Periphery (22 page)

The door slid open under her hand and Isandre stared at her with an unreadable amber gaze. “Were you planning to come in, Captain? Or is staring at the door all night more appealing?”

“It has a certain charm.” Bridget gave her a grimace, not quite a smile, and stepped inside. She glanced at the active comm and wondered for a moment what Isandre had been looking at, what secret message she might even now be transmitting. A moment later, the thought was forgotten.

The door slid shut behind her as Isandre twined her arms around her neck, pressing close to kiss her. Isandre’s lips parted beneath hers, pulling her into the warmth of her mouth, linking their tongues. Bridget’s hands found their way down and over the graceful curves of Isandre’s body as Isandre’s fingers unfastened her jacket with frantic haste. Bridget could feel Isandre’s heart beat race through her, feel her own thighs run slick and wet beneath her uniform.

Isandre turned her, herding her back toward the bed until she toppled over backwards with the ambassador on top of her. Her jacket was ruthlessly tugged off, the shirt following until her bare breasts met the slightly chilled air of Isandre’s quarters. She had Isandre’s dress unfastened now and was sucking her bare nipples hard, pulling their sweet tightness into her mouth until the sensation brought a moan from deep inside the Lyrizi.

Isandre ran a cool green finger over Bridget’s scar, sending chills over the sensitive skin. “Elshabet?” Bridget nodded, not trusting herself to speak. “Interesting.” The word hung in the air between them and Bridget scowled, trying to imagine what she meant by it.

Isandre reached for something on the table by the bed and Bridget felt a cold touch at her neck. “Do you trust me?” Isandre whispered.

She pressed her body the length of Bridget’s until it was hard to think, harder still to whisper back, “No.” The finality of the word shook her. What if Isandre threw her out now, half-naked and desperate with longing, aching so much that she might never be filled?

Isandre sat up, straddling Bridget’s hips. Her dress was open to the waist, pale green breasts spilling out. More than anything in the world Bridget wanted to sit up to take them in her mouth before moving lower on Isandre’s body, making it her own. Instead, she reached up to feel what Isandre held against her neck: a hypo, its cold needle hovering just above her skin. She thought about flinging the ambassador off her, wrestling her to the floor to remove the danger. There was still time: she’d been that fast before, she could be again.

But somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to move. There was hurt in Isandre’s amber eyes but it was gone so quickly Bridget thought she imagined it. She kept talking as if Bridget hadn’t said anything, her tone suggesting nothing more than polite conversation. “The hypo contains a drug that we Lyrizi use to increase our pleasure, Captain. Is it something that Commander Elshabet shared with you? No? It will do you no harm and it is the supreme surrender, the full opening of one lover to another. Think of it, Captain: you can learn to trust a former enemy, perhaps even fall in love once all your barriers to it are removed.” Her fingers gently caressed Bridget’s cheek.

“Or I can give you the opportunity to rain skyfire down on my ship. I assume you have a ship following this one? No? You astonish me, Ambassador.” Bridget’s hand closed over Isandre’s, moving the needle away from her neck. Her fingers were like a vise and she could see Isandre winch. With a single quick motion, Bridget shook the needle from those green fingers, causing it to fall to the floor with a crash. “Do you doubt my desire for you, Hight? Somehow you struck me as more secure in your powers than that.”

Isandre caught her breath with a hissed gasp as Bridget reached under her skirt to drive her fingers into the warm wetness between her thighs. Bridget sat up, loosening her grip on Isandre’s hand and sinking her teeth into the nearest pebble-hard green nipple. Releasing it when Isandre groaned, she tongued it against her teeth as Isandre’s back arched. Elshabet never would have given up so easily. She grimaced at the tiny regret that came with the thought.

Isandre pulled away to tug off Bridget’s pants and the long, silky dress she still wore. Bridget watched her, eyes narrowed, waiting for her to reach for the hypo, for some unknown weapon. Instead, Isandre crawled up between her legs, still holding her gaze captive. The green mouth dropped between Bridget’s thighs, tongue caressing her clit with rough enthusiasm. Isandre slipped a finger inside her, then two before Bridget lost count riding her hand. She bucked, her back arching against the bed, legs locking before they exploded into motion, shaking and shivering as Isandre brought her to climax.

