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.