Dry, No Lube Ch. 03: Disrupted

* * *

"No sex. What's your name, again?"

"Smuul, ma'am." The sailor was new since Pixy had left for her course, a strapping thing from PP-729, one of the asteroids out in the boonies. He frowned. "No sex, ma'am?"

"I told Mr Amisuul to tell you this was a bedwarming gig only." She looked the naked man over; he was an absolutely scrumptious specimen. Of course. Amisuul would have sent his best one first. "Same rate, obviously."

"Uh, okay." His eyes were crystal blue, roving across her where she lounged on her bunk. "What if I get hard, ma'am?"

"What if?" she mocked; he was already halfway there, just from looking at her. Pixy put down the momentary buzz from that; he was enlisted. She wasn't going to fuck him.

"Well, okay. I mean, what happens when I get hard?"

She sighed, knowing that the golden room light made her look like a tempting morsel. Pixy was not blind to her own charms. "Then get hard, Smuul."

"Can I cum on your face, ma'am?"

"Will it shut you up?"

In the morning, Amisuul was grinning over his breakfast at her. "Did you like Smuul, Ms Pfeiffer?" he asked with a wink. Pixy frumped into her seat and glared across at him.

"He wouldn't shut up." She wiped again at the crustiness around her eye. "Send someone else next time."

"Yes ma'am."

* * *

"How's it coming?"

"Wha?" Pixy was blinking, achy-eyed, at her serving of trout kebabs with turshi lakre. She hauled her gaze upright to see Klonmyre, shifting her weight nervously beside the table in a way that made her bag of juice wobble alarmingly on her tray. "Hi, Janelle."

Klonmyre would have known, then, just how shredded Pixy's brain was. She almost never used first names outside wardroom dinner. Pixy saw her squared-off face tighten, the younger woman forcing a smile. "The studying. Barrier mapping."

"Oh. Fuck." Pixy brooded for a moment, then nodded listlessly. "Take a seat, Ms Klonmyre, if you like." They hadn't spoken much since Falgada had accepted Klonmyre. It had been an odd past few days; it meant Janelle still came up to the same corridor to warm a bed. Only this time, she turned to port instead of starboard once she got to the Senior Officers' Deck.

"I'd like." The engineer laid her tray carefully on the table and slid into her chair.

"I haven't soaked up this much shit since last time I fucked a coprophile." It was an old joke, delivered poorly. "It's a lot to learn, and our technical pubs haven't been updated in a couple of years, mostly."

"Need a new pubs officer, then." The laugh lacked any kind of warmth; van Kleck had been publications officer, until the recent arrival of Donskoi. "The old one seems to have been a waste of breath."

Pixy eyed Klonmyre shrewdly, thinking she should put a stop to that kind of talk; she would have, when she was First, but she found she didn't care now. "Well. It's been hard to get low-use packets delivered out here, and until now a new barrier survey manual hasn't been any kind of priority." She shrugged. "It's what happens. I'm dealing with it. And how much can the subtle art of barrier mapping have changed in the last few years, anyway?"

"Well, I guess we'll find out." Klonmyre had opted for the kimchee over pupusas; she always had had a nervous stomach. "And when you pull out your abacus and start fucking up the physics in mid-survey, ma'am, don't worry. I'll pull your ass out of the fire." She picked at the cabbage. "Now that I'm not in the engine room anymore."

"Yeah." Pixy made a face. "Nothing I can do about that," she lied. Klonmyre was, ultimately, out of the engine room because Pixy had needed Donskoi to take over supply (and drugs), and had vouched for him to the captain, and she hadn't felt it would be kosher to insist that Klonmyre stay below. But Reye had wanted van Kleck in the engine room for awhile; the writing had been on the wall, and even Klonmyre was forced to admit the fiver was doing a decent job. "Van Kleck will fuck up, eventually." Another lie; that fifth lobe had robbed the odious woman of her social skills, but it meant she made very few mistakes.

"Huh."

Pixy sighed, painfully aware she was not good company. She'd been locked in her quarters for days now with her abacus and her worn old tabslate, struggling to dredge up the complexities of barrier survey from one unremembered course she'd taken years ago, as a sublieutenant. A course she hadn't paid much attention to; the sexual opportunities there had been most of what she'd gone to that course for. But now she wished she'd cared less about dick and more about anomalous spherical declination and the HARS technique for measuring magnitude offsets. "It's an important mission, Janelle," she said softly.

"I know." Klonmyre had to restrain herself from reaching impulsively for Pixy's hand. They were in public, and besides, it wasn't her right any longer.

