Dry, No Lube Ch. 06: Skulduggery

Of course, she'd deny any such ludicrousness, if asked. But she knew it in her withered heart.

It had only been a few days, but life on Fleet ships is so uniquely balanced, so finely tuned, that any change as abrupt as the commanding officer's steward suddenly disappearing into the Great Cabin with the Army was going to have serious effects on said commander, and it was never going to take very long. Pixy was realizing she was addicted to Juno, just as surely as she needed her butter-tea. And an occasional dose of stim, or bump. And dick, sometimes. Juno was that elemental.

She hoped Jeyne understood that. She thought he must.

* * *

Part IV: Juno

* * *

"Five minutes 'til release."

Corcovado's voice floated laconically over the diplo ship's speaker cones, its deadpan character setting off a deeply chilling vibe in Juno's brain. Corcovado had been her final exam, of sorts, her last bit of hastily contrived training during the two sleepless nights when Vanzetartt and Nerkins had stuffed her full of knowledge of what they called "the two fundamentals," sex and death.

They'd had to accept that she wouldn't become a master of either, though Vanzetartt had been forced to admit, after watching Juno with Corcovado, that the young steward's sexual chops were well above average. "You'd be outstanding," the warrant officer had growled, "given about five more months."

"And I'd be kicking your ass every fucking day." The lithe sergeant had punctuated her comment with an attempt at stabbing Juno, out of the blue, which she'd been doing for days at that point. Part of your training, she'd laughed after the first day, when she'd sunk the knife deep into Juno's liver; the surgeon had not been pleased, though he'd obeyed once Colonel Rennels told him he wasn't to tell Pixy. Good thing, too: Juno suspected that if Commander Pfeiffer found out her steward had been stabbed, there'd have been hell to pay.

The wound still ached, but there'd been very few more. Juno was good at blocking.

She blocked this one, too, her wrist knocking Nerkins' arm up and back while she followed up with a brutal chop to the sergeant's neck. Teeth bared, the two women had faced off until Vanzetartt had told them to stand down. "Not much of a killer," the warrant officer had spat. And that's when Captain Corcovado had made his appearance.

"The objective," Vanzetartt had announced loftily, "is to make both the captain's cocks ejaculate simultaneously." She'd glanced at the man. "You won't be able to, Juno."

"Fuck you."

"Try your best. This isn't a normal situation; ordinarily, we'd wash you out if you couldn't do this. But then, ordinarily, you'd have had a lot more training by now. So just do what you can. Try to make his orgasms as close together as possible. For simplicity's sake, I'd suggest a handjob at the same time you ride him." She'd nodded at Corcovado. "Sir? You ready?"

He'd sprawled in Captain Ledicki's bunk. "Might as well get this overwith," he'd sighed, and as far as Juno could tell, she'd done okay. His first load had bloomed inside her pussy just twenty-seven seconds before his second had slapped her belly, her hands twisting along that upper shaft as she rode the lower. Vanzetartt and Nerkans had traded a veiled glance, but they'd seemed pleased. But Corcovado had taunted her the entire time, that dead voice of his cutting monotonously at her appearance, her technique, the tightness of her pussy, the look in her eyes. The captain had proven to be a man gifted in the many uses of insult. And now his voice grated at her every time she heard it.

Floating in the zero-g bag once occupied by the late Warrant Officer Suryasta, Juno felt the fast ship shake around her as Pfeiffer brought the Desperado into its low orbit over the asteroid where their target waited. She could hear, in the tiny dart of a ship, the bleedover from Captain Corcovado's cockpit up above, where he was monitoring the Desperado radio net: the bridge was requesting orbital clearance from B-Milistine Control, and the voice on the radio didn't sound like Jeyne. Unusual.

"Remember, scum-bitch," Nerkins growled from the next G-sack over, "welded to me. On my ass. I'll tell you when to do anything."

"Yes, sergeant." Her disguise, as an Army tech, hung loosely along her tiny frame. She shifted, queasy as she often was in zero gravity, feeling the knives strapped to her body under the Army greens. They weren't using guns, though the Colonel would wear one openly. He waited upstairs, in the tiny wardroom's selective gravity, finishing up his plan.

"One minute," rasped Corcovado. Desperado's transmissions had stopped now, and everything was in motion. She gulped nervously, then glanced over to see whether the two fearsome Army assassins had noticed. Of course they had, exchanging one of those opaque glances of theirs. And all of a sudden, Wrae Juno felt a stir in her gut that had nothing to do with zero-g. This was different: this was danger. She furrowed her brow and opened her mouth to speak just as the captain's voice slipped one more time out of the cone. "Releasing... now."

