Aneka Jansen 7: Hope (11 page)

‘We may have discussed asking you to join us, at least temporarily. Look, you’re going to need money to persuade someone to take you back to Old Earth and I’m in need of a new pilot on short notice. We’ve got something big coming up and everyone on the crew gets a share when we make money. Come out with us, earn yourself the cash you need, and I can get a new pilot in time for the next run.’

‘Let me think about it,’ Ella replied, already thinking about it.

‘Sure. I don’t need an answer until we get to Haven. But when we do, we’ll be dropping off passengers and cargo and then heading out. This thing is time-sensitive, but it really is big.’

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‘You going to do it?’

Ella looked up from her food to see Lanyon sitting down across from her. His plate was piled high with vegetables and two of the slabs of artificially produced lean meat Patches had cooked up for lunch. They did not look especially appetising, but they tasted good.

‘Do what?’

‘Join the crew, of course. It’d be great if you did. No delay on the next mission, and we’re heavy on ugly men at the moment.’

Ella giggled. ‘I’m not sure. I mean, I’m guessing your captain’s big score is some sort of hit on the Pinnacle, and I obviously have a bit of an axe to grind with them. And she’s right. I’m probably going to need some form of currency to get home…’

‘But?’

‘It just seems… This is going to sound like I don’t trust Captain Kade. She seems to have decided she can trust a total stranger after ten minutes of chatting.’

The big man pushed an entire potato half into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. ‘Ten minutes of chatting with her. And more with me, and you helped Cubby with his gadget and told him about your cyber stuff and where you’ve come from. Didn’t need to be open about that, but you were. Trust begets trust.’

Ella nodded and tucked into her food. She had not been
absolutely
open about everything Aneka and Winter had done to her over the last few years. Some of it had only been used in anger once, and that had been a real emergency on a dig. She really had had a fairly quiet life since the Collective had formed. Even the emergency, a huge attack by a horde of pack predators, had been a relatively mundane danger compared to wars, espionage, and terrorism. Did she really miss that kind of action? She knew Aneka did or Winter would never manage to persuade her to go off on missions for her.

‘I’m still thinking about it,’ Ella said.

‘If you’ve got worries, or questions, talk to Ana. Or Trin. Trin’s good to talk to and she knows Ana’s mind pretty well.’

‘Okay, thanks. I might just do that.’

~~~

Trin’s cabin was set up a little like Kade’s, but more so. There were
more
cushions on the floor, the only breaks being a walkway past the hangers where her knife-belts were slung to the bedroom door, and a couple of short tables which formed little wooden islands in the padded sea. Trin liked her edged weapons: aside from the belts, there were knives and swords mounted on the wall as if on display.

The cat-girl beamed at Ella, waving her in and pouring a second glass of rum before sprawling on one side of the table the glasses were on. Ella figured the other side was for her. Lying down, she propped herself up on an elbow and grinned at the blue woman.

‘I’ll get right down to it,’ Ella said. ‘You know the captain asked me to join the crew?’

‘Of course.’

‘It just seems… too fast. You’d never heard of me two days ago.’

Trin’s tail curled across the space between them and settled on the exposed flesh of Ella’s thigh, but she ignored it for now since it seemed to be just being companionable. And then she chided herself for actually thinking of it as a separate entity.

‘My tail likes you,’ Trin said, grinning. ‘My tail has a good eye for people.’

‘Your tail doesn’t have eyes, Trin.’

‘You know what I mean. You’ve been open with us, and we pulled you off a stolen Pinnacle ship, on the run.’

‘I could be lying–’

‘But you aren’t, are you?’

‘I could have been dressed up and sent out in that ship with a sob story to make you empathise with me. I could be a spy–’

‘But you’re not. The Pinnacle would never trust an outsider to be a spy, and they’d never send a woman on a mission like that.’

‘It still seems a lot of trust to put in someone you’ve just met.’

‘Ah, but we have an ulterior motive.’

Ella blinked at her. ‘You do?’

‘Of course.’ Her tail chose that moment to slide upwards and back, cupping into the swell of Ella’s buttock. ‘Ana and Lanyon want you in bed, and my tail wants to convert you to codaphilia.’

‘Codaphilia… right.’

Trin giggled. ‘Some guy I met said it meant “tail lover.” My tail thinks it’s hilarious. Also what everyone should be.’

‘What about Cubby? Does he have an ulterior motive?’ Ella shifted her legs a little and the tail curled so that it could stroke its tip over her inner thigh. She continued to ignore it.

‘He’s barely been seen since you told him what that gadget did. I think he wants your mind, but he’ll take your body if you let him. He’s a Tech-Spec. They’re always more concerned with technology than anything else. Someone engineered them to be, uh, engineers, and mechanics. Cubby’s even better than most.’

‘I’d barely noticed he was a subspecies. His eyes–’

‘Ah, no, that’s nothing to do with it. He’s just blind as a bat. Mind you, those goggles give him a computer display and infrared vision, but without them he can barely see his hand in front of his face.’ Trin’s tail flicked across Ella’s thigh, evoking a shudder. ‘Are you cold?’

‘No,’ Ella replied flatly. She was wondering how long she had gone without sex. There had been a good week on Lacora, and ten days on the cruiser, and then the station, and… She sank her glass of rum in one go and looked across into Trin’s eyes. ‘But your tail better be able to make good on its promises or I’m going to slap it silly later. How long have you got before your next watch?’

‘Two hours or so.’ The cat-girl began to move, lifting up and almost prowling around the table.

‘Plenty of time.’

