Sleeping Angel

Julia again blinked several times as she processed through John's information-dense statement, "Let me think about this for a second..." She brought her index finger up and tapped it against her cheek several times, as if lost in thought, "...I'm sorry John. We have to wait for the atmospheric conditions to change to attempt takeoff. The odds of a high altitude weather-event induced system failure are too high...."

John interrupted, "Okay. I get it. We have to wait. So be it."

-- --

V. Grounded

"You must be starving. My scans indicate you are malnourished and severely dehydrated."

John blushed, somewhat embarrassed that the Angel-Bot had scanned his body so thoroughly without his knowledge. He knew he was thin. He could feel every one of his ribs when he ran his hands down his torso. The New Virga-adapted muscles on his arms, upper chest, shoulders, and legs still bulged, though, something Julia's scans hadn't missed.

She detected a slight increase in the temperature of her robotic sex as subsystems, layers removed from her main processing core, simulated John's strong arms holding her down on the ground as he thrust himself inside her tight pussy. Her libido control parameters were ramping up quickly; her main processing core took temporary full control over her chassis operation to limit the computational bandwidth they consumed.

"I will return to the Ascendant to acquire supplies for you in addition to an extra set of armaments."

She turned and began walking away, emphasizing the sway of her hips with each step forward. Sensing his eyes glued to every meticulous wobble of her sporty rear, Julia spun around and called back to John, "You can join me if you'd like."

John trotted up and began walking alongside her as they made their way to the transport ship.

By this time, the local star, Diluculo, had risen above the encircling mountains, lighting up the lush green prairie-scape. It peaked through the hanging clouds in long glimmering rays.

"Can we stay in the ship tonight? I'd much rather that than having to stay another night in Nephele."

"No. We need to limit your time spent in the ship. Ascendant is a minimal-mass rescue lander. Prolonged exposure to the radiation of the engine may exceed safe dosage levels. The transport is strictly for ascent and descent to and from the Sleeping Angel.

John rolled his eyes, "Oh. Okay, I see."

They continued onwards to the ship, John staying several paces behind Julia so as to "covertly" sneak glances at her plastic derriere. He pondered how curious it was that such instincts would remain, even intensify, despite the life-threatening circumstances he currently found himself in.

Julia's circuitry hummed with positive feedback subroutines. Knowing that John couldn't help but stare at her chassis instinctively activated several coital software packages within her. She further increased the provocative swaying of her hips.

Halfway to the ship, Julia stopped walking and abruptly pulled up into a neutral standing position. John absentmindedly walked right into her, pushing into the springy softness of her butt with his groin.

He quickly side-stepped and turned to face her, finding her eyes crossed and blinking in quick succession.

After several seconds the blinking stopped and her eyes uncrossed themselves. She continued on walking forward like nothing had happened.

John jogged up beside her, "What was that about? Why did you stop like that?"

Continuing her stride towards the ship, Julia turned her head towards John, her fiery red hair twisting around her shoulders as she did so, "Sorry! I was recalibrating my servo motors to account for the 1.3 G's on this planet! I was designed for an earth standard single G of force, so my systems just need a little tweaking to optimize my movement!"

She took a playful skip forward after finishing her matter of fact statement, "I have it all sorted now! It's just a bit more taxing on my batteries than I had originally calculated. It's a good thing I brought some spares...maybe I'll have to show you how to change them out later this afternoon?

She finished the statement with a wink.

John's heart fluttered in his chest and he skipped after Julia, a smile sneaking out from the corners of his mouth.

--

With the supplies taken from the Ascendant stashed inside the pump station, John and Julia each sat down. Julia watched as John ravenously ate multiple ration-packs and slurped down several hydration gels. He gestured towards her with an unopened packet of food.

She smiled, "Oh. No thank you. I don't possess the capacity to process food." She stretched to the side and tapped her spare battery, a slim cuboid six inches long and two inches wide, "I'm fully electric. Spare batteries, like this one, and recharges keep me going."

John chuckled.

Julia tilted her head curiously, blinking her eyes at John, a few strands of red hair falling over her face as she did so, "What's so funny?"

