Subtle Redundancy

* * *

"So." Weathers brushed crumbs off the front of his tunic. "That leaves just one more item, I think. The hatchery inspection."

The citizens groaned; the periodic inspections of the hatcheries at Plastic Harbor were not usually in demand, even to those who spent every day in the mild claustrophobia of the Wad. Either Erno Taconic or Marianne Fwentes had to go, for the agronomy aspects of the algae farms out there, and of course April 78-F's zoology inventories were the whole point of the visit; apart from them, though, there was always keen competition to find something else to do on the day.

"I know it sucks out there," Weathers went patiently on. Understatement of the week; conditions at Plastic were downright primitive, even after four years of effort. "But there are generators to maintain and sensors to service. And?" He chuckled and glanced at Reille. "Now that Ms Fourbee is a citizen, we're running low on Domestics." They'd always made up the bulk of these inspections, largely because they weren't allowed to say no. Rielle had taken her last trip out there at seventeen, and had sworn never to go back.

But that was then. This was now.

"April and Erno are going, and obviously Janicka and Sergey." Yup. All the rest of the Domestics. "But we need someone to fly the shuttle out there, and probably one other for odd jobs." He glanced around. "I can offer extra pay?"

"How much?" Leonor, the apprentice engineer, had a mother to support back on Klarus III, and she could fly.

"No." Chonn shook her head sharply. "You're at six months, Leonor. No fucking way you're going." She was carrying her first child, probably the last one they'd get out of Mikka. That kind of genetic diversity wasn't something to be gambled with.

Rielle saw her chance, an opportunity to look noble while getting Erno's sperm. "Nonsense," she snapped. "I'll go with her. She'll be fine, and it's only a few days." Bexler looked like she wanted to argue, but instead she just raised her eyebrow. "Besides, she can help me practice flying the shuttle at the same time." A lie; Rielle had no desire to learn to fly. But it couldn't hurt.

Weathers raised an eyebrow. "Eighty shekels?" he suggested. Leonor frowned.

"Eighty-five."

"Done." The commandant moved his finger through the air, stabbing out letters and numbers into the visible ether. Two more names appeared. "One more? Any takers?" He peered around.

"No, captain," Scott shrugged. He'd done plenty of these, too, as a domestic. "There's your two names, Leonor and Rielle."

"They'll be in the shuttle the whole time," Weathers pointed out. "And you can go too, at eighty shekels, just for being such a dumbass." People giggled.

"Maybe he can find another stayback to fuck," tittered Sia, nursing the infant Weathers had just given her. Scott was rumored to have messed around in the backcountry, unregistered.

"Maybe, if the possibilities in the Wad were any good, I wouldn't have to," Scott muttered pointedly back at her. Sia replied with two fingers, but he ignored her; he was still basking in the glow now of being a viable breeder, with Rina's baby doing well enough and April 78-F starting to show.

"Okay, then." Weathers frowned at his list. The station out there had a purpose-built research shack with two bunks, and that was it. The rest of the inspection people usually slept in dome tents, or uncomfortably in the shuttle. " So how many domes, April?"

The clone frowned. "Two should be fine," she shrugged. It didn't matter to her; she slept in the shack, and had often said she'd be more than happy to live there permanently, alone with her hatchery. But she also enjoyed sex, which was difficult with fish. "It's whatever people want to bring, Elon. Uh, but I'd love it if Scott could stay in the station with me," she added, rubbing absently at her belly. Scott twisted again to scowl triumphantly at Sia, and Rielle wondered vaguely how long they'd been fucking.

"Okay." Weathers thought about it, then shrugged. "Scott in the shack, Erno in a tent. Sia? Shuttle or tent?"

"Tent. With a hammock," she said, shuddering at the thought of sleeping in the shuttle.

"Then I'll take the shuttle," Rielle put in quickly, seeing her plan fall neatly into place. She'd be damned if she ended up sleeping in the shuttle, but nobody needed to know that yet.

"Great. And another dome for the kids." Weathers sounded bored already. "That's three domes plus rations, April."

The clone looked back at the commandant as though the man were developmentally delayed. "Why tell me, Elon? Let a Domestic handle all that shit." She shrugged and tossed back her long hair. "Sergey and Janicka. They can do it."

"No they can't," Rielle deadpanned. "They're not eighteen yet." She was pleased when that drew a general laugh, even a smile from April, but Rielle herself took pains not to show any emotion.

She had a reputation to maintain.

