Firebrand

"S-so deep," she growled, pushing her face into the nape of his neck. "You smell like love, Harry..."

He wasn't sure what that meant, but it made his heart leap, his cock flexing inside her and making her shiver. Her furry hips made for great handholds, and it didn't seem to hurt her, their bodies crashing together. Droplets of her excitement flew from her belly where it still lingered from their previous encounter, joined by his sudor, the two of them becoming sticky and wet as they brushed against one another.

The bouncing of her breasts drew his attention, the rosy flesh shaking as it impacted her carapace on the downward thrusts, making a lurid slapping sound. He caught one of them in his hand, squeezing it, her supple meat deforming as he brought it to his lips. She moaned as he dragged the flat of his tongue across her sensitive skin, sucking her flesh into his mouth, shaping it between his fingers like modeling clay. It offered so little resistance, like a balloon filled with gel, her loins tightening as the stimulation made her rhythm more erratic.

Her body was a playground, he had no idea where to put his hands. Her delicate fur, the waxy, burnished skin that contained her yielding flesh. Even her carapace was pleasant to the touch, firm, but flexible enough that it had some give. Now it was his turn to push his face into her neck, burying it in her fragrant ruff, taking deep breaths of her sensuous pheromones. It was like inhaling a drug, every breath invigorated him, the silky texture of her iridescent hairs caressing his cheeks. He felt her gentle hand on the back of his head, guiding him deeper as they moved together, her pink eyes watching him covetously.

"Does my scent entice you so?" she crooned, delighting in his show of affection.

He lifted her again, support her rump and her back, laying her on the mattress. She kept her thighs closed around his waist tightly, locking him inside her as though she couldn't bear the thought of him withdrawing for even a moment. Harry mounted her, planting his hands to either side of her head. His larger stature meant that she had to peer up to see his face, her furry feelers tickling his chin.

Holly loosed another sordid moan, this new position driving him deeper, his throbbing member reaching new and exciting places. Like a living thing, her loins pulsated around him, dragging those wonderful ribs up his shaft. Their grip was so fierce, as though someone was reaching through the barrier of her flesh and massaging him with their hand. All the while, her prehensile opening sucked and pulled, her syrupy emissions leaking from between her swollen lips.

Harry could no longer hold back, the springs in the mattress creaking as he began to thrust, Holly's body rising from the bed to meet him as their hips crashed together. Every impact made her shudder, the soft parts of her body wobbling, her eyelids fluttering as her antennae twitched. She kept her thighs securely closed, using the considerable leverage that they afforded her to pull him into her, their coupling reaching a fever pitch.

He was really working up a sweat now, his muscular body glistening, Holly sliding her hands across his damp skin as droplets of his sudor rained down in her. She was in a heaven all her own, drowning in pheromones, the scent of lust and exertion apparent even to Harry's dull nose. He could hear the slap of his hips against her pert cheeks, a lurid sucking sound emanating from her loins with every thrust.

"I feel it nearing again," she whispered, her four arms wrapping around his torso. She pulled herself closer to him, lifting her back from the sodden sheets below, her soft breasts squashing against him. "I need...harder," she grumbled, "do it faster..."

He couldn't keep up the pace for much longer, the velvet creases of her slick passage were driving him towards the edge, her pitiless rings of firm muscle stroking him with intent. They slid from his base to his tip in punishing waves, kneading him, swallowing around him. He could feel every bump and wrinkle, the reaches of her passage brushing against his glans when he bottomed out inside her, a fleshy membrane sliding against his most sensitive zone. Her frame was so small, yet he was so deep, her muscles seeming to shift and stretch to accommodate him.

"I feel it coming," Holly whimpered, Harry's eyes widening as she crossed her legs around his waist. "It's happening again!"

He upped the pace, driving her into the mattress, Holly's breathy voice cracking beautifully as he felt a tremor roll through her body. She pushed her face into the nape of his neck, her fingers digging into his back, her loins gripping him like a fist as a climax turned her into a shivering wreck. She mewled and twisted beneath him, her antennae curling with every jolt of ecstasy, rolling her hips like a machine as though trying to sate some maddening itch in her seizing depths.

