Guardian of Night (31 page)

Cradit puffed out vigorous esters of excitement—along with the slight but distinctive underlying odor of anxious craving. Even though Cradit knew she was completely protected from his orgasmic give, he found himself imagining that he was taking her hands-naked, open to the spume of his pod.

He was barbaric! He was done with pillaging and now was despoiling and shaming the alpha female of his defeated foe!

His
she was.

Yes, why not?

He knew she was impressed by his rank, the quarters he’d established for her here in the bomb tug. He believed
she
thought of herself as his, as well. Why should she not? He was forced by protocol to share her with other flag officers, true, but he provided the funds for her primary upkeep. The problem was, those flag officers were apt to barge in at the most inopportune times. It seemed to him lately that every time he set the mood, prepared himself with a bit of pheremonal stimulant (illegal, of course, but harmless, harmless) to produce an erection, one of them would show up and insist on sharing the whore out.

It was as if they planned it.

Because they had.

He’d discovered as much when some junior officers had been careless in dissipating their talk in the rec area and Cradit had breathed in the truth.

It was a conspiracy to humiliate him! There was a plan afoot among his peers to keep tabs on his movements during his personal time, to
always
disturb him when he was with the whore. It wasn’t right! It wasn’t fair! And he didn’t have to put up with it!

He was a cursed admiral’s chief of staff, after all. His loyal aide-de-camp.

Cradit didn’t know the whore’s true name, and had never bothered to ask, although with a bit of discreet database massaging he was sure he could have turned it up. Besides, he liked her whore’s name.

Sweetbreath.

Cradit gave a mighty thrust into her gills. Sweetbreath’s hands trembled, and she moaned. She was getting pleasure from this, too! He knew she was, even though she still wouldn’t let him nuzzle her afterward. That would come. He would have it all.

And now he’d managed to truly find time away for the two of them to be alone. And physically away as well, so those morons couldn’t bother them. He’d commandeered the bomb tug (it hadn’t taken much, just his officer’s circlet) and simply taken off some distance from the armada flag vessel, the
Indifference to Suffering
. Why not? He was still within Q-containment limits.

He’d engaged the tug and lugged the pod (along with Sweetbreath’s quarters among the weaponry, of course) to a safe distance—all by himself. He’d not taken fifth in Academy flight training for nothing!

He was at least an orbital away from the flag vessel. He and Sweetbreath were alone, finally—

The view-screen image came back to life with full sound feed. Blawfus had overridden the lockout. He could do that, of course. He was an admiral, and this was
his
fleet.

Curse him.

“Commander Cradit, disengage from that nonsense and get yourself back to the
Indifference
immediately.” The voice sprayed loudly from every speaker in the pod. Damn it.

The form of Blawfus was displayed on the pod’s small communications screen located just above the area where Sweetbreath had created her “nest,” as she called it.

“I ought to spiral out your guts in front of the assembled armada,” Blawfus said. “You’ve taken one of my
weapons
to conduct your little tryst
,
you twice-cursed fool.”

“I needed a moment away. . . . The officers have been cruel and . . . I’ve been undergoing a great deal of pressure, sir. I apologize and I—”

What was he saying? What could he say?

Cradit fell silent, hung his shoulders in shame.

“Shut up, Cradit. I could drum you out of the service and be within protocol,” said Blawfus. “Let him go, whore.”

Sweetbreath gave one more playful twist to his positor and then released it. It hung down sadly, it seemed to Cradit. Forlorn, corkscrewed, and limp.

Damn him! Damn the old stinker.

“Fortunately for you, Commander, I have need of you. We’ve received reports from scouts. My suspicions have been confirmed. A Mutualist vessel has indeed been spotted two light-years from Sol. There will be others, I’m sure. And if all goes well, we should have the humans, the Mutualists, and our errant vessel within our grip.” Blawfus’s muzzle widened in a wicked smile. “Think of it as a whore’s grip. Something you’re obviously familiar with. But we’ll tighten our hands like a vise. We’ll twist off their positors!”

Blawfus was right. If indeed they could isolate all three mission objectives in one location and deal with them in one swoop, it would be seen as a tactical and strategic masterpiece.

