by Aaron Bunce
What does a mining station in deep space need with a sports outlet?
He strolled out of the sporting goods nook, and passed an electronics shop, a three dimensional vid commercial blaring loudly, the animated, borderline-hysterical Japanese teenagers singing praises about the new iPhone jaw implant interface.
Jacoby sifted through his thoughts, trying to block out the market’s overwhelming sights and sounds. There was just too much of everything – light, noise, and stuff. He felt overly sensitive, raw even, as if every nerve was hanging just above his skin.
He walked back out of the shop and strolled to the railing, resting on his forearms. The lower floor hung just twenty feet below. More shops lined either wall while small, automated merchant kiosks dominated the space between, their holographic ads filling the air with even more light and noise. A lazy trickle of people walked in either direction, stopping outside shops to interact with three-dimensional A.I. ad interfaces.
People…they were more distracting than anything else – the way they looked, moved, and smelled. He couldn’t seem to stop staring at women, the bounce of their breasts or the jiggle of their butts as they walked.
Jacoby turned away and strolled down the way, a pair of station security officers walking out of the next shop side by side. The woman tucked her purchase into a bag, and looked up, throwing him a friendly smile.
She was tall and athletically built. The sides of her head were shaved, the longer hair on top a rich auburn color. A splash of freckles covered her short, narrow nose, and her eyes were strikingly green, accented by the slightest trace of metallic-blue eyeshadow and dark eyeliner.
He walked past, his gaze just catching on the neckline of her tight, black and gray jumpsuit, where the zipper hung loose, exposing the soft and flawless skin below. Jacoby drew in a breath through his nose and smelled her – a complicated and sensual mixture of vanilla sweet and amber spice. There was something else under it all…something that immediately elicited a fire inside him.
He spun and faltered a step, his gaze roaming down the woman’s figure as she walked away, from her bouncing hair, slender, muscular arms, to the flexing curves of her hips, rear, and thighs. An uncomfortable pressure formed in his head and a thrill coursed down his body, settling like an undeniable itch in his groin.
“Damn,” Jacoby cursed and doubled over, blood rushing to his pelvis so fast his head went fuzzy and his legs unsteady. He staggered forward, slapping the wall with a hand, just managing to keep from falling on his face. Bright stars burst before his eyes and that irritating ringing noise filled his ears.
“…hey, buddy, are you okay?” someone asked, and he felt hands hook under his arm. He could barely hear them over the ringing.
“Are you sick? Do you need us to call for help?” a woman asked. They’d come back to help him, but damn, she was too close now. Jacoby kept his eyes down but he could smell her, could almost feel the heat radiating off her body. She was right next to him, her hair practically tickling his neck. Yes, it was red, fiery red with subtle streaks of blond.
“Can you hear …?” the woman asked, but paused, sucking in an almost startled breath through her nose, and then coughed.
Jacoby straightened as she pulled away, his eyes sweeping quickly over the man in a desperate attempt not to look at his female counterpart. He was tall and slender, with a pronounced Adam’s apple and long, angular face. He looked strangely like the scarecrows from his great grandparents’ farm, save the flannel shirt and straw hat.
She deserves better.
“What is the matter, Lex? Are you okay?” the man asked, moving to grab the woman.
Lex…she has a name. He didn’t know why it mattered, but some part of his brain felt it was important.
Jacoby’s gaze crawled over to her, despite his every effort to stop it. She stood half a dozen paces away, facing him and breathing hard, a hand held over her sternum. They locked eyes for a moment – hers were wide, the pupils blown. He’d seen the effects of stims and other synth drugs with Mike to recognize the symptoms. Strange, her eyes hadn’t looked like that a moment ago.
Is she high?
Jacoby’s gaze crawled down to her breasts, a portion of his mind slowly pulling the zipper down, her heady scent increasing as the jumpsuit pulled away, her soft, pink nipples begging to be kissed. Her chest heaved as she ripped off the suit, her tongue curling up and sliding teasingly over her top lip. She reached down, glossy, painted nails bunching up in her panties, the sheer fabric pulling tight and starting to tear.
