by Kennedy King
Galia’s leg slid between Deidra’s. She pushed against her captain, hard enough to force her back in her chair. Deidra slid on top of her. Her legs pinned Galia down, warmed her waist. She threw her hands around Galia’s neck and brought her lips down again.
“By the way…” Galia snuck in between connections of the body, “Your new clothes came in.” They kissed and rolled over, hands gliding up shirts.
“Don’t need them just yet,” Deidra dared to whisper back. Her Gold Standard uniform rained to the floor with Galia’s jacket and pants, like the veils they’d shed to come together. One way or another, Deidra decided, I’ll never put it back on. The cockpit could only contain them for so long. With everything these two had been holding back, the whole Dreamweaver wasn’t big enough for them.
Deidra breathed deeply for excitement as much as fear. She acted on instinct alone. Devin was her partner, the only person she was permitted to interact with among her peers, and they never interacted like this. She’d never touched. She’d never been touched. Before the Olympia Gold, Deidra thought she never would. Now here she was, the arms of the strongest, most stunning woman she’d ever met pressing on the chair around her. Deidra couldn’t help the smile that danced across her lips with every slide of Galia’s
“Relax,” Galia whispered in her ear, when she saw the tension in Deidra’s shoulders. Her captain worked her hands up to those tight balls of muscle and worked them loose with dexterous thumbs. Each pulse of relief in the top half of Deidra’s body gave rise to a pulse of excitement below. She kept wondering what else such skilled fingers might be able to do. Galia gave her a preview when each of her hands slid their way down over one of Deidra’s breasts.
She turned her head, more for an odd sense of exposure than anything else. But Deidra trusted Galia more than anyone else now. She waited and was rewarded with the thrill of the cool air’s kiss on her hardening nipples. Galia lifted Deidra’s undershirt up in an arc over her chest. Every graze of her lips brought an involuntary groan from Deidra, from edge to center. Suddenly, exposure was the last thing on Deidra’s mind.
Her hands slid under Galia’s arms. Her skin was warm and comforting as the air around hot coals. Deidra’s fingers came together on the clasp of Galia’s tight bra. At the break of a single seal, her entire chest released tension. Her breasts bounced down. Galia shrugged off her bra with a smirk. Her lips and hands worked in tandem, kissing and slipping Deidra’s underwear off together. Her heart skipped a beat when Galia shed her own. It skipped two when their legs interlocked.
Galia made love like both the woman she pretended to be and the one she was. She lifted Deidra by the waist and pushed her into the wall. Then she rocked gently, just enough to warm Deidra’s pleasure center. She moved her hands slowly, with sweetness as much as desire. She left her lips opened to invite Deidra to lead, with her tongue. Every movement came with a gasp, a moan, a kiss, or a smile.
The two rocked against the wall until Deidra cried out in trembling ecstasy. Then they tilted back the captain’s chair. They twisted the sheets off of dormitory beds. They warmed the steel floors across the Dreamweaver with their backs and thighs, straddled and stretched out. They didn’t rest until Galia pressed up into Deidra in pulsating climax. Her cry rattled the glass of the ship, before quiet fell between them at last. It broke when Deidra said, into the ceiling,
“How’d my first lesson go?”
“Star student,” Galia huffed instantly. She couldn’t stop herself from laughing along when Deidra snorted. “Bit of a teacher’s pet, though, honestly.”
“Sorry, sorry. Just wanted to make a good impression,” Deidra panted. Her toes were still tingling back to feeling.
“Well… if you want to do that,” said Galia with her eyes on her watch. It was hardly afternoon, “You might want to think about enrolling in my night class.”
Chapter Fourteen: The Joust
“Where’s Fogan?” Galia asked while she settled into her chair. Rey was none the wiser of just what had occurred in it, and everywhere in the ship yesterday, when he sat down himself. Deidra tried not to overthink it while she took her own seat at the cannons. Galia clutched the navigation bars, ready to charge their opponent, whoever that was. A chorus of Torrent, Torrent, please be the Torrent, cycled through the collective minds of the Dreamweaver’s crew.
“I… think he withdrew,” Rey finally spit out. He’d wanted to say it all morning, but he had to be sure. It wasn’t like him to be this late. The combatants were only waiting on Cybil’s announcement to dive back into the fray.
“He… what?” Galia roared.