Engineered behind the scenes by
me
, of course,
Cradit thought.

Cradit stifled a smile. Let Blawfus keep his delusions.

“The armada will move now,” Blawfus continued. “You will be personally in charge of arranging the deployment.”

Cradit shuddered with a wave of relief. Of course he had not
really
been in trouble for taking the bomb tug out for a spin. After all, the old stinker certainly couldn’t operate the flag deck’s operations and supply board without him.

“Of course, sir. I’m on my way, sir,” Cradit said.

Blawfus nodded. A thought seemed to occur to him, and he whiffed out a chuckle. “Perhaps when this is over and goes well, Commander Cradit, we’ll find a command worthy of your contribution. Maybe our old friend Arid Ricimer’s vessel, eh?”

“Admiral? Are you serious, sir?”

Blawfus pulled his muzzle into another smile. “Deadly serious, Commander,” he said. “Wartime breeds marvelous opportunity. An alert officer can rise rapidly. Especially the son of a Central Committee member such as yourself. For some of us, it was more difficult.”

“Yes, sir.”

Blawfus suddenly turned his gaze to Sweetbreath.

Cradit felt his simmering indigation rise higher.

What does he want with my—

No, mustn’t be possessive. Not yet. She was, after all, the flag vessel’s official prostitute.

“You, whore,” said Blawfus.

“Yes, your Excellency” said Sweetbreath. The very scent of her words reinvigorated Cradit’s positor into a slight swell. “Can I be of service? I promise my hands will be as soft as moss to your rocky cylinder.”

Blawfus seemed tempted for a moment.

Curse him.

“Not now, but I’m impressed with these quarters you’ve established. The vessel gigolo has nothing so nice, I happen to know.”

That
I
established
for
her, as well,
Cradit thought. He reflected, not for the first time, that the armada without him would be a poorer, sadder place. He said nothing, however.

“My assigned quarters were a bit cramped for . . . the methods I employ.” Sweetbreath’s reply was a perfumed cloud of titillation. “I would be happy to demonstrate them for you, my admiral.”

“As I said, not now,” said Blawfus. “I will, however, be sending a certain receptor to you soon, a highly placed DDCM officer who has not yet sampled your wares, I think. He is called Porhok. I want you to save those hands for him between now and them. You’ll know what to do when Porhok arrives, yes?”

“Your Excellency, of course. It is my duty. And my pleasure.”

“Good,” said Blawfus. He considered Sweetbreath a moment more. “Yes, you’ll do nicely. Don’t waste those hands on the lower grades any longer.”

“As you command, your Excellence,” Sweetbreath answered.

Cradit trembled at the humiliation. He’d store
this
slight in his
gid
, that was for certain. And one day—he would be the one serving out the humiliation. They would pay.

Blawfus would get no pass.
Of course he’d give me the vessel command to curry favor with mother,
Cradit thought.
I owe him nothing for that.

“Get back to the vessel, Cradit.” Blawfus’s form blinked off the display screen.

Fuck you, stinker. Fuck, fuck, fuck you.

Cradit shook his head. It could have been worse. He really had gone way beyond protocol with this excursion. But, blessed relief, it looked like he would get away with it after all. For now he’d better get himself back, however.

“He’s a quick one, that Blawfus,” Sweetbreath said after she was sure the admiral was no longer listening in. “Thinks well on who to poke hard and who to soften up first before hammering them with the good stones.”

Cradit gave an exasperated huff. So now she was puffing all over the admiral? Sweetbreath certainly
was
a whore. They all were, of course. At least she admitted what she was.

He’d make them pay. One day. He
would
, curse it. But for now—

“Shut up,” Cradit said. “What do
you
know, anyway?”

Sweetbreath bowed her head in the posture of humility. “Nothing, sir, nothing” she said. “Please don’t be offended at the folly of us whores. We think with our hands, we do.”

EIGHTEEN

19 January 2076

Vara Nebula

approaching Eridani Gate

USX
Joshua Humphreys

Coalbridge was salting himself up for his watch when SIGINT acquired the sceeve vessel on the beta.

Here we go,
he thought. And two light-years from Sol system. Like the bad old days.

