Dry, No Lube Ch. 07b: Armor

Hell, Pixy herself had proven, years ago, that a GP Service ship with a determined and clear-thinking person in command could do some genuine damage in combat.

He was still pondering these things when Klervolld over on the Weapons station snapped his head up. "Shit. Sir. I've got a Lerbal disturbance, high grade. Bearing is 4220, variable, moving around velocity eleven? Twelve?"

"That'll be the Tirving," Stellato nodded with some satisfaction. "She'll be happy to see us here. Commo? Sniff on the mid-beam, and check that our beacons are illuminated; I want to make sure Captain Pfeiffer knows we're here." He glanced at Amisuul. "They'll be passing at, oh, looks like forty kilometers? Make sure our buffers are on."

"They're on, sir."

"Okay. Then get us underway for the objective." They both looked up at the plot, where Regillia Prime hovered in the middle distance. "Position us as per the original orders."

"Aye aye, sir." Pfeiffer liked the tender to lie on the darkside of objective planets, between 400 and 450 kilometers up, then sweep in for the replenishment operation just as soon as the Army reported they were secured down in the dirt. It was an operation Stellato and Amisuul had managed several times now, between rehearsals and operations. He did the math in his head. "Helm, one-oh-eight. Standard acceleration." He glanced at the captain. "Weapons status red, sir?"

"Red, yes." The GP ship rattled briefly with the passage of Tirving, now smashing through lightspace toward Regillia with her shuttles crammed full of hopped-up soldiers, her torpedoes probably already loaded and fused for the bombardment. "Keep us out of their wake."

"On it, sir." Amisuul hoped he didn't sound offended. The great placer-extraction ship was a blur against the stars, barely even visible on her collision course with the enemy planet; aboard, he knew, they'd be hearing crash alarms and the proximity detectors would be shitting their metaphorical pants. Leith swung nimbly onto her new course, the planet growing steadily larger off to the portside. "Get those clobbets figured out, Bogue."

"Sir." The helmsman wasn't paying attention, staring instead at the Master Plot where the enemy planet waited, oblivious. And well he should: a P/E raid was quite a spectacle. Amisuul made his routine sweep over the familiar bridge, his eyes on every scope, every officer and tech bent to their duty, and then he smiled at the helmsman. "Were you on watch the last time Tirving hit a planet? The Calinda operation?"

Bogue glanced up. "Yes, sir. I was on the approach watch. Mykonos came on for the actual placer shift."

"Mmhmm." Amisuul glared at the man. "Meaning, you could have found a handy viewport and watched that Calinda operation."

The helmsman's smile went a little glassy. "Well, sir, I mean, I needed some rest..."

"Because, see, here's the thing, Bogue. When you're off-watch? That's when you stare aimlessly at the plot." He waited until the man's face changed from a pleasant smile to a sudden pained grimace. "In this seat, sailor? You'd better mind your fucking helm. Comprehend?"

"Aye aye, sir!" Bogue went pale beneath a blotchy set of freckles then, chastened, bent to his bearing scope. The first officer nodded a few times, then sighed as he glanced back at the captain.

"Two hundred klicks, sir."

"Right." Stellato squinted into his sighting hood. "Do we know what Tirving's altitude is going to be?"

"The order said they'd start their bombardment from a third of the way down into the thermosphere. I hadn't heard they'd changed that." Amisuul understood. Leith needed to get into position after the P/E ship arrived, so that the planetary defenses would miss the tender's arrival, but before the shooting started. "We'll make our time, sir."

The captain grunted as his ship plowed on past the looming Cathos Vremein planet, toward the long curving terminator where day became night down below. The air on the bridge was charged with expectancy, and despite what he'd told Bogue Amisuul found himself staring hard at the plot repeater, anticipating, enthralled by the upcoming placer operation.

And the plot screen showed it all.

Everyone who could spare a glance did just that, as the silent planet glided beneath them. The bridge hatch shuddered open, the commo officer popping out onto the bridge like a catapult had launched her there. "Sorry, sir," she chirped as she flew to her station. "Problems with the coding gun."

"No problem, Kira." Like everyone else, Captain Stellato watched Lt McWalesa's ass as it bounced nimbly atop her legs. Competition to take her as a bedwarmer was apparently fierce among the junior officers. "Any word?"

"Tirving had some sort of problem with their organic armor? They had to drop out to deal with it."

