Wild Space Pt. 04

That left them short on supplies and by virtue of being the only one of them who could move up and down a mountain easily Sita found herself appointed the designated shopper. Edge had given her detailed instructions on how to get into the Osprey, what to grab, and where. It had taken Sita barely a half hour to extract everything they could use and still keep the gunboat in working order. The Ranger was blown away by just how the other woman recalled the location of every weapon, every medical pak, all the food and water. It was as if she was seeing the Osprey's layout in real time.

"We were trained to pull up visuals and retain them for a lifetime," Edge said one day over a bland but filling meal of emergency rations. They now had stacks and stacks of the things.

"Like a blueprint?" Sita asked her.

"You made your method individual to you so you could remember. And do it quickly and for good." Edge replied, eyes wandering. "Me, I just lose focus and I'm there."

Sita knew what she meant. Sometimes, like now, Edge or Vinjula or whoever this strange person was helping her leave this godawful planet behind would be lucid, insightful, even have a black sense of humor. Other times she would detach, her physical body moving just as smoothly or even better when she performed a manual task, but her eyes were vacant, empty. It was singularly unnerving.

"Others memorized the schematics by heart or all the raw information on every piece of equipment. And every planet that we needed to, along with every weapon. That all had to be committed to memory by the end of training, or you got a ticket off Camp, it didn't matter if you were about to graduate or not. That was the easy part."

"How could that possibly be the easy part?" Sita dunked her spoon into what she was eating. It's consistency warranted a spoon, but it wasn't quite a soup. Whatever it was, it was hot, sustaining, with a lot of salt that made her gulp down water, all of which she needed after humping up and down the mountain carrying supplies all day.

"They start you off with a five mule run. That washes out a bunch of applicants every time. Then a free climb up an entire bulkhead of the Camp. That and training for it is the first two weeks." Edge sipped her own broth. "Then marksmanship, fitness, the memory training. All the while the instructors are prowling about, setting you against one another, waiting for you to make a mistake. I made a few myself. Once that is over, however, they know they have forced out every trooper who wasn't going to make it, anyway. That's when the real fun begins."

"Ranger training isn't that intense," Sita allowed. "But I am sure we were schooled in things you weren't."

"Like what?"

To Sita's surprise there was no condescension in the other woman's voice. She wasn't like Alla at all, constantly insulting the force. It pleased her. "Dealing with civilians, helping people. No offense."

"None taken."

They talked a great deal until Edge was ready to start moving about. Edge wanted to take the Osprey with her, she explained, but the modifications were too extensive for even her to sketch out for Sita to perform. And so they had a great deal of downtime.

Sita spent most of it with a purloined pistol in her jacket pocket, but Edge was too weak to make a move on her in any case. She had no doubt that she was being similarly guarded against, but she had no way off of Mapili. Edge had no one to help her heal up, so they needed one another.

Nights were the worst. The Horizon wasn't a large ship. Edge couldn't seem to be able to sleep soundly. She was constantly up and down for the entirety of the night, and when she did manage to snatch a few hours of rest she would make noises, talk, and thrash in her sleep. And worst of all, she would cry when he thought Sita wasn't awake, dry, emotionless sobs that continued well into her fitful slumber.

"Are you married?" Edge asked abruptly, breaking the silence one morning as they ate another round of military rations.

"...yes." Sita said, deciding not to lie. "Seperated, I guess, at this point."

"What happened?" The other woman said. "If that's not a rude question."

"No, not at all." The Ranger assured her. "I just...not ready to talk about it quite yet."

"I understand."

"How about you? Do you have a man, or maybe a w-"

"No. Listen, Ranger Sita," Edge cut her off rapidly. "Are you a pilot?"

"I'm a qualified pilot, yes."

"Do you think you could fly an Osprey?"

"No, I'm sorry." Sita said. "We don't have that kind of vessel in the Rangers, no military grade hardware like that."

"I didn't think so. I think it's about time we go down to the gunboat, then. Alone it would take me half a day to enslave it-"

"Enslave?"