She felt nothing as the little ship thumped free from the frigate's ventral hatch, angling down and zipping toward B-Milistine with nothing more than a slight bob among the bagged women despite the diplo ship's rapid acceleration. She heard the creaking of the control surfaces outside as Corcovado guided them down. "Eighty seconds," he bit out over the cone.

"Remember," Vanzetartt said quietly, barely audible over the rattle of the micro-clobbets along the hull, "keep it simple. Rollstenfenger's men are fucking psychos, but they're anticipating a complicated operation. Because that's how Rollstenfenger thinks." She licked her lips. "In, out. Done."

"Well," Nerkins chortled, "you'll certainly be doing the in and out." The sergeant's eyes shone in a way that was not altogether safe. "Remember, scum-bitch, we're getting dropped right before the captain lands."

"Right." Juno was unnerved that she felt quite so anxious. She never felt anxious. There was something wrong here, she knew, even aside from the obvious. "Then we hightail it to the target building."

"It's a hotel," Vanzetartt's voice was still soft, almost medicated. "Just call it a hotel, sailor."

"We do, indeed, hightail it," Nerkins broke in scornfully. "Well, I do. It remains to be seen whether you can keep up."

"She can keep up." Vanzetartt nodded. "I think the Colonel chose this woman wisely, Sergeant Nerkins." But the warrant officer's nod was cold, a curt bob. Her implant glowed, an almost imperceptible green in the corner of her eye. "Thirty seconds, ladies."

Captain Corcovado had done this many times before, a quick dip to the surface to disgorge a hit team before taking to the air again to move on, all without being detected by local Control. Vanzetartt had explained to Juno that they often did insertions this way, via rescue bag, so the little steward was ready as the diplo ship tore through the asteroid's thin terraformed atmosphere with the side hatch open, Nerkins in her Army Secretariat disguise squinting forward as the wind whipped at the artificial hair she'd put on. She glanced unreadably back at Juno. "Now, scum-bitch."

And then she was out the hatch, disappearing in an eyeblink, with nothing for Juno to do but suck up her nervousness and bundle herself out in the other woman's wake, the gravity hitting her with a shocking abruptness. The ground rushed at her with a suddenness and rapidity she couldn't even process, her eyes taking in the usual peaty ponds that covered most asteroids, the dark sky above her blotted out suddenly as her bags popped open.

Even cocooned within the safety of quadruple-strength safety bags, the landing was a rough ride. Rescue bags were designed to make sure whatever was in the middle survived suborbital impact on low-atmosphere bodies with minimal damage, but not no damage; Juno felt her teeth jar painfully together and found time to be grateful she'd remembered to make sure her tongue wasn't in the way. She felt herself rolling, bouncing across the rough landscape, the vestibular compensators over her ears barely fast enough to keep up with her tossing motion; all the while, the bag deflated slowly, sluggishly, leaving her entombed in billowing fabric right next to a tarn.

Nerkins was already tugging at her releases. "Come on, scum-bitch. Time to show me you can hightail it." Juno dragged herself onto the lichen, the sky a weird purplish veil around them with the diplo ship skating far over the horizon and the Desperado high above looking like a child's model. "Move that ass."

Juno moved that ass.

* * *

They waited in a corner of the subbasement of the hotel employee cafeteria, just a civilian researcher from the Army Secretariat along with her tech, both of them wielding complicated-looking scanners that were ostensibly made for investigating voids in the asteroid's crust. Of course, in reality, their purpose was somewhat simpler: deception. The place was swarming with soldiers loyal to Field-Marshal Rollstenfenger, and even this late at night they needed to be ready to talk their way out of discovery.

"Something's wrong." Sergeant Nerkins glared at her screen, a slice of pizza forgotten in her hand.

"No shit?" Juno was pulling security, staring out at the rest of the empty cafeteria. "Should I set the explosive?" She hoped she didn't sound too eager. Her rucksack contained a foldable wall charge that, once they clacked the detonator, would open a dusty and very noisy path straight into the subterranean luxury quarters where Vanzetartt's simulacrum of the princess-ambassador of Kuygens VII was currently seducing a traitorous field-marshal.