“I’m…I’m alright, F-F-Fred,” Lex stammered, “I don’t know what happened. I got a little light headed and my heart started to race. Whoa, that was weird.”
Lex. How soft she must be. Soft skin, soft hair. How soft, how inviting inside!
Jacoby’s face turned hot, a painful twitch shooting down into his right arm. Lex was still clothed, but in his mind she was naked and bending over, supporting her weight against the wall, begging him to touch her. She didn’t want Fred. She wanted him.
Red hair, like fire. Hot, burning fire. That is what I want. Taste her, feel her, inside and out.
Jacoby turned away. His thoughts were crazy…out of control. But he couldn’t deny the attraction. His pelvis ached with an unrealized need.
“Hey, buddy, just relax. Maybe you should sit, and we’ll call the med techs.”
“I think I just…I think I’m,” Jacoby stammered, his hands shaking against his knees. He couldn’t seem to straighten his thoughts, and didn’t feel himself at all – ill, angry, and violently aroused at the same time. He wanted to cry, vomit, and have sex, the sensations so strong he almost couldn’t bear them together.
Red hair, like fire…that’s what I like. The thoughts banged around in his head, swirling around Lex’s now naked body as she writhed on the ground, her fingers working seductively between her legs.
“No. I’m not hearing things. I just hit my head, that’s all,” he mumbled under his breath. He didn’t know where the strange thoughts were coming from, but they weren’t him damn it! A foreign impulse shot into his right arm and chest, his back stiffening in response. He pushed away from the wall and stood.
“Oh my god,” Lex exclaimed, and turned, suddenly looking at the ground.
“Dude, you’re fucking crazy. What in the hell is that about, people don’t need to see that shit,” Fred said, jumping in front of Lex protectively.
“I’m okay, b-b-but thanks,” Jacoby stammered and looked down. He had an enormous erection, his pants pulled painfully tight. He kicked away from the wall, cutting quickly into the shop just behind them.
A clerk looked up from the desk as he ran by, brushing up against a rack of shirts and nearly knocking it to the ground. Jacoby ran into the bulkhead, pushed off down the hall to his left, tore open the bathroom door, and jumped inside.
He stood in the dark for a long while, fighting to catch his breath, his hands and feet twitching violently. The impulses didn’t slow and Lex was still there in his mind, moaning his name, sweat glistening on her chest and face. She spread her legs, gesturing for him, begging for him to thrust himself inside her. His hips twitched, the muscles in his legs going tight.
NO! Stop! he yelled, pounding his fists against the sides of his head. “Get out of my head. Get out of my head!”
I can’t. I won’t. I can’t.
Jacoby closed his eyes, sucked in a deep breath and pushed it out, then took another. His heart was racing, the blood practically roaring in his veins and throbbing between his legs.
He focused on the space beyond the outermost bulkheads – the void, cold and black. More air rushed into his lungs, and he pushed it back out. The chaos in his mind started to calm. He reached over and swiped his hand over the light sensor, the LED bank above the mirror blinking on. The cool, bluish light stung his eyes, but he refused to blink.
Jacoby leaned in apprehensively, wrapping his fingers around the narrow stainless steel sink. He stared into the
mirror, his reflection gazing right back. His face was red and sweaty, a vein on his forehead thrumming gently in time with his heart.
“You’ve just been through a lot lately. It’s stress, that’s all. It gets worse when you’re around people. I’m not cracking up. You just need time…to…relax,” he said, and his reflection nodded back. “And you haven’t had a girlfriend in a…long time.”
Breath in, breath out. Repeat.
Yes, relax, after you have fucked her brains out, the voice said, his grin widening. His left eye twitched in a wink and for a moment, a shadow of dark veins appeared around his eyes. No…he was seeing things – a trick of the light, or his stress.