~~~

Ella writhed. Her heels dug into the sheets on the bed, her hands gripping and clutching almost as if trying to escape what was happening to her. Trin, however, was having none of that. Her tongue was a constantly flicking machine, fast, sharp, and a little rough. Her tail squirmed within Ella, quite firmly, driving her over the edge again.

Light exploded in Ella’s head and she let out a strangled moan as another orgasm overwhelmed her. Objectively it was not the best sex ever, it was just different, but Ella’s objectivity had booked a ticket to the other side of the galaxy and was questioning whether coming back was worth it.

And then she was coming down and Trin’s tail was snaking free of her. Ella clamped down on it with her inner muscles, trying to stop it escaping, and Trin giggled.

‘It’s half an hour to watch, and I need a shower,’ the cat-girl stated. ‘I have duties. I can’t be doing this all day and my fur is sticky.’

Ella grinned weakly and let go. ‘Sorry.’ The sense of loss was more extreme than she had expected. ‘I haven’t had any in a few weeks. Do you use seven-day weeks here?’

‘Yes,’ Trin replied, getting to her feet with cat-like grace, ‘of course.’

‘In that case, it’s been five weeks.’

‘Poor baby.’ Trin vanished through a door at the side of the bedroom and Ella heard water running a second later.

Rolling over to get off the bed resulted in a groan. Her muscles ached. No sex for five weeks
and
no exercise for four, and she was paying for it. She walked over to the bathroom door and watched Trin’s shadow under the shower through the smoked glass. ‘Is there somewhere I can exercise? I’ve let it slip what with being in prison.’

‘The large mess. We pulled most of the tables out, mostly to give space for combat practice. There’s room to do laps. If you want weights, talk nicely to Lanyon. He might let you use his.’

‘Running and some general exercise will do. You really gave me a workout there and my muscles are telling me I’m not used to it.’

‘We aim to please, my tail and I.’

Ella giggled. ‘I don’t think I’m a convert yet.’

‘Good. There’s plenty more fish in the sea and I’m flighty, you don’t want to hang around with me too much. It was fun though. You’re good. I haven’t come that hard in ages. If you want to use this after me, feel free. The showers in the smaller cabins aren’t quite as good.’

