Just before stepping out of her office, Jo hesitantly gave me another quick, hard hug, and sternly told me I was not to gossip about her emotional reaction earlier. I readily agreed, I understood her enough to know that she was not someone that was going to be thrilled about those kinds of personal reactions talked about casually. Frankly, I think if I told anyone, I’d find myself in an airlock about to be depressurized.
I was headed back towards my quarters, mind a jumble of what had just happened, and what might be in store for me tonight, when Stacy chirped in my ear, “So how did your meeting with the Commander go?”
There was an odd sing-song quality to her tone that got me suspicious. “The usual. Lots of technical talk. Why do you ask?”
A sound like a blown raspberry came through the comms, “Well, that’s boring. I was sure it’d be way more interesting than that!”
“Sorry to disappoint.” I told her, letting out a chuckle. At least it sounded like Stacy hadn’t been eavesdropping. Jophixa had strictly laid down the law that Stacy was not to listen in to meetings within her office unless expressly invited. She would not have been pleased to find she’d been disobeyed. “This is Jophixa after all. These meetings are always strictly professional. Were you expecting there to have been some steamy torrid sex happen or something? Stacy, really!”
“Well poo, that’s just no fun at all Tommy-cakes.” She paused for a moment, almost like she was going to say something else, but when she resumed, she changed the subject, “Oh! By the way, Boudya is waiting in your quarters. I let her in, just as you asked, and from the looks of it, she’s got some hella plans for you tonight, mister! You gonna be a prudey dudey and make me give you privacy?”
I considered that for a moment. Tratsa and I had never specifically told her to keep herself out of our trysts, and she never said a word during them, thankfully. I’m not sure how derailing and awkward that might be, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out. In fact, she only made the odd sly comment directly to me via the implant outside of our actual playtime, like she understood that would be pushing our banter a bit too far.
“As long as Boudya doesn’t say anything, I won’t kick you out.” I said hesitantly. “So long as you behave!”
“Promise! I’ll be a silent peeping tom you won’t even notice is there” then she chuckled, “See what I did there? Peeping Tom?”
With a last chuckle and shaking my head, I found myself coming to a stop outside my own quarters, the humour draining from me and being replaced once again by anxiety. I suddenly felt like I was nineteen again, an awkward young man in university, preparing to meet a benastian, meet Boudya, for our first official date.
This is ridiculous! I thought to myself finally, this is Boudya, we know each other! But I still hesitated a moment longer before taking a deep calming breath and stepping through the door to my own damned quarters.
The room was cast in darkness, with only the glow from the swirling mists of hyperspace casting the interior in flickering shadows. Across the room, I could just make out Boudya’s lithe, salacious form reclining in a deep silhouette on the lounge.
If there were ever a goddess of seduction in existence, she would have been hard pressed to hold a candle against the vision that was Boudya in that moment. Leaning back in the double-wide chair, her arms thrown out over its back so that her modest, upturned breasts were heaved out as if in offering. The long expanse of trim, azure flesh of her abdomen undulating slightingly as if she were performing a strange, exotic dance while seated, and her impossibly smooth legs, long as a venutian day, followed in counterpoint, crossed seductively at the knee.
The undulating red-orange light of hyperspace swept over her azure skin in a caress that teased the truth of her nudity. Every square millimeter from the delicate arches of her cranial ridges, to the cobalt pattern of spots that ran down her hips and thighs were clothed only in the shadows that were being teased away in sultry glimpses by hyperspace’s light.
I swallowed hard at the sight of her, my throat dry, and my nerves finding themselves in an all out battle against the long dormant feelings that were being stirred up. “Well,” I finally managed to get out, “this…brings back memories.”
Uncrossing her impossibly long legs, she allowed the faint light from the viewport to reveal that the dappled cobalt pattern running from her hips and thighs continued across her pubic mound. Not saying a word, she just tilted her head ever so slightly and gave me a burning, sultry look, her eyes glinting yellow in the darkness. One long, toned arm came up off the back of the lounge and stretched out towards me, fingers beckoning.
That was all it took to break the last of the heavy inertia my nerves held me locked under. Old, remembered passion flooded back and propelled me across the room where I dropped to my knees in front of her. She met me in that motion, lifting her body from the back of the lounge to lean sensually forward, her hips still undulating ever so slightly to some music I couldn’t hear. Holding my face in her deceptively strong hands, she pulled me in for a long, sensual kiss.
The pulse of electric fire the kiss sent through me was like a fusion reactor igniting. I felt my heart racing, longing I’d done my best to forget for all these years surged to the surface with the intensity of a supernova, and I pushed her back against the lounge, hands grasping for her flesh in desperate need.
Tonight was going to be a night to remember.
Hours later, I woke up in bed, the sheets a tangled mess, and Boudya’s long, limber body half draped over me. Every muscle in my body was a confused bundle of exhausted soreness and sated limpness. Our rekindling of passion had roamed throughout my quarters, making it look as if the Elegance had either been through a terrible battle, sending everything that hadn’t been secured flying in all directions. It was going to take some time to get it straightened up, but fuck it.
Totally worth it, I thought to myself, lying there and simply enjoying the energetic tingling of my body and the feel of Boudya’s silky skin against mine. I just hope we didn’t break anything important.
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Well that’s a relief. I thought back to her, I’d really hate to explain to her that it was a casualty of a wild night of passion. Not entirely sure how she’d react.>
You’re likely right about that! I chuckled to myself, trying to stay quiet so I didn’t wake up Boudya. Thankfully, she was still a languid puddle on the bed beside me. That woman might say it’s all in the name of medical research, but she can come off like such a perv at times.
