Dry, No Lube Ch. 08: Imprisoned

"According to family lore." She stretched her arms and leaned back into the soft cushions of the conference chair. "His name was Ronit. He was a Pioneer, so he'd have a fuckton of local descendants. The rumor was he was a popular breeder."

"A horndog," Vallory chuckled. "And the jarga doesn't fall far from the tree."

She smiled thinly. "You can leave now, Mr Vallory."

"Andon."

"Dildo Man." She watched him go, thinking there was nothing in the universe more useless than a flirt who wouldn't put out.

* * *

"Shit," she grunted, hobbling off the mat. It was like taking up the guitar again after a couple years off: the calluses gone and needing to be built back up, only this wasn't just fingers.

Pixy had caught a sailor drunk in the aft magazine early that morning. It was not normal for the captain to be trawling the aft magazine during a lightspace transit, which was precisely why Pixy had been there. She'd spotted two orange-suited engineers down there with flasks glinting in the strobing flare as the kickers flamed out of the drive ports, and they'd seen her in the same moment she'd seen them.

One of them had scampered away. But the other one hadn't been so quick.

She'd been a random propulsion tech, tall and stringy, and petrified to be caught wasted by Firehole Pfeiffer. "You're fucking done," she'd seethed. "Your choice, sailor: I'll give you a kicking right now and you can tell me who your buddy was, or I'll send you to your section chief and let them beat it out of you. Then I'll still give you a kicking for making me come down here into this stinky-ass part of the ship." She'd stood loose, ready. "Pick." The sailor had merely puked on the deck, so Pixy had gone ahead and flashed her feet out.

It had been her first time booting anybody since the Total Clone Replacement, and it didn't go well.

From the start, she'd known she was going to do some damage. She realized (only afterward, though) that her wounded back had slowed down her kicks over the years, so she'd learned to go harder to compensate. And now? Alas; now, her back was good as new, no better than new, a whippy 23-year-old collection of supple muscles and eager nerves, and she'd whapped that foot across the drunk propulsion chick's face like a horsewhip, sending her sprawling in a sprinkle of blood, teeth, and vomit.

"Ow!" Pixy had yelled. "Fuck!" Her foot had throbbed at once, that shapely unblemished foot that the overworked people at the Clone Farm had neglected to callus up. Not for the last time, Pixy had thought about the upgrades you could order (at the cost of docked pay, obviously) to get your clone closer to your ideal. The Farm sent a form every year along with the Control Statement, and every year almost everyone in Fleet skimmed through the paperwork and sent it straight back.

How nice would it have been, Pixy thought as she limped away from the kicking dummy, to have her new body all pre-callused and ready to deliver beatdowns? While she was at it, Pixy reflected, she should have upgraded the stomach, to reduce space sickness...

She was still limping toward her quarters for a shower when the little voxbox around her neck chimed. "Captain Pfeiffer? What's your location?"

Pixy rolled her eyes. It was Verily's voice. "Who's asking?"

"It's the lieutenant from the Leith? Mr Amisuul?" Pixy felt a sudden fond pang in her heart, remembering the old days. "He just arrived, wants to report."

The easy old days. Before the War had reached out and touched her.

"You can send him to my quarters." The last time Amisuul had come aboard, she'd walked in on him fucking Juno. Same old Amisuul. "He'll be with us for the duration of this mission. Did the XO send Mr Romario back to the tender in return?"

"No, ma'am. Captain Stellato wanted someone more senior, so the XO sent Malavongsy." Pixy snickered. "What?"

"Nothing." He'd be slumming it, all right. Pixy had seen how Rocky Amisuul kept his quarters, and was very familiar with the cramped wardrooms on GP Service ships. Elon Malavongsy would be pissed already, and he'd only just arrived. "He'll love it. It'll expand his horizons. I'll see Amisuul when he gets back here. Out."

She was relaxing on the couch in her quarters, munching on a matzoh, when he popped in. "Am I interrupting?"

"Story of your life, Mr Amisuul."

He nodded thoughtfully. "Still with the matzoh. Some things never change." He glanced around her quarters. "There'll be tea around somewhere, too."

She felt a sudden gush of warmth, and sprang up to meet him. "Welcome." It came out with a very un-Pixy-ish catch in her voice, and Amisuul was still raising his green eyebrows in surprise as he pulled her into his arms. "Fuck. I'm a mess," she admitted, pressing herself to his chest.

He was the past. Simplicity. Comradeship. He was a friend.

"You've always been a mess," he laughed, "but a pretty competent mess."

