale's new spacefleet, had been reading books and technical PDFs since the moment they had been imbued with self awareness. Now they had a basic grasp on the technical capacity of each spaceship that they had. It was a little bizarre to learn that the differences between the ships of the 1960s and the ships of the 2160s was less than Annie had expected. Yes, they used nuclear rockets instead of chemical, and yes, their computational power was several thousand magnitudes better. But the basic outline of spaceframe, thrust-to-mass ratio, even basic weapon designs, all of it had been mathed out and theorized by the same people who had put a brace of men on the moon.

It all came down, according to the most talkative ghost, to fusion power. Annie had grown up hearing that fusion power was about ten years in the future. The ghost from the 1970s said the same thing. And checking the historical records, the same thing had been true through the Collapse, the second Space Race, and right now. Fusion power had always struggled to break from theoretically doable to actually, practically functional. And so, the modern spaceship used essentially the same nuclear fission reactor that had been proposed in the 1960s and tested in the 1970s. The changes were all in the material they were built from -- modern materials being lighter and stronger -- and the fact that they had actually been built.

So, the old ghosts were more than up to the task of plotting out what their fleet and the rag-tag fleet of the old nations were going to do. The only problem was that what the old nationals were doing something that looked, to all the world, like complete insanity.

Dale stood with a grin. "We should focus," he said, smugly, as if it hadn't been him that had started to kiss her.

"You dick," Annie said, grinning at him. "And, for that matter, yes. I think...people are actually starting to believe us." She bit her lip. "The free healthcare magic definitely did the trick."

Dale nodded and began to incant. His fingers traced the patterns of force in the air and the factory they stood in -- the tenth they had done today -- started to strobe with raw force. Annie began to do her passes as well. Their power swirled around one another, growing closer and tighter, like two birds swooping in flight, pairing themselves. Annie forced herself to not giggle with delight. But the power never stopped feeling good. And there were some advantages to casting while dead. Her voice, properly modulated, could sing the spell components with a vibrant resonance that let them hang in the air for long, singing moments. Moments that Dale could then use, building the spell into a deeper, more firm complexity.

The end result came and Annie shivered as her whole body throbbed with the pleasure of casting. The factory began to move, the ghosts and unthinking undead that had been bound to the machines coming to life. Arms moved and drills whirred and Dale grinned as he saw the raw materials that had been stacking up at the entrance starting to float themselves into the machines.

"All right," he said. "We've automated the entire west coast's industrial capacity. This, with our liutenants, puts the planet at twelve percent automation..." He chewed his lower lip. "Remarkable time, honestly. But we do need to begin working out how to do the rural areas. There has to be a means more efficient than using mindless undead as field hands. Though, the farmers that are reporting in to us do seem happy..."

"We don't need to remove all labor, you know?" Annie stretched her arms behind her, groaning. "Just make enough free labor that people don't have to choose between slaving and dying."

Dale nodded.

Annie looked aside. "Before we go on to the next project...are you...sure about Ceres?"

Dale sighed. "I have to believe that they're not monsters. So, Ceres won't be heading for Stark. It'd be worse than the dinosaur killer. Hell, it'd be almost as bad as the impact that formed the moon." He shook his head. "So, that leaves one alternative. They're bringing Ceres into a near pass, to serve as a laser and missile shield, until they can deploy. If I launch to hit Ceres while it remains in its current orbit, they get to fight defensively-"

"There has to be someway we can..." Annie paused.

"What?" Dale asked.

"I'm an idiot..." Annie put her hands on her face. "I am such an idiot!"

"What?" Dale asked again.

"Send me!" Annie said, beaming at him. She floated off the ground. "They can't kill me. I'm a banshee -- the worst they can do is turn me back. I can float...that means I can get some permanent acceleration going, right?" She nodded, then made a quick twisting movement with her fingers. Her cellphone appeared, stolid next to her transparent hand. She started to tap into it. "What was my max speed? Ten meters in about ten seconds?" She stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth. "One MPS...constant..." She tapped a few more buttons, bringing up the online acceleration calculators used by billions of people planning their stellar vacations. . "It'll take meeee..." She narrowed her eyes. "...fourteen days."

She scowled. "Okay, that is a long ass time."

