Dry, No Lube Ch. 08: Imprisoned

"I'm down here on this dumpy rock, aren't I?" Pixy huffed. She glared over at Apronis, by the door of the shattered hut. "After you."

Pixy hadn't seen what could happen when a Type H grenade went off in an enclosed space, so she didn't know that that's what she was seeing as she ducked into the charred shack and waited for her implant to get her used to the lack of light. It took about three seconds, but while she waited there, crouched in the rubble, the queasiness in her belly all of a sudden vanished, leaving her with a suddenness that seemed almost audible, like a whump in her ears. She was still catching her breath when she realized she was damp between her thighs.

"Ah. Captain." The voice was quiet, almost a whisper, coming from a slumped form in the corner next to the kneeling Lt Pestonji. "I've been waiting for you." She took in the sight of Pestonji's blank face turning toward her, but only as if she was seeing it through a Lerbal haze, indistinctly, even vaguely, for she only had eyes for the man in the corner. "You need me."

Pixy sucked in a breath, for lying there broken among the smell of charred grenade fragments was the most beautiful creature she'd ever seen. She fought to clear her throat, galled by a strong feeling that whenever she spoke, it would come out as a very unwelcome squeak. She tried to look away, because everyone knew that a Korlene's power was in their eyes, but because she'd never actually been pursued by a Korlene before, she was completely unready to fight off the mental attack.

The silence hung in the still hovel like the grenade smoke, but then the Korlene was speaking once more. "Go, Captain Pfeiffer." The voice had a sibilance, the kind of hiss that Pixy knew she should make herself ignore, but that wasn't possible now. The Korlene had Seen her. "We're in danger."

Pixy swallowed, her voice coming out low and unmistakably husky. "We're in the midst of a long-term total interstellar war," she rasped. "We're always in danger." With a great effort, she turned to Pestonji. "That's not a Flasbard," she pointed out unnecessarily.

"Which is probably why the Army didn't finish him off," the psychologist shrugged. "He's wounded."

The Korlene's reply was placid. "The danger lies 5400 meters from us. The danger is stupid, unthinking." Those eyes, those incomparable limpid eyes, slid to Pestonji. "You should fetch the medic for me, I'm afraid. Your captain needs me. So you should get me to her ship, where my life can be saved."

A distant explosion shook the hut, the dust drifting everywhere. 5400 meters... that'd be the fucking Eighth Battalion, all bloodlusty. She shook her head, noting that the Korlene was no longer looking at her, and raised her voice. "Yelday!" she shouted over her shoulder. "Five minutes, and not a second more." She glanced sideways toward the Korlene, the uneasiness suddenly back. With a vengeance. "And expedite that fucking corpsman!"

* * *

"Blue Point," Pixy rasped over the beam as the proximity port opened up, her Aries accent strong and harsh; she didn't really bother suppressing it anymore, and there were other things on her mind now anyway. Even as a little girl, she'd always believed in getting straight back into the saddle after setbacks, which was why she'd insisted on piloting the shuttle across to the Fragarach despite Byskop's skeptical glance. The pylon indicator scraped gently across the hull above, near the port. "There we go," she announced with more relief than she hoped she showed. "Capture."

All around her, the Vag gleamed with the clustered Army shuttles it was her job to take into battle, painted in their company colors. Everything inside this vast open tunnel was busy, almost chaotic, barely controlled by Commander Leodmannsegge in the bridge. Even she, the Captain, had had to wait for clearance, orbiting uselessly out the back of the tunnel.

"Relax," she told the fuming Crazy Jack McMerckx now, her hands moving automatically through the lockdown sequence. He'd insisted on riding up in the cockpit with her, mostly so that he could complain on the way back. "Your ass dragged me over there, which I'm not happy about; if you have to bitch, go find someone else to do it to." Byskop, at the copilot's station, pretended not to hear the two commanding officers.

"I told him I'm never working with him again." Eighth Battalion had taken its sweet time down there on 3442-B, shifting their fire away from his men. "Fucking Promegoro. I knew he'd get men killed."

He'd insisted on heading over to Fragarach right away so that he could vent his spleen at the other battalion commander, and protocol had forced Pixy to go along to be awkwardly entertained by Captain Valladock while the two soldiers had raged at each other. Apparently, once she'd lifted off the surface with her nerds, there'd been some near-fratricide between the Eighth guys and Prizzk's D Company. So there she'd sat, making useless small talk with Valladock (a first-namer, she'd been disgusted to find out: "Call me Strollsung!").