She sighed, and then glanced up at him suspiciously. "Jesus H Buddha. Are you getting a hard-on?" She backed away from him as though he'd suddenly shit his pants.

"Well," he shrugged, looking away, "my bedwarmer got transferred a month ago. And you know a First Officer has to be careful picking a new one." He adjusted himself, but not too shamefully: she'd seen him fuck before, more than once. Hell, the two of them had even done it themselves one desperate night aboard the old Pulver. "You're looking well, ma'am. Since the... you know."

"I don't have my back injury anymore," she blurted. It had been bothering her, and here was the only person within fifteen light-years who might just understand why. "I miss it."

"Why's that?" He took a seat at her desk chair and looked doubtfully at her light-lizard. "I never got used to those things."

She regarded him narrowly, then gazed out at the stars. "Remember Amber Okonkfwe?"

"Of course. How could I forget?" Service Fleet officers weren't supposed to die under enemy fire; it was one of the reasons people chose to join, but Pixy had changed all that forever when she'd taken charge of Pulver and moved in to attack a Flasbard dreadnought.

And she'd won.

But the cost had been Amber, and Pixy's back: the battle had torn it to pieces, and she'd had the surgeon zip it back up because there'd been no time for anything else, anything at all. Amisuul looked down. "Our first battle."

"My first wound," Pixy said quietly, "and now it's like it never happened." She ran her finger along the fading scar around her neck, where they'd attached her head. "I'm all new."

"New and improved," Amisuul smiled. "I heard from Captain Crick after you died. He wasn't sure it was you."

Fucking Crick. "Where's he at?"

"Fleet Central, in the Hearth. Some sort of staff gig." They both nodded; Crick had been a well-connected incompetent. Fleet Central was the perfect spot for him.

Pixy nibbled at her matzoh. She thought of offering Amisuul something, but he was enough of an asshole to ask if he wanted anything. "Hear anything from any of the rest of that old crew? The Pulver gang?"

Amisuul shrugged. "You know how it is. People scatter." He pondered, remembering, while Pixy grew impatient before reminding herself that the Tygon was still just a lieutenant. No memory implant yet. "DiBiase went over to Transport. I think he's planetside at some depot these days."

Pixy snorted. "He never liked being in space."

"I did run into Densborg about a year ago." Amisuul and Pixy swapped a helpless glance. Pulver's old First Officer had been a hopeless drunk. "He's cleaned himself up, apparently, but he's not certified for space duty anymore." He scratched at his chin. "Too many livers."

"Poor guy. I liked him." Pixy sighed. "He'll never get promoted past Subcommander, if that." They paused, thinking about rank. Pixy was officially a Subcommander herself, though a full Commander by custom and a warship captain in status. All that put her light-years ahead of Amisuul, who was already on the next Subcommander's List... but in Service Fleet. He was still three years from his first command, which would be a mere GP Service vessel.

And that was farther than Kim Densborg would ever get.

Pixy looked down, then asked. "Klonmyre?"

Amisuul shrugged again, like always. "She was still on the Pulver when I left, doing fine." He watched Pixy's reaction, then added, "Once you left, she took Falgada as a bedwarmer. Remember him?"

"Thick cock," Pixy nodded. "He tasted like soap."

"He was happy you left. You were an awkward person to have around, at the end." Not many officers made the jump from Service to Combat, and the Service people didn't like being reminded of the ones that did. They saw them as snobs. "But yeah. Klonmyre. I haven't heard anything about her, and no news is good news."

Pixy sighed. Janelle Klonmyre had been her best bedwarmer. "Well. You're more likely to see her than I am, and if you do, tell her hi."

"Not really." Amisuul yawned. "She's an engineer. She could show up anywhere."

Pixy smiled. "Tired? Am I keeping you up, Lieutenant?"

"You know what it's like, being First on a GP ship."

Pixy smiled thinly. "You're not First on a GP ship. You're Acting First on a P/E ship." His eyes widened. "Don't get a hard-on. It's only for a week, and I'm not really going to let you drive."

He tossed his hair back. "Yeah. Like I'm qualified for that."

"Your job here is to link up with a team of fucking nerds, ride down to a Flasbard colony world, and give them the benefit of your insights as a Fleet senior lieutenant." She waited while he pondered this. "Who's been on a Flasbard world before."

"Oh, fuck this shit," he burst out, throwing his hands up. "Now you've yanked me from my happy billet, where I'm doing quite well, and I'm supposed to go with an invasion force of geeks?"

