5 comments/ 11992 views/ 17 favorites Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 01 By: TaLtos6 ***My writing time is being taken up with real life at the moment, so this one's something to read from out of my uh, ... vault. Think of it as a Taltos 6 action comic. Most of this is from the memories of the protagonist, but there are parts which concern others and he wasn't necessarily aware of them at the time. 0_o *** ----------------------- The service bay was dark as he approached the door from the colony side of it and the door opened. There were two distinct and muted clicks from automated lighting contactors somewhere and a very few lights came on so that he didn't need anything portable to find his way with. The cold of the place hit him instantly as he cleared the doorway and the door shut behind him automatically. He pulled up the hood of the sweatshirt that he was wearing under his jacket. His communicator alert chimed in his ear and he reached into his pocket to pull it out as he walked. But it was only the alert from his craft that someone was near to it. The cams on the ship were active anyway and the computers were now sending him a feed to his phone, basically. He saw a rather tall man in silhouette walking along the side of a modified Morgaron strike/interdiction craft and stepping through a few clouds of steaming water vapor. He watched as the image came nearer in the view of the cam. Just a man in pants and boots wearing an old bomber style jacket with the collar up as well as a hood against the cold of the landing/service bay. As shitty as he felt, he had to crack just the slightest smile for the stupid irony of it. The system was doing what it was supposed to do -- send him proof that there was somebody near his unattended craft in the bay there. Ryan was looking at himself on his phone. Right there in the bay, the climate was a little bit of a tortured no-man's land. Behind him the place was a touch too warm for his taste, heated as it was by the geothermal heat distribution systems as they drew heat from the planet's core. Everywhere back there it was like that, as though the inhabitants and visitors passing through needed for it to be that way against the other extreme out there just beyond the fused stone walls. Outside, the wind and the cold could suck a man's life from him in minutes without the proper protective and heated clothing. The landing/service bays were somewhere in the middle; alternately blowing hot and cold in an attempt at some sort of balance. There was always water vapor blown around by the overhead heaters and the floor was always wet. When the outer doors opened to receive or send off a craft, the floors froze over in seconds and the water vapor became an icy fog for a while until the heaters could make a bit of headway once more. Nanworth Colony must surely be the asshole of the known universe, he thought. Well, as far as orbiting gas stations and trading posts went. Unbelievably cold and hostile to most lifeforms ... No, he thought, check that. Unbelievably cold and hostile to most life forms that he's have preferred to deal with on a daily basis or even get to know. The only survivable parts of it were inside. Outside on the surface, it was pure howling Hell -- if your idea of Hell featured permafrost around eighty feet thick on average. He'd just been identified by his ship's systems which lowered the narrow boarding ramp for him and he walked aboard, the door closing behind him. The craft, depending on facilities encountered, could stand on rather long, wheeled legs. He was almost halfway to the flight deck when it hit him. Shorty wasn't there. The young creature would normally now be in front of him, as happy and excited as a puppy -- well for a warm-blooded flying reptile-ish creature, anyway. He called a couple of times, but there was no answering squawk accompanied by the scratchy scrapings of talons against the floor grating. Ryan walked onto the flight deck and saw the blinking notification that there were messages for him. He sat down and slumped in the pilot's seat and watched the fog of his breath for a second. Reaching over, he configured the exhaust vents for one of the auxiliary power units and then he turned the fuel flow to the unit on and with things in that system's control quadrant showing him a green panel, he hit the starter and a hundred and seventy feet or so behind him a small turbine lit off and sat at idle as he watched the temperature digits in the display climb in blue until they turned green. He quickly made the small changes needed to both power the auxiliary electrical bus and more to the point, shift some of the turbine's bleed air to the interior of the ship so that it would warm up to something liveable. He went to the galley to make himself a cup of coffee, thinking the whole way there and back. Sitting with his coffee, his hood still up as he accessed the messages using the main display, he sighed heavily. There were the notifications that his craft had passed the fitness and eco-space tests, which he'd expected. The next one was the bill for the operation to repair the long-term damage to Shorty's wing. There was also a bill for the service to his drives -- which he'd also expected -- and the amount at the bottom caused him to wince slightly. After that, there was a note from Shorty. The little guy couldn't really speak, other than make some sounds and the odd word, but he was pretty damn bright and he could keyboard pretty well. Ryan's heart sank to read that Shorty had gone to look for Taela. He supposed that given the nature of the creature's life and upbringing, he should have known that something like this was bound to happen. Taela probably wasn't equipped to handle wandering around all alone on a trading post with its numerous bars, synthetic opium dens, and pleasure portals, but it had been her choice, as she'd pointed out to Ryan. He hadn't tried to change her mind at all. He'd just done his best to try to warn her a little. Shorty wasn't equipped to handle it at all. He supposed that it had been a little bit of parallel development -- long after the fact, but the overall shape of the craft that they'd gotten here in bore something of a passing resemblance to the old Rockwell B-1R variant of the B-1 bomber of the United States Air Force of centuries ago. It was a good deal larger, of course, and it wasn't just a sled that you sat in to drive. You don't need a winged craft for space travel, but this one had them and not for space-runs either. The wings swung out for flight in atmosphere -- where there might be one, but it was mostly for light interplanetary warfare, waged from the Morgarod side, rebuilt and retro-fitted by Ryan, Taela and Shorty to get them off the world where they'd all met a few years ago. Other than aid in dispersing ranging signals like radar, the slick shape bought them little other than comfort. It was in an atmosphere that the thing excelled, the point of the design way back when had been two-fold; use as a penetration/strike craft or just as effectively, use as an interdiction craft to stop penetration of defenses. Morgarods were a rather complex bunch, and if they were anything, Ryan had learned, they thought things through. Ryan and his companions had one because, ... well, they had one. It might have belonged to the Morgaron military complex at one time, but finders-keepers and though it hadn't seen a lot of long or hard service, it was old and outdated for its original role, now looked a little different after it's necessary modifications and - Ryan liked this part on a personal level - it had just been certified for use as a light trader. The certification that Ryan had just obtained for it made this the equivalent to a man owning and flying a P-51 Mustang after the Second World War on Earth after having purchased it as surplus, though this was a lot more fun and challenging to operate in the flight rule-rich environment of the present-day shipping lanes. The three of them could live on it in a little comfort and it could haul shit in the cramped cargo bay. That, along with its speed and its hidden weaponry -- as outdated as it was, well, .... What more could you want? Ryan sighed. He wanted them both back. Ryan set the mug down on a console and then he placed the call to the colony. When he saw the female security watch person, he asked if there had been any reports of a winged creature getting into any sort of difficulties. "No sir," she replied with a bit of a harried and an 'I-don't-really-give-a-flying-fuck-about-your-problems' sort of expression, "As owner of your craft, you are responsible for the actions of any crew or passengers that you carry and --" "I know that," Ryan said in a hard-edged tone, "I'm only calling you to inform you that he's missing. You know your shithole here better than I do, I'd hope," he said as he sent her a photo. "He answers to 'Shorty' and in a place like this, he'd have about the apparent mental capacity of a thirteen year-old human and would be easily confused and overwhelmed in a crowd. I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for him. Could you please pass this along so that your patrols are informed? That's all I'm asking." The watch officer leaned toward her desk cam a little, "Are you saying that you want a search mounted for this individual? Be advised that there will be a back-charge to you once we locate him -- in any condition, even dead, and --" "What I'm saying is that I'd really like it if you could just do your fucking job, Lady," he snarled, "I'm aware that on this snowy dustball, it's all about service charges. I just want a little help here -- like it says in the scrolling banner that I'm looking at along the bottom of my screen. Does my ID show there in front of you? I just want you to know who it is who'll be coming to speak to your commander if you don't think that you can get up off your fitted-ass chair." She nodded coldly until she read what was superimposed in light transparent script on her screen. Her eyes widened a little and she apologized then and disconnected with only, "Understood. Out." Ryan sat back and sipped his coffee, trying to think of where Shorty might have wandered to. He tried to put himself inside the little guy's head, and regretted it instantly. Shorty would be looking for Taela and he wouldn't have a clue. More than likely, he'd become officially lost and wandering after the second turn in the commerce section of the place. It almost caused Ryan to jump up and run out there himself, though he knew that it would be about the least constructive way to go about it. He kept thinking about the dangers to both of them. No matter what the colony's security people liked to portray about them having it all under control, this place and any other like it anywhere had a seedy underbelly. No one said a word to him officially, but he'd already heard that the colony had a vampire infestation. They weren't vampires in the classical Bram Stoker sense, they were more of a problematic type of nocturnal carnivore which preferred to drain as much of a victim's blood as possible for the warmth before the real eating began. He began to worry again. Ryan thought that if he even knew how to get there, to the wrong side of the tracks, he'd go there straight off and try to cut to the chase. But he knew that having placed his call for assistance, he had to make himself available, so he'd also have to stay put -- until it was time to go to the security offices and pull that self-important cop right the fuck over her desk and drag her into the watch commander's office. One thing which hadn't changed in all of the time that he'd been in cryo -- Ryan was a decorated veteran and this was still the military civilization where he'd been born. It wasn't all that much, but it did get him a lot in the way of slack from desk aviators. He thought back then, over all of the time and space to what had brought him here. It was a long haul. ------------------------------ Far away, three calendar Earth years ago: The speaker in his earpiece crackled for a second and then he heard Berkov's voice. "Flight deck to Security; McCallum! McCallum, where are you? I show you somewhere on the lower level, that's all." He thought her voice sounded stressed. Wondering about that, he switched his comm system to voice actuation and tried to seat the earpiece a little better. "Right here, Mandy," he replied, "I'm still on Level B, Bulkhead Charlie, moving forward. What's up?" This was the seventh time that he'd been awakened out of cryo. When he'd signed on to be part of the security detachment on this trip, he'd run into Berkov in a hallway at the shipping company's offices. Mandy Berkov was the deep-space pilot there to accept the contract offered for this trip. They'd both stopped and stared for a moment and then passed by on their way elsewhere with small smiles. A little later, she'd found him in one of the vacant offices as he sat ploughing through the mountain of on-line forms at a terminal as he was signing on for the job. After a bit of quiet conversation, they'd agreed that he request that his tasking schedule be changed to include the annual ship safety checks. There were bonuses, she'd said. It meant that the two of them would then be awakened together for a few days on a yearly basis to perform the system testing and soundness checks of the ship which were required on every deep-space haul. It made certain that the freighter was still on-course and that everything was copacetic. This was done while the rest of the crew and any passengers slept on in cryo. These days, it was a formality done mostly to satisfy insurance company requirements. Any course deviation or system alarms would wake a member of the flight crew anyway. For a few days a year, Berkov and McCallum were the only ones awake and active on the huge craft. It cost them a year or so off their life spans overall, but the tests were easy and quick, there was a large pay bonus for volunteering and the perks were pretty good as well. They'd been fucking their brains out whenever they'd had the time for it. This time, they'd both only been awake for about an hour and had started their testing programmes so that they could maximize their time together. They'd woken up in sections far apart, and had only taken the time for a shower and a quick meal alone. They hadn't even seen each other yet. Ryan McCallum knew that there wasn't anything to it on Mandy's part. They were both in it just to get laid. Besides that, McCallum was in it for a little peace for his heart, though he knew that it wasn't possible. Cryogenic-sleep had been developed to counter the problem of flight crews aging or dying off on long voyages such as this one. The light cryogenics involved held the metabolic rate of their bodies to very nearly zero, but time still moved at the same rate for everyone else. What McCallum wanted was a fat-assed chunk of time between himself and Sarah, and every time that he was awakened for these tests and the after-hours playtime with the bombshell pilot marked that much more separation between him and what he'd left behind him. A career grunt, he'd come home from a tour on Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons. The wars there had been raging for about twenty years, driven by the need to monopolize access to the large moon's resources, the same as anywhere else that mankind's hunger for wealth had caused him to travel. It was a normal rotation, and he'd expected to be able to spend the four months of down-time with his wife Sarah, but it hadn't worked out that way. He was two days early and he'd forgotten to call beforehand. The arrival times of military flights were never publicized. Until then, he'd been working to the plan that they'd laid out for themselves together, but Sarah, ... well, she was now his ex, and that was pretty much that. The guy in his bed was one thing, but the nearly empty bank balance was another. He'd guessed that the guy sure must have been something between the sheets, because Sarah had planned to be gone when he got home. That much was obvious. The place was already nearly empty. The two of them had tumbled out of bed and cowered against the wall when he'd walked in on them. An awful lot of murders happened this way. Ryan already knew about the bank balance. He'd never told Sarah, but it was the first thing that he checked on arrival every time. It had nothing to do with trust. It actually had more to do with the next piece of their nest egg being there. It had more to do with needing to be sure that the funds had been transferred as was specified in his contract -- payment on return landing, whether he was on his feet or in a body bag. He'd had to do things on these tours which had an effect on his sleep patterns for a long time afterward and he wanted to be sure that he'd gotten paid for it. This time, he'd found that the payment had been held back, since there had been large changes to his account during his absence. It was a military paymaster's precaution. He was informed that they'd been waiting for him to call. He opened another account over the phone and the funds had gone there while he went straight to the bank to sort it out. Sorting it out had shocked the hell out of him, but with most of that done, he'd gone home to find the reasons. While they stood there and babbled at him nervously, Ryan pulled out his phone, took the one required photograph and made the legal changes that were required on-line, using the military access to one of the law firms which were kept on 24/7 standby for this sort of thing to begin the divorce process. It happened fairly often to serving members of the military -- of either gender. He just didn't think that it would ever happen to him. The nice lady at the other end of the call asked him a few questions and then gave him a choice. He chose and then confirmed his answer, sending her the signature file that she'd need to affix to the documentation. Whenever either his wife or the asshole who she'd been fucking in his bed moved a muscle during his call, he'd only looked up at them and they'd frozen in place. A six foot four, two hundred and forty pound veteran trooper with a ton of experience at extinguishing somebody's life was a little intimidating, and the two naked people in the room both knew what a dangerous game they'd been playing. Ryan did his best to keep his face straight and his voice level. He was really hurt, but he wasn't stupid and his pride wouldn't let what he felt show through. He'd find a hotel for that. He received confirmation that he'd be divorced within the hour. Once he'd read and heard that, he tried to smile at Sarah, "Sorry for whatever caused you to do this. Just give me a minute and I'll be gone, Sarah. I'm not going to hurt you or anything. I never would." He turned to the stranger as he moved aside a little, "You, on the other hand, ..." The fool ran out of the apartment stark naked and Ryan felt the heat of Sarah's glare for it. "What?" he chuckled, "He can hump your ass for what, months while I'm gone, and he loves you so much that he'd run out and not stand up to at least look me in the eye? Sorry if I pissed on your dream, but I'm not having a good day here myself." Other than the way that it felt to his heart and trust, to do it this way had cost him the ten years of pay and savings that Sarah had transferred off-world. As Sarah trembled against the wall, Ryan told her that the funds were hers and that he wished her all the best. It was the way that things were done to say it that way, that was all. The lawyer had actually instructed him to say that. He'd actually hoped that she'd choke on her breakfast cereal one morning, but he wasn't going to prison for murder or assault, just as she wasn't about to argue over the legality of what she'd done. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 01 In the pro-military society in which they lived, to open her mouth and complain was to begin a process that she just couldn't win, since she'd basically used Ryan from the view of any judge who liked his or her position and wanted to keep it. "Wait, Ryan, can we just talk?" she'd said, but he ignored her, picking up his duffel bag to leave the room. She'd followed him all the way through the apartment, trying to explain something which he understood perfectly. Finally, he'd just stopped and turned around. "Look," he'd said, "I understand, Sarah. I really do. If it was me in your place, now that I think about it, I don't know if I'd have been able to keep it in my pants either. Anyway, I'm not going to go after the money. It's all yours, all you need to do is sign the documents and you're set. You take care of yourself." He'd turned to go then, but he heard her voice from behind him as she spoke through the very first of her tears, "You're lying, Ryan. You'd never do that. I know you." Ryan didn't turn around because he couldn't. "Yeah," he'd sighed heavily, "I am." He was also fooling himself about her choking on her cereal. Sarah had been the reason that he'd done all of this, chosen this path. All that he'd ever dreamed of was to live with Sarah after he'd gotten done earning the money for them to live on happily ever after. Now he was ten years into a fifteen year career with nothing at the end of it. The options were limited to one, as far as he could tell. He placed another call and requested immediate redeployment as he walked out and down the long hallway. He left the rest of his life there and was on a flight out the next day. He didn't want to do the whole broken-hearted husband thing, though to that point, he'd been faithful. He was just trying to get what he could for himself, needing to do this since Sarah had taken all of the savings that he'd managed to build up over ten years. With only a few years of military-grade employment left, he had to hustle to make some money for the rest of his life, if case nothing else worked out. He never went back to Earth again. On the money that he'd be able to scrape together, he couldn't afford it. After five high-risk tours back-to-back for the higher pay rate and hazardous-duty pay, Ryan left the service and took a year off to unwind, living as frugally as he could before signing on as security and shuttle crew on this deep-space run. His one extravagance had been to fly his parents to where he'd lived for that year to visit with him. His military specialties fit really well for this job, they let him retain his rank, since the structure was the same, and he figured that one run out and another back in, and he'd be set, even better than he'd have been with Sarah. These trips paid like crazy in exchange for the personal cost to most of the people who did them. His parents had died sometime during his second "year" while he'd slept. Many more years had gone by for them. It was a long haul on a fast freighter. That velocity compressed time, hence the pay. And unless she was sleeping in some cryo chamber herself onboard a luxury cruise to one of the pleasure worlds, living on the money that he'd had to kill to earn, McCallum liked the rather pleasant thought that Sarah was now dead -- or at least very old, along with everyone he knew while he was still only in his early-thirties. There were times when he'd actually felt that coldly toward Sarah, but mostly, he'd never gotten over her at all. He'd just wanted an end to the possibility that he'd ever see her again, somehow or somewhere. That would have been more than he could stand. This way, it was out of the question. What had happened with Mandy had been a bonus. They only saw each other for about a week a year, but he liked the voluptuous blonde for more than the obvious reasons. After the third year, he found himself with some feelings for her -- but that was over with now, and he just kept to their original agreement. Without meaning to, he'd accidentally found out that Mandy had volunteered for triple-duty and was awakened every four months to his twelve. She was screwing Ryan for a week, and then months later, she was alone with another member of his detachment for a week so that he could rail her as well. He just didn't know the identity of the other party in all of this. Somewhere else in her busy year, Mandy was with somebody else, a third person. He'd never said a thing to her about it, since he didn't want to mess up the arrangement. It didn't matter, really, since they hadn't exactly sworn to be monogamous or anything. He'd just assumed that he was the only one that Mandy was fucking, that was all. He just decided that he was something of a fool who was not equipped to have relationships without at least something going on behind his back. He was still wondering about what he'd heard in Berkov's voice. "Hey," he said, "You didn't answer me. What's up, Mandy?" "I'm fucking busy and living a nightmare up here at the moment, "Berkov replied a little frantically. "We're off-course and have been for almost five months as far as I can tell! I don't know what happened, but it looks like Danny and Harris had some kind of a fight in here. The Nav station is shot to shit, though I don't get why I wasn't pulled out of cryo then over a system alarm. They're both long-dead along with the rest of the crew. From what I can tell from the life-support display, you and I are the only ones left alive on this thing. I've got two rotted corpses floating around up here with me, and I can't decide if I'm supposed to shit myself or throw up again. Where's your cryo chamber?" she asked him. "My chamber is in the second bank," Ryan said, wondering why she'd need to know this now. She'd never asked before. From the pause that he heard, he wondered if she knew that there even was a second bank of chambers in security. He listened to the quaver in her voice. Ryan thought that Berkov sounded as though she was having a hell of a time holding herself together as well as whatever else was going on. Since his comm system was still on, he heard her distress call over the company channel, over and over -- as if somebody was just going to head on over to pick them up by six o'clock. He knew that wasn't going to happen. It would take about seven months for the signal to reach the nearest shipping company post. While she was stating their position, he used the time to head back toward the security section. He wanted to get a look at what was going on from the displays and logs there. What he saw was more puzzling than it was helpful. Someone had loaded up a rifle and shot up the other cryo chambers, killing the people inside. It came to him as something of a strange feeling to discover his incredible luck. Whoever had done this must have forgotten to check the chambers on the other side around back. He'd been the only occupant there, and when he'd been awakened, he'd just had his shower, ate, and suited up, walking out to begin his normal job without looking back, and with the cryo chambers closed, he hadn't smelled anything. As he worked his way forward again, he began to think this out. Danny Aldridge was the other security detachment member that the pilot was involved with. When Ryan had put it together a year ago, he'd scanned the system logs and noted the presence of two active humans at those times. A check in his detachment duty logs showed that Danny was the one who'd been awake then. Today, he accessed the flight crew's logs again as well. Harris was the flight commander. Ryan read in his log that during one of his routine and random awakenings, he'd read the cryo logs as well and noted what was going on. His notation to have his chamber wake him the next time that Berkov was awake to sort this out told Ryan a