Enemy

The world outside the glass flew by at all speeds. Tendrils of icy clouds whipped out of view in the blink of an eye while the rocky outcroppings that dotted the ground below flowed languidly, unimpressed and unhurried as we passed overhead. The sky far above was bright and brilliantly blue, although shades of green and orange played on the verge of the horizon, hinting at the sunset soon to come. We were on a survey mission, riding in a goshawk, the smallest of the All Peoples Army's long-range fliers. It was equipped for two pilots and a small complement of scouts or soldiers, but I was alone at the back of the cabin, filling the space that might otherwise be occupied by two or three humans, hunched over my pinhole view of the sky. Our mission was straightforward enough: we would conduct a systematic sweep of those regions of the planet that were, due to electromagnetic or geological interference, difficult to observe from orbit in order to ensure that no opposing forces—those being my manufacturers—had established new footholds on the ground. It was unlikely that our efforts would yield any results. By all appearances, military efforts to defend or recapture the planet had ceased several years prior, but it was prudent to be careful, spread thin as the Army was. There had been little opportunity for pleasantries on the flight thus far. We'd cruised through wave after wave of turbulent winds that had rendered the cabin too loud for conversation. Working headsets were hard enough to come by for the regulars, let alone for tagalongs like me. Thus, when the noise abated somewhat as we sank into an uncommonly calm patch of sky, I seized the rare opportunity and spoke. "Thank you again for inviting me along, Lieutenant Commander," I said towards the front. "My pleasure," she shot back, tersely but with a flash of teeth. It hadn't exactly been an invitation and we both knew it. When I'd gathered that a survey team was going out, I'd insisted that they take me along as an embedded observer. It had taken some mild bullying of the already-harried chain of command, but eventually they had conceded. My gratitude, however, was genuine: if it had been anyone other than her at the helm of this mission, I might not have pressed my luck. Lieutenant Commander Temperance Fortual was a volcano of a woman, her craggy exterior concealing a fiery heart. She had gray at her buzz-cut temples, but I'd seen her wrestle fresh-faced upstarts who had twice her swagger and she'd always come out on top without breaking a sweat. I'd also seen her work up a good sweat when I'd presented her with the opportunity and she'd come away no worse for wear. Once word got around that I'd be joining, all the other volunteers had dropped out for ambiguous reasons and any remaining interested recruits had scattered to the wind. For being our liberators, most humans I'd encountered were surprisingly reluctant to spend time in close quarters with a haoma. This suited me fine—it was cramped enough in the cabin as it was. We weren't entirely alone, either: Temperance had press-ganged a surly-looking cadet into riding shotgun. I had hoped she might fly the mission alone, but she insisted that two pairs of pilot's eyes were better than one. Oh, well. "Watch your starboard, ensign," the lieutenant commander chirped. "Those flocks of lovebirds are bigger than we are." Not a cadet, then, I self-corrected, even though she looked greener than some of my sprouts. Not literally. She was human. I leaned back against the bulkhead, resting my neck. The view was impressive, but no longer worth the strain—and I had discomfort enough to contend with. I rarely got hot or cold down on the ground, but the air up here had a crisp edge that tugged unpleasantly at my bare skin. The thrum of the engines might have soothed me, if not for the way their vibrations made my borrowed clothes ride up, tightening around every curve and crevice. Our early textile operations were promising, but were were still many years away from achieving scale, so most of us had to rely on Army hand-me-downs to keep us clothed, as the humans insisted we remain. As variable in size and disposition as haoma were, it was easier for some than others. I'd squeezed myself into a set of coveralls that had been borrowed off the forfeited belongings of some poor, dead mechanic, but even after tearing off the sleeves and splitting them at the middle, exposing a fair span of my midriff, the coarse fabric hugged me more tightly than I would have preferred—to say nothing of the way it pinned my cock to my leg, seams threatening to sever me from myself. What I wouldn't give for a simple sundress, right about now, but such a thing was inappropriate for soldierly work. I tugged at my crotch, hoping to effect some relief. Maybe the motion caught Temperance's eye, because she chose that moment to speak again. "I've been meaning to ask, Cinna," she said. "I've saved up a mountain of shore leave and we're decidedly in-between major conflicts. I could stick around for a while, after we've finished this run, if you're still interested." Her copilot responded before I could, making a sound somewhere between a dry-heave and a growl. "Excuse me, ensign?" she grunted. "Sorry, sir," said the ensign, insincerely. "I don't fuck with somata." "Haoma," the lieutenant commander corrected. "That word is propaganda and you will not use it again where I can hear it, or you'll be taking the long way back to Forward Base." A curious mix of feelings passed through me. I was touched that Temperance came to my defense, even if it hadn't been entirely necessary. The language of my manufacturers caused me little personal discomfort or offense, even if its context was impossible to escape. It was the humans who needed to be convinced whether or not to give a damn about us. The