Seeing Stars
Page 12
“We will not meet for…?”
“A quartile,” muttered Paul. “Equivalent of eight weeks or so.”
“But—”
Paul took her hands. “Be brave. I know you can be brave, Suka. If we do this, we can live the way we’ve always dreamed of. I want to do this, to be with you. If you want this too…”
He broke off.
Suka nodded, emboldened by Paul’s declaration.
“Yes. It’s what I want. I’m just a bit scared.”
“Face your fear. I’ll make it worth your while. Do you believe in me?”
“Yes.”
Veiled and shrouded in white robes, Suka allowed her bonded attendants to help her up the steps to the temple. Leaving the training centre had been an unexpectedly emotional experience—in the eight weeks she had spent learning her submissive arts, she had grown close to her Paladian fellows. What a revelation it had been, to speak openly of her needs and desires with like-minded women. Frequent bouts of homesickness for her old life were tended to with almost psychic kindness by the girls she had come to view as her sisters. Soon she would be with her master, they would reassure her. His dominion over her would make everything well again. Then they would bring her the warm spiced wine of the Paladians, or a box of crystallised hola-fruit, and run her a perfumed bath.
And today, their reassurances would come to pass. She looked up through her gauzy veil at that building, recalling so exactly what had passed there before with Commander Paul that she shivered with excited desire. A real bonding now, with a real audience. She was ready for it.
Entering the temple, she felt straight away that intoxicating flowering of lust, and she looked through the crowds, eager to catch her first glimpse of Paul.
Yes, he was there. Splendidly clad in the sparkling black robes of a Sevarian bond master, Paul looked even more striking than she remembered. His bearing was prouder, his expression more confident, his head held higher—Suka would not have believed this even possible, back in the days on board ship when she had considered him an arrogant, overbearing prick. What a long time ago that seemed.
For now, the man who used to arouse only irritation caused her heart to thunder, her cheeks to flush and her thighs to dampen in anticipation.
He caught sight of her and she felt pierced by the intensity of passion and expectation in his eyes. Yes, this was right. This would be her future.
You have waited for me, Master, and now I am coming to you.
She moved through the crowds, oblivious to their noise and motion, knowing only that she and Paul would be joined forever in that unique bond that constituted the Sevarian Way.
About the Author
Justine Elyot is a UK based writer of erotic romance and erotica. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies from Black Lace, Cleis Press, Xcite and Constable & Robinson. Her first full-length book, On Demand, was published by Black Lace in 2009, followed by The Business of Pleasure (Xcite Books) in September 2010.
Email: justineelyot@gmail.com
Justine Elyot loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.total-e-bound.com.
Also by Justine Elyot
Honeytrapped
Competitive Nature
Mi Amore: Sempre
Master Me: A Very Personal Trainer
EUROPA, EUROPA
KS Augustin
Author’s Note
There is not as much information about Europa as I was expecting and, in fact, Jupiter’s moon is the subject of debate over important facts such as subsurface temperature and thickness of the ice crust that covers the entire moon.
I was delighted to discover Melosh et al.’s paper, which posits a subsurface temperature above zero degrees Celsius. That gave me the idea of using dolphin characteristics for Salvia and Rhus. Considering that both humans and dolphins are mammals, the two species would have many behaviours and characteristics in common.
Richard Greenberg, in addition to providing a good overview of Europa, is a thin-ice advocate and, after seeing images of the moon, and the number of seams and ‘cracks’ that crisscross its surface, I’m tending to that idea as well.
In order to understand a bit of what it would be like to live in a cold dark marine environment and yet call it home, I also turned to the BBC series, The Blue Planet. In particular, the episode on animals that live below the level at which sunlight penetrates water was fascinating and, if you’ll forgive the pun, illuminating. It was from that programme that I got the idea of bioluminescence as a form of communication and the realisation that a pitch black marine environment isn’t.
The rest is pure speculation on my part.
British Broadcasting Commission. The Blue Planet DVD series, 2002.
H.J. Melosh, A.G. Ekholm, A.P. Showman, and R.D. Lorenz. Is Europa’s Subsurface Water Ocean Warm? Lunar and Planetary Science Journal, Vol. XXXIII (2002).
Richard Greenberg, Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter’s Ocean Moon. Springer, 2008.
Chapter One
The signal to return to the station manifested as a sharp pain in Salvia’s upper arm. She flinched and a soft eddy hit her in the back, propelling her forward. It had been several Earth-months since she’d last received a signal and she was surprised to get it.
Hadn’t they forgotten her yet?
Duty warred with rebellion before finally winning. Taking a deep breath, Salvia swam to the station, knowing it would take her the best part of a day to reach it. She wasn’t worried about feeling another painful jab. The tracking device located somewhere on her body should have relayed her position and direction of travel. And she was doing what they wanted, after all.
Her route would take her past the Bayless Plume, which was good. She needed to remind herself that she had achieved great things in the past year and a half. Things that nobody else from the station could have achieved. Things that had increased the profits and prestige of the company she worked for. She kept those thoughts in mind as she swam, effortlessly cutting through the dark water that was her home.
