Pax Multi Pt. 05

Bea looked down, her antennas twitching. "I have mixed and complicated feelings about this!"

Lou smiled, then kissed her forehead. "So, the Feds joining involved a lot of shitty compromises that have kept bad things around. And...maybe now that the war is over, we can try to fix it." He nodded.

"Yes..." Bea said. "Wait, what about the Plurality? And the Upkin of which you have mentioned?"

"They're a..." Lou lifted his head. He pushed Bea behind himself, swinging her around as he stood up, drawing his rapier with his other hand.

"Lou?" Bea asked.

But Lou was sure. He glared into the shadows of the trees around them. "Bea, stay behind me," he said, flatly.

"E-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t-l-y d-o-n-e..."

The warbling, tortured, electronic voice that came from the shadows all around him sent a thrill of fear...and recognition down Lou's spine. His eyes widened and he realized that he had completely mistaken things. The Federals hadn't been doing anything sneaky. They weren't building anything secret.

"Epoch," he whispered.

"What is going-" Bea hissed.

Humanoid figures -- moving like jerky marionettes mastered by a lunatic -- started to step out. They were serviles, but they had been cored out, their eyes empty sockets filled with glittering latticeworks of machines. Crablike metallic fixtures were attached to the backs of their heads, but the machinery at work inside of them had already began to transfigure their hands into curved, bladed claws. Glittering metal, dripping with their blood, pushed from between knuckles, and emerging from palms.

"Lou, what are they?"

"Tell herrrr my sweet prince..." One of the serviles spoke, drooling from around lips, teeth already glittering with metal. Lou forced his revulsion back -- it was an intimidation tactic.

"It's Epoch...an assassin from the Plurality," Lou said, frowning. "And I've fought it before."

He spun and dragged Bea down as Epoch itself uncoiled from behind him, leaping past the tree that they had been standing beside. Splinters filled the air as writhing tentacles of segmented metal crashed into bark, while whirring buzz-saw blades slashed at his head. But Lou and Bea were already diving away, Lou knew better than staying close to Epoch's main body. He came to his feet, one hand gripping Bea's hand, his other holding his rapier up, the point sparking and cracking and deadly. Epoch landed in the grass, digging in whirring tentacles. The center of its body was a single, small egg shape, just barely big enough to hold a brain and some requisite organs. Everything else was segmented tentacles, each articulated and flexible enough to tie themselves in knot, with a strength to splinter steel.

"You remembered!" Epoch spoke from its main body and each of the spliced serviles. "E-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t."

"You are aware of this being?" Bea asked.

"Yes, I'll explain in-"

Violence.

Epoch lashed out with one of his tentacles and there was no time for anything but the honed reflexes of a lifetime of training. With his left hand occupied in holding Beatrice behind him, Lou focused entirely upon his form and the darting thrust of his rapier. The tip sparked and flashed, each impact point between blade and tentacle bursting with a hiss of fundamental particles -- pulsed through his blade with tiny flexes of his fingers against the hilt. There was a million subtle variations in grip and stance that altered how the unified field emitter in his sword created and manipulated energy fields. There was a limit to how much the small UFE could pump out, and there was no way that he could get close enough to discharge all of it into Epoch at once.

And so, he knocked the tentacles backwards again and again, his brow furrowed and his jaw clenched. Epoch hissed and sprang backwards, several of his tentacles smoking, his buzz-saw blades growling and grinding. Lou stepped backwards as he saw one of the spliced puppets that Epoch had created shambling towards him.

He brought his rapier up, about to transfix the walking puppet of meat -- and then stayed his hand.

The servile, eyeless and vacant, reached out with a clawed fingered hand towards him -- and Lou could only see the bright eyed, newly restored person that GF and Amy had created when they had kidnapped the servile. The treaty between the Federated States and the UHP as a whole stipulated that serviles were an allowed semi-slave caste, vat grown workers for the Federals to use as they pleased. It was the same clause that disallowed the Neopolitans to prevent the Plurality from experimenting with radical new forms of ego-sculpting, or the AnCom union to interfere in the autocratic kingship of the Neopolitans.

And yet...

Lou stepped back again, pushing Bea backwards with ease. She was so very light, it was easy to move her about. He still nearly felt the sweep of the servile's claws as Epoch chattered with mechanical laughter.

"Lou! Left!"

