Dry, No Lube Ch. 09: Invasion

Good officer, Luzhenka. She'd keep the thing in sight.

Pixy whirled back toward her chair, feeling the humming buzz of impending action among the bridge watch: coming battle was better than bumtabs, better than stim,, better than caffeine when it came to focusing the mind and lending energy. She felt it even as she walked through it, striding back toward her chair with her hair feeling like it was standing on end. And when she sat down, she thought of calling for a bowl of butter-tea, but something told her it was time to quit relying on Juno.

Her steward had already moved on. Time to follow suit.

She cleared her throat. "Okay, people, stay calm and let's do this. Everything's going to happen fast: torpedo launch, simultaneous Interceptor sortie, then the shuttle goes. Our job after all that is to position ourselves athwart the target's course so our arc-mortars can support any hasty withdrawal from the Army; if that happens, we turn ninety degrees and treat that thing like it's an enemy planet. Comprehend?"

"Aye aye, ma'am!" The response was not the kind of thunderous, unison shout you saw in stories, but it was close enough.

"And if the Army doesn't need our help? We stay back and Leith comes in and takes that little fucker in tow." She nodded to herself. A captured Cathos Vremein scout would be a major feather in the cap of the commander responsible, but Pixy had enough medals by now and wanted to be fair to Amisuul, anyhow: the contact had been his. If he could get the thing to the nearest Fleet Node, the glory should be his too.

She sat, sparing a thought for something that had troubled her a little. McMerckx' intel officer, a cadaver-faced submajor named Skegnes, had referred to some notes on his 'slate as he'd briefed McTivars at the start of this game: Expect planetary survey equipment and readers, spare commo equipment, and ground-effect landers for scouting unfamiliar exoplanets. The assumption had been that this guy was out looking for new places to plant combat bases, rushing in to fill the vacuum left by the P/E ships' successes against the Flasbards.

But.

There weren't really all that many planets around here worth seeding. She'd comforted herself with the idea that, if they were planning some sort of offensive move toward the Hearth, they might be establishing supply bases in advance. Certainly that had been Skegnes' conclusion, which he'd duly submitted to Army Intel with a copy to Fleet, tghough no reply had come back yet. But still.

It was a little troubling.

But everything was in motion: torpedoes were armed, the soldiers streaming into their shuttle below. She could feel the vibration in the deck below as Laredo got her fighters spun up on their pylons, and suddenly Velzeboer was calling out the five-minute warning, and it was time for her to go to work.

* * *

Before them sat the Cathos Vremein scoutship, smouldering, its usual elegant lines marred by the tube hanging from its hull breach, waving along in space like a spent condom. She watched on the magnifier as McMerckx and his men swarmed in and out of the 'tube, floating between the scout and their shuttle with businesslike movements as Commander Laredo watched nearby.

A heavy silence crinkled over the midbeams now, ever since Crazy Jack's astonishing announcement that he'd taken some live prisoners aboard. "More later," he'd promised, sounding harassed, and ever since then they'd watched like an expectant father in a colony creche while Leith crept slowly closer, its sailors no doubt making a thousand preparations to load the scout into their main bay and build a hasty prison aboard. With luck, Amisuul would make it to the nearest Fleet Node in two days or so.

Not that Pixy felt she'd need Fleet's analysis, though. Not since they'd seen the device strapped to the ship's hull and figured out what the Cathos ship had been doing.

"Attitude still nominal, ma'am," the OOD reported, "no aspect change on the target."

"Very well." Pixy stirred, her fingers tapping the incident report into the ship's log. The wrecked scoutship had been leaking something, probably neon, and for awhile there it had been falling out of control toward the nearest star. "I'm going to go take a leak, then a quick shuttle flight to speak to Captain Amisuul. I don't expect anything to change while I'm gone, but in case it does? Inform Colonel McMerckx and his intelligence officer to meet with myself and Commander Jatsupa in my conference room as soon as he gets back aboard."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

Pixy nodded, passing from her bridge with the usual minor panache that surrounded a ship captain's comings and goings. From here there would be hours of work, the aftermath of action whether you'd won or lost: accountability. Inventory. Inspection. Cleaning and maintenance. Reports. You spent hours anticipating combat and hours afterward, dealing with the consequences: the action itself, in the middle, always felt like a whisper of time on the edge of a knife.

