Wild Space Pt. 03

Lex's lower lip thrust out, a girlish gesture. For a moment, Xandra thought she was going to pout and scream, as she always did, but instead her lover rushed to embrace her, nearly crawling into the pilot seat. The smaller woman was crying. Despite herself and her resolve, Xandra felt herself beginning to well up right along with her.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Lex said before breathing deeply and recovering. "It is not seemly for me to cry."

"It may not be becoming of a noblewoman, but it's perfectly normal for a person," Xandra said lightly.

"We're really on our own now, aren't we? No more..."

"No more any of it." The serving woman confirmed. "It is what he always wanted. What we said we would always do."

"But I didn't think it would happen this way."

"Nor I." Xandra said, and she ended their embrace. "We can save the hugs and tears for when we're relaxing on a sandy beach."

"But Azura is nothing but sandy beaches," Lex said with a tearful, sniffly laugh.

"Then the mountains." Xandra replied solemnly and lovingly. "But first things first. We need to get this old girl moving."

*****************

Marik had the rifle, and he had seen how well the big foreign woman fought. Accordingly, he had Phillias walk a full six paces ahead of him. She stumbled a lot over the sand, but whether that was fatigue or an attempt at trickery he couldn't say. Either way, he kept the rifle ready in his arms.

"Where are we going?" She asked once.

"Let you know when we get there," He told her lightly, hoping that would be the end of it.

"That's not good enough. You're a local, aren't you?"

"Stop." Marik said in a loud and clear voice. "Turn around and face me."

The redhead did as she was ordered. Frankly, Marik was grateful she'd decided to back sass him. After hours and hours of walking tiny paints were shooting up from his heels and ankles and calves, and his breathing had grown ragged. Even though he was accustomed to the sand, the climate, Marik felt weak after so much exertion, barely able to hold the rifle, much less bring it to bear on her.

In contrast, the big foreign woman didn't seem winded at all. Her bare feet had to be taking a beating, but if she was in any kind of pain her hard, expressionless face didn't show it. The sun was rising behind her and highlighted her body and flaming mahogany hair. If anything, Phillias looked as if she could walk another day and night. At least.

"You know who I am, and I know who you are." Marik said, and shrugged the rifle up a bit, as if he half knew how to use it.

She didn't say anything. In fact, she hadn't said much of anything at all since he had ordered her to march, except just now. He had found her silence unsettling, but his plan wasn't to make conversation, anyway.

"What is your plan?" She demanded.

He started a bit. Had she read his thoughts? Marik shook his long blond hair out of his face and shook his head. He had been awake for too long, walked too far in the dark.

"We have to get to the sea, it's the only safe place," He told her. "The spaceport is going to be swimming with them."

"There isn't a spaceport on this pisshole world," She told him, but then shrugged, showing more emotion than she had in hours. "You're not wrong, though. How long until we get there?"

"There's no telling," Marik said in a tired voice. "No more than another night and change, though. The ocean isn't ever far here."

"Sun is coming up." Phillias said, half turning to take in the spectacular sunrise. "We can't walk during the day."

She was right. Marik hadn't even considered that. He leaned against a palm tree, blowing out a gust of breath.

"You're not giving the orders here," He managed to get out.

"You haven't had any water in hours and neither have I." She told him. "We'll be shot or captured during the day or we'll drop dead in the sun. We need to rest."

"There's a copse of trees ahead," Marik said. "There'll be water and tsara in it."

"How do you know that?"

"It's one of our sacred places, for fighting. They always have extra water and tsara for the ceremonies. Now move it on out, lady." Having rested slightly and feeling emboldened by the prospect of a drink, he stood up straight and gestured at her with the rifle. "Let's go."

The copse did have a jug of tsara and cooled water buried under six inches of sand, but it also had a net full of someone's catch, hastily left. He didn't want to think about why this particular catch had been abandoned. Experimentally, Marik knelt and sifted through the contents of the net. Crabs. They were lucky.

"Make us a fire," He told her.

"They'll be able to see the smoke," Phillias said, but she was already kneeling herself and preparing a spot in the sand.

"It's either that or starve. No, dig a hole. We're going to bury them."

"Bury them? Why?"

"I'm a local, like you said. Trust me."

