Dry, No Lube Ch. 06: Skulduggery

"Yes sir."

"Walk in front of me. I wish to savor the sight of your ass."

"Yes sir!"

Payne made himself scarce when they returned to the great cabin. Or maybe he didn't; neither of them noticed at all.

* * *

Wrae was still burping up Colonel Rennels' semen when she sat down on Captain Ledicki's sumptuous couch and watched the two whores return down the stairs from the Main Bay.

They really were hot, she admitted to herself: the short one, Vanzetartt, so gloriously ripe and curvy; the tattooed one, Nerkins, a sinuous wave of powerful sexuality, both moving with unconscious grace as they came down the stairs from the hatch. Neither of them looked like they'd spent the past hour straddling Lieutenant Charlatul. Vanzetartt called down as soon as she spotted Wrae. "You the new recruit?"

Wrae grinned up. "That's what I'm told."

"That's what I'm told, ma'am," the whore snarled quietly. "I'm a warrant officer. Get to your fucking feet and show some respect, bitch." The two reached the rich carpet at the base of the stairs as Wrae leapt to her feet, quivering at stiff attention. Vanzetartt had cold, calculating eyes now, sweeping Wrae with careful disdain. "Did the colonel break you in?"

Wrae burped again, her throat raw. "Yes, ma'am."

"All three holes?"

"Um. Two, ma'am."

"Were you too soft to get punched in the ass, or something?" Nerkins had a soft, calm voice, almost motherly. "Your weak Fleet sphincter couldn't let his dick in?"

"Uh, no ma'am." Wrae had to crane her neck at the taller woman. "He just... didn't fuck me there, ma'am."

They traded a glance. "How many men have you killed?"

"Um, like five. Ma'am."

"Not in combat. I'm talking about murders."

"So am I, ma'am." Wrae met Vanzetartt's cold eyes at that one. No wavering. Her victims had all deserved it, one way or another.

"Guns? Knives?" the warrant officer pressed.

"Knives. And... uh, blunt force." Some of them had needed persuading to walk out the airlocks, which had always been the only way to reliably get rid of people out here, where the surgeons were good and the clones were waiting. "Never a gun, ma'am."

"We mostly use knives." Vanzetartt nodded at last. Both of them were watching her closely, judging. "You may sit, scum-bitch. I can tell the Colonel had you spread out for awhile. Might as well make yourself comfortable."

"Actually, before you sit, go clean this." Nerkins snickered as she held out the cattle prod. "That kind of thing is usually my job, as apprentice, but I guess that's you now, you fucking weak-assed Fleet whore." Wrae frowned as she took the object, small and bullet-shaped, still warm from Charalatul's anus.

"Then come on back." Vanzetartt's voice was still cold, but at least she didn't sound cruel. "We'll talk."

"Aye aye, ma'am," she nodded, the prod pinched between her fingers as she started for the galley.

"And, scum-bitch? No more of that 'aye aye' bullshit, either." Vanzetartt was smiling now, bleakly. "You're in the Army now."

* * *

Desperado hurtled through space on her new course, the stars elongating and wobbling through the great cabin's transparent hulling, shimmering through the Lerbal waves. Wrae hadn't known quite how to deal with Colonel Rennels when he came back from meeting with Commander Pfeiffer; he'd shocked and thrilled her with the bunched power of his passion once they'd finally found the late Captain Ledecki's pristine bed, taking her as thoroughly as her sprightly little body had ever been taken. "You'll do," he'd muttered viciously while getting dressed, and then he'd left her to discuss his requirements with Pfeiffer.

Now she found herself a little subdued around him. Wrae Juno wasn't used to feeling subdued, ever, though part of it was also the obvious bloodthirsty confidence of Vanzetartt and Nerkins. She stood behind the couch where the two Army women sat, mostly because that's where they'd banished her.

"Apprentice stands in the rear," Vanzetartt had told her in that clipped, impersonal way she had.

"Yeah. So get your sloppy Fleet cunt off that fucking couch, whore," Nerkins had added unnecessarily, the filthy words oddly incongruous in that cool-grandma voice of hers. And so, gritting her teeth, Wrae waited at parade rest while Colonel Rennels set up a classified projector on the late Captain's coffee table. "And get me a drink, while you're up," she'd gone on nastily. Off to the side sat Captain Corcovado, reviewing flight information on a Fleet tabslate Pfeiffer had given him so that he could track their position.

Before them, the clear hull showed the sleek blue needle of their diplo ship, hanging from the Desperado's ventral boot like a parasite, tiny against the relative immensity of the frigate's asteroid-pocked hulling. Rennels pursed his lips. "So obviously, we're going to need to change our original plan just because our new apprentice is not as highly-trained as our old. And because, to be blunt, Sergeant Nerkins is not Warrant Officer Suryasta." He nodded toward the tattooed whore. "No disrespect, Nia."