The ambassador switched positions as her tongue continued to caress Bridget’s trembling thighs. Now she lay on top of her, pressing her sex to Bridget’s lips as she continued her own explorations. Bridget tried to keep track of where her hands were, even as she buried her face in Isandre. There: one on her thigh, the other moving inside her slowly, stroking the wet walls, feeling their way deeper inside.

Bridget moaned, swiping her tongue the length of Isandre’s crack before sinking into that warm green wetness, wondering with every movement if she would cost the Confederation Arment. Part of her brain thought about betrayal, about skyfire and selerinite while she sucked on Isandre’s clit, drove her fingers in and out of each available opening until Isandre came, thrusting back hard against her. Her juices dripped down Bridget’s chin and into her mouth, sweet and sour all at once as she coaxed another orgasm from Bridget’s tense body.

Then, all at once, they were in each other’s arms, kissing and caressing as if they were truly lovers. A pang shot through Bridget with the realization that Isandre might be right. She might be the one who could have driven Elshabet’s face from her nightmares. But just as suddenly as it began, it was over and Isandre pulled away to roll off the bed. Bridget rolled over the other side, avoiding the hypo and kicking it under the bed. They faced each other warily across the rumpled, sweat-stained bed.

Isandre bowed, hands cupped at her eyes in the Lyrizi manner, like a combatant at a duel. “Thank you for helping me to understand a bit of what my cousin Elshabet experienced.”

Bridget went cold. Cousin? What was in that hypo? She reached warily for her clothes as though expecting Isandre to burst into threatening action. “I did not realize that the Commander was a member of your family, Ambassador. I am truly sorry to have brought grief upon your house.” She spoke formally in Lyrizi now, wondering what she would see when those amber eyes looked up to meet hers.

Isandre straightened. “Your accent and your body are both quite lovely, Captain. I have enjoyed the time I have spent with the most cunning warrior of your people.” She smiled a cold, tight smile and reached down to retrieve the hypo as Bridget pulled her pants back on. Her fingers caressed it as she looked up to read the question in the Captain’s eyes. “You’ll never know now, will you? May that uncertainty haunt your dreams along with my cousin’s face.”

Bridget tugged on the last of her clothes before spitting out a reply. “So is that what this was about? Torturing me? Revenge for your cousin?”

“It was about me understanding a warrior who could destroy what she cared about, Captain. So that I may be a better ambassador. Not an assassin or a spy, despite what you think.” Isandre dropped the hypo into a case and closed it with fingers that faded from green to tan as she spoke. “Elshabet never could have betrayed you the same way. I can see that truth in your eyes. One last question: did you truly love her, Captain?”

Bridget closed her eyes for a long moment, trying to shut out the sight of Isandre’s face, the scent of her body. Trying to remember what she felt before the blaster, before the skyfire explosion. “Yes,” she said finally and turned away to open the door.

“Good,” she heard Isandre murmur behind her. “I loved her, too, Captain.” The door swished shut behind her as Bridget walked slowly back to her quarters thinking about trust and diplomacy and love and wondering if she’d ever get another chance.

*

CL:
I can’t really point to any one specific thing that inspired “Diplomacy.” At a guess, its roots lie in my reading of copious amounts of science fiction and fantasy and a newfound enthusiasm for the series
Firefly
. Ever notice how those battered but unbowed war veterans and starship captains are almost always male? Heterosexual goes without saying. It’s as if all our current patterns, good and bad, of relating to the people and the world around us, have to be carried forward into the future in perpetuity. For me, the joy of writing sf is the opportunity to envision something new or at least different. To twist things just a bit so that more seems possible. The part where I get to do it with sex just makes it more fun.

You’re stripping out of your mecha because the battle’s over. Your nerves still sing from your part in the ship’s defense. You peel the shimmering layer of mecha down your arms, your wound-scarred torso, your legs. Nanoprobes withdraw, pricking your depilated skin with delightful heat, and the mecha pools on the silver deck like a satisfied cat. Released from their unnatural tensile state, your muscles slacken. You’re a normal soldier again.

A trooper, still wearing her mecha, pokes her head in the door. “Sarge, they need you in Blue Area.”

