by A. C. Ellas
Cai hefted the book and studied Nick for a moment. The man’s sincerity was as obvious as his love. And it wasn’t as if Nick would never see the book again. He nodded. “Thank you, I’ll treasure it.” He set the book aside and cast himself on the couch. “The basic repairs are finishing up. Anything further will require a repair yard. But I don’t see any good breakout options. The system is too well populated by the enemy.”
“Can’t you jump from anywhere?” Nick asked.
“I can, but the energy expenditure…that might well deplete what hydrogen stores we have remaining.” Cai shook his head. “Plus, if we give that capability away to the Rels, both admiralty and the Guild would have my balls for trophies.”
“Our rock disguise seems effective.”
“Rocks don’t accelerate or make orbital adjustments.”
“Ah. There is that.” Nick frowned and scratched his chin. “We have another problem.” He told Cai what he’d overheard.
Cai could see that Nick was upset, but he wasn’t all that surprised. Those weeks with nothing to do but sit there and wait…discretion had fallen by the wayside. “The crew isn’t upset so far as I can tell. They seemed more amused than anything else.”
Nick turned on him, eyes flashing. “You knew? You knew they knew and did nothing?”
“What would you have me do?” Cai replied, stung. “I can’t silence the crew. People talk, Nick. And to even try to quash rumors like that would only lead to unrest as well as a conviction that their ideas were right.”
“What are we going to do?” Nick asked, more softly now. “When the Guild finds out…there’s no way the men won’t talk once they have shore leave. We need to have a plan.”
Cai held out a hand. “I think this problem has a far more simple solution than the other problem.”
“Oh?” Nick cocked his head endearingly.
“Marry me.”
Nick’s eyes widened, but Cai continued before the captain could get a word in edgewise. “It would show the Guild that we’re committed to each other. Plus, a legal marriage can’t be broken without our consent.”
Nick stood up and clapped a hand over Cai’s mouth. “You will let me speak,” he said emphatically. “I accept. I would be honored to marry you. I’ve known you were the only one for me for a long time now. I don’t care about your logical reasons for wanting to do this. I want to do this because I love you.”
Cai was nonplussed. “I thought I’d have to talk you into it,” he said quietly. “I love you, too, but marriage is a big commitment.”
Nick snorted then pulled him into his embrace. He whispered in Cai’s ear, “Now I want you to tie me up and play with me.”
“What about our other problem?” Cai’s hands were already undressing Nick.
“I’m sure I’ll think of something, probably when you’re balls deep inside me.”
Cai had to laugh. His eye fell on the coffee table and his heart filled with glee. Nick wasn’t the only one with surprises up his sleeve tonight.
A short time later, Cai smiled down at Nick in satisfaction. He had the captain exactly where he wanted him, stripped and bound to the low coffee table. Nick was on his back, his wrists stretched above his head and tied to the pair of legs at that end of the long table. His thighs were widely spread, his calves under the table and his ankles bound to the other pair of legs. A pillow, strategically placed under Nick’s hips, raised his sweet rosebud up where Cai could get at it.
“Comfortable, m’dear?” Cai stroked Nick’s erection. As of yet, he’d made no move to disrobe.
“Very comfortable, my love.” Nick smiled up at him and flexed against his bonds, showing off his bare physique. The captain had the body of a honed athlete. He practiced several types of martial arts and climbed mountains for fun. Cai often felt physically inadequate in comparison and wondered if that’s where his urge to dominate this man stemmed from. Other than the fact that Nick wanted him to do it, of course.
Cai brought out his surprise—a massage wand. Nick’s eyes widened a moment before Cai turned it on and pressed it against Nick’s balls. Nick’s whole body lifted off the table in reaction to the stimulation, an effect Cai observed with great interest. Cai moved on to the penis, rolling the head of the wand up the underside of Nick’s erection from the base to the frenulum. Nick was gasping and squirming under the relentless stimulation, but he didn’t seem at all displeased.
