Dry, No Lube Ch. 07b: Armor

"Whatever, Ms Laredo." She turned away to check Malavongsy's navigation calculations. "If you don't get them back aboard, I'm leaving them here."

"Aye aye, ma'am." Pixy tried to ignore the hint of mockery as she walked away. She sensed she was doing well enough as captain; most of the crew respected her. She could tell, after years in Fleet. But she knew she was failing with Laredo, and that bothered her. She stalked past the commo station.

"Give Leith our countdown and let them know what our nav calculations are. In case they want to just piggyback." Her idea for the tenders had always been to let them remain independent, which was fine unless the captain over there was working with the usual questionable Service officers. Unless he had a good First to keep them in line, someone like... well, like Pixy herself. A thought struck her. "And if you get time, can you find out who their First Officer is?"

Lt Romario, in his own mobile comm headdress, glanced around. "Is there a rush on that?"

"No. Just curious." Pixy knew a great many Service officers; she even thought she'd met Captain Stellato once, years before. She leaned down over the railing, looking over her bridge, nodding to herself. Everything seemed well in hand.

It was good to be the Captain, she decided. "I'm going to go back and eat lunch," she told the OOD loftily. "Let me know if anything breaks."

* * *

"So." Pixy kicked back and watched the stars wheel slowly past. Fucknut, her light-lizard, had dimmed himself automatically. He was starting to understand Pixy's moods, her workflow in this new environment. He knew now that Pixy liked to unwind and gaze into space, sometimes. "How do you like the new digs? Are you getting used to this fucking amazing ship of mine?"

Juno gave Pixy one of those disconcerting little glances of hers, the kind Pixy figured she gave to people she was thinking of slicing. She hoped not. "It's great." The little steward bit her lip. "I'm not used to so much space. You know how Fleet is: you never have privacy, and you never have space to call your own." She yawned. "Now I feel like I've got a whole ship to play around in. And fewer duties, too."

Pixy frowned. "Are you bored?"

"Sometimes." Juno shrugged and started chopping a radish with that fierce knife of hers. "You know me. I need to be busy."

Pixy smiled. She'd been thinking about this for awhile. "You're clever. I find you useful."

"Gee. Thanks." The steward raised her eyebrow. "You're so fulsome."

"You calling me fat?" Juno just smirked. "I'll tell Mr Verily to put a desk in my office for you. No duties. But you can go there when you want, take on whatever tasks we delegate to you." She swallowed, not sure about the propriety of this next bit. "You can, you know, chime in. If I'm trying to decide what to do."

Juno stared flatly at her. "You're saying you want my advice."

"Of course I fucking well am," Pixy snapped. "You know how much I need to have you around."

Juno scoffed. "We should just fuck, and get over it."

"Very funny."

"Well, if you want my advice, that's it." She swept the radish into the bowl. "Get laid. I've seen you like this before."

"Like what?" Pixy glared.

"Uptight. Skittish. You're not finishing your matzoh lately." She shrugged as if all this was obvious. "Get fucked." Pixy sighed, trying to take refuge in the stars outside. It didn't work. The ship, her ship, hummed around her, a symbol of how hard she'd worked to get here. She should have been ecstatic. She glanced over at the steward. "How long's it been, ma'am?"

Pixy thought about fitting out the ship back in the Basin, almost a month ago. Before she'd launched, before the moon of Nosferates II, before the Flasbard commo post on Klamath IX-B, before the aborted attack against that station on Nosferates X. When Subcolonel McMerckx had destroyed her pussy right in these very quarters. "Like, a month."

"Oof." The steward started in on some peppers. "Well... have you thought about a bedwarmer?"

"Juno," Pixy tutted, "you know damn well that captains don't do that shit."

She shrugged. "Sometimes they do."

"No." Pixy glared at her. "Not in my world. Officers don't get their beds warmed by enlisted people, and a captain doesn't get her bed warmed by an officer she's got to kick the shit out of sometimes." She sniffed. "I have my standards. I don't need gossip on my ship. Besides?" She gestured at a simple illuminated strip beside the bed. "Look at that."

Juno craned closer and smiled once she realized what she was looking at. "Oh! Heated mattress!"

"So my bed is already warmed," Pixy joked.

"I wonder if my quarters have that shit." The steward shrugged elaborately. "Anyway. Just saying. Sometimes, the captain fucks the surgeon."

Pixy thought about Dr Reilly, then grimced. "No. I'm not into him."

Juno pondered. "That Army liaison? The fire-support dude?"

"No." Submajor Nestilio was not an impressive man. "Too lazy. Has no idea how to dress."

