Aneka Jansen 7: Hope Page 9

  The cat-girl beamed at Ella, waving her in and pouring a second glass of rum before sprawling on one side of the table the glasses were on. Ella figured the other side was for her. Lying down, she propped herself up on an elbow and grinned at the blue woman.

  ‘I’ll get right down to it,’ Ella said. ‘You know the captain asked me to join the crew?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It just seems… too fast. You’d never heard of me two days ago.’

  Trin’s tail curled across the space between them and settled on the exposed flesh of Ella’s thigh, but she ignored it for now since it seemed to be just being companionable. And then she chided herself for actually thinking of it as a separate entity.

  ‘My tail likes you,’ Trin said, grinning. ‘My tail has a good eye for people.’

  ‘Your tail doesn’t have eyes, Trin.’

  ‘You know what I mean. You’ve been open with us, and we pulled you off a stolen Pinnacle ship, on the run.’

  ‘I could be lying–’

  ‘But you aren’t, are you?’

  ‘I could have been dressed up and sent out in that ship with a sob story to make you empathise with me. I could be a spy–’

  ‘But you’re not. The Pinnacle would never trust an outsider to be a spy, and they’d never send a woman on a mission like that.’

  ‘It still seems a lot of trust to put in someone you’ve just met.’

  ‘Ah, but we have an ulterior motive.’

  Ella blinked at her. ‘You do?’

  ‘Of course.’ Her tail chose that moment to slide upwards and back, cupping into the swell of Ella’s buttock. ‘Ana and Lanyon want you in bed, and my tail wants to convert you to codaphilia.’

  ‘Codaphilia… right.’

  Trin giggled. ‘Some guy I met said it meant “tail lover.” My tail thinks it’s hilarious. Also what everyone should be.’

  ‘What about Cubby? Does he have an ulterior motive?’ Ella shifted her legs a little and the tail curled so that it could stroke its tip over her inner thigh. She continued to ignore it.

  ‘He’s barely been seen since you told him what that gadget did. I think he wants your mind, but he’ll take your body if you let him. He’s a Tech-Spec. They’re always more concerned with technology than anything else. Someone engineered them to be, uh, engineers, and mechanics. Cubby’s even better than most.’

  ‘I’d barely noticed he was a subspecies. His eyes–’

  ‘Ah, no, that’s nothing to do with it. He’s just blind as a bat. Mind you, those goggles give him a computer display and infrared vision, but without them he can barely see his hand in front of his face.’ Trin’s tail flicked across Ella’s thigh, evoking a shudder. ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No,’ Ella replied flatly. She was wondering how long she had gone without sex. There had been a good week on Lacora, and ten days on the cruiser, and then the station, and… She sank her glass of rum in one go and looked across into Trin’s eyes. ‘But your tail better be able to make good on its promises or I’m going to slap it silly later. How long have you got before your next watch?’

  ‘Two hours or so.’ The cat-girl began to move, lifting up and almost prowling around the table.

