Starlight Gleaming Ch. 20

There was a round of clapping, and congratulations from everyone.

"Congratulations," I said. "I'm proud of you, Janetta."

Zinja raised her glass, and the rest of us joined her. "To Captain Tlacotli! Air Service!"

"Air Service!" everyone echoed.

Janetta smiled at the recognition, and took a bite of food.

Ixma turned to her mother. "You knew about this, didn't you!"

Zinja grinned indulgently at her daughter. "The captain asked me to keep quiet, so I did. The captain has worked very hard. She deserved this promotion."

"Thank you, Zinja. I appreciate all the hard work and support from all of my ground crew. I depend on all of you." She then looked at Cholan. "My last bit is a request, not a directive. Cholan, we are all very sorry for your loss. I'm offering for you to sleep with us tonight. Or, if you wish, you and he can stay in your room."

Cholan glanced at me, then said to her officer, "You'd prefer it if I stayed the night in your room, wouldn't you, sir?"

"I would," Janetta admitted. "I miss him when he's not there."

"I'll join you, then, Captain."

"Very good. If you like, you can have some bereavement time to mourn for your parents."

"I'd like to visit my sisters tomorrow, if that would be all right, sir. But I will do my shift as normal."

Janetta nodded in approval. "As you wish, Sergeant. I appreciate your dedication to me, to your unit, and to the Air Service."

I cleared my throat. "I actually have some news of my own to share. The Air Marshal stopped by my office today, and confirmed that he is greatly pleased with me and what we've accomplished here at High Guard. So I guess you're all stuck with me being here."

The others cheered, and Sisi clapped. Ixma took Mina's hands and clapped them together. When the happy noise died down, I said, "This other bit, well, it relates to you, Cholan. I hope it will make you feel better."

I had her attention, and that of everyone else, too.

"You've met Lieutenant Penimits Fortri. He works at Air Security with me. Well, apparently Tanti started working at the primary school just a few days ago. While we were investigating the tip about the school being in danger, Tanti and Pen met. According to his good friend, Jay, it was love at first sight."

A slow smile grew. "Really?"

"Jay said Pen had it bad. I saw him this afternoon, just before I came home, and when I asked him about Tanti, he got this silly grin on his face. So, Pen really likes her. And before we went to check on Ramilla and Leetsi, I called him. Your sisters received photos as well, Cholan. Pen was there, and he's comforting them both."

She paused as she took in what I'd told her. Then she said, "He's a good man, isn't he, Commander?"

"He's a very good man. His family and Jay's both live about a hundred rads or so west of Tohingo."

"I see. I will want to meet him, of course, but thank you. That does help. You said he's staying with them?"

"Yes. He and Tanti met again at the Diner, so he bought dinner for everyone and they went to Tanti's place, the one she shares with Breena and her family. When he mentioned the possibility of leaving, they both made it clear they wanted him to stay the night. He will protect them."

"Both of them?" Cholan gave a snort. "That's Breena, all right. Horning in on Tanti's man. Still, knowing that, I won't worry so much about them. Thank you, sir."

The rest of the dinner was pleasant, everyone worn out from work and then worrying about Cholan and Sowitwee's sisters.

After dinner, Sowitwee quietly thanked me for going to check on Leetsi and Ramilla.

I motioned for Sergeant Vaniksl over and spoke quietly to him. "There's a package in my boot. It was sent to Sergeant Sowitwee's sisters and somehow made onto the war base. It appears to be cocaine. I want it taken to the Forensic Lab and it tested. I suspect it's laced with poison, but want to be sure."

Nodding, he said as quietly, "I'll see to it, Commander." Then he called Corporal Laylandi over and shortly both of them exited the front door.

Sisi persuaded me to play a matching card game with her. Each set was worth a point, with a goal of twenty-five points being the goal. Terra and Salvia each had a hand as well. While I sat on the couch with Sisi beside me, Cholan sat on the couch, nestled between my legs, content to watch the game play while leaning against me. Sisi won, and she very graciously praised the two servant girls for their scores.

Calia, sitting nearby as she stitched repairs on a shirt, gave me a wink. I just grinned back, then drew my girl into my arms for a long hug.

Which devolved into a search for sweetness hidden somewhere on her neck.

"Num, num, num, num," I said, nuzzling away.