lot. Somehow this had gone from a little fucking on the side to something deep into stupid. By dumb luck, it had been Danny who was awake at the time and paid the price. Apparently, Harris hadn't thought about the second cryo bank either. Ryan didn't have everything figured out just yet, but it was beginning to look to him as though Harris himself was doing Mandy at some time, and there was nothing as deadly out here in the long silence of space as a triangle -- and this was now a what? A parallelogram? Berkov was sawing her life short by going into and out of cryo so often, if this was what it was, but he guessed that Mandy liked to have a pretty full dance card. There was a tortured silence now from the comm system. Mandy had finished her transmission. Ryan strained to listen. He stopped moving so that he could concentrate on what he was hearing. She was straining, moving, fighting with something up there as she made emergency changes in their configuration. The decking tilted a little under his feet and it caused a thrill of uncertainty to shoot up his spine as he fell. What had begun as a routine wake-up out of cryogenic sleep for the annual security and soundness rating for his shift rotation turned into a nightmare for Ryan in that second, because it shouldn't be happening -- not this far out from their destination. It signalled a rather ominous change. He shouldn't have been able to notice the inertia of whatever change she made. Mandy had actuated the internal gravity systems. He heard her breath as she worked something frantically. What she'd done had brought him to his knees for a moment, but he was fine now. He guessed that the corpses up on the flight deck had stopped floating around. "What the hell are you doing?" he asked. She didn't answer. He heard her crying a little as she prayed in Russian. Ryan had left security and had been working his way for the last few minutes to the ladder that would take him up to where she was. He didn't know why, but it suddenly seemed to him to be the right thing to do to get toward the cargo shuttle flight deck instead. He turned and with gravity now present, he ran all the way. He wanted to see what it was that she was seeing, since she didn't respond to his calls much. He wondered if she might be the one who'd gone a little nuts a few months ago. He hadn't checked the last part of her cryo log and now wished that he had. The freighter itself wasn't made to actually land anywhere. It was made to spend its entire working life where it had been built -- in space. Mostly, it was a very strong backbone studded with cargo hold latches, huge fuel tanks, racks of fuel cells, and engines. If it wasn't going to dock with a station, the cargo shuttle was what brought loads up from the surface and back down to whatever world the port of call of the moment happened to be. For this trip, there hadn't been any other cargo holds attached yet, and all that they carried for cargo was already in the shuttle's hold to save moving it around on arrival. The shuttle pilot belonged to the security detachment, and he was now dead in his cryo chamber along with his co-pilot there in hers next to him. Other than his being there to handle the load-outs and act as a deterrent for hijackers, Ryan was the back-up shuttle pilot. The back-up shuttle co-pilot was also dead. Ryan strapped himself in and activated his cameras. He saw a planet, or rather; he saw a portion of a planet since it more than filled his camera's field of view. Another display showed the feed from the main flight deck where Mandy was, above and hundreds of yards ahead of him. She was obviously working her ass off dealing with too many things at once. He heard audio alarms and warnings from the computers. "Shuttle to Flight Deck; are you ever going to tell me what the fuck is going on?" Mandy sobbed as she cursed, "We're caught in the gravitational pull of this fucking planet. It was already pulling us for I don't know how long. All that I can get from the Nav system from pulling what's left of the data to my screens is that this thing's got some oxygen and it's temperate. I can't see through the heat of the atmospheric flare yet. We're too heavy like this! We're already too fucking close from here." she cried out. "I can't get this pig straightened out. We're just falling!" "Listen," he said tersely, "I'm in the shuttle now. Get your ass down here and we'll drop off. The ship wasn't made to fly in any kind of atmosphere. You stand a better chance with me, Mandy. Get down here while there's still time!" He looked at his flight instruments, seeing that this was bad and getting worse by the second. They weren't in any kind of attitude for flight and they were falling fast. The rate of descent was off the scale and he saw that the temperature of the ceramic tiles which were to act as a heat shield for the shuttle's belly was headed to the point where they'd just fry off. They weren't made for this. "Drop the load!" she yelled. He could barely understand her, but he got it. The load to this point in the trip was mostly machinery destined for the mines far out at their first destination. Ryan's hands flew as he configured the drop. Four seconds later, he jettisoned the contents of the cargo hold of the shuttle and closed the doors. He had an ominous feeling about this and he switched on the pumps that would pull fuel to his tanks, but then he saw that he was full anyway and shut them off. He activated the quick disconnects. Things were already glowing hot. He didn't need to spray fuel onto his bird. Ryan looked at the monitor which showed Mandy's face. She didn't look relieved at all. "Not enough to get my nose down!" she shouted. "Get down here!" he shouted back, but she shook her head. At that instant, Ryan saw what Mandy was thinking. She was dead wrong, but he couldn't believe it anyway. "No, Mandy," he said, "Don't." "Don't do it." He watched her look over at the monitor where his image was displayed right under the little cam that allowed him to see her. "I have to, Ryan," she said, "Without the shuttle's weight; I ought to be able to get my nose down. I've got plenty of fuel to get back on course and make it the rest of the way. I just need to reach escape velocity. There's no time for you to get up here to me." "That won't work," Ryan said, "You don't even know what that value is on this planet. You can't calculate the mass of the planet and the gravitational potential energy that this ship has here without a lot of computation that we don't have time for. The main ship isn't meant to handle stresses like that anyway. You're running out of time. Get out of that chair and run for the ladder. Get down here and run back to me. I'll have the hatch open and waiting for you. Hurry!" She shook her head. "And go where? The shuttle doesn't have the engines to make it anywhere on its own. At best, you can make it out of the atmosphere and float until you get pulled down again." He wanted to plead with her, but he could already see it in her face. She'd made her decision. He heard alarms from his own systems indicating that the locks on the latches which held the shuttle tightly to the underside of the main ship were being actuated. Ryan toggled the shuttle's power from the ship to his own supply. The hydraulic pumps which powered his control surfaces were coming online. "Don't, Mandy," he said, "Please don't." He saw her look at her monitor once before she looked away. Ryan watched her hand reach to her left -- and he knew what she would do next as well. His monitor went dark as she cut the connection. Ryan actuated the retraction of the protective covers over his windscreen. He had to get the shuttle away before she firewalled the engines or he'd be fried. The covers pulled downward. All that he could see was the flare of the atmosphere glowing around everything. He had no time to think about it. His hands flew over his own console as he watched the pump pressures come up. It just hit the green when he felt the downward lurch and thanked God that he'd had the presence of mind to fasten his harness. The shuttle was falling and without his harness, he'd have been smashed against the ceiling. She'd cut him loose and he was in free-fall away from her. Ryan nudged the nose down and feathered the speed brake panels so that they extended just a little. He wanted to slow a bit without having them rip off. He saw his airspeed dip a little and then he retracted the brake panels as he eased the nose down a little more. The drop in his speed and his distance from the ship caused the atmospheric flare in his windscreen to disappear and he could at least see where he was flying now. When he saw the ship above him pulling away, he slid and rolled to his right gently. Eight seconds later, he straightened out again on a parallel heading and watched as the main ship's engines flared brightly. Mandy was pouring it on, giving it everything that she had to stop her descent as the nose levelled a little to get her speed up in at least a straight line as she tried to leave him behind. He knew that she'd try to stand that long thing almost on its tail to power out of sight, leaving him to his fate here all alone. Ryan watched from a mile away, knowing that the frame of that long beast had never been designed for something like this, and already heated by the friction of this atmosphere, there was even less strength to it. The long frame began to fold itself in half backward to tumble and disintegrate for a second before it exploded in a blinding flash. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 02 ***Not sure, but I think this might be my 200th post. Anyway, more of the action comic and I trot out the female here. this one's a bit short as well, but the next ones are longer. It's just how the story breaks down into segments. 0_o ***** ---------------------- She looked up at the sound. It had come as a large boom, far off at first, but then she heard what sounded like something large being torn high up in the sky. She looked around herself to make sure that she was alone and she ran for a little higher ground to get a better look. That better look frightened the hell out of her. Standing on the low hilltop and out of the trees was bad enough. One never knew when one of the many kinds of predators were out hunting, but it was getting toward dark now and soon the screechers would be out and to be in the open here like this was just asking for it. She'd have to be in the deep forest soon, though that brought its own hazards. She looked up again. The roar continued, though she could see that it was the fall of some object that caused the sound and pieces of it seemed to be coming off here and there looking like glowing globs. She felt a little thankful that it didn't look as though it was heading her way, though she couldn't be sure of it. Then there was a bright flash and she ran, knowing that the sound of that would have to be loud when it reached her through the thick atmosphere. She ran, deciding now that the best place to be - if she could make it before full dark - was the mountain. She chose to hide herself as she went. It carried with it the slight delay that it took for her body to "catch up" to its surroundings, but she couldn't help that. Her method worked very well if one was stationary, since she could blend in to any sort of background unconsciously, but when she was moving, she was often a little visible as her body tried to keep up with the changing background. Whenever she was running, it was always a little out of sync, but at least if she stopped then, it "caught up" quickly and she could make herself almost disappear. The sound of the explosion reached her ears and she almost fell flat, but she kept going after a look over her shoulder. Whatever it was, it was much larger in her view now and she didn't want to be wherever it landed. ------------------- Ryan levelled the nose and watched as his airspeed dropped along with the temperature of the ceramic tiles down below. His onboard sensors told him that there was a higher percentage of oxygen here than there was on Earth, but it was within the operating limits of his engines. He retracted the intake covers and let the turbines spool up from the air rushing through them. With his airspeed now almost low enough for a sightseeing flight, he initiated the start sequence. One engine after another lit off until all four showed as online on his display. He looked back and down as the largest pieces of what had been his home for the past seven years from his point of view burned their way hotly to the planet's surface to land, leaving a long flaming trail through what looked like jungle canopy to him. The rest of the fuel tanks ruptured at that point and the fireball must have been miles long. Seven years, he thought, almost all of it in cryo-sleep. That meant that decades had passed on Earth, and that he'd physically been on the ship for those seven years. To him, it had only been about seven weeks, for all the short times that he'd been awake. What a life. He had a thought to say goodbye to Mandy out loud, but he chose to save his breath. He wasn't certain how it had happened, but he supposed that he'd cared for her a bit more than any thought that she'd ever given him, other than for one thing. He shrugged. Instead, he kept his mouth shut and throttled back to take stock. He wasn't falling and he wasn't gliding anymore. He was flying. For the moment, he had tons of fuel. It was too bad that he couldn't just leave and go home. There were two problems in that. For one thing, he couldn't leave this world -- he didn't think, at least not without a lot of computations, and secondly, he hadn't had a real home in years. He queried his nav systems. Not knowing where it was, the system began to analyse and compare its present position to the last known position at the point of separation from the main ship. Position: X62.9-Y98.1-Z17.7 Nearby Object Class: Q2b. 4th planet in System S479568. Size: 1.63E Gravity: 1.21E Length of planetary day: 26.16 hours E Length of planetary year: 762.87 planetary days Prevalent mineral deposits: Granite, Beryllium, Basalt, Shale, Likely substantial crude hydrocarbon deposits. Surface water: Abundant Technology: Iron Age (optimistic; no known humanoids) He was a little surprised at that last bit. It meant that this lump had been at least surveyed and assessed, so he checked and found that it had - some eighty-odd years previously by probe. The main ship's crisis management software must have made a few choices as they'd drifted, he thought. He supposed that this must have been the most likely best choice available, and that accounted for the course change. Ryan looked down. The window through the clouds that he'd been looking through to see the crash of the main ship was far behind him now, though he did see what still looked like heavy jungle through the holes here and there. He turned to go back for another look. He hoped that, sooner or later, his queries would turn up some sort of terrain map left by the probe. It should have been loaded with the rest of this planet's file, but that would take more effort than he was prepared to put into it while he was flying over something as unfamiliar as this without a co-pilot. He wanted to get a look, just in case Mandy had made it out alive, though he knew that it was really deep into impossible, but still ... And anyway, he'd need some sort of ground reference to work from. He planned to mark the scene of her crash as a datum point, since it was the only feature on this world that he knew of. He was very surprised to notice that he was receiving a signal. As he leaned over to configure the craft for endurance flight, he actuated the system which might identify the source. What he heard from the shuttle's computers amazed him. "Signal is from a beacon and identifies itself as from the mapping probe ship, 107226 X-ray Delta, lost in this region eighty-three solar years ago. Known data accumulated by last upload before loss of probe ship." Ryan was astounded. What he'd heard indicated that at some point, there had likely been at least one survivor from that mapping ship's flight. He configured the shuttle's next interrogative query of the beacon to see if there was more data available. What he got from that instantly was a mapping feed which was loading the entire planet's known geographical features at the time of the probe ship's upload. His display showed him a nondescript wire-model of the planet, but it was filling with details quickly. It also indicated its own location accurately on that display. It wasn't that far away, either. Ryan added this to his datum points list and turned to head there. He saw the remains of some sort of wreckage a minute later which had obviously been there for some time. A wide pass around it and he was headed in the direction of the highest feature that his map showed on this part of the planet -- a rather high plateau. The way that he saw it, Ryan would have preferred to set down there rather than to just knock down a lot of trees and never have the chance to take-off again. The shuttle slowed further as he changed the engine configuration to vertical take-off and landing mode. It was getting dark, and he wanted to at least have a look at where he'd be setting down. -------------------- When the long crash came, she was far ahead of it and very happy to be. The rolling flames that she could see over her shoulder grew closer every time that she looked, and she knew that she wanted to be far ahead once everything came to rest, since any form of animal life was bound to be running for all that it was worth and she didn't want to be trampled. She slowed as she reached the stream at the foot of the mountain and walked slowly to the spring, even though she could hear the roar of the approaching stampede through the jungle. It was a matter of her own safety -- as was almost everything else in her life for as long as she could remember. She knew that she had to get to the opening in the rocks unobserved. Her wide feet slipped into the water quietly and she began to work her way to the little doorway in the rocks. There was a more direct way, but that would take her over the stones sticking up out of the stream, and that would leave a scent for someone or something to follow, so she stayed in the shallow water. Before she slipped inside, she stopped for a few seconds to look around. Other than the sound of hooves, feet and wings around her growing louder, there was no sound other than the quiet murmur of the stream. But then she heard another sound which was out of place to her ears, and it caused her to look up. It was difficult to see through the wisps of clouds, but she could make out the shape for a second or two before it was gone again. Her heart rose to her throat. She didn't know what this meant, but she saw an aircraft of a kind that she'd been taught to fear when she was small, but had never seen. It meant that the others were here. She saw nothing around her, so she ducked inside and moved the stone which would fit into the opening to seal it off. It was a lot of quiet work, but she never neglected this detail. As she stood in the darkness and waited for her eyes to adjust, she thought about what she'd seen and what it might mean. Had there been a fight in the skies above? Had there been a rescue ship sent after all of this time, only to be shot down by the hated ones? She didn't know, but all the same, she was certain that nothing aboard what had crashed would be alive now, not after a landing like that. She resolved to go back in the morning to look. The night-time was not a place for anything which had no defence against the screechers. She knew that there were such things, but she didn't want to meet any of them in the dark either. She turned and began to make her way to her home by the dim phosphorescent light of the little things which grew over the walls. ------------------- As he neared the plateau, adjusting his altitude so that he'd be in a position to get at least an overview, Ryan noticed something on the forest floor below him. More wreckage -- a lot more, and a lot older than the other site as well, since the long groove in the ground was beginning to grow a few good-sized trees -- or whatever passed for that form of life here. There were the remains of a large hull down there, lying broken and a little twisted as well. But he knew its origin, as easily as he'd been able to identify the remains of the probe ship, just from the way that it was made. What lay below him now bore all of the marks that he needed to see that it had once been a Morgaron warship. The sight sent his thoughts back to some of the bloodiest fighting that he'd lived through during his time. No one knew where these things had come from. They only appeared now and then, but when they did, it marked some god-awful fighting. They never attacked Earth itself, which led the more foolish among human statesmen to conclude that they feared humans. Those who'd had any experience in battle with the Morgarods knew that, as usual, the politicians had no clue of what they were braying about. The level of Morgaron technology was at the very least, on a par with anything that humanity had developed, and the average Morgarod fighter possessed every bit as much bravery in him and more than his human counterpart. The veterans like Ryan concluded that, had they wanted to, the Morgarods could have attacked Earth. The only reason that they could ascribe to the tendency of avoidance in that regard was that it was a form of respect for one's enemy to leave his home alone -- something which mankind could never have managed for all of their feigned nobility, civility, and superiority. On many far-flung worlds, man had discovered some mineral or substance which had some worth to him, and he began to set up shop in some way to capitalize on what he'd found. But doing that had always only brought competition in the form of other men. It has always been a trait of humanity that though we all talk a good game, in reality, we are all more than prepared to steal each other's lunch if we can manage it. In almost all cases, those greedy actions had precipitated wars among the armed forces of mankind. Ryan's first few tours had been to support his country's aspirations in that regard, fighting the armed forces of other nations over whose methane ocean or gold deposits those were out there on those cold rocks. As odd as it might seem -- or as natural, if one really knew human nature, those wars skidded to a rapid halt whenever the Morgarods showed up at the party to harvest the very same materials which mankind had claimed for their own use -- though we hadn't really bothered to ask anyone else if they minded. They didn't even want to talk, they just attacked, and so as groups of humans have always done when faced with a common enemy, the warring factions allied themselves to fight off the new threat. Ryan had seen more than a few of the creatures. Everybody made a big deal out of demonizing the things, but he'd never found all that much about them to hate. It really didn't take much of a brain to figure out that they were a lot like us -- they only looked a little different, that was all. But it didn't stop the more narrow-minded among humans from heaping their hatred of anything different onto the outsiders. Ryan knew that small minds were never in any danger of extinction. They made more of them every day, the way that he figured it. Stupid people fuck each other and have stupid children and the idiocy reproduces itself before your eyes, if you pay any attention at all. The 'Frog People', he'd heard them called. Well he'd seen a bunch, and though they were different, there weren't a lot of features shared with any amphibians that he'd ever seen. For one thing, they were warm-blooded, though their fingers and their feet were a little larger than the average human of similar overall size. At one time, he'd thought that the name might have come from the way that their legs had the same sort of shape as those of frogs -- or dogs -- or deer, for that matter, the only huge difference was that they weren't like human legs and they had bigger feet, and some of them even had a little webbing between their toes. Ryan knew that even if they'd looked just like us, we'd still find one thing that was different and that would be all that was needed. They were 'known to be murderous, bloodthirsty things' to hear a lot of fools talk about them. But Ryan knew that almost all of those talking heads out there, offering their considered opinions on the evening news, had never even seen a Morgarod. He had. As part of his training once the war had begun, Ryan had met Morgaron prisoners who were used to teach their form of speech. It had been a chance for him to learn something a little different. He'd learned that they referred to their home world as 'Morgaron' and that they referred to their own kind as Morgarods. It was an important distinction to them. What Ryan got from that was a way to tell if a human knew anything at all of what he or she was talking about. And of course, most didn't. Sadly, that included most of the world's leaders. Mostly, the ones that he met were badly crippled fighters who now had no choice but to live in something of a zoo to be stared at by classes of schoolchildren and used once in a while by servicemen who for some reason wanted to learn their way of speech. Since none of them were linguists, the education had been somewhat lacking, though he did learn how to curse really well. He'd also seen them in the middle of some fierce fighting, and when asked for his considered opinion, he didn't mind telling anyone that the Morarods gave as good as they got, and they'd fight right down to the last one of them if they had to. Live prisoners were a rarity. To his regret, he'd also seen them on the few outposts that had been located and attacked by human forces. He knew that they'd bleed red blood, just like humans. He knew that they'd weep over their dead -- especially their females and their children. He knew that. Because he'd been there and ripped through what he'd been told was a heavily armed and fortified settlement, along with his entire division, pounding it with everything that they'd brought along, before they'd stormed it and waded in, expecting the heavy resistance that they'd been told to expect. What a pile of horseshit, Ryan thought, even now, all this time later. What they'd waded through was the Morgaron equivalent of suburbs on fire while most of their males were away to mine for a metal which Earth also wanted. How convenient that there were no Morgaron military units near that little rock at the time. He'd always wondered about that little detail. The noble humans had decided to exploit the way that their enemy chose not to attack what they'd called 'home places' in their few communications. They obviously expected the same courtesy from mankind. Ryan remembered how he'd felt shamed to realize it. A pity that they didn't know us that well. He had no doubt that somewhere, there were pencil-necked human strategists pounding each other on the back who needed to die for this. After what he'd seen, he wanted so much to hand those planners over to the units of Morgaron female fighters that he'd come up against now and then. It wouldn't last long, but he knew that he'd feel better if he could watch something like that. Those he and all of the others had run into were Morgaron civilians, women and children before they'd figured it out. There have always been the stupid and the bloodthirsty among us, but this almost caused a mutiny of the human ground forces, once they'd learned what they were being ordered to do. Hundreds of human troops lowered their weapons, refusing to go on. A lot of fast and fancy talk later and they'd been pulled out of there, leaving a lot of hurt and dead non-combatants behind. Ryan refused the offer to re-enlist when it had been made two weeks later and expressed his desire to leave the service at the end of his tour. But nobody ever said anything publicly about that little walk through the garden, oh no. Nothing was said, and no word of it reached the 'war correspondents' who'd seemed to make a hobby out of drinking themselves pie-eyed every day at the hotel complexes where they'd been billeted on their government's dime at the time. But when the Morgarods had retaliated in a similar manner, well then that just proved that they were savages, didn't it? What Ryan McCallum and others of his kind who had been there knew was that the world was very fortunate that the Morgarods didn't attack Earth itself in retaliation. He didn't really know why they hadn't. He heard the others' theory about respect, but he figured that we'd about used that up. He thought that it was more likely a matter of the economics of having to send an avenging armada all of that distance. Ryan never told anyone the reason that he'd left the military. Everyone had just assumed that he'd made enough to live on for the rest of his life -- a hero, somebody who they could all be proud of. Other than being at the top end of his career anyway, what he'd seen and had to do there were the reasons that he had such a hard time getting a full nights' sleep ever since. At least the cryo helped. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 02 He'd never had any trouble with the fighting, no matter who it had been that his unit had to fight, human or Morgarod -- as long as they were there under the same circumstances that he was. In that regard, Ryan considered the average Morgaron trooper to be a worthy opponent, and one who likely had the capacity for more battlefield honor than most of the humans that he'd ever fought beside or against. When the human thirst for resources had turned in another direction, the undeclared war with the Morgarods had simply stopped. The human settlements and facilities were abandoned and we went elsewhere as we always had. The Morgarods were left with their raw materials, since we'd found much more in another direction, that was all. When they'd exhausted the little that was left, they'd just moved on in another direction themselves, but Ryan had a feeling that the two forms of life would meet again one day. -------------------- She'd stopped hiding herself as she reached the top of her climb inside the low mountain. There was nothing here to hide herself from and she wanted so much to speak to her father. He'd have wanted to be told about what had happened. If he was still alive. It had been so long, she thought. She could have used his wisdom now. She walked to the window to lower the shield which protected them against the screechers every night. Her words failed her as she looked out of the portal to see the shuttle begin its approach to set down on the plateau where they lived. Taela stared and groaned, not quite believing this. Out of the whole uninhabited landscape on a whole empty world, they'd had to come here to land. The first of the sand and small pebbles kicked up by the downward thrust of the shuttle's engines began to click and hiss against the transparent screen. She lowered the shield. "I know what this is," her mother said, walking into the chamber, "and that is not a warcraft, though the crew more than likely are military. She gave up the rest of her reply as the sound of Ryan's turbines grew to a pitch that precluded speech for the moment, even through the thick rock wall. --------------------- After one pass which told him that there was plenty of room to set down in, Ryan raised the dust collectors over the engine intakes and made his slow approach, lowering his landing gear to hover the massive shuttle in and set it down. He waited for a minute, and then he shut his engines down. As soon as they were cool enough for it, he closed up the intake and exhaust covers of the engines. On Earth, it was said that hornets or sparrows would only need about five minutes before they began building their nests in an intake. Ryan knew of a few other life forms on other worlds who didn't even wait that long, liking the residual heat of turbine exhausts just fine. He finally closed the protective covers over the windscreen and went to the galley. He came back a few minutes later with a bowl of noodles and sat there as buttoned up as he could get while he ate. There were sounds from outside as night fell around him, some form of flying life which whistled shrilly as it flew. There seemed to be many of them. He had a thought to use his external cameras in night vision mode, but decided against it, not really caring for the moment. He was sure that he'd find out all that he needed to know about them at some point. He didn't seem to be in any danger where he was at the moment, and he really didn't give much of a damn. He had a lot of things to think about now, the only human here, all alone on this world. ------------------ She walked to her mother, a lovely middle-aged female. Taela was fretting over breaking out the old weapons from their storage racks. Her mother took her arm in her hand to cause her to pause. "Calm yourself," she said in Morgaron, "The craft that has landed is not the kind which can fly from world to world. From what you say, I doubt very much that there was a fight of any kind. We would know it if a Morgaron craft was coming for us. This is something else," she said quietly, "We will need to see in the morning, but I think that this was the same sort of unfortunate event which trapped us all, your father and the others, me as well. They use this sort of craft to go down and up from worlds that the crashed ship visits. The big ones cannot land. If that large craft had crashed, then this one here is not going anywhere far." "Then we will be faced with how many, Mother? Five?" Taela asked, "Ten? Twenty of the hated ones?" She stared as the older female laughed softly. "What have I said to make you laugh?" she asked, "I see nothing to laugh at." Her mother chuckled and turned to her with a smile, "As far as what we face, I believe that the usual crew for the large ship is less than ten, unless there are passengers, and that is unusual. That was not a passenger craft, not as large as that one was from the fire that I saw from here. So we are faced -- as you say -- with ten or less. Perhaps even two, since that is how many are needed to fly the one which landed. We will have to see. But you should stop thinking that the war continues here. It does not. Even if the belly of that craft opens and twenty of their warriors jump out, we are all in the same circumstance here. Where can they go?" "But they are the hated ones!" she exclaimed. The female sighed, ""I wish that your father had softened his lessons to you." She reached toward one wall, modified in its structure by her mate long before and chosen for its flatness. The sandy stone surface smoothed out to reveal a mirror-like surface where they both stood together regarding themselves. "I would like you to try to remember the lessons that I taught you," she said, "I've always been able to take a moderate view in all things. Which was a good thing as far as you are concerned, isn't it?" she smiled as she watched her daughter roll her eyes. "The hated ones were what they were called as the two races fought each other over bits of pebbles and shiny rock, "she said, "In something like a war, it helps to have some insulting term for one's enemy. They called Morgarods the Frog People in the time that your father commanded." "But he fought them," Taela objected, "He killed them in battle, many I was told." "When one is young," the old one said, "it is easy to allow one's blood to be roused by hatred. But war is a game where young ones die and old ones grow rich. I am sure that it was this way on both sides. He killed them," she nodded, "many of them. But what he learned, after the heat of his own hatred had cooled a little, was that aside from the way that they looked unlike Morgarods in some ways, we are very similar in many things." She looked from her own reflection to her daughter's with a proud, warm smile, "Once more, a good thing -- for you. You should perhaps think of some other term for them. The files which you have watched from his old ship were made at the height of the hatred. The night when you were born, Taela, when he lost his heart for the second time in his life, that was when he stopped calling them the hated ones." Her mother seemed to not be much more excited over the news than Taela. "We'll have to be a little careful," she said in English, "they tend to spook easily, and when they're like that, they always shoot first." "Why?" her daughter asked, "if they are such fighters as you both said to me, I would think that they wouldn't have that much to fear, would they?" "Well," her mother smiled, "Morgarods have an ability which disturbs the hell out of humans. To their eyes, Morgarods can vanish in plain sight -- often in broad daylight, can't they? It tends to make them nervous. You know what I'm talking about, Taela. You can do it too. Sometimes I'm very thankful for it all the same, or I'm sure that I'd have killed your father if he hadn't been able to get close enough for me to get a really good look at him." Taela' interest was piqued now. She'd heard this tale before a time or two, but she loved to hear it all the same. Her mother saw it in her eyes and laughed softly for a moment before she began. "I knew that I wasn't alone," she said, "and that's something that you need to consider, whatever you do, because humans have a sense. They don't know what that sense is, and they don't even really have a name for it, but it's there in most of them anyhow. We know it when we're not really alone. We feel it somehow when we're being observed or watched. I was busy trying to stay alive and salvage what I could out of the wreck of my ship. I'd bellied it in as gently as I could, but even so, the pieces were scattered for about a half a mile. I was just really lucky that I wasn't killed or worse, injured. Most of what I found was wrecked and smashed, but I was able to gather quite a few things. So there I sat, with all of what I'd saved around me, years away from rescue -- even if my distress calls got through to somewhere. I'd found a way to hide from the screechers, but they were kicking the shit out of the hull section that I was hiding in every night. By the third day, I'd gotten pretty much everything that was still any good, and my situation just came crashing down on me. I might live here for a while, but I'd always be alone, and I was going to die here. I started to cry. I've never been a weepy thing, but that day, I just couldn't help it anymore. I'd run out of things to keep myself occupied, and I just started to cry. After a while, I noticed the proximity alert cheeping at me. It meant that something not too far away from me was moving. I grabbed my gun and looked around as carefully as I could, but I didn't see anything. The damn thing just kept cheeping and I kept looking, so after a long while, I assumed that it must have been damaged in some way that I hadn't been able to determine. So I did about the most stupid thing that I could have done under the circumstances." "You turned it off," Taela smiled. "Hey," her mother grinned, "you want to hear this again or not?" "I want to hear it," her daughter said, pushing her long dark hair behind her ear as she sat down next to her mother and hugged her, "I have always loved to hear this, but I think that I would have turned it off too, if it had been me." "Well, if I'd left it on," the woman said, "then it would have screamed at some point, because your father was getting slowly closer the whole time. It didn't matter anyway. I knew that I wasn't alone. I could feel it. I even had an idea what it was, since I'd seen the wreck of the Morgaron ship. Whenever I'd look around me, I couldn't see anyone, but I could see something shift a little. Now I know that it's from his motion, but I didn't know that then. She grinned and kissed Taela, "I never told you, but that's how I was able to keep tabs on you when you were little, once you'd figured out that you could do it. You always thought that you were invisible, but I just had to look for that shifting of some detail or other and I knew that was you. You couldn't hold still to save your life for longer than a second. I only had to wait. Anyway, the day that I met your father I stopped seeing that shift after a while. It was because he'd stopped moving. But I knew that he was so close, I could tell by the way that normal sounds had changed from behind me. I turned around, and he stopped hiding. I saw him then, from almost right against me. I thought that I was about to die." "What happened then?" Taela asked, knowing the outcome the whole time. The old woman shrugged, "I fell in love -- just like that. I remember thinking that I hoped that he wouldn't kill me, not then. I'd only just gotten my first look at him and I was lost." "I have always wanted to know," Taela said, "just how it was that you fell, as you say, for one who was so different from you. I would think that one must see features that one likes in one who has that effect." "Well I did," the woman smiled, "There's not all that much difference. My legs were different from his and yours, but I liked his, and he liked mine. A lot of human girls like men with a bit of strength to them, and a lot don't like that at all. I've always liked that, and there he was, right there. I liked his hair, his face, everything right in that one instant. I'd never seen one of them before, either. I remember thinking 'Whoa, what the hell are we fighting with them for?' I had a whole long list of what I wanted to do come to mind, and honey?" she laughed, "Shooting him was not on that list at all. I tried to speak to him, you know? I did my best to keep it simple by telling him my name and all, but then he smiled and my knees damn near gave out. I hadn't even gotten past that when he started speaking English to me. I mean, he'd taken lessons for that, but I didn't know it, did I? Right about then, one of the big cat-things came after us. We'd been so busy staring into each other's eyes that we hadn't noticed it. But we both spun around and shot at it. His shot went wide, but I drilled it first shot, and I shot three times. There wasn't much left. Your father put his arm around me and asked me to protect him. I agreed and that was that." "It was not so simple as that," her daughter said, "from the way that he always told it to me." "Ok," the woman grinned, "alright, it wasn't, Taela. It was murder trying to get him to stop trying to drag my stuff up here. He just went on and on, working like a dog, saying that he was so happy that we'd found each other, because at least now there was something to live for. He said that with a little kindness and friendship, we'd have a reason to go on, each of us. Well I was already way past that part of it. I finally had to stop him just because I wanted to be close to him for a while. He was right and I knew that, but Jesus, I wanted to get to know him a little. I had to kiss him to get him to slow down and stop. It was getting dark anyhow, so before he ran out to get one more load with me walking shotgun and carrying a lot of stuff myself, I just kissed him. He had the sense to close up the place, and he took me to where we could wash, and I showed him what I thought before he could get all shy on me. Hell, it would have taken months if I'd left it up to him. He'd been here for a while already and he was scared to death to offend me or something. What he wasn't thinking about was that I'd been cooped up all alone on that probe ship for three years, most of that in cryo. Damn, I needed to get laid in the worst way, and there he was, ripped and gorgeous. Well there's limits to everything, and we found mine right then. My Momma wasn't here to tell me no, so, ..." Taela had never heard this part of the tale before and sat with her mouth open and a huge grin there as well. "So, there was no, ... courtship first? I read that Morgarods and humans both have courtships to their relationships. There was, ... nothing between you?" "Well yeah," her old mother laughed, "and we did that. Don't forget that we'd been walking up and down the mountainside for most of a day, hauling my stuff here. It did give us a chance to talk an awful lot. I decided, and then I kissed him like I meant it. I was so happy. He almost fell down himself, but that started it between us. You have to look at it this way, honey; a courtship is to allow both people, the girl mostly, to decide, right? She has to decide if the guy is the one for her, out of all of the men that she might have a chance at. We had two things working in our favour here. We were both stranded here. There were no others for us to choose from. That's one. And two, it just happened that he liked what he saw, and I LOVED what I was looking at." Taela laughed along, but afterwards, she sighed silently to herself. It might have been rough and tumble -- a regular prospector's love affair, in the words of her mother, but her parents had each other when they were younger while she had no one. She was about to get up to eat something when her mother took her hand. "You might have noticed that I'm not really all that upset that there's a shuttle parked outside tonight. Now, the people in there might just turn out to be stupid jerks, but I'm a little hopeful that at least one of them might have something to catch your eye -- if they don't just open the door and come out shooting. I know that you identified with your father a lot more than with what I am," she said, "but I think that you ought to at least try for a peek at one of them. You never know." Taela shook her head. "I feel upset for some reason that I do not understand. I have a want for a mate, but, ... like this, with one of them? I have seen the pictures in the files. I doubt that it is possible. Good night," she said as she got up to go. --------------------- Taela sat in her chamber, looking at the old screen that her father had configured for her so that she'd have some way to learn of her heritage. It was ages old, but it still worked. She accessed the files which related to the war at the point of the system's last update while her father's warship had been in port. She looked for illustrations of Morgarod males. She liked them, she decided. A male like her father -- though they didn't always get along -- was pleasing to her eye. They looked like her or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she resembled them, since she was a mix. She didn't care. She liked the way that they looked to her anyway. She closed the files and searched for pictures of human males. What she found were a sorry-looking lot, thin and weak-looking. She didn't like their legs, or their little undersized feet. Even their thin fingers did nothing for her. They had dirty-looking faces, most of them. She couldn't believe that she had some of that DNA in her. She saw nothing which gave her a feeling that she had the slightest thing in common with those things. "Try to remember something," her mother said quietly from the doorway where she stood with a smaller figure who held her hand. Taela jumped visibly as she spun around, feeling about the way that she had years before when she'd been curious about reproduction and her mother had caught her just this way then. She was an adult now, she told herself. She had nothing to be ashamed over. So why was she having a bit of difficulty holding her mother's gaze? "When a people go to war, they try to cast their opposition in a bad light," her mother said with a nod to the screen. "They say things about their enemies which may or may not be true -- and usually aren't. Did you know that Morgarods eat their captives?" Taela's mouth fell open in shock. "Oh yes," her mother nodded, "They roast them over fires alive for what the fear and pain do to the taste. They prize pregnant female human captives. They cook the babies separarat-" "No, they do not!" Taela said, hotly. "Those are lies!" "I know it," her mother smiled, "I'm just telling you what I was told. If you read the garbage in there carefully, you'll find some things that they said about humans which are patently untrue as well. I was once trained as a military pilot, but I was routed a little differently, once they found out that I was really good at finding my way out of bad situations all by myself, and I didn't seem to mind being alone all that much -- uh, at the time. I saw photos just like that, only the males in them were Morgorods. They all looked like bags of beaten shit -- which is pretty much what they were, since they were prisoners just like the guys in those pictures that you have open there." She walked into the chamber and smiled down at her daughter. "I get the feeling that you're feeling upset because of the humans up there. You don't have to be. In fact, you can ignore everything and put your head in the sand if you want to. You are half-human though and you might make a friend even if that's as far as it goes. So why not at least take a look? They might move on and be gone by the early morning, I don't know. All that I'm saying is that you shouldn't think that they look like these poor guys. The Morgoroths that you were drooling a little over were at their prime then and in fine shape. Human males can look pretty good too, that's all that I'm saying." Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 02 "Why do they look so dirty in their faces?" Taela asked, pointing. "Well, that's most likely because they were dirty and not allowed to wash for the photos. But human males also have beards, though not many of them allow them to grow. Mostly, they shave them off. If those ones had the chance for it, I'm sure that they'd have shaved too, since a beard itches until it grows out. It drives them a little nuts," she smiled, "I know that because my father always had a beard." "What are they like to, ..." The old woman laughed quietly, "Not all that different, honey. Everything works just the same, there's no difference in size -- not that I'm exactly an expert on Morgaron men. There are differences in size and shape from one to the next, the same as men, I'd guess, just as there are differences in any group of females." Taela pointed, "From the pictures, human males have smaller, ... " "Well that's one slight difference, and I mean slight," her mother said with a grin, "What's really going on is that what Morgarod males have just hangs there until it's needed, if you'll pardon the joke, then it gets hard, but it doesn't really grow much more than what you see. Don't let that get in the way of how you might feel one day, because," she laughed, "a human male just might surprise you." "Why?" Taela asked. "It grows more on a human male when they get hard," the older woman grinned at her daughter, "Other than that, they're about the same. Some are a little longer than others and some are a little fatter. Some girls really like it if they can find somebody who is both," she winked, "but that's not universal. Some of us don't like being skewered every damn time. Just a lot of the time," she grinned. "The point is that none of this ought to matter anyway." Taela looked down, "No, it does not matter. I am already a little old and past whatever prime I might have had." "Now you're talking nonsense, honey," the woman smiled, "You're flat-out lovely and that's a fact. Look, just take a look if you get the chance, that's all. I think that I'm saying this all wrong and I don't want to. The point is that you're here, and I won't live forever, will I? There's somebody inside that thing up there. They just might be male, and one of them just might like you, just like you just might like them. I'm not telling you to toss yourself out there. That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? Just think that they might be here for a long time, and so will you. If you can make a friend, it's a hell of a lot better than making an enemy. So take a look if you get the chance. There's no harm in it unless they pull out some firepower. If that happens, we'll kill them. Just remember that they've probably got detectors and don't forget that sense that I was talking about. You never know, you are living on a desert island here." Her daughter looked up, "What does that mean?" "It's sort of a popular little fantasy where I come from. I don't think that Morgaron has them, but Earth has a few left, I'm pretty sure. A desert island is an idyllic little place where people would like to live with the one that they love, or they hope to meet that one there. It's a nice thought because you can screw all day and night, and you never have to worry about little things like how you'll stay alive next week or if there's something hunting you at the moment. You live here, and that's pretty much what this is, only without the palm trees and the beach. You can look all of that stuff up on there, by the way. It's just a little wilder, but I can tell you that it's a nice place to live if you've got that one male for yourself." She kissed her daughter and turned to leave the room. "Wait," the younger one said, "I wish to know. What did you do to show Father how you felt? I think that you wanted to tell him that you had decided before he'd had a chance to back away in his shyness." Her mother rolled her eyes for a second, but she just said, "You're right. That's just what he would have done, too. I didn't want that to happen. As you said, I'd already made my choice. I liked him right off, and so I just showed him when we were someplace where we wouldn't be disturbed. I got down on my knees and showed him, that's all." Taela thought about it. "With your mouth?" Her mother nodded, "Uh-huh. Where I'm from, a girl learns early that boys like that a lot. My gorgeous Morgarod turned out to be no different. Good night, honey." She looked down at the other figure who had let go of her hand and now rested it on her haunch as he caressed it idly. "Alright honey," she said as she turned to go, "Momma hasn't forgotten you. Let's go to bed." Taela stared at the human males for a little while longer and shut everything down. She crawled into bed, trying to imagine what it would be like to have a male of any sort. She still liked the Morgarods better. Her large fingerpads found her breasts for a few moments before one of her hands slid down her flat belly to end between her thighs. Taela found that it was one of those nights when she really wanted more than this, so she reached for the phallus that her mother had given her, one of the many toys that she'd gathered in her travels. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 03 ***So we continue with Ryan's recollections. This begins after the first night on what looks as though it might be where he'll be for the um, foreseeable future. Like any new arrival anywhere, he wants to see the lay of the land and what's shakin', so to speak and other top of mind things, like where's the nearest Starbuc - ok, maybe not that. 0_o ***** ------------------------- Ryan woke up in the morning from the sound of the alarm that he'd set on the panel. He swung over the edge of the hideaway bunk and stood stretching on the decking at the rear of the flight deck door. He padded naked to the galley and thought about his choices. Everything looked tasteless to him today, but he thought that he'd better eat something if he was going to get used to not living in cryo now. His next thought was that he'd better think about saving what he had while he still had it. It was a conundrum. So that brought the choice of breakfast down to a cup of instant coffee. He made it and then sat at the controls again. With lots of battery power available to him, he turned on the cameras which were built into the shuttle and he opened their little ports for a look around his new home. He was sitting on a flat-topped mountain not all that far away from the small rise that led to the very top. He looked at the camera which would be pointed toward where the ship had crashed. He could still see the pall of smoke rising from some of that. It looked to be a long walk away indeed. Awesome, he thought pessimistically. Why, if he had the fuel to waste, he'd fly right on over. But he didn't have that luxury. While he still had tons of it, he now had a better idea. The ship had fuel cells -- a lot of them. He wondered if all of them had been smashed. He looked at the column of smoke out here again and sighed. That was probably what was still burning out there, aside from what might be left to burn out of the huge fuel tanks that the ship had carried to fuel the shuttle's engines. He sighed. To get anywhere near to upper edges of the atmosphere on this rock, it was going to take one mother of an external fuel tank full of a lot of volatile and inherently dangerous fuel. Ryan thought that he'd just better get used to the idea that he was staying here for the rest of his life. He finished his coffee and walked to the arms locker. If he was going to go for a walk, he'd need to take something along. He just knew that he wasn't the only form of self-propelled life walking around here. But what to take? He made his choices and then he tried to determine a few other things, such as what the sunlight here was like. The answer wasn't bad, he decided, the UV that his sensors picked up was about the same as on Earth, so he'd need sunscreen, having lived without real sunshine for so long. He was about to walk out when he looked at himself and chuckled. He'd been about to become the most heavily-armed nudist on this world. He pulled on some combats and laced up his boots before he pulled a T-shirt over his head and shrugged into a knapsack with a day's supply of food, a little water, and a lot of ammunition. The loading ramp ground downward and he jumped down before hitting the retract control to close it again. He walked to the edge of the plateau and looked down. It wasn't too sheer, but it was a long downward walk. And that would mean that it would be a long uphill hike on the way back. Fucking awesome. He pulled out his proxalert and noted background readings. Something was moving, but he didn't see anything, and anyway, there was nothing nearby. He set that setting as the zero point to shut it up unless there was anything closer and then he reached for his NavPad to set his present location as home. It worked much the same as a pocket GPS unit on Earth -- or those worlds where man had stayed long enough to launch and place the satellites that were required. There was nothing like that here, but he'd pulled a mapping feed from his console and the thing had a tiny ring-laser gyro, so it could keep him informed about just where he was on this world for a day or so. He stepped over the edge and began to walk. ----------------------- Ryan stayed watchful on his way down the long gentle slope. The geography here -- from what he could see was pleasant, though he'd have preferred a bit more in the way of open spaces, maybe a little grassy savannah and like that, but there wasn't all that much that he could do about it and he did like the heavy forest that he saw off in the distance. A little in front of that, he saw the occasional tree which had taken root successfully on the rock surface. He saw a fair bit of wildlife, and a lot of it seemed to have no clue about the hazards of humans in the neighborhood, but then again, how would they know? The only other thing which troubled him was that he had to try to figure out from the way that an animal was built what its purpose might be, since he had no idea. But it was all that he had to go by. Whenever he saw something which might be a little brighter and was built for a bit of speed and looked to have some power, well that was when Ryan knew that he had to be alert and careful. From what he saw here, it looked to him as though everyone had eaten a healthy breakfast fairly recently, since nothing seemed to regard him with much interest. But back to the original thing that bothered him. His proxalert was cheeping quietly in his ear. He looked down, and saw that there was something at his seven o'clock, out about a hundred yards. He stole a slow glance that way and saw -- nothing. The alert didn't go away. He tried to change direction slightly -- about thirty degrees away and the alert was still there and the same range, though now behind him at the same distance. So he was being followed. Ryan resumed his earlier heading for a little while. As he walked, he thought about it. There was only one creature that he knew of who possessed an ability such as this. And he'd seen the remains of the wreck of one of their ships yesterday on the way in. He smiled to himself. Perhaps he wouldn't need to figure out if he could leave. Maybe it might be a little more constructive to try to decide just which of the few prayers that he remembered to use in his final moments. He had an idea, and reached around to a side pocket of the knapsack, hoping a little that this was the standard combat issue one, and not some flyboy's idea. He'd disliked the main shuttle pilot on sight, though they'd had nothing to do with each other once the ship had gotten underway, obviously. His fingers found the military issue small pack of six cigarettes and the military issue cheap lighter. After hundreds of years of trying to stamp out the habit, the military still decided that if you were going to send somebody out to get his ass shot off, then the state of health of his lungs for the time that he was under your command was not much of an issue, and it was more manly than having him suck his thumb. Ryan looked at the pack. They were ages old and quite stale. He'd quit long ago, but this might work out for him here. He opened the pack and took one out, stopping slowly for a look around. His eyes were moving while the rest of him stood still. Sure enough, he saw a very slight shift in something out there, and then it was gone and things looked normal. He sat down and waited with his personal defence weapon cocked and in his lap with the safety on set to full-auto. PDWs were really very compact rifles and didn't really look like much like a weapon at all, but they were perfect for close-in last ditch defence and they could be carried easily almost anywhere, which is why they were standard additions to the survival backpack. Ryan just looked off into space, not appearing to be focussed on anything ahead of him. In fact, he was trying to look to his left so hard that his eyeballs hurt. It took a little time, but the cheeping in his ear grew more insistent. He turned down the volume a little and waited. ---------------------- Taela was a little fascinated, she had to admit. She'd only seen one of them leave the aircraft and step over the edge of the slope to walk down, but she'd stopped anyway and hid herself, stepping out farther and staying downwind. She even had to smile. She wouldn't have said at this point that her mother had been correct about everything, but she did find the odd thing about the human male that she liked a little. He didn't look anything like the unfortunates in the photos that she'd seen. This one looked healthy. From this distance, he looked to have dark brown hair much the same color as her own, though it was very short and he wore a hat over it. She thought that he'd look better if he had more of a mane like the ones that Morgarod males grew, but then she realized that she was mixing things to think like this. He had those odd legs like her mother's and he also had little feet, compared to her own. Still, she thought, he didn't look all that bad and he certainly wasn't built like the poor ones in the pictures. He was made much more like her father was, and she liked that. She knew that he'd been her only reference as to what a male ought to look like and the fact that this one was built along those lines did make her smile to herself. He did smell a little funny, she thought. Taela had no way to know it, but Ryan hated the way that he smelled now -- ever since he'd had to apply the sunscreen. Just why the fuck this stuff had to smell like a bouquet of flowers eluded him frankly, but he blamed the dead shuttle pilot. He hadn't liked the guy right out of the gate. Well, he had to blame somebody. Taela wanted to get a little closer. Doing that would have caused her no trouble in the forest, but out here, well, it was a bit more difficult, since he was walking fairly quickly for her body's blending ability to keep up. But then he stopped, and she was able to get closer still. She stopped only a few feet from him. From this close up, she liked him even more, though he wasn't what she'd ever thought that she'd like. He was so strange, from her point of view. Anyway, she thought, all that she had was a strange desire to know someone like him a little. Just as he seemed strange to her, she was sure that she would seem so odd to him. She slowly crouched down near him. She found herself just about to sigh, but she caught it in time, and then wondered where that had come from. She'd spent the years of her life where a young girl would have normally had the first real interactions with males of her age out here but there had been no one for her. From her reading, she'd learned that it was about the same for human girls. But she hadn't had that. She felt some kind of a want in her, but overall, she just felt stupid. She looked down a little at his shoulder and his arm. She felt like an idiot. She didn't know what to do, other than what she was doing. She guessed that if there was a chance for it, she'd like to know him at least a little. If he was stuck here like the rest of them, she hoped that she might find at least an acquaintance in him one day, if they could even understand each other. She knew that where he came from had different forms of speech and she'd need to find out about that somehow before they could talk. If she could hear him say a few words, then she'd try to memorize what she heard and repeat it to her mother. It might give a clue as to which language to look up in her old system, if it was there. Her situation at the moment came to her, and she realized that she ought to back away at least a little. From this close, he'd have to know, wouldn't he? Her mother had said that humans have a sense, and she'd been here this close for far too long if her mother had been right. But she couldn't tear herself away. Her eye went to his cheek. There was something there. Looking at his arm, it was there too, the same thing, only more of it -- long lines of characters. Some symbols. She looked at his cheek again and knew that it was some form of human writing. It wasn't very large or dark on his light skin, it was just there. She tried to remember what she'd learned of this from her mother, but here, like this, nothing much came to mind. She got just a little closer and tilted her head slowly, wanting to at least memorize what was there. McCallum, Ryan B. B neg 870239 -------------------- He did have that sense. It was screaming to him now, just like the proxalert was keening its solid little tone into his earpiece. Ryan couldn't believe it. There was a Morgarod just a foot away from him. Not all that large, certainly, but there, nonetheless. He didn't quite know what to do about that. If he'd been in any of the situations in his past, he'd have raised the weapon in his right hand, thumbed the safety off and gotten them both messy, well not him, so much, but ... He wasn't in a war zone anymore, and he didn't even know if that war was still on. Then the breeze shifted a little for only a few seconds before it blew the same as it had for all of this time, but now he had to keep his eyes from opening in surprise. This was a female. His eyeballs were killing him from looking sideways for this long. He wasn't quite certain how to get out of this. His stupid idea had turned to crap, and he looked ahead for a moment with the smile that he felt at his foolishness. He'd had a thought that whoever this was, they might get fairly close, and then he'd light his cigarette and blow smoke at them. He was sure that it would have gotten him a moment to take command of this while the other choked for a minute. By the time that they'd gotten clear to look at him, he'd have been standing and they'd have been looking at the barrel of his rifle. Ah well ... -------------------- His eyes moved! Taela froze. She hadn't noticed, but until just now, he'd been looking at her. Now he was looking ahead of himself. Maybe he wasn't aware of her. Maybe she could back away now. Maybe -- She watched him smile at nothing out ahead of himself for a moment, and then she heard the first clicks from his throat and her eyes opened wide as he spoke to her in the Morgaron tongue. "It's the dots," he said, smiling at the horizon. She tilted her head, trying to figure out what he was saying. He turned his head to look right at her and Taela felt her heart fall in her chest. She'd been caught and she couldn't understand it. The tiny symbols were only on one side of his face. She liked his face. His nose was too thin and his brown eyes were a little too close together, though they didn't look as though they were cruel. His hair was too short and it didn't cover his forehead at all. From this close, she could see the beginnings of the beard that her mother had told her about, so she guessed that this one hadn't shaved or whatever they did so that it wouldn't itch them and drive them nuts and she wanted to touch his cheek to feel what that felt like and his hair wasn't moving at all and his chin had a little line from a scar under his lip and his teeth were as white as her own but they were wider at the front and his skin was so light and she wondered if it felt the same as hers to the touch and his mouth was a little too small and his lips looked so nice that she wondered what they might taste like and -- She blinked and drew a breath. She liked his face. He smiled and it brought the quietest little groan from her, "I see the reflections of everything around me, right there, all over you. But it's the dots that get me." He began to stand up so that it might force her to move a little, "That's alright, though." He watched her for a second, though there wasn't much to see, other than the spots that he was referring to. Morgarods had evolved a defensive ability, so that they'd know it when one of their own kind was hidden nearby. They had heat receptors in their faces, and they took the form of a few small spots, usually brown in color. Ryan had learned this from his time trying to learn the language. When they didn't want to be seen, Morgarods wore nothing. You had to look for other things -- signs that they were there. Like footprints which appeared suddenly, like just a little body warmth, like the shift in the normal sounds because there was someone standing right next to you. Like a few tiny little brown dots which seemed to hang in the air like a group of freckles across an invisible nose. And of course, once he knew what he was looking at, the rest of the head was just possible to make out, even if there was no motion to give the Morgarod away. He caught a quick glimpse of the shape of her hair and the fascinating way that Morgarod hair moved on its own just a little, since unlike human hair, it wasn't dead tissue excreted by hair follicles. There were other dots there that he couldn't fathom, a little behind the others on either side of her head. They were different colors as they hung in the air. He'd never told the ones that he'd taken language lessons from, but he'd noticed that the slight way that their hair moved could be an indicator of mood. But he'd never really gotten much of a chance to explore that, other than saying something incorrectly in a way that he knew would annoy his teacher, just to see what his hair might do. He managed to get just the most fleeting glimpse of her soft brown eyes when she moved them to look at something in his face. Then they were gone, hidden like the rest of her. That was about all the time that he had, and it only happened because he'd just shocked the hell out of her and he knew that. He watched her look up at him for a moment and then she rose up very cautiously as she tensed. The next thing that he saw was her form as she ran away faster than he'd have believed possible. The only reason that he'd seen her was because she was running and her body couldn't change fast enough to keep up. There were instants when she looked as though she was made out of chrome as her body sought a background to mimic. Ryan didn't care. He thought that she had a fine shape. He might have been a seasoned veteran of several wars, and he'd seen a lot of things in his time for damn sure. But he'd never seen something such as this. He stood with his mouth hanging open for a second. But then his ears told him that she'd stopped running and now stood still, watching him again from the edge of her new comfort zone. Ryan closed his mouth and looked down. He noticed that he was smiling. If that wasn't the damndest thing. His proxalert now had her at about his ten o'clock and thirty yards out. He shook his head at himself and began to walk in the same direction as before. ---------------------- Before he entered the forest, Ryan decided on a few changes. He took his pack off to stow his personal defensive weapon, tucking the short little rifle away. With that done, he checked his bearing again in his NavPad and saw that he'd have to correct his course a little. He unslung his heavy battle rifle and leaned it against his leg to shoulder his pack again. He took a drink from his thick plastic water bottle, hating the way that it changed the taste to polyethylene, but it was tougher than any metal ones, made no noise, and it was green. He picked up his rifle, slapped in a magazine from one of his cargo pockets, jacked the first round into the chamber and set the safety. His prox unit told him that there were other things here, farther out but almost ahead of him. His companion was twenty yards at his nine o'clock. "I would like you to know," he said in Morgaron, "that this is not for you. I do not know what is here on this world, so I am being careful." Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 03 He turned his head in her direction. "I don't want to harm you, so it might be better if you held that position to me, if you can. I can't see you from here, and I want no accidents." Looking forward again, Ryan McCallum adjusted his ball cap and walked into the jungle. As he worked his way along, stepping over and around old fallen and well-rotted trees, Ryan wondered at the female's silence. He supposed that it might have been because he was speaking in the speech of her kind. It might have come as a rather large surprise to her, he didn't know. But then he began to think and it gave him another reason to pause. There was that old wreck out there as well, miles from here. She looked younger than that wreck must be. Could she have been a child survivor? Was that possible? If it was, then she could very well have grown up here alone, and never learned her mother tongue. More likely, she was the descendant of at least one survivor and had never learned her own mother tongue. He listened for a moment to the sounds of a struggle a little way off on his right side. Something was actively engaged in the killing of something else out there as he heard the crashing and the sounds of some form of mortal agony. He thought about her again. How could she have lived here long enough to grow up? She was naked, he knew, since she'd been hiding. He shook his head at that. A hell of an accomplishment to have lived here with only that as a defence. He went on for a while, checking his NavPad and making his corrections. It was hot work, but he resisted the impulse to drink for a while yet. He only had the one bottle with him, and though he was sweating, he'd been in more humid jungles in his time. He had to strain to step over one huge trunk in his way. When he got to the other side of it he stopped again. He'd heard a small splash. He looked around and wondered. His proxalert showed him that she'd gone ahead a little and was now at ten o'clock and not far off at all. He was a little annoyed for a moment, but then he thought that she might not have understood him earlier or she might have a reason that he didn't know. He looked that way and saw a rise in the ground in a small clearing. From his proxalert, she was on the other side of that rise, so he walked that way as quietly as he could. When he got near the top of the hump of ground, he froze, staring. There was a long section of water. The female was crouched cautiously at the edge and was looking around. Somehow, she missed seeing Ryan, but he couldn't miss her, not by a long shot. She was visible, crouched with her wide feet far apart, down low. She seemed to be intent on the water for some reason. He flicked his gaze away from her for a second before he looked again. Her body looked a little like a human girl's, just a little on the young side, not really there yet in terms of her maturity. He knew why that was, and it wasn't an indicator of her age. Morgarod females just looked like that. Of the ones that he'd seen, he'd never seen one with what he might call a full figure. Even the ones who had a bit more weight to them had this same look of wistful immaturity to them by human standards, only proportionately larger. This one was the most shapely one that he'd ever seen. He couldn't tell since she was leaning down to look at the water now, but he knew that her breasts weren't large. In fact, he smiled, this was likely as large as one might ever see them from this angle. Her skin was brown -- a medium shade -- but it wasn't like the corresponding shade on a human anywhere, because there was a very slight greenish tint to it. She didn't look green, she was brown, but the brown carried the tint. Her face was incredibly lovely to him. He'd been prepared to see at best, the sort of beauty that he'd seen in these females, because no matter what had been said to demonize them in his own nation's propaganda, there was beauty to be seen. But hers was a little different. She looked somewhat human in her features somehow, and it amazed him. She had the same sort of ears that Morgarods were known to have, but hers were shorter, and he could see a little cartilage there. They were pointed, a little, anyway, but they almost looked human to him. He'd never seen that before. He watched spellbound as she pushed her hair back behind one ear for a moment. Suddenly, the other dots that he'd seen made sense to him. He couldn't see the ones on her face -- he was too far away. But he was looking at her long dark brown hair now and she'd braided it a little here and there, and the braids ended in bright plastic ties of different colors. Ryan wanted to laugh. She looked a little sweet like that. He watched for a time, engrossed by her long legs, ending in those wide feet. They looked powerful, even on one as small as she was. When they'd been standing looking at each other, she'd come up to a bit above his collarbones. He looked at her hair again to see the motion, and it was there, her hair moving slowly just a little at the ends, mostly. It was just the barest movement, and since it didn't all move the same way, it wasn't the breeze -- which wasn't in the clearing at all anyway. But it brought a thought to him and he looked between her long thighs, since he was at about the right angle for it. Her pubic hair was a maybe an inch and a half long at most. He'd never liked a thick bush there on a woman. It was just a personal preference to prefer that Sarah kept hers shaved, since she liked it that way as well. This girl's was thick, and hung down a little, and not because it was hair, because it wasn't. He'd never had the opportunity to think about it much, but he now knew that what she had there was just like the hair on her head. There was just a bit of a tuft there and on her, it seemed to fit. The thought of seeing that part of her shaved seemed more ludicrous than seeing Sarah with a full thatch in that spot. Ryan wasn't fixated or anything, at least no more than anyone else, he supposed, but the comparison was a little bit of a marvel to him as he watched that tuft move a little of its own accord, just like the hair on her head. He knew that he ought to look away, but right then, she looked up. Not right at him, but she looked up as though she was listening for something. A second of looking at her expression, and he knew that she was listening for something that she was not hearing and expected to hear. She stood up and looked over her shoulder. Ryan knew in an instant that she was straining to hear him tromping through the undergrowth off that way. He knew that he ought to pull back and hide behind the rise, but it was too late for that. She spun around, listening and looking hard around her. It took her only a half a second to see him and then she was blending into the background as quickly as she could. Another half a second, and she was running at that unreal pace again away from him, a half-silver girl whose large invisible feet left huge splashes behind her until she was out of sight in some trees. He'd seen that sort of running speed before. But all of those times, it had been Morgarod warriors and they'd been running AT him. It usually marked the start of where his day was about to tank. This one was running away from him and although it made him feel a little bit of regret for that, he was still grinning to himself. Mirrored as her body tried to imitate a background to hide against, even the way that she looked semi-chrome plated didn't change his opinion. She had the sweetest-looking ass that he'd ever seen. Ryan walked down the slope to where she'd been crouching, wondering if she'd been looking at her reflection or what. That didn't make much sense, but then the last full day of his life had been a little odd. It took him a second, but he did see something in the shallow water there. They looked like some form of small black fish. Their shape was a little unusual too. There was a large head and a pair of fins right behind the gills. After that, the whole thing looked a little like a stubby little eel about four or five inches long. What could there be here to interest the girl? He shrugged and walked out the way that he'd come before he carried on. His side-trip near the standing water and the lovely floral scent that he carried mixed with his sweat had aroused the interest of more than a few insects and it didn't take very long at all to decide that at least some of these things were the equivalent to Earth's mosquitoes. He pulled a can of repellent from his pack pocket and applied it to his exposed skin. It seemed to work, but not in the way that the manufacturer had perhaps intended. Ryan wasn't certain, but