Dry, No Lube Ch. 07a: Command

He groaned again, looking down with an admiring smile, when she slipped him out of her mouth and curled her lips at once along the underside of his shaft, sliding down slowly, wetly, until she opened wide around his ballsack, sucking it hard. His legs trembled then against her skin, and with a feeling of pride and exultation she knew she was pleasing him; she reached sleepy fingers from his ass to his dick, wanking him with firm, hard strokes while she swirled his balls with her tongue.

Certainty stabbed into her brain through the drug haze: she knew she needed to keep this up, to do more of it. Something in the pace of his breathing, the way his fingers gouged her scalp, the look in his eyes, the way his balls tightened in her mouth, told her she was doing exactly what he needed. Her mind tried to plan ahead, to decide where she wanted to take his load: normally this was something she was good at, but this time the Anchor was slowing her down, making everything soft and lustrous and beautiful, and as she felt his shaft swell with her fist pulling at it through the drying film of her thick spit, she realized she had very little time to decide.

Mouth. She'd take it in the mouth.

A strangled moan sighed from far above. His first rope dribbled along her hairline even as she spat out his balls and lunged desperately to wrap her lips around his head; always, the second load was the biggest, and she wanted to swallow it. And she nearly made it, her mouth open and moving to enfold his meat as that hard, hot second shot shattered into dozens of warm, viscous pearls against her cheek and nose.

But then she was on him, his dick sealed back in her mouth, sucking steadily as his shaking body sent four more strong spurts straight across her tongue. He was thick and hot in her throat and belly, her whole body feeling alive with the pleasure she gave him freely, willingly, and this time when their eyes met she saw gratitude beneath the swagger.

She placed her numb hands into his, still swallowing his cum as he led her to the bed.

Afterward they lay in her sheets together, the rain lashing the big bleary window. Pixy felt pleasantly groggy as the Anchor wore off and her pussy slowly recovered from the pounding he'd given her from behind; she smiled tiredly when she felt his semen move around inside her. But she stiffened in the middle of the night when she felt his thumb trace gently along the wreck of her lower back. "I've got scars," he whispered into her ear, "but nothing like this."

"It's Fleet," she replied, her voice still sluggish in its post-fuck fugue. "Even when they do surgery, they bend you over and tag you with no lube." He chuckled, his laughter a vibration through their bodies. "No, I'm exaggerating. But seriously, it was a busy day. There wasn't exactly time to get the surgeon to fix it up properly."

"Still."

"Well. That's what happens when you take a GP Service ship in against an enemy dreadnought. My hull wasn't exactly made for that kind of thing." She yawned, melting back into his arms. "But we got the fucker, so it was worth the scar." She frowned to herself, a little shadow oozing through the fading Anchor: the scar hadn't been the only price. That day had been bloody, with her friend Amber Okonkfwe smeared along the decks, dying, so Pixy closed her eyes and pressed back against him. "Hold me, Jack."

He'd be gone by morning, she knew, and then she'd be on her way to her first command. But just now, she needed his arms.

* * *

On the last night of the trip to the 114 Basin, Pixy presented her work on how the GP tender ships would interact with the P/E ships. "So," she told the other captains, wrapping up, "I think it's important that the Service captains maintain their autonomy to the extent possible. We give them their tasks, but they're free to carry them out however they wish."

"They're tenders," barked bar-Murphy. "They'll be working for us."

"Yes sir, but they know best how to employ the capabilities of their ships." She shrugged. "We can trust them to be where we need them to be, when we need them to be there, with the supplies we need. We don't need to micromanage them." She hesitated, but loyalty to her old comrades made her add, "Service officers get mad when Combat officers take them for granted. They get mulish and pissy. They start doing things, like when a waiter cums in your soup."

"Waiters cum in peoples' soup?" Leeuwen blinked incredulously.

"Whatever. The point is that they can make life harder for us if we alienate them. The procedures I've outlined here should give us a good, solid working relationship with them. I envision a situation where I call up my tender and say, 'hey, we just had a rough placer operation, I need forty score of new STG torpedoes and eleven hundred rounds to meet me at location X by time Y,' and then I should be able to sit back and fly there with my armor regenerating and know the ordnance I need is going to be there for me."

She felt relief when she saw nods around the table aboard the express transport. Except Leeuwen. "But... waiters cum in peoples' soup?"

