“Make yourself scarce, but available. I need to make a good, strong impression. You know her, but we can’t be too careful. Take a table around a blind corner from us. Somewhere she won’t see you, but you’ll hear me if I need you,” said Dawn. Miller smirked at the resourceful arrangement.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Onion rings?”
“Right here,” Kennedy slammed her hand to the table a second faster than Dawn. They shared a laugh over mutual eagerness. Then they shared a bite of crispy, bitter goodness. “Dawn Redding. Newly appointed Captain of the Arcadia,” Kennedy smirked, “Tell me how you managed that. I was sure we were going to have to wheel Miller’s whiskey-soaked corpse from that Captain’s chair.”
“I stood in for him for a while, when he was down from an injury. I suppose my performance speaks for itself. Here I am, Captain,” Dawn reflected the confidence of her smile.
“An injury severe enough to take Miller out? Now that’s a story I’d love to hear,” said Kennedy. She leaned forward to pluck another onion ring. Her stretch to scoop it through some barbecue mayonnaise gave Dawn the slightest peak at the gap between Kennedy’s pinned-tight cleavage. Alluring as it all was, Dawn knew she couldn’t give specifics on the incident. At that moment, she imagined Marcus breathing on the back of her neck.
“I wish it was a better story. Someone swung a crane too low during a delivery,” Dawn told her. “What about you? Got any better stories from working with the old man in the outerworlds?”
“Do I? What do you want to know? Drunken joyrides in Saturn’s rings or WCC-condoned-bar fights?” Dawn sputtered the pull of bourbon she was in the middle of.
“He did not take the Arcadia into the rings,” Dawn laughed.
“Understand now, my surprise that he relinquished the throne?” winked Kennedy. Dawn leaned back to squint at her new friend, to read her for signs of trickery. All she found were exquisite curves. Dawn couldn’t help but wonder what the tips of them looked like. The thought of a certain, considerate ship poked into her mind, and helped her center herself again.
“Let it rip. I want to hear it,” Dawn invited. Before the story was through, both she and her partner had downed the rest of their bourbon. They laughed their way through tale after tale. The lights became hazier with each one. Kennedy’s eyes glowed a brighter hazel. Her breasts bulged out fuller. Her teeth sparkled every time she flashed them. Thoughts of Alice, who Dawn couldn’t see, drifted behind this prize of the eyes.
“Your gift!” Kennedy declared at the conclusion of a particularly juicy story about Chrysum dealing on Neptune. She plopped a black case on the table. “I’m not sure what insane errand the WCC has you on, but I know it’s something big. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be gathering unauthorized weapons on the side… I’ve got something for you that you won’t find in any catalog.”
“What… is it?” Dawn managed, through the fog of alcohol.
“I can’t exactly show you in here. Prying eyes and all, we’d never make it out. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the inside of the Arcadia anyway. Why don’t you give me a little tour of the place, and I’ll give you my gift?”
“What… is this?” Dawn marveled over the open black case. Their tour of the Arcadia had concluded in her cabin, where Kennedy saw fit at last to present the mysterious gift. Inside was a blade in a velvet mold. It stretched four feet in length. Its hilt was a dark, glossy wood. Its blade was perfect onyx.
“A Chrysum sword,” Kennedy hummed.
“I’ve never heard of one,” Dawn told her. Her fingers wandered to the blade. She slid them down the chilled edge.
“You wouldn’t have. It’s purely conceptual in most circles. A sword made from the same mineral that bonds to Chrysum in nature. It’s edge channels cold fusion energy. It’s capable of cutting most materials. If the research about Chrysum being in Dragons’ blood is to be believed… it’d do a number on them to be cut with this,” Kennedy explained.
“Where… did you get this?” Dawn marveled. Kennedy only grinned. She slid a step closer to Dawn. Kennedy’s shoulder grazed the inside of her arm. The warmth of their bodies became magnetic poles, pulling them together.
