Wild Space Pt. 04

She was led to a mid-sized room, dimly lit. There was no furniture to speak of, and the walls and ceiling were completely black.

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Just wait," The receptionist said. "Things will get started shortly. Have fun."

She was left alone. Idly, Sita glanced around. The room was absolutely featureless, simply black. It wasn't very sexy, but then again, neither were the brothels hollowed out of rock back on the Rangers base. Her thoughts went to Arold. It was understood between them that the other could do as they needed when they were apart. There was a woman who worked in one of the base's myriad of mess halls, a civilian, golden skinned, with long dark hair and a thick body that she had seen Arold casting wistful glances at from time to time. It was only natural, he had a man's needs and she had a woman's. She'd even made the arrangements with Arold's lover herself, in case there was any doubt of her willingness to let him see someone else. Perhaps he was with her this very minute.

There was a tapping at the wall, and Sita turned her head. A moment later a pink, formidable cock slid through the wall, and she had to cover her mouth to stop laughing or gasping at the abruptness and absurdity.

"Hello?" She said in a laughing, incredulous tone.

There was no answer. Like any good cop, she went to gather evidence.

It was definitely human, not a fake, she saw when she got closer. A good size, big but not so big that it would be painful or awkward. Unconsciously, she felt a sweet ache between her legs, and pressed her thighs together in response to her body's automatic reaction.

"Can I touch?" She asked whoever it was. Again, there wasn't a response, just a solid, declarative statement of a penis thrust through a hole. She began to see that this was exactly what she had asked for: anonymous, gratifying.

Feeling emboldened, she stepped up to it, and ran a curious index finger over the head. Whoever it was appeared to enjoy the sensation; the penis flexed upwards. She tapped the head a few times with her finger tip, and suppressed a giggle. She resisted an urge to pinch or childishly waggle the cock about. Something about this was bringing out her coquette, girlish side, a rare thing.

She encircled the penis at the base. Her hands were always coarse from work, something her husband hated, but there wasn't exactly a person she was pleasuring right now. All she could see was his member, so she treated it how she wanted: roughly. Perhaps a touch too tightly, she repeatedly pulled the cock towards her with her thumb and forefinger. She barely heard a muffled groan through the wall.

"Shhh, shhh," She cooed. "Shut up, now." He was hers, didn't he understand? She resolved to do with this cock as she pleased. Letting him go, she took a step back, and shimmied out of undergarments the hotel had provided for her, and left the front of her dress flipped up. Her pudendum was puffy, fleshy, and covered with fine, soft black hair. With a little squat and some awkward balancing, she could just about reach the tip, which she rubbed teasingly against the cleft of her cunt.

She could feel the wall straining slightly as the man on the other side of it eagerly tried to thrust forward, but was unable to. With a wicked grin of satisfaction, she withdrew, and took a minute to kick out of all of her clothes, leaving them in an untidy pile around her.

When she was naked, she turned and took the hard cock between her thighs, squeezing it. Sita was short and tended to be skinny, but long hours of exercise, training and range time kept her fit despite all the sitting and administrative work she had to do. She was able to enclose the penis tightly in the smooth skin between her legs, and felt it glide along her already moist lips. Slowly and dryly at first but with more speed and wetness, she swiveled her hips back and forth until she felt her cheeks hit the wall, which was already bending ever so slightly outward from the pressure being exerted on the other side.

For a few minutes she continued this way, and realized belatedly that she was breathing hard and crying aloud at the pleasant, insistent outercourse and was being answered by throaty grunts from the man on the other side of the wall. She pushed off of the wall one last time.

She saw that the penis was slick with her juices, swollen and red with need. She positioned herself again, and when the cock was nuzzling at her lips, eased back onto it carefully. She felt herself flex internally to accommodate him in this strange position, but a few more thrusts and she felt confident enough to start railing him.

Sita braced a hand and foot against the wall and took in the full length of him, closing her eyes and raising her head as she did so. After a dozen or so strokes she could somehow feel the climax building in him, whoever he was, and the sensation and realization of fucking a stranger's anonymous hard cock triggered her own. She contracted around his hard pumping member, her free hand twisting her own nipple roughly, shuddering as her orgasm built in her loins, radiating out from her pussy to her entire body, a tightening and a blissful release accompanied by a loud cry, her plump lips and wide mouth twisted into a beseeching shape at the force of it all.