it seemed to confuse them more than anything. Still, they seemed to want to leave him alone. About ten minutes later, he found her again, visible this time. What caught his eye was that she wasn't moving. She was standing stone still in one place in a slightly awkward-looking pose. He headed that way slowly. She was standing still, looking at something. As he crept closer, he saw that it was a large snake. Well, it was large for the average suburban garter snake. By the standards of an Amazon anaconda, it was about right, though its open mouth showed a pair of fangs and it's attitude was more along the lines of an aggressive rattlesnake than a constrictor. Ryan watched the mouth close and its long tongue slide out and back in before the mouth opened again. He looked around and found a rotted branch. He tried to toss the branch onto the part of the snake's body away from her, but he missed. It landed very close, though and that brought the snake's head around quickly. "Run!" He yelled in Morgaron and she was gone. Before the snake could determine the nature of this new threat, Ryan's battle rifle was singing its song, thudding against his shoulder heavily at its slow rate of fire. He fired three bursts of three and four rounds and then he was backpedalling as well as the snake thrashed. By the time that he was forty feet away, the snake was still. Ryan moved closer cautiously, but only close enough to see that there wasn't anything recognizable left of its head. The thrashing had been reflexes apparently. He looked around for her. He was alone. He got back on course and continued. It wasn't long before he came to blackened and burned areas, and then he was walking in a sea of burned growth. He'd entered a brand new clearing, created by the fire of the crash. Some of it was still smoking as he walked on, but he didn't stop. He had to know. It took him a little while, but he found the remains of the flight deck section. It was on its side and still warm to the touch. The windscreen was smashed and he looked inside. There wasn't much to see, but he did see the little of Mandy that remained. There wasn't really enough there to scrape up and bury. He saw a little of the shape of a burned human body, but it was mostly ash and some of that had blown away or disintegrated already. He stepped back and stood for a moment. Eventually, he walked away and tried to get a look at the rest. Overall, it was pretty much a write-off -- a burned out frame and not much more, but he did see two sections of fuel cell containers. Out of the twelve that the ship carried, ten were obviously destroyed completely, but there were two that looked at least a little hopeful. Ryan wasn't about to investigate today. He didn't want to get too close in case they exploded, since he could feel the heat there even now, but it was something to think about. He looked around a little more and then he turned to leave, setting his NavPad for a reciprocal course. The trip out was uneventful and Ryan spent most of his time just keeping an eye out for any wildlife which might have been stalking him. He checked his proxalert often but there was nothing near him at any time. When he'd walked a few hundred yards away from the edge of the forest, he stopped on the rocky incline and, after making sure that there was nothing around him, thought about eating his lunch. But walking around sweating had soaked his shirt and it was stuck to him uncomfortably. It wouldn't have been so bad, but since had been stuck to him for most of the day under his pack, some of it had bunched up here and there under the straps and it was past uncomfortable, since the bunched parts were under the pack straps. He took his ball cap off, along with his pack, before he tried to peel the soaked shirt over his head. He sat down. That was the moment that his proxalert began its cheeping in his ear. He looked down. Two o'clock, seventy yards and closing slowly. Ryan looked off in that direction. There was nothing in the way of cover or obstructions out that way. He sat and looked steadily. He had a sense who this might be. Eventually, he noticed a shadow on the rocks getting closer. From looking at it, he determined that she was walking to him a little slowly but steadily. He waited until the thing in his ear screamed its tone steadily before he looked up and tried to smile. The smile faded as she stopped hiding herself. After that, he just did his best to keep his jaw from flopping open. Taela tried to keep herself from staring. She was determined to act more like herself, and that was not the way that she'd gone to this point. It took some effort, but she was able to keep her eyes narrowed. She stood there a moment before she finally spoke in Morgaron. "Why are you sitting?" By now, Ryan was a little more than shocked that she had a voice. While he thought about that, he decided that he might have been a little more prepared to hear something along the lines of 'thank you', but while she plainly wondered if he was always this slow, he shrugged with a small smile, "I'm hungry. I thought this might be a good place to rest." "Bad place," she said with a bit of a scowl, "Look up." He tilted his head back and saw what looked a little like pterodons with long tails wheeling above them in the sky. "They hunt in daylight. They see us," she said, "more of them will come. When there are many or if a big one comes, they will come down. You cannot hide as I can. I show myself so that they will think a little about attacking two. We should leave now, "she said looking up, "Only three and they are not large. But not long before the bigger ones come to see. Come." Ryan decided that he really couldn't argue the point, so he stood up. Taela felt the stony front that she'd affected begin to crumble for a moment as she looked up at him. She thought back to the pictures that she'd seen. "Why did you shake your head?" he asked. "Nothing," she replied, "Are you finally ready? I can come back when your bones are clean to take what I can," she nodded at his pack and rifle. She watched as the backpack went back on and he picked up his hat and his rifle. He set the ball cap on his head and tucked his shirt into his waistband. "Alright, let's go." She walked quickly beside him in silence, mostly, but she did have a question or two. "Why did you help me?" she asked. Ryan shrugged, "I liked you better than the snake." There was a strained silence for a moment and then he heard her chuckle. They walked on a little and then she had another question for him. "Why do you wear a hat? It is not cold." "It keeps the sun from burning my head." He thought it was a good answer, but it brought another question. "Why is your hair short? It grows, yes? Why not grow hair and not wear a hat?" Alright, he thought, how to explain that? He considered for a minute. "I like to wear my hat," he said, "It keeps the sun off my head and out of my eyes. My hair is short so my head can't overheat from long hair. It's easier to take care of and hard for insects to live in when I'm living outside." They were nearing the edge of some woods. Or maybe it was the same forest, just in a different direction. It did look just a little different to Ryan somehow, as though it was a little more arboreal rather than jungle-like. He wondered where they were going. "I can't cut my hair," she said. "I know," he replied. She was about to ask him how he knew that, but a sound from behind them caused him to turn around. One of the pterodon-ish things didn't seem to want them to leave, it seemed. It was diving and was coming at them, flying about twenty feet off the deck. The girl cried out and ran, looking around for a stick or something to fight with, but Ryan's rifle barked again in two bursts and the thing fell in a struggling heap almost at their feet. He wanted to get a better look at it, but he felt her hand on his forearm. "Run!" she cried. He ran. She obviously would have wanted for him to run faster, since she was almost pulling his arm off in her effort to get more speed out of him. She didn't stop until they were well into the woods. By then, the other birds, or whatever they were had settled into fighting over the corpse of the one which had attacked them. She led him deeper into the woods until they came into a bit of a clearing, still under the canopy of the large trees. Ryan looked around. There were quite a few animals here, some form of quiet grazers mostly by the look of them. They didn't really give the pair a second look. She led him to the bank of a stream. "Rest here," she said, more as an instruction, "I wish to ask things." "Well," Ryan said, as he pulled his canteen from his harness and unscrewed the cap, "in case you were wondering, you're welcome." He held out the bottle to her, "Here. Don't mind the taste, the bottle makes the water taste like plastic. I usually put flavouring in it, but, ..." She stared at him and the bottle alternately. "Why do you offer it?" she asked him. "Don't Morgarods get thirsty?" He asked, "When did that change?" She took it and sniffed doubtfully before she handed it back. "There is better water right here. I do not mean to be rude. Thank you for helping me. Snakes like that can be aggressive. If you had not killed that one, it would have followed you and they are fast when they wish to be." She looked at him as she sat down on the bank, "Do you always rest standing and sit when you are being hunted?" "No," he said, "I wasn't sure about all of these things here, those animals over there." "They have no interest in us at this time of year," she said, "and anyway, we are all here together. The fliers cannot hunt us here. There are other things to watch for, but unless these ones grow nervous, we are safe." She did her best, trying hard not to stare, "How do you know that I cannot cut my hair? Where did you learn Morgaron? You are, ..." "Hungry," he nodded, as he took off his pack and set it down. He reached inside and pulled out a package. She watched him open it and look inside. He set it down next to her and sat on the other side of the little bag. "You can have anything that's in here. I don't know if you have an allergy to monosodium glutamate and polysorbate 96000, or crummy food that was made before you were born and will taste just as bland as it will now long after we're both dead." He smiled at her a little, "Oh wait," he grinned, "you're about to tell me that there's better food right here, only I don't know what it is. I just got here." He pulled out some simulated beef-flavored biscuit things which looked as though they'd already weathered a nuclear strike or two and he began to chew thoughtfully for a moment. "I'm obviously a human, as you've probably figured out, since I'm not a Morgarod. I learned about Morgarods and how they speak in the war. I know that your hair is not like mine. If you cut it, it will hurt and you will bleed. I've been in cryo-sleep mostly, but I guess that at the speed that the big pile of ashes back there was going, it must be sixty years since I was a soldier." Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 03 "Sixty years means nothing to me," she said, "but I understand about cryo. How old is your body?" "I'd guess around thirty, thirty three, something like that, if that means anything to you. I'm all grown up, if that's what you're asking." "But you are not old," she said, almost as a question. He shook his head and reached into the bag again and came up with the dessert, some apocalypse-resistant brownies. "Here," he said, "You ought to try these. They're the best thing in here. Everything else tastes like shit." It made her laugh a little, but she understood the gesture and she tried one. "I like it," she nodded. "Then have the rest," he said, "I'll try to get through these sandy, nutrient-filled sawdust rolls." "Why do you eat it if you do not like it?" she asked with a curious smile. "This is soldier's food," he said, "for when you're out on the battlefield. I always thought that they gave us this to keep us annoyed. But it's kept in shuttles as emergency food. Since I don't have anywhere to live, other than what I flew in on, I'd say this is an emergency." "Are you annoyed now?" she asked. "No," he smiled, "I'm a little pleased to have found somebody else here. If you weren't here, I'd be annoyed." "Humans are strange," she decided aloud. She was half-human herself, but she often felt more like a Morgarod, and she knew that he didn't know of her mixed heritage, so she played on it a little. Ryan had nothing for that, so he didn't reply. When she looked over at him, he nodded in agreement, so she decided to try another tack. "You have strangely shaped legs and such small feet." He looked at her, and was about to make a remark about the size of Margarod breasts, or the lack of it, but he knew that it might be too close in, since he was enjoying this quite a bit, and he knew that he likely didn't have too many options for some sort of conversation, so he went another way. "I dunno," he said, looking at his legs and swiveling one foot, "They've gotten me this far, so I think that I'll keep them." His reward for that was her laughter. It was a little different, but he liked it. Why do you wear clothes here?" she asked, "It is too hot." "I think that your question is dependent upon your point of view," he said, "I do have my reasons. Why are you NOT wearing anything?" He knew that her reason related to her wanting to be able to hide, but her answer still surprised him. "I wish to be comfortable," she said, "and not sweat like you do. Also, I wish to save my clothing for when it is cold." "You wished to hide yourself," Ryan said with a nod, "for your own reasons, and you can't do that if you're wearing clothing, can you?" He winked at her and it caused her to tilt her head in curiosity. "I think," he smiled up at the trees, "that it would be nice to see an empty bikini running around." The thought made him laugh a little. Her expression made him laugh more. "What is a bik-" "Never mind," he said with a little grin that seemed to pull to one side a little. "Humans are strange." She nodded, before she looked at his legs again and then at his face. "My legs are different from yours. Aren't you going to tell me that they look strange to you?" Taela was an only child. All that she'd ever had were her parents telling her that she was lovely, or pretty, or beautiful all of her life. She'd never had anyone else to use as a measurement for herself. She knew that her parents had always loved her, but they were her parents after all. She'd have liked to learn what she wanted to know from a male Morgarod, but there weren't any others here. She was coming to like Ryan, but their differences ... He didn't know what was underlying her questions. He was just being honest and enjoying their strange conversational game here. "Now why would I think that your legs look strange? I did tell you that I've seen Morgarods before." "My legs are not like yours," she said. He shrugged, "Your hair is not like mine either, but I like it anyway." Her mouth fell open. "You like my hair?" Ryan nodded decisively, "And your legs." "My feet are much larger than yours," she said, trying again. He nodded, "So? You don't walk on them flattened out. You walk more on your toes. Where I'm from, we have these actors to amuse people by dressing absurdly, and acting a little crazy. They're called clowns. A lot of them wear huge shoes to add to the effect. They clomp around in those shoes to cause small humans - children - to laugh. You don't walk like that at all. The way that you walk on your feet gives you a lot of grace. It also sends a feeling of strength. It's nice to see." "And you like that?" she asked, "that I walk like a ... clown?" "You know," he smiled, "what you're really trying to do is get me to think that I'm insulting you when I'm not, to see if I'll try to recover somehow or try to explain it away. I said it that way on purpose, just to see you try to spring a trap that." She grinned at him. "Of course, what you're thinking is that I'm smarter than I look," he said, "But I don't think that I'd agree with you and you'd never say that anyway." That shut her up for a little while as she worked through it. But there was something that she wanted to get back to. "If we were on your world, ..." Ryan leaned back to lie on his side, looking at her as he propped himself up on one elbow. "Just as an example?" "Yes," she nodded. "Let's imagine that we are there then," he smiled, "Are we there as friends or acquaintances?" Seeing her nod, he said, "I think I know what you're trying to say. By now, the war - or whatever that was between Morgaron and Earth is likely over - at least I hope it is. It could have ended with three results: one or the other won a clear victory and has subjugated or destroyed the other - that's two ways, or someone with a brain decided that the two peoples have some things in common and can get along. In such a case, by now there likely is little about a couple of people - one of either kind - walking together or being seen in public that would seem remarkable in the least. But we're not there," he said, "so I don't have to worry about anyone stepping on your feet on the street because they weren't looking." "You would worry about that?" she asked. He chuckled, "I think you worry about too much. For the purpose of our example, let's just leave it at the point far back behind us where I said that I like your feet. I'm not even going to begin about your legs. That would take the rest of the afternoon." Now he had her a little confused. "Why?" she asked. "Well because they're long," he smiled. He was beginning to be able to tell her level of interest when she asked, "You think that my legs should be shorter?" "No, I like your legs," he said, "I'd just need more words, wouldn't I?" Besides remaining slightly confused, she laughed again, and Ryan decided that it had been worth stringing her along to be able to hear something like that. "Shouldn't you call the others so that they know that you are alright?" "There are no others," he said quietly as he leaned back on his hands, "I don't really know what happened, since I was in cryo, but most of the rest were killed, and the few that were left killed each other. When I woke up, there was only the pilot and I. She's still on the ship out there." The girl nodded, "I saw. You were standing there for a time. She meant something to you?" "A little," he admitted, "But it was a lot more than I meant to her. I was in the shuttle and she dropped me to lighten her load so she could leave without me." He looked at the stream and didn't say anything else. Taela felt the silence as a heavy thing, so she looked around. "I would have thought that it would take more than one to fly the craft that you landed in. So you are alone?" Ryan regarded her a little cautiously, seeing as she'd just told him that she'd seen his landing and wondering how, since he'd seen no one, but he nodded. "I guess I'm really talented. Actually, I just know where all of the controls are and I have a long reach. You?" "No," she shook her head, feeling a little more comfortable to know that there weren't nine more like him somewhere here. "I am here with you." He looked a little confused, wondering if he should have asked the whole thing. Maybe asking it as a single word carried the wrong connotation. "I meant --" "I know what you meant," she said, "There are others here, but not many. You are not in danger. Do you have a name? What are you called?" "Ryan," he said. She tried it and it always got split up somehow the first few times into 'Ry-anne'. He tried to help, holding out two fingers to bring them together as he said his name again. She had it the next try and repeated it to herself twice more. She pointed to herself, "Taela." He needed far more tries to get it right than she'd needed with his name. "So, if I have this right," Ryan said cautiously, remembering Morgaron naming structure, "You are Taela. It means hope?" He didn't know it, but he made a few points with that. "Yes, she nodded, impressed that he'd know this. Finally, her gaze fell on the water. "Do not move," she said with a little excitement in her voice. He wondered at the slightly hopeful sound, but she was gone, hidden and leaning forward. She shuffled forward slowly a little at a time until her toes were right at the water's edge. "These little things are good to eat," she said quietly over her shoulder. He was curious, but he didn't want to sit up to look, if she was hidden. He'd scare them off, whatever they were. He couldn't see her, but he did see the slight ripples when her fingers slipped into the water slowly. "They have delicate hearts," she said, "They die when you touch them, and they will not stay good for long at all. You must eat them right away, but they are so good." Her hands moved suddenly, and she came up with three. Bringing them back, he saw the black things that she'd been looking at in the jungle. She showed herself as she took one and bit off its head, spitting it out instantly. She put the rest in her mouth and chewed for a second, and then she had bliss written over her face. She bit the head from another and offered the rest to Ryan. He took it from her before she could feel badly or anything. Looking at it for a second, he decided that it couldn't possibly taste any worse than the combat meal, so he put it in his mouth. As soon as he bit it, he was amazed that something a little ugly like that could taste so good. He nodded, "This is fantastic. It tastes like something that's a delicacy where I'm from called caviar. Nobody can afford to buy enough of it for a taste. But I had an uncle who was pretty rich, and he bought a little for me once. What are they like if they're cooked?" She shook her head, "You cannot cook them, they will turn to bitter jelly then, and even so, you cannot even carry them, they do not last. Do you want the last one?" "Can we share?" he asked. Taela could never explain her next action to anyone. She couldn't even explain it to herself later on, but she had a slightly mischievous idea come into her head suddenly. She nodded and bit the head off the last fish. After spitting it out, she looked at Ryan a little challengingly, "My mother used to play a game with me when I was small because I wouldn't try these to even taste one. She would challenge me to take it from her. She knew that I have trouble in resisting a challenge. Come and take it if you are not only being polite, warrior, "she said as she put the last fish into her mouth, holding it there so that half of it stuck out like a black tongue. She nodded her head so that it would wiggle up and down, the way that her mother had teased her when she was little. He laughed and she giggled a little and beckoned to Ryan with her hand. Ryan leaned forward onto his hands and he stretched out to carefully take the rest of the fish from her mouth, making sure to touch his lips against hers as he did. He pulled back a little and chewed the offering, swallowing quickly. They smiled at each other for a moment, and then he kissed her softly one time, before he pulled back and smiled at her from where he sat. Taela was delighted and a little shocked. "The kiss was your thanks?" she asked. He nodded, feeling as though he was thirteen again, "Yeah. I like a challenge too. Besides, I'm out of sawdust rolls. Can we get more? I'd love to do that again." She shook her head, "We can, but it will not be good later." She was a little stuck for a moment, trying to come up with an explanation. She tried to tell him that too many would upset his digestion, but he told her that he had a strong stomach, which was not what she meant. Finally, she just blew a loud raspberry and he understood, laughing with her. Ryan noticed a few different kinds of small fish in the water. He reached into his pack and brought out the simple and rudimentary set of fishing gear and began to fish for them with a small bobber as they talked. Taela was fascinated and he tried to explain what fishing was like where he'd come from. "Things are different here then," she said, "there are things which can lie still until they are hungry, they simply will not move until then. It is better not to tempt them too much." He shook his head, "The idea is to tempt them to bite the hook. That's how you get the dinner that you might need." She nodded with a smile and watched as the little plastic worm hung suspended and drifted near to a pair of pebbles. A second later, something which looked like a cross between a fish and an alligator lunged and took the hook and everything. Ryan gasped as it turned and disappeared with the lure, the bobber and the rest of his little emergency fishing kit. Taela laughed until her tears ran. When she had a little control back, she grinned at Ryan and patted his rifle, "You should keep this close when you do this fishing." She chuckled and wiped the tears from her cheeks. After a moment, she leaned close to him. "You did not smell like this before," she said, sniffing near to him, "What has changed?" Ryan was a little embarrassed, but then he just shrugged. "I don't usually carry this many smells on me," he said, "Some of this is something to protect my skin from the sun, since I haven't been outside in any kind of sunlight for so long. It smells awful. I also put something on to repel the flies in the jungle. That smells worse. The rest," he sighed sheepishly, "is me, from sweating. I'm sorry if it offends you, Taela." She shook her head, leaning closer to sniff more, but after a noseful of repellent, she wrinkled her nose. Catching more of him near his shoulder, she moved onto her knees a little behind him. Her nose tickled his skin and he finally flinched when she began to sniff behind his ear. "This smell is you," she decided with her hand on his shoulder, "much better here." He watched her face come around into his view with a coy little smile. "You are a little fearless at least, to let a Morgarod slip behind you. Are you ready to move again?" He nodded, "But how do I get back to my ship? Where were those things in the air this morning? I didn't see them then." "They were there, some of them," she said, "They like to hunt when the sun warms the ground. It helps them fly. The large ones come out later. You are too big for the small ones in the morning." Ryan nodded, understanding about thermals of warm air rising from sun-heated ground. "I will lead you another way," she smiled at him and he found his own smile tagging along, "I will also show you a place where you can wash so you will smell the same everywhere." She led him to the opening in the mountain wall by the stream. Once they were inside, she told him to remain still until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. "I've got a flashlight in my pack someplace," he offered, but she said no. "In a little time," she said, standing just in front of him in the dark, "you can see by the light of the plants on the walls. You said you have known Morgarods before?" "One or two," he said, "the males who taught me to speak. I requested to learn." "Ah," she said quietly, "You wished to know your enemy, yes?" He nodded, "I guess you could say that. But I think it was more than that. I'd seen them when we fought. Everybody told us that they fought out of bloodthirstiness, but I didn't see it that way. I saw someONE in their eyes -- not just someTHING if that makes any sense. I saw that in every one of them that I was close enough to be able to see it. I had a feeling that they were more like us than we'd have ever cared to admit. I guess I volunteered to learn so that I could know if I was right. I never got much of a chance while we were trying to kill each other, and we'd seldom get close enough to see." She thought about it for a minute. "Well you have kissed one now," she said, "Is it true what they say? That we are frog people?" Ryan chuckled, "I thought that term was a pile of shit before I'd even seen a Morgarod. I don't know about your culture, Taela, but humans never outgrow our schoolyards in some ways. It's always 'us or them'. It's always cut down to a single choice to force us all to agree to something -- whatever it might be -- that is never so clear. They just try to make it sound as though it is clear. 