She flew across to the oncoming Leith with the automatic motions of almost two decades steering shuttles through space, every move encountered before, dealt with before. Almost automatic. She'd had no recurrence of the shattering wave of panic that had washed over her that time years ago, when she'd gone down planetside during a bombardment with Byskop to find that weird Korlene prisoner, but she'd also been careful since then to avoid flying in the Cone.

Pixy still lamented having to get rid of that guy. Three times he'd fucked her, and every time she'd learned something else about her new body. But alas, he hadn't wanted to join Fleet, so they'd set him free at the nearest Fleet Base. It bothered her a little that she hadn't kept up with him, but that was the usual thing with bedwarmers: they entered your life (and, usually, your cunt), you used them as you pleased, and then they moved on.

Just the way it worked in Fleet.

She picked up Leith on the near-beam just before Blue Point and cleared her throat. "Captain Pfeiffer here to see Acting Captain Amisuul," she announced, the rank still sounding odd in her throat... but then Captain Stellato had been gone for weeks, and looked like being gone for weeks more. Pixy understood that dynamic. She'd been in acting command of Desperado for the better part of a whole year, once.

These things happened in Fleet.

"Cleared to dock," came the flat voice of the commo guy, and Pixy squinted through the sight reticle, judged her moment, and gave the power bar a decisive shove with her knee, the shuttle lunging forward with a predator's ferocity instead of the slow, easy glide most Fleet officers preferred. She was not surprised when she thunked right up against the ring on the first try.

"Hard dock," she told the near-beam as her umbilicals snaked out toward Leith and the ship's gravity began to drag her insides back down to their proper places. She slipped out of her harness. "Permission to board?"

"At your convenience, ma'am." She heard a little awe in that voice, which did not surprise her. She knew she was famous, the Service Fleet GP officer who'd made good, transferred to Combat, and forged her own reputation for the kind of aggression she'd never had a chance to show in Service. But, of course, every Service sailor, including the one on the comms right now, thought they could do the same thing.

Firehole Pfeiffer, they called her. She sighed and dropped down to the hatch.

Stellato's steward greeted her at the airlock, a fellow who'd always struck Pixy as efficient and discreet. "This way, Captain," he nodded, leading her down corridors rank with the same smell she'd lived in as a lieutenant for all those years. She could have walked through the ship with her eyes closed. "We're quite excited that we could contribute to Tirving's success, ma'am."

"Nice of you to say, Christoval." She ducked under a relay switchplate. "Any word on when your captain might return?"

"We heard from him last week." The man shrugged. "His conferences are going fine, but as you're aware, the vagaries of the circuit shuttle system mean it might be quite awhile before he can reappear here." They squeezed past some staring sailors. "He's only a GP Service ship captain. His priority here is high, but elsewhere in Fleet?" He glanced back and shared an arched eyebrow with Pixy.

"Well," she plunged on, impulsively, "something got him invited to a staff meeting. Say, in the meantime? If you're interested in coming over to work with us? I need a new steward..."

He paused, then halted in a secluded part of the starboard trunk-link hallway. "Captain Pfeiffer," he began, "we both know you're never going to be happy with anyone but Wrae Juno."

Pixy looked away. "I can try."

"She's not an act I wish to follow," he smiled sadly, "though I do thank you for your interest."

"Like I said," she laughed as they continued aft to the skipper's quarters, "I can try." But it was a hollow laugh.

Stellato had told Amisuul to go ahead and move in while he was gone, and the Tygon had taken full advantage. But why not? He'd slaved away as a junior officer for a decade and a half for the luxury of a captain's cabin. Pixy smiled as she stepped down from the hatch. "This is quite a step up from your quarters on the Pulver," she snickered. She'd allowed him, once, to fuck her in that grotty old junior lieutenant's cabin.

"Nothing compared to yours on the Tirving, though." He lounged on Stellato's couch, typing his report. "As I well know." She flushed; she'd caught him nailing Juno in Pixy's bed a couple of years ago. "What brings you to my lair, if I may ask?"

She sighed as she sank into a chair and propped her feet on Stellato's coffee table. "I can never really relax as a commanding officer. So I figured I'd come do it here," she smirked. "No. Actually, I wanted to give you some personal orders before I cut you loose from your duties to my ship."