"We don't need to issue them explicit orders," ben-Murphy decided with his usual brisk, choppy nod. "Sounds good. Thank you, Pfeiffer."

"No problem." They'd all been working hard during the transit, but Pixy felt a special charge in the air around the conference table tonight. They'd reach the Basin tomorrow and, at last, take command of their ships, after a short demo for the Army.

"Our soldier colleagues have been training planetside for three months," Leeuwen had explained. "It will culminate in a demonstration of a light, short barrage so that they can appreciate our capabilities."

"Yeah," bar-Murphy had gloated, "and then we're going to descend right in the middle of it!" The prospect seemed to be the best thing he'd heard in months, and Pixy had to admit she was curious too: they'd be using bar-Murphy's own ship, the Lavatine, for the barrage. His shuttle was going to come pluck him off the transport after dinner so that he could go on ahead and make his arrangements. "You'll see," he told them all, "the fireworks on the descent are impressive."

Pixy didn't care much as she headed to her cabin for a bruiser of a nap. She was being well taken care of, at least: starship captains traveled quite nicely between assignments, she'd found out. It seemed her days of cramming into smelly, overcrowded circuit shuttles on their eternal orbits, subject to the unfeeling whims of the service robots piloting them, were over.

But for now, she was done. Her tender SOP was written, she'd gotten a text from Juno saying the steward was expected on Monday, and for now? All was right with the world.

* * *

There was always something majestic about a Fleet anchorage basin, especially one where there were major repair facilities. 114-IV, in the lee of a large gravity well and with a convenient half-terraformed planet below, was one of the largest shipyards in the sector, with great hulking skeletons of warships everywhere the eye could reach, in glorious profusion for the next phase of this endless war.

"Okay. Coming up to starboard," Leeuwen called, and the other four new captains all turned their heads in unison to get a look at their commands. Pixy knew that Borgia and Peet had been there before, last month: only she and Daveen were seeing the ships for the very first time.

"Amazing how close they are to being done already," Peet said softly, but Pixy was far too busy taking in the most important sight of her career.

Her implant, however slowly, had given her the specs and dimensions of her new ship. She had the schematics and blueprints, the shunt diagrams and the consumables charts all there, ready to ooze into her mind once she got the implant working. And yet, still, the sight of the ship in person thrilled her to her marrow: K005, the USS Tirving.

These ships were named for famous swords, but she hadn't looked hers up yet. And she wasn't going to right now, either: all she did, as the express transport whirred toward the Laventine for the demonstration attack, was stare out at the line of silent P/E vessels. Two of them, at the head of the line, were only half-done, but the others waited with a sense of bleak menace for their crews to come and bring them to life.

Tirving was, like the rest of them, a hollow tube. One end bristled with thrusters, the other with Space-To-Ground weaponry. The hull was mostly smooth on the outside, other than occasional torpedo blisters, observation bulbs, and the everpresent sentient armor that should keep the ship safe under attack from planet-based defenses, but the inner surface of the tube was a forest of docking pylons, hatches, and umbilicals. "The Tunnel," bar-Murphy and Leeuwen called it, and it belonged to the Army: soon, each of these hollow ships would be stuffed with P/E shuttles, Tygon Interceptors, and the massive barracks barge where the soldiers would actually live.

At the front end, like a cherry stuck onto the rim of a cocktail glass, stood Pixy's bridge, giving a spherical view fore and aft, and into the tunnel. Other, similar spheres clung to the stern end, and Pixy knew these were mostly quarters for the officers: her own Great Cabin was back there someplace. Pixy wondered which one it was, and then it hit her:

She could pick any quarters she wanted.

That's when it really struck home for her. She was The Captain. Everyone and everything aboard that ship was hers. She'd be accountable for every inch of that armor. For all those gun barrels jutting out. For the care and feeding of all the sailors aboard: their promotions, demotions, and awards were her responsibility. She could, as captain, order the death penalty for any number of violations of the Fleet Directives.

Leeuwen watched her from the side, smiling. "There she is, Captain Pfeiffer," the older woman said quietly. "You're realizing now that you're in this, balls-deep."

"I am." Pixy's head wagged slowly. "And I have no idea how I got picked for this."

