7 comments/ 1166 views/ 1 favorites F6: Sing a Dirge in Heaven By: MSTarot This story is a submission to the sixth Friendly Anonymous Writing Challenge (FAWC) and a tribute to the founder of FAWC, slyc_willie, who we lost unexpectedly in October 2015. The true author of this story is kept anonymous until the end of the competition. Authors base their story on a list of four items. Their choices included the following letters: S L Y C. Each item was used in the story. There are no prizes given in this challenge; this is simply a friendly competition. The list for this story includes: yodeler, yarn, yacht, yearn * * * * “I don’t know about you, Yodeler, but I’m in the mood for a good nun raping.” Looking up from the cooling weld bead that I had been trying to push along before I was interrupted, I flipped back my hood and looked at the approaching cargo shuttle. The great silvery-white and flat-black ship was catching the light of the unfiltered sun. It then bent it into a huge drive plume rainbow, making the whole craft blaze a blindingly bright prism spray of colors against the black background of space. The half-Hindi pilot, Sumer Si Kumen, was standing naked by the observation window making lewd rocking motions like he was having intercourse. With a tilt of my suit’s helmet, I watched this show for a second longer then keyed my mic. “Well, Sumer, given your past track record with women I guess it’s a good thing there are no nuns on this station, or you would probably be the one raped.” “Nah, I can take a nun on my worst day. They fight like girls. And then once I get her out that habit I’ll do such naughty things to her she’ll follow me around like a puppy till I get sick of her.” Not pausing his rocking, Sumer took hold of his cock and gave it a stroke. “Hey, Yodeler, is that girl still down in B-6, you know the one? Big tits, a fat ass and a bush like a forest fire. Loved to suck cock! You know her, what’s her name?” Watching the shuttle slide past me, I had to smile. Oh, I knew who he meant and fuck him if I was going to help that bastard get laid with the best piece of ass-for-hire, on the whole, damn station. I keyed the mic. “Sorry Sumer but your mother left a few weeks back. Jumped out an airlock and swam her suit after a departing troop ship.” “Come on, Ese, cut me some slack! It’s been so long since I got some good pussy I’ve about forgotten which arm it’s under.” Turning off my communicator, I ignored the shuttle suddenly disgusted with the whole conversation and with the half-Hindi pilot and his never-ending yearning for sex on this station. Changing tools, I igniting my cutting torch, pulsed the plasma stream to test it, and started back to work. I pointedly ignoring the red winking communication light, demanding that I respond, as I torched through the next stuck bolt that was holding this ancient piece of space trash together. With six more hours of salvaging recovered space junk to go before the end of my shift I was … I was … I glanced over my shoulder at the rainbow spectral rings around the engines of the shuttle. With a sigh, I keyed my mic. “Her name is Lindy. And she’s in level B-7.” “Thanks, Yodeler! Remind me I owe you one when I see you next.” “Yeah.” I shut the com back down, having no desire to talk to anyone. Not even myself. Leaning back into my work, I ignored the drops of tears that fell to my faceplate and froze against the super frigid clear visor. Even as I mentally cussed myself, in the total silence of my helmet, I pictured that bastard Sumer with Lindy and wanted to be sick. That space maggot didn’t deserve her! She might be a whore, she might open her thighs at the drop of a coin, but damn it Lindy was station … not Mars-born scum. She deserved to be treated better than a man like Sumer would ever treat her. He would pay his coin, take his lust out on her and then leave. “Wham, bam, and fuck you, ma’am. Here’s your fucking thirty pieces of silver, you slut.” I had to stop myself from spitting. Then sighed. “Put it away if you can’t do anything about it, Temp,” I muttered to myself and went back to work. By now my heart was no longer in this drudgery, this mindless day in day out scavenging of old burnt out satellites. I found myself daydreaming. My eyes drifted away from the micrometeorite pitted, radiation blackened, another now useless hunk of metal that once sent entertainment to millions. Overhead the sky was dominated by the half-dead orb that was once humanity’s cradle. Even as I watched, I could begin to see the massive, multiple-ringed crater that was the killer of ninety-nine percent of humanity. The Pale Horse. “Stupid name for a comet,” I mumbled. Feeling cotton-mouthed, I keyed my drink tube and then nearly choked as my com was overridden. “TEMPLAR DEVEREAUX, REPORT!” Cutting off the plasma torch, I swallowed the lukewarm, bland tasting water. “TEMPLAR DEVEREAUX, REPORT!” “Yeah, yeah. I’m here.” “WHY WAS YOUR COMUICATOR TURNED OFF?” With a deep sigh, I watched the hoof print of The Pale Horse now fully in view. Like a gravestone for humanity, it will stand for our stupidity long after the last of us are brittle bones on the moon, or in the Paradise station behind me. “TEMPLAR DEVEREAUX …” “I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just wanted to be left alone to do my work.” There was a cold silence from the station as several people were no doubt discussing me, why I was like I was, what the full ramifications of a “person like me” being allowed to live, work, and try to qualify for the right to breed offspring, on their precious station meant. Their station, like I didn’t build the damn thing. Like I wasn’t the one who now ran the huge radiation torches that sculpted it together from N.E.O asteroids and old satellites. Like I wasn’t the only damn one with the skills to keep the fucking place from falling apart now! Like I wasn’t ... “RODGER TEMPLAR, UNDERSTOOD.” I turned to look behind me as if I expected to see some change in the quarter-century old, metal and rock-foam station after a statement like that from them. Did they understand? What the fuck did that vague … Then my schedule menu chimed and I saw that I had a psych evaluation now added to the list of crap I had to do today. “Oh, that’s just fucking capital.” With my constant stream of foul language keeping my company and the slowly vanishing