His eyes, green in a green face, narrowed. "Cut me loose?" He cocked his head. "I'm your tender. I tend you. That's why I'm here. You're sending me, what, to some kind of depot?" He gestured up, toward the main bay. "We're clearing out space to take that Cathos ship aboard, and I can make up your torpedo expenditures from what we have already. I was just about to have Juler get in touch with your supply officer."

Pixy waved all that away. "Yeah. None of that shit matters," she snapped, "not now. You saw what that scout was carrying? What it was doing?"

He looked askance at her. "We came after you were already done capturing it..."

"Beacons." She leaned forward, staring intently at him. "They were placing beacons. We can't interrogate the prisoners McMerckx took, not out here. But that ship and those Cathos have to get to the nearest Fleet Node as soon as they possibly can." She watched him start to understand. "This is the kind of intelligence that can't wait."

"Beacons," Amisuul repeated softly. "Like... what kind of beacons? For marking things?" She let him figure it out. "A route, maybe?"

"A route, almost certainly," she whispered. "I've been suspecting for some time now that the Cathos Vremein are planning something big, straight up the Arm toward the Branch."

He nodded. "I saw on the Bulletin that our targets have been evaporating down-Arm."

"Yep." She leaned back once more, staring mulishly out into space. "I think the Cathos are sweeping up the Flasbards."

He stared, his eyes suddenly wide. Alive. "From the Branch, it's a simple course all the way to the Core!" he gasped. "Even if they're chequering, that's only about a two-week transit..."

"You can see, perhaps, why I want you to make your best possible speed, with that ship, and deliver it to whatever Node Intel specialist you can find. Top priority." She gestured out toward space. "I'm authorizing you to jettison whatever you can ditch right back here. Just leave it and go. Speed course."

He was nodding now. "Holy shit."

"This might be an invasion," she pointed out quietly, "and even if it isn't? It's still important. Crazy Jack is sending word up through Army Intelligence, too, plus whatever contacts anyone has." She hesitated, then reached out and gripped his arm. "But nothing will have the impact that a captured Cathos Vremein pathfinder ship will have. Plus crew."

"Yeah." He was skating through his implant already, considering courses, speeds, security... "Wait. Why am I going? You should be reporting this yourself."

"You're a GP Service ship. Fetch and carry. I'm giving you something that needs carrying." She took a deep breath, her thoughts descending quickly now into the bleakness she'd been sensing ever since that coding gun had told her her targets were gone. "I'm a Combat ship. My job is combat. So. I'm going to stay here and deal with whatever comes after that scoutship."

He stared, lines deepening on his forehead. "Pixy," he began, hesitant, "you're a P/E ship. You're not a dreadnought."

"I've got signals out on all beams, summoning whatever warships can hear," Pixy insisted. "Something will come. Eventually. A captain senior to me to take over and do what needs to be done." Her eyes flashed as she turned away from the stars. "But until that happens? I'm here. I'm it. And here's where I have to stay."

Amisuul shook his head, marveling. "You... you might not make it out of this one, Pixy," he told her quietly, "and believe me, you know I'm not exaggerating."

"Nevertheless. This is where I need to be, Mr Amisuul." She sighed at last, giving him a small smile. "Rocky. Just go. Follow my orders. It's the best thing you can do for me."

"I'll tell them to send whatever they've got," he promised, his face already set. Pixy knew he'd be making the decisions, shaping the orders, choosing what he'd tell his crew. "But... fuck."

"In the ass," Pixy nodded grimly, "dry. No lube. Just like always." She brushed her hair back. "Leave as soon as you can, Captain. Comprehend?"

He nodded, already slipping back into Fleet mode. "Aye aye, ma'am."

"Good." She swept to her feet. "Then maybe I'll see you again. After. If not?" She winked jauntily enough, but her throat was dry. "Well. It's been great."

"Mostly," he nodded, sighing. "Mostly."

* * *

She stood at the big, sweeping viewports in her office, thinking of the barren legal desk in the corner behind her as the OOD jerked the Tirving through the debris field that still hovered around the site of the Cathos schout ship's capture almost ten hours after Amisuul had finally gotten underway. The tender's departure had given Pixy an unexpected pang; scores of times over these three years, she'd sent the Leith off for any number of support missions. But this one had felt different.

But there was more than that to make her feel different. The message had come in urgently in the hours after the battle, a warning that the Army's circuit ship had finally pulled within range looking for its high-priority passenger. It had been an awkward farewell to Juno, who had glanced around Pixy's kitchen with her usual arched eyebrow. "You haven't found a replacement steward yet, ma'am?"