Sisi giggled and then burst into laughter. While Sisi gasped for air, Ixma handed me Mina, who looked at me with a fearful grin. Sitting on my lap, she looked up.

"Can I have some sweetness from you, Mina?" I asked.

She looked at me, then at Sisi, then back at me. "No."

Both Ixma and Cholan lost it. "She's on to you," Calia remarked drily. "Mina's pretty sharp."

After everyone had their dessert, it was story time. When that was done, Sisi made the rounds with everyone, saying goodnight, and Mina watched her. As they went upstairs for bed, Sisi asked her, "Mina? Tomorrow, will you help me say goodnight to everyone?"

"Okay," she answered agreeably.

I suspected Sisi got Mina to do a lot of things that Mina on her own would have not bothered about. Despite the issue of mamas, Sisi acted more like her protective big sister.

Sisi grinned as she watched Ixma attend Mina when Zinja scooped her up, whispering how much she loved her.

"Love you, too, Mama Zinja," she murmured, hugging her back.

Cholan gave my hand a squeeze. I gave Calia, Ixma, and my girls a kiss goodnight, and then we left.

My island girl started across the hall to the master bedroom, but I stopped her at the door. Surprised, she raised her eyebrows as I turned and unlocked and opened the door to the deck instead.

"Come with me," I urged.

The night air was cool, so she moved close. Adjusting so I stood behind her, I put my arms around her and kissed her neck.

"Ranji?" she asked. "Why are we out here?"

"I want to share something with you." There were some clouds overhead, but there were also large patches where the heavens glittered. "Do you know anything about astronomy?"

"No. It wasn't something my parents knew anything about. I know a fair amount of civil engineering, but my focus has been electronics. And music, of course."

I heard Janetta in the bedroom ask, "Is he coming to bed?" Then I heard Zinja stand in the doorway behind us.

"Several times when I was growing up, my father talked to me about the stars," I began. "Each one of those lights in the sky is a sun like the one that shines during the day. Some have planets like ours, where living beings live lives like we do. Out there are the home star systems of the Greys and the draconians and all the other aliens that have visited our world. Notice how some of them have different colors?"

"Huh. I never noticed that before."

"Our sun is classified as Class G2-5."

"Okay...?"

"That means it's a yellow dwarf," I told her. "The number two indicates how hot the sun is within the G category for yellow and orange stars, and the five means it's a main sequence star. Stars are classified by their color spectrum, and from their color, astronomers can deduce of their size and heat. About eighty-five percent of the stars visible from our planet are red dwarfs. What's the color mnemonic for electronics?"

She snickered. "Bad boys ravish young girls, but Violet gives willingly. Resistors are marked black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, grey, and white. Or, numerically, zero through nine."

I leaned down to kiss her cheek, but she turned and offered her lips. We kissed. She wanted more, but I wasn't done sharing yet.

"Astronomers also have a mnemonic. It's used to remember the main color spectrum. It goes, Oh, be a fine girl, kiss me."

"We just did that," she said with a laugh, "but I'll happily kiss you some more. Is this just an excuse to get me alone to kiss? Because if so, I'm down with that. All you had to do was ask."

"Partly. I'm nearly finished. Stars classed as O, B, and A are all blue stars. For example, Rigel is a B-class star, which means the star burns at a temperature between eleven thousand and twenty-five thousand degrees Kelvin. Hmm. That's it, right there. See how bright it is? It's one of the brightest stars in the heavens, yet it's also eight hundred light years away, which means the light we are seeing tonight left that star eight hundred years ago. Think of that. Eight hundred years is forty generations.

"Vega is another blue star, but it's A-class, in the seventy-five hundred to eleven thousand degree range. That's Vega, right there. It's much closer at twenty-five light years. Vega is part of the Navigator's Triangle. That's those three bright stars. Vega is currently the pole star, meaning if we had a cylinder coming out of the earth at the north pole, it would point at Vega. The earth wobbles, however. Every twenty-six thousand years, the pole points at different stars. In thirteen thousand years, it will point at Polaris, which if we follow the Big Bear, from those two stars in a straight line to there, where it becomes the tail of the Little Bear."

"What are you trying to tell me, Ranji?" She tilted her head to look up at me.