"Considering until recently, you would take three months to get to Ceres, assuming you could afford the ticket," Dale said. "I believe that flying there under your own power in two weeks is more than could be hoped for."

Annie grinned. "And I'd be able to handle it if I brought some kind of entertainment. I could watch all those shows I was going to watch but never got around too."

Dale stepped away from her. He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. "No," he said.

Annie's grin faded. "No?" She asked. "Those people out there, they're not ultranationalists. They're not fascists. They're just regular astros, people who signed up back when there was just Earth. No Stark. No Arcadia. No magic. They don't know that there's a better choice. Hell, they don't even know what we're doing here. And yeah, they can ignore our transmissions. But they can't ignore me." She put her thumb to her chest. "If we can convince them to stand down -- to help us, even. We can put all of this horrible, horrible stuff behind us and move on with the whole...utopia thing."

Dale shook his head again, his back still to her. "No. It's too dangerous-"

"Dangerous?" Annie asked. "Dale, I'm already dead."

"No, you're undead," Dale turned to her. "They'll have Arcadian wizards there. People who could scatter your conciousness across space as if it was tissue paper."

"It'll save thousands of lives. Maybe millions, if they fuck up their insane plan," Annie said, her eyes flashing. "It's worth the risk."

Dale reached out. His hand gripped her shoulder, squeezing so tightly that his fingers penetrated her ectoplasmic flesh. The pressure of his hot, trembling fingers in her spectral tissue felt distractedly good -- throbbing points of warmth that spread through her body, radiating down to the tips of her breasts. Dale's eyes were gleaming as he looked into hers. "It's not," he said, his voice a harsh croak. "I almost lost you once, Annie. Never again."

Annie's fingers slipped along his cheek. Goosebumps rose to meet her and Dale shivered convulsively. Her lips quirked, ever so slightly. "Dale, Dale, Dale. You've done terrible things for a good cause. W-We both have." She looked aside. "This has already gotten scarier and more confusing than I thought it could be. But...if we have a chance to make it better, a chance, we have to take it." She whispered. "Please."

Dale hung his head forward. Softly...very softly...he whispered: "It'll take time to prepare your supplies. Time enough for one more night?"

Annie smiled. Her eyes brimmed with her own tears -- tears of glowing, glimmering light. They tracked along her cheeks as she whispered. "Of course, you dummy..." She took his hands and together, they started out of the factory. Dale paused at the door to shroud himself in a shield. It was hardly needed. As they walked through the streets of Los Angeles, people waved at them. She saw a few murals going up -- people painting and expressing themselves. Music played from courtyards where impromptu bands were starting up. She even as people who had set up a console that was playing movies that, until a few months ago, would have been trapped behind DRM and paywalls.

Annie floated casually beside her lover, grinning down at him. "So, Dark Lord, think it's like this everywhere else?"

"I hope so," he said. "The reports from the Chinese arcologies are promising -- there were large sections of their population that, shall we say, were less than pleased with totalitarian communism."

"Utopian communism is much more fun, yes," Annie said, grinning.

They came to one of their projects: A large, magical gateway. The principles behind point to point teleportation were frustrating to Annie -- the power cost went in this bizarre bell curve, where the best 'sweet spot' for long ranged teleportation was between two cities, but it got incredibly expensive for close range teleportation and even more expensive for the really really long ranged stuff. Spaceships would still be a fact of life, even if Stark and Arcadia both became completely set to rights.

Still, stepping through the curved, metal prongs of the gateway put them both back before their headquarters. The distant clamor of voices -- and some chanting -- came to Annie's ears. Mordechai Anielewicz was lounging against the wall of the headquarters, a real cigarette between his lips. He glanced up as the two of them stepped away from the portal and gave a curt little nod. "Mordechai," Annie said, flitting forward to look at him. "Don't you know those things'll kill you?"

Mordechai chuckled. But it was a nervous chuckle -- his eyes flitting away from her. He had been her guard when she had been assassinated. Honestly, the more that Annie got used to being a banshee, the less she held it against him. She flitted backwards, grinning. "How are things going between you and Nofoto?"

