by Ken Wolfson
The idea made his ears burn, but, "No distractions until after I retire.”
“Please. Volantene men wear them for warmth in layers during the winter, and to please their lovers." She twisted her legs against his, pleading. He gasped at the sensory overload, and pressed back against her.
"I didn't say never. Wait until after tomorrow." He patted her legs. Amelie always looked incredibly comfy in her clothes.
"Fine." She dragged him into the bedroom and threw him on the bed. Then she hopped up top. Her hair fell in a sheet across his face. Her breasts dangled so he had to grab them and twist. That got him an eye-roll and slap across his cheek. "You're such a boy."
With that she pulled down her tights just enough and sat atop him.
They wrestled for the next few hours, frequent grunting punctuated by the occasional scream of ecstasy. Amelie ran the show, she had him in her grasp, teeth chewing on his neck the entire time.
When it was over Adrian lay on his back chest heaving, the fresh scratches across his shoulders stinging. Exhilaration pumped clean and clear through his veins. Amelie propped herself up on an elbow beside him. Her tits were red, and a couple of fresh bruises crossed her neck.
"Time for sleep?" she said.
"No, I still got some work to do. You're welcome to stick around."
"I'm a light sleeper."
Adrian placed a hand over her mouth and nose.
"There, give me a minute."
She burst into giggles.
#
Chapter Three: VIP Retrieval
Marves 29, 1040:
Cmdr. Adrian Huxton, CoP. We welcome you back to Tollyon, though your return was earlier than expected. You will give the following speech at the decommissioning ceremony. Do not deviate. The Tollyon System and Wicked Creek Region are watching. Acknowledge.
Lord Admiral Lord Mathias Venko the Greater, Lord Paramount of the Anchorage and Honorable Commandant of Tollyon, CoP MS, GS.
Adrian read the message over several times. He tossed his comp over his shoulder, and fell back in bed. At least he no longer had to write the damn speech. He'd drone out whatever they wanted, and the civilians would politely applaud.
Relief rushed over him. With a groan, he rolled over and checked his alarm; 0415, 3 hours until his alarm went off. Amelie had slipped out hours ago, lest someone spot them leaving together. The downy comforter wrapped him in a warm embrace, until he remembered the admiralty had demanded his acknowledgment. Cursing under his breath, he scanned the floor for his computer.
Something crunched like a bone snapping.
Adrian went to combat ready in seconds. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. He dressed in a flash and sprinted for the door. Something had gone wrong; a reactor had breached or a compartment explosively decompressed. His ship needed him.
He threw his door open, and stared into a black abyss that hid monsters just beyond his fingertips. Power was out, but he knew officer country by heart.
A white light flickered in the distance. Crew finding their way in the dark? Despite the assurance, Adrian's stomach twisted.
Screams echoed up the corridor, chased by roaring atmosphere being sucked into the fire. His eyes bulged. He lunged for the safety of his door, but the wind dragged him step by step towards inferno. The light grew as it devoured oxygen. It raced towards him, hungry for more. Adrian turned about, but the rushing air spun him back and threw him from his feet. The flames reared up with a roar of burning atmosphere. They opened their mouth and engulfed him. His skin burnt off and blood boiled—the last thing he heard was the screams of his crew trapped in their burning coffins—
Adrian sat on the edge of the bed, heart thundering in his ears.
Eventually his limbs steadied enough for him to grab his comp and stand up. He checked his alarm; 0649. There went his nap. Nothing extraordinary, sleep deprivation was a regular part of fleet life.
He began his morning routine with coffee and vodka. Then came the hot shower. One of the perks of being CO was your own personal shower. Or two persons, from time to time Adrian thought as he saw the pink shampoo bottle under his.
First he dressed in a Hahken Weavers shirt, a skintight weave that’d stop splatter rounds and knives. Then came his uniform. He chewed a solar krunch bar while doing up his dress shirt buttons. Finally, he belted on his reliable old gladius, then chugged a glass of milk on his way out. In the doorway he remembered the formality of today's occasions, and about-faced. He polished his buttons, rank pins, boots, and gladius until they shone fit for noble company. Most command officers had an ensign aide or a squire on hand to take care of remedial chores such as polishing and laundry and coffee. Adrian wasn't most officers. He believed routines promoted discipline and humility, and did his chores himself.
