11. Falkion

"Captain," Kollok whispers furiously. His gaze focuses on my beautiful sleeping Zeerah. "You can't allow this disrespect. How long will you subject us to this mockery?"

"Nn…" Zeerah twitches. "No, that's…zzz…"

Everyone looks at her. She snores.

"Humans need more rest than Arrisans," I reply mildly.

"But she…" He shakes his head, frustrated. "She's on the bridge of a dreadnought. She ought to at least try to do her job."

"She is. That's why she's tired."

"Are you really making excuses? For that?" He gestures, not just at Zeerah, but at the whole situation. A non-Arrisan position that overrules Arrisans on the matter of the Harsi. "Can you really let this stand?"

The bridge falls silent, and all my officers look at me.

The truth is, I don't know.

If Zeerah orders me to endanger the empire or her, will I obey?

I've reviewed some scenarios. The ones that most closely mirror my old dreams—ones where she orders me to run away, but the Harsi chase her instead of me—I cannot honestly promise that I will obey.

In all my years as an officer and a captain, I've never compromised my core values as a blade. I give orders rather than slashing up my foes, and I follow the assignments of the High Command over the assignment of the Arsenal.

The other blades who were reassigned, such as Ukuri in the science office, have suffered conflicts. Their minds fractured, their loyalties split.

Now, for the first time since I was forced to leave the Arsenal to go to officer's training, I'm starting to feel dangerous cracks.

Kollok sees my indecision and lowers his voice furtively. "High Commander Drin is making a plan to retake our empire. It hinges on you."

This is dangerous talk. "Why?"

"Our fellow Arrisans must wake up. Send away the empress's spy and contact him."

I hold his fierce gaze for a long moment. "A strong commander wouldn't hide his intentions."

"He will reveal everything soon. It's a matter of timing. He's—"

"Ba…ah!" Zeerah jerks awake.

Kollok pinches his lips together.

Zeerah grips the interior of her console, wide-eyed, and whips around.

I catch her wild gaze.

She blinks, frowns, then closes her eyes and leans back. And just as fast, she rocks forward. "The Battle of Second Star."

"Hm?" I encourage.

She waves me away to focus on Navigator Werrin. "The fleet commander sent the wounded away from the battlefield. The H-aliens destroyed him, then followed energy trails back to the other ships. The only survivor was a single one-man fighter lost in the chaos."

There's a moment of silence as we all recall our battle tactics classes.

"No," Werrin says.

"Yes, I just read it last—"

"That battle proved the Harsi used ‘angle vectors' to pursue their prey like any half-decent navigational system."

"But it says right in the text, ‘that's when we thought they might be tracing engine signatures—'"

"We started to think it, yeah. The battle sequence of the Green-Blue-Red systems is when we proved it."

"I haven't read that one yet." She rubs her eyes and groans. "You have too many battles, and they all end the same. ‘Everybody except one person died, and she tells this story.' It's demoralizing."

"Better get to studying, Officer." Werrin smirks. "The rest of us mastered all this years ago."

She glares at her viewscreen. The other officers appear satisfied with the exchange.

Kollok looks at me significantly.

As much as I want to fault them, I can't. Zeerah is catching up, but her level of understanding is below the lowest junior officer. Someday, she may surpass us, but until then, my officers naturally struggle with their frustration.

The shift ends. Officers due for rest exchange places with fresh junior officers and vice versa.

Zeerah hustles out ahead of me down the busy officer's hall, but for the first time, she doesn't walk alone. Navigator Werrin matches her long stride and schools her on her mistakes. "…then at the Battle of Red, scattering was ineffective. They hunted us all down anyway. That's why we can never run away. Get it?"

"Fine. I get it. I told you already. I haven't read that battle yet."

"Well, hurry up. It'll make your next suggestion less insulting."

"I was never trying to insult…"

A junior officer stumbles toward her. She flinches but before he makes contact, I step between them and shove him to the floor.

The flow of officers moves back and gives me respectful space.

Good.

She stares at me, horrified.

