Idle Hands Pt. 02

Course, if an elevator failed, you weren't going to splat on the ground.

Dey sprang into the shaft. Xee hopped with her. Together, the two started to swarm down the walls of the shaft, Xee panting heavily.

"We just need to get to the port," Dey said.

"How are we going to get there?" Xee asked.

"Undercity," Dey said, nodding.

Behind them - above them - the drones came in for the kill. They had been hastily modified. The one with the machine pistols still had machine pistols. But the other one had one of the shotguns literally taped into the side. The shotgun boomed inside of the grav-shaft, the sound reverberating with eardrum rattling loudness. The gloo shot thudded right into Xee's belly. The Huntress made a low woof noise and coiled around the shell. Dey snapped her hand out and threw the shell back as fast as she could. A snap of a warp field sent it into the shotgun wielding drone. The drone tumbled backwards, taking the gloo-shell out of the grav-shaft before the goop started spraying everywhere.

The other drone opened fire.

Dey kicked off the wall. She and Xee skidded onto the ground of a random floor, Dey's shins stinging with a series of tiny, bruising impacts.

"Where?" Xee gasped.

"Down," Dey scrambled up. "Hold still!"

She looked down, then muttered under her breath. She drew her M2 and dialed it to max power. She swung it in a circle around her and Xee. The floor creaked, then slammed down into the next floor down. The floor creaked, groaned, then shattered downwards. This time, they plunged right into water. The water was dark and murky and filled with kicked up debris. Dey shook herself, her pistol in one hand. Her other hand found Xee's hand. Her lungs started to burn. She kicked up, gasping as she looked around. They had fallen into the building that the apartment building had been built on.

When the tides came in, Georgetown had simply built up. DV emitters and lightweight construction materials, combined with the industrious efforts of the half a million squids who had come to live here after being exiled from Brazil, had created a semi-stable foundation of the city. An undercity, filled with the squids, their culture.

A squid surged from the water and started screeching at Dey in Portuguese. He looked like a maintenance worker, from the harness around his hips, the tools in his tentacles. He had a rebreather slung in one pocket - marked bright white and glowing with LEDs. Probably for use in case he ran into a drowning human.

Dey held up her free hand - having holstered her pistol. "Hold on!" she said, then pulled out her wallet. "Rebeather!" She shook her head. "Mergulho!"

The squid looked at the wallet, then at her. Dey pulled out another Obama.

Dey ducked back under the water just as another spray of rubber bullets slapped down. They started floating down through the water, bouncing off her shoulders as she saw that Xee was looking around herself with a :O look on her face. Dey grabbed her shoulder, breathing through the rebreather fastened in her mouth.

Dey focused. [Can you connect to her suit?]

Trying - we're in.

[Can you hear me, Xee?]

"I can!" Xee's voice sounded as if it was speaking in Dey's ear.

[Can you breathe?]

"Yes," she said. "My god, this is amazing. Liquid water - it's like being in space, but-" She shook her head. A sleek tube of metal fell into the water. Dey felt time slow. She focused and Loki sent a pulse of waver at the metal tube - compacted and launched by a warp field. The water launched the metal tube out of the water. A few feet overhead, the stun-grenade went off with a flare of white light.

[Marvel at the wonders of nature later! Swim now!] Dey sent, then kicked and started to swim forward. She pushed her way past some rubble and then kicked forward. She looked back and saw that Xee was dogpaddling along. But the Huntress was making good time. Dey nodded as she swam lower into the water.

They vanished into the undercity.

###

Skylar patted the side of the Enterprise lovingly. He hadn't been sure about the old sailing ship when this adventure had started. He also hadn't been sure about the strange human he had hired to be his bodyguard. But thus far, he was fairly happy with DeShane Gallagher. The fact she was some kind of special forces super soldier also helped.

"And we're done," the grizzled, scarred human woman that had been working on the Enterprise said, sticking her head from the guts of the machines she had been working on for the past day. "That's a new engine, two K9s for power, and a pintle mount." She paused. "You thinking of running into pirates?"