She'd fucked it up, as she always seemed to fuck up social situations. She'd been intrigued by the newer ship's direct-upload capability, which allowed the tender to dock up directly to the P/E ship for supply transfer. It saved all the shuttling Pixy and her fellow captains had to do during resupplies. "That's awesome," she'd smiled.

"Oh! That's right!" Valladock had been everything a Fleet captain should be: polite, suave, capable. He hadn't even commented on her scars. "You wrote the SOP for that!"

"I did!" Pixy had been into P/E on the ground floor, before tenders had been a thing. "Direct upload was one of my early recommendations."

"Yes. You commanded a tender, is that right?"

She'd frowned, sensitive as always about her Service background. "No. I didn't." The conversation had stalled right there. But all the while, her mind had been stuck on the mysterious Korlene they'd found on the surface.

You need me, he'd said, wounded in the corner of that shack, and Pixy had been amazed to discover that the words themselves made them true: she did. Somehow. Some way. You had to be careful with Korlenes. They were very rare in Fleet, but every officer had their stories about them. Pixy remembered the time she'd needed to trade five spare Furtz generators to engineer a transfer off the old Tibert, just to get a Korlene aboard for Amisuul to fuck. They were legendary for their sexual prowess, fueled by their telepathic capabilities, and they'd always made Pixy uncomfortable.

Never more than now.

The way he'd looked at her in that busted-out hut? She knew she'd been Seen, and she could not for the life of her think of a reason why a Korlene should See her.

The docking chime went, and she interrupted McMerckx in mid-whine. "Out, Crazy Jack. We're docked. It's time to un-ass, unless you'd rather just hang out in here alone, yelling at the darkness."

He frumped out, followed by Byskop with a carefully neutral face, leaving Pixy to take a deep breath as the ship's air rushed into the shuttle. She gave a silent thanks to the universe that she'd been able to get back behind the controls of a shuttle and bring it in safely. And so soon after that weird attack!

Straight back into the saddle. It was the only way.

She squeezed through the differential lock, unsurprised to find Wrae Juno waiting there for her with a bowl of tea. The steward eyed her slowly. "You've had a long fucking day," she observed coolly.

"Yeah." Pixy hesitated, not sure she wanted Juno to know she was anxious about the Korlene, but fuckit: this was Juno. The girl probably knew already. "Is the, uh, prisoner still in sick bay?"

"Yup. Under guard." Juno cocked her head. "It was weird. I felt something in my mind when I looked at him."

Pixy shrugged. "He's a Korlene. That comes with the territory. Look, have Lieutenant Pestonji sent to the bridge, and I mean now. Right fucking now. I'll be up there getting us under way." She didn't like this part of the galaxy, so the Korlene would have to wait a bit longer... goddammit.

"Aye aye, ma'am." The steward whisked off, her little ass wiggling unconsciously, while Pixy whirled toward the bridge. There was so much to do, always, and Pixy traded listless salutes with a few sailors as she stalked to the bridge.

"Let's get the fuck out of here!" she called as soon as she crossed the threshold. "OOD! Ready the ship for departure. Mr Malavongsy! Calculate our course."

"Where to, ma'am?"

"Anywhere that isn't here." Pixy hadn't actually thought that far ahead. Her mind groped for a reply, the implant whirring along... yard time next month... Barracks Barge offload... "Headquarters Planet. Low-speed course. We'll take the scenic route, maybe seek targets of opportunity along the way." She watched balefully as the navigator started for the star-plot shed. "Do it manually, dammit."

"Ma'am?" Malevongsy's voice was pitched somewhere between incredulous and outraged. "Manually?"

"Proper hand-crafted navigation is a dying art, Lieutenant. Dying: not dead. Do it." She smiled slowly. "I want an eight-point bearing. Manually."

He just gaped. "But I thought you wanted to leave right away?"

"Which means that every second you spend standing there with your dick in your hand is making me more and more angry, isn't it?" she growled.

"I comprehend, ma'am."

"That remains to be seen," she sniped, beckoning to the OOD. "Okay, Ms Seton, here are my orders for this run. Are you ready to log them?"

"Yes, ma'am." Seton was a pretty good officer, new to Supply. It occurred to Pixy that being a Supply Officer on a P/E ship with its own dedicated tender wasn't really being a Supply Officer, but she stood a decent watch. So Pixy didn't really care.