"Computer term. We are going to have the Osprey move along with my ship, controlled by its computer via a joystick here on the Horizon. I can think of more than a few situations where having a Capital gunboat would be useful." She gave a happy, bloodthirsty little grin. "But with me laid up like this and you doing all the wrench turning its going to take a while. We should leave."

Sita's back and knuckles twinged in anticipatory pain at said wrench turning. "Let's go, then."

Alone, Sita could traverse to the other side of the mountain, into the hidden clearing where they had landed and then disguised the gunboat with sensors and foliage, in about an hour. Edge was moving more surely than she had been, but even with her still immobile leg on a small anti-grav sled the going was much slower. It was fully midmorning by the time the gunboat, now stripped free of the foliage her, Berg and Alla had initially used to disguise it, came into view.

"We're going to put together the mobile workshop first thing," Edge announced. "It's made for this situation, being stuck on a planet with low or no tech. Help us move supplies and parts around, we can even ride it back to the Horizon."

When it was finished Sita was impressed. Edge called the thing a "horse" and she saw why. It resembled a pack animal and even had a pair of dips at the top that one could call a saddle.It was big enough to be ridden, with bags all along it, an onboard repair station complete with power tools, and storage. It utilized an anti-grav unit and a small but mighty engine. Edge said that the only thing it couldn't do was shoot or communicate, having no weapons of its own and relying on an Osprey's comm systems.

Edge wasn't quite as fit as she had pretended to be, not yet. After directing Sita on how to perform some of the work she had grown frustrated and performed most of it herself. It had saved them time but now she seemed to be regretting it.

"We'll have to stay here tonight," Edge said. "Even with the horse I don't think I can make it back. And I'd let you head back to the Horizon, but..."

"Don't finish that," Sita said shortly. "I don't blame you, given the circumstances. I slept in here for days. It's fine. You don't need the medical facility on your ship?"

"No, I am past needing any actual care. I just need to rest. Let's just break out some rations."

This entire mountain and jungle planet is like a dream, Sita thought, as she cracked open yet another pak of military food. It was designed to be sturdy enough to be airdropped into sweltering jungles or freezing tundra, not taste good. This time it was some kind of meat in a sauce that already smelled horrific. Sita upended it on a disposable dinner tray about the size of her palm and shook out five small sausages. They looked mushy, and she didn't like the way they didn't have a discernible smell. Somehow that was the most disturbing thing of all. Food should smell like something, good or bad.

"Eesh, worst one. Want to trade?" Edge had a long, hollowed out vegetable filled with spices and meat. "This one isn't so bad."

"No thanks," Sita said with a little smile. "Yours looks too much like my husband's cock for me to be comfortable eating it."

"So why'd you leave him?" Edge asked, holding the long vegetable in front of them. Both women collapsed into laughter.

This was an Edge she had never seen before, Sita realized. Silly, coquette, carefree. She wondered what had brought it on.

"Feel like talking about it now?" Edge went on, after their laughter had died down.

It was strange, how Sita didn't mind her asking again. "It was the job. We just grew apart. Arold had another girl, she was able to be there more for him. I don't care anymore. Good for him."

"I'd say that's a healthy perspective." Edge replied, cutting into her stuffed gourd. "For now."

She was right. Sita would have to deal with the emotions at some point or another. But Sita didn't want to admit that, didn't want to deal with anything. So she turned the subject back onto the other woman.

"You cut me off quickly this morning when I asked you if you had anyone in your life." Sita couldn't see how she had any room for it, or time.

"I...no. I did, but I lost them. That's not true. They were taken from me." Edge said, with that intense and detached look on her face. "But now that she's gone...I just don't know if it was everything I had built up in my head, you know? Been doing that for years. And the moment came where we were together again, it was wonderful. But now that she had been taken from me I don't feel...as much as I think I should. I don't know."

It was quite a speech for her, Sita thought. Abruptly the other woman pushed away her food. "I'm finished. Do you mind if I turn in early?"

She needed to ask because there was only one room for them both to sleep, and the former crew hadn't bothered to pull apart the four slabs into separate racks, so Edge ended up on the far one, Sita two spots over.

