“A Tibanna intermix regulator?” The Scrapper’s expression left Essa wondering if she’d accidentally slipped into her native Koeus language, Or’tena. Her frizzy shock of hair drooped at the thought that she had been rude to the delightful human.
“Yep!” Essa effused. “It’s a nexaride composite chamber about this big—” She was holding her hands shoulder-width apart, ready to slip into a full-on explanation before the Scrapper cut her off.
“I know what it is. I just don’t think anyone’s wanted one since my da’ ran the yard.”
Essa’s hair drooped further. It wasn’t hair in the human sense; the mane of platinum-coloured filaments around her head allowed her species to feel electromagnetic fields, but in her case, it also tended to communicate her inner emotional state. Like a dog’s tail.
“At the drydock on Vandemeer Gate they—”
“I got one. Your captain rob a museum?” The Scrapper cut her off again. Essa decided that this human’s Anglofran variant compelled her to speak immediately after grasping the other person’s intent. She would ask her new best friend, Briar, about it when she got home.
“Gosh, I hope not!” Essa had never considered the possibility. Captain Morgan seemed so nice!
The Scrapper rolled her eyes—Essa knew that expression! She was frustrated! With her?—and motioned for Essa to follow. “C’mon, I need help pulling it.”
Vesna Nováková hadn’t met an alien before. She’d expected if she ever did, she’d be awed by their very presence. Instead, this alien had wandered into her shop looking for fifty-year-old garbage, covered in grease and wearing threadbare bib-overalls so worn Vesna had a very generous view of a blue-grey alien boob.
Vesna didn’t object to boobs, not at all, and she wasn’t trying to get a good look at the alien’s boob, but since it was right there, she had to acknowledge that it was a very pretty boob. A little more than a handful, the bumpy areola somewhere between deep ocean and cetacean blue left Vesna wondering what the aliens might enjoy.
She shook her head in frustration; it’d been too long since her last personal day. She was overdue for a visit to The Velvet Deck. A vague prickle of concern stirred as she wondered whether Téreza would still be there.
“Hey! Shovelbum!” Vesna’s irritation simmered as the alien girl lagged behind. “Ass in motion! Unless you wanna wait a week.” The primary star, AU Microscopii, was notoriously unpredictable, but Vesna had been watching the elevated stellar activity. A storm was coming. Any day now. Any hour. That would bring comms and sensor disruptions. Trying to eyeball a flight, even in Vesna’s scrapyard, was unnecessarily complicated suicide.
Essa knew what shovels were, and she knew what bums were, but how they could go together was a mystery. Another question for Briar when she got back to Fomalhaut. Still, The Scrapper’s signals were loud and clear: they needed to hurry. Weirdly, Essa was already feeling a flutter of anxiety. Nothing about pulling parts from a derelict; something else she couldn’t quite name.
“Sorry!” she followed The Scrapper through the hatch and down a short passage to the airlock. “Oh,” she whispered, trying to smooth her hair surreptitiously. She suddenly felt very self-conscious around The Scrapper. A heat was rising, intense and uncontrollable, and it was distracting.
“Are we going EVA?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound nervous. Essa was uncannily good with machines that moved through space, much less so with moving through space herself.
“Shit, no,” The Scrapper shot her an enigmatic look. “We’re takin’ a tug, but the derelict’s not pressurised.”
Essa heard the reply, but a shiver down below and the uncomfortable tug of her overalls against her nipples made it harder than usual to focus. And focus was never her strong suit. “Yeah, of course!” she said softly, hoping that was the correct response, as she tried to not fidget too much, becoming more and more aware of the way her clothing felt against her skin.
“Damnit,” Vesna studied her suit’s display.
“Mmm?” The Alien had been nearly useless during the whole operation—distracted, clumsy, confused about the simplest things. She nearly broke the intermix regulator getting it free of the housing! But now she sounded drunk.
“C’mon! Panic room!” she grabbed The Alien’s suit and dragged her toward an exceptionally shielded compartment in the derelict. All ships of this age had one, being built before adequate EM and radiation shielding could be applied to the entire hull.
