Fairy Chess

Val motioned me to bend over. Quizzically, I did so, and she ran her hand on my skull and along my cheek. "Tsk. Come una pesca. At least you still have di sopracciglia. Eyebrows." I kept my hair short anyway, but the Molotov had burned a lot of it off. Unless I deliberately pushed it out, the field clung to my body very tightly. I usually had at least a couple days growth of beard because of it, and my fingernails were longer than I'd like. I could only trim them so close; the field wouldn't retract below a certain distance.

Colin sounded like he was grinning behind his facemask. "He keeps forgettin' to duck, he'll lose more than eyebrows someday."

"Oh, suck me, James," I groused. As comebacks go, it was lame, but he hated to be called by his first name.

"Isn't that her job?" he retorted, flicking a thumb Valeria's way. She affected an offended look, but couldn't fully hide her smile.

Clyde just smiled, too, from his station at the back. Of course, I would have been shocked if the albino had said anything; he was mute. I'd never managed to find out if he'd been that way before becoming a paranormal or not.

Ironically, he was the lynchpin of our communications. He could directly receive and broadcast a broad range of radio waves. More, he could generate complex signals - if he wanted, he could become a living TV camera, showing on a screen what his eyes and ears picked up.

What confused the hell out of me was that he could do that to other people. He could touch them and set up an interface of some kind, receiving what they saw and heard, and transmitting it on if he wanted. A bank of VCRs stowed in the rear of the copter had taped our exploits today for detailed review later.

I mean, fuck knows how that worked. In some ways, it made less sense than my paranormality. But he could do it anyway. At least it made debriefing a lot simpler.

Potiphar gave every appearance of ignoring the repartee and just leaned back in his seat against the wall, impassive. His English wasn't all that great, anyway. Oddly enough, it was really only the normals on our team that went by superheroish nicknames. Named after Pharaoh's executioner in the Bible, he didn't need powers to be a damn good killer. And Harry, the chopper pilot, who insisted on being called Dustoff.

"Let's just get out of here, okay?" I said sullenly, hoping to end the conversation.

"Rest of us held onto our radios, mate," Colin said with a bit more edge. The teasing had a serious undercurrent. What if one of my squadmates had needed me to go lend them support? What if I didn't get a warning in time, and knocked down a building they were in? Small, elite, powerful units could accomplish a lot... but they had to be coordinated.

The ribbing was interrupted by our commander's voice on the headsets. "Good work, everyone. Our employer is pleased and we've been paid the early-completion bonus. We'll hold debriefings this evening at the hotel, starting at 1700 hours. Until then, amuse yourselves as best you can."

Hearing Thame speak was always just that touch surreal. Ever see an optical illusion that can be viewed two ways? You know, maybe if you look at it one way it's a figure of a young girl, but if you blink you can see it as an old woman's face?

His voice is like that, only you can't switch how you hear it. He speaks in tongues - not the gibberish of the fundamentalist weirdos, but the real deal. If I try to pick up individual syllables, I can sort of tell he's speaking his native Greek. But when I listen to whole words or sentences, that melts away and I hear perfect, midwestern American English. Val hears Italian, Potiphar hears Egyptian.

It's disconcerting, but you get used to it. Lord knows we'd gotten used to stranger.

An hour and a half later the chopper landed in the main base at the capitol, Maputo. An intoxicant-laden and raucous celebration was in progress. Guns firing in the air, chants and songs. The troops could hardly believe how fast our little group had turned things around. They were almost superstitiously worshipful.

I think Colin got off on that, but the rest of us were either indifferent or uncomfortable. Thame had a couple trucks waiting and we were whisked off to the best hotel in Mozambique. Mind you, a five-star hotel in the third world isn't much better than a three-star hotel in the first world, but it was plenty comfortable compared to a military bivouac. I felt a little sorry for Mutabe; we wouldn't be seeing him before we left. He couldn't be on land for long anymore.

Siegfried and Susana stuck with Thame as we split up. He always had some paranormal security, in addition to Stephan and Alejandro, his normal bodyguards. While most of the group went to the elevators, Val went over to the restaurant. I almost followed her - the field meals hadn't been all that appetizing - but instead I gave her a little wave and took the stairs. A chance to exercise. Plus I wanted to reflect a little. Even I was a little shocked at how definitive our victory had been.

