Chapter 24
After the attack by the beasts, Hoss insisted they be even more careful at night, as well as in the daytime when they moved about. He made Ember stay close to him. She found she didn’t mind at all. Sleeping in the middle of this nest of males whom she kinda loved, in a way – if love could be defined as the intimacy they’d have for only a few more days...
She slept so well curled up with them, even when Hoss snored.
It was funny that after everything that’d happened, when his hair began to show as stubble, as in show everywhere, he was disgruntled. She didn’t care if he was hairy. Hair wasn’t what made him Hoss. The mane running down his back and partway around his neck, was tied away most of the time but she liked feeling it. And that purr of his after sex, or when she cuddled close at night, it brought a serenity she’d never experienced prior to this. It was like those recordings of star kraken swimming between the stars, their mating calls, that people listened to. His purr soothed her mind, took away all the bad memories and left only an awareness of peace.
She slept like a baby with them around her.
They came across the first evidence of the battle against the Xatar, just below the crest of the hill – a still hot, still-smoking, wreckage of a warcraft. Upon breasting the very top of the hill, there was more to be seen.
Verd was visible, though the familiar jagged outline of the spires was gone. That night the glow of flames reflected in the clouds above the city. No Xatar craft, or indeed any flying craft at all, could be seen in the night sky. Nothing flew. No lights showed except for fires. No orbiting platforms, starships, or satellites betrayed their presence high above.
With the total absence of any internal comm chatter, for there was nothing on any frequencies she tried, this was eerie. The internals detected at fairly short range, unless it was boosted, but this...it was how she’d imagined a planet would be after an apocalypse.
“Is anyone left, do you think, Hoss?” She tried again to reach someone with the data knife. It had a narrow-band comm link to any CESS ship within range. It should be able to reach an orbiting ship.
Doing this used up power, though. She shut it down, would try again when closer to Verd.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I may as well do some more work on Baz’s systems.” She pursed her mouth, feeling defeated and lonely for the first time in days.
Ember sorted through her emotions.
It wasn’t the destruction.
It was...strangely, that maybe they would be rescued. She didn’t actually believe everything was gone. It was sensible to assume someone would come to look at the mess the Xatar had created. The cybermonks were isolated, on a planet kept secret, but this sort of a war would send echoes into space. Destructive-radiation bursts, squeaked signals. Plain hollers for help. Someone would come.
Then she’d lose her two guys.
Fuck.
Tears sprang up, welled. She ignored them. This was stupid. She’d always known this was temporary. In fact, if anyone was going to suffer it’d be Hoss. She knew, deep down, he was committed to her.
It. Just...could not be.
Crap. She wanted it, but her future was tied to CESS. Love affairs were not the be all and end all to life. There would be others, humans with whom she could walk arm in arm on any planet. Surely?
The thought that she’d have to soon hurt Hoss killed her heart. If she had one of those. It was probably missing. She was definitely a bitch. She should never have let this happen.
As if she had a choice.
The cybermonks had started this... The assholes.
“Hey, Baz.” Hoss jerked his head upward. “Ember mentioned you said there might be special things you could do. Cock things. Is it true?”
Had she told him that?
Baz nodded, opened his hands, shrugged. As if to say it was nothing.
“Want to show me?”
Ember rolled her eyes.
Baz checked she wasn’t currently poking him with the knife, then stood and partly collapsed his armored pants. Then he sat again. Without being too obvious, she watched. This was going to be good. A man showing off his fancy cock. As if that meant anything to her. His cock was nowhere near as big or interesting when he wasn’t using it on her.
It turned bright pink and swelled, rapidly looking like a balloon from a party. That made her snort. Hoss leaned backward and said whoahhh.
The color faded, went to black with steel rivets and bands.
Her blush happened unexpectedly. She remembered seeing that.
Then spikes popped out. Ohhh myy. Those she remembered too, inside her. She’d never actually seen them. They looked deadly in a badass yet nice way. They’d exploded like an orgasm bomb inside her. Maybe she shouldn’t inform them of this. Giving Hoss ideas would be incredibly bad.
He was already looking at her and waggling that monobrow. Dayum.
“No. No, no. no. Once was enough.”
Baz’s cock began to do something that had her mouth staying open. It split in half then each part, one cock above the other, erected again to close to his full girth. Maybe the length was less but he had a double cock...
“Ohhh, now.” Hoss chortled, rocking back and forth. “This!” He pointed. “This I need to see used. One in Ember’s cunt, the other in her ass.”
Crap. If she said anything he’d go on and on.
Even Baz sniggered.
“Shush you two. I have work to do. No, that is not going in me.”
“Later we might have some other work for you.” Again with the brow waggle and Hoss leaned in.
“No, butt anything,” she added firmly, waving the data knife. “Shhh.”
Though he guffawed a few times, Baz shifted then sat very still, as he always did when she needed him to.
The wind moaned past their campsite, rustling the knee-high grasses and somehow triggering more loneliness...because, because if the males weren’t here, she’d be alone facing this.
It didn’t make logical sense for that to bother her. In frustration, she drove deeper with the knife than she intended this round, and found what she’d been seeking for days – the data knot that tied his lack of speech into his new abilities.
Unlock it and she’d surely get him talking again. Again, he’d suffer – this time some strength reduction, but the added extra was not worth losing his humanity over. Speech was a key to what made men and women, all intelligent humanoids, different from lower animals.
Ember opened her mouth to say this, then saw what else was hiding this deep in his cybersystems – the Warranty File.