He ignored the vulgar voice and focused on the dark void again, imagining a place free from sound and heat.
“I just need some peace…some quiet,” he mumbled, closing his eyes and letting his head droop.
Breath in, breath out. Cleanse…and push out the stress.
I am still here. I have been, I am, and I will be here.
“It’s not real. I’m not hearing anything,” he whispered, willfully ignoring the stray thoughts.
When he opened his eyes again he was staring at his tented pants.
“I can’t go back out there like this,” he said, wiping his sweaty forehead on his sleeve. He was still sweating and shaking, but his heart wasn’t beating out of control anymore.
Jacoby unbuttoned his pants. He pulled the elastic band of his compression shorts out, his erection jumping forth like an uncoiling spring. He knew his dick well, hell they’d been connected at the hip his entire life, and partners in crime since puberty. But this…this was bigger and harder than anything he could remember. It was so hard it hurt.
Coward. It is for her, not your hand.
He ignored his runaway thought and sat down on the toilette, scared to even look at his own dick for the first time in his life. Trying to lock his mind on anything else, Jacoby reached down and took a hold. The bathroom smelled like wintergreen urinal deodorizers and orange peel-based hand cleaner…hardly an atmosphere conducive to mastering one’s impulses. There was another scent there, too. He smelled it wafting out of his shirt and off his skin.
Crack a rock with something inside it, melt my saw to slag, get put on administrative leave, Janice yells at me, and now I’m jerking off in a commissary bathroom…and I smell funny.
Twenty minutes later, Jacoby pushed back out of the bathroom, his arm sore from one of the most awkward and difficult masturbation experiences of his life. His pants were still tight, but no longer painfully so. He ducked out of the shop, careful not to make eye contact with the man sitting behind the counter.
Jacoby walked quickly out of the commissary, pressing the airlock button repeatedly as he waited for it to cycle. Finally, after an excruciating wait, the light above the wide door cycled to green and it whooshed open. He stepped inside, and turned, slapping the button to cycle it again.
He just needed some time – perhaps a shower, a cold one, and maybe a relaxing drink…or two. Then he would take a nap to help get his head right, and when he woke up everything would be right again. That would work, that would help him get her out of his thoughts.
A curvy figure stepped from around the corner, appearing in the wash of the bright and colorful light displays just as the door started to his shut.
Lex leaned out, looked right and then left, spotting him, her red hair and green eyes sparkling. She took a step forward, but then stopped, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. The zipper of her suit had been pulled down a little further, and this time it wasn’t just in Jacoby’s imagination. She licked her lips and took a breath to speak, but Jacoby turned away, cursing and forcing his thoughts to anything and everything else. The airlock door finally slid shut, the atmosphere equalizing and making his ears pop.
She wants us. The thought popped into his head just as the lights flickered overhead, and a loud claxon split the silence.
1500 Hours
“This is what it looks like when the shit hits the fan,” Anna mumbled, swiveling in her seat. She reached up and wiped her forehead before the sweat could run down into her eyes.
The pod smelled stale and humid, like stress – a musky, stuffy scent the small air scrubbers couldn’t remove. She’d worked without a break since the explosion, relaying information, remotely rerouting oxygen supply lines, scanning schematics, and assisting the emergency techs.
A host of messages flooded onto her display, some automatically generated by the spire’s emergency protocols, while others came in from Lana and the other control room workers. She flipped through them all, unsure what was actually important and what she could just skip.
“Anna, babe, how are you holding up out there?” Lana asked, her voice tight and thin over the com.
Anna swiped at her face again, flicked through another message, and reached over to turn the climate control all the way to cold.
“I’m in here…I’m safe enough, I guess,” she said, eyeing the small spider web crack in her pod’s solar shield. “How’s Brad? Is he going to be all right?”
A heavy silence settled over the pod before Lana responded, the background noise of the control room filtering through like the buzz of angry insects.
“We took him to medical. He’s going to be just fine. I’m worried about you. How are you holding up? Talk to me, girl?”