"Very well." The captain nodded, the reminder timely. He turned to the weapons officer, Klervolld. "Charge the shields, Arimah. We'll put them on max power forward once we reach our station."

"Aye aye, sir." Klervolld wasn't really listening, his eyes riveted to the plot. Amisuul decided there was no point in correcting him: the weapons officer's task was hardly demanding, sensor sweeps during a mere geosynchronous orbital insertion, and he was clearly high on Bump anyway.

Amisuul, mindful that a First Officer should always make sure to maintain some sort of decorum, made himself walk slowly, almost casually, to the port viewscreen. He had a partial view of the target area there, but it would soon turn into a full view of the arriving P/E ship. She'd come barreling out of lightspace, skidding to a halt at the bombardment altitude like a huge dark dick, hanging there from the cosmic pubes of the outer Bacchanal Arm.

And she did, the Tirving seeming to materialize as if out of nowhere, emerging from between two of the local constellations at top speed. Amisuul flinched instinctively as the great ship glided toward the glittering planet, but he'd seen this before and knew that Pfeiffer had everything under control: the retros were already flaring with the vanes at full extension as the big tube barged toward its bombardment altitude, looking like it intended to burst straight through Regillia Prime and out the other side.

He saw the local sun glitter off the sleek finish of two little ships spewing out the front of the vessel, out from that shadowy tunnel the Tirving folks called the Vag: the ship's recon element zipping down into the atmosphere to make sure the guns would bear properly on whatever objective the Army had picked out. It was all in the altitude, Amisuul knew, the Tirving's fixed missiles and cannons setting the size of the Army's perimeter by their distance above the planet.

The two recon ships, a ground shuttle and a Tygon Interceptor, disappeared against the bright loom of the planet. "Okay. Helm, go ahead and move toward our lying-up position. Velocity factor three."

"Velocity factor three, aye." Bogue worked his console and the Leith came back to life, drifting ponderously forward on standby just as, in the distance, the Tygon Interceptor came blasting back into space to direct the ship's local defense above the planet.

Soon, Amisuul told himself, his excitement growing despite having seen this five times before. Just a few more seconds, while the Army recon guys on the ground directed the P/E ship to its final position before...

All at once, the atmosphere on Tirving's side of the planet flashed into fiery ionic streams of superheated vacuum, opening up with all her guns for the initial assault. Leith was too far away, of course, to feel the disturbance, but the glimmer of the placer ships within Pfeiffer's cone began almost at once: shuttle after shuttle, darting down packed with what looked like three companies' worth of soldiers, plus artillery. They'd be grating down within a maelstrom of fire, landing right within the Cone.

"Sir?" McWalesa swiveled at her station, ear cocked to her commo hood. "Tirving is getting a response from another GP ship, passing by, responding for support. They want us to send out a beacon so the ship can rendezvous over here."

"Yeah?" Amisuul could hear a sharp note of excitement in Stellato's voice. Pfeiffer was telling him to take charge of the newcomer, who would have no idea what was going on. He'd be feeling like a mini-commodore, Amisuul reflected. "Oh, excellent! Get a vox box link with their skipper; I'll give him a briefing and then, I guess, we'll keep him in reserve in case he's needed." What little doctrine there was about P/E operations said that passing Fleet ships were expected to respond if they were able, to lend support against the enemy's space-based defenses.

Amisuul watched, transfixed, as the bombardment settled down. Pfeiffer was turning her ship now, rotating it in a pattern designed to make sure she could sustain the barrage as far as long as the Army needed. Crews aboard would be hauling missiles to their launchers, laying their guns, responding to the ship's fire-support officer.

And all the while, the Army would be dirtside, digging in. Killing the enemy. Winning the war.

At least according to the propaganda. But either way, it was all very exciting. Service with Pixy Pfeiffer always was.

* * *

The invitation definitely came as a surprise to the Leith's First Officer, who hadn't yet been invited aboard Tirving to visit his old shipmate Captain Pfeiffer, who (the invitation said) would be pleased to entertain Lieutenant Rocky Amisuul in the Great Cabin during the resupply after the Regillia Prime strike.

The invitation would also have surprised Captain Pfeiffer, if she'd known about it. Because it came from Wrae Juno, whose sexual curiosity (never far below the surface) had been piqued by her conversation about Tygons and their interesting penises.

Despite their lack of balls.