Pixy had just stared. "Do you think I'm likely to?"

Juno's smirk in reply had been her usual satisfied one, now spiked with an extra shot of power: she'd enjoy her new billet, Pixy knew. The odd little woman had, in some ways, been at her best when she'd been killing people. "I suppose not," had been her parting shrug, and now she was gone.

Her shuttle had dragged along a hitchhiker, too: Colonel Narvon "Crazy Jack" McMerckx had finagled a seat as well. His own goodbye had lasted a bit longer than Juno's, and had involved one last soul-crushing orgasm. "I guess you've figured out," he'd told her quietly, as she'd lain there in the starry darkness with his cum leaking out of her, "that I'm not being sent back in a mere staff position."

"I just nabbed a Cathos Vremein pathfinder ship, on top of three or four major indicators that we're facing a massive fucking invasion of the Core Worlds. So yeah," she'd bit out, "I guess you could say I'd figured it out."

He'd stirred, his finger tracing her nipple for the last time, watching her face. "I'd been hearing rumors from friends, up in Army Intel. We've been attacking aliens for a hundred years," he'd yawned. "Kinda stupid to think they wouldn't return the favor one day. I just hope we have time to get the defenses ready."

Pixy watched the express Army shuttle maneuver coolly off, the pilot letting the bow drift until he liked the course before, without a thought for the P/E ship it was leaving behind, the shuttle showed a clean pair of heels as it disappeared into lightspace. She stood rigid, feeling suddenly bereft: this was her first time in a long time that Juno wasn't around, and it brought home the loneliness of command in a way that nothing else really could.

Loneliness, and responsibility as well. Now, she knew she was facing something massive along this side of the Arm. Just that morning, she'd leaned over the commo console on the bridge. "Nothing? No other Fleet ships are responding to our message?"

"No ma'am." Verily, so used to her moods, glanced up from the beam reader. "Should I send out a further message on alert status?"

Pixy frowned. Alert status was similar to a distress call: no Fleet ship could ignore it. "I'm starting to wonder whether there are any friends left within range," she mused, staring at her scope. "This corner of space seems completely fucking deserted." And if it was, she realized with a growing sense of alarm, she knew her duty: she'd become the only ship standing in the way of a full Cathos Vremein attack force. "Once Amisuul gets to a Node with his cargo, they're sure to send a Fleet battle force straight here."

"That could take awhile, ma'am. Downloads. Interrogation. Identifying a task group and cutting the orders."

Pixy glanced down with more than a whiff of disapproval. "If I didn't know any better, Mr Verily," she said with studied nonchalance, "I'd think you were trying to tell me something I already know. There's no way you could be doing that, though." She smiled, feral. "Right?"

"Ma'am." He paled a bit, then went back to work at his console. But he was right, of course. And with nobody answering Tirving's hails, and that expected lag while the Node got its ducks in a row, that made Pixy Pfeiffer the woman on the scene, making the calls.

Usually, based on past evidence, that meant things were about to explode.

She squared her shoulders. "OOD!" she called. "Staff meeting in my office in five minutes. All available officers. If they're on duty or recovering from watch, that's fine; I'll pick them up later. But pass the word and get everybody there." She strode from the bridge, her mind brimming over with possibilities, her limbs bouncing with the usual energy she fed from when she was approaching decisions.

She kicked her hatch just as the Mass Intertube erupted, calling all the officers urgently. She just had time to have a sip of tea and straighten her hair before they started surging in, more than she thought would come, the last of them yawning sleep from their shambling bodies.

She did not waste time. "Okay, gang," she started, pleased at how the chatter stopped abruptly once she opened her mouth. "Here's the thing. I'm not sure what you all know or don't know, so I'll just lay it all out. All this information is meant to be disseminated to all hands, so don't keep it to yourself. Comprehend?" A low mutter of agreement rushed through the crowded office. "Good."

Gathering her thoughts, Pixy took a deep breath. "By this time, you all know our targets have dried up. It's looking like Inner Antaeus might have been our very last combat placer operation, and I say that because it's my judgment that the War is about to change dramatically. I'll stress that I've got none of this confirmed by Fleet Intel, but here's the idea: I believe the Cathos Vremein are sending an invasion fleet straight up the Arm, most likely intending to invade the Core Worlds." She paused, glancing around to find glittering eyes, wide mouths, but no panic.