26. THALIA

Istood on an overturned crate and helped Ahane make about a billion smelly fish food meatballs. I was never going to get this stink off my hands. Maybe I would make him lick them until they smelled like cranberries and spices.

Hmm. Idea had merit. This ongoing encounter agreement worked both ways, right?

Ahane mixed up the paste with water and something that smelled lilac-ish, stirred it together with a huge flat-bottomed wood pole, and left me to scoop up dime-diameter sized portions and shape them into balls. Then I used my pinky to press an indent in the center. Place on huge shallow baking sheet. Once the sheet was full, he loaded it up into the oven to cook, then he blasted them with a torch to blacken the top a bit.

I picked up one teeny ball between my thumb and forefinger. “These are small enough for baby Humans.”

Ahane glanced up. “It’s a fashion trend.”

“What’s the fashion?”

“A three-bite meal. How you can satisfy your guests with a meal so elegant and perfect it will fill you in three bites.”

Sounded dreadful and like something Humans would latch onto if anyone ever put the idea in their heads. I could see the social media feed-flood now. “Stupid.”

A snort of agreement. “The Site Master wants maximum profit from this [NO TRANSLATION AVAILABLE] so this is my solution to prevent a riot.”

I snickered. “So you’re letting them think you’ve cooked for the finest Houses in all the Gestalt?”

He grumbled.

I deposited a ball onto the pan. “Is this stuff going to convince anyone?”

“Probably. It’s dried meal made from a specific variety of worm. Considered ruined after it’s been dehydrated for transport. Still very expensive though. Used mostly as cat food.”

I stopped rolling. “Excuse me. Cat food? We’re feeding the customers cat food.”

“Yes. Cat food.”

“Cats. You have cats. Like Earth cats? Are we talking about the same thing?”

Ahane sighed with his entire body, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes. “My understanding is they are very similar.”

“There are cats on this side of the galaxy.”

“They are used as guardians for farms. They are not pets. They are also very valuable. Which is why breeding programs feed the breeding stock and kittens well.”

“So there are cat breeding programs out here?”

“If there are, they are not legitimate.”

“I wish I could see a space cat.” I rolled another meatball. No network connection meant no cat photos. Did they look like pumas or cougars? Or more like an overgrown Fluffy out to murder anyone who trespassed? “You think a seedy space cat breeder would ever come through here?”

“I have no idea,” he grumbled.

Why was he so salty about it? Did he object to cats? Did a space-cat bite him when he was a kid? Had he been scammed by a space-cat breeder? I tried to act innocent. “If they do, I want to see one. I would love to see a space-cat. Tell me how to say ‘cat.’”

He stared at me for a full minute. I basked in his frustration and then how it transmuted to something else entirely as his gaze traveled over my breasts.

I stretched my arms over my head casual-like. “You know, Human slang for female genitals is pussy. Pussy is another word for cat. Now show me yours and?—”

“You have seen my genitals.” His gaze was riveted on my breasts. His hands were trapped in cat food.

“—tell me how to say cat in Utilitarian.”

He turned away. “My translator is familiar with pussy. I’m not telling you how to say ‘cat.’”

But he just had said cat. And he’d also managed pussy, which had become six delicious syllables when he said it. The way the s rolled off his tongue promised me great and wonderful things.

Now if I could get him to say ‘cat’ often enough, I could mimic it. All three syllables of it. “Tell me how to say I want to see your cat.”

“That would imply you wished to purchase a cat.”

Hah! Got him again. I pointed at the dark corner by the airlock door where something with three green eyes arranged in a wave pattern stared at us when it thought we weren’t looking. It also scuttled, but damned if I knew where it was making camp. Ahane had already killed one of the octopus-had-a-baby-with-a-sewer-rat nightmares. “We need a cat.”

“We do need a cat. We also cannot afford a cat.”

Hah! Twice more. Almost had the first syllable figured out.

“How much does a cat cost?” I had some vague notion of the value of currency at this point.

He told me.

That was a lot of bowls of slop with strange bits and custard pancakes. “Holy shit.”

“We cannot afford a cat.”

First syllable figured out. I’d let it go for now. He might catch on. “Guess the vermin will rise up and eat our eyeballs while we sleep.” I rolled out another meatball. Scoop, roll, deposit, pinky. Scoop, roll, deposit, pinky. “How the hell does money work out this way anyway? We don’t have a network connection, but I haven’t seen cash. Like hard currency.”