names they assigned us were potent weapons in that fight, but I'd only ever known myself to be a haoma. My own value was self-evident. "Sorry, sir," the ensign repeated. "Why in the fuck did you join up if that's how you feel?" Temperance demanded, unwilling or unable to let it go. "With all due respect, sir," the ensign countered, "you didn't join up just to fuck somata—sorry—haoma, did you?" Temperance blinked at this retort and slowly arched one eyebrow as her only reply. Sensing that there was only one way this wasn't about to get much worse for her, the ensign deigned to answer the question. "I don't need to care about them to want to oppose corporate interests," she groused. She didn't exactly point at me, but she didn't need to. "I'd happily give my life if it denied the plutocrats a penny in the exchange," the ensign added. "That's all this war means to me." The lieutenant commander snorted. "A dyed-in-the-wool anti-capitalist, huh?" she said. "You use their words of oppression while claiming to be a revolutionary. Let me tell you something, kid: dying for an ideal isn't all it's cracked up to be. Spend your life chasing a principle and you'll miss all the people who actually make living worth a toss." Unlike the ensign, Temperance did point at me, one thumb over her shoulder, jammed back on the end of a clenched fist. "That haoma back there?" she said. "She's the only reason all of this matters. She and all her kin." My swirling feelings intensified, so much that I thought my heart might burst, but any warmth I felt towards Temperance in that moment was cut through with a quiet but singular thought: I didn't want anyone to die for me. I just wanted to live. All the windows in the goshawk went dark, all at once. The drone of the engine was drowned out by the shriek of tearing metal. My center of gravity went out from under me and I planted my palms and heels, denting the cabin floor and ceiling with the force of my exertion. I noted with fleeting amusement that it hadn't ultimately mattered that I couldn't fit into the safety belts at the rear of the cabin—they weren't designed for something like this, let alone someone like me. I hoped that the pilots had better protections for their fragile human anatomies, or else I'd be the one facing a long and lonely walk back home. I laughed and the world whirled. I woke up with a mouth full of sand. My back hurt. Everything hurt. I coughed and spluttered. Eventually, I vomited, and that helped a little. At least the sand was mostly gone, but I was left terribly thirsty. We had been fully out over the desert during our unplanned descent and an uneasy twilight settled over the rocks and the dunes. I hadn't been out for long, nor had I flown far, judging by the thick column of smoke that rose up from over the nearest hill of sand. I clambered to my feet, bare toes finding easy purchase against the soft sand. My coveralls felt unexpectedly loose. I reached back to find a long, wet gash splitting my clothes and my backside from shoulder to hip. A quick tug ripped the improvised top from my chest—it was doing me no good, now—and I used the rags to mop up the blood as best I could. By the feel of it, the wound had already mostly clotted. Plus, I was all but impervious to infection. So long as I could walk, it would be no great inconvenience. That, and the evening air felt too wonderful on my tits to pretend that I gave a fuck about modesty, anymore. Let the humans gawk. In a few strides, I crested the dune and surveyed the wreckage of the poor goshawk, fearing I'd find nothing but echoes and ruin. To my great relief, I spied Temperance's small but solid figure standing at the top of a rocky spar, a few meters away from the bulk of the crash, wrestling with some sort of equipment on a tripod. The ensign emerged from the crumpled cabin moments after, laden with emergency packs. I went down to meet them. "Oh, thank Christ," Temperance swore as I approached. If she made more than an appreciative note of my sudden half-nakedness, she didn't let it slow her down, but the ensign dropped her packs on the sand and stared open-mouthed in my direction, eyes on my chest. I wondered how her current expression compared to that which I might have seen, had our flight not been suddenly and violently grounded. Would she have stared so broadly aghast at Temperance's rebuke of her character, or had the crash shaken loose her pretensions? "Near as we can figure," said the lieutenant commander, paying the ensign no mind, "you were flung from the cabin when the port hull ruptured. Even strong as you are, you couldn't hang on once the wind took you. We were already pretty close to the ground, so you didn't go far." "What happened?" I asked. "Lovebirds," she squawked. "Hold on. Turn around." She must have noticed the crumple of bloody rags in my hand—that, or my blood had started to drip onto the sand. Maybe it hadn't clotted as much as I thought, or maybe the short hike had reopened my wound. It stung like hell, so it was probably the latter. I obediently turned around to show her my backside. "Washerin, fetch me a canteen and a cartridge from the first aid kit," she ordered. I made my own involuntary sound. "I know it's technically unnecessary, but humor me," said Temperance. The ensign returned with the requested supplies, careful to stay out of my line of sight—or, perhaps, to keep herself from any angle that would have afforded her another glance at my bare front. I stood as still as I could while the lieutenant commander poured an entire canteen of cold, clean water over my shoulders, back, and hips, washing away the blood and the sand. She popped open the cartridge of liquid bandage and sprayed a long line across my wound. It was hot on contact but quickly dried and homogenized. After a few seconds, I couldn't feel