There was little company on the tram ride. His crew were either packing, or already departed. Vindication's emptiness felt hollow.
Once at the forward airlock, he handed his ID to the troopers, and stepped through.
The airlock opened with a hiss. Pain flared in his knees as gravity jumped from .5 to 1.0 standard.
He emerged in a cavernous lobby. It was packed to capacity by a multicolored crowd, clad in the pastels of Tollyon's current fashion. The civilians clustered in families, studying the issuing fleet personnel for their loved ones. Whenever a surviving son or daughter or parent was recognized, they were mobbed by a small crowd. Kids who'd taken plasma burns without screaming broke down sobbing on the spot. Many more families stood at the wings, already crying and praying to makeshift memorials. House Venko's banner hung omniscient from the rafters, a green satellite in a blue sky, flapping eternally in life support’s gentle breeze.
Adrian pulled off his rank pins, ducked his head, and slipped through the crowd. Most press signaled their presence with a fist-sized camera drone hovering over their heads. However, there were always a few plainclothes weeping with the mourners while searching for a new story. They stood out by the way their eyes surveyed every new batch of arrivals, searching lapels for an officer to pin down. Adrian despised any he didn't have a working relationship with. Speaking of which...
He snuck behind a dark-skinned couple in matching tan trenchcoats. Both had long dreadlocks, though the woman's had been dyed pink, and the man's purple.
"Friends," he said. They spun about.
"Adrian! Never just a hello, friend?" Jaylen said. Tony fumbled with her comp and pulled up a blank notebook page.
"You should get better at spotting me," Adrian said. He shook their hands. They remained where they stood, the commotion providing better security than a lonely corner.
"How's the trip home?" Jaylen said. The big man had been a trooper for the standard 5-year enlistment. Once out, he'd started up his own v-news channel, using his connections and constellation-sized smile to bring great hordes of content and endorsements to their news channel.
"Busy, we were badly damaged and it took a lot of work keeping the running lights on. How's the news cycle?"
"Wild as ever. Got any comment on your battle? Can you confirm the reports that Vindication was the only survivor?" Jaylen said.
"The Wendago came in great numbers to sack Vykhor, but we prevailed. And I can confirm Vindication alone survived of the 3 fleet groups deployed."
"How did you win against such numbers?"
"Instead of falling back on defense, we met them in open space and won. Losing wasn't an option." Tony shrugged, but kept writing. Adrian knew he had to give more to keep this a working relationship. “Here’s my full after-action report, with a few classified bits blacked out. Can you hold it for four hours?”
“Yes we can,” Tony said. She lit up like the supercarrier’s running lights at the file transfer between their comps.
"Thank you, friend, my friend!” Tony said. He paused for breath. “Vindication took an incredible amount of damage. How was your journey home?"
"Incredibly stressful. Once the Wendago were dead and we'd been detached from the fle
et, we were pulling 20-hour days keeping the ship together," Adrian said. Jaylen was a good listener; he gaped in horror at the appropriate moment.
"And what about Vindication? I heard she's going to be scrapped after decom?"
"That's up in the air, but right now the only people with funds to buy her are the scrappers, which is probably why the announcement was made the moment we got home before anyone had time to organize another buying plan," Adrian said. “The Tollyon Veteran's Authority wants to purchase her and do a museum conversion. They do accept public donations on their website."
"Get that link," Jaylen said, eager to put some exciting content on their front page. Tony pulled up a second page and proceeded to multitask with such efficiency that the greatest fleet programmers would have been jealous. She'd gone the university-internship-media techy route, and met Jaylen when he was mustering out.
"What're your thoughts on the decommissioning?" she said to Adrian. She'd been an embedded journalist with Vindication during Adrian's first deployment as the Supercarrier's COS.
"Vindication should become a museum," Adrian said. "She's served five centuries for first the empire then us, and she has a lot to teach. Scrapping her would be a dishonorable insult to the armada and the sacrifices of its brave soldiers."
