Dry, No Lube Ch. 07c: Afterlife

"If I can figure out orbital physics." I felt my whole body heat up as her fingers moved outward from the center of my chest, toying with my hair. "I've never been good at math."

"You don't have to be good at math, right now," I rumbled. She loved my voice. She'd told me it was why she'd chosen me as her bedwarmer: she wanted a hairy man with a low voice. I'd suggested a stuffed gorilla, but she'd only rolled her eyes. I felt the sheets slide over the head of my penis as it grew straighter, and when she moved her thigh up along the front of my body, she felt it too.

"Why, Chaplain Bermudo," she husked at once, and I could hear the smile in her voice. "Are you trying to distract me from the pressures of my duties?"

"No more than you are." I couldn't believe this nymph was here, rubbing against me, her lips now finding my neck. I parted my legs, content to let her show me what she wanted, my breath catching as her probing fingers slid along the side of my erection and curled down under my balls.

"You're right. I am," she whispered, the smile still there, now muffling her voice as she began to kiss my neck, my shoulder. She sighed happily, tickling me. "You feel so good to sleep with," she murmured, "but I've got to admit: it's a major bonus that you've got such a perfect fucking cock."

I lay back into my pillow, feeling her touch, reciprocating with a hand tracing the curves of her ass. Such a gorgeous creature. "Mmmm."

"That's it," she giggled into my ear. "I made a good choice of bedwarmer: kind, a great listener, and a perfect cock." This was her first ship, she'd told me, but her mother had been Fleet, and she'd been itching for a bedwarmer since her Academy days. I'd been startled when she'd been so open about it, but since she told me right after I'd blown my load inside her for the first time, I could hardly object. "I love this dick," she marveled, her hand busy now running slowly up and down my shaft.

I usually didn't say much to Li. Like she said, I was a good listener. I tended to communicate with my hands and my body, both hands finding her narrow waist now in the dark as she slid up atop my body, her weight settling on my thighs. I saw her eyes glitter in the wan starlight when I looked up, but the rest of her was a shadow. A shadow with hands, drifting across my flesh, ending as always at my penis. I sighed deeply when she lifted me, holding me against her bush.

She liked doing that. Her hands moved slowly up and down, measuring me, holding me against her body. Letting us feel how deep I'd be once she took me inside her.

I closed my eyes, losing myself in sensation: her thumb spreading my precum across my head. Her legs clasping mine, warm and strong. The curves of her hips and thighs under my awed fingertips. The smell of her, sharp and already familiar after hours on the bridge. I rose, helpless beneath her body, arching my hips, and she came out with the low throaty laugh she always gave when she wanted me to know that she understood her power over me. "You want me," she gloated.

"I do."

"This dick." She clasped me hard, shaking me against her body, both of us breathing deeply now. "This is for me."

"It is." I was drunk on her body. I wasn't thinking of Pearl anymore, and that bothered me. She shivered when my hands curved around to the firm cheeks of her ass, gripping her firmly.

"Hard for me," she sang softly, raising her body up. "For little me." I gasped, knowing the hot, eager touch that moved so slowly up my shaft now was the wet mouth of her vagina, craving me. About to take me. "For my cunt," she grated, and my eyes were still closed when I felt her move me underneath her crotch, penetrating her with my wide tip wedged just past her lips. "Oh fuck."

She always said that, just at the beginning. Her eyes still glittered now when I opened mine, my hands still full of her as she worked herself down my flesh, the head now locked inside her. Solid and immovable. I wondered what she felt, why she enjoyed me when I was obviously too thick for her. She persevered, hunching up and down in little surges, my hips rising slowly to help her until, with a deeply satisfied sigh, she sank down to my base and held herself there. "So full," she crowed, breathing hard, and that's always when I felt a little of what she was feeling: getting me inside her, she felt, was an achievement. Something to be striven for, even fought for.

I wasn't used to that. Pearl didn't give me that.

Li rose and fell now, much more surely as her body warmed to her needs, riding me with fluid grace. "I'm going to fuck this hard cock," she crowed, husky voice wavering. Her nails dug into my chest. "You hear me? You're going to cum inside me."

"Yes," I breathed, my hands moving of their own accord up and down her ribcage, her long body twisting atop me.