John choked down the last of his food, "It's just so odd to hear you speak so matter of factly like that when you act...so...so human."

Julia blushed, squirming in her seated position, "You really think so?"

John nodded his head in affirmation as he swallowed down several more bites of food, "I would have never guessed you were a bot if you hadn't told me. I think you're amazing."

Instinctively triggering the actuators at the corners of her pink lips, Julia beamed "Well, thanks John. This is actually my first time being activated outside of routine maintenance procedures. I'm glad my emulation capabilities are to your liking."

John grinned back and shifted his gaze to the open door as he swallowed down a few last hydration gels, "It's beautiful isn't it?"

Julia twisted her torso to face the door, her cream-white exploration suit stretching tight against the contours of her body as she did so. Adjusting the lens apertures of her digital camera eyes, Julia zoomed her vision into the distant horizon with impressive resolution.

John gestured to the emerald green Shroud, which still hung, as it always did, as a perfect internal frame of the sharp Halysis mountains. The virga glimmered in Diluculo's warm, blood-orange rays, "I'll never tire of this view. The Fallax have taken so much away from me, but they'll never take this. This is mine."

He leaned forward, pointing at a distant peak, "See that mountain top way off in the distance there? You can just make it out..." He pushed forward a bit more, "...it's Mt. Inumbra...Latin for "in the shade" because of the shadow it casts over the prairies...now if you look just to the right of it..."

He lost his balance and fell directly into Julia. With her optics focused on the distant horizon, she hadn't sensed him falling into her and they both ended up on the ground as his full weight pushed her slender frame over.

John pushed off of Julia to steady himself, his hands firmly pressing into her thigh and waist, "Wow. You feel so...soft!"

Julia frowned as she clasped her hands around John's wrists, "Is that bad?"

"No! Not at all. I just, you just...you feel really good."

John blushed, he found himself quickly growing hard from the physical interaction. Weeks alone had made him ultra-sensitive to the touch of another person, especially when that other person was manufactured with supermodel curves and a face to match.

Julia smiled, again blowing a few strands of red hair away from her face. She performed a quick thermal scan and found the temperature around John's groin measurably hotter. Automatically, her systems reacted to this stimulus trigger by activating her own sexual hardware and software suites.

She bit down on her lip and slowly batted her eyelashes at John. He picked up on her hints and leaned in for a kiss. Her lips felt full and real against his; the way she wrapped her arms around his torso and pulled him down on top of her felt all too natural.

She began gently rocking her hips against his, working her crotch against John's. The dermal sensor arrays woven into her inner thighs detected his growing hardness and she squeezed him with programmed precision.

"That feels so good. How do I get you out of that suit?".

Julia cooed and flipped onto her stomach, "There's a magnetic clasp at the top. Undo that then run it down the small of my back. The fabric will disconnect from itself...yes just like that."

John worked frantically to peel the suit down Julia's legs, exposing her smooth thighs to him for the first time. At the intersection of her legs, he could just make out her pink folds glistening with lubricant.

Still laying face down, Julia looked back over her shoulder and spread her legs provocatively, "Fuck me now."

John's pants were on the floor in seconds. He was rock hard. Greedily clutching a handful of each plastic cheek in his hands, he rocked Julia forward and buried himself inside of her.

Julia shuddered as she felt John enter her. She meticulously controlled the flowrate through her heated lubricant pump and the expansion and contraction of her artificial muscles around John's member. The amount of physical stimulus she was experiencing now, as John pounded her slick pussy from behind, was magnitudes greater than anything her chassis had ever experienced. Her processors worked frantically to ensure every hardware component and software subsystem package was operating perfectly to maximize John's and, by proxy, her own pleasure.

She sighed as he reached his strong hands around her rib cage and latched onto her breasts, which squeaked against the tiled floor each time he thrust into her elasto-polymer vagina.

Julia moaned, the sound escaping from her mouth with several microseconds of latency when compared against the matching movement of her lips. Since John couldn't see her mouth, her main CPU had cleverly freed up half of the normal processing capacity away from her vocal synthesis generator, allowing it to be utilized elsewhere in aid of the operation of other functions.

