Princess of the Void

A rush-ordered fleet of drones in various states of construction splay their metallic guts across the hangar floor. Sparks fire and rivet guns slam. Ajax watches the hangar crew skitter between workstations, calling and whistling. It’s nearly the end of shift for half the workers on the floor, and a carnival air has filled the hangar.

The recruits have been training in a ZKZ class hangar bay for a decacycle at least; Ajax shouldn’t be surprised at how well they’re integrating. But he still finds himself captivated by the interlocking rush of it all.

There’s Meena, her face hidden under a welding mask, straddling the cigar-shaped chassis of a nearly-done drone. Her jumpsuit is unzipped and peeled off down to her stomach; their sleeves are tied around her hips. Her arms and chest shine with sweat, bulging against her ribbed gray tank top. The muscles below the fluff lock and flex, and sweet little Meena is every inch a hangarside greasejockey, hissing air as she yanks the nose cone into place. She pulls her welding torch from its loop; its flare throws pale light across the bulging lines of her biceps. So strong. He wonders if he’ll see her at the gym. He wonders how much she squats.

She clacks the mask up and wipes her forehead. Her glove smears a patina of soot across it. She looks up and sees Ajax watching. She beams and waves. “Jaxy!” she cries, loud enough that half a dozen of her fellow crew glance their way.

He feels very self-conscious, suddenly, in his sleek scarlet service uniform. Is he overdressed? He wishes he’d worn his full visor anticomps instead of these glasses. He waves back. “You ready to party?”

“Hell yeah, I am. Just gotta finish up here and shower. Have you—”

“Meen. Talk to your boyfriend after we’re set.” The strapping amethyst woman she’s working with points a gloved hand at the mobile tool rack they’ve unfolded by the drone. “Rivet gun.”

Meena flips the requested tool off its hook with her tail and catches it in her outstretched palms. She slides it under the drone’s chassis and yanks some slack into the hydraulic hose it’s clipped to. “See you in a couple minutes, ‘kay?” she calls.

He salutes, on reflex. She giggles brightly and salutes back.

The lights are turning blue across the pit stations as the 0900 shift finishes up and clock out. The next shift is arriving, its girls suiting up and unbuckling helmets from their belts as they pass. Ajax patiently weathers the comments tossed his way as they snicker and try to outdo each other.

“Nice fit, marine.”

“You need a friend tonight, marine?”

“What are you doing all suited up in the hangar, big boy? You looking for a ride?”

A wave of cheerfully chattering engineers emerge from the locker room, heading in the opposite direction. Unmissable at its crest is Meena, laughing as she relates a story to a friend by her shoulder.

She’s poured into a body-contouring olive romper. Her ginger hair is still damp from the shower; her skin glows. His eyes travel down the scoop of her neckline to the soft pooch of her tummy, so snug against the fabric that he can see the dimple of her belly button. His primeval ancestors howl and bang rawhide drums around the bonfire in the back of his skull.

“Jax!” she calls, and jogs ahead of the crowd and God help him, the pillowy bounce of her chest. Ajax, take a breath. She’s coming in for a hug; hide your damn hard-on. You’re a marine, not a teenager. She’s your friend. Your old friend. Don’t be weird.

He crouches, hips angled, to receive Meena’s hug without his at-attention recruit becoming MIA in her cleavage. He thanks the Gods of the Firmament that maleborn don’t have to worry about their horns broadcasting their arousal.

“You look great, dude,” she says.

“It’s just the service uniform.”

She laughs. “Take the compliment, Sergeant.”

“Ooh, Meen.” A crocus-blue Specialist winks at Meena. “Making friends already, huh?”

“This is the guy I was telling you about,” Meena says. “We were friends at the academy. He’s coming with us for drinks. C’mon, Jaxy. I’ll introduce you to the cool ones.”

“I’m cool,” the Specialist says.

“You’re super cool, Harni.” Meena nudges her. “This is Specialist Harni, and she’s super cool. And she plays the kluvox.”

