Wild Space Pt. 04

"Here we go, now," Yomp said as the ship they had been chasing, a sleek looking freighter, finally drifted to its gradual stop. Vimorans had no hair to speak of, sharpened teeth, clawed hands, small noses, and black orbs for eyes. Allegedly, their penises also had some strange properties, but Sita had never had the pleasure. Other than that, her partner appeared more or less human, except for his shocking red skin. And Yomp's was already starting to crackle and slough off, gradually, year by year, a sure sign of a Vimoran aging. Underneath was another layer of skin, in his case pink. Once a Vimoran changed color completely he'd traditionally retire. From the stripes, cracks and pockets of pink all over his face, hands and body Yomp didn't have long to go.

"We're technically outside of the area of operations." Sita told him in a serious voice. And it was true. Their authority only went so far anyway, and the Rangers kept their patrols well within the unspoken border.

"We're close enough so that it makes no matter. You want to take this one, girlie?" The alien asked her. He was expertly tapping the Lady Chloe's maneuvering thrusters to line it up with the freighter.

"You want me to take it because you want to keep sitting on your ass, so I'll oblige." Sita told him.

"Nothing doing, you just need the experience." Yomp stretched luxuriously in the chair and gave a big old exaggerated fake yawn. He put his hands behind his head, closed his eyes,and snored.

Every Barrens Ranger carried a cudgel, a plastic tube with a crossguard and grip that was filled with lead to give it weight and balance. In an instant Sita's had cleared its plastic retaining ring and was swung in an economical arc into Yomp's chest armor.

The old man coughed and pretended to be more hurt than he was, clutching his midsection and coughing as if he were in agony.

"Stop it, stop it," Sita tried not to smile in case the freighter crew was observing them. She glanced at the tiny bit of reflection in the viewscreen. A young lady in her early 20s, she was short, only a handful of inches over five feet tall, with dark hair that tended to curl unless she pulled it back whenever she was in uniform. Her body was generous in its curves, fit and lithe and well muscled despite all the chair parade she put in as a Ranger, and her breasts and bum were small but round and firm. Her mouth was vaguely carnal, lips almost too big for her face, but her eyes more than made up for it. Even Yomp, who loved to joke with her but never flirt or creep her out, would sometimes quietly tell her when she was feeling down that her eyes were stunning. They were dark hazel, and seemed to magically drink in whatever ambient lights around them, looking like tiny galaxies in miniature, enrapturing their observer.

Her eyes were hardened now, however. She put on her best cop expression and stood, clicking a tiny switch on her belt.

"Open comms?" Yomp asked, finally recovering from his fake coughing fit.

"Open comms, aye." A Ranger uniform was a crinkly battle suit, a Capital Navy surplus piece, heavily modified, badge, cap, and a piece of chest armor with a molded belt for the officer's weapons and communications gear. Sita knew that open comms meant that her partner would be listening in to the inspection, ready to help in a moment's notice.

"Be careful, girlie." The old man said in a solemn voice, all his joking gone. "I'll be right here backing you up."

It was standard procedure for any vessel being inspected by a higher authority to line up its crew at its entrance, and so Sita was puzzled when she entered the civilian freighter to find no one there to greet her. The Barrens Rangers may not have been the Capital Navy but they still protected the civilians and sometimes gave their lives to do so in this lawless area of space. It was disrespectful not to follow standard procedure. Easy now, she told herself. You don't know what's going on. Don't want to walk into any situation already feeling angry. That was how a Ranger got killed.

"This is Barrens Ranger Sita," She called out loud enough, identifying herself and her authority like any proper law enforcement officer should. "Please present for inspection."

Only silence replied to her. Sita was more puzzled than apprehensive, but even so, she slipped the cudgel from her waist and as she did so her ear piece chirped.

"What's going on, girlie?" Yomp asked in her ear.

"No one is answering," She said shortly in a low voice. "Stand by."

The inside of the vessel looked oddly undisturbed. When Sita was a kid, she had spent a few months on her uncle's freighter, doing odd jobs. These smaller family run operations were chaotic at best. Maybe there was a neat freak on board, but then where were they? Where was anyone else?

She drifted through the small vessel, cudgel at the ready, but there was no one, and very little of anything at all. No scattered containers of cargo left open for sorting, dishes, clothing. It was almost antiseptic.