She looked back over her shoulder, watching as John pumped in and out of her with ruthless efficiency. Her blue eyes narrowed with simulated passion, her tongue teasing at the edges of her puffy lips, "Do I feel good?"

Grunting, John replied, "You feel so fucking good. You feel fucking perfect."

Julia sighed and worked the actuators in her hips to further push back against John with greater resistance. She tightened her electrically controlled elastomer-muscles around him, nearly maxing out her settings.

"Mhhmmmm how's that?!" Julia managed in between convincingly human exhales.

John could only moan, his pumping becoming harder and more urgent, "So good. So good, Julia."

"Good." Julia maxed her settings and her processing arrays hiccuped as she detected the onset of John's orgasm. She could sense his hot cum shooting into her temperature-sensitive elastic folds. This triggered her own orgasm protocols to initiate which nearly crashed her systems outright as they loaded.

Her movements became stilted for several seconds as the deluge of sexual data clogged multiple sub-processing cores. She pneumatically worked her pussy up and down John's length in meticulously calculated, yet repetitive, movement patterns. She temporarily lost command authority of her lubricant pump's throttling valve resulting in her squirting out her formulated liquids in time with each of John's powerful thrusts.

Mouth agape, pinned on her stomach as John continued fucking her relentlessly, Julia experienced her first genuine, non-laboratory-controlled, digital orgasm.

She squirmed against the floor, reaching a set of fingers down to frantically tease at her plastic clit. Maximizing the data pleasure streams that were coursing through her body.

She continued working John's cock for another 30 seconds or so before the waning throes of her simulated climax finally dissipated. The experience, in 1.3 Gs, had so overwhelmingly engaged her chassis' systems that she didn't even notice that 12% of her battery capacity had ticked away during their lovemaking.

Flipping onto her back, she looked up at John with a playful smile. She pulled his head down to meet hers, ensuring their lips touched.

He obliged and they lay there for several minutes lazily making out on the pump station floor, their hands gently wandering over each other's bodies.

Julia pulled her lips away from John's and, smiling devilishly, guided one of his hands onto her plastic rear, "Let's go again?"

John grinned, "Let's go again."

-- --

VI. Awake

A cold breeze woke John up. Opening his eyes slowly, he found that the midday light that had previously poured through the pump station's door had gone, replaced with the dark oranges and long shadows associated with New Virga dusk.

He whispered to himself, "Fuck. How many times did we...how long was I out?"

Sitting upwards, John craned his neck to catch a view of the sky. In the late evening light he could still just make out the color of the ever-present Shroud. The hanging clouds sparkled in the light a copper-tinged gold.

The atmospheric conditions had changed.

He gave Julia a gentle prod on the thigh, "Hey Julia, I hate to wake you up but it's time for us to get the fuck out of here. Shroud color shifted. We should be good for a clean takeoff."

There was no response.

"Julia, we need to leave now. For all we know the Fallax may be heading this way right now."

Again, no response.

He turned to face Julia who still hadn't stirred.

Running his finger along her cheek he wondered aloud, "Whatever sleep protocol she's running must be pretty damn heavy-duty."

"Julia!" He raised his voice as he shook her firmly on the shoulders.

The Angel-Bot didn't stir.

"Oh God. What's wrong."

He pulled the blanket down, exposing the sculpted curves of her nude body, and flipped her onto her back. He ran his fingers behind her ears and all around her head looking for some kind of switch or button, but he found nothing, "Come on Julia...I really need you to wake up. I don't know how to activate your ship, much less pilot it...plus I'm sure as hell not leaving you."

"Wake up!" he force-opened one of her eyelids in desperation, thinking it may activate something within her.

It did not.

Her unpowered eyelid stayed open, her glossy blue eye staring straight ahead.

Unnerved by the look, he gently pulled her eyelid closed.

He sat down, leaning back into his haunches, dejected, "This is not go....."

A horrifying screeching interrupted his sentence.

Shivers ran down his spine. He shuddered.

He brought his face down into his palms, "This is VERY not good."

Another screeching sound joined the first. Soon a third and fourth joined in as well, creating a dreadful harmony that resonated violently within his inner ear.

Under his breath he whispered out, "What are you even coming for? She's not even active. The ship is turned off. What the fuck could you possibly detect?"