'You're either with us, or you're one of them.' That's always the way that it ends up being phrased somehow, not matter what the group or the issue. It's never worked all that well on me." "Why?" she asked. "Well, for one thing," he smiled, "I was never the kind who could be bullied by that kind of thinking." He smiled and she saw it in the dim light. "I wasn't all that popular in the schoolyard." His eyes were growing accustomed to the low light level. He saw her standing so close to him. He knew that she was this close before. He'd felt the warmth of her body on his. Her right foot was against his boot, and he could sense her breasts just a little away from his skin. He relaxed his stance just a little and he could just feel one of her nipples touch against the top of his abdomen. She moved a little bit and the feeling was gone. But then it was back again, both nipples. He thought that he heard just about the softest sigh from her. It was barely audible, but he knew that he hadn't imagined it. Taela found his eyes to be a little unreadable at first when they came into view as her eyes adjusted. She didn't like the other smells on his body much, but she did like the one that she knew was his own. It was a little strong for the reason that he'd said, and she knew why that was. She had the same sweat glands that he did. But she found that she didn't mind it all that much and she'd show him where he could get this strange body of his clean. It wasn't all that strange, she'd decided, and she did like his smell, just not this much, this close, but it wasn't bad. Taela found a thought in her mind that there really wasn't all that much wrong with him after all, and she now wanted to learn how to be a friend to a human if that were possible. She had a fleeting thought about how he might be to hunt with, but she pushed the thought away after a second. They didn't know each other well enough to be a hunting pair. But it was a nice thought, she decided as she lifted her hand to touch his chest. Ryan gasped as he felt her wide fingerpads begin to slide over his pectoral muscle experimentally. It took him a whole half a second to decide that he liked the feeling. He saw her eyes looking up at him, and in light like this, any woman's eyes would seem larger, if she was trying to say something with them. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 03 He didn't know if it was the same for Morgarods, but he was beginning to really hope that it might be. Taela's eyes looked huge and so soft like this. She pulled her hand downward a little to where her motion had begun before she lifted her fingers from him and he watched her bring them to her mouth to taste them a little. "Nothing in this place but you," she smiled a little, "no spray for flies. Just Ryan," she shrugged with a smile. She felt herself smile as she raised her arms to his neck. Taela couldn't help it. She lifted herself up a little higher on her wide feet. His eyes didn't look as though they were quite so close together now, she thought. They looked just about right to her now. It was the strangest thing, how he could change himself from something so cold and powerful-looking to something like this, warm and so inviting to her. She pulled her arms a little tighter around his neck in response to how his body felt against hers. It was all muscle and bone, hard places, mostly, but it yielded to hers in the right places, she thought -- at least they sure felt right to her. She was wondering just how they'd gotten to this so quickly. She was a little frightened, because she knew that she was a complete and utter virgin at the magic of interaction between two adults. Taela was painfully aware that she didn't know a thing about how it was supposed to go. She wasn't a virgin sexually, other than she hadn't had a male there, but functionally, well, ... her bed toy had claimed that honor long ago after her mother had given it to her as she and her father were about to leave to go hunting for food. But Taela decided that there were no others here for either of them, and he made her feel good to be near him, and he seemed to like to be near her. She didn't think that she'd be like her mother in something like this, but she was beginning to find that he helped that feeling of hers, and of course, he caused new ones at the same time. "Trying to get to know your enemy?" he whispered. She heard it just as she was losing the fight to keep her mouth closed. In spite of herself, she felt her mouth open and her tongue slid out to lick his collarbone and the flesh just above that. When she caught herself and pulled it back in, the taste of him was incredible to her senses. She felt as though her knees were weakening and she had to put a lot into forcing them to hold her up. "My ... enemy?" she whispered, remembering how only the previous evening she'd thought of him as one of the hated ones. It didn't seem possible to her now. She lifted her head to look at him. No matter how she tried, her mouth formed a little smile anyway as she found herself actually feeling that slightly crooked little smile on his face. "I really hope not," he heard her whisper as she closed the last of the distance between them and her lips were on his. The joy that she felt was amazing. The way that it felt to hear his quiet groan made her heart feel as though it was loose inside her chest and fluttering. She groaned in answer, though it wasn't what she'd thought to do, and that felt good to her as well. She felt his large and strong hands with the thin fingers on her skin and there surely couldn't possibly be a better feeling than that. Until those hands which now felt so much stronger moved so that his arms could hold her and she felt herself pulled against that body. Amazingly, those hard places on him felt just fine and the parts that yielded to her body as he held her against him felt even better. Her breasts were telling her that they'd found their true purpose in life and it was to be crushed against that chest. What her mother had told her came to mind as she felt something else against her, though it was under a layer of his clothing. She found her body moving of its own accord so that what she felt was closer to where she wanted it. This was about as far as she'd allow, though she wanted more. Taela decided that this would be good enough for the day that she'd met him. There were so many other things which needed finding out about him, but it was enough for now. There might not be anyone else for her on this whole world, but it didn't matter to Taela. This one would be plenty and she wanted more than anything else to get to know him. She wanted to see him in the light now. She wanted to hear more of the way that he laughed and watch the slow way that he smiled. She needed to see if he had it in him to care for her beyond this. Since she wasn't an adolescent, she had the wisdom to even have her next thought. She really hoped that he could be a good hunter for more than the provision of their food. She suddenly realized that she was hopeful that she'd found a mate for her after all of this time and the thought of it just blew her away. She knew this was too much for her to process and it was too fast. But, ... He felt her smile as they kissed and traded soft sighs in the darkness, lit by the thin, pale light from the walls around them. He didn't know it, and she willed her face back to the task at hand a second later, but Taela had wanted to laugh then. Her mother was right. It really does grow more. Taela pulled away a little and smiled, "Have you decided?" Ryan looked at her in the pale glow of the passageway in confusion and it made her chuckle. Speaking to her in Morgaron was a little taxing, but he was getting used to it as it came back to him. He'd had no chance to use the language since leaving the service, and not much even before since his lessons. She felt so good in his arms, and he couldn't help the way that his hands moved over her back of their own volition. He didn't know it, but she was fighting off the need to shiver in pleasure. "What should I decide?" he asked a little carefully. It made her chuckle more, though Ryan could tell that she was growing nervous about it. "Well now you have kissed a Morgarod for a time. I was thinking of asking you if you liked it," she said, as she pulled one of her arms free and moved her hair back behind one ear. "I can say that I have enjoyed kissing a human." "I am amazed," he said quite honestly, as he caught what he believed to be her slightly hopeful expression, "And I -- " He paused, knowing that he wanted to be careful with his words here. He moved his hand to touch her cheek. "Morgaron is not my mother tongue," he said, "Between humans, it would be correct -- if it is truth -- for me to say that I loved it. In Morgaron, the expression is absurd. I liked it very much, Taela." "I understand the difference," she smiled up at him, "If it is truth, then you may say it. I will not misinterpret it." He sighed in a bit of relief as he nodded, "Then I loved it. I have never been kissed like that." Her smile became even warmer and he felt the way that a little of her hair moved to hold itself against his hand. He'd never felt anything like that either. To Taela, it carried the meaning of what he'd said, in the way that she knew that he meant it, but being what she was, the other meaning came to her as well, and it was something of a pleasant thing to feel. She looked into his eyes for a moment. "We should go on," she said. He released her reluctantly and he felt a little coolness on his other hand as her hair released it as well. He hadn't even been aware that the ends of her long mane had curled around his other hand, but now that it was gone, he found himself missing the sensation. She slid her arms from him and took his forearm in her hand, since hand-holding carried connotations as well, and she hoped that he knew that. Besides, she thought, she didn't know how their hands would fit like that, though she supposed that they would. She'd held her mother's hand and walked with her with their fingers intertwined when she was much younger. "Where are we going?" he asked. "In the general direction of your ship in a little time," she said, "but I promised you a place to wash. I need that as well, now that I wear your stink on me." The comment snapped his head around, but he found her smiling at him. His shocked look caused her to laugh, and in the long passageway, the echo sounded like that of a young girl. "A joke," she said, "I obviously do not mean it." The passageway was one of several which passed through the mountain, leading off in several directions. Taela's father had shown them to her mother long ago and when asked, he'd had no answer for it, other than perhaps they'd been formed during the volcanic activity which had created the mountain. But over time, they'd found traces which indicated that others had lived there once a long time ago. ------------------------------- Standing at the other end of this particular passage a long way away, Taela's mother turned to listen to a sound which she hadn't heard in a long, long while. She tried without much success to think of when it had been that she'd heard her daughter laugh like that. She stepped closer to the opening and began to listen. Other than quiet conversation, she couldn't make much out, but she knew that her daughter had to be speaking with someone, and there was only the one possibility, she hoped. She stepped away from the opening and walked away. ------------------- They walked on a little in silence until he spoke. "I wish to ask things," he said after a time, using the correct term. "Ask them," she replied with a nod. "You mentioned that you wish to save your clothing for when it is cold. You also said that those large animals have no interest in us at this time of year. What -- "he sought the phrase, "what was your meaning? It gets cold here?" "There is a cold time to the year, "she said. "But I was walking in jungle," he said, "Jungles don't grow where it gets very cold." "It gets cold here," she replied, "The jungle stops growing then, like it fears to draw a breath and waits. Some plants die, others only wait. The other forests, like where we were sitting do this as well." "How long does it last?" he asked, "This doesn't happen on Earth. There are forests like where we were, and where they are, the cold time comes. But where jungle grows, it's not cold then." "It doesn't happen on Morgaron either, I'm told," she said, "but this isn't either of those places. It happens here, Ryan." He thought about it and tried to imagine what that must be like in a jungle. He'd been in a few during his travels, but none of them had a cold winter. "The animals," he began. "Some leave," she said, "most stay and others come. The large ones where we were have no interest in us now, unless you annoy them. When it is cold, they do not like us. We hunt them then. We need them for food and we need their skins for warmth." "So you wear fur clothing then?" She nodded, "It must be," she said, "There is nothing else to wear." She heard him chuckle and she stopped. "What amuses you?" "Ahh," he said, rolling his eyes at his own thoughts, "you said it so well with only three words. Humans are strange. I had a thought of you in my mind wearing a fur bikini -- which really is absurd, since it wouldn't keep you warm at all. It would give me warm thoughts, though." "What is this word?" she asked, "What does it mean?" "It's a couple of pieces of clothing for females, not very large, and you wear one piece over your, ..." He gave up and just pointed, drawing the approximate size in the air with his fingers over her in the right places. To his amazement, she understood at least a little. "Other than one purpose for the bottom piece," she said, "I see no need for it. Why do human females wear such things?" Before he could answer, she decided to ask her mother about it. To him, she just looked with a smirk and repeated herself, "Humans are strange." "Yes," he agreed. "Especially the males, if there is the meaning to it that I think there might be," she said. "Especially the males," he smiled, and she laughed a little as she began to walk again. Their path wasn't uniform, and though the floor under their feet was fairly smooth, the width and the height varied. They came to a part which narrowed down and Ryan pulled back to allow Taela free passage, but she held his arm so that she was next to him. "There is room," she said. He wondered about it, but he didn't complain, since it forced them to walk with their thighs brushing against each other a little. He liked that, but he became a little fearful in case he stepped on her feet with his combat boots. He drew back again and she stopped. "There is room," she repeated. "And if I step on your foot?" he asked, "How would you like me then?" "Oh," she said, considering. She shrugged and began to lead him, letting go of his arm. Ryan liked this a lot better he decided, as he watched her backside move. But a thought came into his mind finally, and it was a little insistent. Morgarods have expressions and mannerisms to use in their conversations with each other. Some of them confused humans, since they didn't necessarily mean the same thing to both species. Ryan had never seen a Morgarod shrug. He remembered the first time that he'd done it while he was being taught. The male teaching him wondered if he was distracted by a fly on his shoulder or something like that. And there was something else, beside the way that she looked a little different. From what she'd said earlier, he deduced that she'd never been to Morgaron. "Were you born on a Morgaron mining post?" he asked. "No," she said, "I was born here. I have never been anywhere else." "How could you come to know the difference in what is meant if I say that I love something?" He asked. She stopped and turned to look at him. She pushed him back gently so that he stood with his backpack against the wall in the narrow space as she closed the slight gap between them. "I really hope that it doesn't make that much difference to you," she said in perfect English, other than what he took to be a very slight Texas drawl in it as she reached up to touch his ear and his cheek, "But I'm only half-Morgarod." She stood on her clawed toes as she stretched up to kiss him once in case it did make a large difference. "My mother is human," she said, "I just take after my father a lot more, is all." Ryan stood there transfixed. She could have pushed him over with a feather, and the look on his face caused her to laugh again. "You don't mind, do you, Ryan? Please tell me that you don't." "Why would I mind?" he asked as he slid his arms around her waist to kiss her again. She wanted to sigh, but before she could manage that, she found his tongue sliding into her mouth. She groaned as she felt his tongue slide over hers and then she responded in the more Morgarod way of doing this. Ryan found himself aroused again as she pressed herself against him and he learned that her tongue was another part of her which favored her father. "Uh, what were we talking about again?" He asked, a little dazed-looking. Taela kissed him again, though a lot more lightly. They broke the kiss before things became too urgent between them. Taela looked into his brown eyes and smiled a little happily for a second. "I'll take that as a no, then," she chuckled. She hissed quietly in a bit of discomfort and pulled away, looking at Ryan as she touched his cheek again. "This prickles my face." Ryan nodded, "I didn't think that I'd want to shave," he smiled with a bit of embarrassment, "I thought there was nobody else here -- and it sounds ridiculous when I say it that way. I'd have never thought that there was somebody here, never mind somebody who would ever get this close to me. I'm sorry. I'll fix this the first chance I get." "I think it's alright," she smiled, "Maybe I can get used to it." "Not this short," he said, "Either when it's longer or shaved off completely, but like this..." Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 04 ***There's always the point where a man has to, ... I mean uh, ... gets to meet the parents. Remember that this has gone on in a single freaking day. They both know that they're needy. They just seem to be on a roller-coaster made of it and it presents some interesting moments of introspection. Taela comes off sounding a little immature or at least very young in this chapter. In fact, it's because she's had no one, though inside of her, she's really hoping for something magical to happen between Ryan and her. In human terms, she's about 28, long on hope and painfully short on experience by her own admission. Oh, and there are some reeeaaally odd things about her family, just saying. 0_o **** ---------------- He stared all around him at intervals of a few seconds as she led him down a gently sloping hillside. They were inside a volcanic crater on the back side of the mountain, below and out of sight of the flat peak. He hadn't seen any of this when he'd landed. It was very warm and a little humid. The black soil of the crater supported countless forms of plant life. It took him a couple of minutes to notice some details. Their feet crunched in the loose particulate which made up the soil, but every once in a while, they made no noise as they walked, and looking down, he saw that there were pathways here through and around the vegetation. What he noticed after that was that he could see groups of plants, in bunches which looked a little orderly to him. "This looks like a garden," he said. "It is, "she nodded, "in many ways. We care for what is here, and remove what is not wanted or what chokes the plants that are wanted. In return, we have this place to enjoy all year. There's heat from the volcano, and a spring and stream. The water is warm and that helps the plants to grow. Look up," she said, and he watched her raise her face smiling to the rim and the sky above. When he did, he saw the meshing of countless wires across the opening of the rim. The spacing allowed the small birds and the insects to pass through fairly freely, but nothing large could enter. "My father made this roof," she said, "It keeps things out which shouldn't be here. It took him years, but this place feeds us in winter. We always have fresh greens to eat because of this. Even if it's howling outside and laying down enough snow to cause half the jungle to fall down, it's warm here, and the snow that falls just melts before it hurts anything. If you look, you'll see that the plants which like the most sun are arranged in a long wide line. That is where the sunlight follows for most of the year. Here's your place to wash," she said, "I'll be back in a few minutes. I've got some things to do before I forget." "What about the others?" he asked. "You're safe here, Ryan," she smirked, "A warrior like you? I think you worry too much." She walked away with a chuckle. He looked at the ledge on the rock face above him and saw the steam rise from the hot spring there. The water fell from that in a thick cascade to a pool before it wound away out of his sight as a warm stream with wisps of fog rising from it. A look around showed him that he was alone, so he took off the rest of his clothing and stepped in. It was all that he could do not to groan in pleasure. ------------------ Taela found her mother on her way back to the crater. "Why are you wearing that?" she asked. "I heard you coming up the passageway from the stream outside, and I was pretty sure that you weren't talking to yourself. It's alright to be running around without anything on while there's just us here, but if I might be seen by a human, then I want to wear something, at least. Humans are just like that with each other, I can't just hide myself like you can. I don't think that you ought to, by the way. I'd really hate the thought of you suddenly developing the shame that humans have always had about their bodies and from a practical side, there's no real need for clothes here at this time of year, and we'd only be wearing out the little that we have left." Her mother grinned as they whispering while they watched Ryan shower in the cascade. Taela related what had happened. "Well that's my girl," she smiled, "I tell you to go have a look, and you come back with what's just got to be the best one. He's something, honey, I'll give you that. You picked out a cutie." "It wasn't a choice," Taela chuckled, "He's all there is. The others are all dead. He landed the craft by himself. There was only the pilot alive on the main ship when it crashed. He says that she tried to leave him here. I wanted to ask you something. He has writing on his face -- little letters right here," she said, pointing to her own cheekbone. "It's only on one side, but I saw the same thing on his arm, the same small size. It's hard to read, and there are tiny symbols too. Here," she whispered as she drew what she remembered in the dirt with her finger, "I think this is what I saw. I can read human as you taught me, but this makes no sense to me." Her mother looked and nodded, "It makes sense," she said. "He's a soldier alright. They mark their ground forces this way so they'll know who they were when they're dead. It'll be on his body in a few places. His left cheekbone and his left arm, as you saw, and likely there'll be another one at least on his right leg." "Why so many places?" her daughter asked. "In case he gets blown up with some others and they have to figure out what part belongs to which body," her mother said. "I was never a part of that part of the service, so I never got that. I guess they must have figured that when somebody like me crashes, the pieces tend to be too small to leave ID tattoos on." "He has three names, "she said, "That's normal for humans. His name is Ryan McCallum and his middle name begins with a B. It might be Bertram or Barton or something like that. The rest is his blood type and his serial number. If he can fly that shuttle, then I'd guess that he's a warrant officer at least, or he'd never have been allowed near the front of that big bird to even see the controls, never mind learn to fly it. By what you have here, he's a little above that, since he's a chief warrant officer -- or he was once. If you say that he's handy with a battle rifle, then he was a line trooper once and he transitioned to flight training. It shows that he's got more than just rocks in his head and can probably count down from a hundred backwards," she smiled. "He can speak Morgaron," her daughter said, "He took lessons in the war to learn because he wanted to." "Do you like him?" she asked Taela. "Him?" her daughter asked, before making a dismissive little snort as she put up a proud front. When her mother said nothing in reply, Taela looked over and shrugged with a little grin as her shoulders slumped a little, "Yes. I can't help it. I want to say what they say in those stories that you always read to me, about how I've never met anyone like him, the way that it sounds so silly in those books." The older woman chuckled, "Well it's true, isn't it?" Taela nodded and they both knew why. "What can I do to help, honey?" The older woman asked, "Do you want me to make an appearance? Talk to him? Invite him to dinner, or just hide?" "I do not know," her daughter replied, "What is a bi-bik, ... a bikini?" Her mother stared for a moment, "Where in the world did that come from?" "He mentioned the word twice," Taela said, "as a joke, I think." ----------------------- Ryan didn't think that he was particularly stressed, but from the good that this was doing him, he surmised that there sure must have been something building up in him. Well, he thought, it's a little hard to wake up out of cryo, find everything messed up beyond belief in a place where normal carries the soundtrack of the average tomb. Add to that a pilot who might have gone cracked, a crew who'd been ghosted by somebody, and an off-course condition pulling the whole thing down into oblivion with not a peep out of the alarm system -- the very same system that he was supposed to check and that had worked and tested out flawlessly for the six years that they'd tested it. He smelled a rat, but wasn't sure who it might have been, not that it changed anything. Then to get dumped here on a world where things either didn't much care or they were wanting to eat you or at least scream at you in the darkness. That might add a bit, he reasoned. And then there was Taela. He shook his head as he stood up to his waist under the stream of very warm water. This was looking as though it might get interesting pretty soon. He tried, but for the life of him, Ryan couldn't come up with a reason why somebody like him could ever deserve something like this. He knew that he liked her, and was about to wonder why he did -- as much as he quite obviously did. It came to him that he'd liked Morgarod females from the very first one that he'd laid eyes on. That didn't make much sense and he knew it -- he'd just liked them. The circumstances were beyond awful then; given what was going on at that base when they'd attacked it, but other than feeling the horror of what had been there, he'd found that he liked the way that they looked. Something brushed against his calf and Ryan froze, looking down. There was something there, but then it seemed to be gone and he felt nothing. He wondered what sort of life form could survive in the almost hot water here to make it a home. It didn't make sense and he wondered if it had just been a plant, one of the ones bobbing at the edge of the pool and the steam. Maybe something had come loose and been swept downstream or something. He felt it again, this time against his knee, but with the turbulence in the water from the cascade and the mist which rose from the surface here it was impossible to see what was going on. He lunged for the edge to get out, but found himself under water. Ryan fought off the sense of panic which came to him as he tried to get his head above the warm water. As he did, he felt something just brush against his genitals for a second before whatever it was squeezed there gently for an instant. He planted his feet on the bottom and scrabbled to the edge, his hand reaching down. There was nothing now. He pulled himself out and looking back, he saw something rather large move downstream under the surface, but that was all the information that came to his vision. He thought of the creature which had made off with his fishing gear. Ryan's head spun around when he heard her laughter. A little way off downstream, he saw a section of ripples which didn't seem to fit with the rest, as though they'd been cut and pasted into the scene. "Only me," she smiled as she faded chuckling into view. Ryan let out the breath that he'd seemed to have been holding. He felt a little lost as he looked at her, so different, and yet a little familiar. Now that he knew, he could see a little more human in her, though she was by far much closer to a Margaroth. He sat down on a flat rock at the edge of the stream. "What is wrong?" Taela asked, misinterpreting his expression. "Nothing," he said as he began to smile, "I guess that I'm just a little blown away." She rose out of the water to stand up and approach him, but she stopped when his mouth fell open. "Something is wrong," she guessed, but he shook his head. "No," he smiled, "nothing's wrong. I can't believe what's happened to me, that's all." She felt her relief as a palpable thing. "I was afraid that I'd done something wrong. I only wanted a little fun. Now I see that it would have shocked you. I didn't think about it from the other side," she said as she waded over to him. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked at his face, wondering now why she'd seemed to have found so many faults there earlier. "I don't know if you can understand, but I've never had any sort of a friend. To find you was a surprise, and I'm a little afraid to say or do the wrong thing." She'd done her best to change what she'd wanted to say -- that it had been a surprise to see him looking as he did, when she'd seen only pictures of weakened prisoners. To find that he knew something of Morgaron speech, and that he obviously liked her were huge surprises for which she had no words. "Don't worry about it too much," Ryan smiled, "I'm just happy." He placed his hands on her hips and pulled her a little closer. "I guess that I'm expecting to wake up out of cryo any time now and find that I've imagined you." He leaned forward, sliding his hand to one of her breasts to caress it as he kissed it and felt her hands on his head as a sigh escaped her throat. Her skin tasted so good to him. "You should put your pants and boots on," she said with a lot of regret in her voice, "I don't want to stop, but I'm confused and many other things as well. My mother wishes to meet you." "Oh crap," he said, pressing his face against the swell of her bosom, "I knew this little dream couldn't go on forever." "There is something wrong now?" she asked. "No," he sighed, as he pulled his head back after a last kiss against her breastbone, "I'm trying not to think of how much I feel like I did when I was a kid. Meeting a girl's parent's," he groaned, "always a treat." She stepped away and Ryan got to his feet to get dressed. She tried not to look too interested, but she did notice that he had to be a little careful when he closed his pants. "Can I ask you something, Ryan?" "Yeah, "he said, "ask me whatever you want to, " he said as he looked over. "I feel foolish, but that," she nodded, "does that mean that you were hopeful to mate with me, or that you were preparing to? I don't know much about human males. You're the only one that I've ever seen, other than from some pictures." He chuckled, feeling a little self-conscious, "No, Taela, it doesn't. It means that I like you and I was feeling that. That's all that it means. What you saw was just my body reacting to yours being near to me. It happened all by itself, and there wasn't a thought to it, really." He grinned, "I think I understand what you're saying, though. I'll just say that if you like the idea, then you can take it as a compliment. It means that I like you on a physical level, how's that?" She tilted her head a little, "So it means that I am attractive to you?" It made him laugh to hear it like that, "Yes," he said, "It means that you're very attractive to me, though maybe it's not the best sort of way to offer the compliment, and I didn't do that for that purpose. It just happens to human males. A lot of the time, it's not what we'd want to happen, or it's not the right time or place for it, or sometimes we have a thought, even when we're alone and it happens, or, ..." he shrugged, "it just happens for no reason at all. I don't have much conscious control over that. But just now, it was because I like you and you were against me." He frowned for a second and then looked at her, "Was that a good answer?" She nodded with a smile, "Somewhere in there, it was. I heard what I wanted to hear," she said honestly, knowing no other way to say it. "I am attractive to you, enough at least." He swung his pack on and picked up his rifle, "Enough, huh?" She looked up and he just couldn't understand the conversation from the viewpoint of any conversation that he'd ever had with a female before. Just for the innocence that slipped by the front that she was trying to affect, he wanted to hug her right off her feet. "It is not enough? "she asked, suddenly a little confused. It made him laugh as he placed his ball cap onto her head. She looked out from underneath the peak with a smile as he nodded, "Come on, Taela, take me where I have to go now. It's enough to make my knees weak just to look at you." ------------------------ Taela led Ryan up the slope and into a different corridor. After some twists and turns in the steadily rising hall, he was ushered into a long chamber. To him, it seemed more like a gallery, a long hall with rather crudely shaped walls and along one side, there were windows set at irregular intervals through which the afternoon daylight poured in. There was furniture, some tables and chairs here and there, some of them upholstered and some bare, all of it well-made, though a touch rustic, as though it had been fashioned more out of a desire for function rather than form, though the simplicity and unsophisticated nature of it was the form or theme all on its own. It was all well-made and sturdy, it just wasn't fancy. At the opposite end near a doorway, stood two forms. The smaller one, about five feet in height, looked to be a bit of a demonic thing with clawed feet and hands, sand-colored rough skin and a worried expression on its face. It was watching Taela with a friendly though worried expression because of her proximity to Ryan. When it looked at Ryan, it looked really worried and seemed to be trying to get the other person's attention. That other person was a tall female human, about five feet ten inches or maybe a little more. She stood with her back to Ryan as she looked out through one of the windows. She seemed to be ignoring the efforts of the smaller one. Ryan noted that she had quite a figure, standing in old-looking and faded jeans, wearing a scuffed and ancient-looking flight jacket with many patches sewn onto the back and sleeves. Her long straight hair was almost white. Ryan wondered if he ought to clear his throat to get her attention. "That's a hell of a bird I've got standing out there on my terrace," she said, not looking back. "Very impressive entrance you made yesterday too, Mr. McCallum." The woman turned and walked to Ryan with a smile. He could see a lot of Taela's features in that lovely face. "I'm Betty Rawlins, Captain, 134th Exploration and Mapping Wing. Well," she smiled, "I used to be. A long time ago, I ended up here and I met Taela's father. He called me Ru'Bett. I used to like that, back then," she smiled for a second. "But he's been dead for a while now and I'm back to being Betty in my head. Of course, I've always been 'Mom' to Taela," she smiled at her daughter warmly. Ryan stepped forward and shook the offered hand, "Ryan McCallum," he smiled, "as I guess you already know. I got some mapping data from a beacon as I got close to here yesterday. Whose beacon was that?" Betty seemed surprised, "That old thing still works?" "Yes," Ryan nodded, "It's not very strong, but the data sure helped. If you don't mind my asking, - "He looked a little uncomfortable. Betty smiled, "How is it possible that a twenty-five year-old mapping probe ship pilot crashed on this rock eighty-three years ago -- in earth time - and is still alive all this time later?" She shrugged, "Damned if I know. I guess all that I can offer you is to say that I sure hope that we can get along. You won't last long in that tin can out there." She turned to the creature who was peeking out at Ryan from behind her with a smile, "Hey, come and meet Ryan." The thing looked very shy and worried about being too close to something so tall, from his point of view, but after a few seconds of uncertainty and a little quiet coaxing from Betty, he emerged and stood beside her. She put her arm over his small shoulder so that he'd stay put. "This is Shorty," she said, "He's a screecher. He's one of the thousands who would eventually smell your blood right through the skin of that shuttle out there. It would take them a while, I'll grant you, but they would get through to you one night." "Are they after blood or something like that?" Ryan asked as he looked at Shorty. The face wasn't pretty if you looked at it from a human view and applied the points of reference which humans use for this. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 04 But there was a look to it which Ryan found that he could admire. He supposed that back on earth, there were species of sharks which might be called beautiful in their way. Shorty was like that as he stood with his smile on and ... the mouth was full of teeth which spoke of a predatory nature. A pair of dark eyes with yellow centers regarded him nervously. Betty shook her head. "They're just hungry," Taela said, "They're strictly nocturnal, though Shorty is used to the daylight through the windows and he can stand being outside on a dark day for a few hours." "What's he doing here?" Ryan asked, watching the way that the screecher kept looking him over. "He's a prisoner here like the rest of us, in a way," Betty replied, "He broke his wing, and he can't go home unless he walks. His kind lives in trees and he knows that they'd kill him in a heartbeat as soon as they see that he's damaged. They're like seagulls back on Earth in that regard. They kill the weakest of their own kind. I guess you could say that he's like a pet. They're not all that bright," she said, "but Shorty's a lot smarter than the rest. His looks aren't all that representative of his kind, either. By the way, don't mind the way that he's staring. He's a little freaked out by your size, is all. He's very shy, almost like a girl." Seeing Ryan's look made Betty laugh, "Ok, I oughta explain that a little. There's not much of a society to it, but among screechers, the females are dominant, mostly because they're larger and stronger. They're also pretty murderous. Shorty's actually a bit large for his kind, but he couldn't hold his own against a female screecher in a fight. The males know their place if they want to live a little longer, so they tend to be submissive. Shorty is more submissive than what's normal, since he's had his own troubles. He likes to hunt the little things that get in here once in a while and we keep him fed and happy. He's very thankful and devoted, which really surprised me. We'd love it if you'd stay for dinner, and I think that Shorty's cooking will surprise you. They don't do anything like that normally, but not long after I took him in, he just picked that up like it was nothing. He doesn't understand human speech too well as far as details go, but he understands the feeling and the intent really well. The point is, that I'd recommend that you don't sleep out there again. We've got loads of room and we lock down tight at night." "That's very hospitable of you, Betty," Ryan said, "but --" Betty shook her head, "Look Ryan, I'm gonna try to spell this out for you as plainly as I can. We can live here. There's food and game to feed us, lots of it. I've been here forever, and just so you know, unless that thing out there's got big-assed thrusters and the fuel cells to feed them, you aren't leaving here either. You stay in your bird out there, and they'll beat it to a wreck in three days trying to get to you. They'll be through the skin in five at the outside. You might be able to find places to hunker down in like everything else around here at night, but one night they'd find you. That's what they do to stay alive. If you value that shuttle out there, you'll also see that it's practical to stay here. With you in it, the screechers will die as they beat it apart to get the prize inside," she pointed to him, "If you're in here, they'll leave the ship alone. I hate to break it to you, but unless you've got some kind of allergy to Morgarods, you could have a pretty good life with my daughter here -- and I can see that the two of you are already sweet on each other in just hours. What's there to fight here?" She looked at them both, seeing that she'd managed to embarrass them. "I'm sorry if I didn't say it better," she said in a much softer tone, "but that's the way it is. I can see that you're not an idiot, Ryan. That shuttle out there tells me that, and while I can't read them from here, the list of campaign markings down your left arm tells me that you've learned how to fight and stay alive when it hits the fan. My little family here could use a man like you. Unless you're an asshole and a fool, ..." she said leaving it in the air between them. Her eye had been on his survival pack for a while. Seeking to make the others a little less uncomfortable now, she smiled, "Does that thing on your back have survival gear in it? "Do they still pack any instant coffee in them? Any tea bags in there?" she asked a little hopefully. "Yeah," Ryan nodded, "All the crap you can lug around, hoping that you'll find a use for it before you ditch everything and wish that you hadn't later on, why?" "Oh, because I'd about sell my soul for some of that," she chuckled, "if I've even still got one to sell." "It's in here someplace, "Ryan grinned a little, "along with the other little vices of mankind, a really cheap little disposable lighter and a pack of six cigarettes." "Cigarettes?" Betty moaned in joy, "Ryan, you sweet, handsome boy, marry me." She looked at Taela's shocked face with a chuckle, "Just ah, kidding, honey." ---------------------- Taela stared up into the shuttle as the loading ramp whined down. "Come on," he smiled as he led her onto it to walk inside. "Ryan?" she said, her voice sounding uncertain, "I'm sorry for my mother's words. I could tell that she embarrassed you." She rolled her eyes, "I know they embarrassed me." "It's ok," he said as they walked up, "I get the feeling that your mother is the kind that says it like it is, and since she was a military pilot, that would come out even more. I'm used to that. It was just the subject matter of the sermon that got me, I guess. Facts are facts, and have to be faced." "I meant about what she said about us," she groaned a little, "I know that humans and Morgarods have needs for others. I'm both, aren't I? But I don't want you to think that you have to -- MMmmpf." Her voice changed to a soft sigh as she stood in his arms, yielding to his kiss for a minute. He pulled back and smiled. "Stop," he said ,"I'm not upset or unhappy. I don't care what your mother said or the way that she said it. I like you. If we weren't here, I'd still like you. If Morgarods and humans have found a way to live together and we were there, I'd still want to know you. Your mom was just being really blunt about it all." Her relief showed in her face after a moment and she began to smile, "I would still be attractive to you there?" "Hell," he kissed her again, "yeah. I've never met anyone like you. Come on, let's get this stuff out of here." Taela smiled to herself, wondering if Ryan had read the same sort of books to have used those words. There were four other survival packs in total. Ryan helped her shuck one on and grinned as she wobbled a little on her feet from the weight, never having anything like that to deal with from the way that it affected her balance until she adjusted to it. "Are you ok with that?" he asked. She nodded, "It is different, just lower down than I am used to," she said, "I am used to carrying meat on my shoulders when I've, ... hun ... ted." There it was, she thought, that idea again. She looked down at the checkerplate pattern of the floor sections. She didn't want to look at him for the moment until she could force the thought away. "What's the matter?" he asked, seeing that something was. "Nothing," she said, "I just need a moment to get the balance here." Taela was fine a second later. "Would you do something for me?" she asked as they turned to walk back out. Ryan had a pack on himself, and he was carrying some clothing that he'd removed from a pair of lockers. "Sure," he said, "what do you need?" She chuckled a little nervously, "Nothing," she replied, "but if you get a chance, I think that you should ask my mother about hunting here. I can't, ... I can't say what I would wish to say, and I do not want to say more. Sometime, can you ask her?" "Yeah," he said, wondering now. They made a few trips back and forth before Ryan motioned for her to sit in the co-pilot's seat while he checked a few things. She looked around in wonder. Ryan caught it as he worked, and he turned on the head's-up display for her. Taela gasped as she saw things; symbols and text and mapping there on the inside of the windscreen. Ryan smiled, "I'm going to have to come back here tomorrow and light off the APU for a little while to top up the batteries a little." She nodded absently as the display disappeared and she was looking through a blank windshield again and the covers slid up to cover everything up. "Come on," he said, "Let's go make your mom happy." Betty gasped in happiness when she saw it all. "God-DAMN," she laughed, "Honest to God flightsuits! Oh, I'm in heaven," she said, "I wouldn't give you a nickel for the finest Earth fashions anywhere, compared to these." "I've got two of mine," Ryan said, "and the other pilot and my co-pilot were about the same size. I'm sure these would fit you. The other co-pilot was about Taela's size, maybe a bit taller." "What are these?" Taela asked, "Why are you so happy, Mom?" "They're just flightsuits," Betty smiled, "but they're perfect for here," she said, holding up one of the earth tone garments. "They've got a million pockets, and they're just right for when it's not this hot around here. Thank you so much, Ryan." When he began to lay out the contents of the four survival packs, Betty thought that she'd gone to Heaven. He pushed one of the PDW's toward her, "You know how to use one of these?" he asked. "Honey," she said, emphasizing her background in her manner of speech, "I'm an old girl from Texas. What the hell do you think?" she winked. She took the stubby rifle, picked up a magazine, looking at the round which she could see in it for a second, before she fitted it and then removed it right afterward. She held it up and looked through the sight for a second. "Some kind of 5.56mm round and a Tritium reflex sight," she said. Pointing to a feature on it, she looked at Ryan, "Cocking handle?" He nodded and pointed to the safety. "Shorty!" Taela said, seeing the creature cowering in the corner whimpering softly. "Oh, Shorty," Betty said, setting the weapon down to go to him. She sank to her knees and reached out to caress the frightened face, "Oh, I'm sorry, Shorty," she said softly, "Nobody's going to hurt you, baby. It's ok, honey." The creature looked up at Betty from behind the arm that he'd raised in front of his face. Betty leaned in and kissed him softly. Shorty looked as though he got the idea that his number wasn't up yet and a second later, he was in her arms as she hugged him tightly. Ryan noticed that he was crying with his eyes squeezed shut over her shoulder while she tried to reassure him. "Come on, honey," Betty said as she pulled him to his feet. He hugged himself tightly to her for a moment, "Let's go see how your fine dinner is coming along." She turned to Ryan and her daughter, "We'll be back in a minute," she said as she led the sniffling creature from the chamber. "He is terrified of any sort of thing which he thinks might be a weapon," Taela said quietly. "I saw him just now. He was fine and curious about everything that you have brought. All of the screechers that I have ever seen are stupid, but Shorty is much smarter than they are. Until my mother raised the weapon to her shoulder, he was fine. It was then that he grew frightened." She looked at Ryan, "They are all just animals," she said, "but not Shorty. He is like a boy of about eleven or thirteen Earth years in his mind, my mother said. But I do not think that it is correct. I do not know his exact age, but we have had him for fifteen years and he was at least four then. He is not stupid, or even the way that my mother said it. He is only different from us in how he thinks. He will surprise you with his cooking. You tell me if you think that any thirteen year-old Morgarod or human could do what he can. He cannot speak much, but he knows a lot and we love him. He is not really what she said. He is not a pet." Ryan looked at the things that he'd taken out of one of the packs. "Do you think that he'd like one of these?" he asked, "It's just a bar of chocolate. I'm hoping that at least it will still be good. They're made to last a long time in storage." Taela smiled, "I would like to taste it once myself, but it is sweet, yes? Shorty would love that." "Well, there are four to each pack," Ryan smiled, "I don't see why you can't have one." A minute later, Ryan grinned at the look on her face. "I wish that your craft was full of these," she laughed. He smiled back, at least a little thankful that it wasn't. --------------------- Shorty's culinary skills were wasted, he told them all, "He really prepared all of this?" "He did so," Betty smiled proudly, watching as Shorty deftly worked with his knife and fork, "I told you, he's really bright. He even knows how to lay out and use the appropriate cutlery. He knows what's what, and what it's for, too." "He's brighter than I am, then," Ryan grinned, "He's needed on Earth, or maybe on one of the mining posts. He could make a good living at this." There was no dessert, but Ryan was prepared for that. He got up and walked around the table setting out small tins of fruit salad and little plastic spoons. When he got to Shorty, he smiled as he crouched a little. "Here," he said, trying not to look at the creature's wide eyes as they regarded him, "I'll help you, Shorty." He opened the tin and pulled the lid off, handing over the tin and one of the spoons. Shorty stared at the pieces of fruit and tried some of the syrup with his spoon. He gave out a soft hiss of pleasure and began to eat. "Eat it slow, honey," Betty said, "Ryan likely doesn't have any more to give us, so you ought to be thankful that he's sharing with you." Shorty looked up as he ate to stare at Ryan. His eyes were still large, but at least Ryan couldn't see any fear there anymore. It had bothered him a little to see that. Shorty was nowhere near finished, but he set the tin down next to his plate with a great deal of care before he slid from his chair. Ryan was surprised to find Shorty hugging him for a second before he backed away with a shy smile and quickly climbed up to return to the treat. "He's very affectionate," Betty smiled, "that was his way of saying thank you, since he can't talk." "You're very welcome then," Ryan nodded with a smile as he walked back to his own chair. Now that he knew a bit more about the creature, he was getting used to the way that he looked. What he hoped that he wasn't showing was the surprise that he felt when he'd seen that the little guy was sporting an erection as he'd climbed back up onto his chair. -------------------- Taela was with Shorty to help him with the dishes. There was a type of plant which grew everywhere, Betty told him, the leaves of which produced large amounts of a soapy substance. A few of these crushed into a dishpan, she'd said, and you had your dish soap. "Can you tell me if the war is still on?" she asked him. "I don't know about now," he said, "but it had died off before I left. There hadn't been a peace declared or anything like that, though. I think it was more that both sides had gotten what they came for and went elsewhere. I'm sure that if they met up again, there'd be more killing. I kind of hope that they could just work something out. It would save a lot of lives, suffering, and fuel." Betty nodded. "People look at Morgarods and think that they're these bloodthirsty things. They're no more bloodthirsty than we are," she said, "they just look different, that's all. Humans have nothing to be proud of." "I know that," Ryan said, "Whenever I had to fight them, I never thought about it any differently than I would have if it was other humans that I was fighting. I kind of grew to respect them, too." "And you do seem to have eyes for the pretty ones," Betty smiled, "I'm sorry for the way that I said it earlier, but I know that Taela likes you an awful lot and it's easy to see that it's mutual. You're stuck here with us, that's all, "she smiled, "so you two go ahead on and do what comes natural, if you need my blessing -- and you don't -- as long as there's a lot of love in it between you. That'll come anyway, she's just a little confused, and with her being both human and Margaroth, there's bound to be a little more confusion, that's all." "She asked me to ask you about hunting," he said, "I haven't got a clue about what she was talking about." Betty looked a little uncomfortable for a moment as she gathered her thoughts. "Morgarods -- when they're someplace civilized are not much different from us -- just like they're much the same as us in many other ways. No matter what we try to tell ourselves, humans are an aggressive and warlike species. So are Morgarods. Now, I don't know what our ancestors did when they found some game and went out to hunt it down for food. I have the feeling that once that was done, and whatever it was that they'd killed and butchered was brought back to the village or wherever they lived, well there must have been feasting and some sort of communal joy over the news that they'd all cheated death by starvation one more time. Especially if they lived someplace where there was winter, since they couldn't get any nuts and berries then, so meat was pretty much all that there was to eat. Well it was the same way on Morgaron, I was told, except for one big difference. For the most part, on Earth, the females didn't go out with the males to hunt, depending on the culture, I guess. But on Morgaron, it was part of the process of proving yourself as a female that you could hunt just like a male. From that, their early culture evolved the concept of the hunting pair -- a male and a female who hunted together well. They weren't necessarily mates, and could sometimes be paired to others, but when they were hunting, they belonged to each other. Once the game had been found and killed, they'd fuck each other pretty senseless, and I can tell you from personal experience that Morgarods, when they're hunting in pairs, they love pretty violently, both sexes. Taela's father sprained my arm badly one time. I'm pretty sure that I loosened a couple of his teeth for him over it, but in the moment, well, I can tell you that it's another thing that we have in common. We still screwed like bunnies, me with my arm smarting like hell and all. In fact," she smiled a little as she remembered it, "I think that was one of the best hunts because of it. He was very sorry for it afterward, and I hurt like hell for a while. But it brought us closer. I miss that. When I need to, I just hunt alone now." She looked at Ryan and smiled, "If she mentioned it, well I'd say that she's looking at you as a mate, that's all. She's wondering about if you can hunt. We need to around here every so often. We both like the things that our great big garden provides, but there isn't the protein in it that we want. I'm sure a vegetarian could make out alright here, but neither Taela or I can and be happy. Looking at you, and how you sawed through that steak, you're probably the same. One day, maybe soon, Taela will ask you to hunt with her. I'd say that she's feeling a little hopeful over the idea -- since she's Morgarod enough to have the want in her, and if there were a lot of them here, you'd be feeling a lot of pride to be asked by a female like her. Hell, you'd likely have to fight a few of the other males just because she'd asked you and not them. I've never met a Morgarod female, but I've seen the files on the system that my husband built up for her use. Morgarods and humans make pretty children, I've decided. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 04 "If it's not too close to you," Ryan said quietly, "What happened to Taela's father?" Betty looked even more uncomfortable. She looked away for a moment, and Ryan was about to apologize and try to change the subject. He wanted to kick himself over his nosiness now. "You're going to have to see a few things differently here," she said sadly, "My male was the leader of a squadron of fighters. They were either towed behind the large ship, sipping fuel from it, or they flew nearby if there was a threat, sort of like a combat air patrol does around a base or one of those old aircraft carriers way back when on Earth. To have that job and it's responsibility, he had to demonstrate a lot of prowess, skill, and ability. He was a superb warrior among them. They'd gotten lost and were running out of fuel. They chose this planet and he was here with his fighter craft to oversee the landing of the large ship. As the weeks went past before they arrived, the other fighters either never returned from their scouting trips to look for better places, or they just cut the unmanned ships all loose, one by one to conserve fuel for the entry burn into this atmosphere. He'd warned them that it was important to have enough, but they'd used up a lot of the little that they had left. The crash wasn't too bad, but almost everyone else had been injured in some way -- the ones who'd survived. Ru'Torgh did his best for his people, but they all died off, either from their injuries or they were killed off by the creatures here. Soon, he was all that was left, and he was alone here for maybe twenty Earth years before I came along, nursing a probe ship with engine troubles. So we met and we fell in love and lived about as happily ever after as you can on this rock, him and me. My daddy taught me how to shoot the eyes out of a snake at a hundred yards, and I always liked to go hunting with him back home anyway, so it wasn't that much different with Ru'Torgh here, other than what would happen if we actually killed something. I could shoot better than he could - a lot better, since his way got us a lot of scorched meat. We'd hunt together and once whatever it was had been butchered, well I knew what was coming next. We'd screw until we just couldn't anymore. We tried to get me pregnant a lot. It sounds funny that way, since we were screwing like crazy all of the time anyway, but we did want to have children. It's an amazingly powerful urge in all creatures. I managed to get pregnant a few times, but I'd usually spontaneously abort. The two which were born alive at all were the ones which would break our hearts to see them die. I'd already given up. Not on making love like nuts, but I really didn't want to get pregnant anymore. It was just too hard to live through when my baby died. But then it happened, and Taela was born. She tells me that you know Morgaron, so you know what her name means. You're here now," she said, "and believe me, I look at you like something that Santa Claus never was at Christmas, because you're so much more. Taela will fall in love with you and may already be a lot of the way there. I hope that you'll be as good for her as I think that you will be. Today, I heard her laugh over something that you said or did. I only heard it in the passageway, but I can tell you that I haven't heard her make a sound like that in years. It's a hell of a thing to be the only one of a kind that requires sex and love to flourish. I'm beginning to think that you're the hope that she didn't know that she had in her. I know that she's different from human girls, but she's also more than that, and I hope that if there comes a time when you both want children that it'll be more possible than it was for me. What killed Ru'Torgh finally wasn't old age -- since that doesn't seem to happen here for reasons that I can't figure out. It wasn't a fall down a cliff or a lightning bolt or even one of the things that would love to eat us. It was his woman." Betty looked over at Ryan, seeing the shock spreading across his features. She nodded, "It was me. He was near to losing his mind and I put him away before he could do any more damage." She looked out of one of the windows for a moment. "Remember what I said about looking at things a little differently here. Being on a world by yourself tends to change your point of view with regard to how your society looks at things -- since that society is not here to look down on you and all. Something happened one day that took me a little while to work out. But once I put it together, I guess that it sealed my male's fate. Screechers aren't all that strong all alone, most of them. But they're very cagey. They're impossible to fight off if there are a lot of them all trying to get the meat off your bones while it's warm, but by themselves, a human or Morgarod male is stronger than almost all of them. The trouble is that while you're holding their arms, they'll use their longer necks to lean in and rip your face right the fuck off. When I made my mapping and observation passes over this world, I saw them from above on the night side of the planet. I thought that they were some sort of birds. They look like that from above, and I was a good way up, so I classified them incorrectly. They're mammalian, some very primitive flying sort of humanoid. Every once in a while, they get it into their little heads to attack us. It never works, but like I said, they're not all that bright. They bash their tiny brains out against the shutters and the rock of the mountain. In the morning, we go out and toss their half-eaten bodies over the steep edge. I say half-eaten because they do that to each other. As soon as one of them injures themselves, the rest rip him or her apart before they go back to trying to get in. They leave an awful mess. Sometimes, there's one or two outside who are still alive and suffering, mostly. We just kill them and toss them over like the rest. But one day, early in the morning, a few of them stayed. Dawn was just about to catch them all in the daylight and they get disoriented as anything and can't fly worth spit then. They crash into everything because they're blinded by the sunlight. I opened one of the shutters a little and there was a very small one of them with a busted wing and a female over top of him trying to keep the others off. The rest were trying to get to him, but he'd wedged himself into a niche in the rock and until she died, that female was doing her damndest to protect him. I went out and shot the shit out of the others before I looked at them, thinking to put them out of their misery. That one screecher is scared to death of weapons and has been ever since. It was Shorty and he was flickering right there in front of me. He was trying to disappear, he just didn't know how. I got my gun up, but I just couldn't do it. I thought that he must have been along with the others on his first feeding flight, since he was very young, more like a little boy compared to the others. I just suddenly knew that the female was his mother. She was dying with most of her insides on the stone all around her. She looked at me in the strangest way and then she died. Shorty was crying like a baby about a minute later when he figured out that she was dead. It was his face that got me, and the way that he wasn't shrieking out his fear and hatred of me. He didn't even try to bite me as I helped him out of that little place, he just cried hopelessly." Betty looked at Ryan for a long moment. "I've seen them die before, Ryan, lots of them. Screechers don't cry. They can't. Their tear ducts are only to keep their eyes wet when they fly. And for damn certain, Ryan, they can't hide themselves like Morgarods. His wing was busted and there wasn't anything that I could do about that at the time. Ru'Torgh came out because of the noise of my shooting and as soon as he saw the female, I could see that there was something in his face like horror. Ru'Torgh wasn't afraid of anything and he'd never been. He told me to kill the young one, but I told him no. He got furious with me and went inside for his own weapon. When he came out, he found me on my knees, holding Shorty as he cried and shook against me. Ru'Torgh bellowed at me to move away so that I wouldn't get shot. I drew my sidearm and pointed it at his face. I didn't ask. I told him that I was going to care for this young screecher, and that if anything happened to him, then Ru'Torgh had better be prepared to kill me right afterward. He stared at me for a moment and then he turned and left to go hunting. When I got Shorty cleaned up and had a good look at him, I was almost sure of what had happened. I just didn't know how it was possible. I put him in my bed when he finally fell asleep and I covered him with my blanket so that he could smell me on it. I asked Taela to watch over him for me and to keep him in the room if she could. Then I loaded up and I went after Ru'Torgh. It took me half a day, but it was my proxalert that pointed me to him. I was red-hot over the way that he'd threatened and yelled at me and though it went against all of the things that I knew about genetics, I finally found what else he'd been hunting for. He eventually told me that some years before, he'd found a female screecher and he'd dragged her out into the sunlight and tied her down so he could fuck her. I couldn't believe it. I asked him how long he'd been at this little hobby that he had going. He glared at me and he told me that he'd been doing it for years, that he liked to do it very much and that he usually killed the things afterward. But he said that he didn't kill them all. He told me that it happened now and then that he'd set them free because sometimes they liked it and he let those ones go, hoping to find them again sometime." Betty fought back a sob, willing herself to go on, "I've never told Taela any of this," she said, "She doesn't know it, but I'm almost sure that little Shorty is her half-brother somehow. That's why he looks just a little different from the rest. That's why he can hide like she can. He grew up to be bigger than most males, and that's why he's smarter and he knows what love is. I was in shock and so upset that I was shaking, but Ru'Torgh wasn't done yet. He told me that we couldn't expect for things here to be the way that society dictated it to be when there are groups. Since we were all alone here, he told me that he'd raise his daughter to be the perfect huntress and that he'd take her hunting alone with him. He said that in this way, there would be children, since I couldn't seem to make them with him. It was the worst day of my life, Ryan. None of this was the person that I'd been living with for all of our time together. As he spoke, I realized that he'd been acting a little more oddly every day. I assumed that he'd been truthful about the screechers that he'd used. No matter what else, I also had to assume that he would do what he said he intended to do. In all of the time that I'd known him, he'd always done what he said that he would. Taela was just a girl then, about ten years old. There was no way that I'd allow any of the shit that he was talking to happen, not while I was breathing. Betty wiped her eyes with her hands and she looked out of the window again. Ryan watched her face as it hardened. "I emptied my weapon into Ru'Torgh. I blew his legs to shit so that I'd get the chance to stay out of his reach, and then I loaded up again. I worked my shots until I had only two left in it and one more magazine in my pocket. I killed my male myself. The horror wasn't over for me yet, though. As soon as he was dead on the ground, something long and black slithered out of his ear. I shot the shit out of that too before I threw up. So I killed my husband. I wish I'd have known before what the problem was -- then again, I don't know if I could have done it then. I took Ru'Torgh's hunting gear and I left him there while I still had some daylight. I went back to finish raising my daughter and to care for Shorty. Not long after, I found my supply of morphine and after a lot of calculation, I gave it to him and then I tried my best to fix his wing. He still can't take off from a standing start, but he can go a ways if he runs a little for a takeoff, and he can glide really well. He just can't ever go home, and he knows that. He can fly, but not as well as a healthy screecher. Like I said," Betty nodded as she looked at Ryan, "things are different here. That's why I'm really happy that you're here for Taela. I hope I haven't shocked you with the tawdry little background that she knows nothing about. She thinks that her father was killed while he was off hunting, and she doesn't know about Shorty." She shrugged, "I guess I may as well tell you the rest. Screechers are very prolific. They fuck like little demons or something. Unlike a human boy who discovers his little toy pretty early on in his life, a screecher male only thinks that it's for peeing or something until he's hit puberty." She sat down and leaned forward to look Ryan in the eye as she spoke. "Shorty wasn't there yet when I took him in. Taela was just a young girl at the time, and I wasn't about to have any of that going on between them." She looked at the table and saw the pack of cigarettes lying there with the little lighter. "May I?" she asked. Ryan nodded, "Of course," he said. She took one and looked at it. "I haven't had one of these in so long," she said with a smile, "I was about ready to rip the hoses out every time that I came out of cryo, dying to have one. You know how cryo makes you want things when you come out, ... Some girls can't keep their hands away from themselves then and need a good rub. Guys are the same, aren't they?" "Yeah," Ryan smiled, a little self-consciously, "The deep-space pilot and I used to get together then for that, though there wasn't anything else between us." Betty nodded, "Well I used to be like that too, but I'd wake up alone on a ship. I'd need to masturbate AND have a smoke, along with a cup of coffee, and a whole box of preservative-soaked pastry. It was just awful." She lit a cigarette and smiled, "I doubt that I'll get cancer from the few that you've brought, and frankly, I don't give a shit. So what I want you to know, Ryan B. McCallum, who has come out of the sky like a mother's dream, is that in my view of things, something wonderful is almost bound to happen between you and my daughter -- the one with the hope in her heart. Don't you dare fuck this up and break that heart, because I'm sure that you'll find that she's not like any girl that you've ever known, aside from the appearance that I know you like. She's more like a Morgarod on the outside, though she's pretty human in many ways as well. She ovulates like they do, and that's a long cycle, more than five times longer than human females, but that's not the important thing here. What you need to know is that I'm almost sure that Taela will handle this thing between you in their way. That means that at some point, she may choose you as a mate. I know that sounds stupid out here, since there aren't exactly a dozen males for her to choose from, but that doesn't matter. If she chooses you, that means that she's come to a decision. Unlike humans, Morgarods mate for life, and I don't mean in the human way. From what I know, there aren't any divorce lawyers on Morgaron. Once they choose, they devote themselves to each other, so you ought to think about that. And by the way, you can ask her to show you the files on her system about their mating habits if you want, but I can save you some time. They know what they want, and they want a lot of it, so don't step up if you can't keep up is all I'm saying. I'm not going to be like any other girl's mother. If and when it happens for you both, you'll find that I'll be happy to just love the two of you to death and do anything to help while keeping my nose out of things between you. Of course, you know that she'll come to me for advice and all, that's just the way that it goes, but for damn sure; I'm not going to look down on you for anything, unless you start screwing the wildlife around here too. The garden out back in the crater is a wonderful place to make love," she said, "It's nice in the daytime and it's very romantic at night. But if you go there for that after dark, you ought to stay in the little hidden places that Taela knows about there and you can't go there too often, or the screechers will try to get through the wire. Oh, and I ought to tell you so that it's not too much of a shock. Taela knows this part, just not who I'm sure that Shorty is to her. I've always told her that it's forbidden to mess with him, either to play a joke on him because he's so innocent and trusting, or in any physical way. She's always been good about that, because she asked me why one night and I just told her that he's mine. I used to take him to my bed so that there wasn't any sneaking around on his part. I knew that the idea would come to him at some point." She picked up one of the empty fruit salad cans for an ashtray before she drew on the cigarette again and exhaled. "And speaking of screwing the wildlife around here, it wasn't true at the time that I told her that, but one night, when I'd been feeling really lonely and needy and he was as mature as he was ever going to get, I just let it happen. Before that, when he'd get excited at some point every night, I'd help him with my hands. From there, I began to take him with me for a bath, and that's when I found out that screechers have amazing tongues. He can buzz his tongue while he licks and it just shakes me to pieces. Once we'd gone that far, well I just started using my mouth on him, since I've always loved to do that anyway, and the next thing I knew he was fucking me. We're lovers, Ryan. I seem to have aged really well for whatever reason, but I'm long past having any more kids. I'm well into menopause, but I'm not dead yet. I fuck with that sweet little guy far, far more than I ever did with his father, and that's saying something. He's not as big, but he's hard and he can last a good while, so we're happy with each other. I guess that it serves a bit of a purpose," she smiled, "It means that Taela doesn't know about how to make love to somebody like you, other than the mechanics of it. She's not a virgin, since she's had a toy to help her get to sleep for a few years and I know that she's gotten it into her deep enough. Since she's honored what I asked of her with respect to Shorty, I'm going to make a promise to her that the human male who has come here suddenly is all hers, though you probably wouldn't dream of it any way else. Like I said, she doesn't know, so I'd appreciate it if you could keep that little secret, and you'll find a friend in me for it." Ryan sat across from her, thinking. It was the strangest thing that he'd heard in a good long while, but he knew that Betty had been telling him the truth of it. "It might be that he was just happy that I gave him the can of fruit salad, "Ryan said a little carefully, "But when he hugged me, I uh, ... I guess that it excited him a little." She looked at him and nodded, "I saw that. I wouldn't worry about it if you just discourage him gently. He does know in a strange way about what's right and wrong here in this screwed up little family. But there's something else that I guess I should have told you. Morgarods, when they're faced with their own certain deaths, well they tend to get a bit cold and spiteful. They like to toss out a taunt before they go -- an insult or two, something like that. Ru'Torgh told me that the female that had protected Shorty was one of his favorites. She liked to look for him sometimes, he said, and if she saw him coming, she'd drop down out of the tree that she was in and wait for him in some shade. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 04 I guess that I can't really blame her for that if she enjoyed him, and she sure didn't know the other consequences of what they did. It was beyond her ability to recognize. But I guess there was no way to be sure that the others wouldn't attack her son because he's different while his mom was busy. Ru'Torgh told me that she always brought Shorty along. When he told me the rest, it made pulling the trigger the last time a whole lot easier for me. I'd already shot his dick off." "I was always a very active girl sexually," Betty said, "And I'm obviously not shy over talking about it. I've always wondered why a girl like I was would find her calling as a probe and mapping pilot, since I was always alone for so long in between stops. I accumulated quite a collection of toys that I'd pick up here and there. "I have to assume that Ru'Torgh was telling me the truth just before I blew his ass away. It might have been a lie to hurt me with, but I sort of doubt that. So I'm assuming that I've been having sex with something that's like my stepson in a way, though he's not a blood relative to me. I don't care, Ryan. Other than you, there's nobody to judge me for my actions, is there? I've loved him with everything I have, other than my love for my daughter. I'm like a second mother to him, but I let him do whatever he wants to do with me. I think that he'd like a male, but just discourage him, as I said. I take care of that little need of his too with one of my toys." She took a last drag from the smoke and then she ground it out in the little can. "That was wonderful," she smiled, "but I know that there aren't enough to get used to. I'll bet that you must think that I'm a pretty evil sort of woman," she said in a slightly challenging way. "No," he said, shaking his head, "I can see the way that it all happened. And you are right. There's nobody here to judge you. We'd need a society for that, and there really aren't enough of us here for that, are there? I think that you're a remarkable woman." "Ah," she smiled, "by that you mean wicked." "Maybe, but in a nice way," he said, "Who am I to judge you, Betty? Who's to say that if I was all alone here and I figured out what Ru'Torgh did, that I wouldn't be doing the same thing myself. I doubt it very much, but that's here and now, not all alone for years. You're happy and so is Shorty. What more is there to say?" "There is more to say, Ryan,but first you'll need a little time to think things over," Betty smiled with a bit of relief, "Say that you'll keep my daughter happy, and that'll be better than good enough." Taela walked to them, holding Shorty's hand and Ryan was a little amazed at how they looked together, "What'll be good enough?" "That you're happy," Betty said as she stood up and stepped around the table. "I am happy," her daughter said. "Then that's good enough," her mother smiled, laughing at the way that what she'd said had caused her daughter to laugh in confusion. "Come on over here, Shorty. It's bath time and Momma wants to wash you. Taela, make sure that you lock up the windows and everything before dark, ok?" Her daughter nodded. The creature looked over with a shy smile and he took Betty's hand to walk away. "I have to tell you something," Taela said, looking very nervous and reluctant. Ryan wondered just how much more if this there was to hear and why he was the one who had to listen. "Shorty and my mother are, ... they, ..." She exhaled, wishing now that she'd kept her mouth shut. She tried again. "I don't know how you will take this, but, ... she mates with him. That's where they are going now. Shorty is always so -- excitable. I always tell him no and he is good about it, but I know what they do when they are alone. They are going to the garden." "I know," Ryan said, "your mother told me so that I wouldn't be too shocked if I found out sometime, I guess." Taela heaved a huge sigh of relief. "I wanted you to know for the same reason. Does it change anything?" "You mean between you and I?" Ryan shook his head, "No." "Will you wait while I lock everything up?" "Sure," he said. While she was gone, he checked out one of the PDWs from another pack. She came back after a few minutes and he watched her close and lock the windows shut. Before she was finished with the last one, he asked her where he was going to sleep that night. She looked very surprised and she stepped over to him after locking the last window cover in place. She was very surprised when she put her arms around him to pull herself closer. Each time that this had happened, it felt so good to her and it felt better every time, the astounding part was how right it felt to her. "I thought that we could sleep together," she said a little hopefully in the dim light, "I don't know if it is possible, but that's what I would like. One day soon, we will need more meat. The hot season is ending and soon it will grow cold. You and I should go together, so we should be a pair before that. I don't want to mate with you yet, but I really want to hold you and, ... I don't know how to say it, play together in bed? