Dry, No Lube Ch. 01

"Him," said a clipped voice from down near the floor, and the mutant squinted up. "He's a him."

"Ah. Well, there you go." The three detail sailors were hauling the freight, a hoverpallet full of the piled detonators, all boxed and secured. The mutant glanced up again.

"But you won't be dealing with Commander O'Reilly, ma'am. He doesn't talk to lieutenants." He steered deftly around a clot of excited sailors from some other ship, turning down a darker corridor. "His assistant is Junior Lieutenant Kolpore."

"Junior?" Pixy glanced again at Joop, who smiled in a predatory way. If they were dealing with a mere junior, they were dealing with a rookie. Joop snickered, transparently expecting a favorable exchange rate. He'd brought an assortment of morphs to trade. "What's his name again?"

"No ma'am, that one's a she. Kolpore. I'm not sure about her first name, but it starts with M." He shrugged. "She came aboard maybe three months ago? All she does is sign for shit, ma'am; she doesn't really do any, you know, bargaining."

"Who does that?" Joop moved smoothly into the conversation; officers dealt with officers, but sailors dealt with sailors. "Is it you, you little freak?"

The mutant returned a veiled glance that could have meant many things. "No, chief. Nobody does. This isn't really a bargaining-type ship." He stopped at a clean, tidy hatch, one which did not rattle as it slid open. "Captain's orders."

"No shit," Pixy muttered, disgusted. Christ. What was happening to the Fleet? Next thing you knew, there'd be no bedwarming.

Speaking of which, the woman who uncoiled from behind the back desk inside would have done an ideal job in that department for most officers. She was tall and firm, looking sleek like a gazelle or something, unlikely to be a day over twenty-two; she looked as though she'd make an outstanding sexual athlete. She gave off a distinct air of grace and confidence, and when she saluted, she did it like a recruiting film, her breasts jiggling only slightly. Pixy looked away, not at all curious about a woman so titless, but Amisuul steamed right in. He plainly thought he'd found his target for the next thirty minutes or so.

"Hi! I'm Rocky." He slid past the counter in the front and offered his hand. "I do detonators. What's your name, sweetheart?"

She looked coolly over at him, her eyes flickering up and down. "It's Junior Lieutenant Kolpore." She took his scaly green hand in her dusky, long-fingered one, and gave it a brief shake. "Are you Lieutenant Pfeiffer?" She pronounced the P.

"No, I am." Pixy shoved Amisuul out of her way and slid a piece of actual paper onto the suspiciously clean desk. "Detonators, Ms Kolpore. Are you prepared to sign for 144 of them?"

"Yes ma'am." She swallowed. "Um, I should count them?"

"Should you." In Pixy's world, that's what chiefs were for. But if this chick wanted to do some math, that was her business. "Be my guest. Where's the nearest latrine?" Pixy needed to take a dump, and had been holding off for hours; she enjoyed shitting on the bigger ships. The latrines were always much nicer.

"Uh. Down the hall, around the corner to starboard, past the red door to the infirmary." She was digging around in her desk drawer, trying to find an abacus.

"Thanks. I'll be back to pick up the receipt." She checked her chrono and turned to Joop and his two sailors. "Thirty-three minutes, fuckwads. Get back to the shuttle on time, or you're pig meat." She traded a meaningful glance with Joop, and she could see that he understood; he was to find a way to offload his morphs, and a man so experienced would obviously have no difficulty.

"Aye aye, ma'am." The three of them scuttled out, and with a brief nod at Kolpore, Pixy turned toward the door.

"Don't let those out of your sight until she signs for them, Mr Amisuul."

"No ma'am." The Tygon was already leering at the Junior, but that wasn't Pixy's problem. And besides, her bowels were screaming.

Eighteen minutes later, a whistling Pixy Pfeiffer came striding out of the big battlecruiser latrine, feeling several pounds lighter. The corridors were bustling, every corner a vibrant atmosphere of muted excitement, like a medieval fair. She sniffed the air carefully as she went, wondering whether by some miracle the fart she'd left by the infirmary door on her way to the latrine could possibly have survived the air scrubbers, but of course it hadn't.

When she kicked open the hatch to the supply office, she was expecting to see the pallet of detonators, the signed receipt (plus seven copies for the mysterious Commander O'Reilly's records), and a confident Amisuul, just possibly persisting in flirting with the tall Junior Kolpore, who would be giving him a cool, easy brush-off; it was the way confident women dealt with such sleaze.