“You should have heard him in the bar last night, G. He was rattled. Hell, can you blame him? Carol, Kostic, Demitri... just gone? And we still have two rounds after this one…” Rey dreaded aloud.
“Alright, quit your bitching before we have more deserters,” Galia snapped.
“Shut your damn mouth. Deserters,” Rey mocked her, as if it was the most unbelievable thing he’d ever heard. Galia grinned, despite her rage at Fogan. She chanced a glance to Deidra, to see how she felt, down yet another member. She stared, resolute, down the barrels of her guns. She also looked remarkably comfortable in her form-fitting, mid-cut, dark green top and jeans. Her hair was down, pinned away from her smooth, freckled face by clips. She was getting sharper on the weapons, though, and caught Galia’s glance.
“What Rey said,” Deidra told her, without looking. Even with only three left to fly her, the Dreamweaver felt more like a home than ever just then. Galia smiled.
“Welcome, folks, to the fourth round! The Jousting Grounds!” Cybil’s voice boomed down the craggy hall of rock from his podium above. Rows upon rows of spectators cried out for their favorite teams above, from their seats at the tops of the colorless canyon. More than a few of them cried out Dreamweaver! Dreamweaver! “This one is as straightforward as it sounds. Crews are matched in pairs. They are allowed full armory access to pummel each other with whatever they’ve got! That’s exactly what they’ll do… in a rocky pass just wide enough for two ships, with enough room to turn and charge again! Any team able to completely obliterate their opponent’s ship will be awarded a bonus. But you’ll notice something about these rocky passes, folks…”
“Ah damnit,” Galia muttered. She had noticed but allowed herself the naive luxury of hope that even the Gold Standard’s designers couldn’t be so cruel. The walls of the caverns were torn up by razor teeth marks.
“The bevelworms donated by the WBO research labs wait still below. They’re just a little sick of chewing rock, and they’ve got quite a taste for steel and fuel. Of course, they are rather indiscriminate eaters. Good luck, combatants,” said Cybil, with a sickeningly somber note for the near-future fallen. “In the left canyon, we have Daniel and the Torrent!” Oh no... Galia thought, knowing just who was on the other end of their own canyon. “In the right, the Dreamweaver faces the Terra Eagle! Combatants… charge!”
Just as abruptly as Cybil had announced, Galia flung the Dreamweaver forward. She jammed back the throttle lever and kept it drawn. She, Deidra, and Rey grasped their controls against the sharp yank of inertia. Through the viewing screen, the Terra Eagle’s namesake ship surged towards them.
“What the hell are those?” Rey shouted over the roar of their overworked engines. Two hatches popped open on the bottom of the Terra Eagle, to unsheath two bladed mechanical limbs.
“Her talons. They’re going to try and end this quick!” Galia realized, “Hang tight. I’m gonna take us over!” She tugged up on the navigation bars. The Dreamweaver’s nose pointed just over the Eagle’s beak. Galia steered them around the peck. The bottom of the ship scraped across the top of the Eagle.
“Watch it, G! Their jets!” Rey screamed. He redirected half the ship’s shield power to their rear underside. It was just the spot the Terra Eagle’s jet-disks flared against. The Dreamweaver blasted upwards from the force. Galia tried in vain to level the shifting controls until the Eagle
spread its flexible, iron wings. It stopped dead in the air. A flap set it on course upwards, which tilted the Dreamweaver down.
“They’re trying to flip us!” Galia realized. The Eagle rose higher. The Dreamweaver tilted almost straight down. The floor of the canyon rippled alive with movement. The bevelworms smelled prey. A jaw full of hammerhead enamel burst up through the rock. Its eager jaw, double the Dreamweaver in size, crunched chunks of Ares like popcorn.
“She’s gonna feed us to those damned things?” Rey screamed. He rerouted every shield to the front hull of the ship. Galia did her best to aim that most protected part of the ship for the snapping jaws.
“Captain Galia Hattel,” the Eagle’s robotic tone invaded the bridge. Galia turned to Rey to whisper over her shoulder,
“How’d she open transmission without an invitation?”
“Hell if I know, G! The woman’s about to feed us to giant worms!” Rey screamed back.