“When you arrive, you put money on deposit with the Site Master. Or in our case.” He gestured to his translator.

“But without a network connection there’s no access to a central banking system, right?” Bold of me to presume they had a central banking system but…

“You withdraw currency out of your central accounts and carry it in a transaction register.” He pointed to his translator again. “Each [CURRENCY UNIT] has a unique identifier and when deposited back into central accounts can be verified as legitimate. You exchange currency between registers. Here, the Site Master maintains a register.”

“And everyone pays out of what they’ve got on deposit, and when they leave, they cash out. But it’s otherwise untraceable?”

“Yes.”

“I guess you don’t trust the Site Master with your money.” I nodded to his translator.

Ahane shook his head.

If I’d gone on a jaunt with my space-commando buddies, I’d have brought coffee money and enough change to call home or bribe a ride. But also, as a space commando, I would trust my ability to keep my money safe over shady management.

What he was describing sounded a lot like cryptocurrency back on Earth. Had the Greys inspired crypto? Did Humanity have the Greys to thank for cryptobros and a shadow economy?

If there was a Sponsor a Space Commando fund, I was sending all my tips to it.

I scooped up the last bit of mush. “So can we go out after this?”

“No.”

“I don’t mean out, I mean to the concourse. To look around again.”

“You looked around before.”

“Please?” I had a few tips burning a hole in my pocket (or technically, the register in Ahane’s translator) and there might be something for trade or sale. Like sandals for my feet so I didn’t have to walk on the perpetually sticky floor. Or pieces of cardboard that I could tie to my feet with sack strips.

He gave me a we’ve had this conversation before look.

“I’m going out after this.”

“Weren’t you just asking permission?”

“I’ve decided begging for forgiveness would be both more entertaining and more effective.” I tossed down the last meatball and dragged my crate over to the sink so I could wash my hands free of their fishiness.

“Interesting. I presume this also means that begging me to unlock the door will provide entertainment.”

Right: my biometrics weren’t on file and I couldn’t unlock anything. “If you want me to twist your cock until you beg me to stop, you can just ask.”

Ahane’s first full-body reaction was what, no followed by a slow, full-body contemplation of what I’d just said. He glanced down at his crotch, then hefted the tray of meatballs and headed towards the oven.

I finished washing my hands and went to wrap up my wrists and feet. I did not want to be the Mysterious Assistant of the Diner. I’d get more attention than the ladies dancing down at the other end of the facility with their dangly bits out if I never was seen. My goal was to be as memorable as one of those pastel watercolor paintings in a hotel trying to act classy.

I wrapped up my ankles and feet to hide my toes, then wrapped up my hands. “I will never look at mummies on Halloween the same way again.”

Ahane almost picked a fight about my lack of gloves, but settled for inspecting my wrap job to make sure everything was sufficiently covered.

“I didn’t miss a spot, did I?” I asked as he studied me with such care I felt his breathing against my wraps.

He raised his eyes to mine. “No.”

Asshole using High Dialect just to watch me shiver and make me moan softly in shocked response. His cat-slit pupils twitched as he watched my reaction. Then he brushed my lips with his talon, eyes pinned on the way his talon pressed into my lower lip, before slowly drawing his talon down my lip and chin.

Well played, Red, well played. I brushed his hand back to his side. “Nice try, Red. And if you try to distract me again, I’ll make sure you’re harder than you’ve ever been in your life. And I won’t let you cum.”

His scales flushed frosty gold at the tips and his pupils spread wider in the center while remaining sharp at the ends.

I flounced out of the little room towards the concourse door.

The concourse wasthe same sad flea market it had been my first time through, although this time there were no food vendors. The Site Master had run them off now that the diner was back in business.

The squid-faced Cousin of Cthulhu bounty hunter wasn’t about, and no one else had the same vibe to them. Everyone fell into the same strange mix of I’m just browsing… endlessly and I’m here to get shit done.

The I’m just browsing crowd all were passingly familiar. I’d seen them in the diner, and I’d seen them my first time through the concourse. They were still here. No one had left.

No cardboard or similar to make shoes with, and nothing of interest. Mostly the same junk I’d seen before. Or very similar junk.

