Seven
Tyger was seeing spots.
It was a good exhaustion –good for them both, he figured, if the very satisfied Imperial soldier beside him was any indication. After all, it turned out that they’d shared the same mutual itch, which was now utterly, thoroughly, satiated.
He was thankful that it was only exhaustion he felt, and not the pains of injury. Once he and the soldier’s passions managed to outlast the amount of hot water in the shower, and they’d tumbled as a tangle of limbs into the bed in the sleeping cabin, his orange fur and her silver- black hair still half-damp, he discovered that this female could be both insatiable and aggressive. Thankfully, she wasn’t as sexually aggressive as some other mates he’d known. One that came prominently to mind was Alexa, the fiery Pirate Queen whom he’d bedded –or was it the other way around? He wasn’t truly sure anymore among the haze of claws, teeth and blood that was a common occurrence during their frequent run-ins on Siberna.
His thoughts drifted back to the naked form of the soldier as she ran her pallid fingers through the fur of his chest. Still purring, he held her gently against his body, knowing he would be sore in the morning.
How the hell are you not dead? He thought with wonder, gazing at his companion’s placid face. Even asleep she sported a smile that spoke volumes about her approval of his sexual prowess. A part of him found it hard to fathom how she had even been able to keep up with him. Aside from that one pure Felyan girl he met while on a brief stopover at a fuel depot in his home system, only a few hybrids and that one suspect android girl had ever been able to match his stamina. Imperial soldiers, well-known for advancing relentlessly across the battlefield, often grinding enemy forces down with their seemingly endless reserves of energy were apparently yet another exception to this rule.
“My furry fighter ...” the soldier mumbled half-asleep against his chest, heaving a sigh as her eyes fluttered open.
“I’m surprised you’re awake,” Tyger said.
“I should be the one to say that,” the soldier replied, her words coming on the edge of a yawn. “You lasted far longer than the Colonel, or the others.”
“You didn’t believe me, did you?” Tyger said. A smug grin crept across his face. “I told you I could go all night and beyond.”
“The way human males need to ... recharge ... is frustrating,” the soldier replied. “You didn’t frustrate me once.”
“Careful, now.” Tyger craned his neck to view the clock that rested on the shelf beside the bed. His left arm was busy holding his mate securely against him by her backside as she lay sprawled upon his chest and midsection. He awkwardly reached over with his opposite arm to switch the timepiece to display mode. It had long since calibrated itself with the planet’s atomic clock and now showed standard local time. “You’ll give me a big head.”
“Is that another physical quirk of your genetics?” She asked. Tyger felt her hand slide below his waist, slightly awakening him in spite of his exhaustion.
“Not literally,” he said, his voice cracking a bit from the renewed pleasure that fired down his spine at her touch. This thankfully did not distract him from understanding their current situation. Even after hours of vigorous sex, that was something that was still near the forefront of his thoughts. “How often does each wave appear?”
“Roughly every twenty-four hours,” she replied, “just under a full day/night cycle for Blair.”
“Then I’m sorry to ruin the moment,” Tyger said seeing a way out in spite of the protest she was slowly invoking in his body. Deftly, he slipped his arm out from under her and shook the feeling back into his fingers. “But we’re about to have company.”
The soldier made a lilting, disappointed noise, and clasped his arm as he sat up. Breathing in deeply he picked up the scent of his father now mixed with theirs, permeating the entire bed. He was immensely grateful that he’d never once detected the scent of his mother in the mix; the thought of mating where he might have been conceived would have definitely made things feel more than a little weird. “We still have a few hours until then,” the soldier looked at him in a fashion reminiscent of a puppy dog pleading for a treat. “It won’t take us very long to prepare.”
“You want me again already?” Tyger shook with silent laughter. Her scent, though still enticing, was nowhere as compelling as before; exhaustion probably played a part in that though.
“No, not yet,” the soldier said. Tyger felt her arms encircle his waist, and the warmth of her cheek press against his back. His tail reflexively wrapped around her upper body, “But my interest is growing again by the minute.”
Tyger ran his fingers across her arms, tracing the contours of her toned muscles. “Look, we’re not going to be able to fend off those creatures forever.” He lowered his voice to a somewhat more serious octave. “I don’t doubt your fighting prowess; I’ve seen you in action. But I think we need backup.”