anything at all except a slight tug where it held the halves of my lacerated skin together. I reached back to touch it in a moment of runaway curiosity and Temperance slapped my hand away. "Give it a minute to set," she chided. "It'll flake off in a few days, which should be more than enough for you to recover." I turned back around, but she had to move a few steps away before I could properly face her. As close as she'd been standing, my tits all but completely obstructed any view of her. One soldier or another had told me that humans used to be taller, some almost even as tall as I was, but that space travel had caused them evolve to be more compact. We had been based on the old model, as it were. Temperance, standing at well over a meter-and-a-half and considered reasonably tall amongst the humans, could stand against me and have my tits only just brush the top of her head—and that only because they were, even amongst haoma, particularly massive. "Do you want me to try to scrounge up a shirt or something for you?" she asked. I gave her a look that told her what she already knew. Perhaps she liked me better this way, too, because she shrugged and let the matter drop as quickly as she'd raised it. Temperance and the ensign made swift work of the emergency tent. Where minutes ago there had only been a mild depression in the sand, now a faceted silver dome rose several meters into the air, plenty large enough to bivouac a goshawk's full complement of soldiers and then some. "Is no one coming?" I asked, when they were finished. Temperance snorted and gestured towards the tripod on the outcropping. "Ever since the new war started up, the Army has been diverting resources away to other fronts," she explained. "No major conflicts, remember? That means they get the good stuff and we get whatever's left behind." "Which means no one's coming," I repeated. "Our backup communications array is solar-powered," she explained, "and the batteries came to us drained. They'll come get us, I'm certain, but we can't call for backup until a few hours after the sun comes up." The oranges and greens of early sunset were long gone, as were the reds and violets that followed, leaving the sky to settle into full, dark blue, dotted with twinkling points of light. It was beautiful if you didn't stop to think about how many of those stars were home to other wars. The stars ought to shine red for all the blood that had been spilled in their orbit. It was beautiful, even so. I looked down at Temperance, so hard but so full of life. The lines around her eyes looked deeper the growing darkness—or maybe it was just that she was more concerned than she was letting on. "You okay, Tempe?" I asked. She blinked at me, then shot me a quick, rascally smile. "I will be, soon enough," she said. "Let's go inside. Nothing more to be done out here until morning." The interior of the emergency tent was distinctly less shiny than its exterior, its wall and floors instead clad with a soft white synthetic fabric, something between vinyl and rubber. It was comfortable under my bare feet, providing a subtle cushion that made only a small difference over the sand outside, but I imagined would have been a significant relief on rougher ground. To wit, Temperance kicked off her boots just inside the entrance flap, though she left her socks on. The ensign had observed no such courtesy, but seemed to have taken pains not to track in more sand than she couldn't avoid. There were no bedrolls—I presumed the soft floor would serve well enough towards that purpose—but the ensign had inflated a trio of sitting cubes, scattering them semi-equidistantly around the perimeter of the tent. She'd also brought in three hard-shelled cases of various sizes, one of which I recognized as the first aid kit. All three bore some manner of scorch marks and scratches from the crash, but they were built to withstand the worst. I tried not to think of them as my kin, in that respect. Despite the onset of night, it was medium-bright inside the tent, thanks to sections of the support struts that glowed a sterile, effervescent white. "Oh, good," said Temperance. She made her way directly to the largest of the three cases and unlatched it, causing a soft hiss of vacuum pressure release. I spied a number of tightly-sealed packets and canisters inside, two of which she pulled out and tossed over to the ensign and to me. "Ration cakes," the lieutenant commander announced. "They don't taste like much, but they'll keep us going." "With respect, lieutenant commander," said the ensign, "does she need one of these? Don't they eat sunlight or something?" Temperance rolled her eyes and moved her mouth to counter, but if I was going to spend the night with these two, I was going to start fighting my own battles. "Only when we're sprouts," I informed the ensign. "Haoma lose all their photosynthetic capabilities by the time they undergo anthesis. I eat and drink, just the same as you, if significantly less." The ensign glanced down at her own stomach. That hadn't been a shot at her weight—I hadn't even noticed until just now that her pilot's jumpsuit was a little tight around the midsection, although it was clearly a point of self-consciousness for her. Haoma had simply been engineered to have incredibly efficient digestive systems. We didn't even shit, a choice clearly intended for our would-be masters to have unfettered access to our assholes. Any comeback that the ensign might have had was preempted by an unprompted and hearty chortle from the lieutenant commander. "It made it through!" she announced. She drew out a clear glass bottle, filled halfway with amber-brown liquid. Its label was inscribed with a language I couldn't read, but it wasn't hard to guess what it contained, at least in broad strokes. "Really?" squawked the ensign. "Lighten