Dry, No Lube Ch. 05: Blitz

"Nothing else will come in." She stared sullenly over at the Commo station. Paulus had just replaced his assistant Jeyne, meaning Jeyne was currently in his bed. Naked. Pixy gritted her teeth; it had been a week since she'd been able to sleep with him. "I might go take a nap," she mused to nobody; the objective wasn't due to come into comms range for another five hours or so, even on the low-beam.

But shit, there was always more to do. XOs were continually busy as a rule, but it was worse when the skipper spent her life sulking aft. She'd not slept in two days as the ship hurtled through space.

"You're not taking a nap." The voice was a low hiss, Wrae Juno standing right behind her. "You're too busy."

"Fuck." She started. "I didn't even hear you."

"No, you didn't. And don't forget it." Juno liked to remind people she was sneaky. She pulled two folders from under her arm now. "You said you were going to slot the midshipmen, ma'am." She jerked her head back toward the hatch. "They're waiting."

"I'll slot you," Pixy muttered, powerless, scowling back into Juno's mocking grin. "Maybe I'll make one of them my steward."

"I'd be the first to approve, ma'am. You're a pain in the ass to be a servant for." The little redhead smirked. "Do me a favor and make it one of the guys. I'll break him in properly..."

"Slut." Pixy held out her hand for the folders. "Do me a favor. Bring me some matzoh."

"You got it." Juno sauntered off, her pert ass swinging. "Want me to send up the midshipmen?"

"Fine." Pixy had no objection to making officer assignments here on the bridge, in front of everybody. Hell, it was no secret that two of them were reliable and one was a relative waste; the whole ship knew by now that Midshipman van Shaughnessy was kind of useless. She perked up suddenly, something about the ship's motion raking at her senses... "Wait. Is there something wrong with the aft vanes?"

The two techs in the Maneuvering pit below her glanced at each other, then at the helmsman. "Yes, ma'am. Starboard. We're well able to compensate."

"At this speed? You shouldn't need to compensate. OOD!" She shouted it, but she didn't really need to; Lieutenant Dwart was standing right there in her orange Engineering utilities, the OOD's telescope cocked under her arm alongside her impressive left tit. "Did you know there was something wrong with the aft starboard vanes?"

Dwart's vacant face told her the answer was no, not really. "It's in the order book, ma'am, I think."

"Yes," Pixy grated, "but did you feel it? Could you tell by the handling of the ship? And do you know how dangerous it is to be moving above velocity factor ten with a loose aft vane?"

Dwart licked those full, sexy lips. Pixy knew she'd seldom made a better choice than when she picked Dwart to be the ship's chief whore. The Head of head, as they called her behind her back, and with lips like that Pixy knew why. "I know it's not ideal, ma'am," she admitted, glancing over at the helmsman. "But I also know we're in haste, and slowing down to make repairs isn't a requirement unless the vibration exceeds 4.8 million Hertz..."

"Sure. But what's the rate of vibration now? Without looking at the viewscreen, please." Pixy was at full gallop now, snappish for the sake of being snappish, her mind still reeling a tad: 4.8 million Hertz? On the GP Service ships Pixy had spent her whole career in, vanes needed to be inspected and replaced if their vibration hit just ten thousand Hertz! Even after a few months aboard, guiding this awesome war machine through space, the strength of it awed her. "Tell me, Ms Dwart."

"It's well within tolerance, ma'am," the woman insisted, unexpectedly sturdy. "I've got the helm alarm set to warn us when the rate goes beyond two million."

"Relying on warning alarms is not a perfect technique, Ms Dwart," Pixy grumbled, annoyed that she couldn't really find fault with the answer. "Check the numbers every fifteen minutes."

'Aye aye, ma'am."

"Put it in the order book too, please."

'Ma'am." They both glanced aft as the hatch grated open, admitting the two more useful midshipmen. "State your business, you two."

"I called them." Pixy nodded at Dwart. "Thank you. Mind your helm." Pixy peered hard at the two, her lips pursed severely. "Where's Asskiss?" Sure, Captain Ledecki didn't like Pixy's nicknames for the midshipmen, but the Captain wasn't here. This was the bridge; she was never here. "Not that it matters. I'm not terribly interested in him, but I found a place to put you two."

