Periphery (24 page)

Flood’s shaking because Harrah hasn’t let up with the furry brushes thing. Her finger finds the mark anyway, sliding in and curling and pressing. Another finger goes in just as quickly and then a third one. Flood’s stroking forward and Harrah feels it deep inside like Flood’s pulling something out of her. Something’s not enough and she doesn’t know what until one of them stretches her neck and Harrah’s mouth touches Flood’s. Harrah’s trying to suck in someone else’s air; she’s kissing her enemy. Flood’s tongue swoops in like her fingers and that’s all it takes to make Harrah come.

Harrah didn’t mean to do any of that. It’s too late now. They turn onto their backs and Flood kisses her neck while she pants in aftershocks and Harrah remembers she meant to get Flood’s muscles working. That’s her excuse for doing what she wants to do anyway. She pulls away and slides down Flood’s body. Harrah thinks about finger-fucking but ends up licking around Flood’s lower lips instead, using just her tongue-tip, like she’s marking referent datapoints. Harrah wants to touch Flood with something other than mecha, and if that’s not what Harrah expected to want, she’s not going to think about it now.

Harrah uses her hands to smooth down Flood’s thighs while she eats her, being careful not to hurt her with enhanced strength. Flood isn’t talking and her body undulates with each stroke. When Harrah nips at her belly now and again, she can see Flood’s jaw is clenched tight. Once the back of her head hits the table, thunk. Harrah thinks she could maybe go on forever like this. Except then they’d never get the hell out of this place.

Harrah finds Flood’s clit. It juts enough so Harrah can swirl her tongue around and around while she presses Flood’s cunt lips open and kneads the insides of her thighs. That pushes Flood over; she comes in a series of deep groans from the belly and Harrah wonders if she could make her ejaculate sometime. The idea makes Harrah hot all over again but it’s smarter to get the hell out of this prison right now.

Flood’s still gasping when Harrah rolls off the table and pulls her hood on. She seals the neck and her pubic flap, sealing off the warmth in the air and the smell of their sex. She scoops the mecha off the floor and drapes it over Flood’s waist. “Put it on,” she says.

The mecha slithers out of Flood’s grip but she grabs it on the second try. There are no sonics to clean her off; neither of them mention it; Flood will just have to clean the dead skin cells out of the mecha later.

Harrah ambles out of the prison with Flood at her side. Flood’s an old soldier and moves in the mecha like it’s her own skin, and she’s pragmatic enough not to look at any of the wired soldiers they’re leaving behind. Harrah admires that. Maybe that’s why she came here, because Flood wouldn’t expect it in a million years. Flood probably forgot about her as soon as the court martial was over.

They climb the fence and crawl around giant people-eating turtles having a party, or at least banging their shells together and churning up more mud. Harrah almost swims through a few places, but then they are out of range of anything worrisome and she leads Flood to her shuttle at a lope. Wearing mecha, it’s not much of a trek.

Flood doesn’t ask where they are going. That’s good, because Harrah doesn’t know, not in the ultimate sense. Not that Flood seems like a person to ask about ultimates. She’s a soldier and she lives in the now.

Right now, Harrah has to go back to her ship. They won’t like what she’s bringing with her. Flood’s their enemy. But Harrah wants to keep her around, and Harrah’s in charge. She’ll have to tell Flood that one of these weeks. Maybe after they’ve had another adventure like this one. Harrah could live with that. She has a feeling Flood won’t mind, either, and if she does, there’s always the wire. It’s fucking perfect.

*

Personal log of Lieutenant Ursul Granchstyr:

Commander Kassavetes is back from leave and grinning like she’s under seven gravities, and damned if I can figure out why. She brought back a prisoner for a souvenir, a prisoner in mecha; Earth knows where Kassavetes got her. I don’t know how she can still surprise me.

I still can’t believe Command let her skive off on that trip without a flight plan or a ship tracker or anything. Sure, they give her what she wants, but I thought she was lying about the vacation thing, that she was on a mission the whole time. Kassavetes never takes leave for as long as it took her to get wherever the hell she went. She’s not your usual operative, but this is unorthodox even for her.

And there’s the prisoner. A prisoner she hasn’t interrogated. She didn’t ask me for the prisoner’s records, either. I wonder if she knows her? Bugger, I bet she does. Something’s funny here.