Leeuwen paused, then shrugged. "Scuttlebutt is that you have friends. Army friends." She said it airily, in a detached way. "But even then, Fleet wouldn't have given you a ship if they didn't know you could handle it. Your record suggests you can."

"I don't have Army friends," Pixy frowned, thinking of the mysterious Colonel Schwick Rennels. She hadn't believed he could come through for her on his promise to help her get this command. He was too junior, too secret, with no Fleet contacts. She knew he'd met with Commander Thajk at the Assignments Office, but a follow-up message to Thajk had hit a dead end. "I do have one contact there..."

"Your contact has, I think, many friends. They called people." Leeuwen patted Pixy on the back. "Cheer up, skipper. This is how the game works. You belong here." She chuckled and nodded out the viewport, Tirving now receding as they passed. "Well. Actually, you belong there. But you get the idea."

"Yes, ma'am." All of a sudden, Pixy wanted nothing more than to be there, aboard her ship, putting on the finishing touches. Riding her officers. Stocking her torpedoes. Grappling with the fuel systems, which had been problematic with that new fuel they had to use to offset the mass of the organic armor. She smiled to herself, buzzing, the whole bizarre situation suddenly real to her for the first time.

A large part of her wondered when she'd get a chance to go aboard. A small, but rapidly growing part of her realized it was entirely up to her. She could go onto that ship whenever the fuck she pleased.

She promised herself she'd sleep there tonight.

"Okay, if you'll glance forward..." Leeuwen continued in her self-appointed role as tour guide, and they all clustered at one of the front ports. The transport zipped through the basin now, the pilot accelerating now that he'd shown his passengers their new homes, and as Pixy peered downrange she saw the broad pale crescent of the local planet on her right. "That headquarters planet is where the P/E regiment has been training. I assume they're doing fine; Skeffen might know if there are any problems, but you'll all be meeting with your Army counterparts in a couple of hours anyway.

"Take a look at the edge of atmosphere and you'll see the Lavatine positioned above the planet. By this time, if this was a real operation, Captain bar-Murphy would have doglegged his way to that spot and emerged from lightspace, ideally, at just the right altitude. Directly above the objective area."

Pixy saw the stubby tunnel of bar-Murphy's ship, its weapon tubes pointed straight at the surface. "Straight out of the local sun, if possible," Peet murmured; he'd been the one who had written the attack doctrine.

"When we get close, the demo will begin." Leeuwen sat coolly back down in one of the deceleration couches. "We've probably got another hour."

Pixy was craning her neck to look over at the planet. "And the Army troops are down there right now? All of them?"

"As far as I know." Leeuwen shrugged. "They were told to mark out an impact area Skeffen could bombard. He's sending down just one assault company, using about a quarter the normal barrage ordnance. The troops are all supposedly down there, watching. I'd imagine General Percy and Admiral Jominus are down there too, but who knows?" She yawned. "With any luck, Skeffen will fuck up and bomb the headquarters building. Maybe then we can go out and start invading planets instead of sitting around cranking out memos."

A low, savage roar of agreement greeted this wish.

The Lavantine grew slowly larger in the forward viewport, and all of a sudden Pixy wondered if anyone would let her ride upstairs with the flight crew. She'd been the best shuttle pilot in Service Fleet, probably, and it bothered her to be a passenger. Once more it dawned on her that her days of asking permission for simple shit were over; she glanced down to where the shiny new Command Badge dangled off her right tit, and decided that if she wanted to ride up in the cockpit, she'd damn well ride up in the cockpit.

None of her peers even noticed her leaving.

The pilot and crew were all Army, a crusty warrant officer ruling over a brood of staff sergeants. The man at the wheel reminded her of Woj, long-dead Woj from back on the Pulver. That first time with an Army P/E crew. She wondered whether the Army issued cracked, weathered faces to everyone who qualified as a pilot. "I'd like to hang out up here, Chief," Pixy announced as she poked her head in. "Just let me know if I'm getting in your way."

The pilot turned in his chair and studied her with some interest. "Why? So you can get in my way worse?" He laughed and jerked his head at his copilot, a junior WO. "Head on back to the navigation station. Let's let the commander have your spot."

"Oh! I really didn't mean to interrupt."

"Meh." The pilot sniffed and turned back to the front. "It's nothing. I might as well be alone up here. Take a seat, ma'am." He watched her as she buckled in. "You're Captain Pfeiffer, right? Firehole?"