Navigator Werrin continues on her other side as if nothing's happened. "It is insulting. We read all the same battles ages ago, and we're not stupid."

"I…never said you were." She shakes it off and turns away again, uneasy.

"But think about it from our perspective. Suddenly, out of nowhere, some uneducated—excuse my term—lesser comes along and criticizes what we did a thousand Standard Years ago. It stings."

"I'm not trying to criticize. I'm just trying to find a solution where we don't all-but-one die."

"You and every other Arrisan, throughout all of history, across the entire empire." He pauses at the fork. "Hey, the officer's mess is this way."

"Oh, um…" She looks at me and glances away. "I, uh, have to study…"

"Yeah, I guess you do." Werrin smirks and strides off.

The rightness, reassurance, and security I feel as she pivots and enters our hall, in step with me, shakes me. Just a little. It, again, feels like a new sensation in our relationship.

"Don't throw Werrin to the ground," she murmurs.

I had no intention of doing so. "Why?"

"He's the only officer who talks to me, and anyway." She sighs at my door, waiting for my biometrics to open it. "He's right."

She walks in ahead of me, and I follow, closing off her escape.

Again, an unnatural swell of emotion crashes over me. Not long ago, she refused to enter my room, refused to even approach my hall, and now she dwells here comfortably. This is our normal.

My door seals behind us and locks. I press her against the wall. "I talk to you."

She licks her lips and looks away. "Other than you."

"Are you intending to study?"

"Now?"

I wait.

She meets my eyes. "Did you have another idea?"

I lean into her space. Her eyes stay centered on me as I give her every opportunity to move aside, and then her nostrils flare and her lashes close, and I cover her mouth with mine.

We melt into one.

She said human couplings take longer than ours do, and they have many partners, like when Arrisans go to the arena. They can unite their bodies and leave again, never to see each other.

She told me that she did that too.

So I must become a partner that tunnels into her so deeply, I become invisible. A part of her as natural and necessary as her heartbeat or her breath.

Then she'll never want to leave me.

Then I'll have peace.

I pull off my skinsuit, prompting her to do so the same, baring her dark skin to my hungry mouth. This time, she wears nothing beneath. Sometimes, she wears a repaired version of her fabric coverings, and I'm always curious which sight will greet me.

I palm her nude contours. The soft mounds of her breasts taper beneath her ribs to her waist. The flare of her feminine hips and the pleasing roundness of her buttocks that overflow the cup of my hand.

My tongue follows my hand, capturing all her flavors. The human salt behind her curved earlobe, the intriguing earthiness beneath her jaw, the tenderness of her vulnerable neck, the delectable warmth of her full breasts. I tongue her dark nipples, and she moans.

Her moan slides down my spine. Heat pools in my jack, swelling with readiness to take her.

But I caress her other nipple as I tongue my way down to kneeling in front of her. My nose kisses the soft, flat belly, and then I angle lower, nuzzling her dark springy nest, and finally revealing her already-wet socket to my intense exploration.

She strokes my hair. Her eyes glaze with passion, and a matching shiver dances across my nerves. Delving my tongue into her secret creases makes her whimper, and each helpless cry swells my jack to bursting.

I kiss up her body to meet her face-to-face once more.

She wipes my damp mouth. A delicate frown touches her brow. "I never do anything for you."

"You do everything for me," I correct, and walk her backward onto the wide cover of the brazier.

She wraps her shaking thighs around my waist.

I bury my jack in her wet, yielding socket.

She groans and plucks at my buttocks, her heels digging in. "Almost…"

I retreat and tease her, shallow strokes with no terminus, and she writhes beneath me, gasping. "…Stop…playing…"

But I am still concerned that I haven't bound her to me tightly enough.

When there isn't a time crunch, I try to prolong the experience.

There are different types of pleasures, she told me, beyond simple jacks and sockets, and I am learning them all. Her reactions fascinate me. The closer she drifts to her release, the closer I'm dragged to my own, so anyway, pleasuring her is just another way I pleasure myself.