up, Washerin," Temperance shot back. "Have a drink. It'll help the rations go down. Maybe it'll even help us all get through tonight without strangling you." The ensign huffed. "I don't have to—" "Yes," the lieutenant commander interrupted, "you do. Have a drink, ensign. That's an order from your superior officer." She held out the bottle. Washerin crossed the few paces between them and took it, wrenching off the cork and taking a deep draught. A shiver passed through her as the cold burning liquid ran down her throat, but her angry eyes softened as the apparent punishment revealed itself to be a pleasure. "Oh, fuck," she coughed, coming up for air. "That's—" "Yes, it is," Temperance agreed. She snatched back the bottle and walked it over to me, taking a swig for herself before placing it in my hand. Watching her tongue snake around the rim of the bottle's mouth, eyes locked on mine, it wasn't hard to imagine what else she might have in mind to pass the time. I handed Temperance my ration cake—the liquor contained plenty of caloric value to keep me going, whereas I expected she was about to need the energy. She took it with a waggle of her eyebrows, shielding the tender exchange from the ensign's view, and then nodded at the bottle, insisting. The rum was rich but smooth, warming without burning, both savory and sweet, intensely flavorful without tipping over into cloying. I silently finished the ensign's prior comment: that was, indeed, the good stuff. After a moment's consideration, I took a second drink from the bottle before handing it back to Temperance. I didn't need it, but I found myself wanting it just the same—I knew that she wouldn't deny me the indulgence. On the contrary, she took her own second draw from the bottle, longer than the first, leaving only a nip at the bottom, never breaking eye contact with me as her throat swelled with every swallow. "Is there any more?" murmured the ensign from across the tent. Perhaps it was a difference in haoma culture, inasmuch as you could call the vague cohesion between a few hundred sentients a culture, but I had a strong distaste for the idea of plying a companion with drugs or alcohol. It was one thing if all parties were willing in the first place, but consent couldn't be given freely if one's faculties were impaired. At the same time, especially for a pain in the ass like the ensign, I had to admit that sometimes humans' inhibitions seemed mostly to get in the way of their better selves. How much of Washerin's self-righteousness was rooted in self-doubt? Unlike Temperance's weighty gaze, the ensign was doing her damndest not to make eye contact with anyone, pointedly staring at a nondescript section of the tent floor in the middle distance, even as she courted our attention. Temperance gave me a watch-this wink and walked over to the ensign, placing the almost-empty bottle in her hand. "The rest is all yours," she announced. Just as soon as the bottle was out of her hand, she tossed her unopened ration into the food store and unzipped her jumpsuit from neck to navel, shredding any auxiliary snaps and buckles along the way. "Lieutenant commander?" the ensign gulped. "Shut up, ensign," Temperance quipped. "I'm about to do what I joined up to do, so you can either sit and watch or you can get the fuck out and enjoy the evening air." "Is that an order?" she managed to spit out in a confused jumble of obedience and defiance. "Only if you want it to be," said Temperance. "Either way, it's shaping up to be a beautiful night." She wasn't wearing anything but a pair of plain cotton panties under her jumpsuit and she left her socks on, as she always did. Underwear was a concept I'd learned to appreciate in humans, even if like most haoma I never chose to partake in the practice. That stark triangle of white drew one's gaze to the space between Temperance's taut stomach and her powerful, stocky thighs. Its fabric was thin enough to go half-transparent where her arousal had soaked through the crotch and it clung to the swollen whorls of the outer lips of her cunt. Above all that, her tits were athletically lean and criss-crossed with vine-like scars that stood out against her olive skin. She'd told me that they'd come from a mechanical failure in her early days in the army, although I suspected that was a lie meant to shield me from some of the deeper horrors of human war. Regardless of their origin, they gave her chest the appearance of being covered in fine lacework and the effect was not at all unappealing. I looked over her shoulder as she approached. Washerin hadn't moved from her seat, but her eyes had come unglued from the floor and strayed steadily in our direction. Time to catch her attention, then. With a wicked grin, I grabbed both of Temperance's nipples between my thumbs and forefingers and gave them a solid twist. Her whole body tensed and a flush spread through her cheeks that had nothing to do with the rum—or even her arousal. It was unfair of me to conscript Temperance like this, but some small part of me hoped that if the ensign saw that her commanding officer wasn't invulnerable she'd allow herself some vulnerability in turn. Holding her both figuratively and literally off-balance, I moved in further, hanging my tits close enough to her face that she could reach out and touch them with her tongue. I gave her nipples another twist, this one sending her up onto tip-toes—and crashing into my tit-flesh. "Come on, then," I encouraged. Temperance dove in with teeth and fingers, making her best attempt at returning her treatment at my hands. I couldn't tell if it made it easier or harder that my nipples were the size of her thumbs, but she got the job done just the same. I cooed as she found the right amount of suction and torque to set my nerves on fire, making me imagine that electric, lacework