6. Andi

6

ANDI

A fter Thrax landed the long-range shuttle on an extremely large floating platform, Andi saw a woman waving at them. She was wearing an outfit very much like the one Andi had on, with a black corset, skirt, and boots, and a see-through red shirt tucked into the corset.

As Andi and Thrax exited the shuttle, she noticed there was a man standing about two paces back from the woman who was waving. He was dressed like Thrax, in a kilt made of leather strips and an abbreviated shirt which only covered his arms, shoulders, and neck and left his torso completely bare.

Well, at least Kat had gotten the fashions right, she thought as she waved back at the woman as they descended from the shuttle. She smiled at the woman, who quickly introduced herself and her mate.

"Hello, I'm Queen Shannabatch Keenasdaughter and this is my male-wife, Rux," she said to Andi. "I'm here to be your guide and bring you to the party. I assume you have your invitation?"

Andi produced the stiff piece of parchment with the golden script that Kat had given to her and the other woman nodded and looked pleased.

"Excellent! And may I know your full name so the doorman can announce you?"

"Oh, uh, I'm Queen Andrea Elladaughter and this is my, uh, male-wife, Thrax," Andi said, thinking fast to remember her matronymic name. "But you can just call me ‘Andi.'"

The woman, who had pale orange skin and long purple hair with a blonde streak right down the center almost like a skunk's stripe, nodded and smiled.

"Very nice to meet the two of you. And you can call me ‘Shanna.' Welcome to our lovely planet. Do you have any questions for me before we go to the party?"

"Well, I'm kind of curious about all these floating platforms." Andi gestured to the city laid out before them. Every building and house seemed to have its own broad, white, round platform and all of them were hovering over the misty void below. The vapors rising up from it had a distinctive and familiar smell, but Andi couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.

"Ah, well you see, Salacious Delta is mostly a swampland. So we've developed this system of floating platforms which are held aloft by wind turbines located around the edges of the platforms," Shanna explained.

"What happens if you blow a turbine?" Thrax asked, looking interested. "Do you have a redundancy built in so there are others to take up the slack?"

Shanna blinked, looking quite surprised.

"Well, aren't you a smart boy! Those are some pretty complicated concepts for a male."

"What?" No they're fucking not!" Thrax looked annoyed.

"Excuse me?" Shanna's eyes opened wide and she looked at Andi. "You allow your male-wife to use language like that?"

"Er, you have to excuse Thrax—he's not used to the Female-led lifestyle yet," Andi said quickly. "In fact, that's why we came to Salacious Delta—on Thrax's home world, all the males are dominant but he wanted to submit to me. So we came here to live the way we wanted to."

"Ah, I see. Yes, many couples come to us for that reason." Shanna nodded. "And I think that you'll find the longer you're here, the easier your male-wife will find it to submit. That's because of the Fume. Do you smell it?"

She wafted some of the vapors rising from the swamp below towards Andi's nose.

Andi breathed in and finally placed the scent.

"Sweet and sour chicken!" she exclaimed. " That's what it smells like."

"Excuse me?" Shanna gave her a blank look.

"Oh, sorry—that's a dish from Earth, my own home world," Andi explained. "That's what the air around here smells like—at least to me." In fact, the scent was making her hungry. It had been a long time since her breakfast bagel.

"Well, I'm glad you like the scent. But the Fume, as we call it, is the result of a certain plant which proliferates in the swamp below us. Once it dies and decays, it releases a mixture of chemicals into the air which is what you smell," Shanna explained.

"Okay, but how does the scent of sweet and sour chicken help males submit to their wives, er, Queens?" Andi asked, frowning.

"The chemicals in the Fume work on all of us who live here on Salacious Delta," Shanna explained. "They make females more dominant and they have the curious effect of making anyone with a Y chromosome remarkable biddable."

"So breathing in the Fume makes males want to submit?" Andi asked, frowning.