And I have started to realize I am selfish when it comes to her.

Selfish and obsessive.

I tilt my jack to tease her rim.

She shudders, then grabs my face. "Falkion."

"Keep your eyes open."

"What?"

"I want to see your eyes as you release."

She starts to look away. "Um…"

I grip her chin as I move inside her. "Don't run away."

"I'm…not…Ohhh…OHHH…"

I glide all the way to the hilt, finally, and she blinks rapidly, struggling to hold my gaze, her chin trembling. But she does it. She meets my eye.

I reward her by closing the last fractions of distance, seating us into one perfect whole.

Her face goes slack. All her worries and agonies are swept away. In this moment, she's purely mine.

And then her back arches, and her elbows jerk and her eyes roll up.

Her release unbottles mine.

Ropes of my liquid pulse into her, and she squeals with every one, until I deeply know she's taken everything I've given her, everything I could give her, and we both lie still.

Her shoulders relax, and her lower back kisses the brazier cover. She gasps for breath, blinks, and wipes the sweat off her forehead. "Sorry."

"For what?"

"I couldn't hold your gaze at the end."

I saw what I wanted. She broke apart beautifully under my fingers as she impaled herself on my jack.

I lean over her to kiss the worry from her experienced brow. She strokes my hair and returns my kisses. Mouths meshed, I press her into the mat, caging her with my elbows. She is mine, and no one else will ever see her like this. No one else will possess her like I do here.

My jack flexes inside her soft heat, hardening again, and she whimpers against my mouth. I hold her against me, doing nothing but kissing her until the pressure builds and she ruptures against me once more, her climax dragging more fluids from my trembling jack. She cries for breath as she knits her fingers around the small of my back.

And thus, we pass our resting shift.

Her stomach eventually growls. Human stomachs do that. I disentangle us, push the brazier into the wall and put her into the soothing gel bath, and open the stores in my walls.

She finishes and steps out of the bath, the ooze pulling off every speck of dirt, and sits nude for me on the wall bench.

Ukuri has been growing edible Humana plants, and I had one sent up for Zeerah.

I hand her a bowl of nutrient cubes along with the Humana plant object.

The bowl, however, is a privilege of this room. She touches the mottled outside and the pleasant blue interior. "It looks like an egg."

"It's modeled after dishes we used on our home world."

She digs into the cubes, and her spoon strikes the Humana plant. She frowns and prods the object.

"Something wrong?" I ask.

"Is this a potato?" She stabs the yellow lump and holds it up. "It needs to be cooked until it's soft."

I pull the brazier back out of the wall, seal it in place atop the bath platform, and open the cool metal cover to expose the hot sands within. Using tongs, I bury the potato in the hot sand while she crunches the nutrient cubes, and when it fits the conditions, I spear it with my blade, shake off the hot sand, and drop it in her bowl.

She pokes the baked potato, carving into the skin and releasing steam. "Mm. Smells like home." She smiles almost sadly, then rubs her scarred right eyebrow.

"Should we heal that mark?" I ask.

She pauses, touching her scar. "No."

"It's important to you. We have important scars in the blades, as well."

"I got it to show pride in my father's tribe." She turns the potato over, releasing steam from the underside. "My uncle was furious."

An "uncle" is a parent's sibling, my implant explains. It may be genetic-identical or a more distant genetic match.

Hm. A distant relationship? Only a geneticist would bother to keep track. "And that was undesirable?"

"He wanted us to assimilate with a more powerful tribe so badly, he killed my father and took over our small tribe." She blows on the steam. "He had the resources of the more powerful tribe to back him. Instead of regrouping or running away, my father took a stand. He lost."

She seems deeply affected.

Strange.

I have genetic parents, but I have never met them. Like all non-aristocratic Arrisans, I was raised in a cohort. My memories of my earliest caretakers are dim.

Later mentors and teachers have more of my appreciation, but blades are one of the few roles that must fight each other for rank. Occasionally, someone dies. It's unfortunate and a waste of talent, but we move on.