Ahane crouched down by one vendor’s wares spread out across a thick canvas tarp. He picked up a few pieces, studied them, then set them down. All very thoughtful and pensive. The seller, another taproot, watched with unhidden anxiety and urgency, but managed to keep himself from blurting out whatever it was he was trying not to blurt out. Probably please buy my junk.

We walked the length of the concourse with Ahane stopped a few times to contemplate junk on offer. He wasn’t faking it. He was interested in everything.

We ended up at the casino end of things again. Ahane brushed feelers off his shoulders, which earned some mocking trills from the two dancers, and then a smack on the cheek with one of the feelers.

Holy shit, she meant business. What the fuck.

Ahane reacted with just a brush of one hand to acknowledge it, and a tilt of the head to indicate he didn’t care.

Stone. Cold.

Miss Seven Feelers made a trilling [mocking laughter] while looking right at me and snaked her feeler around his tail while the other one lashed around his ear and gave it a tug.

A surge of jealousy shot through my core.

Ahane ducked away from the feelers, but she had a hold of him. The other dancer hopped down off her platform and plastered herself against Ahane’s other arm, her breasts trying to devour the limb, and she drew her forked tongue all over his other ear.

“Since you’re available.” Her words came with such contempt and rudeness it stung my insides. “I’ve never had 25XA tail.”

Ahane turned to look at her, ignoring how Miss Seven Feelers was giving his tail a hand (feeler?) job. “Do I look like the sort of 25XA that isn’t used to being the object of interest?”

Miss Seven Feelers shook her bangles to affirm he sure did while trilling that laughter in my general direction and adding a second note. [No direct translation: insult that you are a weak female who tolerates one of her collected males disrespecting her]

I raised one of my hands to her and turned my head away in an attempt to communicate you’ve got nothing, bitch.

Ahane shrugged Miss Boob off his arm and deftly twisted his tail out of Miss Seven Feelers’ grip. “Exactly.”

He said it with a color to his scales and a lilt in his voice that sliced through the two of them as only a precisely-timed and why would I choose either of you two from the pussy buffet could. It earned him a glass-shattering smack from Miss Seven Feelers, and took a piece of Miss Boob Monster’s soul.

Ahane looped his tail behind my back, and guided me away from the casino towards the dark hallway that nobody went down and went to the back of the facility where we’d seen the big hangars and the ship graveyard.

It got quieter and darker and cooler, and beyond a certain point opened up into a vast darkness that screamed secret UFO base, complete with security guards.

Ahane gave them both his usual look. The one that silently asked why anyone with two brain cells would question him, or what he wanted.

They let us pass.

Down a dark corridor with only sporadic lights, empty except for us.

“What—?” I whispered.

“Shh.” Ahane raised a hand.

I closed my mouth.

Ahane seemed to be looking for something.

The corridor opened up onto a proper hangar with dim light strips overhead.

It was indoor-parking-garage-at-the airport-the-day-before-Christmas full of ships.

Ahane led me down the front row of ships, which all were more or less the same as what we’d seen before: beaten up grind haulers. Nothing fancy. Nothing special. Faded, dingy, dirty, piecemeal, patched together. Different shapes and sizes and makes and models but the same basic principle.

There didn’t appear to be any easy way to get the ships in or out.

A few ships in the second row had open panels on their sides. Ahane inspected the profusion of wires.

I should have stayed quiet and not used my words, but I had to know why Ahane had gone down to the casino but not in. “Why did you let the dancers grab you like that?”

He paused in his inspection of the wires. “Did I offend you?”

Jealousy nibbled at my bones. “No, but I want to know why were we even there or you put up with it.”

“You seem offended.”

“This entire facility thinks we’re mates and that’s fine, but I’m not okay with them mocking us to our faces. You realize they were mocking you, right?”

“Yes. I am used to it.”

“Used to it?” I hissed.

“I am the?—”

I made a shut up noise. I didn’t want to hear that plain brother bullshit. “You’re not used to it. You accept it.”

“I usually avoid it.”

“Ahane. What the hell.”

“I wanted to get a look at the games,” he explained, “putting up with them gave me a chance to observe from a distance. I apologize if you were offended or jealous.”

I snorted again. “You threaten to kill someone who looks at me funny, but I’m supposed to be okay with you getting felt up? I can’t exactly fight them. Or even tell them off. I’ve just got to stand there like the beaten-down little mate everyone thinks I am. The articulated was telling me what a weak female I was and what a degenerate male you were and if I didn’t punish you, she would.”

