The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head

by Cassandra Duffy

  “There are no pilots in Juarez,” Gieo said. “You’re only after the slave labor.”

  “I’m after soldiers,” Veronica corrected her. “Vegas is stretched thin right now trying to repel attacks on Reno and Bullhead City. There are five thousand Mexican regulars and former drug cartel foot-soldiers in Juarez. They could easily be turned to shock troops to help us break the line at Old Yuma.”

  “One airship is hardly going to scare them…you do realize you’re standing really close to me, right?”

  “You stopped being a pet a long time ago.” Veronica reached up and snatched the front of Gieo’s collar before she could even react. “Why are you still wearing this?”

  Gieo had never seen someone move so fast; she could only imagine how deadly Veronica would be in a straight up gunfight. Regardless of being taken by surprise, Gieo refused to show a reaction. “It’s a sex thing,” she said with a gloating smirk. “Fiona likes tugging on it when she fucks me.” There was no doubt in Gieo’s mind that Veronica was a top to end all tops, but something about the way she moved, or eyed Fiona, or a quality even less tangible, told Gieo she liked to be on the receiving end of fucking even if she liked dictating all the other terms of sex.

  If the verbal blow landed, there wasn’t any outward sign of it. Veronica smiled, a little crooked on the right, and pulled Gieo closer by the collar until the pilot could feel her breath when she spoke. “That sounds like our girl—she liked to pull my hair.”

  The circumstances were different, the comments more overt and the threatening overtones far more obvious, but Gieo quickly recognized the situation as the typical back-biting girl-style fighting. Veronica wouldn’t physically attack Gieo when she could use snarky words to cut her emotionally; Gieo had really hoped that part of her life had ended with high school. In the past, she’d internalized her hurt, become quiet, sullen, and paranoid about every whisper behind her back that might be another jibe at her expense. It hadn’t worked. Like blood in the water, the other girls had taken her castling as weakness and pressed forward with their stabbing her in the back. Gieo took a page from Fiona’s operating manual and did something crazy instead.

  As quickly as she could manage, which was far slower than Veronica’s grab, Gieo reached up, snagged a handful of Veronica’s blond tresses, yanked her head back, down, and to the right, and planted a wet, somewhat slobbery, kiss directly on her strawberry flavored lips. After she was certain her point was made with the unpleasant, almost virginally inept kiss, Gieo released Veronica’s hair and wiped off her own lips with the back of her hand.

  “Fancy that,” Gieo said triumphantly. “I like to pull hair too!”

  Veronica had long since lost her hold on Gieo’s collar to stagger back a step or two. She raised her hand as if to wipe off her mouth, but stopped short, and regained an iota of her composure. The mask was shattered though, and they both knew Gieo had unbalanced Veronica’s position.

  “That’s hardly a traditional judo move,” Veronica said with a little laugh.

  “You’re hardly a traditional teacher, I’m hardly a traditional student, and this is hardly a traditional…” The rest of Gieo’s tirade, which she really thought was building to a nice crescendo, was cut short when Veronica clipped Gieo’s legs, spun her in a three-quarters circle, slinging her almost to the rooftop floor, bringing her to rest perfectly over a knee.

  Gieo was a little surprised to find herself bent over, but more surprised at how easily and quickly Veronica had dropped to one knee without making so much as a thumping noise against the roof. Veronica had her sufficiently wrangled with a hand on the back of her collar and another resting on her lower back. Gieo’s initial assessment of the situation as being simple emotional attacks and girl-fighting was apparently something else entirely, or maybe it wasn’t, maybe all the girls who had been so horrible to her in high school had done so out of repressed, lesbian sexuality and desire; Gieo doubted it could account for all if it, but she began to wonder about a few cases in particular.

  “If I’d met you first, I would have had you in my bed and on a throne next to me from our first night together,” Veronica said. “Funny how the world works to rob me of the woman I love and give her over to someone I’m unerringly drawn to. No, funny isn’t the word…”

  “Who says I would have wanted you?” Gieo said, somewhat forced from her entire weight being supported over a single slender knee across her midsection.

  Veronica pulled the back of her collar up and gave Gieo a hard swat on the behind. The sting of the slap and the tug on her collar were shockingly familiar and taboo at the same time. Gieo hated herself for liking the differences in how Veronica stole one of Fiona’s routines.

  “Say you wouldn’t have and I’ll let you go.” Veronica’s hand went from the spank to a gentle caress along the backs of Gieo’s legs. Her fingers were soft, talented, and delicate like porcelain on lace.

  “I would have,” Gieo muttered. In the moment after, she could have kicked herself for not lying were it not for the difficulty of such an act in such a position.