“What kind of backup?” The soldier asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
“My crewmates on the Shadow Star,” Tyger said. “If we can contact them, maybe let them know the situation, they could help us out.”
A look of familiarity spread across the soldiers face. “Shadow Star, I know that name, isn’t that the ship that torpedoed a patrol cruiser above Xiao about five years ago? The same ship that is crewed by traitors?”
Tyger stiffened and an anxious look appeared in his eyes. “The same,” He said slowly, “but listen, right now we’re in what Paige, the captain, would call ‘deep shit’ and if those things out there really are getting smarter, then eventually we’re either going to run out of resources to fight them with or be overrun. Either way, we need help and they can provide it.”
There was a brief but tense silence as the soldier eyed Tyger with an expression that simultaneously scared and excited him. It felt like hours had passed when she eventually spoke.
“Very well, we will contact your crewmates.”
Breathing a deep sigh of relief Tyger stood up and headed into the laundry alcove to retrieve his pants and underwear from the machine and began dressing himself. “I’ll ping them and then take a look at what’s causing the issue with the astronav.” Gently she reached out and took his hand as he walked by. Smiling Tyger knelt down and nuzzled her cheek. “I won’t be gone long.”
He purred against her ear, and passed his tongue over her lips –which she caught in her mouth before transforming it into a deep kiss, much to his combined surprise and pleasure.
Were you taught that too? He thought. With that kiss all sense of urgency faded out of his mind. He sighed, and crawled back into the bed, hoping he wouldn’t regret his decision.
“Okay, you talked me into it,” he said as the soldier gleefully went to work on removing his pants.
***
Just who is this woman? Tyger thought as he finished his message and transmitted it to the Shadow Star’s coordinates. One moment, she’s a warrior, the next a ... what do humans call it? A ‘sex kitten?’ Ugh I feel like I just robbed the cradle.
The contents of the communiqué were exhaustive. He’d even discovered a small portable multi-level scanning device in a toolbox above the starboard console. Managing to scrape a small sample of the now dried ichor from his machete, he placed it into the machine and attached the results to the file that was now sending. For several moments, while the message transmitted, he felt a pang of worry that Paige, having grown bored of waiting for him, had headed out of burst comm range, chasing some lucrative contract. In the meantime he set to work on running a manual system reboot on the astronav unit, there was a ping from the comm and the image of two kisses and a winking skull-like avatar smiled at him, signaling the message’s receipt and acknowledgement. He sighed once more with relief as he briefly massaged his shoulder, and then winced from the particular ache that flared in his loins as he shifted in the pilot’s seat. He’d certainly overdone it last night, but the experience, in spite of his misgivings, drowning in the fog of instinct as they did, had been the closest thing to perfect that he knew. In spite of his her exotic nature, it was unmistakable that what they’d shared was what Felyans called Ru’Li-ahnu: A good mating. And that made the thought that they would have to eventually part ways something less than pleasant. Still, she was a soldier. And as much as she seemed to enjoy his company for the time being, as far as he could tell, she didn’t appear to want more than that life.
This thought, however, managed to set his mind on a curious path, where a few key questions arose about this whole situation they were in. Why exactly did this soldier even feel so duty-bound to kill these creatures? If her aerial comm implant had been damaged, why did she not just return to her base alone and call for back-up?
The most plausible answer to that came to him much more easily than he’d expected: vengeance. They had killed her sisters, after all. He knew how fiercely protective Maria was of the Shadow Star and its crew especially her ‘sister’ Miranda. Leaning back in the chair Tyger wondered if Maria had ever been ‘awakened’ while in service of the Imperium. He knew she was pretty sexually active at the minute, especially with that creepy little pink haired girlfriend of hers. Perhaps such feelings were unique to ‘awakened’ soldiers. Even so the soldier had spoken about it as though such activity was taboo if not forbidden among the ranks. Did they share what they had learned with the others? She had clearly attempted to and been rebuffed quite forcefully by some, and yet if she’d faced disciplinary action for it, she hadn’t said anyhthing.