"Wait." Juno gnawed at her lip. "Don't you have a chaplain?"

"I do. We do." Pixy shook her head. "Rabbi Bermudo. Too much beard, and he's just too happy all the time."

"Civilians?" The ship had three manufacturers' reps aboard, ensuring this brand-new ship type was good to go. Pixy had met each one precisely once. She shook her head now.

"They failed to make an impression. The missile guy was okay-looking, but they're mostly retired Fleet. Not interesting."

"Well," the steward shrugged, "I mean, there's a whole barracks full of soldiers in the tunnel."

"In the Vag," Pixy muttered. Army slang. It's what they called the P/E ship's gaping central tunnel, making the forward gate The Pussy and the bridge, The Clit. Juno raised an eyebrow. "They call it the Vag."

"Well?" Juno shrugged, running her knife coolly through the vegetables. "That whole barracks barge is probably packed with dick."

"Cooze, too." Pixy sighed. "I'll bet those infantry platoons are like brothels."

Something in her tone of voice made Juno peer closely over at her captain, midway through the celeriac root she was slicing. "Ma'am?"

"Mmm?" When Pixy glanced over, she caught Juno with an incredulous smirk on her lips.

"You've fucked one of them! Haven't you?"

Pixy hesitated. The issue of sexual relations with soldiers was a somewhat fraught one for Wrae Juno, who'd nearly been murdered during a weird sex-themed Army mission, but there was no way she could lie to the little steward. "Yes. Twice. Their battalion commander." Juno snickered with delight. "Once was by accident; I didn't know who he was. It was random, outside a skatepark. I was high." She shrugged, and Juno nodded; these things happened when sailors went planetside.

"And the second time?"

Pixy leaned her head back, eyes closed, and sighed. "The second time, he invited himself into these very quarters and took me like a powerless little bitch."

Juno thought about that, then nodded. "I can see that." She'd walked in on Pixy more than once, while she'd been getting rutted by her old bedwarmer Felix Jeyne. She'd even tried to tap in a time or two; the devious little steward had never really made a secret of how attracted she'd been to Lieutenant Jeyne. Quite often, she'd offered herself up to him as a surrogate pussy.

Pixy tried not to think about whether he'd ever indulged.

"I'm telling you," Pixy marveled, "it was crazy. I was starving to get pounded."

"See?" Juno swept her veggies into the foam-wok. "You need to get laid, ma'am. Just call this Army guy back." She shrugged.

"He's a subcolonel," Pixy muttered, watching Juno closely. Rennels had been a subcolonel, too, and he'd tried to kill her. You had to be careful with Juno. The woman was incredibly capable and unspeakably brutal. Pixy felt sure she was completely loyal to her, but somewhere in the back of her mind was the awareness that Juno could go off and stab people with scant provocation. "Sometimes, subcolonels don't do well in the same room with you..."

You just never knew.

"He's got nothing to fear from me. I don't even know the guy." She smiled when she said it, but then? She'd smiled before, too. Pixy sighed. "Seriously. It seems like the perfect solution all around."

Pixy shrugged. "He's an Army colonel. Technically, he's my superior officer. I can't just call him up to give me cock anytime I feel like it." She looked out at the stars. "Still. We meet weekly, or thereabouts. Maybe I can set some ground rules or something?"

"Sure!" the steward said brightly, "like you'll only do it after meetings. Or after successful placer ops. Something like that."

"Well, if it's ever an unsuccessful placer op, he'll probably be dead," Pixy reflected. Below them in the globe of the Great Cabin, she knew she could turn around and look down into the Vag, straight at where McMerckx' barracks barge lay in the vast cavern of Tirving's tunnel-bay, where everything was secured now as they blazed in lightspace. Right there. He was right there, behind one of those Army-regulation windows. Her pussy clenched. "There's something else, too."

"Details, ma'am?" Juno stirred efficiently at the stir-broil, the smell filling the space. Fuck, Pixy thought, how I missed her food!

"The tender? The Leith?"

"Mmhmm?"

"I found out just after you came aboard that the First Officer over there is a guy I used to serve with." She paused until Juno glanced over. "Pretty closely, at times."

"Oh!" Juno cackled. "An old bedwarmer?"

"No, but... well, what can I say? My bedwarmer at the time was a woman, and sometimes you just need that dick." She hesitated, then blushed. "He's a Tygon."

"You know," Juno mused, "I've never fucked a Tygon."

"They have prehensile penises. And they can hold it pretty much forever."