Mordechai blushed a silvery-blue and coughed out some real nicotine smoke. "It's a little rude to pry, Annie," he said, then puffed on his cigarette again. "I'm still thinking I need to speak to a Rabbi about all of this. But I haven't had much time for that." He nodded to Dale. "There are still protests outside of the headquarters perimeter. The Nazi fuck wants to break them up."

"Of course he does," Dale said, quietly.

Annie pursed her lips. She had seen the reports from Heydrich -- the meticulous notes, the expert arrangement of labor. He had followed Dale's orders to a T, every time. Equality, equanimity, and gentleness had been the watchword that Dale had given him, and Heydrich had applied his skill with logistics and management to it with...well, with as much efficency as he had turned to slaughtering people under Adolf Hitler.

That fact alone was by far one of the creepiest, most horrifying things that Annie had ever had to face in her life. She could see the smoldering, crackling anger behind Mordechai's casual expression. The cigarette flared as the ghostly fighter drew in a breath he no longer needed to flavor his undead lungs with nicotine. He breathed out through his nose. "I told him to fuck off."

"Good," Dale said, then slapped Mordechai's shoulder as he walked through the front doors. Annie grinned at him, then leaned in, whispering.

"I'm heading to Ceres today."

"Oh?" Mordechai arched an eyebrow. "You know, when I was alive, I don't think we even knew Ceres was there. I didn't, at least." He shrugged a bit. "Now, the idea of it coming to smack this whole planet?" He shook his head slowly. "I'd say it is unbelievable. And yet..." He gestured around himself.

Annie nodded.

"Go on. Go have fun, mistress," Mordechai said.

"Please. Call me Annie," Annie said, floating backwards towards the door as she did so. She felt the hardness of the door bumping against her back, but hesitated before phasing through. Mordechai looked out at the teleport gate, then flicked his cigarette away.

"I can't, mistress."

Annie was still frowning when she came to the bedroom she shared with Dale. She stopped frowning the instant she saw Dale on the bed. Instead, her expression went from a little grin to a wide grin to an eager purr. Dale was sprawled on his back, his shirt and his pants cast aside. He was completely naked -- every inch of his pale, angular body on display. There, his flat, delicious tummy. There, his sculpted abs. There, his narrow shoulders. And there...his nice, thick cock, hard and aching as it lay along one of his thighs. His balls were nestled under it and Annie wanted, so badly, to suck them into her mouth. She started to float forward, then stopped herself. She closed her eyes and forced herself to solidity. She started, of course, with the parts of her that felt the most vital and alive at the moment: Solidity and presence flowed from the tips of her breasts, to her shoulders. Flowed from her fingertips to her wrists. Flowed from her cunt, out to her thighs, her hips.

She settled onto the floor, her body having shifted from transparent blue to a silvery gray, her form now entirely solid. Her hair floated around her shoulders in long, elegant curls, her pointed ears twitching up with her eagerness as she grinned a sharp, fangy grin at Dale.

His cock had shifted from laying along one thigh to thrusting proudly into the air.

"Gods, you're hot..." He crooned.

"I kinda thought I was cold," Annie murmured, walking slowly forward. Her hips swayed from side to side as she slid her finger along the sheets, rumpling them, teasing him with her almost-touch. She didn't quite graze her finger against the inside of his calf, against his knee. She only slid her finger along his thigh as she crawled onto the bed properly, her eyes meeting his. "Do you wanna warm me up, Dale?"

The exhalation of eager lust that came from Dale's lips was enough of an affirmation for her. She leaned forward and caught his mouth with hers -- her hand finishing its long, slow course from toe to cock. She closed her fingers around his girth -- barely -- and began to pump her lover. She slid her hand from the tip of his cock to the base, drawing his foreskin back, revealing the eager glans of his cock. Pre welled from the tip and slid down her knuckles as she leaned forward and took him into her cold, cold lips. Dale drew in a sharp hiss, almost of pain. She closed her eyes and focused on slowly sliding her mouth down, taking him into her throat. His warmth throbbed through her, warming her inch by inch by inch, and as she began to bob her head, sucking and moaning, she took pleasure in the strangled not of joy in Dale's throat.

\She drew back, grinning. She wasn't even panting.

"I kinda like not having to breathe. Or...a..." She trailed off.

"What?" Dale asked.