He continued calmly to outfit himself in the bridge prep area while his third watch officer, Valdiviezo, began the run-up to battle configuration.

Getting ready for work was a gooey, uncomfortable, necessary affair. While human and computer interfaces had transformed amazingly in the past several years, Coalbridge reflected that the Singularity—the moment of transhuman machine-man transcendent symbiosis—had most definitely
not
arrived.

Coalbridge first droppered each of his ears with a gel-like solution of communication salt, then closed his earflaps with his fingers and swirled his head around to work it down the ear canal. Primitive but effective. Next Coalbridge tossed his head back and dropped visual-feedback salt from a small bottle into his eyes. The gunk smeared his vision momentarily, but with a couple of blinks it soon dispersed over each of his corneas and became invisible.

Sure will be happy when humans really go cyborg and all of this crap is permanent,
Coalbridge thought. Continually having to reapply and recharge salt was a pain in the ass. Human-made nanotech currently had the strength and longevity of an old-fashioned cell phone battery—and, like a cell battery, was at risk of wearing out or going dead at a crucial moment.

Salt, churn, and its nanotech progeny had not turned out to be the gray-goo menace it was cracked up to be by the Peepsies. One more thing they’d gotten hilariously wrong.

Give the engineers time back on Earth, and the stuff would get easier to use—and more lethal—he was sure. The world had changed more in the past twelve years than it had in the two hundred before that.

After a moment, the salt integrated with his senses. DAFNE spoke to him in his inner ear.

He was wiied to the chroma.

“NIRCEIS systems are nominal, Captain Coalbridge,” she said. NIRCEIS was the official acronym for salt. “Shall I activate watch transfer protocols?”

“Activate,” Coalbridge replied.

He felt the inside of his ears grow warm as DAFNE formatted the blank salt and keyed a security protocol and coded handshake into all its intercommunication subroutines. Half of the energy that the salt lost was expended in setup, but that couldn’t be helped. Without secure lines of communication, the words he exchanged with DAFNE or through her intracraft channels to the rest of the crew would be as open as any radio broadcast. He knew for certain that the sceeve had devices that could pick up such emissions.

Dumbass gaffes sink crafts. The slogan didn’t quite have the ring of the old surface navy version, “loose lips sink ships,” but it was memorable enough, Coalbridge figured.

DAFNE appeared before him in her blue-green, see-through geist form.

“Watch transfer complete, Captain,” she reported. “Intravessel operations reassigned. All systems checked. Slight interference in wii D channel, probably due to inaccurately gauged femtothread in auxiliary transmission coil. Reroute ongoing. Otherwise, all com and command systems nominal.”

“Acknowledged,” said Coalbridge.

DAFNE’s voice was modulated to sound as if it were emanating from her geist, which stood a comfortable distance from him. In actuality, of course, she was speaking to him—and only to him, unless they included others in the transmission—via vibrations along his ear canal.

“Give me boards and tanks,” Coalbridge said. “Full tactical crown.” Coalbridge stepped to the center of the bridge and took up his customary position behind the helmsman. A “crown” of display blinked into existence around his head, just above eye level. Coalbridge reached up and with a slightly hooked finger “pulled down” one of the displays, a three-dimensional tank that synthesized and represented data acquired within a one light-minute sector.

“Are we ready to take this thing on, XO?”

“Affirmative, Skip,” DAFNE answered in her chipper voice.

Coalbridge smiled. One thing you could say about DAFNE—she was never a downer. At heart he suspected she was still sort of a carnie, running her roller coasters at Six Flags, making sure that nobody got hurt, but also ready to scare the hell out of her passengers in the process. They’d been through a lot together, and Coalbridge considered her his best friend. She’d saved his ass many times, including once when she’d pulled him out of a pit of black despair so deep there had been no way he was coming up under his own power.

He’d done his share of mending DAFNE’s wounds, as well. Her original programmer had turned against what she had made of herself once he’d set her free in the crunch. He was one of the most visible of the Peepsies now and regularly denounced her as a war criminal. This betrayal had, Coalbridge suspected, broken DAFNE’s heart. And made her all the more determined to remain loyal to friend and duty herself.