What she most certainly did not expect was to find her Third Officer, bent over the supply desk with that cool, confident young Junior plunging a strap-on into his rectum with her long fingers digging hard into his scaly ass. They both stopped in mid-stroke as she paused in the doorway, looking her way with their mouths and eyes wide in terror.

Well. At least the signed receipt was on the counter.

So she took the paperwork and turned nonchalantly around. "Fourteen minutes, Mr Amisuul. Don't you dare be late." The hatch closed behind her with a whisper, and Pixy shook her head as she looked around for someone to tell her the way to the bridge. She needed to broadcast her five-minute warning.

* * *

"Undocked." Pixy's voice on the mid-beam was steady, unlike most of her swollen detail, now drifting through the shuttle in zero-g. The directionals hissed outside as she maneuvered the shuttle with firm, deft movements of the stick. "Tango four-seven, hatch clear. We're fully joy for transit, over."

Timochenco's clearance officer crackled in her ears. "Roger, fully joy. Safe transit, over."

"Roger. Out." The directional spurted, and the shuttle turned slowly; once past the Blue Point, she flicked on the intercom. "Okay, people. Gravity's coming on in three... two... one."

A chorus of groans and thuds drifted forward from the troop bay as everyone fell. Beside her, Amisuul gasped as his ass sank into the seat. "Shit," he hissed, and Pixy swept her eyes back over the instruments before she smirked at him.

"A wee bit of pain astern, Mr Amisuul?" Pixy was enjoying this. "I'll make sure the surgeon gets you a birth capsule. Or, wait, was Junior Kolpore unable to ejaculate?"

He rolled his eyes over at her, the yellow irises slitted. "Uh, ma'am, I'd... I'd appreciate it if you'd, you know, keep quiet about this?"

"About what?" Pixy let her eyebrows rise innocently. "The sexual proclivities of our officers are not something the Pulver's senior leaders are concerned about, Lieutenant Amisuul. I'm shocked at the implication that I'd discuss this with anyone. Or, say, laugh about it in the wardroom when you're not around." He winced and looked out the window. "Did you at least get to do her first, Mr Amisuul?"

He blinked, shaking his head slowly. "It was surreal," he whispered. "One minute, I was getting my flirt on. I thought I was in, had my hand on her thigh just a little bit up under her skirt..." He shuddered. "She already had it strapped on, like, under her clothes!"

Pixy laughed wickedly. "Women are often surprising creatures, Rocky," she teased. "Was it one of those expensive ones? Like, the new ones that move?" The Tygon Strapon had just hit the market. "I'm told they work just like yours." She giggled.

"Please, Pixy!"

She reached across and backhanded him swiftly across the mouth. Joop, behind at the back edge of the flight deck, stirred at the noise through his morph. He'd gotten a stupendous deal, trading for a bunch of high-grade Drag. "I told you never to use my first name, Mr Amisuul." She frowned, adjusting the shuttle's attitude; Amisuul watched with envy as she flew.

He dabbed at the blood. "You can't tell!" he hissed.

She shrugged, twisting the stick. "You're done using my shower, Mr Amisuul."

He would have gone pale, if Tygons could. "Aye aye, ma'am." He'd only gotten to use it once, that first Wednesday.

She smiled tightly. "Deal, Mr Amisuul." Pulver grew steadily larger through the canopy, pumping fuel and lube oil aboard a frigate, the Shaka. She was turning back to look at the gravity settings, beginning the five-minute checks in preparation for docking, when Amisuul leaned well forward and squinted out into space.

"The fuck is that?" He was pointing across Pixy at some of the far stars, new ones, moving fast across the arc of space. "They're moving..."

"Get your arm out of my face," she snapped.

"No, really..." He frowned and his mouth dropped slowly open. "Are those torpedoes?"

"No." She rolled her eyes. "Who the fuck would be firing torpedoes while in an anchorage?"

"Not us." He sounded different suddenly, grim, and Pixy was just looking over at him when the first capital ship blew up. She was the far one, the frigate on the other side of the formation. Pixy braced to fight the shockwave that her training told her would be coming, while Amisuul recoiled with his pained rectum forgotten. "Holy shit! What ship is that?"

"Was that," Pixy blinked, and the wave rattled the whole shuttle. She slapped the alert button, waited a few seconds while she hoped the sailors down in the troop bay were strapping in, and then flicked off the gravity for more power. "Debris field," she muttered, the training taking over; she'd always been a good pilot. "Collision alarm," she bit out. Amisuul knew where that was, at least, throwing the switch on his side of the panel, and the tone seared through the little ship.

