To Walk the Constellations Pt. 03

This kiss, though?

It was like comparing a glow-globe to the sun. Not the cloud shrouded sun from Stumble's surface. It was the sun as a sundiver flew at it, dart-like and fearless. My eyes shuddered shut and I focused on the raw tactility of Thale's hands on me, his weight. His maleness. His...oh gods...my eyes fluttered opened as he drew back, panting heavily.

"Venn," he whispered.

"I-I've never..." I gulped, then looked aside.

Thale's eyes widened. "Y-You're a..."

"Yeah..." My voice was ragged. "Be..."

"Gentle?" Thale murmured.

My cheeks burned. "Be glorious" I whispered. In the stories, when the knight-maiden got under the princeling, Rhales always said they asked for gentleness. And I could see why. I'd want gentle. Caresses and cuddles. Kisses on the forehead and the throat. Nibbling, but no biting. But...there was something meekly retiring about that word. Gentleness. Like that was all a woman could hope for -- a male who didn't simply do the worst. Settling, that was it. I didn't want to settle. I wanted perfection.

Thale's breath caught. He was looking at me like he'd never seen me before. Good. He tossed his sword away. Hard. It hit the wall and the hilt stuck there with a hiss. Thale knelt back, looking down at me, his fingers actually fumbling as he tugged his tunic open. He looked...shy. Blushing. "I..." He tossed the tunic away, revealing his paleness. His scars. His muscle. He licked his lips. He never finished his sentence. But he didn't need to. His tail had stilled, and I could see the effort of will it was taking to keep it rooted.

My hands reached outwards. I set them on his hips, stroking slowly. My voice was soft. "You're...beautiful."

His cheeks burned. His face twisted into a snarl and he actually stood up. He walked away from me, his tail lashing. I blinked. My sex throbbed, almost aching with frustration. I scrambled to my feet, hurrying as Thale walked away from me. I grabbed his hand, jerked him back. "Thale!" I hissed. "What the fuck?"

He glared at me. "I'm not," he hissed at me. "I'm a mutant."

I grabbed his other hand, then jerked him close. My nose pressed to his neck and I growled. "That's what the Hegemony says. And fuck them." My hands slid along his wrists to his shoulders to his back and Thale blinked, slightly, his ears perked up. But I didn't give him a chance to argue. I leaned in and this time I kissed him. Fierce. Desperately. My body pressed to him and his hands, striken, hung at my sides. His tail twitched and his tongue pressed to mine, his ears pinning back in excitement. His hands slipped under my tunic. Up. Found my breasts. Squeezed.

Jesus.

My body shuddered and my mouth jerked back, leaving a thin line of spittle between us. I gasped in. "T-Thale!" I hissed, then gasped as his fingers gently tweaked my nipples. I had played with myself before. But. Jesus. Gods. All the saints. I had no idea it could be so-

Thale dropped one hand, this one shoving past my belt, under my shorts. His fingers slipped between my sex and I felt the blunt tips of his fingers sliding into me. Spreading me. He crooked his finger and growled as he pressed his lips to my neck. He fondled one of my breasts and rubbed at a place deep inside of me, and my mouth hung open slack as he left behind throbbing marks on my neck, purr-growling against me. Fierce.

Hungry.

So very hungry.

My clothing started to slide off me. Pushed and tugged, when Thale wasn't fondling me. My skin burned in the cool breeze of the temple. And by now, the intense feelings that were rocking through me had gotten less intense. Enough for me to move my hands, at least. I jerked and tugged at Thale's tunic, at his belt. He lost his grip on me and my knees thumped to the ground. I wanted to explore his every pore. To kiss every scar. But instead, I found my mouth pressed right up against the side of his groin and...

"Holy fuck," I rasped, looking at the length of his cock. He was so hard. So eager. And so intimidatingly big. My palm cupped the base of his cock, lifting him up slightly. My nose flared and his musk buzzed into my nostrils. My eyes went hooded and I looked up the flat plane of his belly, up into his eyes. My mouth pressed to the side of his cock. I licked him. Nuzzled him. Teased him. The tip of his cock glistened with pre-cum and I knew I wanted him in my mouth. I wanted him in there more than I'd wanted anything in the fucking world. Thale shivered and he whispered.

"Venn..."

My hand closed around his cock. My fingers barely met my palms.

I lifted him up and kissed the base of his cock, tasting the salt. The maleness. My hand started to pump his shaft. Then I leaned my head back, having to bend my spine a bit so I could get my lips against his tip. The intense salt of his pre-cum was shocking here. The contrast between the salt of his sweat and here was...mmm...my eyes closed and I focused only on the gentle ache of my jaw as I opened my mouth and slipped my head forward just a bit more. My tongue feathered around the head of his cock as my hand started to pump his cock faster and faster. I bobbed my head, sucking and moaning as I opened my eyes, looking lovingly up at Thale.

His hands were clenched.

Blood dripped from around his fingers. When his hands opened, I saw tiny, silvery claws had burst from his fingertips.

I drew my mouth back. "T-Thale!" I hissed.

"Don't. Fucking. Stop!" He gasped, his face slack. His palms planted against one of the pillars nearby, leaning against it, supporting himself there as I took his cock back in my mouth. My hand worked him faster and faster as my own sex got wetter and wetter. It...was it kind of fucked up to want those claws to mark me? Cause I did. I wanted his claws to dig into my back as he clung to me and slammed into me again and again and again. I wanted the scars like I wanted tattoos. Marks of pride. Reminders of being. My mouth slurped further down his cock and I pushed myself, feeling the head bumping against my throat. I choked slightly. Thale's breath came faster and faster and faster, and I could feel the throbbing rush of his heart, drumming against my palm as I drew back, just enough to stop choking. And sucked. And felt the cresting moment.

Felt it in the purring vibration that was buzzing through his body. Felt it in the insistent push of his cock. Felt it in the spurt along the roof of my mouth. But it was the hearing it that drove me wild. "Vennnnnnnnn!" He growled, and then there was nothing to focus on but the feeling of his cum, splashing down my throat spurting into my mouth. I drank and drank and drank, desperately. I tried to keep up -- tried to swallow it. But there was simply too much.

Too...

I came.

A MITE SINGED

I came too -- the slurping feeling of non-Newtonian liquid slithering past me. My eyes were muzzy and my head ached. The liquid slid away. The tube disconnected and I...

Gross stuff happened!

The door hissed open and I saw Techne looking in at me, holding my clothes in her hands. She beamed at me while, in the background, a wailing screaming noise filled the bridge. I took the clothes and started to stumble into them -- moving like I was ninety one orbits old, not nineteen. My bones ached. My joints ached. My muscles ached. My spine ached. My everything ached. As I groaned into my clothes, Techne grinned at me. "Did you enjoy your first jackhammer?"

"No..." I groaned. Yes yes yes, my brain thought, remembering Thale's taste.

Techne grinned. "So, uh...here." She held out a small canister -- bright red, with a nozzle on the top. "The ventral engineering partition is on fire. Get to that."

"What?" I blinked -- and I saw that Mal and Rossk were both at work. Rossk was hacking open a chunk of the wall to get at smoking guts and sparking tech. The floor was scorched, and the air smelled rich with smoke.

"We did run through three stars in a row," Techne said. "Come on!"

So.

That was fun. The next two days -- yes two days -- were spent frantically fixing everything our trip through the sun had broken. Along the way, I got a crash course on how we survived. The ship had massive arrays of electromagnets, which pushed charged particles away from the ship. That helped for the approach, but the actual dive required thick sheeting of ice armor, which boiled off at a furious pace. Once the ice armor was gone, the hull plating itself started to soak up the heat. The ice armor, at the end of the day, was barely a patch on the hull. But the hull couldn't take a jackhammer jump -- not again and again and again.

The ice bought it time.

But things still got shredded close, and every time the crew emerged from their acceleration tanks and their electronic slumber, they came out to a ship with fires, sheering, gravitic crush-sites, and worse. Fixing shit up got a lot easier, though, once I figured out a neat trick: My threshold blade could extrude sealing and scrapper jell. I just had to picture it and the hilt would start beading and bubbling up the required mojo.

Fortunately, those two days gave Mal time enough to swing our ship around and head for the inhabited planet.

Masque Macabre.

PLANET NINE HUNDRED NINETY SIX: MASQUE MACABRE

I'd had no idea what a planet would look like. Techne showed me the smeary, brownish ball of grit that was Stumble, and I kind of thought that the next planet I went to would be at least similar, right? Sphere shaped. Smeary. Maybe blue instead of brown, though? Wrong. Masque Macabre looked like a gemstone of pure white plastic, shining and glittering in the light of a pale blue star. It looked like someone had started painting from the northern and southern poles, drawing huge sheets of white up towards the equator, reaching towards a thin line of blue and green and brown, which clustered there, like a colorful belt. Hanging above the planet like a vast curtain was a glittering swath of starry-blackness. It rippled ever so faintly in place, like a living creature, and under the shadow cast by it, I could see a starry glow. Like the planet itself had broken out in a billion fires. As a final decoration, the planet had several needle thin threads that emerged from the equators, ending in small specs that glowed with a brilliance that made my eyes smart.

"What is that?" I whispered, looking at the rippling shroud.

-orbital solar shade-

I shook my head and rubbed my temple as Mal said, his voice jovial: "Orbital solar shade. It provides power for that entire megacity and keeps the inhabitants safe."

I eyed the sun skeptically. "Is this sun...evil?"

"No, but whoever built Em n' Em is," Techne said, shaking her head as she put her hands on her hips. "Before the Domain fell, the whole planet was hit with a nanophage that reformatted the genetic sequence of every baseline human on the planet." She started to tick off symptoms. "Polymorphic necrosis, aimaphage dietary requirements, clinical immortality without any sanity insurance or memory checksums..." She shook her head. "Nasty business."