* * *

The difficulty, of course, was to make sure Erno would be at the Plant when she needed him to be. The man was an agronomical engineer, which meant he was only in the Plant once a week or so, but she told Juuk she'd come by when she thought Erno would be around. The indent didn't ask why; not that Rielle cared anyway. After all, once she was able to announce to everyone that she had Erno's baby in her belly, all the subterfuge would be academic anyway.

So a late Thursday afternoon found Rielle at an empty desk in the Prototype Room with Juukko Lerman and Rina Sevenpee, her feet propped on the desk while she rubbed her pointy chin, watching through the big floor window for Erno to come into the building. If he did. "So, you guys made this to Juuk's specifications?" she pondered, glancing up at Rina.

"Well, Vivy did most of the developmental work." Rina giggled. All the women at the Plant had taken great interest in Juukko's project. Vivy and Rina were the two design engineers. "I mostly did the materials analysis. There were about fifteen different protos."

"Oh! May I see them?" Rielle made sure she was simpering as she eyed the Plant door through the windows; it should kill five minutes at least, waiting for Rina to go fetch the other prototypes. "For their medical aspects, of course," she winked.

"Oooh!" All three of them giggled, and Rina got up. "Don't you two get yourselves into trouble while I'm gone, now." She was still chuckling as she headed out, leaving Juukko to prop her ass on the desk.

"Five weeks now," she mused, sighing ironically. "Makes sense. I finally design the perfect dildo right around the time I'm allowed to get laid again."

"Mmhmm," Rielle nodded. "Still. 'Perfect dildo' is right." She contemplated the object in both her hands, and even her medical eye could see nothing about it that suggested it was artificial. When she'd taken it in her hand, she'd had to restrain herself from looking at the back to check for leaking blood; it looked as if Juukko and Rina had simply sliced it from a donor. "Who's the model?"

"Well, that's where you come in," Juuk purred. "There really is no model. It's designed to be modular. Adjustable."

Rielle nodded. "But you did the design work?" Juukko nodded. "Wow. That's some talent."

The indent shrugged modestly. "Most of my patternmaking is conceptual stuff from the design engineers. This was a lot more fun."

Rielle looked shrewdly up at Juukko. "Have you fucked yourself yet?"

"Jesus. Twenty or thirty times." She sighed happily. "Sometimes, research and development is very, very pleasant." They were still laughing when Rina came back in with a large briefcase. "Ah. The rest of the protos."

"Excellent." Rielle swept her feet off the desk to make room for the prototypes and leaned forward with clinical interest. "Different materials, or just different shapes?"

"Both." Rina popped the locks. "Feast your eyes."

The case, with neatly fitted baize dividers, was an expanse of cocks of every size, color, and description, but all of them just as lifelike as the one in her hand. "Holy fuck," she blurted, her eyes wide.

"The balls are inflatable, too, for the right kind of dangle," Rina added helpfully.

"Adjustable scrota," Rielle marveled. "Wow."

"I was going to consult with you on a system that'll work with esthers and pheromones. So it smells and tastes like a nice, sweaty cock that's been in the fields all day." Rina hesitated. "I get off on that shit," she admitted.

"There are worse syndromes," Rielle replied calmly. "Of course, I'd be happy to lend my medical expertise, such as it is."

"And maybe a remote control. For a partner-assist feature."

"Fuck, ladies." Rielle shook her head. "You really took the balls and ran with them." She waited for the giggles to stop. "You know what this is? This is an honest-to-god export. This is something the colony can market to other planets." She glanced absently back out the window: no Erno. "That is, if Captain Weathers gives his okay."

"I'm positive I could persuade him." Rina sounded very confident, but that made sense; she was, after all, the Captain's vice-commandant, and she enjoyed an excellent reputation as a bedmate. "Positive."

"Then make sure all three of us get listed on the intergalactic patent," Juukko murmured. She'd clearly never thought of the commercial aspects of this. "I'm going to be a citizen in a few weeks. It'll be nice to have a career as a dildo entrepreneur I could just walk into."

And then Erno came through the door down on the manufacturing floor, and Rielle knew it was time to go to work. She had a good few minutes before he came past their window, and she knew what she wanted him to see. Her voice went flat, clinical. "So. Business opportunities aside, I'm here to ensure the device is medically safe." She smiled up at the others. "Only one way to find out, I'd say." She settled lower in the chair and reached for the hem of her dress.