The station shone like a brilliant jewel set into the ice crust. Salvia blinked down her inner eyelid against the glare of light and grimaced. Sometimes she couldn’t believe she was related to the station’s inhabitants. They had no inner membrane to block the bright stabs of illumination that constantly surrounded them. How could anybody see anything clearly under such bleaching? It beggared belief.
She swam up the high tube situated off-centre at the bottom of the station. Even though she was used to the dark, the inside of the tube always appeared to her to be menacing and claustrophobic. Flicking her legs, she headed up almost to the top. Curved rectangles of light patterned her body as she swept past windows peering out into the funnel, but nobody was watching her. It would have been rare if there had been.
Doctor Faisbain was waiting for her in the Interaction Room. Salvia would have laughed at the title if she didn’t already know there were cameras everywhere, watching each move she made. Interaction Room? More like Getting Orders Room. Out in the ocean, she was free. Here in the station, she felt pinned down and shackled.
As if responding to her thoughts, a clear panel below her feet slid shut, trapping her in a cylinder of water. Salvia watched her exit from the station narrow and disappear before looking up again.
“Hello, Dr Faisbain,” she sub-vocalised.
She wasn’t sure how it worked, but that little bit of sound seemed to be enough to communicate with the humans on the other side of the thick transparent panel.
“Hello, Salvia.”
The doctor was an older woman with grey streaks in her hair. Whenever she smiled, the wrinkles on her face grew deeper. She had always been nice to Salvia but Salvia knew the woman was constrained by the company. If Dr Faisbain was ordered to imprison Salvia indefinitely within the station, there was no doubt she would do it.
“You’re looking well,” the doctor continued. “It’s been a
while, hasn’t it? Five months, I believe.”
Salvia flicked her feet, a movement that sent her bobbing further up in the water. Moving her arms slightly, she approached the window, lowering herself again so she was eye-level with the xeno-marine biologist.
You’re looking older, she thought. More tired. Has the company been bullying you while I’ve been away?
“You’re looking well too,” was all she said.
Faisbain leaned against the bench at her back, her arms outstretched behind her as they rested on the flat surface.
“I know this may distress you, but I think it’s important to revisit the last few months. To make sure we’re both on the same page.”
Page of what? Salvia wondered, but kept silent.
The doctor was right. She knew she was not going to enjoy the conversation.
“A year ago, you found the Ivory Chasm for us,” Faisbain began. “This was after you mapped the Bayless Plume. Two such objectives, discovery and a completed survey, in the space of one month was tremendous work and the company was eager for you to go further afield, to scout locations a week away from the station. Maybe even further.”
She paused and pursed her lips. “But there was a problem, wasn’t there, Salvia?”
“I didn’t want to do it,” Salvia muttered.
Faisbain nodded. “That’s right. You didn’t want to do it. And from a promising start two years ago, the productivity of this station crashed. We wondered if you were suffering from some kind of dietary deficiency, but you weren’t, were you?”
Salvia shook her head.
“Nor was it the difficulty of the task. You’re a highly intelligent young woman who took great joy in your past achievements.”
Salvia watched the doctor silently, keeping in position with faint twitches of her limbs.
“Then, a little over seven months ago, you came into the station and told me that you weren’t going to do any more work for the company unless we found a way to alleviate your boredom.”
Put like that, Salvia conceded that it made her sound more than a little churlish. But the station staff always had things to do and, when they didn’t, they had company to spend time with. She, on the other hand, had no one. Nobody to share her discoveries with for almost two whole Earth years. Under the circumstances, she hadn’t considered her request so unreasonable.
“I contacted the company with your request when you made it, and I have some good news for you.”
The smile that broke across Faisbain’s face was sudden and bright.
“The company accelerated a current programme of theirs and shipped it to us here on Europa.”
Salvia thought she must not be getting something, because that sentence didn’t make any sense to her.
“Shipped what?” she asked.
“Why, a companion, of course. A male. He docked yesterday with the Nemo. We’ve been running him through a battery of tests to make sure he’s fully compatible with the ocean environment but think he’s ready for his first exploratory swim in his new home. Would you like to meet him?”
Salvia blinked her outer eyelids. She hadn’t really been expecting such a swift response from her employer and creator. Had they really created a male, just for her? Just like her? Caught between apprehension and a growing excitement, she said nothing.
“If you swim down to Port Five, you’ll be able to meet him in person,” the biologist told her, adding a cajoling note to her voice. She turned and pressed a button on an adjacent console. The panel beneath Salvia’s feet slid open again. “Why don’t you go now and I’ll meet up with you there?”
Faisbain turned and moved towards the door at the back of the room. Feeling she had no choice in the matter, that she had already been dismissed, Salvia slowly flipped her body and swam down to one of three human-sized hatches along the bottom of the station.
She skimmed close to the metal skin of the outpost as she swam. It was cooler up here near the surface, only a couple of degrees below freezing. A normal human would have suffered from hypothermia in minutes. Salvia, on the other hand, felt the water as nothing more than a refreshing rush of coolness against her flesh.