"Maybe," Skylar said. "But I don't know. The last few legs of the journey have been nice and calm. We've even run into some other competitors."

"A race for the Titanic, huh?" the woman asked, standing up and kicking the engine compartment closed. She wiped her hands along a cloth, rubbing it between her fingers to get it clean. "Now that's not something you see every day."

"Well, the person who gets there first gets the glory," Skylar said. "We're going to make a straight shot from here to the Cape." He pointed with his tentacle. "Round it to the Indian Ocean."

"You know the Indian Ocean is full of pirates, right?" the woman said, rubbing the back of her neck. "No wonder you got the pintle."

A sudden splash and spluttering sound drew the two of them to the side of the ship. Looking down, Sky blinked all eight of his eyes as he saw a dripping, ragged looking Dey grabbing onto the edge of the Enterprise and drag herself onto the deck. She knelt there, coughing as she pulled out her breather, then reached down and dragged out an equally dripping, though less ragged looking, Huntress. The two of them remained there for a moment as the Huntress flopped onto her belly. The sounds of her suit hissing and clicking and popping filled the air.

"Are you two okay?" Sky asked.

"Cast off," Dey panted. Turning her head, she forced her arms under her chest. "You did good, Xee."

The engineer hopped off the Enterprise before Dey was even on her feet.

Smart girl.

As the new engine roared to life, Sky took hold of the Huntress and helped her to her feet. The Huntress' faceplate had a blank :| expression on it, but her voice sounded relieved as she spoke. "Thank you - I've never been more tired in my life."

Sky looked over at Dey. She had her hands on the con and was putting her foot down on the peddle. The engine and the propeller went hard and she grinned fiercely.

"Dad would kill me if he knew what we were doing to his baby," she said.

"What a fascinating form of transport," Xee said, kneeling and looking over the edge of the ship at the water that skimmed by under them. "It's a bit like an ice skimmer, but-"

Dey looked up at the pintle, then slammed her foot into the deck. "Sky, why the fuck did you get that and no gun for it?"

"I ran out of money," Sky said, spreading his tentacles wide.

"Cause we may have trouble."

Dey jerked her chin towards the docks that they were leaving behind. Sky had a hard time spotting what she was referencing. Against the sprawl of the scrapology, seeing a group of people glaring at them with guns was harder than it sounded. But once he had seen them, he scrambled backwards, half hiding behind Dey. She snorted quietly.

"They're not opening fire," she said, then sighed, leaning forward on the wheel. "Fuck-a-duck."

"Thank you," Xee said, tottering over, then sitting down on the deck beside the con. She put her hands back, resting her heating spines against the wall with a soft hiss. Looking up at Dey, she said. "Where are you going to drop me off?"

"Uugggghg," Dey groaned, rubbing her face.

"Hi, I'm Skylar," Sky said, holding a tentacle to Xee.

"Xi'Chur," she said, taking the tentacle awkwardly and squeezing it, feeling it. Sky chuckled and shook her wrist. Xee seemed to get it after a few moments.

Dey sighed, slowly. "Well," she said. "We'll get you back to the United States-"

"The United States!?" Sky spun around. "It'll take us days to get back to the mainland, even with a new engine."

"Yeah, well, I don't want to bring an untrained civilian along a treasure hunt," Dey snapped. But she hated it too. Despite how stupid it was, she hated the idea of losing out on the Titanic. The excitement had gotten inside her heart, and she wanted to see it through.

"A treasure hunt?" Xee asked.

Her voice tingled with excitement. Her whole youthful body quivered as she clasped her hands together, her face plate gleaming with a simplistic projection that communicated far more than anything less than a human face could.

:D

###

Charles Crafter leaned back in his seat in the rather well named Underdive and threw down his cards. Today had been a shite day. It had started shite, gone shite, and stayed shite. They had a bunch of fuckin gloo shells, a few flashers, and one of the drones had gotten totaled. Totaled by a random fucking bystander.