"None taken, sir." Nerkins' voice was steady, cold. "I loved Sharaya. If I find the shithead that did her in, I'll kill him slowly."

"Of course. Well, listen up, Wrae. This will be your first time hearing about all this, and although you won't be going in on the actual kill? You need all the information."

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Well, so we limp into the conference. Giannessa," he aid, nodding at Vanzetartt, "you'll replace Sharaya's role: you'll pose as the Princess-Ambassador. Just talk as little as possible and then get him naked your body will communicate. We'll find some fatigues for Wrae."

"Her disguise won't fit, sir," she sighed. "My tits are a lot bigger than hers were."

"We can sew, sir," Wrae spoke up. Everyone turned to her. "We do rip our uniforms out here. We need to fix them. The ship has a full auto-sewing suite. Small, but complete." She nodded down to Vanzetartt. "Give me your measurements. I'll deal with it."

"Huh." The warrant officer gave a single curt nod. "Very well. Go on, sir."

"Captain Corcovado stays with the ship, making a lot of distracting noise about clearances and repairs. In the process, he sneaks Nia into the conference, to lie in wait. As Plan B, in case Giannessa fails to engage the target."

"And I might. He's slippery, like a wet cock," Vanzetartt said quietly. She glanced at Nerkins. "I've tried to kill this guy once before," she pointed out.

"Standard signals in your implants, to designate success or failure." Rennels raised unreadable eyes to meet Wrae's. "You don't have an implant, and we haven't got an extra. But your skipper assures me you're resourceful and reliable."

"I am. Sir."

Eyebrows rose.

"So. You're our plan D, after me as Plan C. Though, to be honest, if it gets to the point where I'm in there myself, everything has already gone to shit and you're probably dead, too." He shrugged. "Fortunes of war, ladies."

Wrae cleared her throat. "Where should I be, sir?"

"With Nia."

"Welded to my fucking ass, scum-bitch," Nerkins added.

"With Nia," Rennels repeated. "She's the fail-safe. You're there to make sure the fail-safe does not fail."

Wrae wondered whether she should ask. She badly wanted to know. Something told her that if she tried to ask Nerkins, later, she'd get nothing but scorn, so she took a deep breath. "Sir? Who's the target?"

An uncomfortable silence followed. Even Corcovado, in his corner, glanced up. Rennels put on a fake smile. "Tell her, Ms Vanzetartt," he nodded at last. "You've tried him before."

The warrant officer nodded, then twisted fluidly on the couch to stare up at Wrae. "I was an apprentice, under Colonel Rennels' predecessor. Our target is why Colonel Rennels is in charge here. I was the only survivor." She shrugged. "Our target is not a badass. He's just surrounded by people who are badasses. He's a field-marshal who supports a faction of the Army that is not safe." She glanced at Rennels. "And he has a meeting scheduled with the princess-ambassador of Kuygens VII, who was supposed to have been our dearly departed colleague Warrant Officer Suryasta."

"She was actually from there." Rennels shifted on his toes. "The cover was perfect."

"But it's me now, posing as a representative. I'll meet with him. I'll be searched. I'll seduce him. I'll kill him. Then I'll call Sergeant Nerkins forward, and she and I will fight our way back to the ship." Her eyes glittered oddly. "You'll be following us, obviously."

"Captain Corcovado and I cover the retreat, then we all flee into the cosmos." Rennels shrugged impatiently. "The man's name is Field-Marshal Juan Rollstenfenger."

"I've heard of him," Wrae blurted. "He's from Terra."

"Yes, from a family that goes all the way back to Old Terra. At the dawn of time." He smiled cynically. "Or of spaceflight, which amounts to the same thing."

"He's the guy who won the Battle of the Moons of Jericho."

"He's a fucking piece of shit traitor," Nerkins growled.

"He's a formidable target," Vanzetartt allowed.

"He's dangerous," Rennels put in loudly. "Dangerous to us, yes, but much more dangerous to the entire Army. To the war effort. To Fleet," he added, nodding at Wrae. "To... well, to everything. And he commands a great deal of personal loyalty, so his death is necessary."

"And I'm going to do it," Vanzetartt finished, her voice low with the rippled silk of danger in its timbre. She glanced again at Wrae. "So. Is that enough information for you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good." She glanced at Nerkins, then at Rennels. "You through initiating the new scum-bitch, sir? She give you enough pussy?"

"I found her entirely adequate, Ms Vanzetartt."