Sita found the cargo bay, which was full of reusable cargo boxes, each one the length of a small human adult and several feet wide and tall. The crew had stacked them only two high, the better to access their contents, instead of to the ceiling. She opened one with a practiced twist of the handle on its lid. Inside were neatly organized electronics parts, nothing sinister that she could see. She sifted through a box with her gloved hand. Absolutely, almost frustratingly mundane. She moved back out into the living area.

"Report?"

She started for an instant, having been transfixed for a few minutes, eyes narrowed as she focused on whatever it was she was supposed to find out of the ordinary here. Briefly, Sita told her partner what she'd found so far.

"That's it, I am coming over." The old man said over the comm.

"Acknowledged," She said, and used her cudgel to open up a drawer in a wall storage unit. Why she didn't want to touch it, she couldn't say. This wasn't a crime scene, not yet.

In the drawer was nothing but some costume jewelry, the kind a little kid might wear when playing dress up. The stones were pink and stringed along a cheap bracelet. There was also a gaudy fake tiara with the same stones and a feather pink boa. Nothing unusual there, if there were children on the ship.

Yomp wasn't long in arriving, and when he did he saw her with her weapon and raised an eyebrow. Sheepishly, she put her cudgel back in its place on her belt.

"Can't say I blame you," Her partner said, solid black eyes taking in the strange and empty ship. "This is creepy. Let's check out the cockpit, girlie."

She should have thought of that, but that's why Yomp was her partner, to lend his wisdom and experience to a rookie's youthful vigor and headstrongness. But she didn't feel very vigorous or headstrong as they went to the freighter's nerve center.

The displays and readouts on the dash were all shut down, idling the vessel as it sat there. Yomp had been around a lot of ships in his decades as a Ranger, and pulled up a ship's status report.

"Got the name and cargo. This is the Pink Lady, out of Mobussah," He told her. "Or it was until two weeks ago, when a course was set from there to a distant system and the controls locked."

"This system, isn't it?" Sita asked. "I don't get it. Nothing was stolen. Cargo is still in the bay, portable comm parts. Expensive stuff. You'd think whoever was here would have stolen it." Theft was rampant in this part of the Barrens.

"You're a sharp one, girlie," Yomp said with a wry half smile. "We'll need to do some legwork, track down the owners." They were both walking back to the docking port, ready to hit their shipboard computers to do just that.

"See if its reported stolen." Sita smacked a closed fist into her open hand.

"You got it. Oh, this isn't the most unusual case I have ever been on, I'll have you know, Ranger Sita."

"Is that a fact?" Sita asked with a soft smile. Yomp was famous for his stories, and in truth he had seen a lot. But each one after its telling grew a bit more fantastic over the years, until it was nearly unbelievable and he was called on it, and then it was trimmed back drastically, only to grow again. It had been a never ending cycle for the months she'd known the old Vimoran, but never failed to entertain her when she was feeling down or puzzled or frustrated, as she was now.

"I got called into a case on Carnevale once," Yomp said with a hint of wistfulness. "Somebody had recruited some children from some place, and had started a begging syndicate. Recruited, I said. Not kidnapped. The kids were in on it, partners that got paid. Strange what some folks allow, after all, you can indulge in any sort of sexual urge you want on Carnevale, you can buy slaves, but the line is drawn at kids stealing? I mean, I get it, I'm a father myself, but-"

"Yomp." Sita said suddenly, staring at the deck.

"-luckily for us we stopped them, rescued the kiddos and an orphanage took them in, and we had a grand old time after amusing ourselves after that case, shall we say-"

"YOMP." She touched the old man's arm and squeezed.

"-the, what is it girlie?"

She pointed down at the deck. "What do those look like to you?"

With an audible clack of ligaments, the old alien kneeled, and grimaced at the sound and pain of his joints. His clawed red finger hovered over a line scored deep into the deck, a bright silver streak.

"There are two of them."

"They're about ankle width apart, Yomp."

"Drag marks from space boots. Cutting into the deck." The old Ranger's solid black eyes followed the twin trail to the bulkhead. The two marks lead to the recycling unit.

With a shared nod, both Rangers drew their cudgels. Sita took up position next to the unit embedded in the bulkhead, and after checking to make sure her partner was ready, popped it open.