Hoof Print for my viewing pleasure, I went back to work with a maniac vigor. For the next six hours, I did the work of two men my age or maybe one man half my age. * * * * When the helmet was removed from the docking collar that hooked it to my suit, I reached up and pulled the itchy, but wonderfully warm yarn stocking cap from my head and gratefully gave my scalp a scratch. I loved and hated that damn cap. A gift from one of the poor ladies in the Downside, it helped to keep my head and, more to the point, my ears warm in the fridge cold of a ten-hour workday spacewalk. But fuck it itched! And of course with the helmet on I could not scratch that itch. “Hey, Yodeler!” Speaking of itches, I can’t scratch. Looking around, I saw Sumer Si Kumen–shuttle pilot, lecherous, and general pain in my posterior–walk into the desuiting room with a big shit eating grin on his face. I’ll give him props, he did at least start to help the tech with getting me the hell out of the suit. Now if he would have just shut his yap for the half-cycle it takes to get the damn suit off. Nope, he immediately began to brag. About sex of course. A tenth of a cycle in and I honestly had begun to considered dislocation a shoulder just to let me slip out of the damn space suit quicker. Anything to get away from his bragging about how good Lindy had treated him, and how little it had cost. And about how Lindy had begged him to stay and pleasure her more, with his massive throbbing member, all the night cycles. By the time he had reached the point where he was describing her mouth on his cock I was only seconds away from igniting my plasma torch, inside this pressurized room–as good a way of violently committing suicide as any devised–and at least having the pleasure of seeing his face catch fire before my eyeballs melted. The suit tech took it from my hand, sensing I think the desire growing in me, or maybe he was getting close to the same point himself and wanted the torch. “So, when are you coming to the moon?” He gave me a grin. “I can put you onto some prime pussy when you get there.” “I’m not.” “What? Ese, this place is falling apart, you’ve got to come to Luna.” His tone held a level of contempt that men in the past had died for using. “You’ve got to.” “No, I don’t. I like it here well enough. Day to day crap notwithstanding. Now, I’ve got a psych evaluation I have to go take.” Stepping out of the EVA suit’s legs, I nodded my thanks to the tech and headed for the door. Anything to get away from this fool. “I’ll see you before you leave.” “Sure, Yodeler. See you then.” “Not if I see you first.” I thought to myself as I made my way down the long connecting corridors that led into the main station. Soon I was passing others, Paradise Station people. Some nodded their heads at me polite. Others, not so much. Some of them looked at me like I was scum they had stepped in but couldn’t get off of their shoe. Those I simply stared back at like they were made of glass. There was nothing else I could do, not yet anyway. They were the Cinquedea. They held the power here on Paradise. And they held it as if it had been given to them by divine right. Sons and daughters of the very scientists that had destroyed humanity, they now lorded their heritage over the last remnants of that dead race. Living as if they were beyond touch, since it was going to take their parent’s scientific knowledge to help humanity survive their fuck up. Walking past more and more of the glass people, the deeper into the heart of Paradise I walked, I let my eyes rest instead on the workers. The ones on their knees scrubbing the polished deck plates, cleaning already spotless bulkheads. Doing mindless spiff work, while the station was falling apart for lack of help and available hands to keep it together. A few of these people looked at me in a different way, but then not even all of them. Some of them looked at me with that same contempt. As if their shit didn’t stink as bad as mine, in some way only they could understand. The waiting room was empty for once, not that that mattered. I still had to sit and count the wall rivets for a half-cycle. There was an unwritten policy here on the station that anyone, not Cinquedea was required to wait for everything. And the Cinquedea wait for nothing. Of course. As I sat and listened to the minute creaks and groans of the station, that only my ears were probably attuned to hear, I found myself thinking of Lindy. Not of her with Sumer, but just of her. Her smile was what always came to mind first. How she could wear such a delighted smile, given where we were and what our most likely fate was, I’ll never know. And that very lack of knowledge was attractive to me. My not knowing what made her smile added a mysterious beauty to an already beautiful woman. Possibly one of the last of the red heads, she was very popular with the station workers, men like myself too tired to do more than enjoy a moment and join her in a smile as the best tip we could give. During one visit with her, while we rested between slaking my lust, she told me that even the Cinquedea would come to her. Slumming, with a common whore from Downside, was apparently in vogue with the young fools. That and trying to pick fights where their opponent would be banished to the muddy Luna surface to scratch out a living, competing for crop space with the thousands of refugees pouring in from the abandoned Mars colonies. I knew better than to be doing this. Sitting here mulling over the common concern of everyone, while waiting to take a psych, was like asking for deportation. The Cinquedea’s parents, the fuckers that killed humanity with their stupidity, didn’t tolerate any sort of mental, or physical, aberration in the lockstep society they were trying to build here on Paradise station. I was already betting on my getting the boot every day just due to my birth race. Like in all the nations of lost Earth throughout all of history, the Roma, were not welcome here either. Gypsy-blooded was considered the worst insult you could give to anyone here. And my coal black hair, among this sea of blond and light brown, was as clear a sign as could be given. I was Traveler stock. The door opened and, getting to my feet, I tried to empty my mind of anything negative. Positive thought patterns. Must have positive thought patterns, to pass. The scan takes only minutes. The wait for the result is equally short but feels like every second is hours long. I get to stay for another day. One more day in Paradise for Templar Devereaux. The welder, station builder, repairman, miracle worker … gypsy born scum keeping all these fuckers alive. One more day to walk among humans on metal deck plates, and not mucking in the iron-heavy soil of the terraformed moon. One more day. I headed for Downside. The only home I had left. * * * * There was a smell to Downside. Not quite a stench but not a pleasant smell either. I’d tried for half a decade to track down just where that particular odor was coming from, but to no avail. The speculation was that it was some fault in the station waste processors or the water purifier system was getting a form of oxidation in some pipe that was unreachable. Or maybe … It’s that endless list of “or maybes” and hunting through that’s kept me busy on the off hours of my day, for years. Everyone needs a hobby after all, and chasing odd smells is not as unusual as some. It’s even productive. I’ve managed to learn more about this station than I had ever known, and hell I helped build this place. Back when I was a young man, hell a kid really. In my first years up out the gravity well, I had drifted from building project to building project. Working every odd job, there was; a gypsy in lifestyle as well as ancestry. I worked to keep the old comet “catchers” up and running, not an easy task since the youngest of them was three centuries old. Then I would be on one of the equally ancient comet “smashers” for months, drifting over the thick stormy gray atmosphere of Earth’s moon. Frozen and then cooked, work cycle, after work cycle. Then, while still young, I had the odd bit of luck fall my way and I got conscripted to work on the new Paradise Station project. A place meant to be the Midpoint in the three day trip between Earth orbit and the newly terraformed Luna. The main orientating center, for rich colonists escaping the overcrowding in the cities sprawls of Earth. It had been better than half-finished when the Pale Horse Comet began a boringly routine approach. Guided by, and slowed by, gravity tractors all the way from the shadowed depths of the frozen outer solar system; it had been in motion towards the Earth’s moon for a century. Following a pathway blazed by hundreds of its icy kin, it had approached the Moon; approached its predestined death at the grinding “hands” of those “smashers” in orbit around Luna. But then that soul-sucking-bastard Murphy finally showed up to weigh in his opinion of the Luna terraforming project. First one “catcher” wasn’t in position, and then another failed to respond. Then frantic warnings began going out, sending panicked messages around to every possible person in charge. The Pale Horse grazed past the Luna atmosphere, brushing the misty remnants of its dead kin in sad morning perhaps before it sought its vengeance on their killers. A gravity-assisted whip from the moon accelerated it to the point it easily pulled out the grasp of the last “catcher” in its path. Walking through Downside, I played over in my mind that moment, when everyone knew … not guessed but knew, that humanities days on Earth were numbered in scant hours. The mindless, helplessness that had fallen over everyone in orbit that day. That mad scramble by everyone from the near-orbit stations, to midpoint stations like this, and even to the half-build Luna colony, had tried, frantically try to figure out some way to stop inevitability. Then there was the Failed Sacrifice. That’s what they called it, once word of what happened finally made its way around the survivors of humanity. Using some rich playboy’s pleasure yacht, Gabriel Queen–the person most hold responsible–had tried to turn the comet into a less destructive “window” perhaps enough to make it break upon its approach. That was what they said he had tried to do when he landed the yacht on the comet surface, grappled it down and pushed the engines till they redline, then beyond that till the last of the fuel was gone. Then Queen rode the comet into the Earth’s atmosphere and died screaming into his mic that he was sorry, and begging for humanity to forgive him. “Behold a Pale Horse, and the man who sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him,” I muttered unthinking. Then I quickly looked around to see if any had heard. That quote was now punishable by exile, since the Martyr Queens elevation to sainthood by his fellow world killing scientists. Hell, he was all but worshiped by the Cinqueda, the whole butt kissing lot of them. Walking through the familiar stench of Downside, nodding to the familiar faces, the ones that smiled, and even sometimes to the ones that didn’t. Here it was not like it was up above. Here people didn’t look at you like you were garbage just because your hair was blacker than space. No, here they had to have a reason to hate you. That I had worked on the “catchers” was enough for a few. Every tragedy has to have a scapegoat and Gabriel Queen was nothing but ashes among the ashes. I took their dislike, their hate and walked past not giving a sign that it hurt like it did. These people were alive because of me and others like me. We, the workers, had in those frantic days, when suicide rates were higher than sixty percent, had grabbed humanity by the collective ass and got it working to survive again. Hundreds of us had died in those first weeks. Ninety to a hundred work cycles, out in the cold vacuum, living on stims and little else, working till bodies broke and minds shattered under stresses never before endured, we had gotten this half-built station habitable. Then we expanded it, as gravity tugs had begun to round up the broken remnants of the near earth stations. Most of the thousands of satellites that swarmed around Earth had been destroyed in the impacts of smaller comet training debris, but some parts of them had been salvageable. We, the workers, had begun the task of fusing those broken bits to this station, expanding it. Huge hydroponic growing habitats were needed to provide humanity’s lost bastards with food. Clean water and processed air also came from those habitats. There had even been hope. A little. For a few weeks signals had still come up from the Earth, humanities last