Dry, No Lube Ch. 03: Disrupted

The drone hadn't put up a fight, per se, but it had taken an hour to figure out how to get its thruster to stop, that hour of hard zero-gee flailing ending only when Klonmyre, toward the end of her air supply, had taken her knife and just jammed it hard into the betakerosene tank, her engineer's mind still evaluating, making sure she wasn't sandwiching herself between the drone and the shuttle. Pixy had fought to hold her course while the drone vented against the shuttle's unresisting hide, and in the end the thing had floated, inert and dead, through the hatch.

"Go sit down." Pixy glanced critically at Klonmyre's sodden clothing. "On a towel." She frowned, looking carefully at the probe, now strapped down hard on the crew deck where the spare torpedoes had been; those now floated alongside, dangling at the end of one of the spare crew tethers. Pixy had thought it unwise to have anything explosive near the enemy device. There seemed to be no signs at all of lenses, cameras, or sensor arms; just the transmitter, still whirring inside one of the balls on the front, and the disruptor field generator in the other ball. She debated with herself, wanting to take it apart and make sure it wouldn't kill her, but also knowing she needed to keep it intact until an engineer could check it.

An engineer.

She spun toward Klonmyre, toggling her staytab to find some dry clothes. "Janelle. When you get your shit together, have some water and then you'll need to check this thing out. I want it to stop receiving signals, and I also want to make sure it doesn't go all disruptive on us. Oh, and that it doesn't ignite. Can you do all that?"

Klonmyre frowned, stripped naked now with Falgada's wet shorts kicked aside on the deck. Her little body was sleek and shiny in the dull crew lights. "That's all?" The sarcasm was thick, a dry pair of trousers finally inching up her legs. She considered. "It's just a matter of finding the power source and then making sure it's disconnected. I can do that."

"Reversibly?" Pixy's throat was dry with excitement; this was the kind of thing that would make both their careers. "Fleet's going to be sucking our clits to get its hands on this and reverse-engineer it."

"Yes." Klonmyre was gathering her hair into a mop on the top of her noggin. "Ma'am." She squinted at the drone. "And I'd better do that now. Right?"

"When you're up to it," Pixy replied kindly, "but yes. ASAP." She smiled gently. "Please."

Red eyebrows climbed Klonmyre's forehead. "No shit? Please? The great and wonderful Lieutenant Pixy No-middle-name Pfeiffer, saying please?"

She got a sharp glance in reply. "I've told you please before," Pixy murmured. "You can sleep for a week afterward while I get us back to the Pulver." After I launch a torpedo spread, blind, toward the location where those mid-beam azimuths were pointing, she thought to herself, and as always the guilt surfaced: like she hadn't already done enough?

No. She never had. It was never enough. "Please," she repeated, smiling slightly, and then she was back up the ladder out of the space-stinking crew bay.

There was a targeting globe with her name on it.

* * *

"It's not every night I get a decorated war hero as my bedwarmer." Janelle felt the warm hands on her body, through the melted-marzipan afterglow of her shattering orgasm, and nestled herself into her bedmate's arms.

"Well," she purred, shrugging through her sex-sweated haze, "it's only a bronze cross. They give out plenty of those."

"Not in the Service fleet," came the response, along with a fondly stinging slap on her rump; Klonmyre giggled, kissing the flesh pressed against her face, and sighed. "You're famous now. Just like Pfeiffer."

"Mm hmm," but Janelle didn't want to think about Pfeiffer. Not this soon. Not while she still had Falgada's semen sloshing through her pussy. "No. I'll never be Pixy."

They'd returned on short rations and fumed fuel tanks, catching up to the Pulver only by lashing the spare torpedoes to the shuttle's skids and spraying the extra thrust through some limiter nozzles Janelle had improvised out of van Angus' used food containers. If she was honest, Janelle was prouder of that than she was of the drone capture, which Pfeiffer had written up handsomely into a fulsome dispatch which had gotten her the medal and, at last, a return to her beloved engine room.

The docking had been testy, she and Pfeiffer literally itching to get back and find a shower, returning to the loom of the scorched-out shell of the Pulver and, most annoyingly, another shuttle already docked at the main ring.

A shuttle with the distinctive red-ring markings of the Circuit fleet.

The robots were impatient to get going, having waited three local days for the Pulver; Reye had been shocked when the Hive dispersed, suddenly and with no warning, the drones shooting off in all directions as if their controller had, say, run into a spread of four torpedoes fired blind, but he hadn't dared stop and wait for the shuttle so deep in enemy space. And the absence of the Cathos Vremein had given the circuit shuttle a chance to find them, bearing with them the frontier-survey expert they'd been promised and a thick pack of orders, addressed to Subcommander Pixy (nmn) Pfeiffer.

She'd left quickly, never one to want a fuss, taking only enough time to turn in Janelle's award recommendation to Captain Reye and pack her shit into her locksacks. Over forty months she'd been aboard, and yet Pfeiffer was able to get her life packed away and ready to leave in less than two hours, shower included.

And hugs. Rough, grudging hugs. Mercilessly brief and sardonic hugs, for the few people who dared to venture up to try to say goodbye: her old supply-shop cronies, who'd slipped her enough drugs for the first leg to the circuit ship. Chief della Sera, both of them refusing to be anything but cool. Amisuul, whom Pfeiffer admitted was no longer entirely useless. Donskoi, who'd fit seamlessly into her duty slot and her bed. Captain Reye, who smiled as he pinned on her new rank, the ceremony hastily thrown together over cold wardroom coffee.

And Janelle, last of all, as the robot waited impatiently to power up and undock, its metal form recalling, as it always did, a man fucking his partner up the ass. They'd held each other a few moments longer than necessary, Janelle ashamed of her tears, Pfeiffer the same strong, immovable presence she'd always been. "None of this, bitch," Pfeiffer had whispered fondly. "I'll see you again."

The shuttle had left quickly, barreling into the void to make up its lost time, and now Janelle closed her eyes against Falgada's hairy chest. "I miss her," she confessed.

"She's a good one," Falgada nodded, sprawled on his back with his cock still twitching. He shrugged. "She blew me once. A supply deal, some training books. Spare parts. Did you know that?"

"Know what? That she sucked your dick?" Janelle chuckled dryly, flicking at his penis. "She was a supply officer. She sucked a thousand dicks."

"Yeah," Falgada sighed, scratching at his balls. He reflected. "But she was a damn good cocksucker. I wonder if I ever told her."

Janelle snuggled deeper into her new bedwarmer, wishing she still had her old one. "She still is a damn good cocksucker, I'll bet."

* * *

Thanks so much for reading. I hope you liked it. I'm sure Pixy will be back, one of these days.