HV-2 Hazardous Cargo

"We train and keep the garden—" Avda explained.

"We study and maintain the ship," Sophine added, leaning around the captain's trunk.

Rewan huffed and rolled her eyes, and the captain continued, "But you need not worry about idleness, Yeowoman." Sophine pulled herself from the captain at the title, and its shift of tone. Avda said, "I think you will begin with the ship's laundry." Avda stepped toward the door to conduct Rewan away.

"You're kidding. Surely there's some Forebear relic for that?"

Avda shook her head, "No, no. Not on the Hutana Van-perhaps on the Hutana Balozi? No, we have all done this necessary, but that was before we had yeowoman aboard."

When they were gone, Sophine let the weight of incalculable possibilities press down on her for a moment. Her shoulders stooped without her show of confident vigor. Then she straightened, fixed her surety on her face, and headed to her quarters. There was study to be done. There was so much she did not know.

*

As the following day-cycle came on rosy and warming in the garden, Sophine fried another breakfast of poptoes on the little stove of the kitchen-cart-this time with a chutney of spiced berries. At the table, Avda was already fully dressed in her captain's regalia: all blue and white expanses, lined with gold, and one shoulder with the plumed epaulet of her rank. She mused over Fathema's notes from the previous suns' domains as she waited. Around them, the garden's nighttime activity was waning. A vine cat was in a tree nearby, its tail sweeping back and forth in some invisible wind as its eyes followed some equally invisible prey in the tall grass below.

"The yellow, white, red, and blue suns that we've seen on the far-scope have matched what we saw in real light and local scopes when we arrived. With that we assumed that the far-scope was simply showing the sun, but this green sun-green on the far-scope, anyway-is white on the near- and local-scope..." She mulled over the reports, leafing among them, "Nothing to set it apart: A stellar archipelago, like many others. Not much more or less than the mean of stone-worlds or storm-worlds." She muttered as an afterthought: "No green-worlds like Hutana, sadly."

Sophine set a hot plate of the colorfully-sauced popto slices before the captain, and turned back to the stove for the next batch. She said, "Nothing but those queer symbols peppered amongst the worlds and archipelago."

Avda nodded as her fork carved out a wedge from her breakfast. When her mouth was clear, she said, "Which we have seen in other domains-though, yes, no other had even a tenth-part of the symbols we saw at the green sun. Perhaps the sun was green in the time of the Forebears? We know the infinite void was ancient and ancient even at the time of the Forebears, perhaps the sun lost its luster just as we have fallen from the Forebears."

Sophine laughed as she pushed the sizzling slices around the pan, "You discard what little evidence we have for supposition, Avda."

"Fine, then there is some invisible aspect of the green sun that causes, on the children of their domain, these mysteries marked on the scopes? Perhaps the Forebears saw something in the sun that our poor eyes do not."

"That seems nearer to the mark, but you gloss over the Forebears' own near scopes that showed it in white."

Fathema slipped through the aftward brush to enter the garden's clearing. Her face was clouded with an unruly mess of bright hair and her airy tunic was propped up with a turgid half-erection.

"Temi!" Avda called out at her approach, "Do you expect us to find a violet sun when we arrive?"

The glowering helmswoman plopped down at the table with a growled, sub-verbal utterance.

"I agree, Fathema," Sophine answered, "Speculation before we have any evidence at all seems fruitless-especially when we have three suns to survey before we even arrive!"

"I only ask for her prediction. Surely," Avda leafed back through the reports before her, "Surely, if she has no intuition it'd be one chance in two dozen to not be violet."

Fathema growled what might have been thanks as Sophine set the heaping next plate before her.

"Quite so," Sophine said sagely, "It's best that we bend our attentions to the yellow sun that we'll arrive at next." She returned to the stove where she picked a dark, purple berry from its bowl and savored it between her teeth.

Avda nodded, abstractedly moving food from the plate to her mouth, chewing, and swallowing. She said, "A yellow sun. Like Hutana's own. Another chance for a green-world, then?"

"A green stone-world like Hutana may be very rare, yet. We only expect to find them because we come from one."

Avda ate idly between her perusal of the notes. When Sophine joined them at the table, the stove was still warm and sliced poptoes and chutney were set aside for one more portion.

Sophine asked, "Do we expect the young Hazard for breakfast?"

