Chapter 9
Flesh-eating flora had never been a sight I expected to be excited by, and yet, relief flooded my chest. Arana tossed herself at me and nearly sent us down the hole the troop created using the laser cutter.
The device created a perfectly man-sized hole all the way down, and a little further. Zavir was enthusiastic about the laser.
“Don’t scare me like that, you bastard.” Arana kissed my temple, then my cheek, then full on the mouth.
Good thing I washed my mouth out, but I still didn’t think she’d like to know where I was not that long ago. Or, well, no, she would love to hear the details while scrubbing her mouth clean.
“I should say the same to you. We could have lost you back there.” I returned the hug and gave Ryker, who stood behind her, a thumbs up. Lilea had her flamethrower out, ready to attack if need be, and Zavir hugged the laser like a newfound lover.
“I would have been a goner if not for you and the captain,” she said, with no idea why I really shot, and I wasn’t about to tell her. “The captain more than you, of course. If my face were burned, I would have eaten yours.”
“Noted.”
Iylene tended to the captain by using another med spray.
I watched from between the hugs and back thumping from the group, seeing Roys' expression soften after the grueling climb out of that tomb.
My stomach did a little back flip, relieved…
oddly enough for the both of us. No one deserved to die like that.
Iylene brought half our troop, explaining the other half continued their duties, so we didn’t muck up our schedule entirely.
Roys congratulated them on their quick thinking and ordered us to head back.
Iylene brought the rover near the plant where we got separated, so we’d return to the habitat long before nightfall.
According to Arana, the flora that attacked us backed off ten minutes after we fell in.
The fire exhausted it because, afterward, they approached the flora without it reacting.
Actually, Arana pushed Lilea toward it; otherwise none of them would have got close.
They returned to the habitat before nightfall, as Roys ordered, which I expected him to give me a harsh look for, but the captain hadn’t looked my way since I sucked him off.
Pfft, he was fine dirty talking down there, but now he got shy? Weirdo.
We returned to the habitat where the remaining troop waited. They barely gave me the opportunity to shower, wanting to ask a thousand questions I promised to share answers to after washing up and a hot meal. Over that meal came the questions, seeing as Roys wasn’t out there to join in.
Tareik, our senior medical officer, took Roys to the cradle, leaving me to explain the flora attack. Ryker reminded everyone that he already shared the tale. My story changed nothing, but he was a shit story teller. My rendition had the troop on the edge of their seats.
Yes, I embellished the tale of the giant centipede thing, and yes, I said the glow worms attacked us, and I saved Roys.
He wasn’t there to say otherwise, so tough luck.
I left out the oral sex, although the details would have gotten plenty of them hot and bothered whether they wanted to admit it.
By the time the tale ended, Roys wandered out of med bay wearing a shirt that—somewhat—fit him.
The color returned to his cheeks, and he didn’t move as sluggishly as he had in the cavern.
“Sounds like you owe Lucky a drink, Captain!” soldiers called over their laughter and bickering.
Roys kept walking. “Don’t trust a word he says. He probably lied through his teeth.”
The barracks doors shut, and he was gone.
“You pissed him off again, didn’t you?” Ryker asked.
“I did much more than that,” I replied, chuckling, feeling the abrupt urge for something cherry flavored.
“Details.” Ryker pulled a cigarette out of his jacket in offering.
He knew I was running low because I got drunk on Main and smoked most of mine the day before we landed. Gesturing toward the group, I had everyone lean in, knowing damn well others listened too.
“We made sweet, sweet love,” I cooed, causing all of them to release a range of disagreements and complaints. I hugged my arms around my chest. “Under those glowing little worms, I simply couldn’t stop thinking about his worm and that sweet hole of his.”
“Lucky!” Ryker shouted. Arana listened with rapt attention.
“Then there we were, lost together in the dark, exhausted and hungry in a myriad of ways. I simply couldn’t resist his temptation!”
“I hate you. So much,” said Zavir. He and Lilea got up to pretend they weren’t part of our group.
“So I ripped off the captain’s clothes and fucked him raw.” I moved in to make kissy faces at Ryker, who slid the smoke over and gagged. “He’s a screamer, by the way. Oh, Lucky, yes, right there, just like that, please!”
“You know what, take the entire pack.” Ryker threw the pack, got up, tossed the lighter at my head and left.
Snickering, I popped a smoke between my lips and lit it. Arana remained, not bothering to hide the message she sent to her girlfriends requesting nudes. I looked at her. She looked at me.
“Your story made me horny,” she admitted as the commlink flashed. Her girlfriends replied, offering a video call. Arana stood. “Excuse me, I have business to attend to.”
“Make it quick. I’m exhausted.”
She looked between me and the pack of cigarettes. “Finish this pack before you come to the room.”
“I’ll give you fifteen minutes.”
Arana puckered her lips and knew better than to argue. “Done.”
Then there was only Iylene, who had listened intently, as they normally did.
They munched on flora that must have come from outside and was, apparently, edible.
As usual, their expression hadn’t changed from apathetic even with my riveting rendition.
That freakishly long tongue of theirs spun around the flora to yank into their mouth whole.
“No wonder the captain was limping. You should know how important it is to use proper lubrication for anal sex, and he was injured. You should have controlled your urges,” Iylene said simply.