It wasn't just power, it was that Thame knew how to use it. Clyde was a one-man SIGINT division; even the fancy frequency-hopping radios the South Africans used were nothing to him. More, he could instinctively triangulate where the signals were coming from, the kind of thing that normally took an AWACS overflight. And Thame didn't just speak in tongues - he automatically understood what people were saying, even through codes and slang and circumlocutions. After one week in-country, they grasped RENAMO's organization and deployments better than its leaders did.

At that point, Colin started playing merry hell with the airdrops South Africa sent. Planes have to be light to fly; a simple magnetic grenade did horrific things to flight surfaces. Mutabe watched the coasts, sinking boats that tried any drop-offs. Potiphar, Susana, and Siegfried harassed the truck convoys. Practically overnight, RENAMO's supply lines were shut down.

Meanwhile Val, Veronique, and I supported FRELIMO's troops in a huge, coordinated offensive. We forced RENAMO to expend their remaining supplies rapidly, attacking multiple sites per day. Insurgent forces usually melted into the brush when the heat got too intense, but we simply didn't give them time. Their losses were catastrophic.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all us. We made the key difference, though. We were the catalyst - a very precise metaphor, actually. A catalyst speeds up a chemical reaction without being consumed itself. We sure didn't intend to get consumed, and we changed the military situation but quick.

For example, both sides used mines extensively - but Siegfried or I could clear minefields in bulk. If normal troops got bogged down or met exceptional resistance, paranormals could break the logjams quickly, preserve the momentum. Plus, defeat on top of continual defeat just slaughtered RENAMO'S morale. Desertion became rampant.

Today's raid had sealed the deal. RENAMO wasn't totally dead, and neither were their bankers... but they'd lost their best asset, la Senhorah da Luz, and it'd be years before they could regroup to mount any serious offensive. FRELIMO would have a free hand practically everywhere in Mozambique for a while.

Who knows, it was just imaginable that some of the civilians and refugees might wind up slightly better off.

With that semi-cheery thought, I reached my room. I unlocked and shoved open the door. Nobody behind it, so I stepped in and closed the door behind me. Automatically, methodically, I began a sweep. Counterclockwise, moving along one wall, checking each space off in turn, until I'd come back to the door. Habit fulfilled, I went back over to the closet and got out my bags. The sooner I was on a plane out of here, the better.

Packing didn't take long, so I had some time to kill. I got out a bottle of pop and pulled the cap off by hand - no bottle-openers needed for me. Carbonation killed germs, and I wasn't going to trust the water here. My immune system wasn't paranormal, after all.

The other disinfecting option was alcohol, but I don't need help breaking things.

I'd long since read all the books I'd brought, so I switched on the TV. They had a satellite feed of CNN. Then I did what I always did with any downtime - I worked out. Like a diabetic tracking their blood sugar.

The field amplified my natural strength; the harder I pushed, the more pressure it put out. That meant the stronger I was - the greater the range of forces my actual muscles could exert - the finer was my control over the field. So I dropped to the floor and started some one-arm pushups.

Not to brag, but by now I was built. I wasn't 'ripped' and fatless like a bodybuilder, though. My muscles were dense and compact, like a gymnast: they weren't for show. Strength and endurance was the priority, not size. My exercise routine needed little of my attention; it was practically burned into my spinal reflexes. I had no trouble following the news reports.

"Kuwait renewed its protests at the U.N. today," intoned the announcer, "stating that vessels from Greater Iran were interfering with shipping in the Persian Gulf. The Kuwaiti delegate also cited 'ominous' troop buildups across the border with former Iraq."

There was an unsettling situation. The Iran-Iraq war had ended late last year. A brokered meeting between Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah Khomeini had ended with Hussein converting on the spot from Sunni to Shi'ite and pledging his whole country over to Iran. There had been some turmoil in the transition, but Greater Iran was now solidly welded together.

And welded shut. Thame had learned from his contacts that intel was nearly impossible to get out of there. Nobody criticized the regime... for long, anyway. They'd have a forced 'audience' with Khomeini and wind up the newest, biggest fan of him and his theocracy.