"I don't think he's buying it." Nerkins frowned at the screen, a closed-loop feed from the little vidcam implanted in a fake mole on Vanzetartt's neck. By this time, the warrant officer should have been well into the process of getting the field-marshal naked. Rollstenfenger's sexual weaknesses were well-known to the people who controlled Colonel Rennels, and he'd trained his team accordingly. "Blowing the charge will compromise us completely, summon every soldier for miles, and probably guarantee we get killed. But setting it will only take a second if we have to. So wait for my order, scum-bitch."

The insult had no force behind it, though, delivered out of habit, and this above all else scared Juno. Nerkins was freaked the fuck out. "Okay, sergeant," she nodded quietly. She wished she could see the screen; she was dying to find out what was happening with Vanzetartt, but she had her own proximity detectors to manage. "Scope's clear," she muttered, trying to keep her voice neutral.

"I don't think he's buying it," Nerkins repeated quietly, shaking her head. "I think she's fucked."

"Umm." Juno felt her heart thumping. This was not like a Fleet battle. This was odd: deadly peril, coming inexorably on while she waited quietly in a sterile after-hours mess hall eating cold, stolen pizza. "I'm going to dig out the breaching charge." Everything in her brain, in response to that mysterious frown on Nerkins' full lips, told her she should already be blasting her way into the field-marshal's suite. It bothered her greatly that she wasn't in charge here. "We can't wait, sergeant."

"Fuck you," Nerkins snapped, but she was nodding as she squinted into her screen. "Go ahead and get it ready. I think we're totally screwed here." She flung the pizza aside, her fingers tapping out a rapid status report to Colonel Rennels, currently roaming two floors above, pretending to be an aide. She was waiting for the reply when her eyes abruptly widened. "Shit. They're fighting. Set the charge now."

"Fuck." Juno had already unpacked the little red bundle, just like the dummies she'd trained with yesterday. Her hands fumbled with the arming ribbon, and then she whirled to her feet with her prox detector forgotten on the floor.

"Throw it at the wall, like we trained you on that bitch-ass ship of yours," Nerkins grated. She was stepping out of her innocuous civilian coverall, reaching for the big-caliber pistol strapped to her thigh. Juno blinked.

"Wait. A gun?"

"Playtime's over, scum-bitch." The sergeant's eyes glinted, feral, her tattoos slithering all along her skin as her muscles moved. "As soon as it blows, we go. Stay the fuck behind me. Anything in there that's not me or Gianessa needs killing: fair game. So don't get squeamish." She watched as the charge sailed from Juno's hand, smacking to the wall with a sound like balls on a taint. "Let's do this shit."

Juno swallowed in a dry throat, her hand closing around her treasured Sajusake Cyclone chef's knife. The girls had supplied her with several choices of blades to carry, but something about that knife felt right. Proper. It sang in her hand as she whipped it out from under her tech disguise, the clacker in her other hand. She was already smacking the detonation code before Nerkins turned and told her to.

Juno felt her blast-dampers bloom in her ear canal as the wall disintegrated before her in a wash of fire. Vanzetartt and Rennels had thought long and hard about the design of this charge: the target diagram had shown three walls and two corridors to blast through, and they'd calculated the explosives to provide exactly the right effect. The fire flashed through the basement, shaking that whole corner of the building, wall after wall melting as Juno watched in disbelief, her hearing safely dulled. The blast was still going on as Nerkins shook her shoulder.

"Don't fucking wait, scum-bitch. We move," she barked, her lips forming words that Juno barley heard, but then the two women were moving without thought into the dusty remains of the subbasement, fire still flaring in their faces as they hurdled piles of rubble. Her dampers subsided suddenly as the last wall echoed down, slagging in a pile on the floor, and then it was all swirling dust and the strangled grunts of two people in the hidden subsurface bedroom, locked in a harsh struggle.

The smoke drifted away to show Juno a large, powerful-looking man looming naked over Vanzetartt, who crouched on the floor beneath him. His neck bloomed in a raw new wound, already half-closed by the suture-iron he was clamping frantically to his throat even as his other hand lifted a little projectile pistol up from where it had just left a smoking hole in Vanzetartt's chest. "Fuck," Juno bit out, diving desperately aside as the field-marshal turned angry, blood-pitted eyes to face the two women surging through the wall.

Nerkins never really had a chance. Where Juno leapt sideways, Nerkins flew up toward the ceiling, her pistol already coming to bear on her desperate target as she gave a triumphant shout. Her finger was tightening on the trigger just as her head smashed into the ceiling, leaving her tumbled on the bed in a sickening heap.