He corkscrewed his tail with thought. “I apologize.”

There were more ships here than warm bodies. Plus there was the scrap yard beyond the hangar that had been visible coming in.

I was no expert in space salvage, but these ships didn’t have that been-sitting-on-the-side-of-the-road-for-five-years look to them.

I followed Ahane to the front of the hangar, which had a door off to the side that led to another dark tunnel with thin air. The tunnel was very wide. Strangely wide. And had weird marks on the floor.

That was all I processed before my breather kicked in and my brain realized holy fuck it is COLD and all resources went to violent shivering and gasping.

Ahane scooped me up and sprinted down the tunnel to the next door, which opened up onto a totally different hangar, this one smaller, brighter, and containing only a few ships.

My teeth chattered hard enough to crack. Ahane did not set me down but instead held me close for what warmth his body could offer. I couldn’t make my tongue or lips move to shape words.

There are disadvantages to being a bag of mostly water and neurons.

He carried me to our shuttle (I recognized it from the scorch pattern and hail-like pock marks all over the hull) and smushed the panel on the side with the back of one of his hands. The door slid open and he stepped inside before setting me down and closing the door.

Ahane steadied me as the shivering almost doubled me over as the heat sank into my frost-seared flesh.

Damn.

“Your lips are blue.” He grabbed my wrapped hands. The wraps were stiff and frozen. His touch sent pain through me as the warmth reversed the freezing process.

“Rr-elax.” I’d thawed out enough I could force my jaw to move. I hadn’t gotten this cold when he’d carried me into the facility the first time. That had been cold as fuck but not this bone-breaking you’re gonna die in ten seconds sort of cold.

He pulled at the wraps and revealed fingers that had been singed white. He threw the wraps to the ground and lifted my frozen fingers to his lips. He breathed on them and held them between his own palms. He spoke in soft, urgent High Dialect that flowed with apology and tenderness and regret.

“I—I’m okay.” My tongue and throat managed to shape words.

“Don’t speak. Don’t. I’m here.”

“I’m—”

“Shh.” He clutched my hands and breathed on them, and pressed his cheek to my throat, and tried to pull my cloak around me tighter.

Sharp pain seared my fingertips and lips and cheeks as the nerves woke again. I shivered and twitched, but it passed in a few minutes, leaving my lips cracked and skin dry and chapped. His pupils were narrow and his gaze darted up and down from hands to face to feet to hair.

“I’m fine.” I coughed a few times. Damn dry throat.

“I should have been more careful.”

“Ahane, it’s okay. No permanent harm done, see?” I peeled back one of the wraps capping my fingertips and wriggled a scalded red finger at him. “Nice and pink. Or chapped red. See? Fine.”

“I—”

If he was about to enter a guilt spiral, time to pull him back up.

By his balls.

“But.” I shoved my hands into his shoulders and pushed. He rocked back out of surprise. “I’m annoyed that I had to stand there while you acted like you are drowning in pussy.”

“I—”

I grabbed his tail and squeezed the tip. He inhaled and the tip shifted shapes in my palm. I leaned close. “So you think you’re drowning in pussy? Have all the pussy you want?”

“That’s not—” He was adorable in his floundering rose-colored bafflement with just a touch of concern.

I pointed at the corner of the tiny cargo bay. “Take your clothes off, go stand in that corner, and I’m going to show you all the pussy you don’t have.”

He was a glorious shade of tangled roses as he stood, backed into the indicated corner, and obediently took off his clothes. I shed my cloak, my sack-dress, and methodically unwrapped my hands while he watched, his thick cock starting to slowly swell.

I shoved my dress and cloak to the corner diagonal from him, reclined comfortably, so I could see him clearly, took a final lets do it breath, and spread my legs.

His gaze was lasers right to the pussy. His cock surged upright.

I traced my fingers of my lips and down my folds. His scales rushed in swirls and gradients and he visibly breathed while his cock started to bead and drip fluid and his tail writhed. He reached for his cock with one hand.

“Did I tell you you could touch yourself?” I drew my finger along my slit. There was some slick.

He froze.

“I told you I wouldn’t let you cum.” I parted my pussy lips for him just a hair.

He made a noise that sounded like a High Dialect prayer to some absent gods. I shuddered and ran my hand over my breasts.

He groaned.