‘Thanks. I think I need it.’

~~~

Ella had started collecting an audience when she had begun stretching to warm up for a few laps around the mess hall. She was not
entirely
sure that it was because the men were getting a really good view of her behind as she did asymmetric toe-touches. It could have been a genuine interest in the girl the captain wanted as a pilot.

On the other hand, when she settled into box splits and began stretching herself out along her legs, each in turn, the audience started getting bigger. And Lanyon had said they were light on females in the crew at the moment. They did look a bit disappointed when she finally stood up and started jogging around the room, and a fair few of them dispersed. Ella wondered when Trin’s next oestrus was. If what she had been told about on-heat Felix was true, they probably had to work shifts to keep her satisfied. And who knew what her tail got up to at times like that.

On the third lap there were footfalls, in boots, beside her and a male voice said, ‘Fight you for a fuck.’

She glanced at the man running beside her. He was not much taller than her, wiry, tight muscles, but nothing excessive. His nose had been broken too many times for its own good and he had a scar over his right eye which was not particularly attractive, but he looked personable enough.

‘Beg your pardon?’ she asked.

‘Fight you for a fuck. We fight, I win I get to fuck you. Old, old pirate tradition. Goes back… oh…’

‘Five minutes?’

‘Centuries! You saying you forfeit the fight?’

Ella pulled up and looked at the man. ‘Are you serious? You want to fight me to get me in the sack?’ There were a dozen or so men watching, and she guessed that they were trying to see whether the ploy was going to work.

‘Oh yeah.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Alderney, Brak Alderney.’

‘Okay, Mister Alderney, but I warn you, I’m not going to go easy on you.’ There was laughter, from Alderney as well. ‘The floor’s hard. It’s going to hurt when you hit it.’

‘Won’t be me that’s hitting it. Two falls, a submission, or a knockout. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

He moved, his fist swinging up from his waist and aimed at her stomach. He was probably expecting to catch her by surprise, but he might as well have been moving in slow motion. Another of Aneka and Winter’s little gifts, this one thanks to some work Reality had put in on neural interface integration: her brain operated at the same sort of accelerated pace as Aneka’s. She watched his muscles tighten, saw his arm starting to move, determined the target point, and her arms moved to intercept. At that point, the nerve augmentation cut in: she was faster than usual, though the accelerated reflexes tended to tire her if she used them for too long. She was not expecting this to take too long. She pushed his arm around her and began lifting it as her elbow swept up, hitting his exposed jaw. His head jerked backwards and she saw his eyes glaze over, but Aneka had taught her to fight and Aneka fought to the finish. Twisting her hips and pushing them in low against his, she pulled on his arm and there was a loud thud as he landed on his back on the metal floor.

Blinking, Alderney hauled himself to his feet, shaking off the blow. Ella watched him from a few paces away, assessing the damage.

‘Want to give in?’ she asked. ‘I won’t think any the less of you.’

Growling, he stepped in and swung his fist at her jaw. She let it connect, her hair flicking as the force pushed her head to one side. Then she turned back and grinned at him as he shook his hand.

‘Shit!’ he yelped. ‘Are you a robot?!’

‘Oh no. Just ask Trin.’

His eyes widened as he saw her move, her left hand swinging up towards his face. His arm came up to block it and it left him wide open as her right fist buried itself in his stomach. He backed off with a grunt of escaping air and she backed away, letting him consider his options. He was slowing. She had done him some real damage and he was hurting. He was considering the very real possibility that he would lose. Her gaze flicked around to the men watching and she knew he was not going to back out. There was no way he was going to lose face in front of his friends, or rivals.

He came at her at a rush, telegraphing the move with a roar of anger. She let him come, stepping around the charge and swinging in behind him, lopping an arm around his neck and then locking it with her other hand. His hands grabbed her arm and he tried to move it, but she was a little surprised to discover that she was stronger than him, and anyway she had a good solid lock. He was going nowhere.

Aneka had taught her two ways of doing a choke hold, and Ella was impressed that, under the circumstances, she remembered to use the one which was less likely to kill her victim. He kept struggling. Apparently he had not thought of trying to hit her yet, but then she was behind him. His struggles weakened and then he sagged in her arms, not unconscious, but too weak to keep fighting. She let him go and he fell to the deck, lying still and gasping for breath.

‘What the Hell is going on in here?!’ Kade had a really loud
voice when she wanted to have. A dozen men discovered a need to be elsewhere really quickly. ‘Anyone who leaves this room is on half-rations for the rest of the trip! Mister Alderney, explain yourself.’

Alderney stared at the captain from the deck, not speaking.

‘He needs medical attention,’ Ella said. ‘I may have bruised his throat, but he wouldn’t stop.’

Kade’s eyes turned to Ella, anger in them, but also something else… ‘Then perhaps
you
would like to explain this to me, Miss Narrows?’