She eyed them both. Nergui Smith-Aliyeva, alias Shitbird, wiry with huge, alert eyes, who knew when to keep his mouth shut. And Dahlia Wollz, alias Vagina, whose tae-kwon-do prowess had saved the bridge during the recent mutiny. "So we're short. You know that. We're heading off on a real mission; you know that, too." She'd made sure they'd been invited to the wardroom with the other officers once they'd gotten underway. "I have it in mind to give you two shitlicks warrants as acting duty officers." She saw their eyes light up. Wollz, in particular, was pumped; she'd already gotten a medal out of this trip. "So from now on you're Mister Shitbird and Ms Vagina. Congratulations. Your buddy Asskiss can just stay Asskiss. Mr McZylenko!"

"Ma'am?" Poor McZylenko, who was usually such a pussy, came loping over from the weapons station. He was Delmer's assistant, and unfortunately, he'd soon be the actual Weapons Officer once she was able to shitcan Delmer.

"I'm giving you Mr Smith-Aliyeva here as your Second Assistant. Turn him into a goddamn killing machine."

"Ma'am."

"Maybe, we can even get him qualified to stand a watch. But until then, he's yours. Mr Paulus!"

"Yes?" Paulus' commo station was within earshot, so he'd already figured out what was going on. "Do we get Vagina, ma'am?"

"You? Fuck no, Mr Paulus; you couldn't get any vagina without paying for it. You do, however, get Ms Wollz as your second assistant." Pixy glanced over at the young woman. "But hands off, Mr Paulus. Clear?"

"Ma'am!" He looked offended. He'd been exiled out here into the wastelands because he'd been found drunk on duty once, but he should have been sent here because he was deeply inept. "I resent the aspersion, ma'am."

Pixy turned to Vagina. "What's an aspersion, Ms Wollz?"

"An insult, ma'am."

"Oh! Well." Pixy lowered her head, glaring at Paulus through her lashes. "You know better. That wasn't an insult." She waited, for effect. "This is an insult, you whiny, worthless, cockless little insect. And here's another: if I had to pick someone to rescue out of a fight, I'd go in after Ms Wollz before you. So suck on that, you shitfuck." She'd been reasonably careful to keep her voice down. "Pray let Mr Jeyne teach her the mystical secrets of commo. He's better than you." She smiled grimly. "How's that for an aspersion?"

"Top-notch, ma'am."

"Kissass. Get moving. Teach her how to be a watch officer." Pixy glared moodily out at the navigation pit, then cocked an eye toward Dwart. "Okay, OOD. You've got the ship." She could do it. "I'm taking a nap. Nothing should happen," she went on, glancing up at the plot: no contacts. Zero. "But I doubt I'll be too long."

The lieutenants lived along the passage just aft of the wardroom, and everyone was shuffling around with all the vacancies: Vecque had had a hullside cabin, and Golightly and Charlatul were currently dueling about who should move in. Managing the lieutenants was the First Officer's job: another thing, falling through the cracks because she'd not been able to get Delmer off the ship. I might have to step in and decide who gets the better cabin, Pixy sighed to herself; so much to do, always.

But not right now.

She stole quickly along to the third hatch on the port side and punched in Felix Jeyne's doorcode. Bedwarmers customarily slept in the senior officer's quarters, but Pixy knew little Juno would be lurking back there and she had no wish to be waylaid by more work. For that matter, she didn't want to bring Jeyne back to her place for the same reason. Juno had never disguised her interest in sliding into bed with the two of them, and Pixy was too tired to deal with that shit, too.

Jeyne's quarters were dark and close. A sublieutenant aboard a frigate got a fairly spacious cabin, but Jeyne wasn't hullside yet; his place lacked stars. But stars weren't what Pixy Pfeiffer needed just now.

She needed closeness.

Her hand slid across her staytab, the clothes sloughing from her body with alacrity. They seemed happy to go. Made sense; she'd been unable to shower since Krynne's change of mission, and she could smell herself as she glided over the bare deck toward Jeyne's rack.

He was crashed out, crammed hard into the angle where his mattress met the bulkhead by the latrine. He had a weird way of wedging himself right up against the nearest available surface, which was useful when he was warming Pixy's bed; then? She was the nearest available surface. But at times like this, it just looked weird. She smiled tiredly, lifting the thin blanket to slide in beside him.

He was sleeping soundly, but that was fine with her. Pixy was not in need of anything from him. She needed to renew herself, and she had her own ways of doing that. Almost six months they'd been warming each others' beds. They were used to each other by now, so she slid down his spine beneath the blanket with her body pressing against his, resting her cheek against his skin. She liked smelling him, feeling him, touching him, and this time he didn't even stir until he felt her arms snaking around his waist, her face and lips nuzzling the small of his back.

"We could go to your quarters," he rumbled sleepily.

