Scouts (27 page)

“Yes,” I said. I was aroused watching Kal become aroused, but also by watching her cock disappear into Shirley’s mouth.

“Then after,” she said, “it’ll be your turn.”

My turn for what? The possibilities drove my anxieties to new heights, yet I couldn’t deny the erotic power of the images in my imagination. Then Kal arched her back and growled, gripping my hand tight to her chest. Shirley rose from between her legs, licked her lips, and swallowed.

“Marvelous.” Kal sighed and opened her eyes. She propped herself up on her elbows and raised an eyebrow at me. “Ready?”

“No,” I said, boosting myself up onto the edge of the pool, “but I’m not going to let that stop me.”

Shirley and Kal traded places. Kal bent down between my legs and Shirley rose up to kiss me. I tasted Kal’s cum on her tongue. It tasted faintly of apples, reminding me that Kal wasn’t quite human—at least, not the way I thought of humans. Shirley’s breast grazed my chest as she leaned over me, touching just with the tip of her nipple.

At the same time, Kal’s lips and tongue played up and down the almost painfully hard shaft of my cock. She was teasing, it seemed, taking her time. With my mouth and hands engaged with Shirley, I could do nothing to encourage Kal. She licked and kissed every part slowly before even making the slightest motion to take it into her mouth, and then it was only the head, and just for a brief moment.

I groaned with frustration into Shirley’s mouth. She pulled away and gave me a questioning look.

I looked down and said, “Kal, please . . .”

Kal replaced her mouth with her hand and smiled up at me. “Yes?”

“I can’t take any more of this.”

“You don’t like it? It certainly seems like you do.” Her smile turned mischievous.

“No, I mean, please . . .” I needed her mouth back on me; her hand wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. “Suck me.”

“Gladly.” Even inside her mouth, though, she managed to make it last. She moved only enough to maintain my erection at full intensity. I tried to protest, but Shirley put one fat nipple into my mouth and the conversation was over.

I closed my eyes and concentrated, falling back on the meditation techniques Shirley had taught me to reach orgasm faster. Focusing my attention on my cock, I pulled the sensations around me and dove into them, accepting them along with all the erotic imagery that was playing in my imagination. Then, unbidden, Valka’s image came to mind. Instead of disapproving, however, I imagined her there, her mouth around my cock, or her breast in my mouth.

I opened my eyes and thrust the images away. Shirley had warned me against that, and I wanted to be there for both of them, a full participant in what we were doing. I took Shirley’s breasts in my hands and guided her away from my face.

“I want to watch Kal,” I whispered. She nodded and helped me up to a sitting position.

Kal used a technique I had felt Shirley use on me several times before. With my cock nestled in the back of her soft throat, she moved her tongue up and down the underside of my shaft while her hands caressed the base. It felt wonderful, of course. Kal knew as much about oral sex as Shirley did–perhaps more, as she was touching an organ that she herself possessed, more or less.

My orgasm finally arrived, teased to a dizzying height, and I felt my body pulse again and again, filling her mouth with my cum. She tried to swallow each jet as it came, but there was too much, and when the cum started dripping out of her mouth, she pulled back. The last few spurts hit her cheek, chin, and neck. With a groan, I collapsed back into Shirley’s arms.

Shirley and I strolled along the path next to the river. I was quiet, focusing on my thoughts about the experience with Kal.

“You’re awfully quiet,” said Shirley. “Something bothering you?”

“Does every Scout have sex with a Chevalier newgen?”

Shirley chuckled. “No, you seem to be developing a specialty in newgens, and since the Scouts have need of someone who can operate in those circles, I’ve been developing your talents that way.”

“I see.”

She gave me a questioning look. “Is that a problem?”

“Well, I would have liked to have talked about it.”

“It wouldn’t have been the same experience for you if I had. Was it that bad?”

“It wasn’t bad exactly, but I am a little worried.”

“About what?”

I took a moment to figure out what to say. “You remember Trace, that cadet who was about to leave for her training cruise? I talked to her before she left. She used to be a man. They put her through the gentank to turn her into a woman because she prefers sex with men.”

“Prefers?”

“I guess not exactly. She wasn’t capable of having sex with women at all. I suppose that’s more than just a preference.”

“That makes sense.”

“It does?
She
didn’t seem to think so.”

“Oh, no, I’m talking about her mentor, Umber. He was a woman last time I saw him. I bet he went into the gentank in order to take the job.”

“Umber used to be a woman? But he was such a . . .”

“Swaggering fool? Yes, well, he always did like playing a role.”

That gave me a bit to think about. Trace’s situation seemed a little different in that light.

Shirley put her arm around me and squeezed. “Don’t worry. Just because Kal had a penis doesn’t mean you’re like Trace. We’re not going to make you into a woman. At least, not permanently.” She saw the look of alarm on my face and chuckled. “Oh, it happens. As something of an educational experience for students who fall behind in certain areas. It can be useful to find out how it feels to be the opposite gender, for some people.”

And that turned the whole situation back at me again. Would I want to do that, to feel how it was to be a woman? How about a newgen, like Kal or Suna, or one of the other types I had studied?