Harry gripped her furry hip with one hand, supporting himself with the other, the headboard banging against the wall as they reached their apex. The pleasure was too intense, her ribs gliding along his shaft like a dozen pairs of pursed lips, the waves of muscle and the unbearable sucking robbing him of what control he had left.

He joined her in her orgasm, dropping to his elbow so that he could reach her ruff, Holly delving her fingers into his hair as he immersed himself in her irresistible pheromones. It was all that he wanted to breathe, as though he could replace the very oxygen in his blood with her sordid scent. His member throbbed and flexed inside her, the walls of her passage bearing down on him as though trying to contain it, the wracking sensation of one of her ribs gliding over his tender glans drawing out the first wad of his emission.

Holly let slip another comely whine as she felt his gelatinous, warm load pour into her, quickly followed by another as her insides milked him reflexively. Like a parched throat, her loins drank from him, every stroke of her muscles easing out more. It seemed endless, time standing still, the acute pleasure all that Harry could think about. His conscious thoughts ebbed away, replaced by a bestial hunger, the thick ropes of his emission drenching her most intimate reaches. As his thrusting slowed, his searing pleasure gave way to bliss, her wonderful scent blending with the euphoria to make him feel almost high.

As he thrust into her one last time, pushing his seed deeper, Holly released her tight hold on him. She sagged back down to the mattress, her four arms splayed out. The three-fingered organ in her loins released him too, her thighs parting, Harry realizing that she had been squeezing tightly enough that his legs had started to go numb.

He tried to slide out of her, but they both groaned in unison, each of the ribs that lined her tunnel catching on his glans as he withdrew. It was at once pleasurable and a little uncomfortable thanks to his sensitive, post-coital state. When he finally succeeded, a torrent of their blended fluids leaked out of her, thick and creamy like glue. They remained linked by a drooping strand that refused to break under its own weight, Harry having to wipe it away, finding that it had the consistency of honey. The sheets were a lost cause, and a visit to the shower was in order.

Harry collapsed beside her, draping an arm around her waist, forgetting how sensitive she was and making her shiver when he brushed her exposed flesh.

"Are you alright?" he asked, noting that she hadn't said anything for a while.

"I feel...like I am floating," she giggled in reply. "I never want this to end."

"Here's a tip," he said, shuffling closer and sinking his face into her ruff. One of her hands reached up to stroke his head, her fingers combing through his hair. "Try to sleep before it wears off. You tend to wake up a couple of times, not really rememberin' where you are, but still feelin' great. I love that."

"Will you stay with me?" she asked, Harry pausing his nuzzling to glance up at her. "I cannot sleep alone."

"It's a sacred human custom to sleep with someone that you just...slept with," he replied. "So...do you feel better now?"

"Very much so," she murmured. "All of my stress, my uncertainty, it has evaporated. I thought that I was doing something wrong, that I was damaged. I thought that exploring my feelings for you was a betrayal, a deviation from my true purpose. But something that feels this right cannot be a mistake, it cannot be the result of a genetic error. I was meant to do this. I wanted to do it, and maybe that is the point. Maybe that was the lesson that I was supposed to learn."

"You went with the flow," Harry said, "and now you can concentrate on your job without that doubt hangin' over your head. You'll be a better ambassador because of it, count on that."

"I do not recall ever feeling so secure in myself," she admitted, her fingers stroking his hair. "For the first time, I feel as though my human heritage is not a source of internal conflict, it is a congruent part of me. It always was, I just...needed somebody to teach me that. I am more like you than I ever knew."

"Let me know if you want any more lessons," he said, Holly chuckling.

"I can be the ambassador that I was always meant to be, but I can also laugh, I can make love. Thank you, Harry, for showing me that."

"What are you doin' after this whole council thing is sorted out?" he asked, Holly's antennae twitching as she considered.

"I...do not know. I will be returning to Jarilo at some point to make my report to the Queen, though I know not when. Perhaps I will be allowed to remain on the station for a time."

"You're gonna need a bodyguard, right? I humbly offer you my services, Ambassador."