After the fire was roaring over the buried crabs, using the rifle, Marik arranged the palm fronds so most of the smoke couldn't escape above them, calling down scavengers or enemies. Some of it was bound to, however, but with all of the fires started by the Capital troopers around them Marik hoped it would go unnoticed. He sat by the fire, rifle close by.

"You need to sleep." The redhead said.

"I have to tend the fire." He told her, and narrowed his eyes. "You aren't getting me to fall asleep so you can bash my head in with a rock."

"Don't be a typical ass of a male," Phillias snapped back at him. "The fire is going to go out, it's what's cooking the crabs underneath them. As far as killing you, I won't say I'm not tempted. But we are in the same boat together, don't you see? I can't leave here anymore than you can. The fact that I'm the servant of a powerful lord means nothing them."

"Nice people you work for," Marik said thinly, and smiled. "You might be right, but I'm staying up a bit yet."

"It's too hot to sleep anyway." She poked at fire with a stick.

"This isn't hot," He told her. "But I guess growing up on Big V-"

"I didn't grow up there," The hatchet maid interrupted him. "I was taken into Ehren's service, if you want to call what happened to me 'being taken in', as he does, at 6 years old."

"Lex talked a little about him," Marik said. "He's our age, maybe a bit older. He couldn't have taken you in at six years old."

"His family, the Manvi family. I was a kitchen servant at first. I was scared, naturally, and defiant. They beat me a half dozen times for running off." Her soft lips twisted into a smile at the memory. "The seventh time, I had just turned 18. I dislocated my own thumb before they restrained me, and slipped out of the bonds."

The fire was throwing out a lot of heat, and with the story Marik found himself drowsy. He nodded off and shook his head briskly to clear it. "And then?"

"I beat the piss out of the other servant that Ehren used as an enforcer, and took his job."

"How'd you beat him?" He wanted to know in a moment of morbid curiosity.

"A hatchet," She said. "I hit him with the flat of it. And from that day to this they called me the hatchet maid."

Marik peered closer at her. The woman hadn't misspoken. She had beaten up a man who was probably larger and definitely more experienced and meaner than she at only 18. He was glad he still had the rifle.

She mistook his pensiveness for disgust or disquiet. She emphatically poked at the fire, stirring it up so it hissed sparks and smokes at him.

"It's a job, and I happen to be good at it and I like it. It's no different than your friend Abaro, what you do to a different woman in every port, or what every human does to the natives here on this wretched planet."

"You don't know a damn thing about me," He said angrily, the emotion chasing away some of his tiredness. "Or any of us. I was born and raised here, lady. Don't talk about things you don't understand."

"I understand perfectly," Phillias said, bulling right over him. "I've been here for nearly a week. Your barfly friend beats up on poor fishmongers and takes silver from their families. You run through more women than I've seen any two men do in my entire life. And every single human on this world, even with this poor and mean existence, is better off than the natives you displaced and slaughtered. So don't tell me about not understanding. You're doing what you have to do to survive, and so am I."

It was quite a speech for her, but all so short sighted and narrow minded that the unfairness of it all made him choke with rage.

"Abaro is dead, thanks to your soldiers. Don't talk of him."

"You killed him more than I. I wasn't the one who kidnapped two noblewomen."

He opened his mouth to reply, took in some breath, but stopped himself. She was an offworlder and had no conception of life on his world. No one from any of the Capital Systems did. Phillias, Marik suddenly knew, was not worth the time it would take to correct her.

"I'm going to sleep," He told her, and hastily felt the need to add. "But because I want to, not because you told me to."

"Great," She said. "I'll try to avoid bashing you with a rock."

"I'm sleeping on the rifle, so don't try to take it away from me," Marik shot back.

"I could kill you with my thighs, I don't need a rifle or a rock."

"I don't want to be between your thighs to be killed or for any other reason!" Lack of sleep was slowing down Marik's brain, making him short tempered and slow witted. Even his own insult sounded lame to his ears. Before she could reply, he turned over in the sand on the rifle and closed his eyes.

Marik heard a snort and resolved again to ignore it. He was exhausted. A long night of watching her for any sign of treachery and marching across the sand while carrying the heavy, unfamiliar rifle. But he was still jacked up on adrenaline, the fear and the aggression of bandying words with Phillias and the constant prospect of a fight. His mind was racing, no matter how hard he closed his eyes. He also found himself straining his ears, the better to hear Phillias if she tried to creep away. With a sigh, he laid on his back, and wound the sling of the rifle all the way up his arm. If she tried to take it he'd be ready.

