Dry, No Lube Ch. 03: Disrupted

Van Kleck was far too competent to gasp at the sudden turbulence, but not quite competent enough to know how to ride it out; Pixy bit back the criticism she normally would have sent flying into the fiver's ear, knowing from brutal experience that Lerbal waves were notoriously difficult to fly through. They were dangerously unpredictable, requiring a certain finesse on the levers that Pixy knew van Kleck would never possess. And, much though she wanted to, Pixy couldn't fault the woman for that.

The shuttle rattled hard all around them, vibrating intensely as van Kleck, still strapped into her seat, fought to maintain her course. Pixy merely floated calmly as everything around her shook, feeling the wave pass through her body as an electrically crackling tingle; Fleet's doctors insisted that exposure to Lerbal waves didn't cause morliosis or cancer or anything like that, but it wouldn't be the first lie they'd told.

She was staring down at the attitude globe, on the verge of chiding van Kleck about her course, when the shuttle began once more to respond to her tentative fingers; the woman was not an instinctive pilot, but that mutated fifth brain lobe of hers allowed her to calculate the corrections she needed on the fly, with no trouble. So Pixy just watched out the forward port as the stars wheeled slowly around to the right attitude, bringing with them a sight that gave her an unexpected pang: the USS Pulver, dangling in space like a charm on a necklace.

She'd expected the usual discoloration: meteorite pitting, solar radiation, all of the assorted vagaries of space taking their vengeance on the electrocoat. But her eyes went instantly to a long, jagged rent in the ship's hide, back near the starboard quarter. "The fuck?" she barked, pointing. Van Kleck stirred beside her, and deep down Pixy knew she shouldn't distract the younger officer, that fifth lobe undoubtedly alive with worried calculations: she'd never been a strong pilot. But fuck that. "What happened back there?"

"It's, ahh..." Van Kleck's neck muscles worked in a nervous swallow. "We had a collision, ma'am."

"Yes, Ms van Kleck, I can see that. Looks like a fucking killer, too; the pelding's all shorn away, down at the lower edge." Jesus. It was like the ship hadn't decelerated at all before the hit. The shuttle wavered as van Kleck tried to focus, glancing frantically sideways, and Pixy knew the score immediately. "Ah. I see. The collision was your fault." It wasn't a question. "I'll take over then, Ms van Kleck; I want to dock, not crash." That wasn't a question either, and van Kleck took her hands gratefully off the control bars as though they'd shocked her.

Pixy accelerated at once; she did not believe in slow approaches, and her confidence in her own abilities was absolute. Her eyes and mind took in the approach vector, accounting for yaw and slide, fingers on the familiar switches; this was second nature to her, and she was already wondering how many penises she'd need to gratify to get another bale of pelding. When she'd left, they hadn't had enough for a repair like this. "I should make her suck the dicks," she muttered spitefully.

"What?" Van Kleck was startled; she believed in order, regulations, and standards. In a world like that, supply officers didn't operate via their genitals.

"Nothing," snapped Pixy. "Shut up. I'm sure you're a good engineer, Ms van Kleck, but you can't fly to save your ass. Watch and learn."

"Aye aye, ma'am." If she felt miserable at the criticism, at least van Kleck had the grace not to show it. "I look forward to your mentorship."

"Fuck off, Ms van Kleck."

"Ma'am."

* * *

A growing cloud of displeasure hovered over Pixy as she stalked the corridors toward the First Office... her old office. Crewmen stopped and stared as she came near, almost all of them breaking into smiles and snapping sharp salutes. "Pulver!" they'd call, and Pixy would respond with the dull greeting, "Rising."

"Good to have you back, ma'am." She heard that more than once, but the short journey just made her more and more irritated. She'd hoped, after seeing the splintered pelding outside, that the ship would be a mess. Instead, it looked tidier than it had in years. It even smelled like cleanser and deconstructant, rather than shit and solvent. She had to bite her tongue when she encountered her own chief, Koster.

"Nice seeing you, Ms Pfeiffer," he said casually, looking with open curiosity at the trailing Donskoi.

What, she was about to joke, did y'all clean the ship just for me? She stopped herself in the nick of time, too afraid that Koster's blunt answer would be something along the lines of no, the new First keeps the ship this way all the time. "How are things, Chief?" she asked instead, her tones freighted with meaning.

Koster shrugged. "Fine. We had to bust McChang again, down from warrant officer to petty officer. The usual."

"Fuck." McChang was bad at self-control. "This is, what, five times?"