Avda looked to the aft where the garden's bulkhead was concealed among a grove of half-trees. "She ate like a draft ox at middens, so I'd expect she's still recovering from whatever that relic did to her. Though she never kept much to the days and nights."

"She'd finished the laundry by then, what did set her about after that?"

"There's little enough make-work on this behemoth with just the-now-four of us aboard, so I had her claim a berth and bind and stow the lines in the ready-room."

"How will you keep her bent to task then?"

"Don't worry about that: I'll not be bested by wastrel idleness. If nothing else, I'll set her to training with Fathema and she'll be begging for rest that night."

As if summoned, Rewan stomped through the brush into the clearing still in her clumsy boots and sparse black clothing, her red scarf catching at the low branches. Sophine stood to return to the stove.

"What have you been doing, Yeowoman?" The captain asked over her plate.

Rewan sidled into a seat between the captain and the helmswoman, "Don't worry, Captain, I re-bound and stowed the lines like you asked."

"For six hours?"

"And... I found a berth."

"For six hours?"

Rewan shrugged, "It's a big ship! But I ended up finding a great one: three feet of solid stone-wood on every side, and cozy! Not like the big cargo bays. Perfect for experiments-probably meant for the Forebears' own Hazards!"

Sophine laughed. Fathema continued carving and bolting her breakfast away. Avda barked: "You will clear any experiments with me in explicit detail and before they are attempted, Yeowoman Rewan."

Rewan looked back to the captain from where she was leaning up on the table to watch Sophine cook. "Great, then I have one I definitely want to try today: comparing the burn rate of—"

"You will be much too busy for experiments today, Yeowoman."

"What? The laundry is done. The halls are clean to be sure. We can't even go out into the void with the ether filling. What am I going to busy myself with. Clearing the dishes? I can handle that in less than the next twelve hours."

"Yes, that and moreover: you obviously showed that you are not yet tempered to handle the exertions this voyage might demand. As such, the helmswoman will administer a Naval physical battery to discern what we have to work with."

Rewan was querulous at first, but that dropped as she turned to Fathema, "I can think of some physical exertions the helmswoman could administer." She grinned, artlessly highlighting her innuendo.

Fathema looked at the Hazard and snorted, unimpressed. She swallowed her last bite and pushed away from the table, "You islanders talk too much of sex." The helmswoman turned and with a sweep of her arms she stripped off and discarded her tunic. She plunged into the pond with a dive that gave up hardly a ripple.

Rewan screwed up her face in frustration and Avda pushed away from the table too. "This time, when you are finished with the dishes and the Helmswoman's battery, you will report promptly to me for your next tasks."

"You were serious about the blasted dishes? There are, like, four!"

"Then you'll make short work of it. I'll expect you shortly, then."

Sophine set Rewan's breakfast before her and said with a jocular smile, "Don't forget the pan-the chutney sticks like glue!"

Avda walked away, "Don't forget the pan."

"Don't encourage her!" Rewan fumed at Sophine.

"And the stove belly could use a scouring!" Sophine giggled.

"And the stove belly," the captain called from the garden bulkhead.

"What are you doing?" Rewan scowled.

"I really hate cleaning the stove belly," Sophine apologized, "But if you don't everything just tastes burnt."

"It does," Fathema called from her languid bathing in the pond, where she was pulling her damp, wild hair into curling points.

"Enjoy your breakfast," Sophine said with a smile on her voice. She kissed the dour Hazard on the nape of the neck and walked away tugging gently on the long shock of Rewan's top hair between its shorn sides.

"But really: don't forget the stove belly."

*

"Well I hope you're happy, Arbitress."

Rewan stomped into the Sophine's quarters in a soft, homespun camisole and panties, looking exhausted and surprisingly normal out of her affected costume. She was squeezing out her damp hair along its central length, the short sides already light and dry. Sophine, seated in the billowy plushness of the bed, set aside the codex she was reading with a slip of densely annotated paper holding her place.

"If the stove's clean and I didn't have to do it, then I am!" She lilted with obvious pleasure.

Rewan approached the bed and sat down with the arbitress, "And after the stupid hazing called as an 'assessment,' Avda gave me one hour to forage a late lunch, bathe, wash my own sweaty, damn clothes, and report back to her for 'protocol drills'-whatever cruelty that entails." Rewan's small hands pressed up Sophine's skirts to draw out her panties' ties. Sophine was surprised at her forwardness, but not unpleasantly so. She parted her thighs slightly to let Rewan work.