"So, how are dwe going to get paid?" Robbie the Robot asked, his voice modulated through his drone body. AIs were raised and educated in quantum computing environments. They usually ended up running programs for governments or militaries. Sometimes, something went wrong. Sometimes, an AI came out a little funny. A little stupid. Most people had a hard time putting an AI down - raising one was kinda like raising a puppy to the eggheads who made em.

If you knew where to go, though, you could find people who gave less of a fuck about a bunch of ones and zeros, who could part with a sub-standard AI at a price. Robbie had been worth the price.

But he was still a bit...

Funny.

"We," Charles said, glaring at the drone, then at the rest of the gang. "Aren't going to get paid. Two billion euroes in black market alien tech, and it fucking jets."

A shadow fell over the table. Something immense stood between them and the light. Charles tensed, his hand almost reaching for his pistol as he looked up. Standing there was a Yahaag. Charles had met a bunch of aliens in his day, but never a Yahaag. They were some kind of big cheese out in space. They owned planets, had battle-fleets. They weren't one of the minor powers, like Squids or anything like that. But that wasn't what made Charles' mouth dry up and his donger try and retract into his body.

Yahaag were fucking scary. Their eyes glowed with a pale red light, and their faces were craggy and split along a central X shaped mouth-part that, when it opened, revealed serrated, ripping teeth. It was like a garbage disposal that could speak. Fatty tissue bulged outwards between chitinous plates of hardened armor, making the creature seem like it had been filled with extra water. But despite the fact it was so fat it should have been comical, there was a kind of deadly air about it. Maybe it was the fact it was casually bending a spoon in half as it stood before them. The metal squealed as it twisted the metal back and forth like taffy.

"You," the Yahaag said in remarkably unaccented English. That didn't stop its voice from sounding like boulders grinding one another to powder. "Have engaged a woman. Named DeShane Gallagher. Appearance."

It slapped down an Apple tablet.

Charles looked at the photograph.

It was the bystander, even if he had to look twice. Was she in a fucking Yank dress uniform? Getting a medal or something?

"Y-Yes?" Charles asked.

"She has...taken value from you," the Yahaag said. "I and my associates believe we can work. Together."

Charles gulped.

He felt like he had stepped in something big. Too big. He started to shake his head when the Yahaag's hand closed around his throat. The stubby, fatty fingers felt iron hard underneath the rolls of extra flesh. Charles froze.

His shake of the head became an emphatic nod.

###

Dey groaned as she squirmed on the bed in her cabin. Outside, Xee was sleeping so silently that if Dey hadn't checked earlier, she might have thought that she was dead. Sky was in the Cthulu, coiled up in his own hammock. But Dey couldn't stop thinking furiously about the day's events, her brain tumbling through faces and thoughts. She felt a pair of hands on her shoulders and calm flooded her as Loki whispered in her ear.

You okay, Dey?

Dey sighed. [I'm worried about Xee. She's not the most fit person for an adventure.]

Loki chuckled. His voice shifted, sounding less like it was coming from inside of her head and more that it was coming from beside her in bed. Dey opened one eye and grinned. Loki, being an integrated artificial intelligence, had access to her brain. It made it trivially easy for him to be there. Visually, tacitly, audibly. He just tended to avoid overusing the trick. It was too easy to occlude something of value with an illusion, without even meaning to do it.

He was in his normal form - a near perfect replica of one of the best actors to ever play Loki on the silver screen. Which Dey was not going to complain about. Heck, someone that pale was kind of exotic, in its own way. The fact that he embellished his simulations and gave the man a cock big enough to be anatomically damaging if this wasn't a simulation also helped.

Dey liked big cocks.

She could not lie.

"So?" Loki said. "It won't be the first time an untrained civilian has been unexpectedly good for you."