It was a reasonable bet that some world leader would end up a paranormal. But why did it have to be him?

Mind control terrified me. The idea of someone screwing with my thoughts and feelings... Fuck, I'd much rather die.

Business news came next. "Tension in the Gulf region drove oil prices higher again today..." As if the world economy needed more stress. Savings and loan firms going under, oil prices spiking, the whole east coast of the U.S. under an ash cloud... Uncertainty was a bad thing for investors and financiers, and these days even settled natural laws were unreliable.

"The market closed slightly higher today, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching 1,839 points..." I listened to the bleak financials without much real interest, moving on to sit-ups. My portfolio wasn't doing all that well; but nobody's was, really, and I had to put the money somewhere.

"In politics, with the Republican convention only days away there is a great deal of speculation regarding vice-presidential candidates. GOP leaders privately acknowledge that President Bush needs to find a response to Michael Dukakis' surprise pick for the Democratic vice-presidential slot, political outsider Philip Voight."

Another sign of the times. Voight had been a psychology professor, and switched to parapsychology at the right time. His foundation, the "Institute For Paranormal Research," wasn't laughed at anymore. The Congressional testimony he'd given late last year, when Pittsburgh finally forced the world at large to admit that weird shit was happening, had gained him national celebrity.

They played a sound bite from his acceptance speech: "The challenges that our great nation faces, that the world faces, cannot be overcome with conventional thinking. We need leadership that will bring fresh ideas, a new vision. Governor Dukakis has demonstrated just that brand of leadership in Massachusetts, and I am proud to..."

The knock I'd more than half expected came at the door. I got up from my sit-ups, switched off the tube, and checked through the sight. It was Val, of course. She often got frisky after combat.

I let her in. "Kinda hoped you'd visit..."

"But of course I came! With you flashing your naked body around like that? The scandal!" Quickly she jumped onto me, wrapping her arms and legs around me and planting her lips on mine.

Very deliberately, I tapped the door closed with my foot. It still slammed shut with a bang, but at least I didn't break anything. Even more deliberately, I carried her toward the bed. Much of my attention was on her mouth and I didn't want any accidents.

She surprised me by letting go early and dropping to the floor. Looking up at me with mischievous eyes, she peeled off her clothes. I started doing the same. "Took you long enough to get here," I teased.

"I like it when you're already sweaty," she proclaimed as she slid her pants and panties off. Valeria in profile is a sight I love, clothed or not. But deshabille is best.

I finally twigged to her intentions when she flipped my suitcase off the bed to the floor, and stepped onto it. She bent forward, grabbed the edge of the desk, and spread her legs slightly.

My smile widened. Our usual female-superior was nice - actually, very nice. I had no complaints about it; Val's level of muscular control was, as I said, superhuman. But variety is the spice of life, and our positional options were limited. Twice we'd tried me on top... but I was so scared I'd squash her like overripe fruit that it hadn't been fun for either of us.

So long as she had some space to maneuver, though, I couldn't hurt her doing it from behind. If I thrust a little too aggressively, her superlative reactions could compensate. But she was so short she needed something to stand on.

I took my station and carefully slid in. My field was better than any lube - like a thin coating of oil all over my skin - but she was ready. Every part of her body had a fast reaction time now. I began to pump.

Val had been my first, and was likely to remain my only. I'm stronger than a lot of major earthmoving equipment; it takes a special kind of woman to want to mess around with that. She seemed to regard sex with me as another extreme sport. It didn't bother me - a month ago I'd been convinced I'd never have sex at all.

She'd helped me make up for lost time, though. Borderline hyperactive by normal standards, she had inexhaustible enthusiasm for nearly everything. Then again, you'd seem impatient too if - from your perspective - everyone else moved and thought like tranquilized geriatrics. Her cry of release announced she was climaxing already.

She flexed away, popping me out of her. Immediately, though, she laid her pussy on top of my dick, sliding back and forth. She pressed down hard, giving herself clitoral stimulation while my head and shaft got rubbed. We could do this better than normals, even - my cock alone could support her entire weight if we wanted.