Lou flicked his gaze away. Two more serviles, lurching towards him and Bea from the left. He leaped backwards, putting the tree between them and the serviles, but that only bought him a fraction of a second. And so, Lou thrust his blade into the tree and shouted. "DUCK!"

Beatrice ducked low and Lou turned aside, then tightened his grip on the hilt.

The UFE emitter in the hilt discharged its entire battery into the tree.

The tree exploded.

Most of the fragments flew away, shotgunning towards Epoch and his servile puppets -- but a few, by sheer chaotic chance, peppered Lou's body. Several stuck into his arm and shoulder, trembling as they sprouted from his skin like porcupine quills, blood welling and dripping down his arm. He marshaled the agony and looked past the smoking tree, to see that the shockwave had knocked the serviles over. They were trying to stand, but most looked entirely incapacitated -- their motor functions were too degraded by Epoch's puppetry.

Epoch, being a mass of metal and synthetic materials, all tentacles and buzz-saws and cameras, wasn't even smoking.

"Ha ha ha. How chivalric..." Epoch began to walk forward as Lou stood before Bea, trying to ignore the stinging pain from the splinters peppering his arm. "Your blade's charge rate leaves you defenseless. My prior taught you better t-h-a-n t-h-a-a-a-a-a-"

Epoch's blades whirred as he reared upwards. Lou lifted his blade upwards -- but then Epoch froze.

"My...husband..." Bea whispered, her voice trembling. "You have made him release his circulatory fluid." Her wings buzzed. Her antennas twitched. And Lou could hear the rumbling sound. The shaking of the forest floor. The crashing of the trees.

And quite suddenly, he felt extremely foolish.

Epoch turned -- just in time for the Terror Talon to sprint into him at nearly sixty KPH. Trees splintered in the immense biomechanical warmachine's wake, and Epoch smashed into the ground and dragged as the Talon mashed against it -- Lou saw it wasn't even using its weapon systems. It had a rocketvore that was designed to take out tanks, but the vore simply spat and slathered slime in a kind of impotent rage. The Talon didn't even swing its massive bladed arms -- it simply smashed against Epoch again and again and again with a blind fury as, behind Lou, Bea trembled from her head to her antennas.

Epoch's tentacles swung around and then the buzz-saws cut into the Talon, which let out a bellowing screech. Blood spurted in every direction -- blood and powdered chitin. Lou winced, and heard Bea keen out in shock, her eyes widening as she fell to her side, trembling. The Talon stumbled backwards, looking confused -- and then Epoch slithered up its sides, swung around onto it's back like an acrobatic squid, and then slammed three tentacles into the stumpy neck of the immense biomech. The blades screamed -- and Bea screamed, at almost the same pitch.

"NO!" Lou shouted, not sure why Beatrice was reacting this way. The Bug War had killed literally billions of her subunits, and she had never mentioned feeling pain before. But he knew he had to do something, even if his hilt was half charged.

He sprinted forward, pain forgotten, and ducked beneath a thrashing bladed arm. He skidded on his knees, came up underneath the Talon, and then sprang up. His rapier flashed and the rocketvore split open along its guts. "Sorry!" He exclaimed -- but he had no time to be gentle. The symbiotic creatures that lived within the rocketvore tumbled out like the loops of a pig's intestines, connected to one another by a ribinous mass of cartilage that almost reminded Lou of the feed strip of an solid slug machine gun.

He snatched an entire belt free, hissing as he felt sizzling droplets of acid burn along his hand.

And then, in the madness and the terror, something so strange happened that it caused him to stop. For...one of the ammo-beasts contained in the cartilage was bumping its bladed nose against his thumb. Gently. It rubbed against him, and he swore that the tiny, beady eye it used to track targets while in flight was looking up at him with...love.

"Letting. Your. Wife. Fight. For. You?" Epoch gurgled in his mechanical screech. "How g-a-u-c-h-e-"

That was as far as he got before Lou whipped the entire belt of ammo-beasts straight at Epoch. The belt wrapped around two of his tentacles, swung together and-

Boom.

The explosion was a sharp, harsh CRACK and Epoch screeched like a dying theremin as he stumbled backwards, two of his many tentacles ending in smoking, hissing, acid sloshed ruins. Lou sprinted forward, bellowing out a single warcry. He sprinted up the side of the Terror Talon, which lay upon its immense bulk, blood gushing from its severed head. He reached the crest and saw that Epoch was trying to recover from the shock -- and then Lou launched himself up into the air, drawing his rapier back, then thrusting, using momentum, the last dregs of his hilt's battery, and the fury of his own soul as one.