"No way!" Juukko's hand was already flying toward her mouth, her eyes lighting up. She glanced quickly over at Rina. "Should we give you some privacy, Ms Fourbee?"

"Do I look like I care?" Rielle knew she had a reputation for emotionless, cold deliberation; everyone on the planet knew she and Bexler were both good in a crisis, but Chonn had a warmth about her when she wasn't saving lives, an amiability that made people want to be her friend. Rielle hadn't ever had that problem, and had never felt like pretending. Her coldness was an armor, and she used it now; she thought little of propping her spread legs on the prototyping desk and shoving a plastic cock into her twat, and if these women wanted to watch?

Why not?

"So." The corner of her eye showed Erno making his way toward the print heads; time to make this happen. She threw her legs up high, the dress sliding up her bare thighs. "Show me again how to inflate the balls?"

Rina, with mild distaste warring on her face against perverse fascination, let the fascination win. She leaned down to point to the sensicontrols on the base of the dildo. "Depends on what kind of experience you're looking to emulate. Whose scrotum are you looking for?" She giggled. "Like, Erno's got big balls, Mikka's are smaller and denser."

"Erno," Rielle snapped. Time was wasting. Rina adjusted the device while Rielle shoved down her underwear, leaving them dangling from her left ankle, and there it was: he'd walk past the window soon, and presumably he'd look, and what would he see? A gaunt pair of young legs splayed wide open, the cunt in between getting split by a hyperrealistic plastic cock, her face presumably locked in red-cheeked passion... this couldn't possibly have worked out better for her purposes, Rielle reflected. Hell, the sheer naughtiness was juicing her up already. And the best part? She'd probably even get an orgasm out of the whole thing.

The little servo-pump inside the fake scrotum buzzed a moment. "We'll use a silent motor once we get outside the prototyping," Rina muttered. "Veininess? High or low? Oh, and curvature? Temperature"

"Whatever." Rielle heard the urgency in her voice. "Just give me the damn cock, Rina."

"She's dying here, Ms Sevenpee," Juukko pointed out, and Rina slapped the dildo into Rielle's open palm. Distantly, Rielle heard the phlegm in the indent's voice; poor Juuk. Horny as hell, and completely prohibited from taking a cock. "Give the poor girl some relief."

"Feel free to join in." Rielle heard the clipped eagerness in her own voice and nodded over to the open briefcase. "Take your pick. I'm sure they're all hygienic." She was still listening distantly to Rina's nervous bark of laughter when she used her left hand to pull aside her labia minora, picturing it, the inflammation there, the glistening flesh ready; she felt her own throat constriction and the snot in her nose, and wondered briefly whether she should pull her neck ties so he'd see the flush spreading over her chest, but a quick glance between her legs showed Erno approaching through the window, in an animated discussion with Lance the small-dicked indent, and there was no time.

The head felt so real, nudging along her slit, starting up high like she liked: a quick, insistent pressure against the clit, to send that first jolt zapping along her nerves, before she sank the cock down, sliding it inside herself with that now-familiar soupy glopping sound. It entered perfectly, beautifully, feeling like paradise. "Fuck," she heard herself sigh, and when she opened her eyes she saw the women staring wide-eyed at her. She swallowed thickly. "Um. Medical evaluation in progress," she managed, and Rina's brittle laughter gave way to the looming shape of Erno and Lance approaching.

Why wait?

Rielle felt her body responding, almost sucking the cock into herself. She couldn't remember being so turned on. The clinical part of her brain, the part that never ever switched off, kept up its relentless catalog: clitoral withdrawal. Skene's gland hyperactive. Muscular tension increasing, with greatest pronunciation at the pubococcygeus, and accompanying vaginal clamping.

Fuck. He was right there now, passing the window.

She saw Erno's eyes widening to match Rina's and Juuk's, her own eyelids fluttering; she wondered vaguely what her face looked like. Her wrist flexed rhythmically, driving the dildo in, out, in, out.

Involuntary vocalizations. Throat spasm. Continued muscular tension.

Her left hand clamped powerfully onto the edge of the desk, next to her foot. Somewhere there were squeaks, from her own throat or the overtaxed chair; it didn't matter. Dimly, the voice of a hushed Juukko: "Shit! Did you activate the fake semen reservoir?"

"I don't... I don't remember." Rina sounded startled, and Rielle tried to scream out at them: fake semen? Who the fuck cares? This feels so fucking tremendous already! But her voice failed her, sliding into a series of dull grunts as the two men outside watched, blinked, and then shuffled on, leaving her alone in a warm-water haze as she came.