That sets them apart from the benastians, I guess. They are as open about love as they are about sex. I thought for a moment, suddenly frowning, Wait, giobhioni are uptight about their romantic relationships? In what way?
Okay….
So wait, you’re saying if a giobhioni woman had an interest to be in a committed romantic relationship with, well, me for example, they’d dance around the topic indefinitely until there was a clear indication I wanted the same thing?
Are giobhioni men the same way?
Holy shit, does anyone ever get married, or whatever the equivalent is, in their culture? That sounds like the stuff of tragic ballads on Earth. I shook my head, idly running one of my hands across the leg Boudya had draped over my body. How does any actual relationship get realized?
That got me thinking about a few exchanges with Tratsa, not the least of which was the ayatsana she’d given me, and the way Jophixa had seemed startled by my wearing it. Would a piece of clothing count in this kind of gifting?
So, the ayatsana Tratsa gave me could be one of these testings of the waters, or it could just be a friendly gift? That…feels…so unclear.
I suddenly became aware that the arm Boudya had draped over my chest had slowly moved its way down my body, and certain manipulations were going on. I’m going to have to give this a good think, but thanks for filling me in. Right now, I think Boudya has noticed I’m awake.
I rolled my eyes but smiled at her reaction, then smiled wider as I glanced over and found Boudya’s large slitted yellow eyes smoldering in my direction. Don’t let me be late for my shift, Stacy! No matter how tired I am!
At that very moment, Boudya rolled over on top of me in one graceful, fluid motion, and I was far too distracted to answer. Have I mentioned that benastians, certainly Boudya, can be rather insatiable? There are even rumors of people in ill health needing medical attention after trysting with one! Seriously, you’ll want doctor’s approval before you consider even getting close to one!
Stacy had to nearly scream in my mental ear to wake me up a few hours later when it was time for me to get down to engineering. It was going to be a full shift, with the flight recorder to crack open, laying out the initial plans for the Mark One weapons system for my suit, and getting the usual inspections and maintenance done. So I slipped out of bed as quietly as I could, half worried that if I woke Boudya, she’d try to go for another quickie, hurried through a shower and pulled on my engineering coveralls.
When I stepped out of the washroom, I found Boudya sitting up in bed and smiling. “I’d demand you come over here and kiss me, but you need to get engineering, and I need to get showered so I can get there myself.” she said with mischief and regret in her tone. “And there will be many more nights.”
I laughed at her, picking up a cushion from the floor and tossed at her. “I certainly hope so! Though hopefully let me get a bit more sleep next time? You benastians might only need a handful of hours of sleep each day, but we humans need a bit more than that!”
Her smile turned slightly evil, “I make no promises.” She blew me a kiss, which I made a silly show of catching, and headed out.
Dealing with the flight recorder wasn’t that difficult a task, it was mostly cracking it open to get at the interfaces and hook it up to offload the data. I’d gotten Stacy to set up a couple of jobs on the ship's mini-factory to make sure we had the standard hookups to run it through the comm unit Boudya had brought with her, and relay it to the Elegance’ computers for analysis. I hadn’t been at all surprised to find that the recorded data was encrypted, it was Enigma Osiris after all. I don’t even think Commonwealth Intelligence was as paranoid about their data as the press made EO out to be.
I was sure Stacy would be able to crack it, just like she had with the files Jesse had liberated. It would just require having them all transferred to the ship's computers to eliminate bottlenecks.
Once I had that task set up, I sat down and laid out the basic plans Stacy and I had discussed regarding the weapons system. The concept wasn’t really all that complex really, just a few high resolution sensor clusters set up in modules that could be attached to an EVA suit in key places, to provide for an unobstructed 360o coverage, and low profile shoulder and hip hardpoints to mount weapons on. Stacy would be able to use the sensor clusters to keep an eye out all around me, and blast anything unfriendly that dared come close.
I wasn’t a tactical kind of guy, so I hadn’t a clue what weapons to put on the thing yet, but Stacy said Jophixa was going to be taking care of that. It was going to be a delicate balance with that part, because if the weapons were too big, they’d get in the way for certain tasks. I was already going to be sacrificing something in that way just for the base systems. I hope Jo didn’t go overboard in trying to protect me.
When your work partner is a highly sophisticated sentient AI living in a computer substrate the size of a small city, taking rough schematics to a stage that can be sent to fabrication doesn’t take long. So we sent it off to the mini-factory with the proper request for priority sent to Jophixa, in case anything else was in the queue.
Now came the tedious part of the day; getting into those access tubes and doing all that preventative maintenance. I swear this was one of the reasons I went into salvaging instead of just taking a posting as a ship’s engineer. I was not a big fan of all this repetitive maintenance. I much preferred getting my hands on derelict technology, sussing out which parts could be made to work again, and what was nothing but scrap. But if I was going to get my knowledge base up to par on these systems for when we hit some of those abandoned locations in the files, I had to grit my teeth and do the boring stuff.
By the time I was about to crawl into a tantaja tube, Boudya had arrived and was busy running through primers on a giobhioni fusion envelope. I could see the hologram she was working with, and the various specs and parts bubbled up from my subconscious unbidden. This sleep learning was really helping. I wished Boudya had the same benefits.
By the time my shift was over here, the pilot I rescued should be just about ready to come out of quarantine, and we’d be almost to our destination. The first set of coordinates Jesse had gotten for us. Supposedly an outpost for a species the Giobhioni had some intermittent contact with back in the day, and who their high command had reached out to in the final days before their Stasis Protocol was enacted.
Hopefully, we got there before Enigma Osiris, or worse yet, the Ktonshi.
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