"You are hired, Sergeant Hayes," she giggled as she pulled his face back into her ruff. "My people do not yet use currency, but I can think of...other ways to compensate you."

"I've created a monster," he replied, his voice muffled by her fur.

CHAPTER 14: UNDER THE GUN

"We recovered the email chain from his inbox," Boyd said, Moralez holding a finger to his ear as he marched along the torus. "He'd deleted the messages and done a couple of overwrite passes, but reconstructing the files from the data fragments was pretty simple with UNNI tools. It's exactly as he described, the guy isn't hiding anything from us. He's been pretty forthcoming since he woke up in the interrogation room."

The Chief's eyes scanned the scrolling text as it appeared on his wrist-mounted monitor, reading through the emails. The first message had arrived out of the blue, the sender had no prior contact with Sinclair from what they could tell. It included the date and time of the Bug ambassador's arrival on the station, along with a spiel about patriotism and avenging the dead that was designed to spur the would-be assassin into action. There was also an attached file, a photo of the Bug that had been taken planetside, tall trees visible in the background. Moralez would recognize that pearly carapace anywhere, he had never seen another critter like her.

What followed was a back-and-forth between Sinclair and the anonymous whistleblower, or at least that was how the sender had styled himself. They had brainstormed together, going over their plan, laying out every detail. Much of it had been Sinclair's own brainchild, but in retrospect, it was easy to see how the man had been manipulated. For all his engineering expertise, he was unwell, and this person had known exactly how to prod at his wounds.

"They must have had access to Sinclair's service record and some kind of psych profile," Moralez muttered into his mic. "Were you able to trace the source of the message?"

"Negatori on that one, Chief," Boyd replied. "We traced it back to the Pinwheel's quantum comms array, so it was definitely sent from off-station. From there, we tracked it back to the nearest relay, but it looks like the message was bounced all over known space. We have it passing through relays in orbit around a dozen colonies, there's no way to determine its origin."

"Fuck," Moralez muttered.

"We did find something interesting, though," Boyd added. "We were able to recover the EXIF data from the attached image file. We have a timestamp, a location, and a device ID. The photo was taken on Jarilo a couple of weeks before the meeting, using an integrated camera in a tablet computer model used primarily by UNN personnel. It wasn't a candid shot, looks like something that might have been used for identification purposes, maybe circulated to people who were in the loop."

"So we can be sure that the message came from someone in the UNN?" Moralez asked.

"Someone with enough clearance to see that picture leaked it, yeah. Is that the same person who sent the messages to Sinclair? I don't see a reason to assume otherwise."

"Good work, Agents," the Chief added. "I'm on my way to see Admiral Vos, he has a lot of explaining to do."

***

Moralez marched into the Admiral's office, Vos rising from his seat behind the mahogany desk. He set down a tablet computer that he had been reading from, his brow furrowing, his eyes darting suspiciously between the Chief and the two Shock Troopers who were flanking him.

"What is the meaning of this intrusion, Security Chief?" he demanded. "If you want to see me, then you can make an appointment like everyone else. I'm very busy."

"I'm afraid that my business with you is rather urgent, Admiral" Moralez replied. He nodded to his two guards, and they remained by the door as he made his way over to the desk. "We've succeeded in apprehending the man who fired on the hub. We have a confession, and we recovered the weapon that was used. The UNNI Agents are interrogating him as we speak."

"That's...good," Vos replied reluctantly, scratching his chin with a gloved hand. "Congratulations, Security Chief. I suppose I underestimated your abilities."

"You made my job a lot harder with the time limit that you imposed," Moralez continued, "yet here we are."

"Are you expecting an apology?" Vos scoffed. "You did your job, that's what we pay you for. I'm not going to give you a medal for cleaning up a mess that you helped to create."

"No, I wouldn't expect an apology from you," Moralez said. The implied insult wasn't lost on the Admiral. He opened his mouth, probably about to reprimand the Chief, but he was interrupted. "I didn't come all the way up here just to give you a report that could have been sent over the intranet," Moralez continued. "I've just had a very interesting encounter with the SWAR operatives that you brought aboard my station."

"What manner of encounter?" Vos asked, narrowing his eyes.