"I've heard that," the steward sniffed, "but no balls. That's almost a dealbreaker. I love balls." Her eyes tool on a faraway look. "Still. Prehensile..."

"Yeah, I like balls too. But man oh man, the feel of it inside you..." She thought back, smiling. "He made me cum with embarrassing ease, but then I almost got him killed a couple times afterward. So I don't think he really approves of me."

"What's his name?"

"Amisuul. Rocky Amisuul."

"They've got such weird names," Juno frumped, shaking her head.

"Rocky is some sort of nickname. He was a tier down from me on my last GP ship, the Pulver." That was overstating it; she'd been Second Officer, then Acting First, and other than her and that loveable old drunk Densborg? No other officer had really counted. The two of them had run that ship, completely.

Well. Not so much Densborg; he'd been a horrible drunk.

The steward gave Pixy a shrewd glance. "Does he know you're here?"

"How could he not?" It was a strange position, being captain of a P/E ship. Fleet said she was completely independent out here, running her own show, seizing enemy planets and bases wherever opportunity or intelligence led her. The Leith worked for her, meaning she was sort of like a mini-commodore. This was not a position in which mid-grade subcommanders normally found themselves. "I'm almost a mini-admiral out here."

Juno nodded, lips twisting in a grimace as she decided whether to speak. Evidently, she decided to. "Nah. Admirals are all pieces of shit, ma'am. You're not." She scattered some coriander into her wok. "You're just a bitch."

"Aw. Thanks. Now shut up and cook."

* * *

She lay later in a fuzzy haze, the usual post-orgasmic fugue state that McMerckx always left her in. She liked that he fucked her so well, but a part of her was troubled that all they ever did was fuck.

Pixy was used to bedwarmers. Closeness. Vulnerability. Crazy Jack was not interested in those things, to say the least.

"I have to get back," he told her now, turning to smile at her with that big dick of his swinging free. She sighed, her snatch still pulsing in exhaustion, smiling as she reminded herself that her own sweet little pussy had just taken that brutal, cum-slicked slab of meat the colonel had dangling low between his thighs. It made her blush.

"We've got orders to issue," she agreed. Her finger curled absently between her legs, scooping up his cum as it oozed out of her slit. "Regillia Prime." She glanced lazily at the repeater atop her bed, her implant wheezing to life as she read the angles. "Velicity factor twelve. Fuck. Just eight more hours."

"My people are already doing their rehearsals," Crazy Jack nodded, scratching vigorously at his pubes.

She opened her mouth to suggest, a bit shyly, that he let her lick his balls clean when, with an annoying fluttery chirp, her vox-box chimed. "Fuck," she grated instead, feeling her scar grip at her lower back as she curled into the ball near the speaker. "Captain here. What's happening?"

"Ma'am?" Her implant helped her place the voice: Sublieutenant Milipet. Of course, the junior officers were running the ship while all the Important People were resting up before they hit the objective. "There's a problem with the OAS. Standing orders say to let you know whenever that happens?"

"Fuck," Pixy grunted again, sitting slowly up. Shit. They really had made a mess of her sheets this time. She'd need to throw them into the 'fresher herself; she knew Juno would deal with her boss' cummy laundry, but it seemed somehow like an imposition. "What is it this time?"

"The armor is trying to ooze up into the Vag. I mean, um, the tunnel?" All the Fleet personnel had loved that little bit of Army slang from the start. "Should I turn on the internal herders?"

"No," Pixy spat, summoning her clothes at once, "you should not. You should hang up the vox and await my arrival. Like the standing orders say." She rolled a baleful eye up at the colonel. "Duty calls. And I can't even clean out my twat."

"Give me ten minutes," he replied, licking his lips, "and I'll take care of that."

She chortled. "Fuck. I'd love to." Her trousers slunk up her bare legs while she ran a hand through her mussed hair. "No. The organic armor is trying to get into the Vag, and that can really be a problem in lightspace. It tends to make the particle alarm give false positives."

"I see," McMerckx lied; he was an infantryman. He couldn't give a shit about space propulsion physics. He yawned, his own uniform climbing his body, then winked at her. "You don't have any more briefings scheduled, right? About Regillia Prime?"

"Nope. The plan is set, just like the last few placements. Everything now will just be changes, as appropriate." She jerked her head toward the forward hatch. "Get the fuck out of here. I'm busy."

"Yes, captain." He chuckled, adjusting his penis crudely within his trousers. "Thanks for the fuck."

"Sure," Pixy nodded, acting like she didn't feel more than a bit cheap. She swept to her feet, glancing (as she could never stop herself from doing) out at the passing stars. "Good luck dirtside."