Fuck them. What scrolled down her data specs was so typical. They’d written in a compulsion to lust after her, same as they’d compelled her somehow. So...it wasn’t real then? If she undid this and that, he’d break warranty according to their inane terms. They were dead though, weren’t they, the monks? Surely they must be. Break warranty and he’d fall out of lust with her. Lust, not love, of course.
She sat back on her heels, sneering at her own naivety.
Then she snapped the links, deleted the warranty compulsion, and set him free without asking. He’d want this.
And then...then she watched his face change as he realized what had happened.
A small amazement spread to his eyes. The best she could compare it to would be watching a flower blossom. Baz opened his mouth, cleared his throat, then worked his jaw. Hoss fell silent; he knew she’d achieved something.
Would he be able to talk? She wanted to poke him but was afraid she’d done something wrong after all. Baz lowered his head.
“Hello?” A smile sneaked onto his lips. Quietly he added, “I can talk? I can. Gods. Ember, you did it!”
She’d forgotten the timbre of his voice, how deep it was – how it might warm her merely listening to him say a few syllables. She’d known this man, this cyborg, but not as she did now. On his ship they’d been strangers really. He, a somewhat angry and distant person. She, preoccupied with her own problems.
“You’ve done it. Come here.” Then he leaned down, took her by the shoulders, and...
He kissed her. So gently, like the murmur of the sea, of a tide washing through her, reaching into her fingers her toes, making her so aware of this man who held her. She’d seen his rough side these past days, but this, this was truly him.
He pulled away and looked into her eyes. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She smiled.
Ember felt shy, of all things. As a mute, Baz had lacked a certain humanity? She thought that was it. Now she saw intelligence, and felt more naked than she had been with him before.
“I couldn’t think properly without knowing words. Now I can and I’m...” He shook his head, swallowing. “I’m so grateful to you. Really.”
Were those tears shining in his eyes? The moonlight was strong tonight.
“I’m just glad it worked. You won’t be as strong or fast from now on. Those were linked.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He squeezed her shoulders.
“We will just be more careful from now on,” Hoss said quietly.
“Mmm.” She nodded, a little entranced by Baz’s forthright admiration. So happy, though. She’d done something good for someone she adored.
“I couldn’t think well without words but I felt emotions clearer than I normally do. I don’t know when it happened, but...” He kissed her forehead. “I think, I’m in love with you. How could I not be?”
“Oh.” Fuck.
It was just a side effect or something, she almost blurted. But she didn’t.
He released her then, as if to give her time to sort out her feelings. And gods, she needed that time.
Love was not possible.
Desperately, she looked to Hoss and found him staring back. He knew Baz had said something significant.
After that, they let her be and talked a little more. Baz was testing out his speech, she guessed, as well as the two of them running through the past few days of their history, and what lay before them.
Neither of them seemed likely to pull her aside and pin her down, make her say what they wanted her to.
Love.
She squashed her lips together. She figured Hoss had notions like that too.
Later she lay between them, staring up at the sky and trying not to sob. What was she going to do now?
Ig arrived – popping out of the air, flapping a few times, and descending onto her chest. He wove a few circles on her breasts, tromping about to get comfy. She smiled through her watery eyes. Least she had him.
As his eyes lowered sleepily, she tickled the side of his little jaw, feeling the bump of his scales under her finger.
Hoss cleared his throat. “Tomorrow, I expect you to tell us...”
Oh crap. She cringed, anticipating the next words.
“What the fuck that creature is.”
Ig? Relief flooded her. “You can see Ig?”
“I can. Baz says he has too. For a few days.”
She’d missed that part of their conversation.
The stars above twinkled, clean and bright. She’d never come across anyone else who could see Ig. That it was these two...her first lovers in a way, if you excluded a few brief assignations, it was telling, discomforting, as if Fate was trying to fucking force her hand.
“I’ve had him since I was little. Always, really. I guess he’s a pet of sorts. He does something odd, travels through hyperspace maybe, or other dimensions.”
“Uh-huh.”
Baz rolled over and stared at her and Ig. “That’s not possible.”
Neither was being invisible. She sighed. “I’m no physicist. I don’t know what he does, but he does it. I’m sleeping now. Shhh.”
She shut her eyes.
In that twilight time of almost sleep a notion came to her, and she knew it had to be done. The cybermonks had been fucking with her life, their lives, for long enough. She was going to read the DSU tomorrow. If it had something on it that they wanted, she needed to find out what it was, because, there was a chance the monks had survived.
It was akin to arming herself. Knowledge could be deadly.
During the next few days the men were going to ask her about their future. Her stomach wormed about, hurting. Maybe she should just kill herself.
This scared her more than the Xatar.
Why?
Because she had her future glued to being with CESS. That was normal. Easy.
Them? If she was with Hoss and Baz, she’d be happy until something went wrong. She’d lose her job with CESS; so would Hoss. It’d be a sort of doom waiting to fall on them. Even if Baz got his ship back, where would that go?
Roaming between star systems, picking up odd jobs? Being the systems tech for a cyborg captain who did what? She wasn’t entirely sure what he did.
Why not? It wouldn’t pay well, would it, but would that matter? She could help him organize.
Did she really care more about money, career, stability, than being happy and with these two amazing guys?
Fuck, no? Maybe? It was all whirling about. She should think some more.
Reading the DSU was going to violate her work agreement anyway.
It was a sign.
Or was it?
Sleep on it. Think. Hurrying this was bad.
Sleep...
Ig sneaked his head under her hand, and she smiled. She’d always have him as a friend.