"No. You're supposed to go with an invasion force of nerds."

"I never should have agreed to go on that fucked-up shuttle mission with you," he fumed.

"Aw, shush. You liked the excitement. You got a medal out of it too, so quit bitching." She watched him closely. "It made us famous. Got us billets."

"Destroyed my hearing, gave me a concussion, and broke four ribs," he added morosely.

"This will be better," she promised. "I'm on the other end this time, raining ordnance down. And you'll have at least an entire infantry company, plus more available." She shrugged. "Plus, it's orders. You're going down to that Flasbard colony, Mr Amisuul, and you'll put yourself at the disposal of Dr Yelday once you do."

"Doctor?"

"A Fleet psychiatrist. And a lieutenant." A more junior one than Amisuul, true, but she didn't need to be the one to tell him so. "They probably won't need much from you. And this'll be quick, in and out. My crew, the Army, and I have been doing this for almost a year. We're good at quick strikes."

"What are they looking for?"

She shrugged. "They want to understand the Flasbards so that they can write propaganda for them, I think. You can ask Yelday. She'll tell you all about it."

He brightened. "She?"

Pixy snorted. "Same old Rocky Amisuul. If it makes you feel any better, these are professors. All but a couple of them don't seem to have been in space much, if at all. They might want to slut it up with some hard Tygon dick, huh?"

"Like your steward did," Amisuul winked. "And you, too, back in the Day."

"Stop that." Pixy blushed. She hated that he'd made her cum. "That was my old body. You've never been inside this one, and I intend to keep it that way."

"You used to be much more fun."

"I got promoted."

"Fuck that, then."

* * *

She sat under her phonic unit, relaxing, when the bridge watch broke through her music feed to give their report. "Final dogleg, captain."

Pixy made sure she was facing away from her voxbox when she sighed, though after this long in command she knew the watch would know she was rolling her eyes. "Very well. Enroute."

Standing orders (her own orders, mind) called for her or the XO to be present on the bridge during course changes when the OOD ranked at Sublieutenant or below. She stalked from her quarters, whirling past Juno at the conference table in the outer office, chatting with one of the drug dealers she managed; Pixy had no time for that now. Juno was good with the onboard drugs, and she made sure her captain got a percentage, anyway.

A stack of ordnance carts lay at the stern ends of the long magazines that stretched the length of the Tirving, and Pixy climbed onto the torpedo cradle and flipped the brake off. She liked riding the carts to the bridge; it saved her the walk, and when she'd been entirely prosthetic for those awful couple of weeks after they'd beheaded her, riding the carts had been a lifesaver.

Her bridge was a big, crowded globe perched at the forward lip of the ship, right at the mouth of what the soldiers called The Vag. She'd arranged her officers and stations along rings clinging to the inside of the globe, from the navigators down in the pit to the weapons and commo types higher up, all in view from her command chair suspended on its little peninsula in the middle of it all. Junior Lieutenant Wayne Tomasu was Officer of the Deck, standing there with the ceremonial telescope clamped underneath his left arm. He showed no sign of his usual Bump addiction, she was pleased to note. "Report," she growled, taking her chair.

The man swallowed, nervous, and Pixy nodded: more evidence he was off the stackpipe these days. "Good morning, ma'am. Current course is eighteen million and four by nineteen-point-one one, no superscript. Velocity at factor thirteen. Comms are nominally silent, other than hourly checks with Leith; otherwise, the scope is clear on friendly bands. Two contacts, both passing at zero or negative closure... want their courses, ma'am?"

"Negative closure is positively increasing range." Pixy shrugged, glancing at the Master Plot. "Why would I give a shit about their course?"

"Aye aye, ma'am." His Adam's apple wobbled as he picked up the thread of his report. "Repairs continue to the inboard Number Four gravisensor, and I've got a crew scouring the inside of the lower solid tubes. Menu of the day is kobel loin with butternut-juice reduction and vichysoisse, ma'am."

"Fuck." Kobel loin? Again? "I'll have some 'soisse, Mr Tomasu, in a mug. What's your plan for the dogleg?"

He stared straight ahead: clearly, he'd rehearsed this to himself. "Alteration left and down, to minus four thousand, with the Pritzes set for negative drop."

"Good. And how do you intend to coordinate with Captain Stellato? We're running silent, as I'm sure you recall."

"Visuals, ma'am, and passive pulsing with the sniffer." He brightened. "Oh! Our Mr Malavongsy is on watch over there right now!"

