Dry, No Lube Ch. 08: Imprisoned

"It's in Italy," another civilian woman pointed out.

"Of course. I was joking," Pixy lied. She'd never heard of an Italy. "Who are you two?" she demanded. The team was Yelday, another man in Fleet uniform, the two women from Bologna, and one bald guy at the end of the table, looking like he was about to put his feet up on Pixy's conference table.

A part of her wanted him to. She loved sticking it to civilians.

Still, you didn't often see bald men in this day and age. It wasn't in fashion. He was tall and stout, and his tiny smile hadn't gone away since he'd arrived. He sat now, leaning back, watching everything.

"Actually, Captain, I was just about to introduce my team," Dr Yelday continued, trying to regain her momentum. "Brin?"

The first woman spoke up again, the oldest university in existence one. "I'm Dr Apronis, professor of linguistics." She nodded toward her colleague, who was a lot older and a lot more exhausted. "This is Salvada Chandos."

"Professor of psychology." The woman tried to smile. "A pleasure to be here."

Pixy nodded at the greenish expression on her face. "Space sickness. Your first time on a big ship?"

"My first time off Earth." She coughed. "I did not think your ship would smell like peppermint."

"Most of them don't," Jatsupa said into an awkward pause. "P/E ships are the only ones that use petrolatum hyperventate as fuel." The psychologist merely blinked back; clearly, the syllables meant nothing to her. Jatsupa glanced over at Pixy.

"Next!" she rapped.

"I'm Lieutenant Beston Pestonji," the other Fleet guy said quietly. He had more medals than Lt Yelday. "I teach psychology as well, but I used to be a sailor."

"Ship?" Pixy raised an eyebrow. It wasn't rare for enlisted men to become officers, but she didn't imagine most of them ended up as Academy professors.

"USS Bexar. Fleet destroyer." He cleared his throat. "I was a gunner."

"No shit. What's the maximum range of a Type XI torpedo?"

The psychologist did not pause. "Eighty-eight thousand kilometers."

"Good. You can be the liaison between your team and my staff." Pixy nodded, not even bothering to glance at the astonished Yelday. She glanced at Jatsupa. "Make room for Mr Pestonji at your staff calls, XO."

"1300 daily, Mr Pestonji." Jatsupa made a note on his tabslate. "Wardroom. Down the hall from here, near my quarters."

The psychologist nodded. "Aye aye, sir."

"I was thinking I'd be the one to interface with you personally, Captain," Dr Yelday began, but Pixy waved her away.

"Focus, Dr Yelday. You'll be far too busy managing this very complex operation. Mr Pestonji already speaks our language. Who's the last man on your team?" She nodded at the bald guy. "The other civilian?"

The man's smile grew. "I'm in marketing."

Pixy leaned forward. "Marketing."

"Marketing." He hadn't moved. "I sell things."

"Things like?"

He shrugged. "I work for Naida-Shvindl Corporation." A titter made its way around the table.

"You sell dildos."

He spread his hands expansively. "I sell pleasure, Captain."

"Why are you here? Flasbards need sex toys?"

"No, Captain," he replied seriously, "they need peace. I want to develop ways to make them understand that need." He nodded at his colleagues. "My friends here will help us learn what 'peace' means to them." He grinned politely. "My name is Vallory, Andon Vallory. A pleasure to be aboard."

"There's never been a concerted effort to understand the enemy's motives," Yelday put in, making a transparent effort to stay relevant. She gestured at her presentation, flickering in the air over the table. "Our task is to land on a Flasbard colony world, conduct an intensive cross-sectional study of whatever artifacts we find here, use those conclusions to generate messaging, and produce that messaging for Federal use." She glared around the room.

Crazy Jack McMerckx spoke up first, in a patronizing drawl. "And the Flasbards will let you do this... why?"

"They won't, sir." She gulped. "That's why our military sponsor suggested we link up with a Placer/Extraction vessel, like this one."

"Military sponsor." Pixy felt a chill in her heart. "Meaning, you're working within a Service context." She fixed the nerd with a glare. "Who is your sponsor, Dr Yelday?"

The professor went pale. "I'm not supposed to say. Honestly, ma'am, I'm not even completely sure." The other nerds looked uncomfortable, and Pixy felt her wrath bloom in her mind like a malignant tumor. "Rest assured, ma'am, that this mission has survived vetting at all levels, and that has been reflected in your orders," she patted a formal red envelope on the chair, "which I hereby deliver."