death screams, some panicked, some calm simply giving details that burned images into nightmares for us, the survivors. Cities aflame, with human fat, skin, and bone as the fuel, slow cooking till the blackened smoke choked out the oxygen and left cold ashes. Ashes buried under snow. Winter cold descended, under those never ending clouds. Frozen people began then begging for help from people struggling to live themselves. Then the voices began to fall silent. Now, it had been decades since the last human voice was heard from Earth. It was believed that all of humanity that survived were either living an animal existence—little different from our cave dwelling ancestors–or they were here. F6: Sing a Dirge in Heaven In Paradise. The three century old Luna terraforming project, the brainchild of the Queen family, was the lifeboat. The Colonists from Mars, without any of the vital resupplies from Earth ever coming again, had been forced to abandoned their hard centuries of work and flee back here. There were more than bitter words about that. Dozens had been murdered. Scientists, men, and women that had tried to help the Luna colonies get established, by being on the ground. Trying, with the own sweat and blood, to help correct what they had caused. Well, their blood probably made poor fertilizer in the already too iron rich Luna soil. My cubical didn’t have a door, simply a curtain of saved plasma welder beads. Not many do down here in Downside even have that much. Walking through my door, I did a quick visual check but like always nothing was missing. There may be a few down here that hate me and the ground I walk on, but they wouldn’t steal from me. They might murder me in my sleep, sure … but taking something was a terrible social no-no. Akin to farting in church. Dropping the sweat soaked yarn cap next to my sink, so I can wash it before my next work cycle, I grabbed a protein bar and vita-a-juice packet, I collapsed onto my pallet of salvaged shipping foam gratefully. The cold of space was still in every bone, soaked into the marrow by the long hours working. My body ached from pushing against the pressure of my suit to move normally. Bone deep, muscle deep aches that never really went away. They simply compounded day to day, month to month, year to year into a poisonous fatigue that drained me of all life. And what the hell was I living for anyway? I knew, without a doubt knew, that I would never be chosen to be one of the breeding stock suppliers need to keep the human gene pool viability pure, but variable. Beyond the scientist that were, of course already preselected, the lower class people had to prove themselves worthy to be allowed to breed. Resources were scarce and not every bloodline was needed or desired. Some were being encouraged to die out. Like those of Roma decent. And who was there to tell these people in charge they couldn’t do that? No one. The governments of the Earth were gone. Mars’ colonial government was not being recognized. And the various stations leaders, scattered between dead Earth and muddy-swampy Luna, were simply doing as they wished to do. And there were none to tell them differently. There were many versions of the Cinquedea developing on other stations, or at least that was what he had heard from Sumer, one night when the pilot was drunk enough to forget his normal decorum and risk his ability to return here by speaking bad of the … Sipping my drink, I knew the words I wanted to use. They were on the lips of more and more people of late. Too many scared lips, whispering words that had been dead for centuries. Nobility. Royalty. Leadership caste. Dominus. Frightened people who were looking desperately for someone, anyone, to save them and were willing to put up with anything, no matter what, so long as they lived. The thought being, it will be far better to live on your knees than to die trying to breathe vacuum. “Not me,” I whispered softly, no caring about rumors of listening devices in the personal quarters. “Better the last cold breath sucked from frozen lungs.” Shaking off the dark mood, I pondered what to do this night. Go chase down a phantom smell through endless miles of service ducts, and water supply pipes? Maybe give into my curiosity and invite Sumer Si Kumen, from drinks, to see if I could get him smashed enough to maybe learn some more of what was going on at the other stations. Such passing of knowledge was discouraged in extreme fashions. Loss of station privileges was light compared to some of the rumors making the rounds of Downside. People who asked too many questions had a tendency to vanish. Not an easy trick in an enclosed, vacuum surrounded, space station. As the hunger aches dropped to manageable levels, other hungers began to make themselves known. Those images of Sumer with Lindy had been far too detailed. “Why not?” It’s been forever since I decided to scratch the eternally reoccurring itch and get a bit of sexual relief. Hadn’t I earned it? Didn’t I keep the very air in this metal balloon? Were these people, from arrogant Cinquedea to their Dominus scientist parents all the way down to the poorest beggar starving in the back corridors, not beholden to me? Should I not seek out pleasure for pleasure sake, enough others did. Hiding their fears between the thighs of whatever made them sweaty. “Why the hell not?” Using some of my water rations in an act of vanity, I cleaned myself up head to toe. I wanted to be clean for Lindy. That stopped me. Why did I want to go to her? There were plenty of others on the station that peddled their charms for extra ration cards, the general form of payment used on Paradise station. Grabbing more cards than I thought I could ever use, just in case she wanted more, I headed out and towards the part of the station that had been set aside for … entertainment. Level B-7. Knowing I would be following Sumer I quavered a bit more on choice but in the end I decided Lindy was still the best. Besides, the chances of sex with a redhead were dwindling fast. Their days were numbered, the ones choosing the pure breeding stock didn’t care for the color. Like black hair, it was being culled. Lindy has a doorway, but not a door ... or even a curtain like I have. I really must make one for her. True she and body-privacy parted ways a long time ago but still everyone deserves the