He arrived aboard as his supply officer was already bawling at his sailors, shuttling hundreds of loads of ammo, missiles, fuzes, solids, fuel, and all the other impedimenta Tirving fired off each time she did a placer operation. He wasn't happy about the summons, for Stellato liked to get moving as soon as possible for their own resupply: today they'd be traveling in ballast for the depot at the basin off Key Polaris, hurrying to gather supplies for Pfeiffer's next operation, wherever it might be. Amisuul had been working out the navigation when the summons arrived, but no lieutenant could turn down a lunch invite from a ship captain.

The P/E ship had a weird odor to it; every Fleet ship stank, obviously, and he'd been aboard enough Combat vessels to know they shouldn't smell all that different from Service. But this one smelled weird. Sort of minty.

So he found his way aft to the Great Cabin in one of his cleanest uniforms, the stink of Service Fleet scrubbed hastily off his green skin for this visit. The ship surprised him: he'd been aboard Combat vessels before, but this one just seemed to be a long series of magazines and torpedo racks, with systems areas at the bow of the ship and living spaces aft. Pixy's cabin perched back there too, a big globe on the upper rim of the stern, flanked by lesser quarters. He knocked hesitantly at the hatch there. "Uh, Captain? It's Amisuul!" he called.

He was puzzled by who answered the door, a slight little creature with a long ponytail and a bright grin. She wore the uniform of a legal clerk first class, with an incongruous Galactic Medal of Valor dangling off her pert left tit. "Hi!" she chirped, her quick eyes roving over him in a way that seemed indecently lecherous for an enlisted woman. "Come on in!"

"I'm Lieutenant Amisuul, here to see Captain Pfeiffer?" He smiled, looking wistfully at her ass she led him through a conference room. He'd always had a thing for human women, and his current bedwarmer didn't put out. "Who are you?"

"You used to be a lieutenant with her, didn't you?" she purred, glancing back over her shoulder. "Like, back when she was Service?"

"Yes." The conference room opened into a little galley, then into the captain's rather oversized bedroom. All around him, the stars glimmered. "Yeah, she always did like a transparent hull."

"I'm Wrae." The girl sat on the big bed as though she owned it. "She's my boss."

"Is she, uh, coming in soon?" The girl's legs swung over the edge of the mattress, her head cocked saucily. She couldn't have been much older than twenty-three, though it was tough to tell with humans. "I'm happy to wait in the conference room."

"Why?" She crossed her legs and leaned back on her elbows. "I think you'd be happier waiting in here." On the wall by the bed, the vox box chirped. The girl paid no attention.

He nodded, a twinge starting in his cock. Outside he could see his shuttles snapping busily back and forth between Leith and Tirving, schlepping ammo, the sailors working hard while the two ships' supply officers, presumably, found a corner somewhere to fuck. He nodded over at the galley. "She's your boss, you say?" Wrae nodded slowly, those well-turned legs of hers still swinging as Amisuul felt his trousers adjust themselves to suit his twitchy penis. "She still like macaroni 'n' haggis?"

"She does," Wrae laughed, "and occasionally matzoh with cream cheese. Know what I like?"

He forced his eyes to meet hers. "What's that?"

"I like dick."

He burst out in a laugh. "You're subtle. What are you, Pixy's steward?" She nodded, her big eyes welded to his. "Does she know you're in here with me?"

"She's got no clue you're here, sir," Wrae laughed. "She's in the middle of a resupply, with Colonel McMerckx still mopping up planetside. Why the fuck would she have time to come hang out with one of her old shipmates?"

He nodded, definitely intrigued now. "And you? You have time to hang out with one of her old shipmates?"

The woman giggled. "I've never had Tygon cock, sir. I thought I might want to make an effort to expand my horizons."

He smiled. Human girls were all the same, wanting that sweet green Tygon meat. He hesitated, his hand at his staytab. "I'm in a hurry, which is very unfortunate," he chuckled. "Usually, I like to take my time..."

"I don't." Juno leaned forward, her lithe body scrunching into a little ball as she shot her hand forward and slapped the staytab herself. She stared greedily as she gathered her legs underneath her on the big bed, hunched forward, watching like a kid on Yuleday as his clothes relaxed themselves and flew down his legs. She let out a quick, sexy little squeak as his penis flew out in all its slender green glory. She tipped her head to look underneath. "It's so weird, not having balls."

"Fuck that shit," Amisuul scoffed, "your human males and their ludicrous repro systems, needing external testes and all that. This?" He ran his fingertips along his shaft, gloating as her eyes shone. "This is how cocks were meant to be."

