by Calista Skye
Dani hooted with laughter, from both delight and relief. Nichole always knew the right things to say, and after a tiny bit of booze, there were no holds barred with her and she would just say what everyone was thinking anyway. She loved that about her friend.
"I know exactly what you mean, girl. Damn, I came this close to dragging Kelson in here right after and giving him the surprise of his life. I can't recall being this horny for... well, a while, anyway."
Nichole tried to pet Belle, but the remarkably cat-like alien creature that Dani had adopted as a pet on a whim would have nothing of it and walked dignifiedly away, twirling her double tail in the air behind her like a propeller. "Oh, tell me about it. So damn dangerous and so damn hot and... yeah, I don't know. I think every woman on that battlefield felt it. I know Callahan and Jonsson did, for sure. And you actually talked to the guy. Wouldn't mind being able to replay a conversation like that in my mind during ... certain times." She raised her finely shaped eyebrows suggestively.
Dani laughed again, then emptied her own bottle and got her feet. Belle jumped two feet into the air and clung to her hips for a second, then let go and fell gracefully to the floor again. "Yeah, we'll see. It might be a little too much danger there to really enjoy."
Nichole pulled the neckline of her top down to display just the right amount of cleavage for when they came to the bar. "Uh-huh. Didn't seem like you were in danger of anything at all. Looked to me like that phantom saved your life."
Dani touched up her lipstick and checked her look in the mirror. Still weird old Dani, thin as a stick from the waist up and thick and round as a barrel from the waist down. It was like her body was made up of two different women, one nicely chunky and the other a skinny gymnast. If only her body could have made up its mind and picked one of them. "That he did. Not to mention the life of that ass of a colonel. Well, at least he made a champ out of me. I hope they still got that discount brand. If I have to spring for a bottle of the real stuff, that's my pay for a couple of weeks gone."
6
They were the last of their squads to arrive at The Dump, and Dani got the bottle of discount champagne right away to get it over with.
The bartender handed her a stack of styro cups. "A new champ, huh? Not too often we get one of those. Keep going, though. Decent markup on these bottles."
Dani brought it over to the long table where her squad and parts of other platoons had assembled. She tossed the stack of cups onto the table and started fiddling with the cork. Despite her extremely lofty background, opening champagne bottles was not one of her specialities.
Comments were hurled at her from the whole room, dirty and crude like most Space Marine things.
"Let's see you produce some juice!"
"Hey, think she'll squirt?"
"Didn't know you were this hard to get going, sarge!"
It didn't bother her. The Space Marines wasn't a Sunday school. They were the most badass units in Space Force, and statistically a third of them would be killed in combat. And the girls among them were usually much worse with the vulgarities than the guys.
The cork was held on with a metal wire, and she felt her face going red trying to make sense of it in her half intoxicated state.
Corporal Kelson handed her his machete. "Do it the Space Marine way, sarge. Chop the top off."
Ah. She held the bottle in one hand and slid the heavy blade of the machete fast along its side until it hit the glass flange that held the cork. With a sharp bang the last inch of the bottleneck flew towards the ceiling and sweet smoke rose from the ice cold bottle.
The whole bar cheered. "Like a champ!"
"Not too juicy, though."
"But damn sweet!"
She carelessly poured the sparkling liquid into the styrofoam cups that were held out to her, splashing a little into each one.
Then she held the half-empty bottle up. "Cheers for Colonel Abeni, the best officer in Space Force!"
The bar erupted in chaos as a hundred half drunk Space Marines cheered for the hapless officer who had brought the charges against her and made her a 'champ'. They all knew what the charges were, they all knew she'd be found guilty and they all knew that the plainly incompetent colonel had no future in the Space Marines.
Dani put the sharp edge of the cut-off champagne bottle to her lips and took a long swig of it. The cold, sour fluid reminded her of other times and other places. Parties, jewelry, huge and loud alien warriors, exotic scents, delicate gowns, large halls filled with prominent people...