comfort of a covering of some kind on the way into their home. “Hey, beautiful. Busy?” I did pause at the door and not walk in like her home was just a common corridor. For a half second, I saw a tired resigned look pass over her face but then she was smiling and her normal flirty looking eyes captured mine and she winked. “Never too busy for you, handsome.” She stood up and her hand went to the knot holding the simple wrap on that was covering her plush body. “Come on in.” Moving forward I placed my hand atop hers before she could get the knot undone. “Not yet. Here, for you.” She looked at the small, thin, decorative cloth wrapped box I was holding out to her. A delighted smile took years of resigned worry and drudgery from her face. “A present? Why, Templar Devereaux you naughty man, you didn’t have to do that.” “I know.” “Or are you wanting something especially kinky and think you need to bribe me with gifts?” her teasing tone and that smile told me she was joking as she unwrapped the thin scarf, it in itself a part of the gift. There would never be another roll of gift wrap made. Never another Christmas morning of shredded paper and discarded bows. There were so many now. So many never-going-to-be-done-again things. Too many. Far, far too many. Her delight at the box of ribbon scraps was beautiful to see and painful for its very delight. That a box filled with the discarded scraps–which I had pulled out of a derelict station–someone in the past had no doubt risked a lot to get those spools of ribbon up out the Earth’s gravity well. Had enjoyed their secretive hobby and had in some, no doubt fun way, used up the spools of ribbon. Leaving these scraps behind. Now they were more precious that gold. Harder to come by that jewels, and in a few years would be worth even more. Puzzlement began to show. “Why? Why give these to me?” I stood trying to figure out how to answer that then swallowed. “You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a girlfriend.” I smiled at her suddenly wide eyes. “I come see you, we talk, and then we have sex and say goodbye till the next time.” I shrugged. “As close as I’ve ever gotten, or figure I will. Besides I figured you needed something nice. All pretty ladies need something nice.” For a moment I thought she was going to cry, but then she smirked. “Why Templar, if I didn’t know better I would think you were trying to seduce me. You know my goods are bought not given. I’m not rent to own.” I tossed the normal number of food ration cards on the table next to me. Now it was my hands undoing the knot hiding her body from me. “I know.” When her heavy breasts appeared with puffy, cone-shaped nipples as silky and pink look as any ribbon in the box I learned my head in and let my lips brush them in a soft kiss for each. “Ever the gentleman, Templar. Except for those times when you don’t want to be gentle. Which is it this cycle?” She asked cupping my head, holding my mouth to her breasts. As I licked, sucked and nibbled those soft cones till they hardened, I thought about that. What mood was I in? This day was in no grand way different from any other. Even the arrival of the shuttle was no uncommon thing. Stations were being consolidated, the shuttle had fewer posts to travel to. It came by more often. “Temp?” “I don’t know, really.” I shrugged and went back to enjoying the delicate appetizers that her nipples offered. She laughed softly, cradling my head. “You just want to get laid.” I looked up at her eyes framed by that fiery hair. “I want a memory. A good one. I have too many bad ones already.” Lindy’s face froze, then she gave a small nod. She understood. She has as many bad ones herself. She took my hand. “Come on. Let make one.” I let her lead me to the curtained-off corner where her bed was, not that I needed a guide I had been in it before. Enough times to know it by smell. Her smell, body perfumes and sweat. Male smells, from harsh to eye watering. Sex smells, a completely different type of body odor that, the musky scent of the rut. Running my hand across her plump hip, I began to fashion a new theory of where the unidentified stench of the Downside was coming from. Humans. In all our myriad odors. Then she and I were in that smelly bed and such abstract thought passed, to wherever distracted thoughts go when they are not being thought about. There was simply no more time for them. Lindy normally will work her profession with a sure hand, and sure touches here and skilled caress there, but no greater emotional investment from her than dancing with her would have given. Tonight maybe because of the gift or maybe, like myself, she had the need to make a good memory so she put more into it. Tasting her lips, then her neck my mouth traveled to that warm valley between her breasts as she guided me above her, positioning my body to her satisfaction. Lindy bit the corner of her bottom lip as her legs open wide and wrapped my hips. Then she took on such a naughty smile as her hand went between us and caught hold of my cock. She held me in place and nodded, then guided me into her. When I was comfortably inside her fiery-hedged pussy Lindy pulled me closer and held me tight. “Just rest. I know you’ve had a long day, I’ll do the work.” With her hands caressing my back, I felt her roll her hips, a soft thrust upwards that moved my cock into and out of her barely an inch but felt better than anything I had ever thought possible. Then I felt her belly ripple under me, rolling from bellow her breasts and popping her body up to meet me with a sharp smack, then it was that soft rippling motion again. I wanted to never move, to let this woman simply hold me here in her arms, to feel taken care of, body and soul, till the last bit of air escaped the station. I wanted her, I wanted this. I want … As I looked into her eyes and she smiled back I realized a very important thing about myself. To survive isn’t enough if the wants are not ever going to be taken care of. Then I saw the edge I had been walking on, a precipice so deep that it fell away forever and ever, and I was dancing along it like I had no care in the world. She hissed when I gave her a hard thrust and nodded. “Yes. Now. Take what you need, it’s there for you.” She caught the back of my head and pulled my face down to her chest, holding me like a child needing comforting. And