He pulled the wand off Nick and said, archly, “Now, about that plan…”
“Caaaiii,” Nick whined, lifting his ass off the pillow beseechingly.
Cai pressed the wand against Nick’s pucker.
“Oooohhh,” Nick told him, pressing down against it. “Oh, yeah. More of that.”
“Your plan?” Cai persisted. The wand slid up Nick’s perineum to the base of his scrotum and pressed in.
“Nnnnggg.” Nick’s eyes were rolling up into the back of his head.
Cai pulled the wand away. “No coming until we have a plan.” He slid a slender vibrator into Nick and turned it on with a twist of telekinesis.
“You came prepared for this,” Nick accused him between gasps.
“Of course I did,” Cai chortled. “But I admit, I hadn’t thought to use these toys to wring a plan out of you. I was just going to use them until you couldn’t shoot another load even if you wanted to.”
“My evil, evil love,” Nick teased then writhed as the vibrator abruptly increased in intensity. “Ooohh, God, I like that.”
Cai resumed massaging Nick’s balls, avoiding the ass and cock assiduously. Fascinated, he watched Nick’s pumping hips frantically work to bring off the cock bobbing in the air, knowing it was pointless.
“That innocent-seeming massager,” Nick told him as he writhed in the pain of his tension from his need to come, “is nothing like what it seems, is it?” He drew in a deep breath, eyes widening. “I have it, Cai, I have it!”
“Tell me,” Cai insisted, allowing the wand to slide up Nick’s cock again.
“If we can’t pretend to be a rock, can we pretend to be a Rel?”
Cai applied the wand directly to Nick’s frenulum, triggered the anal vibrator into overdrive and used his teek to tickle Nick’s prostate. The resultant orgasm more closely resembled a volcanic eruption than a climax. In the aftermath, Cai said, “Good idea, but we’ll have some details to work out.”
Chapter Seven: The Capture
The Rel ships were organized into sizes that Cai assumed were at least somewhat congruent with their own classification in that the larger the ship, the better armed and better defended it would be. Most of the spheres seemed to range from one hundred meters in diameter to five hundred. There were a few larger spheres in orbit around the inner planets, one behemoth was a full five thousand meters across. Cai didn’t want to even attempt tangling with a ship that size. The ships that had attacked him were average, around two hundred meters across.
Using his optics at the highest magnification he could manage, Cai studied the spheres as they rolled by. And they did roll, or spin, depending on one’s perspective, probably to provide internal gravity, which would indicate that they hadn’t mastered gravitronics yet. But he wasn’t trying to determine their technology level but whether or not they could see him directly. It wouldn’t do to impersonate a Rel on the sensors if some alien could look out a window and see that they were arrow shaped rather than round. A careful survey left Cai of the opinion that the Rels, like Cai himself, relied on electronic light sensors rather than old-fashioned organic eyeballs. He could fool the electronics, with some luck.
Now, he had to pick a target, and that wouldn’t be easy. It had to be a Rel ship, large enough that when they captured it, they could assume its identity, so to speak. So the little automated rock-wranglers separating high-grade ore out of the asteroid belts weren’t good enough. The problem, of course, was that the Rels were all over the system. Cai needed to catch one alone and out of the line o
f sight of all the others. He spent days studying the Rels, calculating angles and line-of-sight vectors only to strike out over and over until he was ready to scream in frustration.
Finally, they got what appeared to be a lucky break—a Rel ship, three hundred meters in diameter, headed directly for the gas giant. Cai calculated the angles and determined that if the Rel continued on his present course, he would cross the terminator line between day and night, after which Cai would have a five minute window in which to act. Quietly, he warmed all his systems up from idle to screaming to go. The crew, alerted, manned their stations. They would have one shot at this. If it didn’t work, they’d have to run like a scalded cat.