She liked the variation in the marine climates of Jupiter’s moon. It was clear and a little cold adjacent to the crust of ice that enfolded the rocky satellite, except where the hot water from geothermal vents weakened the solid water, forming cracks that looked out into the vacuum of space. Afraid of what might happen if she was caught in a boiling updraft, Salvia stayed well away from the ice, except for her visits to the station. Where she normally swam, deep down, sometimes skimming the moon’s rocky core, it was warm and comforting. There were no dangers down there she couldn’t deal with, as long as she kept her eyes open and didn’t swim directly into a hot and bubbly geothermal vent.
She saw a large illuminated number five next to a hatch and slowed, looking through the neighbouring window with curiosity.
The window was set into the floor of the fifth launch bay, looking out into the open ocean. Salvia looked up at the foreshortened legs of normal humans as three of them moved about. They were shifting a long metal tank closer to the hatch. The tank must have been heavy because the three station members looked like they were straining their muscles. One of them even had beads of sweat on his forehead. Salvia reflexively lifted a hand to her face but, of course, she didn’t sweat. And even if she did, the water surrounding her would wash it away in a second.
After they moved the tank to the position they wanted, they started tilting it so the end of the tank sat upright on the hatch opening. At this point, Dr Faisbain entered. The scientist wasn’t aware of it but, in the time she spent training Salvia for her job, Salvia had learnt to lip-read through the thick transparent panels. She narrowed her eyes, damning the glare, and concentrated on the biologist’s lips.
“How far are we from a ‘go’ situation?” Faisbain asked.
Luckily, someone who was only a little in profile answered. His mouth was almost fully visible to Salvia.
“We can jettison the cargo now if you like,” he said.
Cargo? Salvia thought they were handling a person like her. What kind of cargo were they going to drop into the ocean? A robot submersible? An oceanic sensor array?
Faisbain nodded.
“Let’s do it,” she said with a sigh. “Haber wants his luggage in the ocean yesterday. But keep sharp. The greatest difficulty will be from thermal shock. Better to find out sooner rather than later if we have a dud on our hands.”
Another technician moved to a console and said something. Unfortunately her back was to Salvia’s curious gaze so only a low buzz was audible.
What did they mean about jettisoning cargo? About the cargo being a dud? Salvia wanted to think about the questions more but a dull creak vibrated through the water towards her. She turned in time to see the hatch fully retract. In a plume of obscuring white bubbles, something dropped into the water.
Salvia knew she should have approached the object but she stayed where she was, confused by the different meanings being discussed in the launch bay. Then the object began to move by itself. Salvia watched it cautiously, then gasped as her vision cleared and the bubbles rose to the station’s metal skin and skidded upwards.
It was a person! Her heart thumping, she approached the stranger, circling with slow practiced movements, her gaze never leaving the newcomer’s body.
It wasn’t a her, as Salvia was expecting. It was a him. Like her, he had a slit low on his abdomen, but it was short and his skin was smooth and unbroken at the juncture of his thighs. Dr Faisbain had told her that many of her adaptive features were taken from Earth mammals called dolphins and Salvia could see this was one example of it.
She circled him again while he remained calm in the water. When she was in front of him, his large dark eyes focused on her, but he didn’t turn his head when she went around his back. His skin was smooth and glowing a neutral purple, even along his spine where a dorsal fin erupted. Sal
via had been told of early attempts to craft something that was more fish-like, able to fan out or lie flat against the body depending on circumstances, but they couldn’t get it to work. Eventually, the scientists settled on a thick fixed membrane, kept erect by extruded vertebrae.
The webbing between his fingers and long toes were just like hers, which meant the light shallow mounds on his forehead, cheeks and chin must be on hers as well. She had never seen more than dim glass reflections of her facial photophores, those large organs that augmented her vision and turned the dark of the ocean into a wonderland of exquisite detail. The mounds looked…interesting, like small shiny mirrors reflecting the world.
Her skin gleamed blue with satisfaction, shifting to orange then back to blue as she continued her leisurely examination. She flexed her shoulders, almost sure that hers weren’t quite as broad as his. And while her legs were muscular and powerful, the stranger’s seemed to be bigger and thicker, as were his arms. If he could help her lift away rocks on their exploratory journeys, he would prove to be very useful.
“Salvia.”
The voice came from the speaker just next to the hatch.
Dr Faisbain. She’d forgotten.
She spun around and headed for the window. Inside the launch bay, Faisbain was crouched down, watching her.
“We haven’t had time to properly introduce you,” she said with a smile. “Salvia, your new companion is called Rhus.” Her gaze shifted to somewhere behind Salvia’s right shoulder. “Rhus, this is Salvia. Up till now, she’s been the only full-time resident of Europa.”
Salvia felt ripples brush her fin as Rhus approached.
“Hello, Salvia.”
His voice, while higher in tone than a normal human’s and designed to cut through water with less interference, was still deeper than hers.
“Hello,” she replied politely, not knowing what else to say. Her body, radiating yellow and pink was, she hoped, the only indication of her embarrassment.
Dr Faisbain chuckled as she watched them through the porthole. “Why don’t you take Rhus for a quick look around, Salvia? Don’t be too long. We need to complete his medical check-up before we release him into your tender care.”