"And where do I fall in that list?"

Rewan grinned as she pulled the arbitress's cock from between her legs, "After lunch. After the bath. Before more laundry."

"Should I be honored to be at least—" her voice caught as Rewan gripped her and ran her tongue from the head of Sophine's dick down the shaft to the break of the soft lips at its base, "-at least third on the list."

Rewan looked up from between Sophine's thighs, the arbitress's firming cock held casually aside, "It didn't seem polite before the bath, and I was hungry." Her eyes, so close upon it, stared at Sophine's cock, "Shit, you're pale!"

"So your sister tells me," the arbitress scoffed as Rewan got to her knees and tugged loose her own panties, her thick brown cock popping free. She knelt on either side of Sophine's hips and guided the arbitress's length between her legs.

"You should get some sun-or whatever the garden gets anyway."

"So Fathema tells me," Sophine's chuckle choked off into a purr.

Rewan looked distracted as she slid up and down Sophine's dick.

Sophine worked her hands up Rewan's satiny, earthy flanks to under her camisole, "You seem frustrated, Rewan."

Rewan blew out through her nose as she rose and fell, "It's Fathema. She won't have me, and aside from her it's just my sister."

Sophine twitched her head as if slapped and cocked an eyebrow, "Just her? What about me?" She gestured to their coupling.

"Okay, obviously, yeah, there's you, but that doesn't count," her confidence waned as she saw Sophine's confusion, "I mean: you're an arbitress."

This did not clarify the matter to Sophine as well as Rewan obviously thought it would.

"And what does that have to do with anything?"

Rewan nearly stammered as she tried to explain, "I mean, it's kind of your job, right?"

Sophine grabbed Rewan by the hips and brought her down hard, arresting her bouncing ride and eliciting a high, pleased squeak, "Rewan, do you think I'm obliged to have sex with you?"

"No!" Rewan hedged as she rocked her hips on Sophine's dick pinned inside of her, "But, I mean, isn't that one of the things arbitresses do?" Rewan could see this was not going well and tried to explain better: "Like a public service?"

Sophine rolled her eyes and held Rewan fast, trying to still her subtle, maddening motions, "No, Rewan! Arbitresses are not expected to service their wards. Why would you think that?"

Rewan closed her eyes as she acclimated to the rocking pressure, "I don't know, I guess an arbitress has never said 'no'."

Sophine growled and shifted their weight to roughly throw Rewan under her in a pile of pillows and sheets. The arbitress's cock was still lodged inside Rewan as she asked, "Maybe they just thought you were cute!" Sophine punctuated her last word by sliding up to her hips into the Hazard's tight warmth.

Rewan's whole body tensed with pleasure, but when she recovered, she said, "Not just me! Anyone!" Her breath came faster as Sophine swept her hips back and forth with little slapping sounds. She spoke between shallow gasps, "Unless they were busy-or the woman asking was-involved in a dispute-I've never seen an arbitress-turn someone down!"

Sophine was thoughtful, but did not interrupt the tempo of her hips, "I suppose we're so trained to see someone's true needs and desires-to see what makes a woman good and what she wants to be and what makes her worthy of love." She halted her musings and her hips with them, "Is this a common understanding? That our personal relationships are a public service?"

Rewan's eyes snapped open with yearning as Sophine stopped. The Hazard replied hazily, "I mean, I've never heard someone say it just like that, but... " she shrugged, "Yeah?"

Sophine bit Rewan sharply on the foot where she was holding it against her shoulder for leverage.

"Just so we're clear—" She slowly resumed her thrusting.

"This is not an arbitress's duty." She rotated Rewan beneath her so that she could slip a slim pinky into her ass and stroke her cock on the other side.

"I just think you're cute—" Her long, driving thrusts picked up speed again.

"And I see the great woman you see yourself becoming—" Her hips slapped noisily on Rewan's firm butt like a drum-beat between her words.

"And I see your great capacity for love—" Rewan panted and clenched the sheets beneath her, writhing around Sophine's pounding, stroking, and probing.

"And I want to share in that." Rewan's body curled back on the bed as a scream faltered into a gasp. Her short, hard cock spewed over the bedclothes and pillows.