“Was there something wrong with Trace?”

“Someone like Trace isn’t well suited to being a Scout. I’m surprised they went to such lengths to accommodate her, actually. Do you know any reason why they didn’t just send her home?”

“She said that people like her got killed on her station.”

“Good enough reason to keep from sending her home. You’re worried about her, aren’t you?”

“Wouldn’t you be? She was miserable.”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine. As much as Umber can be, well, Umber, he’s a dedicated Scout and I’m sure he wants the best for Trace.”

“I hope so.”

We walked in silence for a few minutes, bringing us down to the water, where we then turned towards the academy.

Shirley scanned the area and frowned. “You know, the odds of us meeting up with him are pretty slim. Chances are, he’s out in the fields somewhere fixing a robot, not driving that little cart around.”

I shrugged. “I gotta take the chance.”

We stayed alert while we walked, keeping conversation to a minimum. I kept the pace slow to give us more time to spot him. We passed the little bower where Shirley and I spent the night, and then after a couple more kilometers, we spotted the dust cloud. That had to be him.

“Vack,” I said. “Look how fast he’s moving. We’ll never catch up.”

The dust cloud zipped along the edge of the oxygen deck where the long, high row of buildings that made up the rim rose up out of the terrain.

“That’s if it’s even him.”

The dust cloud suddenly changed direction, moving toward us.

Shirley pointed to a side path running between rows of fruit trees. “Looks like he’s going to come up that way.”

After walking a short distance up the path, we finally got a good look at the creator of the dust cloud. The truck was the same type that Joco had been driving. Before we could go far up the path, however, Shirley pulled me off the path and under the trees.

“A skimmer,” she hissed. “Headed straight for him.”

I peered up through the leaves. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear a mechanical whine from off to our left. It got louder, shifting in front of us, then dying down.

Shirley tossed her head back in the direction of the river. “Come on, we should go. The only people who have those skimmers are station security.”

“No. I need to know what’s going on. This could be
my
fault.”

My stomach clenched at the thought that our investigations had put him in danger. I ran towards the sound of the idling turbines, head down under the foliage, moving from tree to tree.

“Challers! Oh, vack . . .”

Shirley quietly moved along behind me.

I saw them before I could really hear them. The whine of the turbines, even at idle, was loud enough to prevent me from hearing their conversation without getting dangerously close. Joco stood a short distance from his truck. He seemed to be explaining something, his palms out in front of him in a gesture of innocence. The two Scouts standing in front of him weren’t hearing it. Their words were angry, punctuated with pointed fingers.

One of them drew a pistol. Joco dropped to his knees. I could almost hear him pleading. He hid his face in his hands. The weapon was aimed at his head. My guts wrenched into a knot. There were more cries of innocence.

I wanted to run forward—not knowing what I could do to save him, but I couldn’t let it happen without trying.

Not again. This time, I wanted to
do
something.

But Shirley had one hand firmly clamped around my wrist, and her other on the branch of a tree. She shook her head, her eyes wide with fear.

Bang
.

Joco slumped to the ground. The two Scouts turned calmly, boarded their craft, and flew away.

I tried to run to him again, but Shirley still held me back. “No, no, wait until they’re out of sight,” she whispered.

The whine of the skimmer’s turbines faded, and we crept out.

He was dead. There was no chance we could have saved him, even if there had been a gentank handy. The bullet had smashed his skull and his blood was seeping into the dust.

I turned and retched.

“We can’t stay here,” said Shirley. “They’ll have called this in; someone will come to clean this up.”

“What do you mean, ‘called this in?’ They just murdered him! We’re the ones who need to report this!”

“Those were Scouts, Challers. From Security. That wasn’t murder; that was an execution.”

“For what? He didn’t do anything; he never hurt anyone! He didn’t deserve that!”

“I know, Challers, I know. But if we get caught here, we’re not going to get better treatment.”

She pulled me away, back under the cover of the trees. We hurried away, through the trees for as long as they lasted, and then back out onto the path before Shirley figured we were far enough away.

The Scouts had killed Joco to stop him from talking. One thought kept running through my mind. Could they have known I was trying to find him? My research on the tablet that morning hadn’t been secret.

“Should we be going back to the academy?”

“You mean, will they be looking for us? I don’t think so. If they had expected us, they wouldn’t have just left after they shot him. They probably would have set up some kind of ambush. I don’t know exactly why they killed him, or why they waited until now to do it, but I don’t think it’s anything you did. They may have detected your queries without knowing exactly where they were coming from and just decided not to take any more chances with him. Whatever it was, if they knew you were coming today, they wouldn’t have just flown away like that.”

“And what if they’re waiting for us when we get back?”

“We don’t have a lot of choice. This is their station. If they want us, they can find us. The alternative is to go down to the docking bays and steal a ship. We could probably manage it—they’re not guarded—but after that, there’d be no turning back. They would be on the lookout for us wherever we went.”

I sighed. “And I’d never see Valka again.”

“That would be the least of your worries. We need to go back to the academy and act as if nothing happened.”