  ‘Plenty of time.’

  ~~~

  Ella writhed. Her heels dug into the sheets on the bed, her hands gripping and clutching almost as if trying to escape what was happening to her. Trin, however, was having none of that. Her tongue was a constantly flicking machine, fast, sharp, and a little rough. Her tail squirmed within Ella, quite firmly, driving her over the edge again.

  Light exploded in Ella’s head and she let out a strangled moan as another orgasm overwhelmed her. Objectively it was not the best sex ever, it was just different, but Ella’s objectivity had booked a ticket to the other side of the galaxy and was questioning whether coming back was worth it.

  And then she was coming down and Trin’s tail was snaking free of her. Ella clamped down on it with her inner muscles, trying to stop it escaping, and Trin giggled.

  ‘It’s half an hour to watch, and I need a shower,’ the cat-girl stated. ‘I have duties. I can’t be doing this all day and my fur is sticky.’

  Ella grinned weakly and let go. ‘Sorry.’ The sense of loss was more extreme than she had expected. ‘I haven’t had any in a few weeks. Do you use seven-day weeks here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Trin replied, getting to her feet with cat-like grace, ‘of course.’

  ‘In that case, it’s been five weeks.’

  ‘Poor baby.’ Trin vanished through a door at the side of the bedroom and Ella heard water running a second later.

  Rolling over to get off the bed resulted in a groan. Her muscles ached. No sex for five weeks and no exercise for four, and she was paying for it. She walked over to the bathroom door and watched Trin’s shadow under the shower through the smoked glass. ‘Is there somewhere I can exercise? I’ve let it slip what with being in prison.’

  ‘The large mess. We pulled most of the tables out, mostly to give space for combat practice. There’s room to do laps. If you want weights, talk nicely to Lanyon. He might let you use his.’

  ‘Running and some general exercise will do. You really gave me a workout there and my muscles are telling me I’m not used to it.’

  ‘We aim to please, my tail and I.’

  Ella giggled. ‘I don’t think I’m a convert yet.’

  ‘Good. There’s plenty more fish in the sea and I’m flighty, you don’t want to hang around with me too much. It was fun though. You’re good. I haven’t come that hard in ages. If you want to use this after me, feel free. The showers in the smaller cabins aren’t quite as good.’

  ‘Thanks. I think I need it.’

  ~~~

  Ella had started collecting an audience when she had begun stretching to warm up for a few laps around the mess hall. She was not entirely sure that it was because the men were getting a really good view of her behind as she did asymmetric toe-touches. It could have been a genuine interest in the girl the captain wanted as a pilot.

  On the other hand, when she settled into box splits and began stretching herself out along her legs, each in turn, the audience started getting bigger. And Lanyon had said they were light on females in the crew at the moment. They did look a bit disappointed when she finally stood up and started jogging around the room, and a fair few of them dispersed. Ella wondered when Trin’s next oestrus was. If what she had been told about on-heat Felix was true, they probably had to work shifts to keep her satisfied. And who knew what her tail got up to at times like that.

  On the third lap there were footfalls, in boots, beside her and a male voice said, ‘Fight you for a fuck.’

  She glanced at the man running beside her. He was not much taller than her, wiry, tight muscles, but nothing excessive. His nose had been broken too many times for its own good and he had a scar over his right eye which was not particularly attractive, but he looked personable enough.

  ‘Beg your pardon?’ she asked.

  ‘Fight you for a fuck. We fight, I win I get to fuck you. Old, old pirate tradition. Goes back… oh…’

  ‘Five minutes?’

  ‘Centuries! You saying you forfeit the fight?’

  Ella pulled up and looked at the man. ‘Are you serious? You want to fight me to get me in the sack?’ There were a dozen or so men watching, and she guessed that they were trying to see whether the ploy was going to work.

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Alderney, Brak Alderney.’

  ‘Okay, Mister Alderney, but I warn you, I’m not going to go easy on you.’ There was laughter, from Alderney as well. ‘The floor’s hard. It’s going to hurt when you hit it.’

  ‘Won’t be me that’s hitting it. Two falls, a submission, or a knockout. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  He moved, his fist swinging up from his waist and aimed at her stomach. He was probably expecting to catch her by surprise, but he might a
s well have been moving in slow motion. Another of Aneka and Winter’s little gifts, this one thanks to some work Reality had put in on neural interface integration: her brain operated at the same sort of accelerated pace as Aneka’s. She watched his muscles tighten, saw his arm starting to move, determined the target point, and her arms moved to intercept. At that point, the nerve augmentation cut in: she was faster than usual, though the accelerated reflexes tended to tire her if she used them for too long. She was not expecting this to take too long. She pushed his arm around her and began lifting it as her elbow swept up, hitting his exposed jaw. His head jerked backwards and she saw his eyes glaze over, but Aneka had taught her to fight and Aneka fought to the finish. Twisting her hips and pushing them in low against his, she pulled on his arm and there was a loud thud as he landed on his back on the metal floor.

  Blinking, Alderney hauled himself to his feet, shaking off the blow. Ella watched him from a few paces away, assessing the damage.

  ‘Want to give in?’ she asked. ‘I won’t think any the less of you.’