As he settled back into the sand, he became aware of a sudden absence of an ambient sound he had been hearing. Warily, Marik opened his eyes to the tiniest slit and glanced over at Philias.

It was easy to make out in the weak early light, even under the shade as they were. The big boned redhead was lying on her back, with her hand busy between her legs. She had flipped up the front of her traditional dress and taken the top of it down to expose her breasts. Her nipples were large and very pink. She was barely able to encircle one with the two fingers of her free hand. The sound that he had been missing was the persistent wet noises coming from so close by and her soft, quickening breath.

He reflexively shut his eyes. Phillias was incredible. A long night of walking through a warzone and she was still horny. Or perhaps she was unable to sleep, just as he was. He tried to focus on the sound of the wind through the trees around him, but it was difficult. The sea was far away. Try as he might, the soft sounds of her taking her pleasure was ringing in his ears. Unbidden, Marik felt his member begin to stir. He scooched a bit in the sand, relishing the sensation of the rough cotton pants against his hard on.

After a few minutes of wriggling, he realized that he was following the steady rhythm of her own breathing. It was on his lips to yell at her to stop, to embarrass her, but he didn't. When he peeked against, he noticed her head abruptly swiveling to the sky. She'd been looking at him, but whether it was out of arousal or something else he couldn't be sure.

Marik resolved to give her something to look at. Working quickly, he slid his pants down to his thighs, and almost gasped when he truly felt how hard he was. With a practiced grip, he took himself in hand and tightened his fist.

She was watching him, having been alerted by his movements. Phillias didn't smile or wink or speak. Instead, she studied his body and resumed masturbating. Silently, her eyes urged him.

Blood was pounding in his ears like the roar of the waves as he pumped his cock. His own breathing deepened and fell into sync with hers. As they drank in the sight of one another, both of their movements became more frantic, less deliberate and teasing. Phillias was cupping her breasts and pinching the sensitive nipple as her hand roughly raked over her swollen clit.

Marik was always one to recover quickly, not last forever, but even for him his climax came quickly. He was jerking his cock so hard that an initial gob of pre-cum was flung from the head. A moment later he felt the orgasm beginning with a tightening of the muscles of the pelvis around his member, followed by his asshole. A wave of pleasure ricocheted from his crotch and thighs up to his head, a sudden explosion of endorphins that numbed his mind and made him cry out and arch his back. He heard rather than felt the load shoot, too large an amount of fluid for the lips of his penis soundlessly, nearly drowned out by a prolonged grunt of pleasure. A few more pumps and it was finally done, laying on his chest in a haphazard puddle.

Phillias had not been far behind him, and as she saw him reach his climax her own was triggered. Her body shuddered in the morning air, and she drew her legs to her body as far up as they would go, the better to expose her sex. A low sound of need was escaping her throat, finally ending in a low pitched expulsion of breath and sound. She shuddered as she drew her fingers away from her throbbing pussy, now too sensitive to touch.

Both of them caught their breath and opened their eyes to see the other. Now suddenly shy, each twisted away, kicking up a tiny bit of sand as they did so, and going to sleep without a word.

****************

"Are you ready?" Lex asked the other woman.

"Considering neither of us has piloted anything larger than a dessert cart, no, I'm not ready." Xandra said.

"You said you'd figured it out," The tiny noblewoman said in a panicked tone.

"I did, just a joke." Xandra replied stolidly. She always had to be strong for Lex, who was in so many ways a spoiled girl. Xandra had puzzled through how to fly the Queen Bee, but it was vastly different than piloting a smaller vehicle as she sometimes did as a servant. She saw no reason to impart this information to her lover and best friend. She had enough to solve in the next few hours besides calming down a hysterical Lady Lex.

"Right," The smaller woman said. "Then...let's go. Should I do anything?"

"Leave it all to me," The serving woman replied in what she hoped was a determined tone, but in truth she was frightened as well. On Valantier, vessels had extensive automation. The Queen Bee was another type of bug entirely. Hesitantly, Xandra took up the control yoke.