"Okay. Then if you gentlemen will excuse us? We ladies have some training to do."

* * *

Part III: Pfeiffer

* * *

Pixy scraped testily at her bowl, wondering whether it would be worth sending it back again.

Rennels had sent Payne up, "with my compliments!" as if the fiddly little steward was his property, instead of a member of Pixy's crew. Even though his job had evaporated. "We don't actually want him down here," the Colonel had said more candidly. "We're discussing highly classified stuff, you see."

And so Payne was, once again, the commanding officer's steward. Even if that commanding officer was merely acting. He'd accepted the move into her tiny little galley with an air of disapproval, but to be fair he'd probably have had the same reaction if he was appointed to cook for the Fleet Admiral. Which he was certainly qualified for, Pixy thought gloomily as she stared at the roast hare with plum sauce he'd "thrown together" for her.

The man was too good.

Stewards were supposed to be good cooks. But Pixy still wasn't used to actually having a steward. Almost nobody in Service Fleet ever got one, even if it was normal for XOs and COs in Combat Fleet. So she'd spent her whole career making do with the slop they served aboard GP Service ships, and now she had preferences to match.

Payne's food was just too good for her. Fucking plum sauce...

She sighed, staring mulishly out the curving expanse of the hull. She was not a fan of being used for this weirdo cloak-and-dagger bullshit, and she certainly wasn't happy that Rennels wasn't telling her everything she wanted to know. Even though the lying fuck had said he would.

He'd given her a destination, B-Milistine, a resort asteroid and conference center Pixy's plot repeater had never heard of. It's in Casseopeia Basin D, Rennels had assured her blandly. Just fly there. Corcovado and I will handle the rest. Pixy had scowled, but she'd gone ahead and set the course anyway, with Bar-Lev on the helm watching her curiously. So now there they were, trundling along toward Cassiopeia at velocity factor 13 with an ETA of thirty-four hours and twelve minutes standard, and Pixy still couldn't get Payne to produce a simple grilled cheese sandwich.

Nope. With Payne, everything had to be roast hare with plum sauce. Or brush-pigeon in cream. Or matzoh towers with jarga compote.

She glared testily out at the stars. "Fucknut. Extinguish." Her light-lizard winked out at once, leaving Jeyne to glance over from her bed.

"Something wrong?" he threw out casually. He was a good bedwarmer, Pixy reflected: he knew just what to say to calm her down, usually. But sometimes, his attempts at careless banter were a little too careless.

"The fucking food."

"Again."

"Yes, 'again.' I want my goddamn steward back."

Peyne dimmed his tabslate. He'd been studying for his promotion exams. "You want your impertinent, murderous, independent-minded, insubordinate, sexually voracious, offensive steward back?"

"Yes. Like I said," Pixy whined.

Peyne laid his head back, hands interlaced behind him. "It's been nice for me, not having her here. She always undresses me with her eyes."

"Yeah. That's because she wants to fuck you," Pixy explained.

"Well. But it's off-putting." He hesitated. "She and I have other duties, but when we're in this cabin we're here for the same reason, Pixy: to support you. That sometimes puts us at odds."

"You're not at odds." Pixy nudged the dish away. "She just wants to fuck you. You two should probably just get it on once or twice so she can get over it."

"No." Peyne was certain. "She wants to fuck us. Both of us, simultaneously. And you know it."

She sighed. "Yeah, yeah."

"And yet you miss her."

Pixy laid her head on her crossed arms. "Completely." She let herself ooze into the chair, the smell of plum sauce sickening her. This was the time she hated the most: some decisions had been made, but most lay ahead... and she had no idea when. Or what. Or whether it would even be she who could make them. She hesitated, mulling one of them. "You'd fuck her," she accused him softly.

Jeyne stirred and shrugged, naked on her bed. "I'm a married man, Commander Pfeiffer," he reminded her evenly. His wife Drinella was some sort of doctor back home on one of the Javete moons.

"Yeah," she smirked, eyeing a penis still glistening with her pussy-juice. She'd had time for dinner or a fuck between a cargo inspection and a counseling session for a miscreant engineman, and she'd tried to cram in both. Alas, though his spooge in her vagina had been satisfying enough, dinner would not be. "You'd fuck her."

He paused, then sighed. "I'm the second officer aboard a Fleet frigate on one of the least desirable stations in the universe. More to the point?" He waited until she turned questioning eyes on his. "I'm the bedwarmer for the acting captain. That makes me monogamous."

"True." It was an awkward position for him. There was a reason captains didn't usually take bedwarmers. The risks of favoritism, of perception, of being used, were very high. It was not possible for him to sling his dick around to others; it would endanger her position, and thus the entire ship. "But. Hypothetically. You'd fuck her."

