Steel Beneath the Skin (20 page)

‘I didn’t say no,’ Aneka said quickly, ‘I just wasn’t expecting it. I haven’t actually had a man since I woke up.’

‘You didn’t say yes either.’

‘How do you want me?’

‘Shannon likes to bend over with her elbows on the flight chair.’ Aneka give him a quirky, questioning look as she got off the seat and turned around to face it. ‘She has a thing for inappropriate sex.’ She saw him get a tube of some description from under the flight console. ‘She decided to go down on me on final approach into New Earth Spaceport last year.’ She spread her legs wider as his fingers smoothed a slick, cool fluid into her labia and then began to massage it into her; they were well prepared for sex in the cockpit. ‘I came as the landing gear hit the Plascrete.’

Aneka let out a little whimper as his fingers stroked her clitoris and it stiffened under the effect of the cool lubricant. She heard his suit unsealing, his hands gripped her hips, and then she felt him enter her. Her eyes widened; man he was big! She felt herself stretching smoothly around his shaft, glad of the extra lubrication, until he was all the way in. She let out a long groan.

‘Good?’ he asked. She laughed a response. ‘Since I’m your first I wouldn’t want to hurt you.’

‘I’m a fucking armoured android. Fuck me.’

He took her at her word, pulling out and slamming back in again, his hips smacking into her butt. Her grunts picked up the rhythm of his thrusts, but then he began to vary the pace, slowing and quickening, apparently at random, but the effect was to push her almost to the edge and then back over and over. She realised that the women did the same thing, but she had never met a man who could do it like this. Drake’s genetically enhanced penis seemed quite capable of teasing her like this for hours, but after about ten minutes she was mewling and begging for release. He switched back to solid pounding and she came almost instantly, her hands gripping the back of the flight chair so hard she thought she would leave marks.

When she could muster the energy to stand up and turn around, he was sitting on his chair, cleaning himself off with some wet-wipes. Aneka laughed. ‘Shannon really does have this place stocked for quickies.’ He offered her the pack and she shook her head. ‘I’ll grab a quick shower before I come to the mess.’ She tilted her head to one side thoughtfully. ‘How was I? I mean, compared to a modern girl.’

Drake frowned slightly, starting to pull his ship-suit back on. ‘They’ve got the muscle thing. It’s like being milked. Very stimulating. You’re really tight, and without the extra stimulation I could really concentrate on doing what I wanted with you. And, like you said, you’ve got an armoured combat chassis there, so I could go to town without worrying.’ He gave a shrug and sealed up his suit. ‘Pros and cons on both sides.’ He stood up and gave her a grin. ‘I’m certainly not complaining about my first ever xinti android.’

Aneka returned his grin. She was not complaining either.

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Aneka sat in the lab watching the stars again, but this time it was with a sense of melancholy. She had been feeling a little off for the last couple of days, and she was moderately sure it had been noticed, but she knew what it was, and that it would pass, and no one had asked so far.

The lab door opened, and closed, and no one called for the lights which meant it was Ella. Her artificial eyes functioned better in dim light than Gillian’s did, not as well as Aneka’s, but enough that she did not need to disturb the ambience of the room with more light.

‘They’re beautiful, really,’ Ella said, her voice soft. ‘I don’t really look at them anymore.’ She got a non-committal hum of response. ‘Something up? You’ve been a bit… sad since yesterday morning.’ And Ella was the kind of person who did not like her friends unhappy.

‘It’s… Ah, it’s Christmas.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Yeah, I gathered you guys didn’t know what it was. It used to be a religious festival, sort of. I mean, it wasn’t terribly religious by my time, though some people still went to church for Midnight Mass… Anyway, it was a family time. I used to try to be home with my parents and brother every year if I possibly could and… well…’

‘It’s brought the whole thing home,’ Ella said.

‘Yeah.’

‘So, what did you do at this “Christmas”?’

Aneka laughed. ‘Well, there were presents. We would buy each other gifts, wrap them in bright paper, and they would be opened on Christmas Day, which was the twenty-fifth of December. The calendar has changed, but it would be today, basically. After the presents we would have a huge meal, drink too much, watch some bad TV… It was having the whole family together that was the important thing though. In Sweden it was more to do with Christmas Eve, the day before. We would do both and make sure we were together both days.’