"My reputation precedes me," Pixy sighed, checking the targeting globe out of sheer habit. She'd steered a million shuttles. This transport was not a type familiar to her, but flying was flying. None of it was all that different. "Need me to do anything? I'm an experienced pilot."

"Yeah. I know. You're the one who hard-docked a service shuttle under fire once. First try. Everyone who flies has heard of you." The transport's speed seemed higher up here, Lavatine approaching rapidly. Pixy could look down over the starboard vane and see the planet below, its surface visibly scarred where the impact area was. The warrant officer glanced at his chronos. "Two minutes to Blue Point."

One of the sergeants in the back dutifully mashed the intertube key. "Zero-G in two minutes. Secure all loose gear and strap in. I say again, zero-G in two minutes." Pixy heard thumps and rattles below and behind as everyone got ready.

"So. You're taking over the Tirving." The WO didn't seem to be asking, really; he already knew. "This demonstration's as much for you as it is for the troops downstairs, ma'am. Right?"

"I've not seen one of these operations before, no," Pixy admitted. She couldn't stop herself from reaching to the control panel and feathering one of the vanes; she'd detected a flutter in the vessel's motion. It smoothed out at once.

"We're going to come around astern, pass through the ship behind the mock assault wave, and then descend. We'll let you guys off and then stand by to lift again. The battalions will come marching to the impact zone, and I think there'll be some sort of ceremony? Speeches? What the fuck ever." He tweaked his course, the great P/E ship now huge before them. Pixy heard one of the commo guys making some sort of clearance broadcast. "Then, probably, meetings and shit. I'm sure you officers will be busy down below."

"Fuck that." Pixy was taking in the broad sweep of Lavatine's hull, the smooth grey organic armor. "I'm heading back up later. Um, is there a way your commo guy can get a shuttle from the Tirving to the surface to pick me up after this is all over? I mean, if your beam has the range."

The pilot glanced at her with some approval. "Sergeant Jayx! Request shuttle transpo from K005 at H plus... oh, three hours." He nodded. "You don't seem like the kind of person who wants to wait around planetside when there are things to do aloft, ma'am."

"You are a very perceptive man, Chief."

"One minute to zero G!" the intertube bawled from behind her.

"That's the rear rim," Pixy breathed. The whole stern of the ship was a gaping maw, lined with directional beacons and drive ports. "The tunnel passes straight through, hmm?" The warrant officer chuckled. "What's funny?"

"Uh... terminological differences between Fleet and Army. Ma'am. It's nothing." He glanced at her lap. "Might want to fasten your harness, Captain."

"We don't call it the 'rear rim.'" The copilot, from just behind Pixy, leaned forward.

"Soldiers come up with a lot of colorful slang, Captain. Don't worry about it." The pilot glanced critically at the targeting globe. "Captain bar-Murphy wants one-way movement. He's not into ships backing into the bow, meaning all the pilots need to be good at flying through the... through the Tunnel." The copilot chortled.

"Out with it, Chief." Pixy hated being out of the loop. "What do you guys call this shit?"

The two soldiers traded a glance, but apparently they'd decided Pixy could be trusted. She wasn't their captain, anyway. "Check out that gate, ma'am," the pilot grinned. "It's in back of the ship. What do you think we call it?"

Pixy thought about it, the transport making its little burns to get lined up, then the sergeant behind her threw the switch that turned off the gravity as they passed Blue Point. She felt her guts rise slightly, that vague queasiness zero-G always brought. She took a deep breath. "Ah. The asshole?"

"You got it, ma'am." They passed into the shadow of the great rounded ship. "And the gate at the bow?"

Pixy was smiling now. "A hole in the front..."

"Yep." He frowned, focusing, steering carefully while scrubbing speed. The curved inner surface of the ship bristled with shuttles and transports, neatly docked. The big hulking form of the Army barracks barge loomed at the upper right, with the hospital barge opposite. Far ahead, she could see where the bow gate looked down at the target planet, with seven Tygon Interceptors docked at the rim, ready to launch. "The pussy."

"Wow."

A brief alarm chime sounded, the commo sergeant clearing his throat. "Decelerate, Chief," he called. "Control is saying to halt just abaft Point Thirty." Pixy glanced out of the cockpit, seeing numbers spaced at intervals along the middle of the shaft.