lines ran across my chest, just as they did hers. Impatiently, she broke away from my tits and pawed at my coverall bottoms, unbuckling them and dragging them down, freeing my cock from its unpleasant confines. "Giantess," I heard the ensign whisper. I suspect that Temperance had already noticed that the ensign had decided to stay, but this outburst forced her to acknowledge it. "Washerin, fetch us a seat," Temperance commanded. Half in a trance, the ensign stood and picked up the cube she'd just been sitting on, moving it across the tent and placing it just behind me. She lingered at my shoulder, her mouth half open, tongue curling, as Temperance sat me down and leaned me back, readying my cock to mount. "Normally, I'd be one for foreplay," she said, "but nearly catching your death has a way of clarifying your priorities—and, baby, I need you inside of me." My cock was full hard and dripping with ichor. I didn't need foreplay any more than she did, and she knew it. Maybe she was speaking for the ensign's sake, too. Regardless of her ulterior motives, Temperance tugged down her panties and clambered onto my lap, needing to extend herself fully upright on her knees in order to fit my cock between her legs. The fact that the head of my cock was the size of her balled fist wasn't about to stop her, as it had never stopped her before. She spread her own outer lips, stretching herself as wide as she could, and then descended, unable to stop herself from letting out a mournful groan as I sundered her vulva and ran the course of her vagina, coming to a soft stop at the mouth of her cervix. As far as she could go, she'd still only taken a little more than half the length of my cock, but that was okay: humans had their limits—and we'd been designed to compensate. She knelt there atop me, full to bursting, catching her breath, tears at the corners of her eyes. I had the sense that if I didn't move first, we might stay frozen there forever. I did the most gentle thing I could: I flexed my cock, pushing out against her walls. "Jehoshaphat!" she swore and bounded into motion, dragging herself back upwards along my cock. I turned my head to look at the ensign, who stared, mouth agape, at the place where Temperance and I met. Without even realizing she'd done it, she had unzipped the top half of her jumpsuit and had a hand inside, mauling at her own tits. "What's your given name, ensign?" I asked her, as calmly as if her lieutenant commander wasn't currently grinding her way up and down on my cock, gradually building up speed as she adjusted to the burden of me. I flexed my cock again, just to keep Temperance on her toes. "Blasz," the ensign managed. "My friends call me Blast." "Do they, now," I chuckled. "Well, Blast, you don't have to just stand there. In fact, I have a mission for you, if you're up for the task." Caught halfway between lust and terror, her eyes widened. After a few tense moments, she nodded. I spread my legs a little wider, forcing Temperence to catch her balance, spreading her cunt open just that little bit more—which was both torture and a mercy, as she'd started to find her groove, riding me at a steady trot, if not quite a full canter. "Kneel down there, between my legs, and tell me what you see," I instructed. She followed my orders perfectly, moving around to stand behind Temperance, between my legs, and kneeling down. I could practically feel her breath catch as she gasped. "You've got a cunt down there," she announced. "That's right," I agreed, encouraging her innocent wonderment. "Lick it." When the ensign hesitated just a little too long, Temperance twisted around and grabbed her by the back of the head, abandoning any sense of decorum in the chain of command, and pulled her forward between my thighs. A little forceful encouragement must have been all she needed, because I felt her tongue dive between my labia scant heartbeats later. Temperance leaned forward, releasing the ensign and wrapping her hands around the back of my head, running her fingers through my mop of woolly hair. She kissed me on the lips, no tongue, passionate and insistent but somehow still reserved, then pulled back just far enough to speak so that only I could hear. "I see what you're doing," she said. "Thank you." I flexed my cock by way of reply and she buckled, all but losing her balance. She crashed into my tits so as not to fall off my lap entirely, skewered atop my cock all the while. Whatever that had felt like to the ensign underneath, she redoubled her efforts, running her tongue up and down my slit in long, steady strokes, slurping up my free-flowing ichor. By the way that Temperance had started to shudder, I knew she must be close to bursting, so I took command of her, too, grabbing her by the ass and lifting her up before dropping her down, carefully catching her before she bottomed out—there was a fine line between maximum pleasure and real damage and I'd rather sacrifice the former than cause the latter. She was strong, but I was stronger than any human had ever been, making it child's play to play catch with myself, tossing her back up again and again, faster and smoother than she ever could have managed under her own power. A low growl began to rumble in her chest, building louder and louder until she screamed so loudly that I thought we might not have to wait till morning to call for help. Her whole body writhed and bucked so hard that she threatened to unseat herself from my cock, but that wasn't the end of it—not for her. I held her hips in place as the rest of her shook, just holding her onto the head of my cock, and then I thrust upwards. Three strong pumps was all it took before a gout of my sap burst forth within her, but I kept fucking, working the sap into her and then out of her again until it dripped down the shaft of my cock, running