"Calm down there," Nichole whispered into her ear. "You'll puke if you drink all that in one go."
Dani wiped her lips. It was true, she was never one to hold her liquor too well. And the ritual was over, anyway.
She placed the bottle on the table and looked around. The bar was always full of people after a battle, but this time, there were more than she had ever seen.
This was the only semi-privately owned establishment on the ship, and it meant that anyone could mingle here, officers and NCOs and privates alike. Pulling rank was not allowed, and it was rare that officers came in here, where they'd be on an equal footing with their subordinates. But Dani saw many of them here tonight.
Yep, that Ethereal had given everyone a serious scare, and now they felt a need to talk about it and get it out of their systems. She heard multiple conversations about the 'phantoms', and lots of people were sending her stolen glances over their shoulders. She had always done her best to keep a low profile, not just because of who she really was, but also because that suited her personality the best, too. But it was clear that tonight, she was the biggest celebrity on the ship.
Random marines slapped her back and cuffed her shoulder in friendly approval, some said "Praspera dastra" into her ear, badly mangling the formal Per Aspera ad Astra motto of the Space Marines. Through hardship to the stars. Well, this wasn't hardship, exactly. But being the center of attention had never been her thing. That was her brother's specialty.
She wondered how Ter'Umion would react when he heard that she was charged with insubordination. Probably he'd laugh his ass off, and probably he'd be proud of her, too. He was never one for the Space Marines. He took too much after their father, and formal discipline and strict orders was something he'd never been able to handle. He was at his best with a sword in his hand and alien enemies all around him.
And she wasn't.
Many men and quite a few women gave her lingering eye contact, inviting and suggesting. Well, that happened every time she went out, and she knew that her voluptuous hips made her enticing for a whole lot of people. Normally she'd enjoy the effect it had on her self-esteem and leave it at that. But tonight, it was as if that Ethereal had turned everyone on. And that included her. She might just take someone to bed tonight.
"Clink," Nichole said and knocked her styro cup into Dani's bottle. "Nice crowd here, huh? Some I haven't seen before, too." She nodded towards the back of the room.
Ah. That was General Tanh in civilian clothes, as well as several people Dani hadn't seen before. Tanh's entourage of Intel officers, no doubt.
"Yeah, I'll be staying away from those people," she said. "I don't need to be reminded more of the Ethereals."
"Mm," Nichole said, taking a sip of her champagne. "I wouldn't mind being reminded a little. I never imagined you could get that much danger and hotness rolled into one. Why did nobody tell us that they were like that? Hey, maybe fighting them isn't the best idea. Maybe they just want to get laid! I'm sure we could help them with that. How about next time they show up, we just strip and jump their bones?"
Dani nodded. Now that she had some distance to the encounter, she could easily imagine meeting that extraordinary alien in a different setting and then just...
Liquid heat shot to her girly bits at the thought, and the tingling was pretty noticeable.
"Maybe that approach should be at least checked out," she agreed. "It's not as if the guy hurt me."
"Damn right," Nichole sai
d, sending a little glance to a passing male with a nice bulge in his pants. "Without him, you wouldn't even be here now."
"Well," Dani said, placing the empty bottle on the table, "he would have to save all of our lives a hundred times each to make up for what they did last time."
"Sure," Nichole agreed. "Or maybe they're so good in the sack we'll forgive them after one encounter."
Dani shook her head, mostly to remind herself of what she knew. "They did too much damage. Not just to us, but to the Braxians, too. Billions dead, thousands tortured. Hundreds eaten alive. Our Moon base totally destroyed."
"Yeah, but are we sure these are the same ones? Maybe this is a different... branch? Family? Type? Race? I mean, the old ones, the Denibael ones, they just played with Earth for a couple of years and then nuked the Moon."
"Well, maybe this was how that started," Dani said. "One drop-dead gorgeous Ethereal and one little Space Marine sergeant. They seemed so nice last time, too. And then..."
"Yeah, yeah. I know the story. I'm not being that serious, Dani. I'm just saying that even watching a grainy recording of you and that phantom alien in some kind of super sexy conversation really got everyone's juices flowing. I mean, about thirty minutes later, when we all had stopped shaking and weeping like little bitches."
Dani laughed. Weeping like little bitches was not something Space Marines would ever do.
Nichole was not too drunk to stay mostly away from the topic of what Dani and the Ethereal had talked about, which was the part that was secret. Dani appreciated that.
She yawned and suddenly noticed how tired she was. It had been a long day. And eventful. Probably the most eventful day she'd ever had. Now she was crashing after the overflow of chemicals in her bloodstream.
"You know," she said and drunkenly returned a wink from a flirty male two tables over, "I'm about to keel over. I'll have to call it a night."
"Whaaat?" Nichole said with mock outrage. "And leave me alone among all these horny marines? What if one of them looks at me suggestively?"
Dani laughed again. Nichole was probably the horniest marine in the room, and at least fifteen people had made crude advances to each of them since they came in.
"Just slap him and tell him you're not that kind of girl," she said and got to her feet. "Always works for me. Except the slapping. That just seems to turn them on more."
Nichole frowned in worry. "Then what kind of girl should I tell him I am? Because I don't want him to think I'm not interested."
"Tell him you're an Ethereal," Dani suggested and shot her ample chest out for the benefit of a group of males standing nearby. "If he runs, it just wasn't meant to be."
Nichole nodded wisely. "That should work. Well, goodnight, marine. Per sleepy time ad astra, I guess."
Dani stifled a yawn again and walked out of the bar, swaying her hips more than usual. She spotted Kelson and for a split second debated with herself if she should give him a 'come-hither-to-my-quarters' look after all.
But her common sense won out, like it usually did.
She sighed and walked to her cabin alone. So many complications with being who she was. Why couldn't she be just an ordinary Space Marine?
7
"I notice she's still alive."
Queen Benirsheba lounged on a daybed, only draped in a transparent sheet of a fabric so thin that its purpose clearly was to draw attention to the fact that it did nothing to conceal what lay beneath. And what lay beneath was a female body of exquisite perfection, pale and slim and relaxed. And ageless, despite her doubtlessly hundreds of years alive.
Crixael was unmoved. Perfection of body was common among Ethereals. They placed great emphasis on esthetics. They placed no emphasis on most other things.
"She is," he said, sauntering closer and looking out the transparent wall to space. A huge planet spun outside, a gas giant with swirling bands of gas, glowing in orange and blue and green. The sight of it also left him unmoved. "I find her intriguing."
The queen laughed, a perfect sound from a female voice so crystal clear and melodious that it didn't sound real. It was too flawless. "Intriguing? A little soldier from that simple species? Surely you're not serious, young one. What can she possibly have to offer?"
He kept looking at the planet. It was of no particular interest to them. The queen had simply chosen to park her space fleet here so she'd have a view of something other than black space while she thought. It was a crossroads. They had to choose where to go. Human space or another direction.
"To offer? She hasn't offered me anything yet. But she has passion. Emotions. She cares about things. She is... alive."
The queen gingerly picked an egg from a golden bowl beside her and cracked it between strong white front teeth, then sucked the contents into her mouth. The eggs were all alive – they were the first stage of growth of a highly intelligent species. That was the point. They didn't even taste that well. "Alive? Are we less alive than them? Surely a thousand years of life makes one more alive than the members of a species that rarely live to see a hundred."
"They pack a lot of life into that lifespan," he countered. "And like I said, they care. When was the last time we cared?"
"Well," the queen said, chewing thoughtfully, "right now I care that you didn't follow my command. You were supposed to bring her here so that I might enjoy her. In my own little way."