"Hold our speed within a range of velocity factor seven through ten, condition-dependent. We're in no rush, so gravity wells get a wide berth... say, forty kilometers past the Marsant Line. Beams at maximum sniff: I want to know well in advance if there are any shenanigans up ahead."

"Shenani-what?"

"Anomalies," Pixy grated. The girl had probably grown up way out on the Perimeter someplace. Their slang was all fucked up out there. She snorted. "Build in UV halts about every twelve standard hours, and not more than every fifteen: standard stellar orbits to feed the Organic Armor." She glared balefully up at the Main Plot, where Fragarach was maneuvering to complete the conquest of the planetoid. Which was no longer her problem. She noticed the nerd, Pestonji, standing obsequiously off to the side. "That'll do for starters, Ms Seton. And put macaroni and haggis on the menu for tomorrow. I'm having a craving."

"Aye aye, ma'am." She adjusted the telescope below her arm and went back to work as Pixy turned to Pestonji.

"So. Mr Pestonji. I got called away as soon as we came back up, but I take it Dr Yelday is happy with what y'all gathered?"

"She seems pleased, ma'am."

"Good. She better make sure it's all secured for lightspace. I think the XO gave you people some space to work..."

"Yes, ma'am. We're all set for movement."

"Good." Pixy paused, not wanting to appear anxious. "And our prisoner? The Korlene?"

The nerd cocked his head. "I think, technically, he's the Army's prisoner."

"He's on my ship," Pixy barked. "He's my prisoner. Are his wounds, uh, treatable?"

"Very." Pestonji glanced to the side and leaned in. "He's mentioned you."

"Yes." She raised an eyebrow, wondering whether she'd overlooked an opportunity in Pestonji. "Wait. You're a psychologist."

"I am."

"Do you... I mean, have you done any research about Korlenes?" Pixy knew she was blushing, and cursed herself for it.

He hesitated. "I'm aware of their telepathic capabilities, captain. Why?"

"Because this one mentioned me," she snapped. "What should that suggest? In your opinion as an academic, not a Fleet officer."

The nerd nodded thoughtfully, glancing around at the assembled bridge watch. "Can I ask if it's your intention to meet with the prisoner?"

Pixy fought down a flare of irritation. Why even ask? "Obviously."

He pursed his lips and lowered his volume. "I'd suggest then, captain, that you speak to me first? I think it would help everything go more smoothly."

She let him see her eyes roll. "Whatever. Do you know where my office is? Out the hatch, turn right, second door aft? I'll speak with you there as soon as we get underway." She turned pointedly away from him. "My secretary's name is Spago Verily. He'll be in there. You guys can talk about gunnery or porn or something. Now go."

She found him in there as the ship shuddered toward velocity factor eight. The biggest challenge in getting underway, as it turned out, had been to prevent Fragarach's tender from joining them. "Jesus H Buddha. Get them out of our slipstream!" she'd raged at her commo people. "If they don't want to be with Captain Valladock, they're certainly not coming with me."

So she was in her usual shit mood when she kicked the office hatch open and nodded curtly at Verily. "Go. Do something else. I have to talk to Dr Pestonji here," she told him at once, and he slunk out with his tabslate to go finish his work... hell, somewhere else? He was used to Pixy's moods by now. Probably, she reflected, he had a semi-permanent hiding hole somewhere in the vessel where he could do his work without her fucking with him.

She didn't begrudge him that. She'd had that poor motherfucker working like a dog for a year now. Not for the first time, she reckoned it was probably time to move him out and find a new secretary. He deserved something better, being a real officer of some sort. She put it out of her mind, though, as she took her chair across from Pestonji. "So. What gives, sailor?"

"Your surgeon is certain the prisoner will make a full recovery," he began, "in case that was something you were wondering about."

"It isn't." She leaned back in the chair. "I know my surgeon is good. You know that's not what I want to hear about." She stared expectantly at the nerd. "I want a narrative, Doctor. I want to know what that Korlene said. I want to know what he was doing on what was supposed to be a Flasbard base. And I want to know, more than anything else, what he thinks he knows about me."

"Not what he thinks he knows, Captain Pfeiffer." He crossed his ankle over his knee. "You know as well as I do that numerous studies have shown Korlene telepathy is real. It's a thing. He's not guessing."

"Well, then." Pixy sniffed. "That hardly changes what I want to hear from you. So. Spill."