Pixy ignored the envelope. "This has clearly been in the works for some time. You obviously know who your sponsor is. Who is it, Lieutenant?" She put some snap into her voice, a bit of venom, her tongue wound tamed by her anger. She was pretty sure she already knew the answer, anyway. "Fucking tell me."

Yelday glanced at her team, then looked down. "It's an Army colonel, Captain."

Pixy felt Juno staring at her from the doorway to her quarters, ostentatiously feeding her light-lizard. "Colonel Smith? Tall? Scar on his lip? Andromeda accent?"

Yelday cringed. "He introduced himself as Colonel Schwick, ma'am. I'm sure that's not his real name, given the level at which we're all cleared."

Pixy sighed. Juno would be burning, she knew. "No. Schwick's his real name; it's just his first name." The rest of the table looked with interest between the two women, but Pixy felt no need to explain anything. She was no idiot. She knew people wondered about her past, the redacted gaps in her service record, the nature of the classified award of a bar to her Gold Cross. She thought about her troubled dealings with Schwick Rennels: the mutiny investigation, the assassination of one of his Army rivals, using Juno as his weapon (and nearly getting her killed).

His intervention with Fleet to get her this command...

"Carry on, Dr Yelday," Pixy rasped. "You may continue."

"There's not much else to say, ma'am." The professor glanced at McMerckx and Murtaugh, then the glowering sergeant major in the corner. "My understanding is that these orders call on the Army to secure a perimeter for us while we work. When we've gathered what we need, you extract us."

"Fleet was eager to suggest you, Captain Pfeiffer, as a possible ally in this project." Dr Apronis, from Bologna, was obviously trying to flatter her. "They seem to think quite highly of you," she beamed, not noticing as Yelday and Pestonji rolled their eyes. Bald Andon Vallory just watched, that odd smile of his still on his lips.

They knew. They knew flattery was not what Pixy Pfeiffer needed, and she decided it was time Apronis learned the same thing. "Don't blow starshine up my ass, nerd," she snapped. "You people happen to be in proximal space to the only two Fleet officers who've ever landed on the Flasbard homeworld. One of them is the First Officer of the tender ship that follows us around, a Tygon named Rocky Amisuul." She glared at each of the nerds. "Guess who the other one is."

Yelday spoke into the uncomfortable silence which followed. "We'd, um, be grateful for the chance to interview Mr Amisuul before we reach the objective, ma'am."

"I'll do you one better," Pixy chuckled, "I'll have his captain send him down there with you."

"Oh! Uh, thanks?"

"Better him than me." She yawned and looked around the room. "Any other questions from anyone? Or can we get around to sorting these people out with quarters, and then figure out where the fuck we're going?"

There were a few more question, but Pixy couldn't have cared less about any of them; it did intrigue her when McMerckx volunteered some vacant quarters in the Barracks Barge, which Yelday accepted gracefully even though, as a psychiatrist, she had to have seen the gleam in the colonel's eye and known that every woman in the team would probably have to fend off Army dick for the next week or so.

"Fine." She shrugged. "Mr Malavongsy, coordinate with Dr Yelday and get the ship on course."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

"XO? Logistical concerns: iron them out and get any issues over to the tender before it's too late for them to go grab shit for us. I'll call Captain Stellato and have him cut Amisuul loose." She frowned at that, for there were niceties to be observed. "If I'm robbing him of his first officer, we should offer to detach someone qualified in return."

"You've been First on a GP Service ship, ma'am," Jatsupa pointed out. "Which of our people should I send?"

Pixy nodded, considering. "Romario could do it. Mr Malavongsy, you're actually the analogous choice: want to slum it for a week on a Service Fleet ship?"

"I think Paston Romario would be an outstanding choice for a mission of such responsibility," Malavongsy smiled.

"Yeah. I figured. Sort that out, Commander Jatsupa."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

She swept the red envelope off the table. "Subcolonel McMerckx and I will read these right away, and then we'll reconvene here at... 2200 this evening?" She saw terror on the researchers' faces, and realized they wouldn't be used to late nights. Pussies. "Not all of you, obviously," she spat, "but as liaison, Mr Pestonji should be here. In fact, I'd like you to stay and read the orders with us." The lieutenant glanced at Yelday, but he knew the only response was a nod. The psychiatrist, for her part, seemed on the verge of protesting but eventually kept her yap shut. Wise woman. Pixy hesitated. "And... Mr Vallory? I'd appreciate a word, if you please."

The salesman raised his eyebrows. "Why?"