"I'm not sure I can pull it off." The confession hurt.

Klonmyre sucked deliberately at the juicebag. "You never are."

"I never am." She waited while the robot wiped her mouth, then shook her head. "Rendezvous tomorrow at 0200. Mr Falgada has you on bridge watch then, I think."

Klonmyre felt the atmosphere change, the duty reasserting itself, as it always did with Pixy Pfeiffer. "Ma'am."

"Read up on it." She stood to go. Her manuals waited in her quarters.

* * *

"No sex. Nice to see you again, Purcell."

"Likewise, ma'am." Purcell worked in the weapons shop; Pixy had walked in on her audition for Amisuul, back when the girl had joined the ship. Before the Battle. Purcell frowned. "No sex, ma'am?"

"I told Mr Amisuul to tell you this was a bedwarming gig only." She looked the woman over; short, compact. Just like Klonmyre. Pixy had watched her suck Amisuul's cock, and knew what this chick could do. "Same rate, obviously."

"Uh, okay." She looked heavy-lidded at the nude Pixy, pink and scrubbed, fresh from the shower. "I also do backrubs, ma'am."

"No shit!" Pixy liked the sound of that. It was one of the reasons women made such good bedwarmers. Klonmyre's massage skills had been outstanding. "That might be just the thing. Thanks for offering!"

"Oh, ma'am," Purcell protested quietly, her clothes already making their way toward the 'fresher, "I wasn't really offering. That's extra."

"Fuck off," Pixy snarled, already kneeling on her bunk. "No it isn't. Backrubs are a standard part of bedwarming, Purcell. They're included."

The woman's eyes rolled slowly along Pixy's body. "Not the way I do them, ma'am."

"I said no sex, dammit," Pixy spat.

"I didn't say sex, ma'am." Sleekly, confidently, Purcell moved to the edge of the bunk, her eyes calculating, and Pixy frowned.

In the morning, Amisuul was grinning over his breakfast at her. "Did you like Purcell, Ms Pfeiffer?" he asked with a wink. Pixy frumped into her seat and glared across at him.

"She was too expensive." She shifted in her seat; at least the backrub had helped where the injury was. "Send someone else next time."

"Yes ma'am."

* * *

The proximity alarm had the entire ship vibrating as Teo Falgada brought the ship out of lightspace. Pixy was not surprised that the captain was already on the bridge when she ducked her head in. "All good, sir?" She was feeling out of sorts, like the piece left over even after the puzzle is completed; for the first time in years during a Pulver rendezvous, she had nothing at all to do. Which was the meaning behind the blank stares that met her from all the stations.

"All good, XO." Reye's legs were crossed in the Big Chair. "You should probably supervise Mr Donskoi."

Pixy had to bite back a sardonic sure in reply. It was Donskoi's first crack at a supply deal; she'd sat him down the day before in one of her few spare moments. "I'm sorry I haven't been able to help you out with the supply shit for this rendezvous," she'd begun, trying to figure out whether or not the kid needed any help. "I saw from the log that you'd been using the low-beam to call the Nebel?" Their rendezvous ship was supposedly already waiting for them.

He'd shrugged, as the knew he would, and said, "Sure," as she'd known he would.

"What extras is the supply officer from the Nebel requesting? I'm assuming you lined up some extra detonators?" She didn't ask about the drugs; Ana the Tygon Whore had already given her the scuttlebutt on that. He's doing a great job, she'd gushed as she handed over Pixy's percentage.

Donskoi had shrugged. Pixy had tried, earlier, to sound him out, figure out whether he'd be up for the sex part of the job. She'd even hinted that she'd be willing to handle that on this rendezvous, even though she wasn't. But he'd just looked her in the eye and nodded. "No problem, ma'am."

"Quick turnaround," she'd warned, and he'd just smiled.

And now he had the supply crew, Pixy's old supply crew, ready at the shuttle bay. She picked up an air of subtle tension, even stress, a far cry from the typically boyish grab-ass attitude she usually got out of them: Chief Koster waited, arms crossed, his gravity harness buckled for the first time Pixy could remember, watching sourly as the warrant officers, Ana and Kluwer, manned the airlock controls. The compartment was all coiled intensity.

It struck her, suddenly, that they were trying to impress Donskoi.

So she ducked back out of sight, listening from the corridor outside while he and Koster went through the familiar checklist, the one Pixy could have done in her sleep. She listened halfway, mostly curious about whether Chief would try to set up a Rat Bet, but soon she heard the low tones of Donskoi murmuring something to Chief. "Aye aye, sir," Koster replied. He raised his voice. "Fast turnaround, people. Remember, the skipper needs us to be done in ten minutes. That's unloading, cataloging, and all the forms signed and shit."