"Vive l'Humanité!"

The blade punched through the center of Epoch's hardened ego-case and then snapped. He rolled onto the ground, holding a sparking, hissing hilt, and then used his momentum to come to his feet, skidding to a stop as Epoch stumbled backwards. His tentacles writhed, desperately, even the stumps, which only ended up flecking more biological acid onto his case. But Lou could see the circulatory fluid and artificial stimulants pouring from around the edge of his blade, soaking the black egg that was the home of this particular variation of Epoch's multifaceted ego.

The Plurality assassin dropped with a rattling crash.

Lou, shirtless, soaked with sweat, streaked with blood, and peppered in splinters tossed his hilt aside with a sniff.

The soft groaning sound of Beatrice's voice made the entire world vanish. One moment, he was standing before Epoch. The next, he was cradling her. She was so light, so delicate -- and she looked entirely unharmed. Her antennas were bunched tight against her head, and her wings buzzed ever so slightly as he held her up, whispering, softly. "My love, my wife, my Beatrice -- are you okay? Did he hurt you?"

"You...you...YOU!" She hissed, trembling. "You are...you are...the worst husband!" She wriggled, then mashed her face against his chest, her arms wrapping around him, her legs scissoring around his back. Her wings beat, pushing her further into him -- and with enough strength to actually push him onto his back. The wet grass smelled faintly of blood and smoke, and Lou blinked, feeling faintly chagrined. Apologetic. Bea made it worse, heaping coals upon him as she nuzzled his neck and churred words at her, her voice buzzing and modulating so much he could barely understand her -- her sentences short and jagged declarations: "One body! Fragile body! No mind! No subunits! No acid! No cuts! No! One! One! One! One!" She trembled. "Foolish! How dare!"

"I-I-"

"Protect this!?" She squeezed him tighter. "Replace! Five hours! Five hours. Better afterwards, new improvement, new stomach, new erogenous zones, more wombs! FIVE HOURS! Protect!? You!? Foolish! Bad! Worst!" She trembled, growled, then bit down on his collar bone. Hard.

Lou yelped. She had shockingly sharp teeth, even if her jaw strength was vastly lower than a human beings. The end result was she didn't break skin -- but she had definitely communicated her displeasure. His hand caressed along her bunched antennas, stroking their base, his voice soft as he whispered. "I...I am sorry, my wife. But..." He paused. "Among the Neopolitan Star Kingdom, we...I...was taught...when someone threatens that what you love, your duty is to do anything it takes to protect them. I..." He sighed. "I did not think. I merely acted. Please, I beg your forgiveness for this foolishness."

Bea, her face mashed against his chest, drew in a slow, slow breath. She nodded. "Forgiveness." She whispered, softly. "I...is it...so that...I can forgiveness too?" she asked, her voice halting -- her words stumbling. Her syntax had suffered when she had been in the throws of passion. It seemed terror and anger could have the same effect as...more gentle emotions. Lou's cheeks heated as he felt her lower hands gliding along his body, caressing down his abdominal muscles. Her upper hands remained on his shoulders, her fingertips digging into him.

"Yes. Of course you can," he said, quietly.

"Then...I provide it," she said, softly. "If you will accept it."

Lou reached up, his arm aching from the many puncture wounds , and cupped his wife's cheek with his right hand, while his left continued to caress through her hair. "Yes. I accept it."

Bea laid her head down against his chest again, breathing in his scent again. "You smell even better like this," she murmured, her body no longer trembling so. "Make love to me."

"I...I beg your-" Lou stammered as Bea sat back, pushing herself up, his hand dropping away from her head as she took hold of her shift and casually tugged it up and over her head, tossing it away. Her hard, blue nipples glinted in the dappled sunlight as Lou felt the adrenaline in his body seeping away -- and leaving him with the most shockingly intense urge to...to...the intensity of the urge, combined with the openness of the air, it...

Well, everything that he had been taught that now, in the field of battle, with his wounds still untended was the worst place, the worst time, to do anything of the sort. He should sternly reprimand Beatrice, and remind her that the sovereign of several star systems and the Duchess of Venus, she should have had more decorum.

Her hands shoved herself back, her light body landing upon his shins.

More tact.