"Because I love you, when you hurt, I hurt, Cholan. But knowing about the stars, well, it helps me keep things in perspective. I love you all so much, and sometimes all the people and organizations arrayed against us -- it can be depressing if we let it be so. If one of those stars in the heavens explodes, it will be years, maybe decades or even centuries before we learn about it. We look up and see a bright flash in the night sky, but the bright flash we see actually happened a long time ago. It takes that long for the light of that sun to reach us. The starlight gleaming in the heavens above us -- the light we see might be from stars that have already exploded, but we don't know it yet, because it takes so long for the light to reach us. Even the light of the moon is our own sun's starlight gleaming down on us. Because our sun is so close, it only takes eight minutes to reach us, day or night. The light of our sun that shines so brightly today when your heart was broken by the loss of your parents and their servants, that light will be seen by other worlds, but it will take them many, many years to see it. It may reach those worlds long after we are dead and gone. It doesn't diminish your grief. You loved them and now they are gone. But just as there are tens of millions of people across the world living their lives, so in the skies above us are thousands more worlds, each with people that are living, loving, happy, angry, or sad. Some of them even dying."

"Oh." Her hands squeezed my arms.

"In one respect, we are just microcosmic specks in the whole universe amongst a vast universe of other microcosmic specks, all living our lives under starlight gleaming down from the skies. Yet we are also important, too. Our world is reaching for the stars, and it's my hope that we will soon be capable of interplanetary travel within our own lifetime. Think of it, Cholan! I believe we will live to see humans walking on the moon, that we will visit other planets and set up colonies for men and women to live and work. I believe that humans will one day visit other stars like the Greys and draconians visit us. Hopefully, we will be better explorers, and we'll be able to stop the aliens from interfering in our world politics."

I leaned down and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close to me. "Grieve for your heart's ache, Island Girl. We all love you and are sad at your pain. The universe around us is also alive, and it wants us to be happy. The light of all those stars tells us we are not alone."

"You really believe that we will reach the stars?" she asked.

"Yes. I can see you on the bridge of a starship. Zinja manning the engines, and your captain piloting the ship through the heavens."

She giggled. "I can, too! Calia would be ship's medical officer and Ixma would man the science station. Do you think I could be your e-man?"

"I think you would make an excellent e-man on our starship, Cholan. Ixma as the science officer? That's interesting."

"She's learning a lot from her education programs. Sometimes she tells us fascinating facts about animals."

"Indeed? Ixma on science then." Another kiss and then I nuzzled her cheek. "The Protection Order came about because I love all of you. But I also believe it's absolutely essential for us as humans to work together. Men and women are two halves of the same species. As long as one half of us is suppressed, unable to have a say in how their lives are lived, humans will not be united. The Greys and draconians want us divided because it's easier to control us and keep us locked on our world. When we work together, we frighten them."

Cholan shivered in my arms.

"Are you cold?" I heard movement away from the open door behind us.

"The air is still damp from all the rain we've had. It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow, thank the gods."

"All right, let's go in."

I moved to let her go, but she turned in my arms and held me a moment. "Ranji? Thank you for sharing this with me. We both serve in the military and we're lovers, but we don't get a lot of time to just talk. I like getting to know you."

We kissed, and then went back inside. I made sure to lock the door.

Inside the room, Zinja and Janetta were already in bed, and the blankets on the side where I usually slept were pulled down for us.

Cholan blushed when she spotted the towels laid out. While she stripped and climbed into bed, I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth and shaved.

When I returned, I saw Zinja straddling Janetta's hip, rubbing in Calia's ointment. I stripped down and moved to the bed.

Cholan opened her arms to me, and I settled in next to her. Drawing her close, we kissed, letting our hands feel our bare skin, and the heat of our bodies touching.

A few more kisses, then I asked her, "What would you like me to do, Cholan?"

She bit her lower lip. Her hand reached between my legs and stroked my length, encouraging me to harden. "I love all the things you do to me, to make me feel loved. Right now, what I need is to feel you buried balls deep in my body, spreading and stretching me around your cock."

"Okay. Guide me in."

Moving over her, she spread her legs. Taking my shaft, she rubbed my tip along her swollen lower lips. Once the crown was wet, she positioned it at the entrance to her intimate center. Nudging forward, her lips split apart, and began to engulf my length. She groaned as I paused, letting her get used to my presence. When she rocked her hips, I pulled back an inch, then pushed deeper into the tight, velvet heat of her pussy. Another quick stroke, and another two inches were claimed. Her knees lifted, opening herself to me.