"Because this is my ship, and I said so." She shrugged. "Say... after I read these orders. Should take a couple hours. Go get settled into your quarters, then return here."

"We'll get 'em settled in," the sergeant major grated. Nobody knew what to say to that one, but the nerds looked slightly nervous.

* * *

"So. What do you think?"

McMerckx laid aside the red envelope and studied the projected image of their objective, which hovered somewhere on the frontier between asteroid and planet. It had no name, so Fleet was calling it Objective Area 3442-B. His eyes darted across the surface. "Three million square kilometers of surface, and only 5,000 is terraformed. But I'm not sure what Flasbard terraforming is like. So I'll need to plan for that. Weak gravity throughout, though. Looks like only a third of a G, so the E-value is 8? 8.1? And I'm not into those temperature fluctuations." He punched up one of 3442's five settlements. "I'd pick that one," he said with his usual air of quiet confidence.

Pixy nodded. "Right near the ore piles."

"That'll throw off some of our readings, but I can manage. Eighth Battalion off the Fragarach will probably go in as heavy as possible. It's their first action. But I'll go in with D Company only. Major Prizzk has most of our Linders; they do well in gravity with an E-value above 7.5." He smiled ruefully.

Pixy knew this already, both in memory and implant. She made some notes, her mind full of data about the weak local sun. "We won't have any surprise," she warned. "If Fragarach's captain has any brains, he'll want to go in at that main population center by the north pole, to bust his cherry. So they'll get the benefit of the star."

"That's why I picked that other settlement. You should have the other ship attack first, then we'll just scoot down. Might not even need much of a bombardment."

"I was thinking that," Pixy nodded.

They turned to Lt Pestonji, and Crazy Jack smiled. "Well, Beston? How's that look? Or would one of the other population centers work better?" Pixy grimaced at the sound of the man's name. She lived in a world where first names might as well not exist.

"Any of the settlements will work," he shrugged. Pixy was impressed at the man's demeanor. "A prisoner would be great, but not required. We're more interested in the sorts of things the inhabitants do for fun. In their spare time. Books. Tools. Hobby items. Entertainment modules. So we can work within any of the proposed areas, sir."

"Good." Crazy Jack rubbed his hands together.

"And if you find any sex toys, you brought the perfect expert." Pixy stirred. That reminded her: she'd asked the sales guy to come back and talk to her. She glanced at the chrono. "Okay. That's a good preliminary plan, Colonel. I'm going to get about my duties, and we can reconvene for final planning at 2200." She nodded at the psychologist. "Thank you, Mr Pestonji. It's nice that one of you is on our page, as it were."

"Ma'am." Pixy stayed at her table as the men got their shit and bustled out. She was grateful that McMerckx was so experienced with women; he understood that, after what the two of them had done, and what he'd done to her, the least awkward thing to do was just to act normally. He sauntered out now without a backward glance, leaving Juno to stick her head in.

"I'm heading to the gym. Anything you need me for before I go?"

Pixy yawned. She thought she might want a nap, but that brought the dildo salesman back to mind. "Andon Vallory? The guy from Naida-Shvindl? I asked him to meet with me around now. Can you go see if he's outside?"

"Sure, ma'am." The little steward paused on her way to the door. "I don't like this shit, by the way."

"You don't like anything," Pixy shrugged. "I'm used to it."

"Colonel Rennels..."

"Yeah. I know." Pixy was not in the mood. "Go find the Dildo Man."

"He's already here!" came a genial chuckle from the corridor outside. The room lighting gleamed off his pate as he leaned in. "Did you miss me, Captain Pfeiffer?"

Pixy smirked at Juno. "Off you go." She watched as the two passed in the doorway, Juno giving off her usual lethally frosty menace as the salesman nodded her through. "Take a seat, Mr Vallory."

"Please, call me Andon." He folded himself into the same chair he'd taken during the initial briefing, with the same nonchalance.

"No. I'll call you Mr Vallory, or Dildo Man." She smiled. "I don't mind if you put your feet up. I know you want to."

He kicked his sandals obligingly off and swept his legs up onto the table. "Thanks. You're never sure what to expect, you know? New environment and all that."

"You ever been aboard a Fleet warship before?"

He shrugged. "Just the frigate that took us out from Sol III to the circuit depot. To be honest, I'd never have expected to interact with the military at all, but with the war going like it is..."

Pixy flared. "What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"

He shrugged. "Salesmen hear things. It's our job to spot trends, predict the next big thing, and the word is that the next big thing might not be so great, as far as the Cathos Vremein are concerned."