“That hardly matters. What matters is where it ended up. In the hands of the only Dragon slayer of the Milky Way,” whispered Kennedy. She leaned in before Dawn had a chance to access her better sense. Kennedy’s lips infiltrated
the space between hers. Wet warmth spread up into her cheeks, into her lightheaded brain.
“I… we…” Dawn drew back to mutter. Each feeble word grazed her lips against Kennedy’s. She remembered the ship around them. The mind circulating its walls. Alice’s light was entirely absent. Instead, the neutral silver luminance in the ceiling revealed the desire in both Dawn and Kennedy. The gloss of sweat on their foreheads. The bulge of nipples through shirts. What Dawn didn’t know was that Alice had seen, and decided. She had decided that human connection was what Dawn needed more than anything. Something Alice could never give her.
“Come on, Dawn. You’re going to the edge of who-knows-where to fight Dragons. Take this chance,” Kennedy pressed into her again. Her tongue slid in alongside Dawn’s. “While you have it.”
Shirts flung to the wayside. Pants slid down for warm legs to cross between one another. Breasts bounced free as backs arched. The ridge of Dawn’s cheeks found her desk. That gave Kennedy more purchase to push against her. She rocked Dawn backwards with pulses that threatened to push her over the precipice.
Dawn’s fingernails dug into her desk to hold her up. She leaned back to savor every sensation. The slightest glaze of sweat on Kennedy’s skin. The way her breasts bunched together between her muscular arms. Her gorgeous eyes, smiling at Dawn’s pleasure. Dawn opened her legs wider, to give into it completely. She let herself be vulnerable. Kennedy’s hand climbed up over her chest, gentle at first. She pricked Dawn’s tense nipple with her thumb until she moaned through a smile.
But Kennedy hadn’t been with a human woman in years. It was all too fast. Her hands wandered further, one for Dawn’s vulva, one for her neck. Her fingers parted Dawn’s warm flesh. She grasped Dawn’s neck. Dawn was right on the fence of screaming out in ecstasy when Kennedy tightened on her throat. It was supposed to enhance things, she’d heard from her more open-minded friends. By the time Dawn measured if she liked it or not, Kennedy’s hold on her was too tight. She couldn’t have known how intense this was for ‘Kennedy’, who hadn’t enjoyed the touch of another for sixty years. Dawn’s hands flopped weakly on the desk. Her legs loosened. Her eyes fluttered with light.
“Dawn!” Alice’s crimson roar flooded the room. A single bolt of Chrysum leaped from the wall into Kennedy’s side. She stumbled off while Dawn gasped back to life. Her first fully conscious instinct was to reach for the Chrysum-blade. Dawn’s hands grasped only emptiness. The sword dissolved into a black mist around her tingling fingers.
“What the…” Dawn wheezed. She traced the swirling cloud all the way to its master, Kennedy. This time, when her and Dawn’s eyes met, two of them blazed gemstone yellow. “Dro... gan?” A hint of remorse flitted through those yellow eyes just before their host burst into a body-shaped blur of color. It reformed in a shape of black scaly armor. The mist that had been a sword seconds ago trickled up Drogan’s talons and took the form of his gauntlet. He crashed through the doorway without another word. Dawn stumbled after him. She stopped in the doorway at the chill on her bareness.
“Dawn, stay away from him. You’re no match in these close quarters. Leave it to me,” Alice’s voice hummed through the room.
“Alice… I’m so sorry,” Dawn heaved, while she gathered her shed clothes. Alice answered by popping fusion turrets from every wall inside the Arcadia. She unleashed burning silver hell on the beast in every hall he charged through. Drogan folded his wings around him for cover. He fired back with his DA-Vos gauntlet whenever he could. At any opportunity, he extended its shape as a jet-black blade to cleave the turrets free. Drogan took the kick of several bolts before he made it to the deck. It left a bright stain across his armor. The beast’s wings unfolded to launch him to the Martian sky.