Her back was already tightening up on her, and so she gently slid away from him, his cock leaving her with a soft, wet sound. She stretched just a bit, and looked back with a smirk at the penis sticking through the wall, a tiny pearlescent droplet of cum still perched on its lips. She leaned over and kissed it, slurping on the head just a bit to make sure she got every bit of the precious fluid. A sharp hiss was her only response.

"Thank you," Sita whispered to him, whoever he was, and that was how they found her.

She hadn't even gathered up her clothes when Zan and Yomp entered. The executive cried out and turned away at her nakedness, but Yomp had seen her take field showers on the job or training with little or no clothing many times. Her partner merely averted his eyes politely.

"We've got a hit on the ship owner. Sorry to interrupt you, but we've got to move. Now."

She ought not to have been embarrassed, but she was. Sita resisted the urge to cover up as she got dressed. The cock that had satisfied her was long gone, having squirted out of her fingers as slippery as an eel the moment the door had opened.

"Who is the owner?" She asked as she got hurriedly into her underwear.

"Madaline Natal," Zan said, clearing his throat. "The heiress to the company."

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

They were given no time to go back to their hotel and to change. It seemed that the family wanted to see them immediately, with Zan even pressed into service as their driver. Sita shifted uncomfortably in the back of the Natal family car, wiggling her lips side to side in thought, and turned to Yomp.

"Partner, I'm sorry you had to see all that."

"See what, girlie?"

"Me, at the brothel." She felt her face flame.

"You don't have a thing to apologize for. That's your business. You're a woman, aren't you?" The old man asked with a half smile.

"Well, yes." She blushed, an old habit from childhood she had never outgrown. If there was any doubt to her gender both Vimorans would have just seen proof.

"And as a woman you're entitled to take your pleasure as you see fit, so long as you don't break the law or hurt your husband's feelings or something."

"Dammit, I know, but I was out of uniform, out of comm range...it wasn't professional."

"No, but it was human." Yomp wasn't big on touching like a lot of Vimorans, but he knew how much humans enjoyed it and placed importance upon it. His gnarled and clawed hand patted her shoulder reassuringly. "You can't be a Ranger all day long, Sita. None of us can."

"Thanks," She smiled at him, patted his red and pink hand and blinked a few times. Stupid little girl. She was too old to tear up. Besides, she was on the job, even though she still wore a slinky dress. "Tell me about this heiress."

"I don't know much," The old man confessed, and lowered his voice so as not to be overheard. "Just what I gathered from Zan. We were finishing up dinner when he got the call. From someone really important, from what I could gather. Madaline Natal has been missing for some time."

"About two weeks?" Sita asked him, thinking of the body on the ship, and when he nodded she frowned. If the heiress to the wealthiest racing family in the Barrens had wound up dead on their watch...she felt a twinge of anticipatory stress, like someone shooting ice water into her belly.

They landed back on the roof of the Natal building, and by night it was considerably less welcoming and more foreboding. Only a few lights remained on inside, and they were quickly ushered and left by Zan in the same conference room they'd met at earlier in the day.

Waiting for them there was a short, extremely buxom blonde woman, who Sita recognized instantly. She'd always assumed that Edla Natal's youthful appearance was some advertising gimmick, but up close and personal she really did appear much younger than her fifty some years. Her hair came down to her shoulders, her eyes were a frank and cool brown. Age lines appeared here and there, on her chin and cheeks and at the corner of her eyes, but overall she looked full of vigor, with an alert expression, makeup precise and not overdone, and dressed in a prim business suit even at this hour.

"I'm Edla Natal, Chief of Operations." The woman said, and extended a hand. Her handshake was brusque but almost implosive in its intensity. "You're Rangers Yomp and Sita?"

"That we are, ma'am," Yomp said in confusion. "Did Zan-"

"Zan said nothing. If I wasn't informed of every person of importance who came onto this world with Natal business in mind I'd be a poor executive. Sit." The way she said it wasn't exactly an invitation.

Long silence reigned, and it was Sita's turn to be confused. She was being regarded openly and searchingly by Natal's eyes. She felt herself squirming uncomfortably again, this time under the steady gaze. Why didn't the older woman speak? Was she waiting for them?