Her hands gripped his pants and yanked them open and down -- her upper hands holding the pants, her lower hands both fastening around his cock. She looked down at his member, her antennas unfurling, her body trembling.

More...shame...

Her mouthparts, delicate and slightly cool, closed around his cock.

Lou slowly laid his head back into the grass.

In some cultures of the United Human Polities, the act of oral sex had moved beyond an art and into a competitive sport. In some cultures, Lou -- at the tender subjective age of eighteen -- would have been a hard bitten cynic when it came to the act of using a mouth to bring pleasure to a partner. He'd have had blowjobs, handjobs, titjobs. If he had been among the more enthusiastic practitioners of 'ways to have fun with cocks', he might have graduated on to the more extreme variations that had been created by the endlessly (and slightly demented) creativity of the unchained human id.

Lou, though, had never felt anything like this.

The soft, feathery touch of his wife's tongue. The delicate, slightly cool, slightly rubbery texture of her twenty fingers wrapped around his shaft -- the first two sets interlocking at the top, the other two closed around his base, so that his entire member was held in her soft hands. The coolness of her lips, then the eagerness of her breath as she drew her mouthparts away from his cock. She breathed against him. "Oh my husband, I now fully understand the advice, to eat, but only a very tiny amount, oh husband...oh..." She closed her mouth around him again -- and Lou lifted his head, just barely able to move past the pleasure swimming through him.

Their eyes met and Lou got his elbows under him, gritting his teeth as he tried to bite back his moan. The softness of the grass under his bare ass, the incredibly slight weight of her body against his shins, the dappled light flowing along her dark blue and white and black body. Her wings fanned out and caught the sunlight and turned it into irridescent rainbows and Lou felt as if his heart was about to burst. His fingers dug into the soft earth and he whispered. "Beatrice..."

Bea drew her mouth back, slightly, her antennas twitching. "I believe I shall be consuming this part of you for many, many, many, many..." She leaned down again, licked his cocktip. "Mm." Her eyes half closed. "O-Oh, yes. I must quote!"

Lou blinked -- then gasped as her hands began to gently stroke him -- alternating movements with her upper hands and her lower hands to envelope his entire member in her grip. His fingers tightened more as Beatrice lifted her head. "Godfucker showed me an educational film -- a pornographic one, he said."

"Oh..." Lou said, bracing himself. He had not seen any...well, he had seen one pornographic film. But his studies of human culture, his instructors had told him about the ages after what the Neopolitans studied. The 20^th and 21^st centuries had been replete with epochs of filmed copulation, with terrible acting, worse writing, and often, unsavory and viciously cruel productions that had disenfranchised and exploited their labor force. Which made it exactly like all other media produced in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. But still...he knew what to expect.

Bea looked up at him, her eyes softening. "I love you more than the stars themselves, my husband," she whispered. "I hope, I can bring you just a tiny fraction of what just being with you makes me feel..." She kissed the tip of his cock. "Now...lay back..." She closed her mouth around the tip of his cock, then released him with her upper hands -- which reached up to interlace through his fingers. Then she pushed forward, taking the first few inches of his cock into her mouth as Lou gaped down at her.

The movement of her mouth continued, smoothly, for another inch -- before Lou felt his cock bumping against something inside of her throat. It felt like a sleek, rubbery cap. She paused, her voice muffled. "Huhhh..." She drew her mouth slowly back, a glistening strand of glowing, purple pre-cum sticking her lips to his dick. She blinked. "...oh."

"W-What?" Lou asked, feeling as if he was on a hair's trigger.

"F-Forgive me Lou, this body does not have a throat," she said, her antennas drooping.

"O-Oh..." Lou blinked. "How do you breathe?"

"I have an air pipe!" she said, cheerfully. "It simply has a reflexive cap that prevents anything within my mouth from reaching my lungs. Such as-" She paused. "Your seed in my lungs would be very uncomfortable." She paused again, then smiled. "Your cum in my lungs would be very uncomfortable. Cum." She paused. "Cum...I think I enjoy saying this word..." She licked her lips. "But you know what I will enjoy even more than saying the word cum? It shall be tasting your cum." She smiled. "I am trying to use my own dirty talk, rather than quoting, is it effective?"

Lou's chuckle was soft -- husky, like a knife drawn along a leather strap. His eyes half closed and he lifted one hand up, leaning most of his weight onto the other elbow, and caressed his hand along her head, finding the base of her antenna. "I love you..." he said, quietly.