“She won’t,” Deidra interjected. She laid a hand on Galia’s back to urge her, “Answer. See what she wants.” Galia reversed the jet-disks and fired them at full blast to buy time. Each stream of invisible heat was a waft if deliciousness to the bevelworm below. It was joined by two more of its tunneling brethren. The three scrunched and snakes around one another, widening the canyon at the bottom with their endless feast of rock.
“Alright,” Galia conceded, “I hear you, Eagle. What?”
“I present you a choice. Both outcomes are largely the same. You live. In one, you take the Dreamweaver with you. In the other, you don’t. I will feed your ship to the bevelworms if you don’t yield,” the Terra Eagle outlined.
“Maybe she will…” Deidra muttered to herself. Galia shot her a look. They confirmed agreement with a silent nod. She found an identical look waiting for her with Rey.
“Why don’t you snap your visor up so you can use that gnarly mouth to bite me,” Galia hissed at her childhood hero. She cut transmissions completely. “Deidra. See that left-hand lever with the yellow grip?”
“Yeah,” Deidra shuddered as the mouths of the bevelworms grew across the viewing screen of the bridge. The Eagle blazed its jet-disks down on the Dreamweaver’s back. The three inside had seconds to decide between the ship’s incineration and its digestion. But then, most ships didn’t have that yellow lever.
“Pull it only halfway back,” Galia instructed. She gave Deidra a moment to internalize that before she went on, “I’m going to point us straight at the bevelworms. I need you to shoot what comes out of the Dreamweaver with the high-caliber round. Understand?”
“Go-got it,” Deidra coughed up.
“Alright, said Galia, then nothing further. Could Deidra know from that alone what she planned, she might have been too petrified to fire. Galia aimed the nose of the Dreamweaver straight at the open maw of one of the bevelworms. She jammed back the thruster.
Even the Terra Eagle couldn’t have predicted so drastic a plunge. Her ship was left hovering above, while the Dreamweaver dropped to the hungry beasts. At a flash of their gnashing teeth, Deidra almost pulled the lever more than once. But she trusted Galia. She waited for the:
“Now!” At Deidra’s halfway yank, Galia pulled the Dreamweaver’s nose up, the fuel storage bays beneath the ship’s swing open. Exactly half of their reserve fuel tanks rained down over the bevelworms. At a single waft, their eyeless heads collided in an attempt to snap the tasty treat from the sky. Before the sweet nectar was theirs, Galia turned the Dreamweaver down again. “Light em up, Deidra!”
Both the girl’s clammy hands clamped down on the turret handles. At a firing rate of eight rounds a second, she didn’t need to be all too accurate. Deidra held strong against the kick of the guns for about three seconds before a round pierced a tank. The fire burst ignited the rest of them. A crimson-orange hellfire surged through the teeth of the unsuspecting bevelworms. Each of their heads snapped back in revulsion, only to strike the walls of the canyon. Galia took the Dreamweaver straight through the fiery gap between them. The ship burst through with a tail of smoke. Galia, Deidra and Rey glided down the long, segmented body of a bevelworm to the far side of the Jousting Grounds.
All through their turn-around, the crowd bellowed and roared. Driven by adrenaline, the crew of the Dreamweaver dissected the chaos. Cries for their victory rivaled the loudness even if those for the Terra Eagle. If her life were in even a knife’s width less danger, Galia might have realized she had stepped into her one-time fantasy brought to life. As it was, all she could focus on were the even louder cheers for Daniel in the next canyon over, and the navigation bars in her hands.
It was a hard time to take a calming breath, but Galia knee it might be their last chance. She forced the air down. The second pass wouldn’t be so easy, she knew. They couldn’t afford to feed the bevelworms again. When the Dreamweaver faced the long crevasse once more, it floated opposite the poised talons of the Terra Eagle. Galia eased her fingers around her sweaty controls.
“Round two,” she sighed to her companions.
“Hope you’ve got something cooking in the upstairs oven,” Rey sighed with a tap to his temple.
“I lost the recipe after that first pass,” Galia admitted, more to herself than we crew. She and the Terra Eagle launched their ships forward, on a direct collision course. The Eagle’s claws lifted straight for them. Then it hit Galia, a second before the steel. Why fight it? She let go of her navigation bars and slid her chair back as far as it could go, which was about five feet. “Rey, focus our shields to the bridge window! Now!”
“On it!” he barked back.