There was a heavy thud of something falling onto the medal, and a scathing curse from Yomp. Sita had never heard him curse that badly before. She wondered what could have fallen out of the recycling unit to cause him to do so, and looked.

Afterwards, she would fervently wish she hadn't.

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

Her ship was the only place that Edge ever felt truly at home, but feeling at home didn't always mean feeling good.

The Horizon was a personal transport, with a look as pedestrian as its name. It was designed to appear as innocuous as possible but pack a devastating punch when needed. Accordingly, Edge had installed a multi-role weapons turret and homemade sensor system with a customized integrated real time video targeting system, all of it gimmicked up as old comm arrays on the dorsal hull of the boxy vessel. Its antiquated turret that jutted off from its side for everyone to see was in reality a disguised torpedo launcher. For stealth and oomph, the Horizon had a military grade sensor suite and an old but powerful engine she'd scrounged out of a racing ship. The only issue was the ship's gravitron: try as she might, she could never get the thing down to the galactic standard, and so it always took her a day or two to adjust to what felt like oppressive heaviness whenever she was done a job.

Like she was now. With all of the extra hardware installed, some of it not designed for a transport vessel, plus her equipment, the interior of the Horizon was cramped. Her latrine was more of a closet, dominated by the shower. In fact, to do anything, even look in the mirror, she had to stand in the shower as she was now.

Her face was a stranger's, but oddly a stranger's was the one she felt most comfortable with. This one was paler, more aged, the lips dark and pouty and sexy. The persona of Tyla, one of her favorites, only trotted out on special occasions. Like each lie it had a tantalizing kernel of truth. Fondly, she turned her head to each side, observing the disguise and the face of the desert artist as if it was a painting itself. Had her life not taken her to other places, she might have been an artist.

A bit reluctantly, Edge got out her makeup and hygiene kit, the same one she had been using since basic training, and began playing the lights over her skin and hair. The dyes faded and what remained was the strangest face of all, her own. She had lustrous, thick black hair and a prominent hairline, light golden-brown skin, heavy eyebrows, dark eyes that strained almost to almond shape, an anvil of a jawline, a wide nose that bordered on flat, and full lips. A solemn, pretty face that was somehow mundane and characterless, and had been pronounced as her best professional asset in a former life. A complexion and features in between races, pale or brown or golden or black or anywhere in between, essentially anonymous, with a chameleon-like ability to change completely with a few dabs of disguise and a different expression. The permanent face of a nobody. She turned away from the mirror. She needed a whack.

And she found one in the pocket of the desert robe, now turned back to its brown so she could blend in as she left Kekal's spaceport. The vibrant was about the size of her pinky, a potent blend of multiple colors that she had personally tailored for herself after much trial and error. She cracked open the tube with a practiced and ritualistic flick. A tilt of the head, her thick black hair falling to the side and an expert sniff off of the tube. Immediately her eyes rolled back into her head and her lips twitched into a ghost of a smile. Edge whacked again on the other nostril just to be thorough and felt ready to face the rest of the day.

She sat at the Horizon's terminal and logged in to her personal message center. Here, too, she could be herself, but the sense of personal disconnect with an online interaction and the drugs coursing through her brain made her confident enough to handle it. A chat window immediately opened, an old fashioned thing, but she hated face to face interaction when it came to set up or payment.

YOUR PAYMENT HAS BEEN RECEIVED.

Yes, she typed. It's done. Do you have what I asked for...?

I DO.

Yes. Now give me the coordinates.

I AM NOT IN THE HABIT OF QUESTIONING MY CUSTOMERS, BUT WHY THIS, OF ALL THINGS?

Give me the coordinates.

0071.328-111.42. ENJOY AND SEE YOU ON DOWN THE-

She severed the connection, and tapped the marbles on the Horizon's dash, pleased that the merchant had followed her instructions to the letter, even if he was a bit familiar with her. The coordinates were so close by that she barely had time to get ready. Excitedly, Edge made sure the ship was enroute and leapt away from the pilot's seat to get dressed.

A half hour later, she stood at the airlock, wearing a casual sleeveless orange and black striped shirt, a wide brown belt and a slim fitting pair of brown pants, standard space boots with spikes on the ankles on her feet. The airlock started to crack open, and hurriedly she took another bracing sniff of the vibrant, blinking rapidly and then casting it aside before rushing to the other ship. Her personal blend of vibrant was designed to calm her down, but the prospect of the delights to come and the pleasant high she was on only made her excited.