Hard.

The chair clattered to the tile floor as Rielle lost her balance, her legs spastic, pushing too hard against the prototyping desk. She didn't really feel her head smacking the floor, but she didn't care either; she stayed right where she was, reaming herself with her legs flailing, wondering vaguely how bad the contusion would be on the back of her head, and when she surrendered to oblivion a few seconds later it wasn't the fall. It was the dopamine hit from her cum.

"Umm." She was still shaking a few moments later, looking up at Rina's concerned frown, the fake penis still wedged against her cervix. She swallowed in a mucus-filled throat. "Uh, yeah. It works."

* * *

"Hey! You're fucking up again with the directional vanes, Rielle!" Leonor was proving to be one of those women who lost her emotional stability during mid-stage pregnancy. She'd always been very even-keeled when they'd been Domestics together. "With hands and a brain like yours? Why can't you get this?"

"I know," Rielle admitted bitterly. "It shouldn't be this hard."

"Again," Leonor intoned, "never maneuver with clobbets inside the Blue Point. This isn't hard."

"Fuck off." Rielle gnawed at her lower lip, fighting the controls as the shuttle lurched along. The thruster lights blinked up at her in mute accusation. "So. Thrusters, right?"

"Thrusters. Right," Leonor mocked, shifting her weight again in the pilot's seat. "I've got to pee. Can you cope? Or do I have to sit here and piss my pants?"

"Don't be a bitch." Rielle squinted out into the rain. "I know gestation sucks, but deal with it." She swallowed. "Don't make me regret I came along to take care of your pregnant ass." The shuttle wavered, the landscape ahead blurring momentarily, and then Rielle steadied it. "Go. Pee. I probably won't crash."

"Sure." Rolling her eyes, Leonor waddled back toward the crew area. Rielle frowned as she watched her go, wondering what pregnancy would do to her own body if Dr Bexler couldn't get the lesmerase to behave in the fucking bisches. Leonor Raantta had been a knockout a couple years ago, when she'd gotten her citizenship; Rielle remembered secret discussions between Chonn and Captain Weathers, conversations about which of the men should be encouraged to breed with her. Her genes were considered optimal in many ways. Mikhail had won that particular lottery, in spite of the fact she'd never liked him. And now?

Now she was massive and bloated, and losing control of her bladder. Rielle shuddered. Sure, the gene studies all suggested good rebound from Leonor, with a short refractory period before she could handle a second pregnancy, but who could really tell?

She frowned as the warning board chirped at her. Better avoid crashing. She zoned out after that, focusing, as the planet unrolled through the windows. It was so easy to see how fragile the colony still was: nearly six years now, and it was still plain to see where the terraforming stopped and the natural landscape started, even though Weathers and Sevenpee were very satisfied with the way the infilling was going.

Plastic Harbor loomed through the rain about an hour later, Leonor biting her lip as she squinted out. "Fuck, Rielle. Look at that reef growth." She blinked and wiped at the condensation on the windscreen. "Remember when we were kids? It was like a stub, sticking out into the bay. Now?"

"Now? There's an actual harbor." She smiled despite herself, remembering the taste of the smoked purgeon on those rambunctious trips back then. "They planned the reef well."

"Hey." It was Erno from behind them, leaning down to stick his head through to the flight deck. "Do me a favor and do a slow circle over the reef? It's the easiest way to check its growth."

"Okay." Leonor shrugged and reached around her belly to take the controls. "I've got it, Rielle." The apprentice surgeon sighed, her hands aching from their long grip on the control sticks, and stretched her arms high toward the ceiling. She leaned her head over the seatback, her whole body arched and feline, and stared upside-down at Erno.

"Gonna check from up here?" she asked innocently. "I'm happy to move so you can get a better view."

"Oh." She was gratified when his eyes flickered down along her stretched neck, toward her neckline, so she stayed still to let him look. "No, thanks. There's a reticle mark I use on the rear viewport. I'll, uh, just need one widdershins circle. About a kilometer's radius."

"Cool." Erno ducked back out of sight, and the engines rose briefly as Leonor gave them more power. She spared a glance toward Rielle as she finished her stretch. "Your nipples are obvious, Rielle."

"Relax." Rielle sniffed as she settled back into the seat. "You were eighteen once, and non-gestational. Sexual arousal happens involuntarily sometimes, Leonor."