"Yes," she mimicked, exhilarated, speeding up. I was arching strongly now, bucking up into her, and all of a sudden everything grew fast and powerful. Passionate. "Fuck me," she whispered, "just like that." Our flesh slapped loudly as we collided, my abs feeling strain as I bit my lip, struggling to keep myself from ejaculation: she felt so good, so needy, tight and strong and wet and tight all around me, and I knew I wouldn't last. I never really did.

She gasped sharply, her breath wavering back out as her finger found her own flesh where it slid around me, pressing on her clit. Driving us both toward our release. Her eyes wide now and pinned sharply on mine, focused, driven, our hips swirling in that timeless human tempo, a rhythm as old as time, as old as a heartbeat.

"Oh, God!" she spluttered suddenly, her muscles tightening under my fingers until they slackened, and I was so preoccupied with her that I was hardly even aware I was climaxing deep inside her. "Cum in me!" she sighed, her free hand around the back of my neck, and I groaned because I already was: strong, eager spurts, launched hard into her willing body, the two of us feeling that closeness we both needed.

She swooped low as we finished together, our hips churning more slowly now but still deliciously, still hypnotically, her nipples grazing my chest hair. I smelled her strongly, her body and her breath, our faces touching at the forehead; both of us lay sweaty, sated, close. She did not kiss me: that had been my first rule when we'd met, but there had been others and, slowly, we'd broken all those.

I knew she'd break the kissing rule too, some starlit night. And I'd have to say something. But it didn't happen this time, so I felt nothing but grateful nearness when her face slid along mine, burying her nose in my beard, her body wracked with orgasmic twitches on top of me.

She fell asleep with my penis still inside her, softening before she could unclench her tight lips. And I lay beneath her, my hands drifting along her sweaty back, staring up at my ceiling, thinking of my day. Of my awkward interview with my near-dead captain. Of Pixy Pfeiffer and her lost, lamented vagina.

That young man I'd told her about, the one who'd been prosthetized for almost two years... he'd missed his genitals, too.

* * *

I didn't finish the last funeral until 1700 the day after the extraction. The hit at Piso Nebula had been unusually bloody, mostly because one of the early casualties had been the shuttle carrying one of the Army medical platoons. So most of the Portable Surgeons had gone up in smoke even before the placer operation had formally gotten underway.

All of this had been explained to me at the quick meeting we had in the shrapnel-proof infirmary tent just as the wounded began to roll into the perimeter. It was customary for Fleet doctors, chaplains, and engineers to help out their Army counterparts when needed, but usually that didn't involve climbing onto a shuttle and putting our own clean Fleet boots in the dirt. But the Piso toll was bad enough that Reilly and I had ended up down below.

"We won't need you up here." Jatsupa had been certain, making the call without hesitation even though Captain Pfeiffer had been sitting off to the side, watching him. "Thanks to Canidia Prime, the Cathos Vremein pattern is pretty clear: drone defenses from below, minimal orbital defenses up high." He'd allowed the Organic Armor come surging into the Tunnel as it wanted to do, cut loose half the fighters to go down and help the Army, and sent down Reilly and I.

I was relieved when the smells and sounds of planetary battle did not make me freeze in fear. I'd expected them to. There had been a time in my life when those sensations had been a matter of course, but I'd thought the Severus Offensive had put an end to that. Pearl, I reflected, would kill me if she knew I was down here.

But there were dying soldiers to talk to. And, as everyone knew, I was a good listener.

So I was tired, bloody, and dusty as our shuttle lifted back off the Army's placer zone, whooshing back into orbit under the pink skies of this nameless planet and taking the usual sweeping curve to approach the Tirving from astern. I tried to breathe normally as the gravity reasserted itself, for flying in shuttles always made me nervous. I stirred as Reilly broke the silence beside me. "Pfeiffer's going to be pissed," he pointed out mildly. "These casualties are going to delay her TCR."

"Thank goodness Diallo didn't get wasted," I nodded.

"Right?" Two of the medics and a nurse would need PCR and the Assistant Surgeon would need TCR, but Diallo herself had jumped into a rescue bag with the pilot and saved herself from anything serious. "The Army might want to think about a better load plan."

I couldn't agree more, but tactical crossloading was a concept from my youth. Chaplains didn't worry about things like that. "You want to tell the skipper about the delay? Or should I?"

"Fuck," Reilly laughed, "if you want to break the news, padre, you feel free. I'll never miss a chance to avoid that freaky little steward of hers." I nodded as we neared the aft gate. "She's a murderer, you know."