"They interfered while we were apprehending the suspect and attempted to take him into custody themselves, very nearly creating a situation where we were forced to fire on them. They put the suspect's life, and ours, in jeopardy. It was unprofessional, to say the least."

"The Lieutenant Commander must have thought that you were incapable of capturing the fugitive yourself," Vos said. "I see that the situation was resolved to your mutual satisfaction regardless."

"I recall you ordering Murphy not to interfere in my investigation," Moralez added, meeting the Admiral's angry stare. "He and his men clandestinely monitored my team's comms, then boarded the station in a decidedly illicit manner just as the suspect was about to surrender to me peacefully. They hit him with a stun gun and knocked him out, then tried to haul him off to some kind of...black site. If I hadn't had a full squad of Shock Troopers with me, I get the impression that things might have gone down a little differently."

"What are you after?" Vos asked, leaning his hands on his desk as he glowered across it at Moralez. "You got the outcome that you wanted, you caught the fugitive, and you have the satisfaction of proving me wrong in front of the Admiralty. It didn't escape my attention that you and Lieutenant Commander Murphy didn't exactly start out on the best of terms. If you're expecting me to reprimand him for stepping on your toes, I won't. I trust him to interpret my orders."

"The case isn't quite closed," Moralez continued, crossing his prosthetic arms as the Admiral raised an eyebrow. "We apprehended the shooter, yes, but he wasn't working alone. Someone with high enough clearance to know that the Bug was going to be on the station, and when, leaked the information to him. They manipulated him, goaded him on. We have the emails that were sent between the two parties. We also have EXIF data from a photograph that links the culprit back to the UNN."

The Admiral's eyes wandered over to the two Borealans who were standing guard at his office door, their faces hidden behind their visors.

"That explains the extra muscle," he muttered, "not that you need it. I saw what you did to Admiral Rawling."

"Then you know that I've brought in corrupt Admirals before," Moralez replied. "It's becoming a trend as of late."

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," Vos said, collapsing into his chair and rubbing his temple with one hand. "I've never given you cause to trust me, of course this is the conclusion that you would reach. When the reports from the UNNI agents that I had assigned to keep tabs on you became...less informative, I guessed that they had added me to the list of suspects. I have to commend you for being thorough, at least."

"I would prefer that you came quietly," Moralez continued. "I don't want to haul you out of this office, but I will."

"These accusations should infuriate me," Vos said, his usual pep returning for a moment. "But I know that I'm partially to blame for this. You want the truth? Well, here it is. I don't like you, Moralez. I never have. I captained the UNN Ardennais when the war broke out, I ran a damned tight ship. That crew worked like a well-oiled machine, they knew what I expected of them before I even gave the order. But this station...it's in a state of chaos. Controlled chaos, as I have learned, but chaos none the less. You're like a child with a messy room. The place might look like a Jovian squatter camp to me, but you know where every loose sock is, don't you?"

Moralez didn't reply, watching the Admiral warily as he continued.

"When the incident happened on the hub, I saw it as an opportunity to oust you, to replace you with someone who would return Fort Hamilton to its military roots. I gave you a task that I didn't think you could complete, but you proved the Admirals who appointed you right. They were wise to place their trust in you, wiser than I have been."

"You engineered the assassination...just as an excuse to fire me?" Moralez asked in disbelief.

"No," Vos replied adamantly, "I had nothing to do with that."

"You really expect me to believe that?"

"Of course not, have you not listened to a word that I've said? I know why you reached this conclusion, but you're wrong, Security Chief. Think about it. If I had goaded this...this person into assassinating the ambassador, then why on God's green Earth would I have wanted to be in the same room when it happened? I read the crime scene report. An inch to the left and that slug could have hit me instead. He forgets to carry a one, and everything in that conference room gets turned into a fine, red vapor. Why would I expose myself to that kind of danger?"

"You act as though extremists and revolutionaries never put themselves at risk to accomplish their goals," Moralez said.

"Don't be a fool," Vos snapped, "it would have been trivial for me to have someone attend the conference in my place. This fucking station is crawling with diplomats," he added with a sneer. "Now I'm going to do what I should have done from the start."