You groan. “Confirmed. Go strip off, Park. That suit’ll tear you up if you’re not careful.”

“Sir. On my way, sir.”

The door shuts. You do some isometrics under the black monitor cameras before you pull on your black undress coverall. Your uniform cap hides the pressure marks on your bare scalp. You suck down a tube of the protein paste regulations require, post-mecha, and jog to your next assignment.

Following a yellow strip on the deck leads you to a cluster of primary-colored triangles. The silver corridors surge with squads of mechanized troopers trotting in unison; engineers inspecting the bulkheads for damage; civilian scientists cleaning away debris from the unsuccessful attack. The air stinks of burnt plastic, not masked by the lemony deodorizer pumping out of the air recyclers. You take the upship corridor to Blue.

“Sergeant Flood,” says a trim blonde officer manning the Blue control desk.

“Sir.”

“Roo Squad captured one of the terrorists. Find out what she knows.” He gives you a palm reader, with her record open. It shows a DNA scan and nothing else.

“Yes, sir.”

He gazes at you solemnly. “We need this information, Sergeant Flood. If the Terraformers are still making an effort to capture Beta-Coriolanus for their use, we need to know. The recent communications blackout has made our Intelligence very…unhappy, with the elections coming up.”

You don’t give a damn about all that political crap, but these officers seem to feel obligated to keep the grunts in the loop. “Yes, sir.”

“She’s in Blue C-16. Dismissed.”

The captive slumps on the silver cell bench. Up in the corner of the ceiling, the red light on the monitor camera pulses, watching her. Her mecha is silver, scarred with black sooty burns incongruously smelling of rainstorms back on Earth.

You let the door slide shut and step back, blocking it. You’re big and silent and menacing. The prisoner is much smaller. She’s white-skinned, and her blue eyes are huge and defiant. She has a red plastic stud in each nostril and a design like a star—a brand, you realize—marks her forehead. Her sweat-spiked hair is prematurely gray, the way mecha troopers get after a while; she looks about twenty, a fresh little morsel who needs a good meal more than she needs an interrogation.

You say, “Take that mecha off.”

She says, “Fuck you.”

“Take it off.”

“Make me.”

The chickie’s wearing mecha but you’ve got twenty years of experience on her. You pin her to the bunk, her pulse beating frantically against your forearm. You find the stripseal of her mecha and rip it down. She shudders and spasms. The chickie’s hooked on the suit. You seal her back up, trying to ignore the sweet scent of her; it has the same effect on you as an unexpected cloud of nervegas. You wait for her to wake up.

When she does, you say, “How many ships are there in your fleet?”

She says, “I am not knowing. I do other work for the soldiers on my ship.” She licks her thin lips. “Special work.”

She’s a whore. Your people don’t have whores on their ships. Your government legislates that you just have to suffer. You wonder how long you could hide her in your quarters before someone found her. Anyone would wonder that.

She says, “I am wanting to stay here.”

“You look like you’d eat too much.”

“I am making it worth your while.” She grins, saucy like the kid who gets dessert no matter what. “The name is Harrah. You are Flood. See, I can read.” She points at your namestrip.

You say, disbelieving, “You’d rather sit in one of our cells than go home and do your special work.”

“The cell is having a big woman with big juicy tits.”

You don’t blink or acknowledge that you’ve heard. “I make all the deals here.” You lean back against the door, crossing your ankles. This position presses your swollen cunt lips against the seam of your coverall because, yes, the chickie makes you horny. Especially after your mecha’s been screwing your entire body all day. This scrawny little chickie with the hard attitude is just what you need to be banging.

You glance up at the camera. The red light blinks, on, off, on, off. You can smell ozone and your own musty sweat, and a kind of metallic tang you get right after you strip off your mecha.

She’s looking at the camera, too, those big blue eyes all wide-open and innocent. She turns slowly, stroking her hand down her body, modeling for whatever schlub is monitoring. You can see her ribs and concave belly outlined under the mecha in brutal detail. She’s a head shorter than you. Your people don’t have mecha that small. Even without mecha on, you could kick her bony ass. You could get a million details out of her, find out if she’s fucked the enemy’s High Command or knows what the grunts complain about in their own territory.