I had to be careful. Cholan being a small woman, her pussy couldn't take my full length in this position. As passions rise, the thrusting can get rougher, driving hard into yielding flesh. It would be easy to batter her cervix, leaving her bruised and hurting. For the moment, however, she sighed as I stroked into her tunnel, lifting her legs to wrap them around me. Because she couldn't grind her clit against me, I wet my thumb and rubbed her nubbin.

"Oh, sweet goddess, that feels so good," she murmured.

With an easy in-and-out motion, my hips nestled between her thighs as I explored her core with my cock, letting the friction of our movement build the pleasure from our union. I kept working her button as we moved together, and her breathing shortened to panting, then to gasps for air. Sliding my hands under her shoulders, I leaned down, and we kissed, and then when she couldn't catch her breath, I nibbled along her neck.

Unhurried, I pressed into her until I reached the entrance of her womb. In the faint light from the skylights above, I saw vulnerability in her face, her heart in her time of need sought reassurance that she was loved.

"Oh, my sweet island girl, I love you," I whispered to her.

Acceptance and happiness filled her face, and her hips moved faster beneath me, doing her best to take everything I offered. The frisking of my cock with her sheath made wet noises, and my balls were wet with her juices.

"Oh, Ranji," she moaned. "I love you so much!"

"You belong to me, Cholan! You're mine. Do you hear? Mine!" I pressed firmer along her clit, trying to help her along. Already I felt my balls tightening, the pressure building.

"Oh, goddess!" she gasped. "Take me. Make me yours!" I felt her pussy tighten around my cock.

I wanted to push harder into her center, push until I felt my balls resting on her butt, but instead I rose a little, and made short, rapid strokes into her depths, my crown rubbing insistently along the rough nodule of her cervix.

She moaned deeper. "I want you... please cum in me. Please give it to me!"

My cock swelled, and I felt the pleasure of release. Holding myself still, my cock began spewing hot, thick ropes of semen, coating the entrance to her womb with my seed.

Her arms tightened against me. "Oh, gods, I feel it! So, so good!" She whimpered as her hips bucked beneath me. She pulled me down for a kiss when I felt her sheath begin to pulsate along my length. The kiss forgotten, she arched, grunting as her core convulsed, sending bliss radiating out from her center.

When her senses returned, she insisted on the kiss, and I enjoyed giving it to her. I stayed inside her, enjoying the physical connection we shared. Her heart's need eased, Cholan sighed and smiled as we gave each other small, light kisses.

When I began to slip out, I shifted to lay beside her. After she wiped her leaking sex with the towel, she insisted on sliding down and licking my cock clean. She stayed down there, lavishing attention with her tongue, and I think she hoped for more. But the long emotional day was catching up to me with a vengeance.

"I'm fading here, Cholan," I told her, then yawned. "Come on up and let me hold you in my arms."

She moved back up, curling into the crook of my arm.

"If anyone asks, what do you say?" I asked her, stroking her cheek.

"I fuck just fine." And she gave a contented sigh. "Thank you for loving me."

"I should be thanking you, Cholan. You are a wonderful woman. Brilliant, funny, kind, creative, and a real delight."

"Thank you for saving my sisters, Ranji. If you hadn't brought them here, they would be dead, too."

"They're here and they're safe. You're my island girl. Love your warm beaches... "

I felt Janetta's hand on my hip, and her snuggling up behind me.

I don't remember anything after that. I must have fallen asleep.

I awoke much later, my cock hard again, and somewhere warm and wet. Ah, that was a tongue flicking the underside of my crown. As I came to awareness, I moved my hands, finding and gently stroking her head.

When she released my cock from her loving mouth, she sighed. "I can't decide if I want to give you a blowjob or if I want you inside me again."

"Cholan, I need you to fuck for me. On your belly, ass up."

She giggled. "Yes, sir!"

Cholan did as I told her, hunkering down on the bed, raising her butt up off the bed.

Giving each cheek a slap, she widened her stance to give me better access. I lined up and pushed into the groove between her pouty lips. She was already wet. Horny girl!