"I like where I am," Pixy whispered back, feeling the strain melt away as her lips roved slowly along the lean cheeks of his ass. And Jeyne was wise enough to lie there and let her be. She tasted skin and sweat, her eyes fluttering closed as her day melted away into the urge for contact. She felt him stiffen slightly, like he always did, when her tongue skirted the outer edge of his butt crack. "Just relax with me," she murmured.

He did, slowly, while Pixy trawled along the backs of his thighs, still tented by his Fleet blanket. Her fingers traced idly around him, along the hair and flesh of his chest and belly, then down to where his cock nestled between his thighs. He let her raise his upper leg so that her roving face could find the warm, sensitive flesh between asshole and balls.

Pixy was losing herself, exactly as she needed to. This was bedwarming distilled to its essence, a time of closeness and trust and warmth far, far removed from the sterile walls and decks all around them, and from dry space beyond. She needed this, and as she tasted his crotch she felt her whole body uncoil between his legs, slithering up and around to his front.

The worm. That had been Lieutenant Shimizu's laughing term for this thing Pixy sometimes felt driven to do, the full contact of face on body, and Pixy had always secretly thought that was just the right term: worms dug and delved and pried, just as her nose was doing to Jeyne's balls right now. Although Shimizu had always messed it up: she'd always tried to reciprocate, back there aboard the Seville in those far-off days when Sublieutenant Pfeiffer had been fifth officer. Leanne had been her name, Pixy recalled suddenly, the only bedwarmer she'd ever had who'd been shorter than she was.

Pixy wondered where Shimizu had ended up. She'd been a good officer, but she was undoubtedly still in Service Command if she was even still in Fleet. Probably already a captain, guiding some General Purpose ship from place to place, like all her other old friends in Service. That was the story of Pixy's career now, littered with useless contacts from those days in Service.

Jeyne's penis was growing stiff and heavy as Pixy let her chin nudge it toward her lips, laying a soft kiss on his head. Not all bedwarmers were also lovers, but she and Jeyne enjoyed that side of it too; he had a pleasant dick that, no doubt, his wife was missing these days. She emerged from between his legs to bury her face in his pubes now, his thighs clasped around her body, feeling warm and secure and wanted as she trailed licks and kisses up the front of him.

He was still wise enough to keep his mouth shut as she wedged herself between his warm body and his cold wall, face to face now with their eyes glittering in the stuffy darkness. She felt him raise his arms, one hand in her hair with the other one light on her hip, their legs pressed together, and it was the most natural thing in the world to raise her foot atop his knee, pushing against him, feeling his cock now warm and firm along the lips of her pussy.

He pushed inside her, easily, smoothly as she sighed into his mouth. Bliss, she felt: this abandonment of herself to him, to them, to this, and she drifted off to sleep with the pleasant fullness of his penis halfway inside her.

* * *

She watched him a day later, forcing aside a twinge of unwanted jealousy as he stooped close behind Vagina at the comms station with his face nearly buried in her long hair. He was teaching her to use a coding gun.

Jealousy. Of a man who was happily married to a doctor. Pixy chuckled to herself, drawing an irritated glance from Captain Ledecki. "What's funny?" she demanded.

Most of the bridge crew clearly thought she was, making her monthly appearance on the bridge in her lounge coat and slippers. She hadn't yet told anyone why she'd come up here, though Pixy figured it was just as well; they were about to hail the people they were supposed to come help, so the command chair was where the skipper clearly belonged. Probably, she reflected, the captain was simply bored down there.

"Nothing, ma'am. A joke Mr Jeyne told me a bit ago," Pixy lied, hoping the Captain wouldn't ask her to repeat any. Jeyne did not tell her jokes, as a rule, and she knew the fact she was using him as a bedwarmer made Ledecki uncomfortable. The woman had shown no signs of ever having one. "You're drifting again, helm!" she barked, keeping an eye on their rate of deflection. "Got to stay on top of that."

"Sorry, ma'am." McZylenko stood beside Pixy with his midshipman next to him, a long line of useless officers milling around because the Captain was here. They all stood in careful nonchalance with their hands behind their backs, even Pixy. And as soon as she realized it, she scowled at herself.

"Not sorry enough. Stay on top of it, Mr McZylenko," she growled. "Might even be a good chore for Mr Shitbird over there."

"Pixy," the Captain warned.

"Like I was saying, a good chore for Mr Smith-Aliyeva over there," Pixy went fluidly on, restraining another scowl with great difficulty. "How about it, Midshipman? What's the optimal deviation deflection correction the helmsman should apply at this velocity factor? With the clobbets deployed?" The kid blinked across at her, then whipped out his abacus and began clacking his way toward the solution. "In your own good time, Mr Smith-Aliyeva."

