Wearing an enormous smile, Bunny did a proper fist pump at her side: mission accomplished.
Once the two amorous crewmates had left the common room, the forgotten doctor shook her head slowly as she pulled the equally abandoned bowl of popcorn over and lamented her lot in life.
“I live on a boat full of horny children.”
__________
Having escaped the prying eyes and ears of the crew, Maria and Bryan were having a tearful heart to heart in the privacy of her quarters.
“-been so long since I had the whole intimacy thing, I got carried away with you. Then when it turned out you lied...” The blonde woman trailed off as her expression soured further from the unspoken thought.
Bryan had no idea how close he had come to a truly terrifying ass-whooping.
Red-faced, he wore his remorse in his posture; shoulders slumped and eyes wet with shameful tears.
“I wish I knew how to make to up to you.” He said miserably.
She couldn’t help but let out a tension easing chuckle at the sight of him so desolate. And she was not without empathy for his other plight.
“Never mind that now baby, how are you doing? I imagine it’s a bit of a shock to find out all that stuff from Billy.”
She reached out and set her arm on his shoulder, giving him a comforting squeeze as he smiled wanly at her.
“I honestly have no idea. It’s so messed up. I mean, I wouldn’t believe any of it but it’s too crazy for anybody to have made up!”
She rubbed at his shoulder as she nodded sympathetically.
“I can’t say that this surprised me, the mega-corps all do some pretty horrific shit.”
He nodded with a bitter look on his face.
“Yeah, but I was experimented on before I was even born! Does that mean my parents knew about it? Did they consent to it?”
“I wish I had the answers for you baby.”
He wiped away stressful tears and met her gaze with his earnest eyes.
“Maria, no... Mary. I’m so sorry that I dragged you into all of this. You are the last person in the universe I wanted to-”
She cut him off with a hug, her other arm coming up and all but grabbing him to her breasts.
In that moment she realized that she had already forgiven him; she just wanted things to go back to how they were.
To hell with Donnie and pressing pause.
“Lie down.” She whispered in his ear.
“What?”
“You said you want to make it up to me right?”
“Y-yeah?” He replied uncertainly.
“Then lie down.”
Still believing that everything remotely romantic was over between them, he didn’t catch the obvious cues she was giving.
“But I’m not tired.”
She laughed and pushed him over.
“Nope, but your jaw will be in a bit. Because it’s about time you got more practice.”
She repositioned him on the bed by yanking on his ankles, causing him to yelp.
A moment later she was peeling her pants off and he finally clued in to her intentions.
“Mary, are you... sure?”
She froze in her movements.
“What? You don’t want to?”
“No! I mean, yes! I’d do anything for you.”
Somewhat relieved, she let out a throaty chuckle as she threw her naked thigh over his face, his wide-eyes tracking her as she did.
“Good, now shush and start licking..”
With a task now clearly spread before him, the boy didn’t hesitate. He’d learned enough by now to be an active participant, though he was a far cry from Kyle’s easy confidence in the bedroom.
With shaking fingers he tucked her panties to one side of her mound as she pressed her pussy to his mouth.
“Ahh, I need to listen to Bunny more.” Maria sighed as his tongue set to work.
She rested more of her weight on him, causing her toes to curl as his tongue thrust deeper inside of her, the wet noises of his efforts filling the room as he panted against her flesh.
With every muscle in her thighs and ass taut, she began to rock back and forth over his head, her moist sex sliding over his working mouth.
“Okay yeah... fuck. Keep doing that baby.”
With one hand on the wall of her bunk and the other gripping his hair to help him keep his mouth where it needed to be, she rode his face with aching slowness.
Whenever he struck a nerve, or rather the bundle of nerves that was her clit, she would smack her hand against the wall and spasm against him.
Beads of sweat trickled from the sides of his face as his tongue tasted her sweet and salty tang. He ruefully, and privately, admitted that having his head between her legs like this was very much akin to having it in a fleshy furnace.
But no way was he going to complain, not with the tantalizing promise of her forgiveness hanging in the balance.
The tempo of her riding his face increased as her pleasure mounted, helped along by his hands stroking against her sides, occasionally reaching up to grope at her breasts.
With him working so earnestly on her privates, she didn’t take long to cum. Her whole body seized up suddenly as her hand slapped the wall one final time.
“Oh-fucking-god-yes!” She cried out all at once.
He had focused all of his attention on her clit, sucking on it fiercely and ramping up her pleasure to an impossible degree while pinching both of her nipples.
Her thighs pressed in on either side of his head as she juttered and squirmed above him, crying out her pleasure to the room again and again.
He took pity on her clit once certain that she had gotten as much pleasure as humanly possible out of his work on it, switching to lathing over the entirety of her pussy with his tongue as she came down from her orgasm.
Though he was extremely aroused by the encounter he had no expectations of her returning the favour, not even when she flopped down on the bed beside him and pulled him over.
He was satisfied just with the opportunity to cuddle with her again.
Inevitably the prior conversation resumed, the only difference now was her lack of clothes.