was I any less than that for all my sexual needs? Harder and harder I let my body push, driving my cock into her. Sitting back, I placed myself on my knees between her legs, lifted her legs higher and with pops of my hips drove the whole length of my cock into and out of her. Lindy cupped her breasts, pinching those pink nipples. She was panting, watching me fucking her with a naughty smile growing. She could see me already fighting my bodies need to cum. I wanted this moment to last forever and my will would have done that very thing. But the body? The body wanted satiation. It wanted resolution, a hard pulsing ending that would leave it to shatter. Every stroke showing me it had wants too and didn’t care in the least about what I might want. Lindy hooked a foot behind my back and made me drive into her harder. “I know you like it rough, Templar. Let it out.” Then I was down on her, holding her hands flat to the bed, she wiggled and writhed under me as I pinned her flat, fucking her with a growing need that was not going to be denied. I winced when she sank her teeth into my skin, then I bit her back simply because I wished to, and she moaned. I was now ramming her body with all had, trying to make one of us break, not caring in my lust if it was I or her that shattered. She struggled to get free of my hands, but I held her tighter making her know that for once I was the one in charge. The as every breath began to be a struggle I felt her quiver under me in a way I had not felt from her before. She used strength I would not have thought she had and slipped a hand free. Her fingers tangled in my hand and she pulled my mouth to hers. The kiss was brutal! An affair of smashed lips and teeth; our mad tongues at war with each other for dominance. “Please, Templar … please …” What exactly she was begging me for I didn’t know but I was willing to give my last breath to make it happen. And more and more that seemed to be just what it was going to take. My very last breath. Holding my body ridged, I gritted my teeth at her clawing nails on my back, a pain that was a pleasure. It was also the key for the locked door I didn’t want to open and yet yearned for with all my being. With a feeling both ecstatic and draining I felt my orgasm begin. Then, with mad thrust after thrust, I tried to rid myself of the feeling of gripping fullness. And then that deep aches when I had no more to give but wanted more to come out. “Yes!” she moaned by my ear. “Just like that.” “Would you fucking look at this shit!” I looked over my naked, scratched bloody shoulder at the sudden voice that started me terribly. There was a young man standing at the edge of the partition curtain, with others behind him. They were also watching. I knew by their clothes that these were Cinquedea. The sons of the scientist come down here to Downside to slum among us lower class. The speaker looked particularly important. “Would you fucking look at this shit!” he repeated. “This gypsy fuck scum has just ruined my fun. Hey, whore didn’t I tell you I would be back to see you one day? Did you not get it when I told you that? Your cunt is mine now, who the fuck do you think you are to be still peddling it out to bastards like this fucker? Huh?” Trying to catch my breath, I moved from on top of Lindy, placing myself between her and this young scion. For a half-second surprise flashed across his face, then contempt replaced it. “Get the fuck out my way, gypsy scum. I’m going to take a pound of flesh out that whore’s ass for letting you wreck her pussy before I got here.” He moved his hand to his crotch, shifting an already hard cock. Watching Lindy and I must have turned him on. “No.” I’m not sure who was the more surprised at that moment him, me or Lindy. Or possibly his friends. They gasped and began to whisper among themselves. Then laugh. I think that made their leader here do what he might not normally have done, simply to save face. He snarled and stepped up and tried to shove me over backward onto Lindy’s sweat and sex-soaked bed. I didn’t budge. Far bigger and tougher men than this young punk have shoved me. I simply looked at his surprised face. No more than that, but no less than that either. A simple look from the eyes of one man into the eyes of another. There were words in that exchange of gazes. He and I stood there, testing the will of the other the way the samurai of old were said to have done. He knew that I was, by station law and with banishment awaiting me, not allowed to touch him. I could also see that he was afraid. He was afraid that I was a person that didn’t care about that. Still, he was an arrogant as hell little bit of Cinquedea scum. He had been born with privileges in a place where people were at the point of eating each other to fill empty bellies. From his earliest memories, he had been told that the Paradise Station was his playground and that the people in it were going to be his toys. Break them if he felt like it and don’t worry, they’re not that important. To him, that’s what I was. Unimportant. This little wormy maggot didn’t know or care that he owned his life to my skills at keeping his home from crumpling like a crushed beer can. Again he tried to shove me and again I didn’t budge. I had to fight to keep my hands at my side. I wanted things then. Dark things. Things that many on this station wanted. To kick the ever living shit out of one of these young arrogant assholes. To feel my knuckles hurting and to see his blood on the floor. I wanted that so bad … “Do you not know who I am, you scum!” He looked back over at his friends. “This gypsy slime is too stupid to even know when he stands before his betters. He thinks himself equal to us.” I didn’t look away from him, but I saw the sudden anger flash on those other young men’s faces. “Templar, just leave. I’ll be fine. Just go.” Lindy’s voice behind me was a quavering plea for sanity, in a place where sanity was lost. And had been lost. As I looked at the growing madness in the Cinquedea’s eye I knew that no one was going to be looking for sanity anytime soon either. Then his equally over-privileged-born friends moved forward into the room, that was really too small for this many people. Most men would have backed up, when naked and being pressed by unequal odds, but I knew there was no room behind me. There was nowhere to