The interior of the ship looked plain, even a touch run down: a sagging metal table surrounded by a tough old leather booth, small kitchenette, recycler, and a double bed.

On the bed sat a man, tall and a trifle overweight, but handsome and clear eyed, with auburn hair and a slight dusting of a beard. He rose when he saw her.

"Welcome home, my lover," He said with a teasing lilt to his tone, and laughed. "I was beginning to think you'd never make it back to me."

"Sorry, love," Edge said and sighed deeply. "Rough, rough day. You know how it is."

"I do," The man said, and gestured at the kitchenette. "I was about to have a drink, if you want to join me."

"I think I'd rather jump right into bed, if you don't mind." She said with a suggestive laugh. "It's been too long, love."

"You're in a mood," He said, and moved closer to her, giving her a light kiss on her brow. "Go on and lay down, lover. Get comfortable. I'm making drinks anyway."

She sank down onto the bed, and toed off her boots. She hadn't had them on her feet for very long, but she sighed as if she had had them on all day anyway. When he returned with a stemmed cocktail glass filled with a pink liquid she gratefully accepted and sipped.

"It's much better than milk." She said and laughed as he sat next to her, putting her head on his shoulder.

"What do you mean?" He asked, and slipped an arm around her waist.

She leaned into him."Nothing, love. Let's put our drinks down."

He did as he was told. She clasped his hands in hers, intertwining their fingers, and planted a kiss on his lips, and giggled a bit at the scratchy feeling of his stubble. When he smiled she could feel it scratching against her once again, since she'd closed her eyes. A few more kisses and they stretched out onto the bed, nestled in one another's arms.

She whispered to him a request and he deftly maneuvered until he was atop her. She didn't have any sense of his weight. Eagerly, she raised her hips from the bed and wrapped her big legs around his ribs, nails trailing along his back. He grunted in honest surprise at her strength and flexibility, but soon fell back into character, kissing her mouth and forehead and eyelids and cheeks and chin as she sighed and sighed. For a few minutes, they kissed and cuddled, tongues and lips and hands busy. With each deep kiss that ended Edge would grind her pelvis just a bit harder against him, and he would pin her down an increment more securely, escalating his already rampant excitement and her wetness.

"Let me get out of all this," She said and wriggled out beneath him. Her lips were even fuller than usual, very plump, swollen and reddened from repeated kisses and attention, slightly parted as she gave out quick little excited breaths, and she was trembling just a bit, minutely, with desire.

"How romantic," He said dryly as he watched her skim her shirt off of her body and shimmy out of the pants. "You really know how to turn a fella on, you know that?"

"Stop complaining, you're lucky to get a girl like me naked in your bed." To prove her point, Edge fell backwards onto the pillow, her small, almost flat breasts bouncing merrily with the movement. They were tipped with dark areolas and nipples, set above a toned belly with just a hint of six pack abdominals peeking through the minimal adipose tissue. Her arms and legs were thick, toned, corded with just enough muscle so that she could pack a mean punch but not hinder her flexibility. A scar twisted its ragged way across her torso, and she was likewise nicked and gouged in many other places of raised dark tissue that stood out from the otherwise perfect brown skin.

He took in the sight of her and smirked just a bit. She knew what he was thinking: that he had gotten a good one this time around, that he couldn't wait to fuck her and never see her again. But in a moment his expression changed back into one of bemusement and affection, and she resolved to forget about his momentary lapse of character. She needed this, needed the release.

He wasn't long in becoming naked with her. When he was, she brushed a hand down his wide, strong shoulders, down the muscular chest and to the slight belly, a build that she specified to his employer, and they'd done damn well with producing. His manhood was between his legs, soft, nestled in a thicket of brown hair. She took it in between two fingers, flicking her wrist hopefully, and smiling down at him when he took one of her breasts in his hand. Soon she was able to fully encircle him with her hand, and give him a full stroke up and down. Edge had always loved touching a fully hard cock, and she was pleased to see that he was of a good size and was very responsive. For a few minutes, her hand played over his member, tightening and loosening, varying her pace, simply enjoying the feeling of him. He was limp at first, but she didn't mind. It only meant she got to touch him more, which she did, flicking her wrist expertly.