She tried to sleep, curled up on her side, but she kept seeing Yomp, kindly old Yomp with his red and pink mottled skin, getting sucked up into a whirling vortex of energy and then spat back out like an unwanted morsel of food. The blast had slapped her onto the floor like the hand of a god flattening her. All along she had thought the murderer was the woman lying not three feet from her, but it had been their erstwhile allies in the Capital military instead.

Resentment rose in her, tasting as bitter as betrayal. She might not have pulled the trigger herself, Sita thought, but if Edge had been good enough to be on the receiving end of a grenade or something herself they wouldn't have killed Yomp. They wouldn't have sent that assassin at the hospital after her, or killed Medus or anyone on the farm. They wouldn't have changed gears to make themselves look good and recruited her. She would probably still be curled up next to Arold, right this very minute if the days and nights lined up between the base and Mapili, happy, with another fulfilling and routine day of work tomorrow with Yomp at her side. If not for Edge.

Then Sita heard the crying. It was a quiet noise, barely on the edge of her senses, but there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was. As slowly as humanly possible Sita turned and saw the other woman's back to her, shaking minutely as she vented her sorrow.

For some reason there was a mirror on the overhead of the common area of the gunboat, probably for maintenance or to check one's form while exercising, but Sita could see them both very clearly, just as she had watched her and Alla frolic with Berg in what seemed like a lifetime ago. She watched herself reach for Edge, hesitate, and finally touch the center of her back.

The woman with the long black hair flinched away, but that was a reflex, it seemed. They both crawled on their sides until they were touching. Sita's reflection put her arm around the other woman's hip, her chin on the ripped, bulging deltoid muscle. One of them or both shivered.

Finally Edge turned, eyes closed. She was much bigger, taller and heavier, than Sita, but she still wriggled down and nuzzled Sita's delicate collarbone, taking the less dominant cuddling position. Their arms and legs entwined and both women settled into one another. Sita accidentally brushed her lips against the other woman's hair and she froze, but the awkward moment passed and she relaxed again. Edge burrowed a little deeper and sighed, finally at peace, her sobs leaving her as quickly as they had come.

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

Edge awoke to an unfamiliar sensation. Her mind wasn't yammering at her, demanding that she get up and get moving, throw her gear into the armored personnel carrier, to take a prone firing position and scan the area. She felt a faint itch for a whack, but all of her stuff was back on the Horizon. Her lip curled in self-disgust, both at the awful habit she had allowed to creep into her life and that she was cuddling someone.

As unobtrusively as she could, Edge eased herself away from Sita. When she was finally lying on the edge of the bed she glanced over at the other woman. She had big, pouty lips, and even though her face was dirty Edge wanted nothing more than to hop over to her, kittenish, and kiss her awake. The insane urge was gone in a moment. She had to get out of there.

She made sure that she made no noise as she gathered her gun belt in her hands, careful to not knock any of the equipment around her over. Years ago, with memories she could recall with startling clarity, her mother had been dead set against noise in the morning. Edge had been cursed as a morning person even as a young child. Athletics and the military had only reinforced her hardwiring, making her a perennial early riser. And so she had to learn as a youth to awaken quickly and move silently. She never imagined it would have turned out to be such an occupational asset.

Her bladder weighed on her with the special urgency it does when one hasn't emptied it overnight. Using the facilities would have awoken Sita, so Edge slipped out the cockpit maintenance hatch, intending to answer the call of nature as nature intended, outside.

It was still pleasantly cool this early. The view below was spectacular: the overgrown base, the jungle with its treetops wreathed in mist. It looked peaceful and she felt as if she was the only person on the entire planet, but she was still heavily armed. Khara beasts and the natives were still lurking in those scenic, savage trees.

Edge kept her back to the rock, where no one could sneak up on her, kicked out of one leg of her uniform pants and squated, forearms on her powerful, thick quadriceps and her gun belt close at hand. She wriggled her toes into the stony soil as a stream of piss, quite pleasant smelling, hot and pretty in the dwindling twilight, gushed languidly from between her golden brown thighs. Edge sighed, tilted her head to the side in enjoyment. She snaked a finger between her thighs, moistening it, and hooked it into her mouth. Her piss and sex tasted salty, primal. It tasted like her, like a woman, a strong one. It tasted good and aroused her, as urine always had, but those thoughts lead down a troubling path. Shaking her head, she wiped herself clean with a moist square of sanitary product from a ration pack, put on her trousers and stowed away the soiled thing into her pocket. Edge was trained to leave no traces behind.