"I don't know about that, sir," Wrae tittered. "I like balls. A lot."

"Well. Then, as you say, you need to have your horizons expanded." He licked his lips as he eyed her scrunched body. "Why am I the only one who's naked, sailor?" he went on coolly. This was par for the course. The Fleet tradition of casual sex was well-established: when two ships met, the fluids would splatter.

Not that it was normal, officers playing with enlisted. But this girl was hot, and enthusiastic, and definitely willing. So...

She shrugged, popping up onto her knees on the mattress, and winked at him. "I understand, sir," she cooed, her hand working her own staytab. "Let me just take care of this real quick..." Her uniform sloughed off her and folded itself neatly on the deck at the foot of the bed, showing a body sleek and toned by youth and exercise. Amisuul licked his lips again, his eyes tracing past Wrae's firm tits with their scattering of freckles and their bold, brown nipples, down along the graceful curves of her hip and belly to where her close-trimmed vagina waited in the starlight, already trickling.

Again, the vox box chirped. Neither of them cared.

The girl was begging for it, and Amisuul's cock gave an appreciative surge as he studied her. "Better," he allowed, grinning now. "So. Just what was it about Tygon dick that made you curious, sailor?"

"Well," she said, rocking back down onto her heels, her nude little body on full display for him, "they say you guys have, like, prehensile penises? Like, you can make them move?" She squeaked again, her face showing absolute delight, as he propped his hands on his hips and thrust his hips toward her, his cock moving slowly back and forth. Almost like a snake. "That's fucking insane," she breathed, her eyes glued to his dancing green shaft.

"Yes." He was getting rapidly hard, the excellence of Wrae's body combining with his bedwarmer's lack of ability and the fact that he was here in the legendary Pixy Pfeiffer's own fucking bedroom to make his libido soar out there among the stars, his shaft already twitching. "It can do all kinds of interesting things. There's a reason human women can't get enough of us," he added with some satisfaction, looming over her.

Quite without any regard for her own modesty, the steward reached a graceful right hand down between her own thighs and up against her mound, cupping tightly as she sent her middle finger smoothly inside herself. "Show me," she breathed, her dark eyes crossed as she focused on his smooth dark-green head.

"Watch carefully," he mocked, grinning, loving the way her jaw dropped when he made the front part of his dick curl up and back like a man doing a "come here" gesture with his finger. They both laughed. "Imagine how that would feel inside your pussy," he mused.

"Aw." She raised those gorgeous eyes up to his, her chest beginning to take on a speckled pink flush. "Do I have to imagine it, sir?"

"Not if you get that wet finger of yours out of my way," he snapped, and with a greedy little snicker she flopped straight onto her back with her legs waving above her, staring up at him ecstatically.

"Come on, sir," she urged, her pussy swollen and glistening. There was zero shame in this girl, Amisuul thought to himself, but then again there wasn't any reason there should be: the wriggly little bitch was a fine-looking specimen, and there was certainly nothing to be sheepish about, getting horny on a Fleet vessel. She lay beneath him, giving herself, smooth and naked and pliable and altogether inviting.

Amisuul reached out, his hands hooking her thighs, and without ceremony he dragged her to the edge of the bed with surprisingly little effort. He let his cockhead dip down, dragging itself softly down the inside of her thigh toward her pussy, and Wrae's eyes fluttered with a quick gasp. "Open your eyes, dammit," he grated as he let his dick trail lightly over the wet folds of her pussy. He waited there until she obeyed him, then he smiled grimly as he let his cock pulse down until the head lay just barely inside her. "Watch that green cock split your cunt." It came out as a cruel rasp.

"Oh, fuck!"

"You wanted it," he shrugged, his voice husky; he let his penis inch slowly into her writhing body, waggling it around as he did so, all without moving his hips. She felt good in there, tight and hot, his cock feeling every muscle she tensed in response to his questing twitches. "That's it," he hissed, "clench my cock." She obeyed, her teeth gritted as she stared wide-eyed at where he'd entered her. "Good."

"This is fucking amazing," Wrae burbled, enthralled. He was sending spasms all up and down her vagina, almost a tickle as he roved around in there. This was nothing she'd ever heard. Most dicks just slid in and out, along that one axis. Sure, sometimes the guy would move his hips sideways and go in at an angle, or fuck straight down along the clit, but there were still just two dimensions: in or out. Up or down.