He shrugged. "There's not much to tell. The Army shuttled us down, we bounced out into the ruins, and we started our search. I was paired with Dr Chandos. A soldier came up to us, one of Major Prizzk's platoon leaders, telling us her men had found a prisoner and were wondering what they should do with it."

"I thought the orders were to kill anything moving."

"They seem to have been. The platoon leader who met us was on her way to seek guidance from Prizzk, because the prisoner wasn't a Flasbard."

"I see."

"Chandos and I went inside the abandoned structure and found the Korlene." He cocked his head. "Care to guess why he was there on a Flasbard base?"

Pixy had thought about that from the moment she'd understood a non-Flasbard was on the outpost. "I'd imagine he was the Flasbards' prisoner before he was our prisoner."

"Not prisoner," Pestonji corrected quietly, "slave."

Pixy sat there a moment, absorbing the information, letting it percolate. "Ah."

"Yes. Our Korlene was most pleased to see us." He paused. "We asked his name, but at first he was too injured to say much. And then he looked at Dr Chandos and nodded. 'Your captain needs me,' was all he said." Pixy felt her heart go cold. "We thought he meant the Army, but he shook his head and muttered 'fleet.' So. That's when we called you down."

"Fuck." It came out quickly, low, without Pixy's conscious thought. The nerd just sat there, staring at her. "And you never did get his name?"

"Have you met many Korlenes, Captain?"

"Enough to know that they've got fucking names," Pixy flared.

"Well, if the Korlenes you know have been in Fleet, then yes. They choose noms de guerre."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"Names under which they serve in war. For the convenience of their comrades. But on their own, in their own culture, they don't really have names." He shrugged. "They differentiate each other based on stuff they just seem to know already. Might be pheromones, but it's probably telepathic. Or a hybrid." He smiled. "I don't think any name he gave would have meaning to him."

"Well. He'll certainly give me a name when I go talk to him." He'd have to. She'd need to start a record of him. Prisoners had to eat, and Fleet needed to account for those meals. "I don't give a shit whether it has meaning. But what did he say I needed, Doctor?"

"Him." Pestonji arched an eyebrow. "I've got nothing more to say about that. He says you need him. What I would add, as you know, is that Korlenes tend to focus on specific humans, which they seem to... I don't know what to call it. Pursue, maybe? Though that term conveys a certain malignancy that I've never agreed with."

"I couldn't care less what you agree with. Focus, Doctor."

"Yes. Focus. That's probably a more accurate term than pursuit," Pestonji smiled, deliberately missing Pixy's point. "He Sees you, Captain. Whatever that means? He's going to be the one to tell you, not me. From what I've read, Korlenes See humans whose psychological needs they can fill. And they often seek them out."

The chill spread. "So I'm in need."

Pestonji cocked his head. "I wouldn't know, ma'am, but the Korlene thinks so." He paused, then pressed on. "And studies suggest they're usually beneficial in these kinds of situations."

"I'm a Fleet captain. I'm not a situation."

Pestonji spread his hands. "Hey. Whoah. I'm just the messenger here, Captain. I'm not making any judgements nor asking for your insights." He shook his head. "Still. You can see why I wanted to speak to you before you talked to the prisoner, yes?"

Pixy made a face. "You can go now, Doctor. I'm sure you and your people have many artifacts to go through. Right?"

Tirving carried no Marines, the theory being that a ship with a full battalion of Army soldiers, fully equipped for planetary invasions, would hardly need a token force of Stellar Marines to do the same thing. But it also meant that there was nobody to guard the brig. This was seldom a problem on any ship commanded by Pixy Pfeiffer, who believed in keeping the brigs empty by beating the sailors instead of imprisoning them whenever possible, but it was proving a problem now that there was an actual prisoner aboard. She supposed McMerckx had a few people he would spare if needed, but she also supposed she wanted the Army kept far, far away from the Korlene.

After all, she was the one who "needed" him. Not McMerckx.

That was why the brig was merely locked when she reached it. She'd left orders, when she'd heard the Korlene was out of sick bay, that the XO should make an effort to dress up the bare cell so that it was at least slightly comfortable. After all, she wasn't quite sure that a freed enemy slave really did constitute a "prisoner" anyway.

The queasiness began when she was still eight or ten meters down the corridor from the cell, a faint buzz in her brain that made her wonder whether it was a good idea for her to talk to this guy. She hesitated once she reached the hatch, that weird shake in her legs, but it was different from the feeling of going into action. This was not, she sensed, a life and death decision.