"This is a war," I sighed, yawning. "We're all murderers, at some level." Which wasn't fair, but I wanted to shut off the doctor's gossip. "I'll talk to the captain. If I need backup, I'll let you know."

But she'd taken it well enough, especially since I hadn't showered or changed out of my battlefield-stained utilities. By that time, a week after prosthesis, she was getting around just fine. "Whatever, Chaplain." She'd been weaned off her meds in preparation for the Replacement surgery, and I could tell she was in pain. Probably her face; there wasn't much else that could hurt. "I already know that Leith is off The Wad with my clone. So I'm sure everything will work out fine.

I'd nodded. "Want to talk about it?"

She'd smiled. "Not until you have another form you need to fill out."

And now, coming back to her quarters almost a week later, I did: she was two days post-TCR, meaning it was time for me to check in.

I was more nervous this time as I entered. I knew how disoriented she'd feel, but what really threw me off was the absence of that malevolent little sprite Juno. I glanced around, hesitating, before Pfeiffer's voice gave me a start. "Even my steward has to sleep sometime."

I darted my eyes back to the hatch leading to her quarters. She leaned there, looking exactly as she had when I'd reported aboard. "Hi, Captain," I smiled. "You're looking just about perfect."

"You coming onto me, Rabbi?"

I chuckled. "I'm a married man, ma'am."

"Yeah, but I know you're Millipet's bedwarmer," Pixy nodded. "Hopefully, she fucks better than she does orbital math."

I knew I should keep my mouth shut about that, so I did. "Want to talk in here, ma'am? Or in your quarters?" She jerked her head to the side, ushering me into the inner room, but I could see the movement didn't come out the way she'd wanted it to. A brief spasm of fury crossed her face, and I nodded. "Still not quite right, is it?"

She stared at me for a long moment. "I checked your record, Rabbi," she said quietly. "You weren't entirely truthful with me, last time."

I shrugged. "It wasn't a friendly chat, Captain," I replied lightly, "but maybe it can be now. Go on inside." I felt on firmer ground, the meeting already developing its own flow. I was confident, now, that she was going to be all right. "I know you'll be more comfortable if you're not standing."

"Yes," she sighed, "you do know." She led the way into her quarters, motioning me to the same chair Juno had brought in for me last time. "Most of the time, I feel like myself already. But little things are still throwing me off."

"They will, for awhile." I took the chair and limbered up my tabslate. "I'm sure Dr Reilly is explaining all this to you."

"Yeah," she replied bluntly, "but after reading your file, I think I'd rather hear it from you. If you don't mind. He's good at nerve endings and CNS plasticity. That's not what I need."

"I'm a better listener than I am a talker, Captain," I winked.

"You said you're looking for a friendly chat, Rabbi. Those go two ways." She was only slightly shaky as she sat on the bed, her legs swinging more naturally now. "Spill."

I crossed my ankle over my knee and cocked my head sideways. "It's weird," I admitted at last. "It still is sometimes. I'll look into a static mirror and remember that what I'm looking at? The man I am? The skin, the hair?" I gestured at myself. "Nothing you see came out of my mother's womb. No part of me, except my brain." I allowed myself a half-smirk. "Well. Most of my brain."

"And the rest?" She seemed genuinely interested, which was a good sign. Pixy Pfeiffer was famously blunt. If she didn't' want to hear it, she'd say so.

"The rest of my brain?" I chuckled. "If you talk to my wife and kids, they'll tell you I never had it."

She nodded with a half-smile of her own. "It's still my own head. My own face," she said quietly, her finger tracing the scar down the left side of her cheek, where her skin had been laid open on Canidia. "At least I've got that going for me."

"Your finger went straight to the scar," I observed. "Reilly must be happy with your musculoskeletal calibration."

"How long did it take you? Before you felt normal?"

"Physically?" I leaned back. It had been eight years since my own TCR. "Almost immediately. It was like waking up after a hangover, you know? Some disorientation, but then? After a day or so?" I gestured toward her own face. "You already know, ma'am. You seem like you're blending in just fine, other than the balance. That took longer."

"How long?"

"About a month," I recalled, frowning, "though you'll be quicker. I'd been in a full prosthetic for a long time. I'd gotten used to that." I paused, remembering. "The sensations were what healed me, Captain. If I'm being honest." She raised an eyebrow. "I'd grown accustomed to artificial sensations, see, with the prosthetics." I shrugged. "Suddenly? I felt just like before."