"Exactly so." Shanna nodded. "It's very helpful for male-wives who still harbor Alpha tendencies. It allows them to let go of their misplaced machismo and just give themselves to their Queens—true submission can be a beautiful thing, you know."

Andi wanted to point out that if everyone here was just submitting because they'd been drugged, it wasn't really a "true submission" but she didn't want to offend their guide.

"Well, I'm glad to hear it," she said, casting a quick glance at Thrax—who still didn't look a bit submissive to her.

She wondered if the chemicals in the Fume would work on the two of them—that would be weird. She'd never thought of herself as particularly dominant—though she had to be to a certain degree, she supposed, to make it in her male-dominated profession. There weren't that many women who were police officers or detectives—she'd been working Vice before she came up to the Mother Ship to become a Special Agent in the WLA.

Not that she objected to playing the dominant in their current roles—it was kind of sexy to be in charge—but Thrax was anything but submissive. Right?

Unbidden, the image of the big Hybrid kneeling at her feet as she put on his elaborate eye-makeup popped up in her mind's eye. The drugged look on his face and the way he'd said, "Yes, Mistress." What was that all about?

"—right this way to the residence of Queen Pantyitch Tieradaughter," Shanna said and Andi realized she might have missed something the other woman was saying.

"She must be a very important person," she said to cover, as Shanna led them down a long white, floating bridge that connected the landing platform to an even larger floating area which seemed to be some kind of public park. It had many twisting trails that went through large areas filled with potted plants and trees, some of them flowering with vivid orange and blue blossoms.

"Oh, Pantyitch is the head of our Ruling Collective," Shanna explained, nodding. "She's a very esteemed member of the community."

"This Ruling Collective—is it made up entirely of women?" Andi asked curiously.

"Well, naturally." Shanna laughed. "You can't expect males to have the sense to rule—or to want to bother their heads about anything as complicated as government! Why, their only job should be to cook and keep the house clean and to look handsome for their Queen. Isn't that right, Rux, my sweet?" she asked, turning to her male-wife, who was trailing two steps behind her—just as Thrax was walking behind Andi.

A wide, rather goofy-looking grin spread over the man's face. His eye make-up was even more elaborate than Thrax's, Andi thought, but not as well done. It made him look a little like a raccoon.

"Yes, my Queen," he murmured, looking at Shanna with obvious adoration. "All I want in life is to serve you and make myself attractive for you."

"That's my good boy!" Shanna exclaimed, giving him an approving smile. "Come—just past the park is the bridge which leads to Pantyitch's residence." She looked at Andi. "I assume you have some status markers with you?"

"Status markers?" Andi asked, frowning. "Uh, do you mean the golden breast jewelry?"

"Exactly." Shanna nodded. "You'll need to have your male-wife put it on for you as soon as we enter the party."

"My male-wife is holding onto it for me," Andi assured her. "Er…but since we're new here, I've never, uh worn anything like it before."

"Don't worry—just watch as Rux puts mine on me," Shanna told her. "It's easy as can be."

"Um, okay, thank you." Andi nodded. She still felt a little weird about letting her partner handle her breasts, but it wasn't really that big of a deal. She knew Thrax would be gentle and it was just part of the mission—it didn't have to mean anything. Even if the mental image of her full breasts being held in his big, capable hands did send a shiver of desire down her spine.

Stop that, she told herself sternly. He's your partner and that's it—you can't start thinking of him that way!

It was the same thing she'd been telling herself since the two of them had first been matched by Commander Sylvan. It would have been extremely tempting to let herself have a crush on the big Hybrid—especially after her ex had treated her so badly. And it didn't hurt that Thrax was always giving her compliments.

But Andi was a big believer in keeping her love life separate from her work life. Too many things could go wrong when you grew a romantic attachment to your partner. She'd seen it several times at the PD where she'd worked on Earth before coming up to the Mother Ship and it almost always ended badly.

So even though she was about to let Thrax handle her bare breasts, she told herself it was no big deal and vowed to keep things professional.