She hasn't. "I was a kid. There was nothing I could do but fantasize about revenge."

"You wish to kill your uncle?"

"I want to embarrass him. Strip his ranks, and make him live out his days as an unimportant little man." She eats a bite, considers the potato with new eyes, and then quickly consumes the rest of it. She licks the spoon. "Of course, I can't even avoid everyone dying in a theoretical Harsi attack, so clearly, plotting out an intricate revenge strategy is beyond me."

I take her empty bowl, cleanse it in the hot sands, and return it to the wall stores, then I lead her to the sleeping pod. "You're not expected to invent a new strategy to defeat the Harsi."

"But your current strategy is ‘fight and hope a thousand years has improved our technology more than it's improved theirs.' And so far, it seems like our technology hasn't even improved enough to let us deal any damage to their thousand-year-old tech, much less any improved ships that might be flying around. The Vanadisans pitted an ancient H-alien ship against us, and we totally lost."

"We did stop the Harsi ship."

"Only because our lasers hit the Vanadisans' atmosphere veil, traveled up their wires, and fried them at their own equipment. A normal H-alien ship won't have a random hole in it. We can't drill one. Our engineers have been trying for kortans. In a true invasion, our lasers will bounce off, and we'll all die."

She yawns.

"Rest, Zeerah."

"Don't distract me. I'm thinking."

But the shadows under her eyes tell me her true needs.

I pull her into the sleeping pod and slide my hands up her waist, framing her body against mine.

She settles atop me uneasily. "I don't like getting cornered. You do, though. Arrisans love that for some reason."

"When your back's to a wall, no one will creep up on you from behind."

"They'll stab you in the chest instead."

I stroke her soft black hair. Even though it appears to be my length, it coils into springs, and she can stretch it out to be much longer. She can twist it into unique shapes as well.

She shifts, refusing to yield to her exhaustion.

I soothe her worried brow. "Is our current plan so bad?"

"If the H-aliens showed up next shift, I'm expected to run away, but you're a blade. You'd have to walk toward them."

"I accept death as an Arrisan and a blade."

"Yeah?" She gets up on her elbow and looks down on me. Her chin wrinkles, and liquid glistens in her eyes. "Well, I don't. Okay?"

Tears?

For me?

A strange ache clenches my chest. In the back of my mouth, my inner mating teeth flex.

Only a short time ago, she ran from me at every chance. Now?

Her shoulder is bare before me. A lovely, sweet brown, soft and inviting. I could easily sink into her, bite as I thrust. Press my poison into her, bind us forever.

But she could choose to slip away…

I clench my regular teeth until the urgency passes.

She lies against my chest again and fidgets.

"Rest," I say again, gently.

"I have to figure out a new plan. Just, for my own confidence, I need one."

Fine. Have it her way.

I tilt up her chin and take her mouth. She accepts my kiss, scissors my waist, and I tunnel my jack into her liquid hot socket, uniting us as one. You are mine. We explode, white and pure, and the shock wave holds us in a simultaneous embrace.

Zeerah melts and finally, finally sleeps.

I stare at the roof of the sleeping pod.

My inner teeth flex again and recede. An acrid sharpness dries the back of my tongue. The taste is foreign and interesting, like everything about my experience with her. Her precious weight, her even breathing. Her fear too.

I may die facing the Harsi head-on.

But it's likely my death will not prolong her life.

The Harsi trace energy signatures. They circle back and consume all survivors. All our precious ones, any persons we try so carefully to hide. They even consumed our planet once.

Destroying a planet is almost impossible. It's a feat that no other race has really accomplished.

Perhaps we do need a new strategy. Fractures crack along the foundation of my loyal Arrisan mind, and into these fractures seeps chilling uncertainty. If I don't do as I'm told, what will I do?

Zeerah twitches in her sleep.

I ease her carefully into the firm sand cushion of the pod and then carefully extract myself.

Whether I execute the orders of my Arrisan superiors or her, I will do better with honed blades.

And so, to calm my own uneasy mind, I sharpen them.