She was about to see if she was once again fit enough to muscle her way through a punishing series of stretches and calisthenics in the same mechanical manner she had been doing multiple times per day for years, but the sun was rising. She buckled on her belt instead, adjusted it so she could reach her weapons and then leaned against the Osprey's talon-like landing strut and waited. A fiery red and orange ball drifted over the horizon, lightening the sky, the ship, her face. She shaded her eyes with her hand and took in all the natural beauty stoically. She thought of the woman just inside, this strange cop who had held her and made her fears and sadness disappear, even if just for a night. They hadn't even kissed.

What is happening to me, she thought.

*****

The work on the ship's computer that morning went a great deal quicker. Edge had needed a good night's rest, it seemed, because she focused utterly on the tasks at hand, almost but not quite limping sprightly around the common area.

"You want to take it easy on your leg..." Sita said once.

"I'm fine," Edge replied in a tone that she seemed to regret immediately, but after a quick head shake she resumed working.

A few hours past midday it was done. They hadn't spoken much, not even over their food. Sita's head was awash in questions, her heart with the emotions that she always had trouble hiding. Had she done something wrong? Should she ask? Sita suddenly had all of the worries of a life or death scenario plus the uncertain start to a new...friendship? What exactly had happened last night? Would she spoil it by asking? Edge seemed to grow irritated whenever Sita had brought up her leg before, let alone if she were to ask about the night of intimacy they had shared. If you could even call it that, Sita thought.

They gathered outside of the Osprey with the sun high overhead, packing tools onto the horse. Sita tried out a smile.

"We're ready to go?" She asked. "Not just us, the ships."

"Good to go," Edge said, showing her a thumbs up. "We will be able to control the gunboat from the Horizon. I can drop you off wherever you like except your base. Too much heat there. Or maybe back to Benbar?"

"I'm not sure there is anything for me there in either of those places." Sita said with a shrug. "But we're far away from both. We have time."

The other woman turned away from her, stone faced, and threw a leg over the horse, popped open its control panel and began the startup sequence. Sita stood still for a moment, feeling both the awkward moment and the heat weigh on her, and finally mounted up on the mobile work station herself.

The mountain path slid by. Riding the "horse" with two people and equipment was still much faster than walking, but sitting there in silence Sita felt as if they were crawling at a snail's pace. They had minutes on end to go, but the thought of doing it all in silence was unbearable. Sita finally spoke up again.

"Are we going to talk about last night?"

It seemed to Sita that the other woman had been waiting for her to raise this point, and that it greatly frustrated her when she turned out to be right. The broad shoulders shrugged irritably and Edge huffed before she spoke.

"Nothing happened. I was freaking out. I freak out sometimes." Her voice had faltered there but she quickly recovered. "You helped. Thank you."

"I..helped?" Sita asked. "You're welcome...?"

"I've slept with other soldiers outside for warmth before. It wasn't different."

"It was more emotional than that."

"I...yes, that's it. That's exactly it, I had an emotional need, and you helped me. But that's all it was. Won't happen again. Sorry."

"I'm not asking you to apologize," Sita was confused, sad. The mountain peak was glittering overhead like some kind of jeweled dagger, as hard and implacable as the other woman's attitude. "This wasn't like handing you a wrench or buying you lunch when you forgot your money, or something."

"It wasn't but it also wasn't anything more. Don't try to make it anything more."

"I'm not trying to, but I think it was, and even if you don't we should talk about-"

"Talk!" Edge yelled, startling a sudden flight of birds off of a rocky outcropping above them. "Talk never solved anything, Sita. I don't want to talk about it, or anything else, with you. Once we get back to the Horizon we can leave and go our separate ways. That's what I want."

Tears were brimming up in Sita's big eyes, a reflex, but she knuckled them away. She didn't trust herself to speak, but started to anyway, until she was cut off by an even louder noise from the sky.