"What the hell?" Joop was blinking, his eyes pink, but Pixy was paying no attention; Pulver was maneuvering, turning away, and she needed to focus on the docking. "What's going on?"

"Fucking attack," she snapped, the shuttle coming around, and now ships were everywhere in the canopy, frantic, the umbilicals rupturing. "Quit talking to me."

"More torpedoes." Amisuul's voice sounded strange, all clipped and controlled. From the lower corner of the canopy, a huge grey shape swung into view: Timochenco, turning toward, her directionals flaring, and she was still under control as the torpedoes smashed into her stern, the explosions spreading fast up the hull, and within a few more seconds the great ship was gone.

"Power," Pixy ordered, her voice tight, and then the docking ring was right there in the lens. She did not bother calling in; the bridge would not be paying any attention to the shuttle, and she didn't blame them. "Power, dammit!" she spat, and Amisuul jammed the lever to its stops. The lens showed the docking ring, moving like a drunken street beggar; if she timed this wrong, she'd shear off the docking clamps. She'd get one shot at this. But even as that thought hit her, the ring was right there, drifting where it needed to be, so Pixy waited for the right moment and threw the shuttle forward.

The clamps grated into place. "Slick move, ma'am," Amisuul said in a low voice, and the whole shuttle clanged as some piece of Timochenco bounced off the side.

"Match pressures and get the fuck out!" Pixy yelled over her shoulder, and thank God somebody back in the troop bay had the wit to mess with the hatch controls, and there was a cursing groan as the Pulver's gravity took over without warning. Confused, the work detail spilled into the ship while Pixy moved her hands frantically across the panel, trying to remember the power-down sequence. She was shaking now, the need for action and leadership gone, and suddenly she realized she was terrified.

She'd never been under fire before, and now two combat ships had disintegrated in front of her. No, three... four? Ravager, the destroyer, was burning brightly in the distance, little bits and pieces falling away like mini comets. At least the ship was underway, though, which was more than anyone would ever again say for Stirrup, the other GP service ship, still trailing after the destroyer by the linked umbilicals, but blown apart from the inside, the whole vessel now nothing but a shell.

"Motherfucker." She was watching, transfixed, as the shuttle fell silent around her, and now the stars were all turning crazily in her field of view as Captain Crick got into his evasive maneuvers. It was impressive, actually; the ship was moving like a snake, bucking one way and then another, and Pixy had never seen the old Pulver turn so well. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Shaka, the near side bristling with ruptured umbilicals and, now, guns: her captain was moving with a purpose, straight out toward the perimeter, but then again that was the Shaka's usual job. Pixy felt a sudden strong urge to piss.

"Come on, Pixy," Amisuul was saying , high-pitched and frantic, tugging at her arm. "We've got to go," and she threw off her harness and flew out of the seat. The smell of space, as always, was strong as she headed into the ship, this time tinged with something extra: burning oil. She twisted automatically as she passed through, craning her head into the shuttle to make sure everyone was off, and then she toggled the hatch closed. "So, like, we jettison the shuttle? Right?"

"Fuck yes." The terror disappeared as though it were a light switched off. Did this asshole really not know what to do at quarters? "You know the deal, Amisuul. General quarters; you should be on the guns right now. Haul ass to the bridge; I'll let the shuttle go."

"Aye aye, ma'am!" His fangs were sticking out of his open mouth as the Tygon fled up the corridor, the whole ship rocking as she banked hard over, presumably to avoid a collision. Pixy knew she should wait until the ship was turning the other way before blowing the shuttle free, but who cared now if the hull took a dent from an untethered shuttle? She smacked the emergency button, punched in the jettison code, and then took off for the bridge, where her job at quarters was to run damage control.

She was ready for the bridge to be pandemonium, a constant string of orders summoning those amazing evasive moves; it seemed strangely calm when the hatch grated slowly closed behind her. "Lieutenant Pfeiffer, sir, reporting."

"Uh, sure." The captain was very white, gripping his chair arms with pale, skeletal knuckles.

"Shuttle's jettisoned, portside hatch secure," she added, not seeing Amisuul. "At least four ships hit, sir, three destroyed."