"Something like that," Koster tossed out. "I'm not sure he keeps track anymore. He doesn't even bother attaching the rank markings these days."

Pixy had already started walking again. "Who was it this time?"

"Some FNG. Woman. She lodged the complaint two days ago, and the First Officer already had it typed up by breakfast this morning. She's from Tygon, and you know how he gets when he's around Tygon women." They hove up outside the First Office. "Talk later, ma'am."

"You know it. Oh!" She remembered the conversation she and the new officer had had aboard the circuit ship, while they waited for van Kleck and her tardy shuttle. "Chief, this is Lieutenant Donskoi. If all goes well, he may be helping us with some of our hypothetical activities. Mr Donskoi, Joop Koster."

"Sir." Koster nodded briefly at the junior lieutenant, eyeing him without that everlasting enlisted skepticism for young officers. The old chief even smiled, that faint smile he usually used for equals. "We'll talk."

"Sure." Donskoi's inscrutably flat tone left Pixy wondering just what was going on between them. She shook her head.

"We're off to see the new First. Is he an asshole?" Chief was a friend, sort of. She could speak freely with him.

"He's an officer, ma'am," and that was all the explanation she needed. Pixy's lips drew into a line, then she strode off into the usual scrum of sailors milling around in the corridors, talking over her shoulder to the new officer.

"Mr Donskoi, I'll assign you quarters just as soon as..." Oh. Wait. She was no longer the First Officer. "I mean, you'll get quarters assigned just as soon as your orders get accepted. Then I'm sure the captain will want to meet you, probably at dinner."

"Sure, ma'am."

"Right. Just follow me."

* * *

The interview with the new First didn't really begin until the hatch snicked closed behind the retreating Donskoi, and both Pixy and the guy behind her desk knew it. No, she reminded herself savagely, not her desk. It had been Densborg's desk. She'd only been keeping the seat warm. But god, she'd done a good job. And it wasn't until now, as she stared thoughtfully across at Lieutenant Matteo Falgada, that she realized how badly she wanted the job back.

He had those dark good looks he'd had several years before, when they'd met during a supply deal over, if she recalled correctly, a set of training holos and a bucket of spare parts. The payoff, as it so often was, had been his cock in her mouth; she'd remembered that dick at once in her mind's eye, the moment she'd seen his name on the hatch, a short thick ugly thing that, memorably, had tasted sharply of soap.

Pixy remembered almost all the cocks.

She'd caught his eye first thing, as she had back then, daring him to have forgotten her. She'd always given excellent oral service, and she often met appreciative former colleagues, at briefings or seminars or on training courses, whose eyes took on a faraway look when they shook her hand; she knew what that look meant. And she didn't see it in Falgada. He stirred once the hatch locked itself. "Want a drink, Pixy?"

"No." Technically, she supposed, she should call him "sir," but she found she wasn't inclined to do that. He had that entitled air you often saw in graduates of one of the Core Academies, her first name (and Donskoi's, for that matter) rolling from between his fleshy lips like he'd been born with servants. And like he'd called them by their first names, too. "I'm good."

"That's what I hear," he chuckled. "I was amazed at the condition of the ship when I took over. I'd read about that 447 engagement, and I was expecting a rusty piece of shit held together with epoxy and spit. Instead?" He waved his hands at a stack of reports. "Everything up to date and as it should be."

Pixy nodded, silent; she never understood pleasantries like this. She'd done the job. He didn't need to praise her for it. "Yeah? And?"

"And? Nothing, Pixy, nothing." He tipped his head back against the viewport; why he'd set the desk on the hull side of the room made no sense to Pixy. She'd had it the other way, so she could stargaze as she worked. "It's nice when supply officers are able to do such a worthy job as first officers, is all." His leg was shaking rhythmically beneath the desk. "I came from supply myself, you know."

"No shit. Sir." This was fucking ridiculous. He had to remember her; had to. It had only been about three years ago. He waved a genial hand.

"Please, don't call me sir. Not when we're alone, anyway; we're both lieutenants."

She stared at him. He was so relaxed, so casual; he had that look about him, the slant in his eye, that said he was from the Hearth, maybe even Old Earth. "You, uh, from the Core?"

He nodded. "My dad was a Fleet officer, so I sort of grew up near Fleet Central. You know how it is; you always come back to Central!" He laughed, a deep rumbling laugh, and Pixy got a strange feeling in her stomach; he'd laughed in just that same way after he'd cum in her mouth. How could he not remember? Pixy didn't quite recall every supply guy she'd ever traded fluids with, but whenever she met them she had no trouble remembering.