"You've never avoided the controversy, friend," Jaylen said with a smile.
"I give people what they deserve. What Vindication deserves is a long career teaching adorable kids about the freedom their parents died to give them," Adrian said.
"Yes, yes, friend," Jaylen said. Tony nodded along as she worked.
"Got the link. Thanks to our sponsorship by House Tokotonga, we’ve upped to 5-million viewers a day who are going to see this," she said.
"Thank you,” Adrian said. “I’ve got an appointment so I must leave you.”
"Bye!" they called after.
Two women in identical blonde bobs and eyes glowing with augments flanked the exit, escorted by two camera drones each. Adrian stepped through stinking vagrants camped by the life support ducts and onto the monorail platform before they had a chance to spout their acrid questions. Only once aboard did he pop his pins again.
He found a seat in the back of the last tram car and settled in for the 100-kilometer ride. The military sectors rolled by with a series identical barracks, warship docks and armories held together by duct tape. Jacob Hallard's chosen soldiers crammed the platforms, while warehouses worked overtime to ship out the obscene tonnage needed to supply 100 capitol ships and thousands of support vessels.
Eventually the black and crimson faded into the multicolor of the civilian sectors. The monorail rolled past a kaleidoscope of man-made refuges covering every function an immense space station could ever need. Mega-freighter docking arrays, warehouses, three-dimensional commercial malls, and habitation mods meant for deep space deployment had been welded together over centuries and threaded for the monorail, water, and life support. They bustled as the civilian camp followers prepared to roll. Even a few aliens lurked about on business. He spotted a few towering, insectoid Kiiren wandering about, and a single craggy rockpile of a Duphain taking money outside a cathouse, under a 'buy one get one free, same gender,' sign.
Once, the Anchorage had been a captured comet orbiting at 100,000 kilometers. 2,000 years ago the great houses of Tollyon had clawed out from the rubble of the dark ages. Instead of uniting to recover their lost civilization, they had fought for control of the planet. House Venko had lost out on the space race, and found itself without land suitable for space elevator construction. Lord Venko had built shuttles instead. He shipped his entire holdings up to the moon and sunk his family estate into the 200-kilometer chunk of iron hematite and licensed the surface to fledgling corporate developers. With the high ground secured, House Venko conquered the planet.
Adrian got off at platform 971e, outside a group of commercial airlocks facing Tollyon. When the Imperials had annexed Wicked Creek 400 years ago, they found one densely populated garden world stranded without FTL travel. House Venko bent the knee, and was elevated to the dominant house of the region.
Adrian checked the chronometer on his comp and found himself thirty minutes early. He bought a crispy Jalopy with baked beans wrap from a mobile barbecue kiosk, and sat down to wait. Three banners hung above. House Verger, their tributary House Novelle, and Novelle’s sponsored corporation Vydra Shipping. Vagrants camped beneath the banners.
At 30 minutes on the dot, a fish-shaped civilian transport slipped into the docking collar and achieved airlock seal. Adrian's stomach tightened at the sight of the thin tube in the void. Some civvies didn't even have whipple armor under their barriers. He'd never travel civilian, no matter the safety inspections.
The airlock opened with a pressurizing hiss. Civilians in pastel summer clothes swarmed around Adrian, looking eagerly for loved ones or stumbling off the platform and into the arms of the grimy anchorage. He stood, and scanned them. They parted around the lone uniform. Stares landed first on his rank pins, then his face. Fingers were pointed, and excited gasps exchanged. A mother hoisted her little son onto her shoulder so he could stare at him with intense blue eyes. Adrian winked as he passed. Just as quickly as they arrived, the crowd drained into the lobby, leaving Adrian alone.
Fear crept up inside him from somewhere he couldn't block off. If she didn’t show, maybe she’d changed her mind, maybe her mother would take their battle to family court, maybe the transport had been delayed. Here was a problem he couldn’t solve himself, and the impotence locking him down was more agonizing than any battle injury.