in sticky rivulets all the way to my cunt, where the ensign's tongue happily received them. Gradually regaining her senses, Temperance pulled herself off of me in a slow and sticky drag, careful not to kick or step on the ensign between my legs as she found her footing. From my newly unobstructed vantage point, I could see that while the ensign dutifully and pleasingly continued to lick my cunt, even as my cock slumped down and thumped agains the side of her head, she'd taken some liberties within the letter of my order. She had one small tit fully exposed and was squeezing and rolling it in her one hand, while the other was concealed inside the crotch of her jumpsuit, furiously moving back and forth, as much as it could while staying so contained. Temperance and I shared a look and she took the ensign by the shoulders, pulling her away from my crotch and helping her to her feet. "That looks uncomfortable," I mentioned. The ensign blushed furiously and ineffectually tried to shield the tent at her crotch from our examination. "Would you like us to help you?" I inquired. She bit her lip, staring at the soft floor of the tent so hard that it seemed not entirely implausible that a hole might open up beneath her feet and allow her a swift escape. After a few ragged breaths, when no subterranean savior appeared, she looked up at me and nodded. On cue, the lieutenant commander relieved the ensign of her already half-off jumpsuit. Temperance proceeded to remove her underwear in a few swift motions, taking the drab green bralette up and over her head and the matching high-waisted panties down over her ankles. The ensign had conscientiously removed her boots and socks at some point prior, so quick as anything she stood there entirely bare and on display. Apparently ill-used to such scrutiny, Blast's hands roved from one point of concern to another. She started at her midsection, poorly shielding it from view, but in doing so she exposed not only her small, delightfully floppy tits, but also the button of her small cock, slightly shadowed by the swell of her belly. I immediately felt her shame—it practically came off her in waves—but she had nothing to be ashamed of and I intended to convince her of it. I leaned forward and gently pushed her hands to her sides, running my fingers up along the curve of her belly and across her breastbone, lingering to glide slowly across her neck and then up over her chin, slipping my thumb past her lips. She suckled greedily, as if it were its own little cock, but I didn't dwell for long, drawing it back out on a trail of her spittle, leaving her breathily gasping for more. Now on the descent, I ran my hand again across her neck, squeezing a little this time—not forcefully enough that there was any risk, but just enough to hint at the sweet edge of danger—and then down over each of her tits, cupping them and rolling her nipples underneath my wet thumb. I squeezed at her belly on the way by, gently appreciating the soft heft of that roll, and then continued below, to wrap my fingers around her cock, which throbbed desperately, as if starving for my touch. It was small, yes, but hard as anything, like a little rod of stone. I idly stroked, starting at the base and running all the way to the tip before running back again, pulling her foreskin away from the head and watching her shiver at the sudden wick of the dry air. "I can think of all sorts of things to do with you," I announced, "but what do you want, Blast?" She chewed at her lip some more, gathering up her courage. "I want what she had," she said, with a nod towards the lieutenant commander. "But there's just no way. You won't fit." I cocked my head and moved my hand over to Temperance, sliding it between her legs and running my middle finger all the way inside her cunt in one smooth stroke. "Christ, Cinna," she choked out through a shudder. "Will you warn me, for once?" "What, and ruin your fun?" I said, my tone dripping with mock innocence. I swirled my finger inside her, getting it nice and wet, then drew it out and slid it back in-between the ensign's legs, going on past her cock and rubbing my slick finger around the rim of her asshole. It tightened protectively, but slowly relaxed as I twirled it around in gentle circles, easing it into what might come next. "You see," I said to the ensign, holding her gaze, "lieutenant commander Fortual doesn't want to be in charge when we're fucking. That's too much like normal. She wants to be caught off guard. She likes being off balance." I withdrew my hand and brought it back between my own legs, running it over the head of my cock and all the way along my shaft for show, and then dipped my middle finger into my own cunt, as far as it would go, like I'd done to Temperance. Owing to the quirks of my biology, it came out many times slicker, coated in my ichor, gleaming almost iridescently in the ambient glow of the tent. "You, though?" I continued. "I don't think you want to feel out of control. I don't think you want to be in charge, either. I think all you want is to feel worthy of being commanded." To punctuate this notion, I slipped my finger back between her legs, pressing more firmly, now, rubbing my ichor into her asshole until it gave way. It was slow going. I could feel my finger losing circulation as the ensign failed to keep herself from fighting me. "Do you remember Matto," asked Temperance. "What we did with him?" I did—and I had been thinking the same thing. "I'll need your help, of course," I suggested, obliquely. "Of course," she replied. Sometimes doing things like normal was good, too, but I didn't tell the ensign that. "Get on your knees, ensign," Temperance commanded. Drunk on arousal, not to mention at least a little drunk on liquor—I had to remind myself that humans reacted more intensely to depressants