“I’m just so tired of being scared all the time.” He whispered; “People keep telling me I shouldn’t be out here, and now I’m the first person to agree with them!”
She looked a bit hurt at that, but he was quick to snuggle against her side.
“Honestly, if it weren’t for you I don’t know what I would do.”
Maria went from slightly offended to extremely smug as she held him tight and kissed his forehead.
“I’ll keep you safe baby, at least until we know what’s what. It’s okay to hide behind me even though I’m a little girl.”
She said the last bit rather cheekily, both of them fully aware that every innumerable inch of Maria Gustav was all woman.
__________
The mischief that Eniella and Bunny had gotten up to with Davie sadly didn’t last long before the pilot’s console starting dinging with a slipspace feed request.
And despite what Eva might think, it turned out to be a good thing that Maria was in her quarters being distracted by Bryan again because Jonathan Demarco was on the phone.
Donnie took the call in tac-ops, Eniella and Bunny watching on.
“It seems you killed someone in the Iowa Clan that you ought not to have killed.” Demarco was saying; “And while Mung is a fairly rough station, Juan Corps does not appreciate murder onboard, at least, not the way that you do it. So very... messy.”
“No idea what you’re talking about.” The skipper sniffed.
Like she was about to admit to anything on a live feed.
The hologram of his face hovering over the table smiled genially at her disdain.
“I’m talking, and this is against my better judgment, about offering you clemency. Give up the boy, and I will smooth things over for you with Juan and the Iowa Clan. Don’t and you will be looking over yo
ur shoulder for the rest of your life. I imagine by now you’ve figured out his worth.”
“Clemency sounds awfully generous of you given that the last time we spoke you were saying something about washing my mouth out... Johnny Dee.”
Despite her saying his name like a curse, he chuckled thinly at the moniker.
“Ah yes. I would much prefer people called me Jonathan, or even Mister Demarco, but children these days have the attention spans of gnats. So ‘Johnny Dee’ it is. As for the rest, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones if you are.”
Already tired of the conversation, Donnie crossed her arms over her breasts.
“Can you guarantee that you’re able to smooth things over with Juan and Iowa?”
Sensing weakness, Demarco smiled wide.
“I am a man of my word when it counts Captain Nelson.”
Just out of his line of sight Donnie gave a signal to Eniella, counting down on her fingers as she pretended to mull over his offer.
“Alright Mister Demarco, you win. We’ll give up the kid. But I want assurances that-”
“WHAT?!” Bunny exclaimed, her ears flat and her tail puffed up in shock.
Eniella started laughing.
“Relax kitty, I cut the feed mid sentence. As far as that pendejo knows, the captain is licked and ready to deal.”
The alien cat crossed her arms over her breasts and jutted her lip out in a pout.
“I’m so confused. The glowing man wants to lick DeeDee?”
Eniella choked back another laugh while Donnie shook her head.
“No baby, well, actually maybe. But cutting the link was just a stupid trick; it should hopefully buy us a bit of time while he wonders what happened to us.” She looked to the FCO; “When he tries to connect again, take the feed and garble it up, then bounce it back.”
“To fake a damaged communications system, I’ll get on it.” Eniella nodded in understanding.
“How about that decryption? Any luck yet?”
The Hispanic woman’s enthusiasm dampened and she activated the table to bring up a display of the numerous algorithms she had working on the binary code from Bryan’s DNA.
“Not so far. All I can do is run the programs and read whatever they spit out, which as you can see is bupkis.”
“Ooh, is that Spanish for something?” Bunny asked, still only following half of what was being said in the room.
Eniella wrapped her into a hug and kissed her on the cheek.
“No gatita, it’s gibberish for nothing.”
Donnie pinched the bridge of her nose at the turn in the conversation.
“Let me know if you come up with... anything. We’re in the dark about way too much right now.” She said.
Having no desire to get into a linguistics seminar with the pair of them, the captain took her leave.
Chapter 31:
Make the Call
Less than ten minutes after leaving it the last time an annoyed Donnie was back in tac-ops, most of the rest of the crew with her as she tapped her foot impatiently while Eniella explained what was what.
“I’ve run every piece of software we have, but whoever encrypted this used something dirty. Black market dirty. All I got was one line of code.”
“And?”
“They’re jump coordinates Skip.”
“You’re shitting me!”
“Nope.”
“Where?”
Eniella activated the holographic display table, a map of the Milky Way now floating above it as she uploaded the mysterious coordinates.
The map rapidly expanded outwards as it zoomed in to an empty location in the Outer Arm.
“According to my lovely lady’s math, nowhere.”
They all took in the mostly blank image, tiny points of light indicating the galactic plane just about the only indicator that the holographic table was even on.
“How far out?” Billy finally asked.
“Twenty six light-years.”
Donnie sucked air through her teeth: it wasn’t a small jump.
“And you’re sure there isn’t a fucking star waiting there for us?”
“None of the Pixie’s scopes are picking up anything. If there is one then it’s only twenty-five years old.”