“Mmm?” The Alien said again as Vesna tugged her down a narrow corridor. She should just leave the idiot behind; might have, if The Alien had paid in advance.
Essa allowed The Scrapper to lead her in the strange, stumbling way everyone always moved in mag-boots. She was saying something, but Essa could only make out one word: “Storm.” That was enough; there must have been a high-energy particle event on the red dwarf they were circling. At just over 50 light seconds from the star, they’d have no warning at all.
Oh no, Essa thought, though it was from someplace very dim and very far away. At the front of her consciousness just now was how stiff her nipples were and how shaky her thighs felt. How the growing intensity of the particles passing through the ship—through her own body—was propelling her down a path that had only one destination.
CLONK! Essa reeled as her suit-helmet crashed into the frame of the hatch The Scrapper was pulling her through. “Sorry!” she called, her voice sounding shaky and very high-pitched in her own ears.
“Get in here! The ship doesn’t care if you hit it,” The Scrapper hissed, sealing the hatch behind them.
Essa staggered to a bench at one side of the tiny compartment. She couldn’t sit, not really, but it was very distracting still being on her feet while her entire body trembled with excitement.
The Scrapper was speaking again: “You alright there? The shielding’s gonna hold.”
Essa opened an eye—when had she closed her eyes?—and tried to interpret the human’s expression. She guessed it might be both curiosity and concern. I’ll reassure her, Essa thought but just then a powerful wave passed through her; she could only let out a breathy, trembling moan. The Scrapper’s expression became more … whatever it was, it was more of that.
“Fine!” Essa managed, and she caught herself unconsciously trying to cross her legs, desperate to apply some pressure and maybe speed up some release. The suit was much, much too bulky for that, and all she accomplished was frustrating herself. She moaned again.
“Are … you …” The Scrapper’s words were coming very slowly, but, for Essa, also from very far away. She caught herself rocking her hips, desperately trying to find any way to help herself along, but also utterly mortified that this was happening right in front of the very helpful, very nice human!
“Mmmhmm!” she moaned again, then took a shuddery breath and did her best to ignore the warm, wet heat building between her legs. Her legs—that she couldn’t even rub together, dammit!—clunked together hard in the stupid, stupid, bulky suit. She wasn’t going to last much longer. She hoped the storm wouldn’t either.
“Koeus,” she gasped, “we’re v-aaaah! very liira-seth — ah!” That wasn’t Anglofran; that was definitely an Or’tena word. She tried again. “Sensitive! We’re sensitive! To — oh my stars!” She knew she couldn’t actually touch herself, but it was getting so intense she couldn’t stop herself from trying. Her right hand crashed into the panel on her suit over her breasts, her left hand thudded uselessly against the crotch. “Electromagnetic fields!” She gasped again, whimpering as the leading edge of her climax took her. “Liira-braen!!!!” she howled into the mic, oblivious to everything around her.
Vesna felt so bad for the poor alien girl. She’d had at least three very intense liira-braen—if she was intuiting the meaning of the word correctly—while they were sheltering in the derelict’s panic room. Between the first and the second, Vesna had awkwardly asked if she should do anything, if the alien girl was in any danger or needed any help. During the second one Vesna mentally chided herself for the innuendo of offering “help”.
Since the storm had passed and they returned to the tug, the weird—but also weirdly cute—alien girl had barely said two words. Vesna tried once more to comfort her, let her know everything was alright. “So … I already got a girl. On Vandermeer. But she wouldn’t mind if I bought you dinner.” She glanced over and saw the alien girl look up just a little. “Feels like I should,” Vesna gently teased her. But as the girl looked up a little more, an excited, hopeful look on her features, Vesna understood she really did want to accept the offer. She chuckled. “I hate to say it, but I don’t even know your name.”
The Alien’s eyes opened wide, looking incredibly embarrassed once more. After a moment, she said softly, “Um … it’s Briar?”