The Rel slowed as it approached the planet, settling into a stable equatorial orbit just inside of the rings. Cai focused on them. They appeared to be scanning the planet’s gaseous surface. They were very close to where Cai had broken out. Had they detected some perturbation caused by his passage? The Rel orbited closer, and Cai had the distinct feeling that they were sniffing along his path and certain to find him if he didn’t act. He already had a plan in place, however, and saw no reason to change it.
When the Rel slid into position, Cai moved, striking with sure swiftness. Before the Rel could react, Laughing Owl was magnetically adhered to their hull and Cai was jamming all frequencies. They were also falling back into the gas planet’s atmosphere, but that was actually part of Cai’s plan. He gave the go signal to the idle marines they’d gained after the Brahe mission.
* * * *
Nick closely followed the marine action from the bridge. The success of the mission now lay in the hands of Sub-Commander Kenison and his men. The marines, rigged in full protective space armor, appeared more like robots than men. The mech-suits combined the latest in armament, technology and neurologic interface. The marine within a mech-suit was nigh on invulnerable. The marines exited from Cai’s starboard landing bay and jetted up and over the bulk of the Laughing Owl to reach the sphere.
Emission silence was the rule, of course, so Nick could only track them by Cai’s line-of-sight sensors. The marines landed on the Rel around what appeared to be a hatch of some sort and burned through. One by one, the marines dove into the hole and were lost to sight.
“Anything?” Nick asked Cai on their private channel.
“The fish is fighting its hook,” Cai told him. “But I haven’t allowed a peep to escape. Even better, Crypto and I are making progress in cracking their computer security. I’ve asked the marines to liberate any computer servers or drives they come across, if they’re recognizable, which they might not be.”
“Good work,” Nick approved.
“The ship’s chaplain agreed to officiate,” Cai mentioned in one of those abrupt subject changes Nick had come to expect from the Gator.
“Excellent. When you do you want to tie the knot?”
“Before we make our attempt at breaking out of here. Just in case.”
“Don’t be a pessimist. We’ll get out of here.”
“I just wonder if they call it the Ghost Fleet for some reason other than stated.”
Nick sent a wave of affection at Cai, who snorted. Telepathic snorts transmitted over the shipnet were…interesting.
“When this is over, I’m going to bend you over and use you like there’s no tomorrow…because there might not be.”
“There will be a tomorrow, Cai. Granted, we might not be around to see it, and tomorrow is a very arbitrary concept in outer space. Hell, time’s a relative concept out here and you know it.”
“Tomorrow’d be a long time coming if we got too close to that black hole. I could make love to you for years and it would only seem like minutes.”
Nick laughed, thought about correcting Cai’s misinterpretation of relativity then wisely kept his mouth shut, recognizing it for the humor it was meant to be. He then snapped his attention back to the Rel ship.
A marine was emerging from the hatch. He faced the Laughing Owl and pumped his mechanical arm in the victory signal.
Nick spent the next twenty hours organizing the transfer of alien technology into the Laughing Owl’s holds. Unfortunately, they couldn’t take the ship with them—it wouldn’t fit. But they stripped anything that looked useful and scanned everything else in such detail they could probably reconstruct it all from the holographic imagery.
After the holds were stuffed and the imaging done, Cai consigned the dead enemy ship to the depths of the gas giant’s gravity well. There would be no evidence of that ship for the others to find.
Cai and Nick both hit the sack, catching some much needed rest while the Crypto team and all other marginally qualified personnel worked on finding the data they’d need to impersonate the dead ship.
A day later, Nick tugged on the hem of his formal dress uniform and wondered why it seemed like the entire crew of the Laughing Owl was crammed into the hangar. Oh, yes, because they are, Nick told himself. He’d expected a private affair. Himself, Cai, the chaplain, recite the vows, kiss and that would be that. Apparently, he’d overlooked the human factor. The chaplain had told the purser, who’d told the chefs, who’d told the quartermaster and within an hour, tops, the entire crew knew that the old man and the ship’s Gator were tying the knot.
Or as Cai was fond of saying, “Gossip is proof of faster-than-light travel.”