My brow furrowed. "What does that all mean?"

"They burn to ash when exposed to sunlight," Rossk grunted. "They drink blood to survive and live long enough to go absolutely insane."

I shuddered. "Is that why the place is called Masque Macabre? Cause...that sounds fucked up."

"Oh, no," Techne said. "The name comes from something else..." She turned to face me. "We're going to be taking the shuttle down to sell our tech, buy supplies, reice, and make contact with the Alliance. We have to tell them the good news and find out what it is we're going to be doing with you." She flashed me a grin. "But Em 'n Em is a bit dangerous if you don't know the traditions and cultures. So, stick. By. My. Side." She tapped her hip. "Got it?"

"Got it," I said.

LANDING

Arriving on Masque Macabre had been wonders on top of wonders. We'd gotten onto the Tiamat's shuttle and dropped out of the bottom of the vast sundiver, and Techne and Rossk and Mal had basically forced me to sit up in the cockpit and look out through the window as we streaked through the atmosphere. They pointed out the vast space elevator, which was set on a huge equatorial island that rose out of a glittering, pure blue ocean like the finger of some terrifying god. Then we were flying over beaches of glittering white sand and things that Techne identified as 'trees.'

Trees. Forests of them. Huge, seemingly infinite forests that clung to craggy mountains and spread across steep valleys. The whole place felt desolate and beautiful in a way Stumble had never been. Then the artificial night of the orbital shroud. Then the mile high blue-white wall of the polar glacier. According to Mal, the glacier had been creeping towards the equator over thousands of years, and it wouldn't retreat ever. Not after the solar shade had gone up. If anything, the glacier would just get worse.

Then the shuttle cleared the glacier proper and there was the megacity of Masque Macabre.

Skyscrapers of brooding black and gray concrete. Huge walkways that thronged with people, lit by glowing lamps held by statues of winged angels and skull-faced figures in robes. Leering gargoyles, perched on flying buttresses that smoothly transitioned into walls of sleek glass and glittering obsidian. Skycars that whirred as they cut through traffic lanes that were marked in the sky by hovering stakes. The cars had an almost coffin shape to them -- or maybe that was just my imagination. And through it all, the searing bright colors of neon and the somber blackness of a true, infinite night. Overhead, the solar shade's rippling, starry surface looked like an undulating, infinite ocean.

Our shuttle set down in a huge space port that was situated near the middle of the city. The gangplank touched down and I stepped off, breathing in air so crisp and cool it felt like my lungs were burning.

I noticed, then. My body felt light and loose. Even the weight of my threshold blade was lighter. Laughter bubbled as I breathed out -- and saw a thick fog. My own breath was turning to fog! I laughed. "That's amazing!" I looked back at the rest of the Tiamat crew coming down. "Come on! Lets check this place out!"

"Venn!" Techne said. "Stay by my side!"

I flushed and followed after her. But it was so hard. We walked past crews of other sundivers, getting off their shuttles, stretching their legs. Some were in thick jackets. Some wore almost nothing. They were of every breed and kind of human being. But there were no locals around -- just an omnipresent feeling of being watched. Techne and I split off from Mal and Rossk, with Techne leading me out of the spaceport and into a walkway that zipped between two huge buildings. The walkway actually moved under our feet -- whirring us along faster than our feet could.

That let me lean against the railing and boggle at the city below and above us. There were other walkways. They had people on them -- distant people. But something was wrong with their faces. It was only once we got off the walkway and onto a broad street that was suspended on a series of towering statutes of pained looking angels that I got a close look at some locals: They were all, uniformly, tall and astoundingly dressed. I didn't eve have words for how beautiful they were. Glittering gowns, flowing capes, shimmering tiaras, all on bodies as graceful and predatory as big hunting exigenic cats. But they all wore masks.

Some masks were simple masks that covered the eyes.

Some were ornate and feathered, with long beaks.

Some were grotesque and covered the entire face, even the mouth.

Others were mirrored smooth and looked more like glasses. All of them were unique, in one way or another. I gaped as I walked by -- trying to keep close to Techne. But as I looked at a tall, willowy woman wearing a mask of stripes and fur, there was a sudden swell in walkers sliding by. I staggered as an elbow brushed mine -- one that was as cold as ice. I stumbled and came to my feet. "Techne?" I called out. But she was gone -- lost in the crowd.

A paranoia shot along my spine. That wasn't right. No way Techne would just walk off. Not unless-

I remembered the way that my powers had clouded the cameras and optics of the Hegemony shocktroopers. I stepped backwards, swinging around, looking for the source. Who had blinded Techne? Who was trying to separate us? My hand dropped to my threshold blade.

Something dark and rough slammed down over my head.

I couldn't even scream as I was dragged into darkness -- then down. Down.

Into sleep.