And there was another thing I could do that normals couldn't. I visualized slight ridges rising along my shaft; her ride got a fraction bumpier as my field shifted down there to match. She came again in less than a minute.

Val slacked off not a moment; once she was done she executed a maneuver that would have won her top scores if there were a Sexual Olympics. She hopped up off me, simultaneously flipping over. A leg whipped past my face, making me blink. Then her legs wrapped around my waist and she enveloped me with unerring accuracy. She was now leaning back, arms supporting herself on the edge of the desk. A normal woman would doubtless have found it uncomfortable, but Val could hold a position like that for hours if she didn't get bored first.

It gave me a view of her precious tits, though, so I tried to keep her from getting bored. Thrusting vigorously, I reached one hand forward to gingerly fondle a nipple. My other hand glided along her flank. I had to be careful to leave her an avenue of retreat...

Even her orgasmic rhythm was up-tempo; I felt the rabbit-heartbeat pulsing around me as she came again. My unofficial rule was to let her climax three times or so before I let myself go. I finally quit focusing on distractions and came shortly after. I was probably getting conditioned to be a premature ejaculator, but what the hell.

Val practically bounced off the desk and wrapped her arms around my neck. We kissed again happily. As was our typical pattern, I didn't pull out as I deflated. Instead I played with my field a little, giving her internal stimulation in ways no normal penis could manage. Another minute, and she orgasmed one last time.

Finally she let go and slithered off me. She quite unselfconsciously found my underwear and used it to wipe herself off down there. I could hardly object; I'd always admired her practicality. Hell, less laundry for me to take home.

We got dressed again. As I changed into civvies, she sat on the bed, uncharacteristically quiet. I sidled up and sat down beside her, laying an arm across her shoulders. She leaned into me a little. "What's wrong? Seoul got you down?" The Summer Olympics would begin in just over a month. Val had competed twice, and never placed. If, somehow, she could go this time, she'd get every gold medal she tried for. Easily.

But she shook her head. "No. I'm just... sad."

I wanted to kick myself. Val wasn't like Veronique or Colin or Potiphar. She didn't enjoy killing. Unfortunately, with her paranormality, she was spectacularly good at it. And she caused a lot less collateral damage than I usually managed.

Going into danger and surviving is exciting, life-affirming. Like I said, she was often amorous after a mission. But just as often she'd be depressed. This time, it was apparently both. Or she'd been using sex to drive away the guilt...

"Do you not wish things were different?" she asked quietly, in the face of my silence.

"You know I do. I wish the Event never happened. But then we wouldn't have met," I said, giving her a gentle squeeze.

It didn't cheer her up. She sat there for several seconds - a long time by Val standards - and then she turned and stared intensely into my eyes. "What if we ran away?"

I sighed, shaking my head. "It won't work."

"We could just quit! Go, hide. To hell with the rest of the world!"

"No, we can't," I retorted desultorily. "Paranormals are too valuable. Ones like us, with actual military experience? Forget it." I shrugged. "At least with Scylla we have some autonomy."

"Yes, of course," she said bitterly. "We are free to follow directions."

"Val, that's how it is. We're hot commodities."

"Is that all I am to you? A thing, a toy?" she demanded.

"Whoa, hey, take it easy!" I put my hands up. "I was talking about the spooks and the generals. We're just pawns to them." She was still glaring at me. "I don't take you for granted, Val. You know that." She scowled, but there wasn't anything to say.

Thame paid us well, gave us vacation time, treated us like employees. He never threatened us. He didn't need to. Lone paranormals were big fat targets. If we we left Scylla, any number of groups would try to capture us. And if they couldn't, they'd try to kill us - to deny our 'talents' to others.

But working for Scylla gave us a known status. We could be hired - and even governments sometimes found it handy to work through intermediaries. Plausible deniability, cut-outs, you know the drill. Even if we were deployed against somebody, they knew it was only business. We might work for them next time.

Her face pinched up and she made a sound almost like a growl. "So we keep fighting, killing, until we die."

I shrugged again. "Scylla - it's not just a job, it's an indenture."

She might not have understood the word, gotten the pun. It wasn't that great a joke to start with. Either way she stood and left, not looking back.