"Just like?"

"Just like. And I cried, Captain." She smiled. "You cried too, didn't you? When you had that first taste of butter-tea."

"I cried when it put me in the latrine for half an hour," she said wryly. The clone's digestive system would not really have been ready for Pfeiffer's food. "That was yesterday." I noticed a cup of mineral-milk on her bedside table, untouched.

"But the taste of the tea," I pressed, remembering my own first taste of food after my Replacement. It had been a taco. "The feel of it in your mouth, going down your throat. The act of swallowing." I leaned forward. "You didn't find that restorative?"

"I did," she confessed.

"And is there a sense of good fortune?" This question came straight off the form, but I'd have asked it anyway. "Of luck? Of having, I don't know, a 'second chance' at life?"

"No." Her answer was immediate. "I don't get philosophical about life and death, Rabbi. I get nervous when I don't know outcomes, but once I've decided? I've decided." She did not blink. "I made the right decision in that fucking shuttle, with the rescue bag."

"There was no other way to handle it?" This wasn't really my business, but I was curious about her attitude. Most people who get cloned also get spiritual about it, and I couldn't tell yet whether Captain Pfeiffer was acting, or whether she really was as uncaring as she seemed. "You're not second-guessing?"

"I could have halted the bombardment. Had Mr Horkins come take my shuttle in tow." She shrugged. "That would have deprived the battalion of fire support and taken a Tygon Interceptor out of the fight. Who knows who might have died?" She shrugged. "In the event? Nobody did."

"Except you."

"Well." She smirked. "Here I am."

"Are you?" This was the fundamental question Fleet needed me to ask her, the essence of pastoral care after TCR. It had been a psychiatrist who'd asked it of me, but then I hadn't been in Federal service by that time. I'd been in seminary, a wary student thinking about putting a uniform back on. "Are you you?"

Until she could give the right answer, I would not be able to certify her for unlimited service. I wouldn't tell her that, of course.

She didn't spend any time thinking about it. "Was I me before?" She laughed, mocking my question. "Like I say, I don't get philosophical about these things. I feel like me. As soon as I can drink my tea without shitting like a faucet, I'm not sure I'll even realize I was ever prosthetic." She cocked her head curiously. "What was fucking like?"

"Ma'am?" I coughed. I knew she'd been a supply officer, so... "Surely you know what fucking is like."

She glanced out at the stars. "This body might be a virgin, I think. It's hard to tell."

Fuck. "Are you this body, Captain? Or are you you?" I smiled gently. "You see why this is an important question, ma'am? You have to become philosophical about it, even though you don't want to." My pastoral training had taught me all about this sort of thing: resistance. Cognitive dissonance. "They say sex sometimes feels different after TCR, but for me? Just the same," I reassured her after a pause. "Maybe even better, because I'd thought I might never get to have it again."

"Why not?"

I blinked. "Well. Because I died, of course." It occurred to me that we were talking past each other, and then I realized what might be happening. "What's the last thing you recall, Captain? Over Canidia?"

"Recall?" She frowned. "I remember being pissy. Because I couldn't see shit through the bombardment and the head-restraint. And I was just starting to remember... something. But then?" She shrugged. "Nada."

"Okay." I'd read about this, prepping for her interview. "Can you do me a favor, ma'am? Before our next meeting? Can you try to remember more?"

"I spent a week lying here in bed, trying to remember more," she snapped. "It's not happening. The Army says I was completely gone when they found me, and that I didn't stir after that." She shook her head. "That ionization layer is a bitch. You're not supposed to try a rescue bag up that high, and now I know why."

"Something else to be famous for," I smiled. "So, from what I know, some of the disconnect you're getting? These questions of yours? They might be easier if you could remember more. That's all." I got that sense again, that we'd done enough for now. I was happy with our rapport, at least. "Maybe next time, Captain. I don't want to tire you out."

She opened her mouth to say something wry, but thought better of it. "Yeah. Thanks for stopping by." She glanced back out at the stars, and when she spoke again she wasn't talking to me. "I'm me, Rabbi."

I wasn't convinced. "Talk later, ma'am."

"Yep."

* * *

"Got a problem, sir." The chief clomped heavily into my office and slumped into my vistors' chair like a collapsing scaffold. "I need to talk to someone, and... well. Usually, that's what chaplains are for."