“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 anyunscientificnames, 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. Corporatewasn’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.
010
Onedaywasallthe kindness Roys offered. Over the next week, we set out early. Droids ensured the rovers were ready for us. All the unfortunate bastards stumbling on flora wanting a snack survived thanks to our overworked cradle. At one point, Tareik panicked because of the alarms warning of a breakage. If the cradle broke, Corporate would insist we continue working.
The east and south sides of the habitat would be cleared by the end of the day. The north and west would need two days, so long as nothing went awry. Roys didn’t look at me when he mentioned that earlier in the day. In fact, he rarely looked at me. I lost count of all the times I stepped into his path, chuckling as he pivoted in another direction. Or when I went to his office, and he found an excuse to leave. Or how he always had me monitoring from the back of our group, keeping us far apart, when he scheduled himself on our team.
The landscape and flora changed little during our inspections, though based on scans of The Planet there were varying climates. The habitat was situated around the equator, where the weather was habitable. To the north and south, storms raged that left the caps under perpetual cloud cover. The rain fell at such speed that it could cut. To the east, swamplands peppered the landscape, far too much of a hassle for us toget through. Far to the west, there were hundreds of active volcanoes. Magma flowed slowly, but the eruptions happened eons ago, and the cloud cover dispersed, leaving the area arid but not entirely out of our reach.
After the incident, we wouldn’t go near the translucent flora, not even the smaller ones. Our seats had been ruined. We took to sitting on the ground during our few breaks. In the afternoon, we traversed a forested area with less shade than the previous one. The flora had thinner stalks but with more branches and swaying leaves. Sweat poured off us in droves, forcing me to tug myself free of the cursed exoskin, fuck it, and my shirt.