Juno had just rolled into the far corner by the door as the big man stepped forward, his hand still busy at his neck, and clamped his pistol to the side of the dazed Nerkins' head; her face disappeared in a wild scarlet welter of flesh-and-bone splatter that spewed all over the room, leaving her headless body twitching on the bed. Fuck, Juno thought to herself; everything was in slow motion, the big man's legs and ass rippling as he turned back toward Vanzetartt, whose helpless wheezes sounded like the gasps of a whaleshark. Get the fuck up and stab this asshole, Juno commanded herself, her legs gathering under her body.

The Cyclone knife struck Wrae Juno's favorite target when murdering officers: the kidney, pushing into his flesh all the way to where her sweaty fingers gripped the handle before she sawed it hard toward his spine, the edge eventually hanging up briefly on something deep inside. He gasped and sagged, his whole body shuddering: they all did that when you ripped out their kidney, Juno had noticed, but by then she was pulling the long blade out in a little burp of thick blood and rising up behind him, pulling his clammy body toward her, the knife digging into the junction behind his collarbone, just where his neck started.

His whole body twitched again. Rollstenfenger was trying desperately to twist his head around for a look at his assailant, but his neck muscles weren't working and besides, the blood was coming in great thick gouts now and he was ceasing to worry about much at all aside from the onset of shock. She stepped back, letting gravity pull him off her knife as he collapsed in a pale, sweaty mass at her feet.

"Shit." She was already wiping the Cyclone off on her borrowed trousers as Vanzetartt worked with cold, clumsy fingers to get the field-marshal's fallen suturing-iron to her wrecked chest. "How the fuck do we get out?"

"The way you came in." The warrant officer's voice came faint but lucid, her feet scrambling. "Fuck. This hurts. Help me. You've got a Portable Surgeon in your rucksack; give it to me and I'll try to hobble out." While Juno rummaged, Vanzetartt spat out blood. "And cut his finger off. Or his ear. The Colonel will need to make a positive ID."

Distant shouts drifted through the smoke as the warrant officer fumbled the surgical device over her chest, frowning down at it. "Won't be able to fix a wound this big," she sighed, her skin pale. "Help me up."

"Just a sec." They could hear feet now, a gang working at the rubble while another chiseled at where Vanzetartt had put a stasis bar across the room door. The Sajusake steel hissed through the field-marshal's ear, the dying man scarcely twitching as his consciousness went. She held the severed ear like a truffle over a pan. "What do I do with this?"

"It needs to get back to the colonel. Give it to me." The woman groaned loudly as Juno hauled her to her feet, another muffled thump coming from the other side of the door. She tucked the grisly trophy into her belt. The thump turned into screams. "That's my booby trap. Time to fucking move, sailor."

"What about Nerkins?" Juno had chosen not to look at the tattooed form on the bed, leaking freely.

"Nerkins is wasted. We're not. Let's go." She reached out her arm, dripping silk from the diaphanous robe the princess-ambassador of Kuygens VII had worn to the meeting. "I'm glad I got him naked, at least. Easier stab for you."

"Um. Sure." Juno took the woman's arm across her shoulders and began to maneuver them toward the dusty breach, Vanzetartt grabbing Nerkins' dropped pistol as they went.

It wasn't until they'd lurched to the far side of the employee cafeteria that Juno began to think they might actually make it. By then, the Portable Surgeon had begun to do its work on Vanzetartt's wound, diagnosing and burrowing, stabilizing. "Where do we go now?" It was slowly dawning on Juno that the girls had never given her any precise details about their withdrawal plan, which was starting to set off vaguely disquieting signals in her brain.

"The Colonel meets up with us out at the edge of the marsh," Vanzetartt panted. "Azimuth is 223 for about 350 meters. We get there, then he finds us and the captain comes to pick us up." She wiped a trickle of blood from her mouth. "I can just about make it, but make sure I don't pass out. Let's go."

Juno was exhausted by the time Vanzetartt's implant told them they'd reached the rendezvous, at the far side of a marshy expanse of slippery rock; she couldn't imagine how wasted the warrant officer must be feeling. They slid gratefully down atop a rock, barely able now to hear anything from a target hotel blazing with lights behind them. "The colonel's demo charges should be going off any second now."

"Huh?" Juno's dampers surged back to life, then, as the whole front of the building caved in and then slid down, a pile of burning rubble, the steward gaping at the sight in the low light of the local sun. "Jesus H Buddha." She needed to piss, but the urge faded in the slumped, shattered majesty of the wrecked building.