* * *

She gnawed at her lower lip as she twisted the control bar, sweeping her shuttle along the looming rear face of the Army's barracks barge. This was tricky flying: micro-maneuvers in close proximity to the drive banks as the whole ship popped and fizzled in neo-translight around her. She'd had to drop out of lightspace to herd the OAS, which was a royal pain in the ass because it meant the placer operation would be behind schedule. By how much?

As much time as it took her to get the organic armor to behave itself.

It loomed before her, a dull grey mass lapping over the rim of the Tirving's stern, dangerously close to the banks: if she'd fired them, she knew, the armor would scorch. And her implant warned her, in its chance way, that scorching the organic armor would make it mad.

It was so odd to think of the Armor as having emotions; there was very little solid research on this, but the consensus was that the OAS had a certain degree of sentience. It wanted to do things.

Pixy merely didn't know why, or how.

She slapped the toggle by the attitude globe, the one that switched the plus-ups to manual power, and armed the prod Byskop had mounted to the shuttle's nose. She'd been out two or three times a week, assiduously learning how to shove the armor from place to place along her ship, but sometimes it got ahead of itself and tried to leave the outside of the hull to come into the tunnel.

Why? Who the fuck knew.

The outer surface of the ship was studded with auto-prods to keep the armor in place, but occasionally it got eager. And since it was the captain's responsibility to keep the OAS where it belonged, that meant Pixy got to swing her shuttle into the Vag and go to work.

Mindful of the elapsed time, of the mission profile she'd worked out with the Army, of the rendezvous with Leith above Regillia, she aimed her probe carefully at the quivering little mass lipping the hull and pressed the accelerator lever.

* * *

"So, you're saying there's no sign of the Tirving at all? On any of the beams?"

"No sir." The commo tech was flipping her gear from band to band, as if randomly changing the settings would do anything useful. "And Lieutenant McWalesa is back at the coding table, checking the messages. Tirving might have sent something from lightspace."

"Maybe..." the captain mused, pondering. Dermott Stellato had been commanding the Leith for over a year now, and he'd been tendering for Pixy Pfeiffer's placer/extraction vessel since the great ship had left the Basin on her maiden voyage. Regillia Prime was to be the pair's eighth combat mission, and by this time Stellato thought he knew Pfeiffer's proclivities. "She's never late," he muttered.

Stellato had been in Service Fleet for fourteen years, and Pixy was a legend in his community. She was that rarity: a Service officer who'd made good and swapped over into the Combat Fleet, then gotten a command. He'd known her briefly, from a school several years ago, and he'd jumped at the chance to volunteer his ship as her tender.

Since then, the Leith had been roaming the galaxy, hopping closer and closer to the Fleet objectives in the Bacchanal Arm, Pixy and her colleagues hammering the enemy on every moon and planet in their path. Leith had been making trips back and forth from supply depots to objective areas, ferrying the replacement fuel, ammo, and torpedoes the Tirving needed to keep pounding targets for the Army. It was exciting work, real war service, and Stellato knew he ran a happy ship.

Now he glanced over at the helm, where his First Officer frowned up at the plot repeater while he redid the nav figures. "Need me to check your math, Rocky?"

Lieutenant Amisuul scowled at the interruption of his calculations. He'd been First Officer here for over two years, and was ready for a change; he reckoned he'd be on the next list for promotion to Subcommander, if Fleet ever got the list transmitted from the Core. But Stellato was far from the worst captain Amisuul had ever had, so he knew how lucky he was... relatively speaking. Even if, incredibly, Pixy Pfeiffer was once again putting his green-skinned ass in harm's way. "We're in the right place, sir."

"Yeah." The captain's lips twisted into a pensive little moue as he searched the plot. "She's never late," he said again.

"Pixy is pissed if she's not at least an hour early," Amisuul nodded, "for everything, let alone a combat placer operation. That she planned," he stressed.

"That's right! You knew her." Stellato let his gaze flicker down to the combat ribbons on Amisuul's uniform. A Bronze Cross: unusual in Service Fleet, and he knew that the Tygon had been with Pfeiffer when he'd earned it. "I keep forgetting."

"It's unusual that her ship's not here, sir." Amisuul wanted to get the conversation back where it belonged: off himself, and off Pfeiffer. They were floating along out here in enemy territory, all prepped to support an operations that, so far... wasn't apparently going to happen as planned. There were things to worry about. "I'm going to recommend charging the shields and going to full weapons readiness, sir." Leith did not have all that much in the way of weapons, but she had enough.