  Growling, he stepped in and swung his fist at her jaw. She let it connect, her hair flicking as the force pushed her head to one side. Then she turned back and grinned at him as he shook his hand.

  ‘Shit!’ he yelped. ‘Are you a robot?!’

  ‘Oh no. Just ask Trin.’

  His eyes widened as he saw her move, her left hand swinging up towards his face. His arm came up to block it and it left him wide open as her right fist buried itself in his stomach. He backed off with a grunt of escaping air and she backed away, letting him consider his options. He was slowing. She had done him some real damage and he was hurting. He was considering the very real possibility that he would lose. Her gaze flicked around to the men watching and she knew he was not going to back out. There was no way he was going to lose face in front of his friends, or rivals.

  He came at her at a rush, telegraphing the move with a roar of anger. She let him come, stepping around the charge and swinging in behind him, lopping an arm around his neck and then locking it with her other hand. His hands grabbed her arm and he tried to move it, but she was a little surprised to discover that she was stronger than him, and anyway she had a good solid lock. He was going nowhere.

  Aneka had taught her two ways of doing a choke hold, and Ella was impressed that, under the circumstances, she remembered to use the one which was less likely to kill her victim. He kept struggling. Apparently he had not thought of trying to hit her yet, but then she was behind him. His struggles weakened and then he sagged in her arms, not unconscious, but too weak to keep fighting. She let him go and he fell to the deck, lying still and gasping for breath.

  ‘What the Hell is going on in here?!’ Kade had a really loud voice when she wanted to have. A dozen men discovered a need to be elsewhere really quickly. ‘Anyone who leaves this room is on half-rations for the rest of the trip! Mister Alderney, explain yourself.’

  Alderney stared at the captain from the deck, not speaking.

  ‘He needs medical attention,’ Ella said. ‘I may have bruised his throat, but he wouldn’t stop.’

  Kade’s eyes turned to Ella, anger in them, but also something else… ‘Then perhaps you would like to explain this to me, Miss Narrows?’

  ‘Actually… I’d kind of like to know that too. Did you put him up to this? Or was it his idea and you just watched until it was over?’ Stalking over to the wall, Ella grabbed her boots and then headed for the door. ‘You can put me on half-rations if you want, Kade, but I’m not a member of your crew yet, and this is not a great way to get me to join up.’