Harni the kluvox player reaches her hand out. “Pleasure, Jaxy.”

Ajax shakes it. Jaxy sounds kiddy again in Harni’s mouth, and he briefly wishes—

“Oh, he doesn’t love being called that, actually,” Meena says. “Bad habit of mine.”

Harni’s brow furrows.

Ajax nods. “Just Ajax is good. Or Jax.”

“Jax.” Harni nods. “Fun. Very percussive. Jax.”

Meena introduces him to a few more engineers as they go. She seems to know everyone. She’s changed so much. Not just physically. She’s gone from the shy little girl to the sparkling center of a whole web of friends. She was never like this. Certainly not around him. There was one time she got drunk and demanded a piggy-back ride of him, but she was asking for piggy-back rides from everyone, boys and girls.

He gave her one, then, for a goofy, tipsy minute. He looks at the curvy pink legs emerging from the cuffs of her romper, and wonders if she’d like another.

Or if she’d like to hold hands, maybe?

He falls in with the wandering group, as they move to the lifts, and he watches them, her hands, gesticulating as she goes back to the story she was telling.

The taphall is a rowdy, neon-drenched outgrowth from the main hab level. It’s taken up residence in the abandoned next door, which was a recital stage because the central planners are Imperial Core and don’t know how little Void frontier folk care about recitals, or how much they like to drink.

Meena’s sizable get-together takes up two booths and a long table near them. She hops onto a high-top and slides the stool next to him out. “Let me get you a drink, Jaxy,” she says.

“I can get my own.” He reaches into his satchel. “Plenty of scrip.”

She shakes her head. “I haven’t bought a guy a drink in cycles and cycles. Lemme indulge, yeah?”

He chuckles. “Okay. Get me a—”

But she’s already scurrying to the bar.

He watches her sublimate into the crowd, popping up again by the steins. She grabs two, and they look comically big in her hands as she shuttles them over to the taps. She makes small talk with the tap attendant and fishes into her bag for scrip.

“So you’re the Ajax?”

Two of Meena’s friends are watching him. The speaker is a lithe, jet-haired woman in a wrap dress. Her tail wags.

“It’s so interesting to finally meet you,” the other says. She twirls a platinum ringlet around her finger.

“The Ajax?” He blinks. “Has she talked about me?”

The two engineers make giggly eye contact. “Yeah,” Jet-head says. “A bit.”

Before he can ask what that means, Meena’s back with two foaming drinks. “You gals are being nice, right?”

The platinum-haired girl smirks. “We’re being so nice.”

Meena slides him one of the steins. He eyes it. It’s pink. This is one of those Kovikan sours. Foofy and fruited. He never orders these. Just whatever’s cheapest. That’s not my drink, he thinks about saying.

But Meena is holding her glass out. “Hey. Pike’s up.”

He clinks it. “Pike’s up.” He brings the foofy drink to his lips.

Fucking hell—that’s delicious. How has he never tried it until now, when it’s been right under his nose for who knows how long? He glances past his glass at Meena. She’s been drawn into a conversation with a knot of crewmates, talking about what they’re most looking forward to aboard the Pike.

“The food, girl. Of course it’s the food.” A purple pigtailed girl is wiggling her leg under the table. “You seen the menus? It’s crazy here. No more macrobars and nootch dust.”

“I wanna meet the Void Princess.” This from an engineer with a cute little gap between her front teeth. “Like I know she’s missing, but once she’s back. Or whoever replaces her.”

That makes Ajax flinch.

“I bet I know what Meena’s looking forward to. The marines.” One of the girls, a taller one with artfully slashed sleeves, snickers as she says it. “You picked one up quick.”

“Jaxy’s an old friend, actually,” Meena says. “We went to academy together on Aodok.”

“Well if you don’t want him, I’ll take him.” The tall girl grins lasciviously at him. “Hey, Mr. Marine. How many commanding officers you got?”

“The usual amount, ma’am.” Ajax is glad the frosted glasses hide his rolling eyes.