"I guess." Pixy had been serving for twelve years, and she'd only been to Central once. It seemed impolite to mention it, though. "It seems like I'm almost always in space!" She fretted, feeling the intense pressure of the small talk, this whole thing feeling like a charade. Why could he not simply give her some orders, accept her report, salute, and move on? If they were going to be friends, why could it not just sort of happen, organically, like it had with Densborg? And Okonfwe? And even Amisuul, in a way. Falgada just nodded again.

"When's the last time you were there, Pixy?"

"Oh, fuck." She'd gone there to pick up her first commission out of drydock, over ten years ago now. "It's been awhile," she admitted.

"So, you haven't heard." He was toying with some of the shit on his desk, unbending a paperclip into a long, kinked silver wire. A smile was tugging at the side of his mouth again. "You've got a nickname, Ms Pixy Pfeiffer."

Holy motherfucker. Could he not just be a professional? She pasted a smile to her lips and cocked her head; prettily, she hoped. At some point, she told herself, he'd remember; he'd have to. She'd catch his eye a certain way, or she'd make some sort of facial expression, or something, and he'd remember. It would come rushing back, the memory of the sight of her licking his balls. She found herself both dreading it and hoping for it; how bad did she have to be, that a man just flat-out forgot how she'd sucked him?

But man, would it make things awkward!

"I hadn't heard," she said, rallying. "Something about my perfect teeth? Or no, wait: my eyes." Practically nobody had purple eyes anymore; sure as fuck, he'd have to remember hers, staring up at him as she wrapped her lips around his cock.

"No," he chuckled, "though they're definitely unusual. No, your nickname has more to do with this habit you have, this unfortunate tendency of yours, to put yourself in the middle of massive explosions that you've caused."

The smile froze on her face. Jesus H Buddha. What was wrong with him? He'd plainly never been under fire before, or he wouldn't be making jokes. Twice she'd been force-fed a big, dripping bowl of shit soup, and twice she'd had to cope by ordering FPFs, the Final Protective Fires reserved for vessels about to be overrun or destroyed, when the enemy pressure was so intense there was nothing else to do but blow off every piece of ordnance you had, frying everything around you. "It's very unfortunate, yes," she managed. "That's one word for it."

"Wanna hear what they call you?" He didn't wait for her to tell him Fuck no, instead saying the words with a certain dry glee. "They call you 'Fire in the Hole Pfeiffer.' Apparently people tried out something more accurate, like 'Zero Range' or 'Point Blank' or whatever, but this one alliterates with your last name." He was laughing hard. "Perfect, no? They shorten it to Firehole."

Pixy sat back in the hard chair. She'd never been so appalled. She paused, trying to collect her thoughts, and when she finally trusted herself to speak she hoped she didn't sound too icy. "Who'd you hear that shit from?" she snapped.

Falgada raised an innocent pair of eyebrows. "What? You're not bothered, are you?" He blinked, unable to imagine a world where she'd be offended. "Shit, Pixy, people spend their whole careers trying to get a cool nickname. And usually, it's about their hair color, or their last name, some kind of facial features or something."

"Goddamn it," she hissed, no longer able to contain herself, "when a woman gets a nickname like Firehole, it's obviously about her cunt."

"No!" Falgada's eyes went wide; then, as she'd known they would, they flickered down into her lap. Of course. No man could ever hear any kind of vagina synonym and not look at the nearest one. She pursed her lips, spreading her legs defiantly wider. Fuck him. He shook it off. "No. That's not what people mean. I mean, umm, it's not like you have red hair..." He looked up at her thick dark hair, his forehead wrinkling a tad. "Do you?"

"Sir," Pixy sighed, bringing his eyes back to hers, "I've got a hell of a lot of backlogged shit to catch up on. I'm going to go, unless there was something else to discuss other than my pubic hair."

"Oh! No, Pixy, of course not. Carry on." But he was looking speculatively back down at her pussy anyway, the lech. Well. No big deal; this was a GP service ship, on active missions. They'd undoubtedly see each other naked before long. Pixy made a mental note to start growing out her bush, so that when the time came he could stop fucking wondering. She stood up. "No, don't worry. It'll take time for the nickname to spread all the way out here. Oh, and again, please call me Teo when we're alone." Pixy set her teeth; it was how he'd introduced himself to her before, when they'd met the first time.