The spark of consciousness lit in Rewan's eyes as she opened them. She leapt off Sophine's lance and whirled around on all fours, her little brown butt bare as her dick dripped between her legs. She scooped Sophine into her mouth.

Sophine chuckled low, "You don't have to pay me back. It's—" She quivered when two of Rewan's fingers plunged into her pussy and Rewan's mouth swallowed her cock as much as her throat would allow, "-not a trade... either."

It was the arbitress's turn to squirm. As the tension built in her, one hand clutched Rewan's shoulder and the other took a firm, guiding grip at the roots of the Hazard's heavy, still-damp shock of hair. Unknowable words died on her parted lips. Her pale bottom grinded into the sheets and she braced herself with her hand on Rewan's shoulder as she shuddered. Already thrilled and teased by the stop-and-start play with Rewan, Sophine could not hold herself back. She released her grip on Rewan's hair and the young Hazard pulled back only far enough to cup Sophine's head in her lips as the long, pale cock quivered and poured itself out in a handful of pumps like slow heartbeats.

Rewan gulped in small, practiced goes and stroked Sophine-squeezing on the pull up. When Sophine was truly empty and giggling breathlessly at Rewan's tongue playing at her over-sensitive head, Rewan pulled back to sit on her heels. She swallowed a last time and grinned, proud of herself. Sophine gave a fatigued, encouraging round of applause as she recovered her breath.

"I think you're cute," Rewan said, "And all those other nice things you said, too."

Sophine's spent smile turned to mock confusion, "I don't think all those things apply to me—"

"Beasts!" Rewan whipped around snatching up her panties, "How long was that?"

Sophine shook her head and leaned back against the high footboard, "Should I have been timing?"

Rewan danced to her feet as she tied on her panties over her relaxing penis. She headed for the door, doubled back, and gave Sophine a quick kiss on the freckle just below her eye, "Thanks!" And she bolted from the room.

"Thank you!" Sophine chuckled as Rewan disappeared. She looked at the sloppy mess sprayed across her bed sheets and her chuckle redoubled. She's going to have to clean these, she thought, and reached across the bed to take up her codex with a satisfied sigh.

*

The quavering, wistfully sad strains of Avda's improvisation on her chiba filled the night-cycle garden. In the long, quiet coda of her breaths, the scuffle of night-creatures and the crackle of the fire chimed in their music. Fathema added clipped, mournful, wordless keening at the song's apices. Sophine took the spitted fish from the fire and with quick strokes split fresh flesh from bone as she nestled it among thin layers of herbs and vegetables in the pan. Splashes of water hissed off the steaming dish. The water bound the flavors together and the susurrus mingled with the notes of the airy flute.

Rewan crashed back through the bulkhead underbrush, her lungs heaving.

The music died in the air as Avda pulled the mouth of the chiba from her lips, "Welcome back." Rewan gulped down air to prepare a reply, but the captain continued, "In the face of a foreign vessel bearing arms, but no presentation of aggression, what is the fitting engagement?"

"I'm hungry!" Rewan panted, leering at the dish Sophine was serving to Fathema.

"All the better motivation to get one right-or as close as can be expected-Yeowoman."

"Why am I the only one doing protocol drills?!" She whined.

Avda turned to Fathema, "Helmswoman, in the face of a foreign vessel bearing arms, but no presentation of aggression, what is the fitting engagement?"

Fathema set down her fork, laden with a dripping bite, "Section the ninth, Engagements Beyond Command, sub-section the third, conclusion: 'Thus, that future relations betwixt foreign powers and the Command might not be impeded, such engagements should be approached cautiously as to the objective of establishing any reasonable, mutually beneficial trade barring laminite, powder, or relics."

Rewan had recovered enough breath to complain at more length, "She's been a navywoman for years! What about Sophine?"

Avda looked to her at the kitchen where the smaller fire sizzled the next batch, "Arbitress? Given irrecoverable damage to the ship, but landing in desert harbor, what is to be the disposition of the crew?"

Sophine thought as she arranged the slanted, layered log in the pan, "I don't know the protocols to the sub-section and letter, but my understanding is that: In the face of active hostility, naval order is maintained until hostility is abated, and in only natural opposition, each Hutanari is her own mistress to better the chances of all?"

"She just made that up!" Rewan inched closer to the ring of the fire and the promise of dinner.

"That is two you've missed, allowing others to field them for you. Take a lap... to the engine room and back, and we shall try again."