"Did you want to..." Yomp said, and trailed off.

Sita wrestled down an urge to wince. It pained her to see her old partner so awkward, so dominated by mere force of personality.

"I do, yes." Natal folded her hands in a double ax handle grasp, fingers rigid. "I understand you found my daughter's ship?"

"Yes, ma'am. Around eighteen hours ago."

"What precisely did you find?"

"I was the investigating officer, ma'am," Sita said bravely, her voice sounding thin to her own ears. She wanted to speak up, defend her partner, but she wasn't sure from what. "The Pink Lady was running on its own power, cargo intact, not a hair on it out of place, if you take my meaning."

Yomp, who was without hair, also took the meaning. He nodded encouragingly for his young partner to continue.

"We found a body in the recycling unit. It was the only thing about the ship that was amiss."

"This woman. She was blonde?" Natal could have been staring down a rival business competitor. There was zero emotion on her face, only hard resolution.

Sita found herself trying to decipher the expression anyway. Edla Natal was pretty enough but her mannerisms were too intense and yet too cold. In a part of her mind, perhaps the part that would one day be as skilled at intuition as Yomp's was, she wondered what it took to get a person to Natal's state.

"She was, but that doesn't mean a thing, ma'am. Right now we have no identification."

"Were there engine components missing from the vessel?" Natal looked unphased, but Sita knew a twitch of interest when she saw it. This was the real meat of the matter, not the body.

"I haven't spoken with our staff in the hangar regarding it." Though Sita made an emphatic note in her brain to do just that.

"Fine. Keep me apprised. Release this body to me."

"We're not doing that," Yomp said baldly, and his face took on some hardness of its own. "Not without authorization, anyway."

"The Pink Lady is my property," Natal said slowly and forcefully, each word like a hammer. "And Madeline was my beloved daughter."

Sita couldn't help but notice that the Natal bigwig was already referring to the departed in the past tense, and had been tacked on as an afterthought.

"That's not the issue at hand," The old man said. "Your ship is a crime scene."

"So you're saying a murder took place?"

"Your ship is part of an active investigation, ma'am. The crime doesn't matter." Yomp replied in his solemn voice, sounding strained. It took a lot of Sita's Rangers training to not hug the sweet old fellow right then and there.

"You know I can contact the Capital liaison officer on your base?"

"Then I'd recommend doing it, because that's the only way you're getting that ship or the body."

Refusal wasn't something Edla Natal came across often, Sita knew, from the look on her pretty blonde face. The executive didn't react outwardly other than a tightening of her fist, but seemed to know when she was beaten nonetheless. For now.

"I think your stay here on Mobussah is finished, Rangers." Natal said, She finally moved, taking a portable data disc out of her pocket. "This is the information you came for, on the ship. I expect you'll be having words with your superiors when you get back to base. Good evening."

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

"You had to get caught at a brothel, didn't you?" Chiugo asked them both by way of greeting.

The hop back to the base had been filled with strained silences, and numerous messages, both text and voice. Lieutenant Chiugo had left no less than six with them throughout their journey home, ordering them to come to his office the moment they stepped foot onto the asteroid. They were reminded of this both in traffic control and when the flight deck officers saw the Lady Chloe's ramp open. It seemed that their boss's ire overruled Capital Navy orders; their meeting with Ensign Alla wasn't mentioned at all. With each summons, Sita had found her anxiety growing and growing.

"Only one of us was there, and I don't know if 'caught' is the right term." Yomp said immediately.

Sita was sick of it, sick of her anxiety and how old Yomp had been defending her from Edla Natal and now from their lieutenant. She could stand up for herself and would do so.

"I was off duty, sir." She said loudly in what she hoped was a commanding voice, but she only sounded like some squealing little indignant girl to her own ears.

"You're never off duty," Chiugo said bluntly. He frowned down at them. Though he was leaning over his desk and they were all standing at attention, Chiugo seemed to be almost level with them. He was well above Sita's diminutive stature and fairly dwarfed Yomp and most other male Rangers at six and a half feet tall. A sprinkling of black seedlings dotted his head except for some male pattern baldness, with the same stubble on his face, a faint dusting of shadow despite evidence of recent shaving. His skin was black, his eyes were now a blazing dark brown, and his iron jaw was clenched tight. "You disport yourself on your own time. If you're representing the department and investigating a ship owned by one of the most powerful families in the Barrens you steer clear of the whorehouses. Is that understood, Ranger Sita?"