  ‘Narrows!’ Kade’s roar followed Ella from the room, but the door cut off anything else she might have said.

  ~~~

  It was late when Ella’s cabin door opened and the captain walked in. Ella had begun to hate the fact that all the door locks seemed to have been disabled on the ship.

  ‘So,’ Ella said before Kade could speak, ‘am I starving or what?’

  ‘If this were a military vessel you would be. I wouldn’t be able to tolerate the break in discipline. But this is a pirate ship and you’re not even a member of the crew, as you rightly pointed out. I trust my crew to tell me when I’m doing something stupid. Most of them are too awed by the image of Anastasia Kade to do it, but Trin will, and Cubby’s been with me long enough to know when to step in.’

  ‘And neither did when you came up with this bright idea? You should put them on half-rations.’

  ‘Huh. I needed to know you could handle yourself in–’

  ‘Then you should have asked. I’d have fought someone in a controlled situation. I could have killed him! How is he?’

  ‘He’ll be fine once Melisan’s taken care of him. You want her to take a look at that bruise on your chin?’

  ‘It’s fine. Skin-deep. It’ll be gone in a day. Look, the woman I’m trying to get back to, Aneka, she was the one we found frozen on a Xinti wreck. She was born on Old Earth over a thousand years ago. She was a soldier and when she came here she became a… Well, she works on security and logistics for our digs, and then she gets sent on dangerous missions and sometimes I go with her. She taught me to fight, and she made sure I’d be damn good at it, and she made sure I knew that if someone’s trying to kill you, you try to kill them right back.’

  ‘It’s a good philosophy.’

  ‘You’re kind of like her, tall and blonde, big boobs, all combat-ready. Except that she’s not a manipulative, underhanded control-freak, and she knows not to play fucking mind games with a psychologist!’

  Kade looked at her, her face unreadable. ‘Do you prefer beam weapons or projectile?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get Lanyon to show you the armoury tomorrow. Pick something you like out. Even if you don’t decide to join us, Haven isn’t a place to walk around unarmed. Call it a gift.’ She turned back towards the door. ‘And if you do decide to join us, the position is still open. You may not be sure about me, but I’m definitely sure about you.’

  20.11.559 FSC.

  The armoury was just a section of the hold where they kept their store of weapons. It was pressurised at least, and the nukes, Ella was happy to hear, had been put in the unpressurised section forward of it. This part had originally been there to store spare missiles and munitions for the ship’s marine contingent and it ran to a couple of thousand tonnes of space. It was far from full.

  ‘We’ve got all sorts in here,’ Lanyon told her as he showed her around. ‘Now me, I prefer something with a bit of weight and automatic fire.’ He patted a bulky, archaic-looking weapon with one of his lower hands. ‘This baby puts out nine hundred rounds a minute of seven-millimetre caseless, but I expect you’d want something smaller.’

  ‘Just a little. And I’m trained on beam weapons.’

  ‘Well then… Uh, we’ve got lasers. Infrared, blue-green, polychromatic, ultraviolet… Those have crap range in an atmosphere, but we’re usually firing at short range. Uh…’

  ‘X-ray and gamma? Those don’t work well in an atmosphere either, but you seem to have everything.’

  ‘Got one graser and a bunch of X-ray ones. Use them in boarding actions if we have to EVA. Particle beams? Even got a couple of antimatter ones, but we don’t like using them. Tend to blow holes in hulls. And there’s this…’ He picked up a rather stylish-looking pistol with a large, ovoid port at the front. ‘Pinnacle use them for shipboard actions. Fires a presser pulse.’

  ‘A force pistol? Perfect! I’m used to a rifle version, but the pistol should work.’

  Lanyon raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve used one of these before?’

  ‘Standard issue weaponry to the Guardians on Old Earth, and me when in close quarters. I use an antimatter blaster when there’s some range available. Like you said, they tend to blow things up.’ She picked up the weapon, peering at it. ‘Used right, you don’t even have to kill your target with one of these, but the rifles will punch a man through a wall.’

  La
nyon let out a little whimper. ‘Will you marry me?’

  Ella giggled. ‘I’m already married. Not that we call it marriage, but it’s the same thing, more or less. That’s assuming she’ll… Well, anyway, sorry, already taken.’

  ‘All the best ones are,’ he grumbled. ‘Or they’re the captain. Or a cat.’

  ~~~

  ‘He said that?’ Trin was sitting beside Ella to eat her lunch. Trin’s tail had decided to curl around Ella’s waist, which she was not complaining about so long as it did not tickle. ‘What’s wrong with being part cat?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what he meant, exactly,’ Ella replied, grinning. ‘You did say you were flighty, and on the plus side he rates you as one of the best ones.’

  ‘You have a point. I won’t accidentally murder him next time we have sword practice.’

  ‘How do you “accidentally” murder someone?’

  ‘Oops! My knife slipped.’

  ‘Ah. And Kade would let you get away with that?’

  ‘No, she’d skin me, but it’d be worth it. Never let a prejudice stand. I was born on a Human world. Me and my mother were treated like shit. Dad died not long after I was born and Mom did everything she could to keep us going. Everything.’

  ‘Moms can be like that. The good ones.’

  ‘I learned to stand up proud, push back when I was pushed. I learned that prejudice is about fear, and I made the bullies fear me.’

  ‘I was a bit of a doormat until I met Aneka. She taught me to fight. I mean, I always had ideals I thought I would stand up for, but she… Well, my job and Aneka anyway. You can’t run a department and be a pushover. I had to learn to keep my emotions off my face and get callous about things when I needed to.’

  ‘This Aneka sounds like a strong woman.’

  ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘Mind you, I saw how you took Alderney down. Impressive. And when I say it was impressive, I’m impressed. Could you have killed him?’