“Deidra, empty the guns. When I get up, you take my chair. Keep us upright, okay?” Galia issued. Deidra’s fingers went cold with the flight of her blood.
“O-okay- where are you going?” Deidra fumbled.
“Just fire!” Galia shouted. She braced, both arms hard against the navigation bars. Deidra pulled two levers with one hand and jammed down a switch with the other.
An explosion of heat and light burst from her side of the Dreamweaver. Their thermal ray burnt into the Terra Eagle’s armor, while high-caliber shells pummeled its bridge window and a single particle grenade arced over it. The ray and the bullets hardly had time to leave scratches. The Eagle tilted up, talons flashing. They spread to snag the Dreamweaver around the bridge. Each of its razor blades ripped into the hull. It gave the Terra Eagle purchase to cock back her ship’s mechanical beak. It hammered into the Dreamweaver’s bridge but bounced off of its focused shields. The quake jostled Galia, Deidra, and Ray in their seats. The captain kept the Dreamweaver pointed up with her tug on the navigation bars, until the particle grenade Deidra had launched burst. Its smoky blue light blasted both interlocked ships downwards. They were a hundred feet from the toothy maws of the bevelworms that raged across the canyon below.
“Deidra, take it! Don’t try to break away from them, those talons will rip us to bits!” Galia cried to her. Confused as she was, she trusted the fire in her captain’s eyes. She bolted for the chair as soon as Galia leaped free. She sprinted from the bridge to the armory, to the deck of the Dreamweaver in minutes flat. Deidra did her best to yank on the navigation bars, to keep the ship’s nose up, despite the repeated crash of the Eagle’s beak into the bridge.
“Shield levels rapidly depleting,” the Dreamweaver told Rey. “Hull punctures in left quadrant and-”
“I know, damnit!” Rey shouted at the ship, “Come on, G…”
Galia steadied her feet on the trembling deck of her ship. Just then, watching it be pummeled and cut from its slanted deck, she was reminded of what it was before she found it. It gave her the pulse of rage she needed to snap open her telescoping shock-blade. She had to exchange it, though, for the flower-launcher over her shoulder, when the Terra Eagle’s gunners appeared on the deck of their own ship. Great minds, I guess, Galia figured. She hoisted the weapon named for its flower-shaped shell over her shoulder. She flipped a tiny lever with her finger, which popped o
pen the explosive petals from the skewering needle in the center of the blossom. Galia launched it at the biggest target - the Eagle’s ship itself. It stuck in the steel between the two gunners. The light burst blinded her. Through the smoke came two bodies, leaping with the added kick of jet-disk boots. Galia tapped her earpiece to send her voice through the Dreamweaver.
“Deidra. Ram us sideways into the rock wall,” she said. Her heart waited on its next beat until her voice came back.
“On it!” The Eagle’s gunners landed on either side of Galia. The deck of the Dreamweaver creaked beneath them, as Deidra fought with the navigation bars. Galia took her shock-blade in both hands.
She unleashed a lightning flurry of slashes on one of the gunners while he struggled to find his balance. He sidestepped four swipes before she landed one, right across his cheek. Sparks infiltrated the wound which froze him up for a trembling second. Galia heard the movement of the other gunner behind her. She also knew not to turn and face her, from another sound. The sound of air rushing out from between the Dreamweaver and the wall of the canyon. Galia slung her flower-launcher over her shoulder, hard enough to crack the gunner behind her in the head. She charged two steps and leaped from the deck of her ship. Deidra brought both the Dreamweaver and the Terra Eagle into the rock.
Galia’s boots crashed down on steel, but not the same she’d left from. She clamored to find a solid hold on the Terra Eagle’s iron feathers, but they flickered too rapidly. It was the perfect problem for Galia’s blade to solve. She impaled it in the framework of the wing which flooded it with a high-powered shock. The feathers laid flat. The Terra Eagle turned her helmet to watch Galia sprint down the wing, even while she pulled her ship’s beak back for another peck. A rain of pebbles plunked down on Galia’s head from the cut of the ships into the stone.
“Galia! Her gunners are trying to break in!” Rey cried through her earpiece. But Galia had her destination planned and she was almost there. She planted a knee on the back edge of the Eagle’s wing. She pulled down her flowed launcher to her eye. Galia spiked a blossom straight down into the jets on the back of the Eagle’s ship.