“You like when ladies tell you what to do?” She bats her lashes. “I’m not your CO, but if you’re ever hungry for an order or two—”

“Roka, we’re gonna be around a lot of marines now that we’re on a ZKZ,” Meena says, light and casual. “You gotta work on being less of a cunt to them.”

The conversation slides into silence as everyone stares at Meena. She sets her beer down and wipes her upper lip.

“I’m looking forward to working on an actual Ryox-8 engine in real life,” she says. “Has anyone been to the thruster bay yet? They’re fucking huge. The sims didn’t prepare me.”

“Oh my god, I know,” another engineer says, and the chatter kicks right back up.

The talk about boys, and where they got their outfits, and the relative merits of the Tovo ZX-6 interceptor manifolds versus the Proktia Manufacture models. Ajax lets it wash over him.

“Jaxy.” Meena nudges his forearm. “Are you hungry?”

“Not, uh—” What if she’s asking to get food with you? To get you alone? “Sure.”

She gestures to the door. “You wanna grab something from the cantina with me?”

One of Meena’s coworkers goes ooooh as she watches them leave together. Meena flicks her the horns over her shoulder.

Ajax holds the door for her. “You all seem like you’re getting comfortable quick.”

“Well, that’s engies for you. Poking our horns into everywhere we go.” She slips out the taproom door. “Thanks, Jaxy.”

“No problem.”

“Like Roka.” She scoffs. “That bitch is such a hopper. She should mind her manners.”

“It was just banter.”

“Gotta put your foot down early with chicks like her.” Meena shakes her head. “I didn’t mean to spotlight you, dude. I just don’t like her talking about you like that.”

“Really,” Ajax says. “It’s fine. You don’t get to sergeant as a marine without getting used to that sort of thing. What’s the difference between a marine and a gigolo?”

“What?”

“You have to tip a gigolo.”

She snorts. “That’s so mean.”

“Like I said. You get used to it.”

“They don’t talk like that on the Pike, though, do they? When you boys are doing so much?”

“I guess not. Not like how it was at Academy, anyway. Things are more zipped-up here.”

“Good,” she says. “Maybe someone’ll give Roka’s bony ass a firm talking-to.”

“Hell, I don’t know if any of them could be as firm as you were.”

“Well you’re gonna protect me from now on, Jaxy,” Meena says. “It’d be pussywillow of me not to return the favor.”

He leads her to a nearby mess kiosk. The autotaker gives them a jaunty mechanical trill as he plucks a menu and a meal form and passes them to her. They sit at a sheen-polished table and Meena’s little tongue sticks out as she goes down the checklist, putting dinner together.

“How are the tulatila fritters?” she asks.

“Flat and greasy,” he says. “Perfect.”

“Oooh, lovely.” She checks the box for them. He surreptitiously looks to see if she’s ordered for him again—and does his heart flutter a little at the idea?—but she passes him the pen, and he marks his traditional huca wrap down. He feeds the autotaker their order; it trills again as it transfers the checklist to the quartercooks.

“I’ve been busting my butt to get onto a ZKZ,” she says. “The Pike was the dream, but it was a competition too, you know? Those girls back there, we’re friends now. But back at the Aodok apprenticeships, we were practically slitting each other’s throats.”

“The Academy, when we graduated, we were basically just told stand up, shut up, go where we tell you.” He drums his fingers on the table. “I guess I got lucky.”

“No way. You were, like, what. 94th percentile?” She giggles. “Can’t fool me with the aw-shucks. You worked as hard as me. Harder, even. You were kinda inspirational to me, you know.”

He raises his brows. “For real?”

“Really truly,” she says. “They could get so catty, the apprentices. I decided pretty early on to base my performance on your take-no-shits approach. Head down, hard work.”

The autotaker clicks by with their fritters. It deposits the basket between them and rolls back into its kiosk.

“And now you’re—and it’s so great to see you, like I didn’t think I’d know anyone here. And, uh.” Meena chews a fritter. “God, that is perfect.”

He takes his own. “Right?”