Ella frowned, though Aneka was not looking at her. ‘I can’t really replace your lost family. Normally we have a get together a bit like that on First Day, the first day of the year. Of course, most of the crew will be asleep, but the Doc and I were planning to have a little celebration then.’

Aneka looked around at her and smiled. ‘We called it New Year’s Day. Everyone would stay up on New Year’s Eve and see in the New Year at midnight with drinks, and then it was a holiday on the first to get over the hangover.’

‘It’s still pretty much the same. There’s a little… I guess you’d call it a prayer, that someone is supposed to say just after midnight, and then everyone drinks. And then everyone usually drinks
more.
Gillian has a bottle of shinishee she picked up at Harriamon when she knew we’d be awake.’

‘Shinishee?’

‘It’s a drink, brewed from berries and distilled. It’s… probably best if you just try it and see what you think. I can’t describe it. I know it’s not the same as “Christmas” with your family, but it’s something.’

Aneka looped an arm around Ella’s waist and pulled her closer; Ella did not object, her arm settled around Aneka’s shoulders. ‘It’s not the same, no, but thanks, Ella.’

‘What for?’

‘Trying to make me feel better. You’re right, I think this is what made it sink in. I had to mourn them sooner or later and this is the time. I’ll be over it in a day or two and we can celebrate First Day, and I can start a new year and my new life. There’s a whole new world out there to start living in.’

Ella said nothing, but her arm tightened around Aneka as she watched the stars sliding by on the screen.

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‘Tony Grigson,’ Aneka said, giggling. ‘I was thirteen, he was fourteen. He wanted to see under my skirt, but all he got was a kiss.’ They were sitting around playing a drunken game of something like Truth or Dare, except that Aneka was not drunk and could not get drunk, and they had had to think of a different punishment for not accepting a question. A collection of sex toys had been made ready for applying this punishment, though Aneka was not convinced that “punishment” was the right word.

‘Tongue?’ Ella asked. Technically supplementary questions were not allowed, but Aneka figured that one was acceptable.

‘I was thirteen! He got a peck on the lips and both of us thought we had done the most disgusting thing you could do.’ She shrugged. ‘About nine months later he had his hands down my knickers, but that was about as far as he got.’

Ella giggled and accepted that she had got her answer by saying, ‘Computer, next.’ The screen came up with two names, Aneka above Ella, produced from a simple pseudo-random number generator. Ella pouted, but turned to Aneka to get her question.

‘Okay,’ Aneka said, already prepared for this one. ‘The first person you had sex with?’

Ella giggled and took a sip of her drink. ‘Difficult one,’ she said.

‘Are you saying you forfeit?’ Gillian asked.

‘No,’ Ella replied, ‘it’s just a little complicated. The first person I had sex with on purpose was Hedda Tulka, my roommate for my first year at university. Neither of us had tried girls before… Well, I hadn’t done much with boys either. We didn’t exactly settle into anything regular, but we would end up in the same bed once a month or so. Sometimes with one or more boyfriends.’

‘The first you had “on purpose”?’

‘Uh-huh. When I was fifteen I went to a friend’s birthday party back on Harriamon. I was still blind back then, yes? We got into this stupid hide-and-seek game where the boys all went to hide and the girls had to look for them. If you found a boy, you had to hide with him. The boys would generally try to find a spot that would mean you were pressed together…’

‘A little like Seven Minutes in Heaven,’ Aneka said, ‘just a mass version.’

‘I guess,’ Ella said, probably not actually understanding the game reference. ‘The idea was that the house computer would ring all our comm-units at a set time, we had to stay wherever we’d got to until then. I found my boy after ten minutes, in a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms. I figured there would be a bit of groping and I let him do that because I wasn’t going to let him kiss me. Well, no one else found us and after ten minutes I’d stopped trying to stop him. The comms went about thirty minutes later and he pulled out and left. I never even knew who he was.’

Both Aneka and Gillian were looking at her with slightly horrified expressions, and she shrank a little. ‘It wasn’t what you’re thinking. He didn’t… I mean I know I said I didn’t want him to… I was a blind girl with half a face. All my friends had boyfriends and most of them were having sex. It wasn’t the way I wanted my first time to be, but there I was and he was willing, and it felt good. For half an hour I felt like an ordinary teenage girl…’

Thankfully, the computer chimed at them, distracting them from the story. A large clock had appeared on the screen; it was a minute to midnight. Gillian grabbed three fresh glasses which were waiting just for the purpose, and began pouring a dense, dark purple fluid into them. Aneka watched it pour, wondering at Ella. It was hard to believe that the girl she knew now had once been so insecure as to allow herself to be effectively raped, and was still rationalising it as a good thing. She picked up her glass and turned her eyes to the clock.