The crew, rather than being shocked that a Gator would wed, seemed delighted. In fact, most of them wanted to get right on to the partying, and they were growing restless as they awaited Cai’s arrival. The Gator was the last to arrive, of course.
The hatch at the far end of the hangar opened and an expectant hush fell as the first two of Cai’s six entered the room. Cai followed that first pair, and the remaining four brought up the rear. Cai was also in formal dress uniform, nearly a match for Nick’s except the braiding on the inky black cloth was silver rather than gold. The six adjuncts split aside when they reached the front of the crowd, and Cai continued on alone until he stood beside Nick.
Cai glanced at him. “Too late to back out?”
“Yep.” Nick offered his left hand.
Cai set his right hand, palm down, in Nick’s and a satisfied sigh swept the audience. They all knew which side the crystal was on, too. “Good. I’m not going to let you go.”
“That makes me happy beyond words.”
“Are we ready?” The chaplain stepped forward and looked at them both.
“We are,” replied Cai.
Nick nodded around a throat suddenly dry. “Yes,” he managed.
The chaplain addressed the crowd. “We are gathered here today to pay witness to the mutually agreed upon union of these two beings.” The chaplain droned on about the importance of marriage, the legal and social contract it entailed and the love it represented. Finally, he got to the point. “Do you, Captain Nicholas Steele, vow to love and respect your chosen partner from now until death do you part?”
Both Nick and Cai had requested the full, formal, old-fashioned marriage vow rather than the contract term limited one. Gasps and murmurs were heard from the crew. Old-timey marriages were exceedingly rare in this day and age.
“I do,” Nick said firmly.
The chaplain turned to Cai and repeated, “Do you, Astrogator Cai, vow to love and respect your chosen partner from now until death do you part?”
“I do,” Cai stated as firmly as Nick.
“You may exchange your rings in symbol of your vows.”
Their rings were identical—silver and gold strands braided into a single band. They slipped the rings onto each other’s fingers then kissed.
The crew cheered and immediately moved into party mode. Nick didn’t really notice. He floated along on a cloud of happiness with Cai beside him, exchanging polite pleasantries with everyone who addressed them, accepting congratulations from all angles.
“The crew needed this,” Juan drawled when they finally made it to the head table. “It’s an ex
cellent relief from tension and will make an awesome space story in the portside bars.”
Nick smirked. “I can imagine. My only worry remains the Guild.”
“I don’t think they’ll do anything,” Cai opined. “Not with us married. Not if I hold my ground. They want me happy—you make me happy. It’s as simple as that.”
“I hope so,” Juan said. “For both your sakes. We’ve got the watches covered for the next full day-night cycle. Go enjoy some private time.”
“Later. Right now, I want to dance. And eat cake.” Cai dragged Nick onto the dance floor.
Nick issued a token protest, but the driving beat of the music affected him, too. As often happened at all-hands celebrations, the barriers of rank and class were set aside and a good time was had by all.
When they finally abandoned the party, which would continue going at full swing until the officers put a stop to it, Nick was delightfully full of good food and drink, his feet were nearly danced off and he was as horny as a king stag during rut. He started to strip as they turned into the corridor leading to Cai’s chambers. One of Cai’s adjuncts collected his discarded garments. By the time he reached Cai’s door, he was naked.
Cai glanced at him, smiled and palmed the door open.
Nick smiled back, knelt and crawled over the threshold. Cai hadn’t asked this of him. They hadn’t discussed anything other than the wedding itself. But Nick wanted to make a gift of his submission, too, and it seemed to him that they should start this off as they meant to continue.
“Ahhh,” said Cai softly in appreciation. He followed close behind Nick, who could almost feel those blue eyes studying him as he crawled to the center of Cai’s large living room.
Nick reached Cai’s coffee table, which was much like the one in his own quarters, down to the built-in storage cubby beneath it. Nick removed the items he’d secreted in there prior to the wedding then turned and offered them to Cai. A black leather collar, leash and whip.