  “You’re so like me, yet so…” Veronica’s hand made its way up between Gieo’s legs like a knife, thumping hard against her at the top, rubbing meaningfully at the warm, wet, unfinished business of earlier that afternoon. Gieo, almost as a biological imperative, moaned in response. “…sweet. I envy this niceness you’ve managed to retain through everything.” Veronica had stopped rubbing on the word sweet, which made Gieo nearly scream in frustration, but began again when she lulled in describing her thoughts. Gieo demanded that her body stop enjoying being rubbed through her shorts, swore she liked Fiona’s rough hands to Veronica’s delicate ones, and prayed Veronica had no intention of stopping again. “You are quite possibly the last nice person left on the planet. It’s almost unimaginable that you would let me do this to you.”

  “I don’t really have a choice,” Gieo whimpered.

  Veronica’s hand stopped, holding stock-still. “Ask me to stop.” Gieo remained silent. “Or, ask me to keep going.”

  There were parts of Gieo that said the words, all but hurled them from her lips for Veronica to stop, but that wasn’t what she said. In a voice she hardly recognized as her own, Gieo heard herself say, “Please, keep going.”

  Veronica did, pressing the edge of her hand against the slit between Gieo’s legs, finding the hard dot of her eager nub with the knuckle of her thumb, and teasing it back and forth, up and down, through the material of her shorts, sending much anticipated shockwaves of pleasure through Gieo’s body. Gieo panted, gasped, and pulled ever closer to climax, head held up and throat slightly strangled by the collar that was to make her Fiona’s alone.

  “Did you want me when you first saw me?”

  “No,” Gieo said between moans. “When you saved me from the cultists, I saw something dangerous in you that I liked. It frightened and excited me.”

  “I’m getting a little sick of hearing how much I scare everyone,” Veronica said, letting a little slack on Gieo’s collar to make talking and moaning a little easier.

  “I’m not scared for the reasons Fiona is…” Gieo had to pause in her speaking, had to pause in thinking as a whole when she finally came, in a low, earthy moan ending in a satisfied hiss tempered by a tinge of shame. Veronica slowed her rubbing and released her hold on Gieo’s collar, letting her head dangle near the floor. Idle, delicate fingers stroked the sensitive hairs and skin at the nape of Gieo’s neck in a lovely way that sent tingles to match the shivers of her orgasm.

  “Then why?” Veronica asked softly.

  “Because I want to be you.”

  Veronica helped Gieo to her feet and scooped the pilot up in a delicate, surprisingly romantic embrace that left Veronica’s hand at the nape of Gieo’s neck, never relenting on the gentle caresses that felt so heavenly. Veronica kissed Gieo lightly on the lips, gave her a final squeeze, and walked away without another word.

  Chapter 18: Riding out for the territories.


  Fiona waited at the makeshift corral that was once the high school football field. The last patrol of the day came galloping in just before the sun dipped below the horizon. Fiona held the gate for the twenty odd riders and walked it slowly closed when they were through. Stephanie rode as the captain of the unit, although Fiona had wanted Cork in charge; Veronica insisted on Ravens in every position of leadership, leaving Cork as the official second without hope of promotion. Cork, a former Texas Ranger—of the lawman kind, not the baseball playing type—was a natural leader, a skilled horseman, and a crack shot with pistol, rifle, and shotgun; Fiona had plans to utilize those talents regardless of Veronica’s decree.

  Cork handed off his gelding to one of the stable boys, who had formerly been a grease monkey, and loped toward the stretch of fence Fiona was leaning against. He had the swagger and lean body of a man half his age with the weather-beaten rawhide of a man twice his years or more. His salt and pepper, handlebar moustache blew in the wind after he came to rest against the fence beside Fiona, taking on a stillness only broken by the breeze through his facial hair.

  “Ten,” Cork said in his low, even voice. “Glad we don’t have to lug heads anymore.”

  “Since my goal is clearing space you’d only want to exaggerate down if you were going to at all,” Fiona said. “Is Stephanie pulling her weight?”

  “She doesn’t weigh much.”

  Fiona smirked. “Was that a joke from stoic Cork? I thought you got your nickname for how quiet you were.”

  “I only ever talk to you, ma’am,” Cork said. “You’re the only one of these ladies that wouldn’t shoot me for a wrong word or misstep.”

  “I don’t know about that. Stephanie might even be sweet on you if you talked more.” Fiona nodded in Stephanie’s direction. She was currently barking orders at the remaining hunters, verbally chasing them into rank and file, demanding an accounting of all rounds spent. She might not be a hunter, but she certainly cuts to the quick as a disciplinarian, Fiona thought.

  “Sounds like fraternization.”

  “It does at that, but I’d feel a whole lot better about the merger of Tombstone and the Ravens if people started getting along,” Fiona said. Silence hung between them for a time. Fiona could sense Cork’s imminent departure to finish tending his weapons and mount—he had that potential energy look about him like a loose rock ready to tumble. “I want to start sending some smaller patrols east.” She hadn’t fully worked up the nerve to say so just yet, and her voice rose when she did, but she also didn’t want him to walk away and have to call him back. It was a ludicrous statement and she was hoping Cork wouldn’t piece things together.