go. I was on the precipice I had seen in an orgasmic vision earlier. Then they were upon me. With a rain of fists coming in at me, hands grabbing, pulling and by sheer numbers doing what he alone could not, moving me backward. The back of my legs crashed into Lindy’s bed, and then I was flat on my back trying to avoid the pummeling hands. I rolled away from their fists and crashed to the floor. But then it was boot tips in my ribs and stomping heels in my kidneys. “End him!” screamed the youth in charge. When their knives appeared that was when my hands came up to defend myself. Banishment was no longer my greatest fear. These bastards wanted my life! Well, so many things have tried to kill me since I first left the gravity well, that five youths with knives were not even that terrifying. Dangerous certain, deadly yes, but terrifying … no. With grunts, rage screams and all my considerable strength I now tried to fight my way clear. Swinging my fists to punish, gouging at faces when I could, fighting in nasty, dirty ways I had learned in bars across the years. If there had been more room for me to work or maybe one less of them to fight I would have gotten clear and either escaped or gotten a better chance … but The knife hit me in the lower back. A thick wide blade that tore into my flesh! Pain like fire, as if the knife was still hot from its time in the forge, took my breath. Then a second one hit. Or perhaps it was the first one a second time, not that it matter to me at that time. F6: Sing a Dirge in Heaven And mine was not the only scream. The shriek of pain from Lindy hurt me as much as the blades that now descended on me from all sides. Too busy being killed to do more than scream I did see one of them stabbing her. In a world of pain, my mind fled to odd mindless places. Why did they want to hurt her? Had she attacked one of them in my defense? Why would she do that? I fell to the floor, my face in a pile of bloody lace scraps. A boot tip in my ribs turned me over. I looked up into the eyes of their leader. There were four lines of blood across his face where fingers had raked his skin to the bone. Near me, I hear Lindy weeping in pain. I groaned when the leader of the Cinquedea knelt and drove his knee into my gut. With a bloody smile, he placed his knife point just under my sternum. With malicious glee, he slowly drove the tip of it into me. With my mouth full of copper I screamed. He laughed at my pain. “Have you learned anything, gypsy? I want to know before you die that I taught you to respect your betters.” His smile was like what a child might make as it pulled wings off a bug. “Come on, gypsy you can find the air to speak at least once more. Tell me I taught you well.” My own hand was unrecognizable bloody as I reached up for his face. He pulled away not letting me touch him. Denied that I spit my blood at him, my last act of defiance, pitiful as it was. My last breath was a scream as he ripped his wide knife from my gut. “Well boys, looks like we have to find us a new whore.” He laughed, and as my vision darkened, I saw him kick Lindy. She made no sound. “This one was getting too old anyway. Come on.” “He’s not dead,” one of them said and gave my side a kick just for the fun of it. The Cinquedea leader looked down at me. “He’s dead. He just too stupid to know it. Hey, gypsy, you’re dead, we killed you, died already for fuck sake.” His hand went to his pants and, as I watched unable to move, he pulled his cock free and pissed on me. I never saw the stinking yellow flow stop. * * * * I awoke slowly, a fact that surprised me in and of itself. That I awoke meant that I was not dead and I had been dying last I checked. Then the pain hit me from so many places I had to acknowledge that I was alive. Being dead couldn’t hurt this much. “So you’re still with us, Yodeler.” My mistake, I was dead and in hell. Opening my eyes to see the face of Sumer Si Kumen hovering over me was enough to finish the job the Cinquedea had begun. “Don’t move. You’re held together with more good wishes than anything else. You were nearly gone when we got to you, and you died twice while we were patching you up.” He placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Lindy was already gone. Sorry, she was a good girl.” Somehow that knowledge hit me so hard. I have seen hundreds die. Helped remove almost uncountable bodies from personal quarters when despair sent people over the edge and they took their own lives. Lindy was gone. That wonderful sweet woman was gone and I had to acknowledge my own guilt in her death. If I had just walked out when the Cinquedea arrived she would be alive now. “Don’t do that.” Sumer’s voice was hard. Unyielding. “I can see in your face what’s going through your head, Yodeler. Don’t you try and take a moment of the blame for this shit storm. It’s been coming. Coming at us all, as unstoppable as Pale Horse, and we had no more chance of it not happening. You and Lindy were just the one it touched first.” His hand tightened on my shoulder. “Don’t. Now, try to get some rest. A lot of people want to talk to you.” * * * * And, in the weeks that followed a lot of people did indeed want to talk to me. But I didn’t care to talk to them. I hated them. They had kept me shackled to this world when this world had done its very best to kill me. And they hadn’t done it for my benefit. They wanted me. They wanted me to do what I had done for them for years, save them from the mistakes the scientist had caused. To keep their miserable live from being so miserable. To be some kind of hero or fucking martyr they could hold up to others as an example of how to stand up to the Cinquedea and their Dominus parents. Me? Who had been ruled by those people most of my life, then broken and discarded. As cuts healed to pink scars that itched, I was finally able to get up from that bed and see for my own eyes that I was hidden in plain sight. I was mere feet from where I had nearly died. Lindy’s home was still open to the world as it had been when she was there. Already people were dwelling there. My blood no doubt scrubbed away, her things looted for usable trinkets and the rest sold away. As my limping steps grew stronger more and more of these fools, these men who called themselves the Curmàn, cousins in their ancient language. They were simple men, proud men, tired men