The captain snorted and weighed the pros and cons for a good while before she looked to the grim faces of her crew.
“Alright. Decision time. Way I see it we got two choices. We bail on the Outer Arm entirely, meaning a series of jumps that will leave us well past broke and mostly out of fuel. Not to mention we’ll have to abandon the transport.”
By the continued dour mood in the room, she knew that wasn’t a popular choice, so she pointed her finger at the tiny dot indicating the mystery coordinates.
“Or we risk the Pixie Hazard and our lives to check out whatever the fuck that is. All in hopes that finding out will give us a way to get the Iowa Clan off our ass.”
She sighed as she leaned against the table.
“So speak your minds people.”
“We’re not abandoning the payday.” Eva said immediately; “I don’t care who is after the kid, I’ll take the transport there myself if I have to if you sissies wanna bail.”
Kyle scowled, disagreeing with her logic.
“It’s a lot of money, but we can’t spend it if we’re dead. We can still run. Do a drive by to Lewanna as planned, send Bryan on his way, and maybe find a buyer there.”
“With a bounty on our heads? Not fucking likely.” Eva snapped.
“Yeah, we might as well put a bullet in him now.” Billy cut in to the conversation before the two of them could settle into another argument; “I’m with Eva, we can’t afford to lose this payday.”
“That’s two votes for going and one against, how about the rest of you?”
Clinging to Kyle’s side, Bunny whispered something into his ear.
“Share with the class Bunny.” Donnie resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
The K’or-Macka looked truly torn, while Kyle now looked sulky.
“Bryan doesn’t deserve any of the bad that has happened to him. If some good can come his way from us going to the empty spot on Eniella’s star-map, I think we should at least try.”
“Damn, overruled by the missus, that’s gotta sting.” Eva remarked with a smirk.
“I think that about settles it Captain.” Davie said right on top of her sister’s barb at Kyle; “We all know how Maria would vote.”
“Yeah, I can see which way the solar winds are blowing.” Eniella agreed; “And I am so fucking curious it hurts.”
Donnie nodded her agreement.
“Let’s get this done then, you two get back to the cockpit and get ready to make the jump.”
__________
In the airlock aboard the Howling Dragon, Commodore Fairchild was presiding over the funeral for his first mate and the other men that Donnie and Maria had killed.
After every member of the crew took a pull from a bottle of Old Mash, the commodore upended what remained of the booze on the faces of the four corpses.
With the ritual complete, he stepped back and sealed the door, then opened the outer hatch and watched as the four bodies were sucked into vacuum.
“Preee-zent… ahms!” His new first mate ordered in a gruff drawl while glaring at the crew.
They snapped clumsy salutes, several of them looking to either side to make sure they were doing it right.
They weren’t.
Fortunately for their health, Rufus was too busy watching the corpses float away through the circular window in the airlock to notice.
He wiped at his nose with a large hanky, sniffing noisily as he did.
“My baby boys…” He whispered hoarsely; “Ya’ll can go and dance among the stars, we’ll handle the rest from here.”
He turned and gave a nod to his first mate, who in turn signaled the bridge.
Several seconds later the purplish bloom of an antimatter explosion lit up the commodore’s face a
s the bodies were given an expensive sendoff from the Howling Dragon.
A nervous cough to one side caused the corner of Rufus’s mouth to twitch in annoyance though and he turned to glare at the jumpy messenger who had just come into the room.
“Sorry, erm, C-Commodore. But Dee-Marco is on the horn again.”
The drag-queen let out a huff of annoyance at the interruption of the sacred ritual.
“Gettin’ a little tired of that smug sumbitch.” He complained bitterly; “He better have something useful to say this time or we’re heading back to Mung so as I can gut him.”
The nervous messenger swallowed.
“He’s mostly just making the same offer as afore. I think he is still angling to get paid for the info.”
Rufus eyes widened at the gall of the small time crime-boss man and he all but snarled in response.
“You tell that fat mother-fucker that he’ll get paid if and when those armoured whores are dead and that boy is tied up in a cute little bow for auction! Then and not before!”
“Yessir! Will do sir!” He yelped and then fled.
With the interruption over and the antimatter explosion likewise coming to an end, the funeral soon broke apart; the line of clan members ending their salute as awkwardly as it began as they shuffled their feet and waited on their orders.
Though like their leader, many of them were wiping at tears standing on their cheeks from the solemn ceremony.
Rufus nodded sympathetically when he noticed, weirdly proud of their public displays of grief.
He stepped forwards and clapped one of the more emotional ones on the shoulder firmly, making him flinch.
“Don’t worry baby. Our time is coming.”
__________
In the end they opted to leave Bunny and Kyle with the transport and a week of supplies, while Davie programmed the ship to automatically slipjump to Lewanna’s system in thirty hours.
If the Pixie wasn’t back by then, her crew was dead.
The K’or-Macka was not happy about the decision, but Kyle certainly appreciated it.
Once they made the jump it didn’t take long for them to find what they were looking for. Because just as Eniella’s star-map predicted, there was nothing else there.
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