“A lot of Aodok Academy, I don’t like to remember. I left that place flashing two pairs of two at it.” She holds up two demonstrative horn gestures. “But these things taste just like the mess there. Some of the only things I missed.”

“That and the nootch juice,” he says.

“Ew. No. God.” She pulls a face. “That was just you.”

He chuckles. “That’s right. Cause nobody else took the time to refine their palate well enough.”

They eat their fritters. Ajax’s wrap arrives, crinkling in golden foil. Meena’s glistens with marinated meat. She blows against the steam that rises off it and looks at him through the vapor. “You, too, sorta.”

Ajax makes an inquisitve “Hmm?” around his first bite.

“I missed you, Jaxy,” she says.

Ajax is glad his mouth is full because he doesn’t know what he’d say to that. Not at all.

“You were always nice to me.” She fidgets with the foil. “You were one of the only people there who was always nice. These days everyone wants to be my friend. But back then, back when I was weird, and not cute—”

“Meena—”

“No, I was weird,” she says. “It’s okay. I get that. I wasn’t where I belonged.” Her tailbrush swishes across the floor behind her bench. “And now I am.” She slides the basket toward him. “You wanna trade bites?”

“I’m good,” he says. “I don’t eat lab-grown.”

“See I only eat lab-grown.” She licks sauce from the side of her mouth. “All the critters are too cute.”

“I stopped after that prank,” he says. “The compulsion prank that Wova did.”

“Oh, no!” She laughs and covers her mouth. “With the fucking chili.”

“Yep. That’s what you get for trusting Wova.” He’s far enough from it now that he can smile at the memory—at the time, he was livid. “That’s actually the last time I was compelled.”

“Really?”

“Really. Hasn’t happened since.”

“Nobody’s flashed you since?”

He shakes his head.

Meena’s brow furrows. He isn’t sure what to make of that expression, or the weird quaver in her voice when she asks, “Haven’t you had girlfriends?”

He shrugs. “I’ve dated. But I never got to a place where I really trusted anyone enough to take the anticomps off around them. There’s regs. You can get in pretty deep shit for compulsion, unless you register as partners and fill out a lot of paperwork. They’re eager to shack people up if they can. Frees up space.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t stop people,” Meena says. “Do you remember at academy how crazy we all got on it? Some of the shit we pulled.”

“Like Traelor.” He smirks as he takes the last fritter.

“God, Traelor! That jackass. The shit he pulled and then I dunno, dude. Someone must have compelled me.” Meena snorts. “Fuck that guy, sincerely.”

“Yeah, well.” He laughs. “Wova was worse. Boys have to strike back somehow.”

“Fair.” Meena rests her cheek on her fist. “Wonder where he is now.”

“I think I remember he ended up in the sabsum corpo clans,” Ajax says. “Private security type stuff.”

“Best place for him, I guess. I bet he’d have gotten drummed out if he’d stayed Navy.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. That was the academy. This is a ZKZ. Shit feels a lot more real here.”

“There’s definitely some grab-ass flashing going on. I’ve been here for one shift, and even I can see it.”

“Yeah. But like I said. Never really trusted anyone enough. Got a thing, I guess.”

“That’s okay.” She wipes her greasy fingers on a paper napkin. “You can have a thing. I bet I would too, if I was a guy. Sometimes I see old photos of the group and there’s that one where all the guys took a picture without their anticomps on. After that bonfire. Remember? And you’re facing the camera and like—” She holds the horns up. “Flashing the horns so the fingers cover your eyes.”

He doesn’t remember that particular bonfire. They had a lot of bonfires. Meena was only ever invited to a quarter of them.

He shifts uncomfortably as Meena munches her wrap. She was a friend. Honest, she was. She just wasn’t the first person he thought of, or the fifth, or the fiftieth. Their friendship barely registered to him back then. Certainly he never realized how important it was to her.

“I always wondered what color your eyes were.” She leans forward and he gets a squishy, freckly view down her neckline. “I think I saw everyone’s but yours.”

“Do you want to?” The question just slips out.