who had finally had enough and wanted to start some mad revolution. To take control of Paradise Station. To send the Cinquedea out the various airlock to suck hard vacuum and scream snowflakes. That part I could get behind. But the rest, was ridiculous. The Dominus were not in charge just for shits and giggles! It was only the knowledge in their minds that was keeping humanity alive. While I hated them as much as everyone else for what they had done, I had to acknowledge that they were struggling just as hard as all of us to keep extinction at the door. “Why do they call you, Yodeler?” Looking up from my musings, I saw a young girl standing by the door to my room looking at me. My eyes went to her braided hair and the bright, sew-together ribbon laced through it. That a gift to a friend should walk back within my sight once she was dead should not have surprised me. I live in this world where humanity is a speck clinging to a crumbling bit of metal. Trying to huddle on a rusted bit of Luna rock, and breathed air made from smashed comets, that had once shown so brightly in the night skies of our home. Our now destroyed home. Earth. The very scientist these Curmàn wanted to kill–to murder their Cinquedea children in vengeful madness–were going to be needed to help the Earth again support life. Generations from now, when the last fires have died and the impact lofted clouds have settled. Then, the knowledge these men would have passed down to their arrogant with their own importance sons would be so needed. No, this mad revolution could never happen. The little girl still wanted her answer. “I used to sing. When I was working in space I would sing, for hours often, to keep myself company. So I wouldn’t be bored.” I looked at her innocent face. “Those are pretty ribbons.” “My mom gave them to me.” The little girl looked around this my recovery room. “She said if I could get them clean they could be mine.” “They’re very pretty. Where is your mother?” Simply seeing those ribbons, my gift to a woman that had never gotten to enjoy what I had given to her, was as hard on me as the knives. Every bit as painful to my heart. “Working. She sent me away when the men came for her to make happy.” And a knife blade that was far sharper than all the ones to have pierced me hit home then. It went deep, so very deep. “Your mother makes men happy? In the house, you found those ribbon in?” How bitter is the bile that this world now excludes for us to swallow down and stomach. Lindy’s home had hardly been empty for weeks before another woman was there selling herself. Doing the same ancient trade of flesh for coin that Lindy had been driven to do. “Yes.” “And there are men there now?” I asked, choking down the need to spit. “Yes. She told me to go away. They might want me to make them happy too, and she said I’m too young to do that, yet.” “Yet?” “Yeah, mom says she’s going to have to teach me how to make men happy soon. That I will have to help her, there are so many men who are sad she can’t make them all happy by herself. I wish I was old enough, I want to help her.” She said it with such innocence, devoid of the knowledge of what she was going to have to be doing, for the rest of her young life. To her, it was as just the work her mother did, so it must be something she would want to do too. Then as I watched she pulled a thin trended yarn hat from her pocket and placed it on her head. The patterns were different, but it was so similar to mine that it had to have come from the same source, the same old woman. This little girl looked at me and felt the need to explain. “My head was cold. Would you sing for me? I’m bored; I wish those men would get happy already.” I looked at her and felt my heart break and crash like an ocean swell. “It’s been a long time since I sang, but … I’ll try. You won’t know the words, sorry.” I shrugged. “That’s okay.” Taking a breath, I decided to give it my best try. For her. “Duj,duj, duj, duj dešuduj,tečumi da, tečumi da parnomuj.O parnomuj čumi da dere kostar astarap,šajľage, šajľage astarap.” Without the echo of my suit helmet, my voice seemed strange to me, lacking the power it once had. But then it had been years, and the old words were strange even to my lips now. “Dva a dva a dvadsať krát,chcel ma milý, chcel ma milý pobozkaťna moje obe líčka, červené jak ružička,vymaľované od slniečka.” The little girl smiled and tried to follow the words. Her body swaying in an uncanny way that was close to the old dances I remember from my distant youth. I smiled back. Dva a dva a dvadsať krát,chcel ma milý, chcel ma milý zanechať, pobozkal ma na líčko a pošepkal tichúčko,ľúbim ťa ty moje srdiečko.” Corse laughter rang from outside, silencing me. Getting to my feet, painfully, I made my way to the door and looked out upon the face of the man that had tried to kill me and the others that had taken Lindy’s life. They were leaving Lindy’s old home, laughing. One ran out the door adjusting his clothes, complaining about the others rushing him. These Cinquedea youths walked past the opening to my room, ignorant of me hiding there in the shadows. I heard the joke pass between them about how much work it must have taken to get all that blood cleaned up so the new whore could get to work. Their laughter burned into every place where pink scars were only half healed. Again and again their blades had struck me, and now those laughing youths stabbed me again. They stabbed me to the heart and cut the lifeline that held me tethered to this station. “Are the men happy now?” she asked, coming to stand next to me. And cut away from that once vital lifeline, with my hand resting protectively on the itchy yarn covered head, I fell from Paradise. “Yeah, they are happy, but not for much longer.” * * * * The rebel warriors of the Curmàn who followed me into vicious, quick, and bloody battles in the unlighted back corridors often called me, Primo Templarii Rex. The Dominus Scientists of Paradise Station, upon whose Cinquedea children I visited such revenge, called me, The Butcher. And my subjects here in the green highlands of Montes Carpatus, next to the pungent waters of the Imbrium Sea, called me the First Warrior King of Luna. A title one of my many children would no doubt carry into the future. But on my deathbed, decades later, only a very few still knew to call me, Yodeler.