He shut the curved metallic door and dropped a steel rod in place to prevent it from opening outwards.

A dozen or so other screeches had started up, creating a cacophony of high pitched shrieking screams that never relented. The volume grew louder and louder as they got closer and closer.

Pacing around the cramped space, John picked up the two pulse rifles, magna-coil pistols, and electro-daggers, readying them next to the door as he continued muttering to himself, "If its these fucking daggers that you're detecting, I swea......"

He kicked over the box of rations exposing one of Julia's spare battery packs underneath. Staring at it for several seconds, he took a deep breath in and out.

Before him lay his ticket to salvation.

The screeching was growing louder and louder. The Fallax were getting close.

......

VII. Time to Go

The door groaned.

The Fallax outside were ripping it from its hinges. The pump station reverberated all around John with the sound of six inch claws digging into his shelter's metallic walls.

"Come on! Come on, damn it!"

John had lucked into getting Julia's battery tray to fold out. He had found a dual-set switch cleverly tucked in between two of her hybrid-alloy vertebrae.

Running about four inches down the length of her back, parallel to her artificial spine, the tray was hinged 90 degrees outwards from her smooth synth-skin, exposing the spent battery pack.

Pushing it out from its locking mechanism, John slapped in the replacement power pack and slammed the tray shut. Then he waited, holding Julia's immobile body in his arms as the Fallax continued their efforts to claw through the shelter.

A small chime emanated from within Julia's chassis indicating her startup procedure had been initiated. John sighed in relief.

Another muffled chime trickled out from behind her closed lips and her eyes flashed open. Her irises darted left to right a handful of times as she scanned her surroundings. After the process completed, she fixed her focus on John's face, her eyes scanning him intently for several seconds, "My chronometer indicates I've been inactive for several hours. What happened?"

She furrowed her brow as her auditory suite began receiving its first batch of sound data, "What is that sound?"

John stood up, pulling Julia up with him, "Your battery died. Luckily there was a spare with the rest of the supplies, so I swapped it in..." He swept his hand around in a circle, "That sound is the Fallax. They're here. Conditions outside have changed...speaking of which."

He thrust her cream and gray exploration suit into her hands, "Put this on. I think you're going to need it."

Julia immediately got to work dressing herself, stepping into the tight bodysuit one leg at a time. It was cinched closed around her petite shoulders within seconds. She reached for her pistol and dagger.

Now fully clothed himself, John prepared the pulse rifles.

"What's the status of atmosphere conditions? Are we good for a takeoff?

Julia paused, her eyes flashing several times as she communicated directly with the Sleeping Angel's weather imaging suite.

She spun her head to face John, "Should be fine. The most high energy storms have decayed enough that the wind speeds are manageable."

John threw her a pulse rifle, "Suits me. Let's get out of here."

-- --

VIII. The Run

"Get behind me and stay close!" Julia barked at John.

He did as he was told, the urgency and authority of her order coming through clear in her vocal synthesis patterns.

She holstered the pulse rifle onto two magnetic pads on the back of her exploration suit and, in either hand, clutched the magna-coil pistol and electro-dagger.

She slid the metallic rod that held the door shut out of place and kicked through the door,nearly maxing out her leg's servo motors. The door exploded outwards straight into a waiting Fallax, knocking it to the ground.

A long tendriled arm reached into the newly opened door and Julia shoved her electro-dagger straight through the rubbery green appendage. The electrically charged blade instantaneously boiled the liquids circulating inside the clawed tendril. It erupted in a visceral flurry of green and maroon chunks.

The creature pulled its mutilated arm back with a horrendous scream. John's instincts begged him to cover his ears but instead he focused his gaze out the door, firing a burst of four tungsten shells directly into the grounded Fallax who had been hit with the pump station door. Its alien blood geysered upwards as each shell hit its target.

"Now!" Julia shouted and leapt through the doorway. John followed in tow.

Two Fallax immediately flanked Julia from the right, each erratically swiping at her with their claw-tipped tendrils. She dodged one with a well timed slide and wrapped her arm around the other, able to steal its momentum and jump-spin upwards.