  “Nothing east of here but dead Mexicans,” Cork said.

  “It’s the direction Zeke went.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ll mark it down as a sub-patrol of five when Stephanie is leading one of the larger columns in the west.” Fiona finally turned to look at the old Texas Ranger, waiting until he finally nodded. “Pick four of the best and keep your head on a swivel. Zeke’s craftier than any Slark.”

  “I’ll do just that. Good evening, ma’am.” Cork tipped his hat and began swaggering back to the stables where the rest of the hunters were conglomerating.

  Fiona pulled herself away from the fence, mounted her roan mare Tyra, and set off toward town at a brisk trot. She had a patrol of her own in the morning and a craving like hunger rising between her legs that she desperately needed Gieo to tend to before bed.

  Gieo paced the rooftop until sunset and then paced a little longer for good measure. She was starving, thirsty, and overheated, but she couldn’t allow herself to deal with any of those things until she figured out what she was going to do about her infidelity.

  Veronica was such a chaotic, dangerous figure; Gieo wished she would go away and stop making things complicated. Immediately after thinking that, she hated herself for it, knowing Veronica was only partly to blame for what had happened.

  There wasn’t even a good reason for it, not that Gieo believed there ever was a good reason for cheating, but in this particular case it was downright unconscionable considering her sexual needs were more than handled and her relationship with Fiona was rocky, but relatively stable. Excuses she wouldn’t have bothered with, but she wished she at least had an explanation worth anything. All she could come up with was that something about Veronica got inside her head and crawled around. Superficially, Veronica was every girl who had ever made Gieo’s life miserable, all grown up into exactly the type of successful, powerful woman she always thought they would grow up to be—but that wasn’t the real Veronica. Underneath there was something insecure and vulnerable—something that Gieo shared with her. She suspected Veronica knew what it felt like to be an intellectual outsider, to live among a population neither capable nor interested in intelligent conversation, and to feel crazy sometimes for seeing the world in such drastically different ways than everyone else. Veronica was a fellow genius and Gieo couldn’t help the kinship of outsiders inherently felt between them.

  It wasn’t until she’d nearly forgiven Veronica and herself for what they did as almost inevitable that she stopped to consider Veronica’s motivation. If her true goal was to get Fiona back, the plan seemed more likely to earn them both a bullet. It couldn’t be as simple as that, but the thought did raise concerns. Exactly how dangerous would Fiona be if the news was broken when she was armed…? Gieo briefly entertained the notion that getting shot by Fiona might not be a bad way to even the scales; this was quickly dismissed by the memories of what Fiona’s .44 magnum did to people.

  Gieo’s thoughts were cut short when Ramen helicoptered in from the airfield on his twin rotors. If a robot could look self-satisfied, that was exactly what Ramen looked. For just having a couple of antennae and visual sensory apertures to emote with, he did a remarkable job of expressing emotion.

  “We’re a week, maybe two, away from having a completed fleet with the big daddy set up for you and me, boss,” Ramen said. “This’ll be the shortest time between flights for us and the first time we’ll have escort ships and planes—actual planes!”

  Gieo stopped her pacing and glanced over to the hopping little robot. “What are you talking about?”

  “Crop dusters!” Ramen fluttered a few feet off the ground in his excitement, sending clouds of dust away from the rooftop. “Someone found half a dozen crop dusters at the old airport and we’re retrofitting them to burn ethanol. Each escort dirigible will be able to launch real fighter planes!”

  “I have no idea how to fly something like that and no prayer of teaching anyone else,” Gieo grumbled. “It’s such a good idea though and all we’d need to do is just find one pilot with half a brain to explain it.” Gieo shook her head and groaned in frustration. “But I can’t even think of a way to start looking because Veronica is pushing to enslave the town of Juarez and I cheated on Fiona this afternoon. My brain is a little too full with girl-trouble right now to divine an answer to a sudden need for crop-dusting pilots.”

  “You cheated on tall boss with blond boss?”

  Gieo nodded; Ramen let out a low, somber whistle.

  “Did you kiss her?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Feel her up?”

  “Not really.”

  “Lick her in inappropriate ways or places?”

  “No, and it’s weird to hear you talk like this.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Let her yank my collar and rub me through my shorts,” Gieo said, a little too loudly. “Why am I even telling you this? I need to be figuring out a million things and none of them are easy!”

  “Let’s take a step back, look at the list of things to do, and find an easy one that you can fix right now.” Ramen clattered over on his two mini-crawler legs, and placed his little omni-tool hand on Gieo’s wrist. “Like you’re always programming me: be solution oriented.”