She just stared until he looked away. "War's going just fine, Mr Vallory."

He eyed her, then shrugged. "Be that as it may. We don't do a lot of Fleet business."

Pixy raised her eyebrows. "No?"

"You people seem to find your sexual gratification in other ways. At least, that's the feedback our sales directors have received." His eyes glittered. "Why? Were you thinking of putting in a bulk order for your crew?"

Pixy laughed. "No. It's not the captain's business what sailors put in their cunts. That's an old Fleet tradition."

"We construct artificial vaginas, too. We've got a full line."

"Yeah. No. Not a problem." She gestured dismissively off to the side. "We've got a Fleet Prostitution Program to make up any possible shortfall, with profits going to charity."

"How nice."

"Thing is," she went on, slogging through the small talk and cursing its need, "most Fleet people get laid whenever they need to. Senior officers, however, occasionally find it awkward to... well, to find the right kind of emotional connection with their partners." She knew this was coming out awkwardly, but plunged ahead anyway. There was nothing else she could do at this point, with Vallory just sitting there looking insolently at her. "And in my case, there's another complication."

"You're a clone."

"No," she snapped, "I'm me. But parts of my body are newer than others, is all."

He held up his hands. "I meant no offense, Captain. But I did my homework before coming here. I know you're bouncing back from a TCR minus." He hesitated, then leaned forward. "We do have a special line of adaptive products for virgins, or people on TCR. Designed to, say, break them in gently? It's called Soft Whispers."

"I want dick," Pixy replied flatly. Flirtation, negotiation, table talk: these were not things she'd ever been good at. "Dick, Mr Vallory, preferably under the control of a man who understands what a vag looks like." She shrugged, staring at him with a sort of challenge. "I was hoping that a dildo salesman might be familiar with how to please a woman."

"We undergo extensive training." He hesitated, then looked down. "Let me stop you right here, Captain. Are you trying to proposition me?"

She felt an angry, hot buzz under her skin. "Yes, dammit."

He nodded, his face carefully composed. "You've been in Fleet awhile," he said gently, "and you might not really be aware of this, but where I come from? Where most people come from?" He smiled. "We don't just arbitrarily fuck people."

"I'm not arbitrary," she seethed, humiliated, "I just want dick."

His smile did not leave him. "Really. Captain. Let me give you a copy of our catalog. The Soft Whispers line really is right up your alley."

"I don't want a fucking dildo," she barked. "I've already got a bunch."

"They're clearly not doing the job," he ventured. "Are they Naida-Shvindl, may I ask? I'd be happy to give you a healthy discount, or even leave you a sample if our competitors aren't getting things done..."

"They're Naida-Shvindl. Antiques." She drew herself up proudly. "I've got an original Mark II and a new-in-the-box Mark VII, plus attachments. Bunch of other shit, too."

His eyebrows rose. "New-in-the-box?" His eyes darted around as his brain did the math. "Those are worth quite a bit. Original, you say?"

"One of my great-great-great-however many great grandfathers was a Pioneer. On the Wad."

"Our headquarters is still there." He was leaning well forward now. "We have a museum there, if you're interested in loaning anything? Obviously, we'd exchange for a comparable replacement..."

"I sold off a lot of my really valuable stuff, but trust me, I don't need your replacements. Or any samples." Well... she hadn't sold them off, precisely. She'd used them as bribes, to get into Combat Fleet. "It's not that they don't get the job done. They're just not what I want."

"I can see that."

"Just... look. Help me out?" She put on her cutest expression, hoping it looked sexy even with the new scar.

He smiled sadly. "I'd love to help you out, Captain, really. But no." He shrugged. "I'm happily married, and like I said, most civilians don't indulge in the kind of sex you guys seem so casual about." His eyes flicked down to her crotch. "I'm not unsympathetic. And I'm happy to help you out in whatever way I can."

"But you don't want to screw me."

"But I don't want to screw you. I don't keep notches on my bedpost."

She stared at him. "Well. This is fucking embarrassing."

His smile grew warmer, and even though she knew he was in sales, and therefore a liar, it comforted her. "I won't tell a soul, Captain. Okay?"

"Fine," Pixy muttered. He nodded, understanding they were finished.

"It's been great chatting with you, truly. I'm at your disposal if you need anything other than a fuck," he winked.

"You could eat me out?" she said hopefully.

"No. My wife says I'm no good at it." He rose and stepped back into his sandals. "Thank you for thinking of me though, really. Next time I'm at the Home Office, I'll try to look up your ancestor. Same last name?"