I cupped them and ran my thumbs over my nipples. Tit-play had never done much for me (another thing past boyfriends had taken issue with), but his expression was worth the little performance. His expression was so hot it felt like his face shoved right between my legs licking every bit of me. More slick crept out of my pussy.

His hands stayed braced on the wall of his corner while his cock drained thin, long tendrils of fluid. The cargo bay started to smell like cranberries and spices. I licked my lips and refused to give in to the overwhelming urge to tell him to get over here.

Not yet. This was too much fun and I didn’t want to fuck it up.

He uttered something else in High Dialect. Some kind of plea.

“No,” I told him sweetly.

His knees visibly trembled for a heartbeat and his cock produced a pulse of fluid. I moved my hand back to between my legs and gave myself a long, slow palm-swipe. A quiver moved over my nerves and I whimpered softly and dipped my fingertips into my pussy. Wet.

He moaned again, tormented and low. His claw-tips scraped along the wall and he’d wrapped his tail so hard around his ankle it visibly constricted. He leaned forward slightly, breathing with the effort of not working his shaft.

I parted my pussy lips to give him a good look. He moaned again. I brought my fingers to my lips and gave them a slow, thoughtful lick.

He groaned in High Dialect, breathing hard. His cock twitched with his pulse.

I licked my fingers, then slid two of them just inside my pussy.

He twitched all over, his entire body clenching.

“I told you not to cum,” I mock-chided him.

He groaned, clearly trying not to cum, but his cock had other ideas. White spurted from the tip in long ropes while he groaned and his claws scraped the cargo bay and his knees buckled. He gasped and another spasm, and another, while he moaned in that sweet holy shit, what is happening sort of way that made my own body clench and tingle watching him wracked and powerless to control himself.

He gasped as his cock delivered a last few spurts to the ground and now he braced himself on the wall, legs spread, head bowed.

When he finally raised his head again, his expression clearly said what the fuck just happened.

I swung my legs to the side and sat up. My body whined that he needed to bury his face between my legs and restore my faith in oral, but I wasn’t about to ruin the fun.

Instead, I went and got some of our left-over wet naps and used my foot to clean up the mess.

He groaned softly as I mopped up his cum. Then he shuddered all over as his flagging cock offered another few beads and he full-body clenched and now moaned loudly in pain/pleasure.

I gripped his half-hard cock and squeezed, and stroked down. He groaned again, tormented, and I stroked him again, once, twice, and he arched his back and shouted as his balls visibly clenched and more spurted onto the floor.

He sagged almost to the ground in a panting, twitching heap.

I casually continued using my foot and the wet naps to clean the floor while humming a nursery rhyme under my breath. He staggered back into the corner.

I was halfway done rewrapping my left hand before he finally got himself together enough to put back on his pants. The small cargo bay smelled overwhelmingly of cranberries and spices and it was nice and toasty. And free of three-eyed vermin staring at me from the shadows.

“Did I ravage you?” I teased as he winced doing up his pants.

Ahane gave me a gentle grope on the ass with the upper curl of his tail as we headed out. He ducked to my ear and whispered, “I fear only that you won’t do that again.”

Back in the diner,we washed up, cooled off, and Ahane made tea. The unpleasant swampy licorice tea that many taproot seemed to favor for him, and then something that tasted (weakly) of berries for me.

I sniffed it before taking my first sip. “I’m not sure what that hangar was about, but I know it wasn’t what we expected to see.”

The tea was very weak, but it had potential. Finally, something that had a taste that didn’t make my non-existent toenails rot off.

Ahane pointed towards the door to the concourse. “The parts that are for sale are what’s missing from most of those ships. They’re not critical parts, but they are valuable. Akin to which finger would you like to lose. None of them, but if you had to pick.”

I sipped my tea. “So they’re selling off parts of their ships.”

Ahane nodded.

“Maybe I’m just an idiot Human, but it looks to me like that hangar is for long-term storage,” I said. “And that corridor between the storage hangar and the hangar where the smuggle-shuttle is looks like it’s big enough to drag small shuttles through. Or at least big chunks of them.”

Ahane nodded again.

“And you said that the Site Master”s mechanics are always breaking down ships in the next bay over.”

A third nod. Then, as he sipped his tea, “I have an idea. But it’s going to have to wait until my first pay.”

“Assuming the Site Master pays as agreed,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. “He will pay us. Or I am going to have to convince him to pay.”