“I was joking, dear.” I laughed and offered them a smoke.
Iylene accepted and let the cigarette hang from their mouth. I lit it for them, chuckling when they said, “I see. I suppose that, regardless of injury, passionate fornication would have made the ordeal much more pleasant.”
“Can’t say I disagree.” And it sure did.
Together, we smoked, and I stashed the pack in my pocket.
I half expected my commlink to go off with a message from the captain saying to keep my mouth shut about what happened.
He seemed the type to freak out, even if he was a more than eager participant.
But Arana’s fifteen minutes were up — seventeen, technically — and there was no message.
Saying goodnight to Iylene, I headed to the barracks where I knocked on the door.
“Enter!” Arana called, and I did so, hesitantly. She laid on the top bunk, her clothes strewn on the floor and blanket held tight under her arms. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness toward my needs.”
“So long as you remember this the next time I need alone time.”
“What really happened down there?” She rested her hands on the railing of the bed and her chin on top of them.
“I gave the story,” I replied while tugging off my clothes.
“You gave some of the story. Something happened with the captain.”
“Yeah, he put up with me alone, in pain and hungry, for nearly two days.”
She tapped her chin. “True, it is a miracle he didn’t commit manslaughter. I probably would have.”
I fell into bed. Exhaustion hadn’t settled until my head met the pillow. The weight of my eyelids brought an overwhelming ache I couldn’t ignore.
The bunk squeaked as she leaned over the railing. “Nothing happened? Really?”
“Nothing of importance.”
The captain may argue otherwise. He hadn’t said a word to me during the entire trek back. Wouldn’t look at me, either. Probably got turned on, and that little snicker encouraged me to send a private message through our commlinks.
Lucky: Now that your back’s better, we could pick up from where we started down there.
Of course he didn’t answer, but the thought of him glaring down at my message, or cursing over it, made me laugh. That was the last thing I remembered before falling into a deep slumber.
I wasn’t sure when I woke up. My body throbbed in all the wrong ways.
My stomach growled indignantly, and I rubbed a pound of crust from my eyes.
Rolling out of bed, I found myself alone.
My commlink stated it was well past noon.
One message from Roys expressed the usual orders, departure at 0600, except they went without me.
Apparently, giving good head had its perks.
Roys hadn’t stayed, though. Droids cleaned, did the laundry and such.
One whipped up lunch for me and announced a reminder from Tareik that, if I required medical assistance, use the med bay.
I spent the afternoon on the viz, watching more nature documentaries—a minor regret because learning about penguins and their extinction made me irrationally hostile—or napping all the while considering Roys’ peculiar order to let me stay behind.
In the end, I settled on two options; either he expected me to use the incident to get him reassigned or he was being nice to try to have another go with me.
I’d let him squirm a little longer.
That evening, the troops returned as razzled as ever, that time carrying two soldiers to the cradle. They ran into a fern-like forest where the ferns were full of razor blades, basically, that tried sucking the blood from their victims.
“Vampire ferns,” one guy called them, and catalogued them as such.
The survey team would get pissy over us trying to use any unscientific names, but the name would certainly stick. All the dumb ones did.
“You are lucky,” Ryker said when he dropped into the dining area across from me. “It was the hottest it had ever been today. I thought my skeleton was sweating inside of me.”
He cast Iylene and Lilea hateful looks because their species didn’t sweat.
“That is my name,” I said, watching the troop file in.
Roys entered last. The fool had shaved, much to my disappointment, but at least a layer of sweat caused his shirt to hug him in all the right ways.
I devoured that eye candy in earnest, thought once more that he might acknowledge me in any manner, but he remained too shy to do so.
He hadn't replied to my private message, either.
Did that turn me on or annoy me? A bit of both, I think.
“Did you really fuck the captain?” Ryker asked.
If I didn’t have any self-control, I would have spit out my food. Instead, I chewed nice and slow, mouth open. Ryker, accustomed to my disgusting behavior, thought nothing of it. He laid his hands on the table while Zavir and Iylene fell on either side of him. Arana and Lilea sat beside me.
“I cannot think of another reason he so kindly let you off duty because that must have been a pain in the ass to explain to Corporate. They want us out there even if we’re missing a limb or two.
” Ryker jabbed a thumb in Venny’s direction, who had literally lost his arm and returned to work the next day.
The cradle healed the wound, but he couldn’t get a regrowth where he had been stationed, and Corporate saw no reason to send a prosthetic when there was a high chance it would break while on tour.
They’d have to keep replacing them, and that didn’t fly with them.
Corporate wasn’t keen on missed work hours, and Darmin was too drunk to listen, care, or argue with them.
I smiled. “Me neither. I guess our sweet lovemaking was just that good.”
Ryker faced Zavir, who had practically melted onto the table. “Is he being serious? Can you tell?”
“I don’t care,” Zavir wheezed, all four arms splayed across the table like a scientist’s specimen.
I didn’t much care for the conversation either.
Ryker tried, and failed, to get more information.
Telling them about what happened might lead to Roys’ relocation.
Corporate, technically, forbade relationships between superiors and their subordinates.
That never meant they fired anyone, or that it didn’t happen in droves.
I didn’t want Roys moved though, not while I could have some fun with him.