“I’m fine, well, but wish I could be doing more. I’m just sitting here. I could be…” Anna choked on her words as a body appeared in one of the station’s floodlights. She forced her head down to the display and tapped at the screen, her hands shaking and numb.
A drone launched from the spire a hundred feet below, the autonomous worker bot sliding noiselessly on its small thrusters.
“Anna, I need an extra pair of hands,” one of the techs said, his voice crackling distantly on the radio. She linked to his pod, remotely activating a matching pair of service arms.
“Tell me what you need me to do, Jerod,” she said, scanning his tech credentials first. Damn her eyes ached and her butt felt flat. She’d been sitting in one place so long.
“We’re cutting this damaged housing free so we can fit our patches but these conduit bundles are in the way. We don’t want to cut them off and risk having too little to splice into later. I’d use the auto-sync to have the pod hold them out of the way, but there are just too damn many of them. I need an extra set of hands. Do you see them?”
Anna leaned in, wiping her eyes and spotted several thick masses of conduit and cables hanging out of the marred station’s skin.
“Yes, I’ll try,” she said and worked the joystick on her left and right, the pod’s arms moving in response. The delay was minimal, but still required a level of foresight and patience she wasn’t used to. Anna missed the first bundle twice before finally capturing it in the claw and pulling it out of the way. She worked the second arm in, holding her breath as the four-fingered claw skipped off the armored cable and bounced back.
“Shit!” she cursed.
“Just relax and try again,” Jerod said, his voice surprisingly calm, all things considered.
Anna took a deep breath, leaned in towards the monitor, and navigated the arm. This time the claw locked around the cable, and she successfully pulled it back.
“Nice one, Anna. Now lock those arms out of the way and we’ll make our cuts,” Jerod said.
She locked the controls and sat back, wringing her hands together.
“See, you are a real bad ass,” Lana said, her voice crackling through the white noise. “Doubt me now? You are about the most valuable thing to me right now. I’m down three pods, half a dozen external cameras, and god knows what else. Don’t worry about things inside…we’re taking care of that. Pressure doors are sealed and we’re doing emergency accountability. This is why we you’re out there…my eyes and ears, and all that stuff…so just keep doing what you’re doing.”
“I’m in way over my head, Lana. I’ve ne
ver done most of this stuff before…outside simulations. And now I’ve got to do it all, and it all matters.”
“Trial by fire, babe, and you’re doing great. I’ll buy you all the drinks you want when this is sorted out. For now, just keep being my rock out there.”
How can I not worry about things inside…when there are people floating around out here that are supposed to be…in there? she thought, watching the drone approach the floating body.
The station worker floated, slowly spinning into and back out of the beam from a bright floodlight, disappearing into the black as the drone latched on and started dragging it back towards the station.
A service request popped up on her screen from one of the service technicians. Anna opened it, minimized the request, scrolled through her open schematics until she found the right one, attached it to the request, and fired it back.
A data feed flooded the monitor to her right as the technicians worked to make sense of the damage caused by the explosion.
Anna lifted her data point, opened her contacts, and clicked on Jacoby’s icon. She wiped the sweat off her upper lip – damn the pod was warm – and started typing, her fingers trembling but more reliable than her voice.
Accident on C Ring. Did you hear? Are you okay? People are dead. Please tell me you’re okay!
Anna typed quickly, her fingertips leaving smudges on the glowing screen. She hit send and the message shrunk, zooming into the “sent” folder.
She flipped through another host of messages and requests from the control room and her technicians. Her eyes burned and she blinked, everything going blurry for a moment. She needed eye drops. The damn screen was too bright and she’d been staring at it for too long. Figures…the only part of me that isn’t supposed to be dry right now is fucking dry.
A material request for ceramic sealant popped up from the service techs. Anna switched to A.D.D.S, powered up a drone, and linked the request. A few moments later the request cycled from white to green, and then finally to blue.