A final teenager drifted out, dragging a bulging pink suitcase behind. Her skin was the same brown shade as his. Puberty had stretched her so tall and thin, he wondered how she didn’t blow away. A crimson romper was loose about her, and black tights hugged her legs. Fleet colors, Adrian noted with a smile. According to his XO’s fashion terminology she’d be chic.
Then he frowned, because these weren’t Tollyon’s cobblestone streets. This was the anchorage. Space had different rules.
A pair of greasy men in suits eyed her, grinning as they stood off their bench
Adrian homed in on them, drawing his gladius as he went. They blanched and tumbled over each other scampering back to their rat hole.
Adrian stowed his blade. VIP secured; time for pickup.
"Aly," he called, stomach churning. She looked up, and her smile burst from ear to ear. Alyssa was everything he wasn’t; brilliant, energetic, and eager. Her moccasin feet floated light as a songbird where his military boots stomped. Somehow, she’d turned out everything he’d hoped.
"Dad!" Adrian had barely opened his arms before she slammed into him. He was bowled backwards into a structural beam and pinned there. As he squeezed her until her ribs groaned, he forgot he hadn't slept in two days, he forgot his knees were rotting. For she was young and free, bursting with unlimited energy flowing in every direction, unrestricted by trauma. It was a new and wonderful sensation. She was warm and comforting, in a way no one else was.
"I promised I'd return," he said. He could feel her heart pounding against his.
"Aw, dad," Aly gasped through tears. She kept sobbing on and on; Adrian couldn't believe she had that much in her. She planted a wet kiss on his cheek. "You were gone for 270 days. That's 6,489 hours. And there was news of Wendago. I feared you'd never return." Adrian plastered her forehead with kisses in return.
"I keep my promises," he said. He held her at arm’s length, and absorbed another shock. Last time they'd spoken she'd been shoulder-height. Now her brow grazed his nose. He didn't need to bend over to make eye contact. "You need to stop growing, that's far enough."
Alyssa giggled. "Look out dad, I'm coming for you!" A loose hair strand drifted across her forehead. Adrian brushed it back behind her ear. With one hand holding on, she broke his grip and threw her arms back around him. They hugged it out for a few more rib-straining minutes before slipping apart from exhaustion.
&nbs
p; "Dad, we need a photo." She slipped an arm around him and raised her comp.
"Woah, what?"
"I contribute to a small but growing fashion blog for teens. We have commercial sponsorship. I want to show us matching. Smile!"
Adrian did his best, and the camera flashed.
"Send me that pic, and I need to see this blog of yours," he said, having read cautionary tales about what teenagers posted on the starnet.
She scowled. "Please don't be a backseat editor. We get enough of those already from everyone over twenty trying to be our parents."
"I trust you, Aly. You're already as brilliant as I'll ever be."
"Thank you, dad." She hopped up on her toes and planted a kiss on his cheek.
"What's in the bag?" He returned the kiss on her forehead. Then another hug, because he couldn't get enough of holding her in his arms.
"A week of the finest clothes we could afford. Mom wouldn't come on the shuttle with me, so I hauled it all myself." She flexed her minuscule biceps. Adrian's brow furrowed at her news.
Of course, her mother wouldn't go into orbit while he was on the Anchorage. Even if it meant putting his daughter in danger.
"She does well most of the time. Please don't get angry, Dad. I hate it when you're angry. You look like you're about to murder someone and it's terrifying to talk to you."
"Okay, no anger, I promise," Adrian grumbled. He took deep breaths until the rage died. Once clear, he grabbed the suitcase. He might have been towing a cart of bricks.
His comp dinged.
First and Second Wicked Creek Fleets, set ready level two, hostilities alert. Begin replenishment actions and maintain partial combat watches. Be prepared to deploy at 24 hours’ notice. This is not a drill.
Lord Grand Admiral Avarro Venko the Greater, Lord Paramount of the Anchorage and Honorable Commandant of Tollyon, CoP MS, GS.
"What's up?" Aly said.
"Fleet mobilization. It doesn't affect me, I'm sidelined indefinitely." He winked at her frown. "Let's go. I've got a couple stops to make on the way, if you don't mind," he said, and closed the message.