Another mutter from Donskoi.

"Oh, right. And careful with the detonators, people. Mr Donskoi says we've got three gross coming aboard." Koster had to have heard the quiet clatter as Pixy dropped her stylus in the corridor; she felt her mouth drop open. 432 detonators! The fuck? She wondered, as she bent to get her stylus, just what kinds of dirty things Donskoi had promised he'd do for that. Pixy would have started at a blowjob, in a bed, with the idea that she'd probably wind up settling for vaginal, with the intention of offering anal for another hundred detonators once the man's dick was safely in her twat. Few bargaining positions were stronger. But 432?

That was an awful lot of detonators.

The ship groaned around them as Falgada dropped out; it wouldn't be long now. The litany began on the other side of the hatchway: barked orders, the click of switches, the whine as the servos began the painful process of opening the ship's massive cargo doors. Pixy was only half-listening, feeling the weird slow-motion lurch as the ship fell out of lightspace; the physicists all said you couldn't really feel the drop, but it was there. Your organs knew, your blood knew, that the deceleration was happening, and it always felt a little weird.

"Ready to go, sir?" the chief asked Donskoi. Pixy didn't hear the reply, but apparently it was enough for Koster to go on. "Okay!" he rasped. "Gravity, Ana."

The process began, Pixy's organs doing another kind of dance now, and she had to put down the usual wave of nausea as she went weightless, her limbs light and free; at last, her bra didn't chafe! She saw her hair frizzing around her and knew she should have braided it, like she usually did for zero-g. Funny how much less responsibility the XO had than the First Officer; Captain Reye was juggling their roles pretty well, Pixy decided, but there were drawbacks. Being the XO meant she'd stopped worrying so much about being charge of shit, or getting things done; already, she could feel her discipline slipping away like her wallet, floating out of her back pocket. She snagged it just as it was about to vanish into the vent.

Out in the shuttle bay, the de-icers roared.

"Doors." Chief Koster again, and the whole forward part of the ship shuddered. "Their shuttle's going to be fucking packed, people. Hustle at the offload." A pause, which Pixy spent vainly collecting her hair. "You all set with what you have to do, sir?"

"Sure."

"Okay." Pixy could almost see the shrug. "Warrant Officers, stay here with me to monitor the gravity and the plus-ups. The rest of you? Stand by."

"Gravity delay on, Chief." Reye had given permission to leave the grav off for the unloading; it sped things up, but put strain on the hull.

"Thanks." The Nebel's shuttle was already flaring in backwards, and Pixy caught herself shaking her head at its slowness; Nebel's pilot must suck. The shuttle, a normal-looking Type III with all the usual rust streaks and strike pits, eased into the bay; the operation, as always, reminded Pixy of sex. She took in the scene: Pulver's supply crew, waiting and apparently sober; Ana and Kluwer eyeing the approach vector, Chief Koster and Mr Donskoi in the back, bobbing gently, everyone staring at the shuttle as it shuddered in.

Pixy ducked back into the corridor and settled down to wait, stretching her limbs in the zero-g. Her studies had kept her out of the gym lately; she resolved to get her ass on the trainers as soon as the gravity came back on. It was almost peaceful now, the stress of deceleration and degravitation gone, floating, wrapped serenely in the hubbub of the busy ship. Pixy rolled her eyes across the stained walls, the chipped panels; she'd be sorry to leave. Pulver was far from the worst ship in the Service fleet, even if she'd been finding herself more and more on the Combat side lately. Still. Could be worse, she reflected sourly; Okonfwe could have been blown into four big pieces, rather than three.

She'd been Pixy's first corpse, or at least her first violent one. She'd joined Service after school in order to stay away from enemy torpedoes while still avoiding the boredom of Transport; she'd never expected to end up on a burning bridge, in command of an undergunned vessel up against a pair of enemy starcruisers.

Still less had she expected to survive that, let alone win it.

She had, though, and the result had been fame and decorations and a special pension and the key to a few planets, plus an ornate sword from the Patriotic Fund that still had yet to reach her. And an infuriating nickname in the Fleet, apparently. She'd won respect, even awe, from other Service officers; even the fucking Army had heard of her. She'd earned the right to have a few more clones grown, and on the Federation's dime.

But the cost!