She felt the skin of her hands suffse onto the crackers leather of the freighter's dash. A tense moment passed, then a few more, until the time seemed to stretch until Lex made it snap.

"What are you waiting for? Get us out of here!" She said with a touch of her old attitude.

"Alright! Keep your skirts on." Xandra ran through the mental checklist one last time, and could find nothing more to do. She placed her finger on the marble on the dash labeled 'cold accelerated startup.'

For what seemed like an eternity neither woman moved. Finally, as slowly as humanly possible, Xandra pressed the marble.

The Queen Bee gave a mighty shudder and seemed to rock on its landing struts. Panicked, Lex clutched her friend's arm with one hand and the console with the other, but soon the freighter was lifting off from the sand smoothly.

"We're off!" Lex said excitedly.

For what felt like the first time in weeks, Xandra did not feel afraid or angry. She felt good, even exhilitared. Lex was right, they were finally going to escape from all of this. She felt as if a weight had been lifted from her chest, and tears dotted the corner of her eyes before she quite realized she had been crying. She clutched Lex to her in a brief embrace.

"We did it," The serving woman said, eyes closed tight. "We're going home."

***********************

They awoke when the sun was just dipping below the horizon, the last of its light gasping out over the dunes in a gorgeous display of red, orange and pink, all of it streaking across the sky silently and dappling them as they broke camp. Neither Phillias or Marik spoke, not a word about the afternoon prior, when they had done what they had done in front of one another. He felt himself silently resenting her that they didn't. What had taken place?

He used the rifle butt to knock down two prime coconuts, silently thanking the slain soldier for wielding the longer model and not a typical Navy carbine, like he'd seen on the docks of Valantier. Knocking coconuts out of a tree with rocks was a pain.

"Can't we dig for water?" Phillias asked him. "There were ditches by the docks for fresh water."

"The only big underground streams are near town. Out here, there's no telling. You don't want to spend a few hours digging holes in the sand in the hot sun and not hit water. Here, pick up that coconut."

She did. "What now, bash it over a rock?"

"No," Marik laughed. "That's not the solution to everything on Azura."

He found a shoot of bamboo the size he wanted and took up his fishing knife, an old slender piece of steel with an old fashioned bone hilt. He sawed at the wood.

"What are you doing?"

"Bamboo is sharp and light and strong. See how deep this stalk is in the sand?" He asked her, and leaned harder into his task. The stalk was already giving way under his steady sawing. "We're going to use it to crack open the coconuts."

"Why not just use your knife?" She moved closer to see.

"That'd work for us once, maybe twice, but coconuts are so strong it'd wreck the blade or tear it out of the hilt. Almost done."

When the bamboo was cut, it was expertly done, so the stalk now resembled a sharpened spear. With a few shoves, Marik barely managed to crack open the top of the coconut, revealing its sweet white meat and milk within. When he held out his hand for the one Phillias carried, she stepped up next to him instead. Before he could speak, the big woman raised the coconut above her head and smashed it down onto the razor sharp bamboo, slicing it it cleanly at the top, like a drinking container.

"That's the best I've seen," Marik told her, slightly disquieted. She was very strong, definitely stronger than him.

"You'll make a fisherman out of me yet," She told him lightly, and they drank from the coconut.

"Since you seem so keen and interested, maybe you'd to help us erase our tracks."

"Our tracks?"

"You're good at beating confessions out of people, but you wouldn't survive a minute out here in the sands," Marik said in the same light tone she had just used. "We're going to tie a long branch and a frilly palm frond to your dress, if we can. Drag it behind us as we walk single file. It'll--"

"Scatter the footprints in the sand. I get it," Phillias said with a hint of her former attitude. "But why?"

"Closer to town didn't matter, there were footprints everywhere. But out here...this is the fringes of human civilization on Azura. Here we can be tracked, and not just by the Capital soldiers. The fish men are out here, too." He was rooting around in the scrub, pulling at branches.

"I'm used to aliens." She said indignantly.

"Not like this you aren't. Now come here, and turn around."

Marik noticed that her skin was very smooth and very pale. The dress was clinging to her, molded against her form from the travails of the last day and the heat. He tried to focus on the straps of the dress as he tied the long branch to her. He stepped back from her immediately when it was done.