The queen had an innocent way of talking that masked her anger. And she was angry, Crixael knew. He had blatantly disregarded her royal command. That was a very dangerous thing to do.
"There is something about her," he said, seeing no reason to lie. "I felt that I wanted to be around her. To keep her close to me. To make her... respect me."
The queen was quiet for a moment. "To make her respect you. Why do you want the respect of that dumb little thing when you can have everyone's desperate fear? And why her, of all humans? Why would you pick exactly the one that I want? You know my reasons. Don't you care about me?"
He didn't, of course, as she well knew. No Ethereal ever cared. "I know your reasons and I understand them. Denibael was a peer of yours, a royal, and they killed him. Her parents. And yet..."
"And yet you betrayed me," the queen completed, her voice more innocent and childish than ever. "I would have been satisfied if you had just taken her life and left her body there. I would relish personal revenge, but the point isn't to get revenge on her, but on her mother and father. Her death would suffice. The mode is less important. Parents of this species care a great deal about their offspring. It would have been a marvelous revenge. Yes, Crixael, I know they care. That was the point. That's their weakness."
"They build," he said, still looking at the planet outside it had many moons, little points of light that orbited its huge mass very fast. "They construct. They plan. They expand. They place one stone on top of another until the monument is complete. Yes, they live short lives. But they build for the ages. They build things they know that they themselves will never see completed. They work their whole lives for someone outside themselves. They do it for their offspring. What was the last thing we built? Yes, they care. Isn't that their strength?"
The queen got to her feet in a movement so elegant and fluid that it seemed completely effortless, as if she was floating on air. She walked across the polished stone floor on naked feet, and she had left the transparent sheet of fabric behind on the daybed, so that she was now entirely bare. He glanced sideways at her and had to suppress the arousal that shot through him at the sight. She was spectacular.
She stood close to him and rubbed one hard nipple up against his upper arm.
"I have a weakness for you, Crixael. You know it. Many wonder about it. Why you, who are only half? Why Crixael, with the red blood? If you were full, complete, entire, then they would understand. But you are only half. It is plain. And it is conceivable that it is precisely your humanity that draws me to you. But you see, I must be able to trust you. You mustn't betray me. Anyone else, fine! No one cares. Bu
t I am your queen, Crixael. I give you many of your powers. That's true for anyone of our brood, of course. But you need more from me than they. You are not full. You are half. Without me, you are zero."
The words hit him harder when she whispered them into his ear than if she had shrieked them in anger. She was right. He knew that she was the source of many of the things he could do, the things that appeared to defy normal laws of nature. Other Ethereals could do many things on their own, and so could he, of course. But not as many as them. Not without her.
Why had he showed the Earthling woman that his blood was red?
The queen slid her hand down his hip. He didn't have to struggle to not give in. She left him cold
She took his earlobe between two sharp teeth. "If I decide to withdraw your privileges, you will not be worthy to be one of us. You will lose everything that makes you special. It will mean your death. I have a weakness for you, young one. It could last forever. Let's not jeopardize it. Let's not betray. Let's not look at worthless little humans and say that they are more intriguing than our own queen. Hm?"
Ah, that was where she was hurting. It wasn't so much that he had defied her orders. It was that she was jealous! Jealous of the Earthling Dani.
She held her hand close his crotch, but when there was no reaction from him, she sneered and turned abruptly.
"I will not tolerate much of this, young one," she said. "I don't supplicate to just anyone. If there had been others to see this, I would have disowned you here and now. You have humiliated your queen."
She sat back down on the daybed. It was a curious piece of furniture, constructed of little bones, all different. They were the smallest bone in the bodies of every sentient species that Queen Benirsheba's brood had ever encountered, toyed with and then eradicated. Hundreds of thousands of bones, all different, from the same number of different species. Just one tiny bone from each race. All sentient races with actual societies and civilizations. The species that didn't have bones in them contributed some other part that was carefully glazed and hardened.