"You're just saying that because her ass doesn't quit," Dey said, her palm closing around his shaft. She started to fondle and squeeze. Loki grew hard almost immediately, the AI hissing softly as Dey's hand lazily slipped and down his cock, marveling at the warmth and heat of him. She closed her eyes and nuzzled his chest. "Mmm. It is a nice ass."

"Pervert," Loki murmured.

Dey grinned and chomped down on his neck. Her hand started to go faster and faster, his pre slicking her palm as she stroked him faster and faster. The simple joy of giving her man pleasure - not needing to get anything back, just enjoying his happiness - filled her as she heard Loki groan in the base of his throat. His head rolled back and he gasped, his hips bucking slightly.

"You like me giving you a nice handjob, Loki?" Dey purred. She felt the energy buzzing in her brain transmuting almost immediately into lust. Getting shot at had a way of doing it. Even if it was weaksauce rubber bullets and gloo-rounds.

Loki laughed. "Who doesn't like getting hand jobs." He slid his hands behind his neck, sighing. "Want to do anything exotic?"

"Like what?" Dey asked, kissing his neck, then licking his chest. She traced the lines of his muscles. He smelled wonderful. Male and slightly musky. She shivered as she kissed his chest again and again, reveling in the feel of him as her hand slicked up and down his cock.

"Mmm!" Loki sighed. "Fuck, I, uh..." he sounded slightly distracted. "I could look like something different. Or you could look different. Want to try your hand at being the man?"

Dey drew back, blinking. "Zuhwha?" she asked.

Loki grinned, then shuddered under her. "F-Fuck!" He bit his lip. A thick stream of pre-cum spurted from the tip of his cock, slicking along her knuckles. Dey drew her hand away from his shaft, licking the back of her knuckles. That decided things. She couldn't wait. She slung her leg up and over Loki, poising her sex over his cock. Her hand went down to his shaft and he grinned up at her. Dey chuckled, starting to grind herself back and forth over his cock.

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe we'll try that. Later. Right now? I need cock. I need it bad."

Loki purred. "If you need it so bad, why aren't you on me then?"

Dey grinned impishly. She used her hand and her hips to slip and slide the tip of Loki's massive shaft along her sex. Her juices dripped along his member as she whispered back to him. "Maybe I wanna hear a please."

Loki's return smile was just as impish. His eyes glittered. "You know," he said. "I am technically the one in charge in this relationship."

Dey bit her lip, slightly. She leaned forward, then whispered. "Then take control."

Loki paused. "Do..." his hands slipped up and down her back. His smile faded and was replaced by a look of nervousness. Dey's eyes flashed and she leaned forward, kissing his cheek, then whispering in Loki's ear.

"Go nuts," she said.

Loki gulped. His hands squeezed her ass and then she felt a collar tightening around her neck. She closed her eyes, shivering as her arms were tugged behind her back. Something warm and leathery wrapped her forearms together, binding them behind her back. She grunted as she was restrained - her muscles straining slightly. She shivered, then-

Touching her.

She shook her head. "N-No! Sto-"

She wasn't even halfway through the words before the restraints vanished. Dey leaned forward, hugging Loki tightly. Her whole body quivered as tremors of fear slipped up and down her spine. She felt like she was going to shake to pieces. Loki held her, his hands caressing her. But they weren't the same. They were gentle, grasping hands with palms and wrists - wrists she could grab and twist and force away from her. She knew how to snap someone's arm with her fucking pinkie. She closed her eyes and nuzzled against Loki's chest.

"M-Maybe leave the xenophillia for later, then?" Loki whispered, sounding ashamed.

Dey nodded.

Quietly. "C-Can we just...snuggle tonight?"

"Course," Loki said, caressing her head. "Of course."

The ship rocked from side to side in the waves and in the silence, they held one another until Dey felt herself being dragged down into sleep. And as she slept, Loki quietly caressed more than just her hair. He carefully tweaked her neuro-chemical output and nerve endings to ease her way into REM sleep and to ease her out.

Tonight was a night where Dey deserved to not dream.

Simply to sleep.

TO BE CONTINUED