If I can’t figure this out, Command sure can’t, either. I’ve been here two years. None of her other execs lasted more than a month. I got this far by keeping my mouth shut and letting Kassavetes get on with things, guess I’d better stick with that.

Besides, that prisoner…she followed Kassavetes meek as milk, but me, she looked at me like she would twist my balls right off. Yeah, I’m staying the hell out of the way. Sure am. That prisoner is Somebody Else’s Problem.

You were a prisoner until your enemy rescued you. Why? She can’t want to kill you because in the prison you were worse than dead, you were wired. Now you’re free. What does Harrah want?

You’re lying in a bunk, and your guts and sinuses and bones throb with heat and pressure. Your skin is nearly numb. It’s because you were wired, your body inert for months. You strain your senses, needing information. You hear only the pulsating song of engine thrust, a ship making course adjustments. The cabin is brightly lit and anonymous. The enemy’s ship smells just like your ship, except there’s no sour aftertaste of suppressants. You wonder how their troopers stand it.

Bracing one hand on the bulkhead, you pull yourself up. Your gut clenches at the movement like you’re going to puke, but after years as a mecha soldier, you have good body control. You can’t ditch your mecha and puke in the middle of a battle just because you hurt.

You’re naked. Harrah has taken the mecha she gave you down on Swan Aleph, that you used to escape. You removed yourself from the prison to which you were justly condemned; you accepted aid from the enemy. That’s two court martial offenses. You remember something else, something before escaping. Oh, yes. Down on Swan Aleph, you had sex with Harrah, too.

Oops.

Sex with Harrah was how you ended up in prison in the first place. It seemed like a good idea that time. You’re pretty sure you liked it this time, too.

The door slides open and there she stands, still encased in snug silver mecha, but with her hood peeled off her face and pushed back. She’s alone and she’s tiny. Under normal circumstances you could smash her to pulp. But she’s wearing mecha, and you’re not. She can smash you.

Harrah has gray hair from wearing mecha too much, but looks young, maybe twenty. Maybe less. A red plastic stud pierces each nostril and a brand scars her forehead, a black star on her inbred bluish white skin. Her eyes are blue as the veins in her temples. That alone tells you she’s from one of the First Colonies, first into space and first into rebellion, too. You can just look at her and know she’s on the wrong side.

You try to stand but no joy. “Fuck,” you say, gripping the edge of the bunk.

She says, “What? You are not demanding information? Giving me name and rank? No, you only want fucking. This is okie-dokie with me.”

You lean back against the bulkhead, cross your arms, and peer down your nose at her. Even naked, you can look like the toughest, meanest bitch in the galaxy if you want. And you do want. “Why am I here?”

“Sergeant Flood,” Harrah says, and steps into the cabin. The door slides shut behind her and clicks over to locked position. “You are being my prisoner.”

“I was already a prisoner,” you point out.

“I was wanting you for my very own. You are useful. My superiors, now they are agreeing with me.” She walks closer. You can smell her mecha, plastics with a metallic tang. You can smell her. She smiles and looks you up and down, and…you can’t even stand up and suddenly you want to fuck her. No, you want
her
to fuck
you
.

You’re a prisoner. You’re supposed to want to escape, not get fucked. You should’ve had that neuter operation when you enlisted. You’d be in a lot less trouble now.

Harrah reaches out with one gloved hand. Your eyes cross, following her pointed finger as it approaches your face. She can meld that finger’s mecha into whatever she wants. She can also just poke you in the eye and blind you that way.

She strokes her finger down your nose and then presses your lower lip. Your skin is still numbed, but the cold touch of mecha leaves warmth behind, the barest vibration of air against flesh. You lean into that touch. It’s like you’ve been magnetized.

Harrah says, “I did not go to the trouble of fetching you, just to turn you into sizzle.”

You are strangely reassured. You put yourself in her hands, like she’s your commander.

She says, quieter than before, “You will test our new mecha. This is what they want, if I am to be keeping you.”

You wish she hadn’t touched you before she told you that. The enemy always tries new things out on prisoners. Someone on your side always knows someone who found the bodies afterward. “When?” you ask.

“Now,” she says.

You could try and escape, steal a lifepod, float alone in the Big Black waiting for rescue that’d never come: better than wire. Submitting to Harrah is better than both. Besides, you want her to touch you again. So you let her close, you let her cuff you.

Your arms are cuffed at wrist and elbow, but comfortable at your sides. You’ve had worse. Plastic bands, gel-lined, pin your ankles to the bunk. Your legs gape apart. The mecha might have pubic hookups. You wonder about that. You don’t say anything. You watch Harrah’s hands as she thumbs open the seal of a little bag that doesn’t look standard issue. She draws out shimmering red netting that flows over her hands like mercury. She gathers it up and suspends the mecha above your torso. The curtain’s about to fall. She waits.

She wants your consent. It makes you uneasy. You say, after a minute, “Get on with it.”

Harrah dumps the mecha on your belly. The red fabric stretches itself. It undulates up your ribcage and across your abdomen and down each limb. It looks alive.

Of course it isn’t alive. Not really. But the mecha is warm. Normal mecha is cold, and prickles when the nanoprobes shoot into your flesh. The lab monkeys say that’s imagination. Not true. Sergeants don’t have imagination.

Your skin is warm everywhere the mecha touches. You’d forgotten what warm felt like. Your skin prickles, the hairs rising. This warm mecha will start hurting soon. You remember Harrah and glance at her. She’s in the one chair, looking relaxed. Torture is nothing new.

Nothing happens.

You wait, and wait, and wait. You can feel Harrah staring at you. You close your eyes. The mecha is just sitting there. The prickling was your skin warming up. Sensation is returning. You can even feel the mecha’s slight weight. It’s like an insubstantial person lying on top of you.

It feels good. You don’t betray that. You look stony while savoring the warm pressure. The mecha’s wrapped around you now. It’s wormed beneath your body and encased your limbs. You wonder when the hood will crawl up; but maybe this model doesn’t have a hood yet. Hoods are complex.

How long will this take?

You say, taunting, “This is pathetic, chickie.”

Harrah grins. She waves a gloved hand and prickly heat quivers over your skin, unpredictable ripples of it going in strange directions: behind your knee, the curve just above your hipbone, that spot where your shoulder joins into your neck. It keeps on, and keeps on, and you want to squirm. Harrah’s staring into your eyes now, challenging, but you won’t give in.

She gestures and the prickly heat is sharper now, little needles scratching, marking you. You do squirm now. You abort quickly, but she saw. She points and the little needles scrape deeper. You can’t see any blood, can’t feel it trickling. The sensation is all inside. You’re collapsing in on yourself as you concentrate on it, because it’s pain, or almost, but sensation feels so fucking good after the wire.

Your eyes are closed. You feel the air move around you when Harrah gestures, directing the mecha to do what it does. It feels like laser beams are carving your skin but you’re tough. It isn’t too much.

It isn’t enough.

It’s pain…it’s not. If you had just a little more, somewhere. You’re not sure where. Your whole body’s on fire, nerves in conflagration. Your attention shifts wildly, trying to feel it all.

You’re writhing. You twist your neck and look at Harrah. She still has that damned grin plastered on her face and you want to bite her.

“Now?” she asks.

Now what? Your hips arch up, you can’t stop them, and you blink hard at her.

Hot knives slice down the center of you, and you’re falling into the blade, falling, coming harder than you’ve ever come in your life.

You say, between gasps, “This isn’t mecha.”

Harrah grins. “No.”

*

EP:
“Silver Skin” originated with a story meant to be about a woman warrior, at least until the end of the story, when the second character would also be revealed as a warrior, albeit of a different kind. I chose to place them into a space opera setting for my own amusement, and to some extent to escape from using contemporary Earthly roles. Part one, Camera, didn’t really take off, however, until I shifted from a close third-person point of view to a more immediate and less discursive second-person present. This change immediately altered the entire tone of the story, adding a level of coldness and distance appropriate for the oppressive space-going culture I hoped to portray.

I wrote part two, Wire, because I wanted to return to the characters from Camera and to see them from a different point of view. Prison planets are a time-honored sfnal concept I wanted to try out. And I wanted an excuse to have giant people-eating turtles. Not many people can say they’ve published a story that includes giant people-eating turtles. Part three, Toy, was again the result of wondering what happened next to these characters, with the added challenge of writing a sequel not weighed down by clumps of back story. I also wanted to explore another aspect of the sfnal mecha and to have it serve a more subtle purpose in the plot.