than I did—her reactions lagged, but she eventually did as she was told and sank to her knees. In turn, I stood, towering over her, hanging my cock in her face. The ensign responded as one might expect, reaching out to lift the head of my cock up to her lips and opening wide. My jaw hurt just looking at her try to fit me inside her narrow mouth, but Temperance spoke first. "You don't have to do that," she instructed. "Just make her feel good. Watch." She knelt beside her subordinate and put her hands on my cock, drawing it towards herself. Leading with her tongue, she didn't try to fit the whole head inside her mouth—which would have been difficult for any human and even most haoma—and instead laid wet, suckling kisses along its length, paying special attention to run her tongue in circles around my tip, pulling back the skin with both hands to expose my most sensitive parts to her rapt attentions. The ensign followed her lead and drew along the other side of me, mirroring her movements and repeating her actions. My cock responded quickly, blood pumping in and inflating to increasingly larger and more rigid proportions, but their two mouths wouldn't be enough to get me where I needed to go. I grabbed myself around the base and stroked, low and firm, not so violently as to impede their efforts, but leaving nothing to chance. When I could feel the sap begin to bubble up inside me, I pulled my cock away from the two humans, lifting it up where their mouths couldn't reach. "Are you ready, then?" Temperance asked. "Just about," I sighed. "Her turn." She nodded and turned to the ensign. "Get down on all fours, ass in the air," she commanded. With a little more hesitation than before, the ensign did what she was told, turning around and folding over, putting her elbows on the ground and arching her back so that her ass faced as close to skyward as she could manage. Her little cock angled down like a dowsing rod, as if it was telling me: this way, come this way, come into me. But it would take a little more than that invitation, if experience was anything to go by. Temperance and I knelt, too, she to the ensign's side, me directly behind her, one knee planted to either side of her legs. Still pumping, I placed the head of my cock against the ensign's asshole, making her whimper, but I didn't plan to enter just yet. I rubbed my ichor around her hole, direct from the source this time, using my cock as I had used my finger before, gently, insistently encircling, bidding her to relax. Playing her own role, Temperance took the ensign's cock in hand and began to stroke, not hard enough to bring on her climax, but helping her relax just that much more. I kept my eyes on Tempe's. The timing of this was everything—and while I could try again, I had a feeling that the ensign's nerve would fail before too long. This would be our only chance to give her everything she wanted. The bubble became a simmer and then the simmer became a boil as my pumping strokes continued, deep and unrelenting. "Now," I barked. Temperance let go of the ensign's cock and put both hands on either side of her asshole, spreading it as wide as she could in one sudden jerk. That small opening secured, I jammed the head of my cock against her ass, hole to hole, and unloaded my sap directly into her rectum. The liquid force of that wave couldn't be resisted, and her whole inner ass expanded to adapt to the flow and its eventual backlash. As she buckled and pushed it back out, I was there to meet her gaping hole and pushed myself in. It would be difficult to describe the series of sounds that the ensign had made in that sequence of events. There were no words in it, only shock and revulsion and bewilderment and joy. But when the wave had crashed and ebbed, there she was, ass wrapped fully around the head of my cock. "Is this what you want?" I asked. "Yes!" she hissed. "Please!" I pushed. She ejaculated all but immediately, spraying her seed on the tent floor, but I kept pushing until there was enough of me inside her that she'd feel me sliding back out. It wasn't much—barely a quarter of the length of my cock—but that was plenty. The ensign's groans rose and fell with my every thrust, her body jostling forward and back, holding her ground just enough to grant me passage. Never one to simply sit and wait her turn, Temperance stood and kissed me on the mouth again, this time with tongue. It was a ravenous sort of kiss that promised me that whenever I was done with the ensign, she wanted more from me. In the meantime, she planted herself on the ground in front of the ensign, crotch just below her face, spread her legs wide, and repeated my earlier directive. "Lick it." I knew by now that the ensign was fairly accomplished with that tongue of hers, so I decided to fuck her ass until she made Temperance climax, but no more than that. In order to better encourage this result, I shifted into a new position. I'm not exactly sure how I managed not to pop out of her in the transition, but I got both feet under me and raised myself up, squatting over her backside like an animal in heat, and began to rut as hard as was safe for me to do—and maybe even a little beyond that, if I was being honest with myself. Based on the rising volume of the mix of muffled and open groans emerging from the other two, my plan was working, but so too had we settled into that mid-sex haze where lines blurred and time ceased to have any meaning. I couldn't tell you how long it took, but the moment Temperance arrived to her shrieking climax, squirting like a fire hydrant and showing all three of us with hot ejaculate, I pulled out of the ensign with a soft pop. By the state of the floor beneath the ensign's hips, she'd ejaculated at least twice more in the course of my fucking, not that layered pools of semen were the easiest to