Her expression freezes. “Do I want to what?”

“Do you—” He swallows the syllable as it destabilizes into a nervous little adolescent crack. He lets out an embarrassed laugh. She joins gently in, but her eyes stay on him, stay probing. Her big red eyes.

He tries again. He tries to keep it casual. But he can hear the vulnerability in his own voice. The hushed import. “Do you want to see them?”

Silent staring between them.

“Not here.” She stands up. Half of her meal is still on the table. “C’mon.”

He gets up and follows her.

“You know this place better than me.” Her normally gregarious and clear voice lessens to a conspiratorial whisper, and now she’s matching his memories of her. She was always this quiet back at the academy. “Find us a spot where we won’t be disturbed, okay?”

You don’t accompany strange girls places without your anticomps. That’s one of the earliest lessons you learn. You don’t take your anticomps off when you’re alone with them, without help or witnesses. You certainly don’t lead them into the hab level alleyway between the greenhouse and the dispensary.

What is it about this girl that is making him do this? Control, control, control. His life has been dedicated to control. He’s been so careful to hand his leash only to his Navy superiors, to strict regiment and rule. Why is he suddenly so obedient to this little pink puff-pastry?

He leans on the narrow alley wall on the backside of the dispensary where the day shift take their chem breaks. The vent of the greenhouse is loud and rattling and humid. It’s not a place for foot traffic. “Here’s good,” he says, raising his voice over the whoosh. “I mean—if we’re making a whole production out of it.” He laughs, uncertainly.

She doesn’t laugh. She just smiles. And then she beckons.

He kneels.

Her hand slowly reaches out. It takes hold of the glasses that hide his eyes. The cool-toned world asserts its true colors to him as the anticomps come off. He practically lives in those things. He forgets sometimes, how the world really looks.

Freed from his protective anticomp amber, Ajax can finally appreciate how incredibly, vividly pink Meena is. She’s as pink as a sunset, or a kid’s cartoon drawing of a heart. Soft and full and pink.

“Jax, they’re so golden.” She stares into his eyes. Her mouth hangs open (he watches the way her full lips stick briefly at the edges as they part). “They’re like coins.”

He nods. “My parents used to call me Goldy.”

Her pupils dart across his face, down to his mouth while he talks, back to his eyes. “They’re really nice, Ajax.” She smiles. “Thank you for trusting me.”

Her lips are so dark and pillowy. Like ripe plums. You don’t know her. Not really. Not how she knows him, certainly. Not well enough to trust her this much. That fact should be telling him to stand up and leave. Instead, it makes the gallop of his heart pound even harder against his sternum. It’s strangely difficult to breathe. He wants to trust her more.

“Do you want to, uh.” Inhale. Exhale. “Do you want to compel me?”

Her eyes widen.

“Just to do whatever,” he says. “Just one little flash, right?”

“You’d like me to?”

“Sure.” He tries to dial his tone back into casual. “It’s been so long, I barely remember how it feels. I’m curious. It used to be such a casual thing when we were all kids, y’know?”

“It was never casual for you.”

“Maybe it should have been.”

She laughs. “Okay. Sure. What should I have you do?”

“I dunno. Doesn’t matter. I trust you.” He shrugs. “Whatever you want me to.”

“Um. I guess…” Her eyes flash. “Do what you wanna do.”

His anxiety, his nerves, his inhibitions. Meena’s voice cleaves through them, leaves them in tatters. He moves with sudden, fearless determination. As if his life had been guiding him to this. This and nothing else.

Yes.

Ajax does what he wants to do.

He drops to one knee. His hands clamp down onto Meena’s plump, peachy butt, seize two round handfuls, and yank the little engineer off her feet as he stands. She lets out a sharp, soprano gasp. He spins them both around and pins her between the wall and his uncontrollable body.

His lips lock with hers. His tongue shoves down her throat.

A tiny, helpless piece of him screams in shocked protest. The rest thrills with joy. She’s hot and she’s wet and she’s so solid, so real in this floating, untethered life he’s been leading. He wants to tie himself to her. He wants to come home to her.