She'd been walking around at one point during the Battle, staggering really, and she'd been uncontrollably distracted by the harsh sound her bootheels made as she tore them from the puddles of congealing blood on the deck; funny what she'd noticed. But then most of the blood had showered upward as the gravity lurched, and later there'd been her own wound, but none of it ever seemed as bad as the sight of sheet-pale Okonfwe spread in chunks beside her station, the remains of her face wearing a look of dull surprise.

"Shit," she heard from the other side of the hatch: Ana's dry, clinical Tygon voice. "They're just going to do it right there, in front of everyone?"

"Well, he did say we were in a hurry." Kluwer's answering snicker had a devious tinge to it, and Pixy shook her mind clear and started to listen. "Guess there's no time to find any privacy."

"I've seen this shit before." Ana sniffed. "Pfeiffer does it in public sometimes. I guess some of the other supply officers around Fleet like it that way."

"Good point, Whore."

"Besides," she went on, reflectively, "what good is a supply officer who can't fuck on command? It's a job requirement."

"That was Amisuul's problem," Chief Koster agreed, his voice more judgemental than the rest, and the silently listening Pixy could only agree; Amisuul could certainly fuck, as she remembered well, but he'd never really been comfortable with the casual, semipublic hookup culture of Supply while he'd been trying to hold down the job when Pixy was acting as First. "I've been in Supply on this goddamn ship almost twenty years. He was the worst performer I've seen." A pause. "No, I take that back. We had a girl back about thirteen, fourteen years ago who was married."

"That doesn't stop most of them," Kluwer scoffed.

"Yeah, but it stopped this one." Pixy knew exactly what expression would be on Chief's face now; he sometimes took these distant trips into memory lane, his eyes far away. "Too bad, too," he sighed. "Had a nice little body on her. I'd have loved to have seen her get pummeled."

"You're nasty, Chief," Ana muttered. "Not as nasty as that, though," and the silence that followed told Pixy what she needed to know: Donskoi and whatever anonymous rube the Nebel had sent over were going at it, right there in the Main Bay, at zero-g.

Which always presented problems, as Pixy well knew. It could be exciting, even transcendental, but the weightless fuck required a good, sound knowledge of practical physics. You had to understand leverage, friction, traction, and inertia; she remembered her first time trying it, a clumsy adventure in a borrowed shuttle with another cadet who was as curious as she was. He'd gotten it in well enough, but then they'd both just drifted around with nothing to push against, laughing helplessly.

In the end, she'd made him cum by flexing her pussy; it had done nothing for her, especially once his leaking cum had started flowing out of her, drifting around in pearly white globules. He'd bet her she couldn't catch ten globules in her mouth within one minute, and she'd lost.

Good times.

Now she heard a gasp from the bay control room. "Oh my god!" Ana the Tygon Whore, blurting it out in a voice that let Pixy know there was something impressive going on. "I've never seen that move before."

"How is that even possible?" Koster agreed. "I didn't realize he was so limber." A pause stretched out a few seconds longer than it should have, and then she heard the chief give a low whistle. "Goddamn. Look at him go."

"She's fucking losing it." Kluwer sounded impressed. "She's a pretty hot piece of ass, too. I'll bet she gets all kinds of practice."

"No way," Ana sniffed. "She's got to be faking it."

"Bullshit. Look at her chest, how red it is."

"I'm telling you," she snapped doubtfully, "it's just about impossible to cum in zero-g." She giggled. "With human cocks, anyway."

"Bitch."

"Assfucker."

"Shut up." Chief Koster didn't often growl like that. "This is a masterclass we're seeing. Watch and learn, both of you."

"We're not the only ones distracted," Ana replied, and Pixy heard the disgust in her voice as she keyed the Main Bay loudspeaker. "Hey! Quit watching the show and get that shit offloaded. Now!" She hung up the mic and Pixy heard her gasp. "Holy shit. I think you might be right, Kluwer. I think she might be cumming."

"See? We're lucky this is soundproofed. She looks like she's screeching." Another pause.

"Dude," Ana whistled. "You're, like, crowbar-hard down there, Kluwer."

"I know. This is insane." Pixy waited, hearing her own breath, surprised at how wet she already was just from the mental image. "I'm going to have to line up one of Mr Amisuul's bitches tonight. This is really..." He trailed off into silence.

"Yes," Chief added. "It is. No wonder we're getting so many detonators."

The intertube warbled with the incoming-message signal. "What's the holdup?" Lieutenant Falgada, up on the bridge, sounded pissy. "Captain wants to get underway, and he's concerned about gravitational creep."

Ana giggled. "Tell him we're waiting on the money shot."