‘You’ll say the Renewal?’ Ella asked.

‘Unless you want to,’ Gillian replied.

‘It should be the eldest.’

‘You’re right. Computer, transmit the text of the Renewal to Aneka.’ She grinned as Aneka turned a wide-eyed look on her. ‘You do have several centuries on both of us. Just as it turns midnight, we take a drink, and then you just read the words. It should be the first thing anyone says though. Then we drink again.’

Al popped up the text for her, along with a countdown timer. Aneka scanned over the words quickly; it was not a long speech. ‘Okay,’ she said.

The clock ticked over to midnight, and they raised their glasses, clinking them together and taking a drink. Shinishee had a sharp, slightly fruity taste. It burned all the way down Aneka’s throat like a good whiskey. She smiled, and then looked down before she started reading. ‘As this old year turns and the new one begins, we give thanks for all that has been, and look forward to all that is to come. The Long Dark is gone and we look into the light. Let this First Day be the first of many where we strive to be the best we can be and fight to keep the darkness at bay.’

She looked up to check that she had said it right. Ella was grinning brightly, but Gillian actually had a tear in her eye. They both raised their glasses and there was another click of crystal on crystal before they drank again.

‘Somehow,’ Gillian said, wiping the water from her eye, ‘that had so much more meaning spoken by a girl born before the Long Dark even happened.’

‘That little speech has been around a long time, I take it?’ Aneka asked.

‘It was made at the meeting which inaugurated the Lorenti Federation on Lorenti Four as the clock ticked over at the agreed time for the first second of the Federation,’ Gillian told her. ‘We don’t really have very many traditions, but this is the one we do have which pretty much everyone subscribes to.’

Ella nodded. ‘Even on a backwater world like Harriamon we would receipt the Renewal on First Day. It’s
usually
the oldest person who says it, but it’s the youngest if it’s their first time being allowed to stay up for it. So, actually, that’s two reasons for getting you to do it.’

Aneka emptied her glass. ‘This stuff is good. I hope it’s not just for First Day.’

Gillian chuckled. ‘No, it’s not. However, it’s about fifty-eight per cent alcohol so any minute now Ella is going to turn into a giggly nymphomaniac. She has no head for drink.’ Ella giggled and Gillian smirked.

Aneka gave a little shrug. ‘How are we going to tell the difference?’

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Aneka watched Gillian as she sank back another glass of Shinishee and frowned. It was her third and she looked distinctly worried, which made Aneka worried. When Gillian poured a fourth glass, Aneka decided to intervene.

‘Hey, Doc, what’s got you trying to destroy your liver?’

Gillian jumped and almost committed alcohol crime by spilling some of the Shinishee. ‘Oh, Aneka. I didn’t hear you come in.’ The lab door was hardly silent. ‘I’ve been reading through the xinti database.’

Aneka glanced at the screen. Sure enough she found herself looking at Xinti; something about attacks on xinti planets, probably during the war. ‘I see that, but what’s with the heavy drinking?’

Not answering, Gillian got to her feet and tapped a few keys. The screen locked and she started for the door carrying her bottle and glass. ‘We’ll go through to my room. I want to discuss this with Ella as well.’

She would say nothing else until they were all sat around her room, and she had downed another glass of the harsh liquor, apparently to steady her nerves. When she did speak, it did not seem to be relevant. ‘Ella, why don’t you tell Aneka how the Xinti War started.’

Ella frowned, but collected her thoughts and began. ‘A lot of this is a little vague. We have relatively few solid historic documents from that period. So much was lost in the war and the period afterward.

‘Around eleven centuries ago, jenlay, well humans really, had started spreading out into the galaxy. We had met up with the Herosians and the Torem, and started trading with them. There were colonies on a few worlds, mostly for mining, some for food production. Then the Herosians came to their trading partners with news of another race, the Xinti. They showed evidence that the Xinti had conducted experiments on members of the other races, including humans…’