His impatient fingers unzip her romper. His hands dive beneath the fabric. A stunned, shallow exhale of breath from her lungs. “Jaxy—” she manages, and her breath smells like ice berries and now he’s kissing her again, his tongue exploring and probing further. And further.

Her luscious curves engulf his fingers as he squeezes her closer. Voluptuous and full and perfect. He wants to cry out, it’s so good. She’s so small but she’s so full. The cuddly squish of her little belly, her wide, generous hips, her sweet-scented sweat mixing with the shampoo from her shower. Her tits. Her glorious, round, heavy tits. They’re flattening up against his chest. The breath is knocked from his lungs. His grip sinks into the plump undersides of her thighs and he lifts her higher, tugs her pelvis against his. His cock is so hard he’s in danger of passing out.

And she’s wet. He feels it, feels the silky, yielding heat under her unzipped romper and her cute little boyshorts. Meena is wet for him.

She’s so sweet and small and fluffy. Like a fancy little dessert, the kind you take your time with, the kind you let melt in your mouth.

But he doesn’t want to take his time. He wants to swallow her whole.

“Jaxy.” Her voice is trembling and breathy. “Jaxy.”

She is the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. He kisses her neck, her jaw, her cute round nose.

Do what you wanna do.

He knows what he wants to do. He wants to see how much this sturdy little engineer can take before she breaks. He wants to open her thick thighs and watch her full, fertile body jiggle while he rearranges her insides. He wants to make her scream his name. He wants to see her beautiful red eyes roll into her head as she loses her mind beneath him. He wants to shove his cock between those bouncy tits and paint her adorable freckly face white with his cum. He wants to—

“Jaxy!” Flash. “Put me down,” she gasps.

His horrified frontal cortex slams back into the driver’s seat. He drops her like she’s scalded him.

“Oh shit.” He puts his hands over his face (they smell like her skin; they smell like her sweat). “Shit shit shit. Meen. I’m sorr—”

“No. Jaxy. Hey.” She grabs his hand and tugs him into a crouch. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t careful. That was… I fucked up. You couldn’t do anything.”

His face is burning. There’s a humiliated pressure behind his eyes. His first compulsion in how long, and he’s ruined everything. This friendship he’d only just rediscovered and whatever it may have turned into. “Could you just flash me again and make me forget I did that?”

She laughs. “No, dude. It… hey. Sit with me.”

“On the floor?”

“Sure.” She sits cross-legged on the ground.

He joins her. “I’d never do that to you on my own,” he says.

“That’s. Uh. That’s—” She clears her throat. “Never, like, never? Or…”

Her horns are out, he sees. Out all the way. They’re curly, like a sheep’s. His heart shuts down briefly and reboots.

“I mean.” He forces himself to take a breath. “I wouldn’t do that without you saying it was okay.”

“What if—let’s reset. Okay?” Meena takes a deep breath. Ajax joins her. “I’m not gonna flash the memory out,” she says. “Because that’d be fucked up. But we can pretend like I did.”

He nods.

“Let’s pretend that you and me are just looking at each other. Just looking and talking, and neither of us has made the first move yet.” Her hand creeps into his. “But we can both tell there’s something here.”

His thumb bends upward and rubs her pinky. “I’d like that.”

“I’m gonna take you on a date or two,” she says. “And we’ll get a few drinks. And we’ll catch up a little more. And we’ll figure out what exactly this is.”

She leans into his shoulder. The ice berry smell of her breath.

“Because I think it might be good, Jax,” she murmurs into his ear.

“Yeah.” He wraps his thumb and forefinger around her wrist. “It might be really, really good.”

She grins and bites her lip. He wants to bite it, too.

“Let’s meet up again tomorrow, then,” she says. “Same place. But just us this time. Are you free?”

“Sure,” he says. He’ll make himself free.

He’ll be free tomorrow.

But he isn’t sure he’ll be free after.

He isn’t sure he wants to be.