"Yes, sir." She got out, and hated the way her face flamed. Tears threatened to spill out again, but she locked it down. She had never been very good at hiding her emotions, let alone when she was stressed.

There must have been something on Sita's face that gave him pause. Chiugo was a hard officer, emphasizing almost military discipline, but he wasn't a stone, either. His expression didn't change but he bade them both to sit, which each did after a moment of hesitation. He stood, towering over them.

"You should know that Edla Natal and her company are going through appropriate channels with our esteemed Capital Systems liaison officer, Alla." Chiugo may have asked them to sit but he was standing upright, rigid, eyes locked down onto them, hovering like he intended to jump over his desk and clothesline them both. "I'd estimate that we have something like a few hours before the ship and the body are seized. The lab has pieced together a preliminary report, but I want both of you to crawl over every inch of both so we have as much information as we possibly can before we lose 'em to the Capital Navy. I hope you got some sleep on the hop home, because that happens now. Now tell me what happened on Mobussah, and leave out the sleazy parts. Yomp, go."

Sita very nearly sagged with relief as her partner briefly filled their boss in. She wasn't sure she could trust herself to speak, such was the nerves bubbling up inside of her.

"I guess we got our answers, not the way I'd hoped, though." The lieutenant told them. He sighed. "You need a rest but we can't afford it, Rangers. One of you get down to the bay and the other to the labs and do as I said. Then get some sleep. Dismissed."

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

Hevik was just about the only friend Edge had left.

The others had long ago quietly left her. The first batch were childhood friends, girls and men she had been raised with, adventured with, and shared childhood secrets and crushes on. Then when she had enlisted and served her first stint in the Army she had tried to come back home, thinking it was a good thing to come home. But her friends had turned into strangers or moved away. She only had her family to talk with, and even to them she couldn't relate or unburden herself, not completely. After a few more tours of duty the cycle repeated: no understanding from anyone, and an inability to share in any case. She got less and less traction out of the support offered to her, and kept drifting away. After a few years, it was simpler to not go home, to isolate, and to only communicate infrequently with her parents and siblings. Then, when she had finally been tapped for the blandly named Extracurricular Duties Group she had been grateful. Finally, she could immerse herself completely in what had become the only thing she was good at, or knew how to do.

But even she needed friends, and Hevik was one of them. He was an Army vet like her, in his case a rocket artillery trooper. An enemy anti personnel rocket had torn off his leg at some long lost engagement, but Hevik had fought on and served his time. Now, years later, after all he had seen, he was unable to acclimate back into the society that had sent him off to war. It wasn't just the cheap bionic leg the government had given him, it was so much else, he told her. So he isolated just as much as she had, but not from her.

Hevik usually opened up the most after they had fucked. He had made a pass early on, and she accepted it. He was very handsome, if aged prematurely, but more importantly he had also peeked through the keyhole into the chaos beyond. Their shared experiences were the foundation of their association. Their sex wasn't emotional or loving, more of a mutual acknowledgement of their needs, a business relationship that wasn't renewed very often. Edge valued Hevik greatly, mostly for his words and his affection and how well he listened and supported her. His company in bed wasn't always wanted and he wasn't very skilled. Somehow, she knew he wouldn't have been even with two legs. But if he wanted her body he could have it. Sex with Hevik didn't happen frequently, but she'd have given it to him a hundred times over for the peace he had given her over the years just by listening.

They hadn't slept together this time, yet. Hevik was of a mind for some target practice, some competition, and so they had taken a transport out to what he called his target range. In reality, the entire dwarf planet was practically his, with his nearest neighbor a half hour's buggy ride away. The air was clean and pleasant, and the land undeveloped if unremarkable. If the dwarf planet had had any exploitable resources it would have been overrun by the Capital Systems government, but it was too far out from Centralia and too small to be of any use. Like a lot of vets, Hevik had elected to retire to a habitable dwarf planet in peace and quiet. Edge was fervently glad he had.