"I kinda had a weird idea..." She shook her head, then started to lean down. She lapped at the tip of his cock, tasting the warm salt of his pre. Her hand squeezed and gently rotated around the base of his cock as she closed her eyes to slits, focusing on his warmth.

"If it's...turning insubstantial and letting me fuck your head..." Dale groaned.

"Jesus!" Annie jerked back, her hand tightening on his dick. "...w-would that work?"

Dale's grin was playful. "I've done it before."

Annie's eyes widened. She glanced aside. Then, very softly. "Was it good?"

"Honestly?" Dale asked, his voice soft. "It was more for the girl. T-There, uh, there's less resistance and pressure and, thus, pleasure for me. But...well, you start, uh..." He chuckled. "You start hitting their pleasure centers and...well, it gets worth it then." He grinned, wider. "But I've heard it is a little intense."

Annie gulped. She looked up, then down, then to her left. Anywhere but at his cock -- though she couldn't stop herself from stroking him. "G-God that is weird as fuck." She whispered. "And a little gross."

"Yeah," Dale murmured.

"Kinda want to try it..." Annie whispered.

She focused and let her solidity fade just a bit. Her skin shifted to the chill, glowing blue of her spectral form as she bit her lower lip, while Dale sat up, his cock dragging through her hand, tugging against her. The warmth of him moving through her knuckles sent a crawling shiver along her arm and let her shuddering a bit. Dale's hands gripped her hair, sliding through the silver curls as he shifted to his knees. His cock bobbed before her left eye, filling her gaze. "Uh, not in the eye socket, that's just a bit too much!" Annie whispered.

"Don't worry, I know where to go..." Dale breathed.

His cock slipped against her forehead, teasing her skin, leaving a smear of heat against her. Annie clenched her jaw, then let out a fierce, harsh little squeal as Dale thrust home. He did so without warning and without hesitation, and the feeling was nearly indescribable. Part of this was because, as his cock plunged through her ephemeral forehead and into her ghostly head, all ability to think, let alone string words together, felt as if it had been squished out of her head. There was only time to think about the pressure of his cock, straining against her. Her eyes rolled up into her head, her left twitching shut as she made a groaning, gurgling noise. Then Dale shifted her head with his hands, twisting her slightly to the side, and his cock mashed against a part of her brain that exploded with molten pleasure. Heat burst through her and her back arched as if she was a bitch in heat, her gurgling moan of pleasure becoming a scream, a hoarse, ragged grunting sound.

She wanted to beg him to fuck her.

She wanted to scream out: Do it! Ram your cock through my head!

But her mouth couldn't form more than a 'uhhhnn! Unnnh! Unnnhh!" noise.

His balls slapped against her nose and swayed into her body with every thrust -- Dale pounded himself against her head, grunting. She felt his cocktip escaping the back of her skull, teasing her hair. There was no pain then, no pressure. Merely the spear of pleasure, busting through her head as she looked, thoughtless and senseless. Consumed. Utterly consumed by bliss. Her back arched again and again and again, her cunt spurting her cold juices onto the bed. Dale hung his head forward, grunting as he spoke.

"Gonna...cum deep in that pretty little head of yours," he said, his voice tight. His jaws clenched. Deep in her well fucked brain, Annie was aware that Dale was exaggerating slightly. She, faintly, could see his hand gripping his base, adding extra pleasure. He was pushing himself to climaxing, forcing himself along where her body lacked the pressure. Annie managed, somehow, to focus. Focus. Focus. She focused on his tight voice, on the feeling of his balls slapping her spectral face. She focused...and felt a point of solidity, a tunnel of tightening, ectoplasmic flesh around his cock.

It was enough.

Dale threw his head back and groaned deep in his throat. His balls clenched and she felt a bust of wramth in her head. Then a pattering shower along her back. Cum puddled against her ass, pooled against her cheeks. Splattered her thighs. Dripped along her shoulder blades -- his cock spurting into open air as he grunted and thrust deeper and deeper. Then, slowly, so slowly, Dale slipped out of her, until the two of them were extricated and Annie felt her entire body becoming diffuse. She hovered around him -- languid and foglike. Dale stroked his fingers gingerly through her almost dissolved body, his voice a soft croon. "That...was amazing. I...I've never been with someone who could focus that much while..." he chuckled. "While..."