How could he not remember? How had she possibly been that bad? The hatch closed behind her, sounding like failure.

* * *

She booted hard at the hatch to her quarters, fully expecting the yelp she heard in reply; there'd been no way Amisuul would have been cleared out already. Good, she thought with a black sense of reptilian joy; she had stress she needed to take out on somebody, and she'd been looking forward to using Rocky Amisuul that way. "I'm sorry, ma'am!" he was already blurting before she even got a chance to open her mouth. "Teo didn't pass the word until last night."

"Bullshit. I sent my message two days ago." He was probably right, though; the vagaries of trans-space low beam broadcast could play havoc with the signal's perception of time, and she had no reason to doubt the First would have sat on the message for a few hours. He didn't seem like the most efficient officer ever. "And what the fuck, Mr Amisuul? He's the First Officer, not your bedwarmer. It's Mr Falgada to you, not Teo."

"He... he likes everyone to use first names." The Tygon looked miserably at Pixy, his golden eyes worried; everyone knew how she felt about first names. Only in the wardroom, while food was on the table: never at any other time. "I'm sorry, ma'am." Even during sex she didn't like her first name used, as he knew firsthand.

But only that once.

She frowned and looked around for any dents or scratches on the walls. "If there's even the smallest amount of damage to the permanent fittings in here, Mr Amisuul, I'm going to rip your balls off."

"Tygons don't have balls."

"Are you still here?" she glared, and he began dutifully shoveling stuff into his locksacks. As soon as she was sure he wasn't looking, Pixy threw a worried glance around all the various nooks and crannies in her quarters; she'd been living here over three years, and knew every nick and scrape. Amisuul's uniforms were marching out of the 'fresher and into their cases. "What's that shit over there on the carpet? The stain?"

The Tygon blinked. "Wha?"

"By the door." She bent to look more closely. "Is that cum?"

He was throwing his toiletries into a carryall, looking pointedly at the deck. "That was there when I moved in, Pix -- uh, ma'am."

"No. It wasn't." She'd been leery about letting Amisuul have her quarters while she got her ears soldered back together, but in the end she'd gone against her better judgement and made the offer; he was an okay guy, and he'd been useful on the guns during that disastrous trip to the Flasbard moon. And before that, at the Battle; plus, he was already on the list to move up from sublieutenant.

He almost deserved some nice quarters like hers, hullside, with its private latrine. His own space, one level down with the other junior officers, was a stinking closet.

Almost.

"Don't you lie to me." She was using the low, vengeful hiss she dished out just before she put the boot in. "I know where to find you once I run a spectro on whatever that stain is. So." She glared hard, letting him see fury in her violet eyes. "Again. Is that cum, Sublieutenant Amisuul?"

The Tygon licked his lips; Pixy could almost hear the hamster wheel spinning in his little reptile brain, trying to figure out which answer she wanted. He should have known by now that it didn't matter; Pixy Pfeiffer was in the mood to deliver a kicking, and if he didn't see the signs already, it was his own problem. She knocked her heel back, casually, the hatch sliding shut. "Looks like it's only been there a couple days, too," she added, low-voiced, deciding where she should strike him first; with Tygons, it was usually most satisfying to start at the temple. It often made them urinate involuntarily. "Still sticky."

"It's bump, ma'am. Freebased. You know, when it explodes a little bit out of the end of the stackpipe?" He was shrugging, as if it didn't matter, and he was still shrugging when the spin-kick snapped his head back. "Ow."

"First off," Pixy declared, her lips peeling off her teeth in a nasty grimace, "you're lying. I know what your cum looks like. Second off," she added, along with another kick; this one was a hard jabbing heel straight to his belly, "if you are freebasing bump, you need to be more careful with it. And third off?" She swept his feet out from under him, Amisuul slapping to the ground with an expression of pained futility. "It's still a stain on my motherfucking deck." The boot went in with a muffled crunch. "Clean it. Now."

"Blerghh," was the reply, or something vaguely like it. She stood, her legs tingling with the effort, as the Tygon glared up at her. "Want me to lick it?"

In fact, that's precisely what she'd been thinking about. She let him stew awhile, panting, before inclining her head. "No. No, you may get a robot to clean it. But," she added, with one more swiftly whipping kick to the ribs, "it was a good idea." She bent at the waist to flick a bit of his saliva from her toe. "I'll be back in ten minutes, Mr Amisuul, and you need to be out. Vamoose. Gone. Comprehend?"