"Oh, absolutely."

Pixy sighed. "I feel bad. I feel like whatever that fucking smarmy Colonel wants her to do, it's going to get her killed."

"Others have tried to kill her," he pointed out. "Usually, she's the one who kills them first."

"Well. But these are really dangerous people." She pondered, the decision solidifying. "I'm thinking... I might send a team to keep track of Colonel... uh, Colonel Smith's movements." As little as Rennels had told Pixy, she knew it was a lot more than he'd told anyone else aboard. And she had a finely-tuned sense of security when it came to classified info. "Just to shadow them. Keep watch." She stared levelly at him. "It's the kind of thing I'd tell a second officer to do."

He nodded, eyes glittering. "A shuttle."

"Some Marines. Not many." Pixy hesitated. "And a corpsman, a good one. Kimmage."

"How about I just bring Commander Borowicz?"

"No." Doc Borowicz was a good surgeon, but Pixy doubted his ability to deal with a crisis. "Kimmage is better. With a full haemo setup in the shuttle, not a portable." Her clock chimed softly; time for her to deal with that fucking engineman. "It would obviously be in your team's best interest to make sure Colonel Smith does not realize he's being observed..."

"I'll deal with it." He sat up, his thick cock dangling between his strong thighs. "Trust me, ma'am."

"I do," she said at once, a little surprised to find she meant it. "Just... don't come back without Juno. Whatever happens."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

"No. Really." She swept to her feet, feeling her utilities tug themselves into shape. "That's why you're bringing Marines. I want her back here, and I want you to do whatever it takes to ensure that." She stared down at the man in her bed. "Because you're right. You two are here for the same reason. Comprehend?"

"Perfectly."

"Good."

* * *

She was slurping butter-tea on the bridge some 32 hours later, squinting at the little asteroid belt in the forward port. Colonel Rennels stood beside her, looking a little odd in the purple robes of a Diplomatic Service courier. "Nice disguise," she muttered when he appeared.

"Disguise? Not at all!" He grinned. "This is entirely genuine. In addition to my Army rank, I also hold a Diplomatic Commission as a third-level courier." He winked. "You'd be surprised at the number of appointments, warrants, and sinecures I hold, all of them bona-fide. Or at least honorary."

She scowled at him, her tiny nose scrunching. "Anything in Fleet?"

He chuckled. "Don't worry, Pixy. Not as far as you're concerned."

She glared balefully at him. "Mind your helm, OOD," she grunted to JLt Dwart; she'd felt the ship falling off to port.

"I'm avoiding a gravity well, ma'am," Dwart replied in her deep, sexy voice.

"Don't give me that bullshit, or I'll kick your jaw off." She was feeling waspish. "Just keep us on course. Navigation!"

"Ma'am?" Delmer glanced up from the nav pit.

"Magnify and highlight the objective, and lock it at center. Maybe that'll help Ms Dwart maintain a nominal lateral attitude." The viewscreen came to life, figures and charting data scrolling down the side as B-Milistine grew larger at the middle of the field, winking out of space's inky blackness like a diamond on velvet. She frowned and consulted her implant, the information the Colonel's pilot had given her spreading into her thoughts. "So. Officer of the Deck."

"Ma'am." Dwart straightened up, quivering pertly.

"We're going to have to start sending a request for clearance when we're well out of range. It's going to have to look like we've been sending it continuously on all beams."

"Ma'am?"

"Our passenger," Pixy said quietly, with a wink, "wants his destination to think we've genuinely rescued a distressed diplo vessel."

"Ah." Dwart nodded knowingly. "Got it, ma'am. But, uh, I think we'll be out of midbeam range for another three hours, at least. I'm off in two."

"Yes," Pixy explained, trying to restrain her patience, "and that is why we have a log. Record my orders so that the next OOD can follow them, please. Or?"

"You''ll kick me in the vag, ma'am."

"Exactly. And make sure that both myself and Colonel Smith are called to the bridge the moment those distress calls get a response. Comprehend?"

"Aye aye, ma'am."

"Or?"

"You'll kick me in the vag, ma'am."

Pixy smiled warmly up at the woman. "You're a good officer, Ms Dwart. You're shaping up just fine." She stretched and yawned. "Colonel? Anything to add for my bridge watch to log?"

"No indeed." He smiled.

"Good. I've got coding to do. You've got the bridge, Lieutenant Dwart. Carry on."

She clomped down to the wardroom for more stim, feeling surly, and she knew why. She missed Juno. It wasn't just her cooking, either: she missed the woman's cheerful directness, her fearlessness. Juno gave her strength, and Pixy had known it for some time.