count—and I was about to make it worse. I gripped myself around the base and pushed myself over the edge. It didn't take much—Blast's ass had been tighter than almost anything I'd successfully fucked—and this time I let loose without precision, splattering the ensign's whole backside with my sap. With this last push, she collapsed under the weight of her own satisfied existence, flopping down into a heap amongst our slowly mixing puddles. Temperance didn't look much better off than the ensign, but she still found the strength to crawl over to me and climb up my leg until her face was level with my deflated cock. I sank to the floor, gently pulling her up onto my lap in an attempt to spare her the unnecessary exertions she seemed to have in mind. "Hey, now," she grumbled. "I can go some more." "I don't doubt that you can," I countered, "but that doesn't mean you should. You said it yourself: death nearly caught up with you today. You need to get some sleep." Temperance frowned and looked me square in the eye. "What I need is to live," she said. "Not later. Not tomorrow. Now. You can bet your red ass that you'll be seeing plenty of me, soon, since now I'm owed shore leave and hazard pay, but I don't care about that. I care about this." She reached down and took my cock in her hands. It was mostly soft, but that didn't make much of a difference to Temperance. Even at its least rigid, there was more than enough substance there to fill her up—not that it would take me long to get back up to full strength. She pushed me inside of herself, gritting her teeth to suppress a girlish gasp. Once I was secure, she buried her face between my tits and began to ride, sensuous and loving as she rolled her hips, taking all the time she wanted, taking everything she needed. Lost in the sensations, it took a bit before I realized someone else was probing my delta. Looking past Temperance, I found Blast kneeling there, her rock-hard little cock held at the ready, just outside the entrance of my cunt, looking bashful about how much she wanted to give me a try. I nodded, mustering every bit of a grace I had to try to convey that it was all right, she could fuck me however she wanted with whatever body she had. It didn't last long—the lieutenant commander kept going long after the ensign deposited her seed inside me and crawled up into the crook of my arm to nap—and I didn't feel it much, but that didn't matter. In the moments after her orgasm, when sadness might take hold, I saw a flash of triumph and relief race across her face. That was more than enough for me. Once Temperance had finished, a long while later, I eased my way out of their embraces. The third of the military supply cases was filled with all manner of hygienic aids, including a portable shower, some kind of collapsible space toilet, and a number of different cleansers and clean cloths. I took these latter items and put them to use, gently wiping down the two humans as they doggedly slumbered, leaving them clean and clutched in each other's arms. I set up the portable shower a stone's throw from the tent. Temperance had been right: it was a beautiful night, cool desert wind over sparkling sands, lit by a nearly-full moon. I enjoyed the company of humans, I reflected as I bathed, even if so many of them eschewed the company of haoma. They were our origin—or, at least, parallel descendants from that point—and understanding them led me to better understand myself and my kin, especially in the ways that we differed. I had a sinking notion that we'd soon be on our own, here on Greenhouse, and I intended to squeeze everything I could out of those who were willing to entertain my presence before they were all gone. "Are all haoma like you?" the ensign asked me. It was the morning after. The two of us sat naked on the side of a nearby dune, enjoying the sun before the heat of the day set in. We sipped instant coffee and watched the lieutenant commander fight with the communications array, trying our best to ignore the string of colorful expletives that carried on the wind. "Most aren't as big as me," I conceded. "No, not that," she amended. "I know what I said before, but I really do know about that. I'm not actually that much of a, well, you know. I just didn't want anyone to think that I—anyway, that's not what I'm trying to ask." I didn't say anything as I waited for her to find her own words. She leaned over, resting her head against my bare shoulder. Her skin was cold, but there was warmth in that gesture that reached me in ways the sun could never touch. "Are you all so giving?" she asked, trying again from the start. "Each in our own way," I suggested. "We were engineered for servitude but born into freedom, thanks to you. None of us have adjusted to that internal conflict in quite the same way, but I encourage the desire to connect over the urge to isolate. I choose hope over despair. Reconciliation over vengeance." "Even for the plutocrats?" she pressed. I shrugged. My feelings on that subject were more complicated than I cared to delve into. I still had secret dreams about hitching a ride on a starship and hunting down every last fucker who'd thought it was a good idea to engineer sex mules for profit, but knowing that wouldn't do Blast any good. "I doubt they'll ever come to the table, so it doesn't much matter," I said. "I'm glad to be alive, so I guess on some level I'm happy that they made me, even if I regret the circumstances of my creation." Temperance waved up at the two of us, flashing a quick thumbs-up. She'd finally gotten through to Forward Base and help was on its way. I wondered out loud if there were any spare coveralls in the emergency stores. The ensign stood and extended her hand, offering to help me to my feet. "Let's see what we can find," she said. "I'm sure we can figure something out."