The deathly silence on the bridge would have told a more observant man that he'd been just a but too ebullient with his useless data, but in case he missed it, Pixy just flashed him a withering glance. "I couldn't possibly give a shit less who's on watch aboard the Leith, Mr Tomasu. What I do give a shit about, however, is my fucking vichysoisse. Do you think you have time to have that fetched for me before you make your maneuver, or is that too much to ask?"

"On its way, captain."

"Hmph." She sat back and frowned at everything Tomasu did. Not because he was all that bad, of course: she had a pretty good set of officers aboard, and she assumed they knew that. No, she frowned at him because she believed angry captains were good for young lieutenants' professional development. She glared, her soup finally in hand, as he gave the helm orders and monitored the sniffer so that Leith could maneuver simultaneously. "Might want to warn the crew before you start your checquer maneuver, Mr Tomasu," she put in once he looked like he believed everything was ready.

"Ma'am." It was always nice to tell the ship's company about aspect changes during high-velocity passages. If nothing else, the Army might be training down in their live-fire lane on the Barracks Barge, and the dogleg would affect their shots if they fired during the course change. The OOD hopped onto the Mass Intertube and gave a brusque announcement of the upcoming movement. Still good, Pixy told herself: not everyone could sound confident on the Mass Tube. It meant talking to a thousand souls, in real time, which made some people self-conscious.

She went back to her office even before Tomasu had the ship squared away on its new course, mostly because she needed to pee. Her new body was not quite used to her habit of holding it for hours, though it was getting there; the toilet was still stirring when she emerged from her latrine and caught Andon Vallory hanging out, waiting for her. "Hi there, Captain!"

She scowled. "It's not normal for you nerds to be in the working parts of the ship," she pointed out.

"What can I say?" He shrugged. "I'm not a normal guy." She caught a scowl from Lt Verily at his desk. He was not happy about the researcher's informality. Not with the captain. "I've got a list from Dr Yelday, some protective clothing she seems to think we'll need on the surface." He frowned at his 'slate. "Atmosphere suits?"

"Yes, I know. I'm already having them fabricated." She slid into her work chair. "Did I not make it clear to you people that I was expecting these kinds of things to come through your Lt Pestonji?"

The bald man blinked. "Oh?"

"And that he would know supply requests should go through the XO anyway, not the captain?"

"Oh?"

"And that if I didn't know any better, I might think you have some sort of ulterior motive in coming to see me?" Verily nodded off to the side. Pixy was not certain that this nerd wanted to fuck her, but why else would he be dropping in like this?

Now Vallory shifted in his chair. "What sort of ulterior motive, Captain?"

"How the hell should I know? Search your heart, or some shit." She glared at her in-box. "I'm busy. I'm trying to run a warship here. Get the fuck out." His eyebrows rose, but she was already at her deskslate. And she wasn't even pretending: she did have shit to do. The man sat for a few moments more, as if to preserve whatever dignity he still had, but Verily eventually shooed him out and made sure the hatch was shut behind him.

"Sorry, ma'am. I thought he had something important to say."

"Never mind, Mr Verily. He's a salesman. He doesn't take no for an answer unless you shut him the fuck down." She glanced up. "Next time, feel free to shut him the fuck down."

"Aye aye, ma'am." He glanced at the chrono. "Don't forget, you invited yourself to Commander Jatsupa's staff call in an hour."

"Oh. Shit."

"Final walkthroughs." They'd arrive at their objective in ten more hours, and she'd be placing the research team right after that. The secretary schlepped a file to her 'slate. "Latest update from Fleet Intelligence."

Pixy sighed. "Just keep loading me up with work, Mr Verily."

"Yes, ma'am."

* * *

They gazed thoughtfully down at 3442-B on approach, frowning at the screen. "Small," Pixy noted.

"Tiny," Crazy Jack agreed. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. "I'm thinking even a company might be too many. Especially with the other P/E ship taking the other side of the fucking asteroid."

"Dwarf planet," Pixy corrected shortly, but her heart was not in it. Their objective was a thimble-sized colony outpost beside a small stream of what looked on the far-magnifier scope like actual water, but it wasn't like there was time to enjoy the view. "We're in final closure, Colonel. You need to get your boots on the ground."

"Yeah." Crazy Jack McMerckx would not be going down with his placer element, which made him visibly nervous. Nervous enough that he was distracting her officers. Nervous enough, in fact, that she was about to kick him off her bridge, though not literally. "They're in the shuttles already. Are we sure about the other ship? The Fraggle Rock?"