Jeyne straightened at the commo station. "Looking like three minutes until earliest signal acquisition, Captain," he called out.

"Signal for what?" Ledecki frowned.

"I got it, ma'am," Pixy muttered. "Try the secondary low-beam first, Mr Jeyne."

"Aye aye, ma'am." His tone made it obvious he didn't need to be told how to fucking make commo contact, thank you very damn much.

"Yeah," Pixy went on. "You're hailing something named Johnward Lorero. Callsign seems to be Node North Command? Or North Security? Either should work." Pixy's implant was flashing her data in a constant stream, which she always found disquieting.

"Well," Jeyne said quietly, "actually, Ms Wollz here is going to be hailing something named Johnward Lorero." Pixy shrugged; she could not care less. "One minute, Ms Wollz."

"Sir." Pixy hid a smile. Jeyne was one of the three shades of lieutenant, and Fleet tradition said lieutenants didn't usually "sir" each other. This might be the first time he'd ever had an officer do that, even an ersatz officer like Vagina. "Shall I try Command, or Security?"

Pixy smiled. "I'm going to get some tea," she announced to the entire bridge. She'd learned early on, from Captain Bourbon-Parma years and years ago, that it was important for officers to pretend never to be worried about what was going on. And nothing said "I'm not worried" like going for a butter-tea. "Good luck in your comms, Ms Vagina."

"Pixy," Ledecki began.

"Ms Wollz," Pixy corrected herself, whirling toward the wardroom hatch. Her butter-tea waited there on the hotplate behind the little bar, and she reminded herself to check and make sure the shuttle maintenance guys had bolted one into the shuttle. Rank had its privileges, she mused, and one of them was a ready supply of fresh butter-tea. Even when shuttling.

She lifted the fragrant bowl to her face, letting the steam cloud her mind in that refreshing way it had, there alone in the wardroom with the great ship humming around her. The first slurp was perfection, thick salty astringency flowing down her throat in a solid, hot lump like a big load of semen. She sighed happily, freed for a moment from the cares of her world, then marched back onto the bridge bold and refreshed and ready to track down an enemy bomber.

Until the helmsman fucked up.

"Jesus H Buddha!" she wailed, the ship careening hard with the whine of the clobbets audible even through the graphene hull. She heard a jumble of other curses as the rest of the bridge watch swayed, fumbling for loose objects before they could hit the deck, but of course it was too late for Pixy: she lay sprawled on the floor with that silky, delicious butter-tea spattered all over the front of her utilities. "Shit!"

The whole bridge now stared at Pixy, standing like a moron with her uniform sheeted in thick, caramel-colored goo. A tech fumbled to pick up her dripping bowl. She was slowly coming to her senses when Jeyne gave a carefully understated report. "Comms established on Beam Three, 88% signal strength." He bent over the console. "He's requesting visual."

"Put it on," Ledecki shrugged.

"No fucking way," Pixy spluttered, but the Captain had been quicker and the screen was suddenly shimmering at the front of the bridge. And that's how Johnward Lorero made his first acquaintance with his Fleet saviors, ranged hopefully around the camera in varying stages of slippers, tea-spatter, and abacus-rattle.

From the look on his big, square face, it did not reassure him.

"Watch your mouth, Pixy," the Captain was admonishing in her robe. "And your hygiene. We're trying to make a good impression here." She disliked swearing. She flashed a radiant smile toward the man on the screen. "Good morning!" she purred. "I'm Commander Lina Ledecki, Celestial Parcheesi Cup runner-up. With whom am I speaking, please?"

The man frowned, clearly having never heard of Parcheesi. Pixy watched his beady eyes sweep the bridge group, from red-faced XO to fidgety midshipman. "Ward Lorero. Look, I'll just get to it," he rumbled. "Which of you can fix our problem, and how soon can you do it?"

Everyone looked at Pixy, which just made her redder. Of course they'd look at her. Everyone knew who ran this show, and it wasn't the woman in the slippers. She stepped close to the camera so that her wrecked uniform wouldn't show. "Subcommander Pfeiffer. When can I come meet with you, and where can I find you?"

He nodded soberly. "As soon as possible. Administration building at Node North. What's your position?"

"Node North?" Pixy glanced across at McZylenko, who was frowning at the planetary chart on his tabslate. He looked over and shook his head helplessly. "Can you get more specific?"