“That would be interesting to talk about over a pint,” he thought aloud as the astronavigation console ran through the last phase of its rebooting cycle. The image resolved itself and then broke up and began to blink randomly.
“Dammit,” he growled, and rummaged through the box of tools. He located the system analytics unit he’d found in the toolbox above the console and plugged it into the diagnostics port below the stellar positioning screen. He set it to Deep Scan mode and left it to run.
He detected the soldier’s distinctive scent long before he felt her hand on his shoulders, massaging them right where he needed it.
“Couldn’t stay away from your work, could you, furry fighter?” she asked.
“Necessary work, if we’re to get out of this,” Tyger said, pressing the “BEGIN SCAN” icon on the unit’s screen before relaxing into her hands’ very effective work.
The soldier leaned in close looking at the screen from over his shoulder. “Out of this, ‘deep shit’?” she asked.
Tyger let out a short laugh. “Yeah, precisely.”
Her hands slowly finished their work and she clasped them together across his chest leaning in and kissing him gently on the cheek. “You got lonely?” Tyger asked.
She hummed an affirmative. “But I understand that you had duties to perform.”
“Spoken like a true soldier,” Tyger said with a chuckle. “I got a confirmation receipt from the Shadow Star. My friends are,” He paused scanning the contents of the return message, “building nitrogen snowmen on one of the moons of Astoria.”
“The fifth planet?” The soldier asked. “That far out?”
Tyger shrugged. “What can I say? If Pip wants to build a snowman…”
The soldier looked at him and frowned, letting out a disapproving ‘hmm’. Tyger couldn’t complain, he’d pretty much had the same reaction when he first joined the crew and they decided it would be fun to flood the lower part of the main hangar and re-enact sea battles whilst riding inflatable marine creatures.
“When will they arrive?”
“Tough to say.” Tyger pursed his lips. “The captain works fast, but Pip might want time to analyze the sample of the creatures’ black crap I sent her. I managed to scrape some of my blade.”
“You sent them a sample?” the soldier asked with notable curiosity. “Impressive.”
“Well, it wasn’t so much a sample, as an analysis.” Tyger gestured to the device in the open toolbox beside him. “It doesn’t have a massive amount of detail but it should be enough to work with.” He reached down and picked up the device, activating it’s display screen, “Check this out. Those creatures are a fusion of artificial and organic all the way down to the cellular level. This machine at least can’t tell where the machine ends and the creature begins.”
“What will this Pip be able to do with the data?” the soldier asked.
“Not sure about that either,” Tyger replied. “But Pip’s a computational tank. She’ll think of something. She’s always thinking. And I do mean always.”
Tyger felt the soldier pause in her massage. He turned to face her. She was now dressed as he was, in her own now clean, yet still tattered uniform. Like it was on his freshly-laundered clothes, the scent of the ichor was still present, but greatly diminished, thankfully. She had a distant look in her eyes, as though trying to resolve an impossible problem.
“Pip is a tech?” She asked slowly.
Tyger wasn’t sure what to say. As far as he knew, tanks were tanks, bred for different roles sure, but still did the business where it counted. “Yeah,” He answered just as slowly as she had asked. “She’s tiny, though, just under five feet tall. She can interface with just about any kind of tech there is.”
“Yes, that is the function of a tech,” The soldier rubbed her chin gently. “And she moves around the ship freely?”
Tyger was growing more confused by the second. The soldier then looked him in the eye as if sensing his confusion.
“Techs do not move around. They are contained within processor pods aboard starships. I find it odd that you have one aboard that can not only move about independently, but is also a traitor like the others.” She turned and stared out of the main viewport in front of them.
Tyger sat there for a moment, processing what she’d said … and then began to chuckle. “They really do keep you in the dark about a lot of stuff don’t they?”
“Yes, it is ... certainly a surprise,” the soldier replied, her voice as distant as her gaze.
“Hey, that reminds me,” Tyger said, feeling that he might have accidentally turned the situation awkward. “You said your station wasn’t too far from here, so why sit around here, playing whack-a-mole with those monsters? Were you cut off? Is vengeance that important?”
“It is that in part,” she said. “The other part, I feel you will need to see for yourself.”