"Thank you." Crick was grinding his teeth, and he seemed to be giving no orders at all. He instead watched the crowded scope, transfixed, like a man staring at a porno. Well, shit, thought Pixy. If the captain wasn't conning the ship, that meant Densborg was on the helm, his assigned battle station. So the ship was being steered by a drunken man, and suddenly the weirdly inventive evasive maneuvers made perfect sense.

Pixy thought of saying something, but the maneuvers had looked good, and Pulver hadn't been hit yet. So she shrugged, strapped herself into her station, and started figuring out which fluids she needed to shunt, and where, to make up for the leaks from the umbilicals Shaka had torn out.

The rain of debris from blown ships was constant on the hull. DiBiase was responsible for the shields, which meant Chief della Sera would be the one telling the Junior what to do, so all things considered the little collisions weren't surprising. Okonfwe had the commo stream on the speaker, and the confusion of the sneak attack was plain to hear. Off to one side, she was dimly aware of a pale Amisuul emerging from the latrine, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, looking very pale.

Well, no wonder, Pixy thought: the senior captain had been aboard the Timochenco, meaning his corpse was now just a collection of organic matter drifting frozen in the void; so was everyone else aboard, from the mysterious Commander O'Reilly to the little mutant who worked for him, all the way down to sleek Sublieutenant Kolpore and her expensive dildo; and with the destroyer captain worried about damage control, it was clear from the comms that nobody at all was in charge. There was apparently nothing at all from Corsair, which should have provided early warning, and with a sinking feeling in her gut Pixy realized that probably meant she'd been torpedoed.

She snuck a glance at the scope, trying to make sense of what Pulver's antiquated detectors could tell her. She saw a white blur, a cluttered field of debris confusing the whole picture, and wondered why the captain hadn't reset the detectors to screen out the smaller contacts. "Uh, sir?"

He turned toward her mildly. "Yeah?"

"Sir, why don't we set the detection floor to forty meters or so? That way, we'll see where the ships are."

He stared hard at her. "Why the fuck haven't you done that yet, Lieutenant?" he demanded.

"Uh, sure. Sir." She unbuckled, the stars still wheeling crazily in the viewports as Densborg threw random levers and pedals, Jacobs beside him looking as pale as his dark skin would allow. Pixy made her way to the right console, her fingers sure and precise as they flowed over the buttons, and as if by magic the screen cleared, the structure of the battle showing itself.

Shaka was heading straight toward a cloud of torpedoes, maneuvering skillfully, firing at the stars. Janus, the medical ship, was still getting underway; she'd had her engines offline, probably, and it took time to power them up. How has she not been hit yet? Pixy wondered, irrelevantly, but then she was seeing the rest: Ravager, her fires apparently under control, now turning away from the enemy; same with Corsair, hit and drifting out at the side of the scope, and there were the three big, brutish enemy ships, and Shaka was about to get her ass kicked.

"What do we do, sir?" It was Okonfwe, tense, staring hard at the monitor, and Captain Crick frowned thoughtfully at the screen. He then turned quite deliberately toward her, opened his mouth, and vomited all down the front of her uniform. "What the fuck!" she spluttered, gagging herself, and then the captain was reeling out of the chair with a wet stain spreading across his groin, smelling faintly of shit.

There were wide eyes and trembling limbs all across the bridge, the brilliant inventiveness of Densborg's oblivious maneuvers keeping the ship quite safe, and then Pixy swallowed in a dry throat. "Chief? Get the captain down into sick bay." She glanced over at Densborg, who was in absolutely no danger of taking over. She hesitated, then leaned down. "Sir? Lieutenant Densborg? Want me to conn the ship?"

"Fuck, whatever dude." She understood at once that the man was having the time of his life, like a college kid with a hologame. "Just be yourself, Pix."

She blinked, amazed even among the confusion at how surreal all this was, but there was a job to do once more. Pixy shook her head, glancing over at the disgusted Okonfwe. "Dry, no lube, Amber."

"Well, that's the Fleet for you." Okonfwe's clothes were doing their best to rid themselves of Crick's vomit, her jacket inching tentatively off her shoulders.

"No shit." Pixy marched to the captain's chair, used the edge of her hand to sweep the puke from the seat, and hoisted herself unceremoniously up. She cleared her throat. "Shields forward, Mr diBiase. Max power."

The young man was white as a sheet. "Yes ma'am." He sounded like a boy reporting to his mother, but she had no time now for psychoanalysis. She glanced over at the weapons station.

"Gunnery status, Mr Amisuul?"