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no one gets left behind
“Stop masturbating, Raconteur. You’re going to dehydrate yourself.”
Raconteur whines, slumping back against the pilot seat of her prone mech and thumbing her mic back on. “How did you know? I even muted myself so it wouldn’t bother you.”
Suzerain groans, pinching her temples. “How conscientious of you. But that doesn’t do much when your cockpit’s open. I can see everything. Which I how I know you still haven’t fucking stopped.”
“Ugh, but I’m soooo close!” Raconteur moans. “Just one more, to take the edge off?”
“Do not fucking make me debrief Captain Laredo on how you died of thirst from touching yourself,” Suzerain growls icily, only to recoil when Raconteur shivers and climaxes right after. “Really?”
“I love when women are cold to me,” pants Josie, going limp.
“I hate you so much.”
“Careful~”
”You realize it’d be cooler with your cockpit actually closed and your suit zipped up, right? It’s just your legs busted, not the temperature regulation systems.”
Grinning lazily, face still flushed with stimulant heat, Raconteur pillows her hands behind her head. She doesn’t implement either suggestion. “Maybe so, but it needs airing out.”
“What does,” asks Suzerain flatly, before she can help herself. She doesn’t want any details, but now Raconteur is going to give them anyway..
“My cockpit. And my cock.”
“What was I expecting,” Suzerain mutters.
“Could you move like a meter to the left?”
Mercifully, Raconteur has finally zipped up her suit, but Suzerain is still averting her eyes on principle. “Why?” she asks coolly, squinting off across the endless dunes to the west. “Why should I do anything for you?”
“The sun moved, so now I’m not in your shade anymore.” Raconteur pouts. “Remember how you didn’t want me dying?”
“No. I’m conserving power. Close your fucking cockpit.”
“Please?”
“This isn’t a beach holiday, Raconteur. I’m not your fucking umbrella.”
“Are you saying you would be if it was~?”
“Close your cockpit.”
Raconteur sighs and relents, reaching down to yank the big lever. And frowns at it. There’s a grinding sound, but nothing happens. “Ah, fuck, I think the servo seized.”
With a scream of frustration, Suzerain throws the switch to boot her own mech back up.
“Now I’m too cold,” Raconteur whines.
Eight earth-hours since Raconteur’s mech was incapacitated, and Kjetra-7 has finally spun far enough on its axis for the boiling sun to set. Which has, of course, replaced the sweltering desert heat with a bone-piercing chill.
Suzerain finds herself unmoved by Raconteur’s plight. “Fascinating,” she opines, inspecting her nails. “And what exactly do you want me to do about it? Not like my drone can fix your servo with it buried in sand like that.”
The question was rhetorical, but Raconteur answers anyway. “Let me in your cockpit?”
“Fuck off,” Suzerain shoots back. “No way, no how.”
“I’ll be good, I promise.”
“Still no. How are you cold? I thought the stims made you run hot.”
Raconteur mumbles something the mic doesn’t pick up. Suzerain doesn’t really care what it is, but after she doesn’t respond for a while, Raconteur decides she needs to repeat herself. “I get the chills when I start to come down. It’s been long enough.”
Her tone is so subdued that it gives Suzerain pause. “Really?”
“Yeah. You’ve never been around me when I’m coming down–”
“For obvious reasons,” Suzerain rolls her eyes.
“Yeah.”
Suzerain risks a look down at Raconteur. The other pilot is hugging herself and shivering. Suzerain, herself, has never touched combat stims. The academy preaches against them these days. Everyone has an MTA device installed in their frame now, and the squad’s network of real-time triangulations makes everyone’s aim deadly precise.
Everyone except Raconteur.
Who, infuriatingly, can somehow keep up with networked computer brains purely by pumping herself full of dangerous drugs with unpleasant side effects.
Suzerain imagines Captain Laredo’s judging eyes watching her as she explains how BG Squadron’s best pilot froze to death as she did nothing to forestall it. Her skin crawls at the mental image. Captain Laredo is terrifying when she wants to be.
Gritting her teeth, she reaches for her drone’s radio controls. She’s at least not going to kneel to allow Raconteur to clamber into her cockpit. “Alright, fine. But if you do anything gross or touch me, you are exiting the cockpit the quick way.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“Nonnegotiable. Don’t say anything either.”
Raconteur nods slowly.
To her credit, Raconteur keeps her promise. She huddles in the corner of the cockpit beside the temperature regulator ports and doesn’t even look at Suzerain.
Initially, Suzerain doesn’t look at her, either, but the novelty of a silent Raconteur eventually gets her to turn her head. When she does, she’s baffled by what she sees. The ace pilot actually looks embarrassed.
Anyone normal would be, after the kind of things Raconteur says (or moans, or whimpers) into the mic while she’s fighting. Or how she conducted herself after the fact in this instance. But until now, Suzerain had reasonably assumed Raconteur wasn’t normal.
Sure, she’s always cool and collected in the hub, but Suzerain had assumed that that violent, visceral lust was always bubbling somewhere beneath the surface. That every glance in her direction was lecherous.
Raconteur’s carefully averted eyes and mortified expression paint a different picture.
Post-nut clarity, is it? Hmph! Suzerain thinks to herself, folding her arms and reclining in her pilot’s chair. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Finally, the Bivouac descends from the skies to collect the two stranded pilots. The vacuous idiots in her squad all snicker at her when Raconteur emerges from the cockpit after her. Suzerain stares at them all with murder in her eyes until they quiet down, but frustratingly she isn’t able to silence them entirely.
The exception is Troubadour, the only person here Suzerain doesn’t completely despise. He’s waiting with a pair of blankets when they emerge. Brusquely, he hands one to each woman. That done, he disperses the cloud of jokers with a few sharp words and a wave of his hand.
Suzerain retires to her berth as quickly as possible. She’s had far more Raconteur exposure than she wanted today. Time to detox.
Her repose is interrupted by a knock on the door. “Fuck off!” she exclaims, even though her berth is soundproof, and doesn’t get up. The knocking comes again, but only once. Or, at least, only once that Suzerain hears. Bone tired from her ordeal, she drifts into dreamless sleep soon afterwards.
Suzerain is incensed to discover she’s out of instant coffee and bagels. So she can’t have her usual breakfast routine without leaving the safety of her domicile and risking one of the dolts waylaying her. Groaning, she throws a coat around her shoulders and trudges for the door.
When she steps across the threshold, her foot crinkles something. A piece of paper? Who’s leaving trash outside her door? She stoops to pick it up, and notices three words written on it.
thank you
-Josie
Suzerain scowls and crumples the paper. “We’re not on a first name basis, you whore,” she mutters. Discarding the note, she stalks toward the canteen.
Author's Note: I like Suzerain and I use her as much as possible, but because I'm usually writing porn, she doesn't like to be involved.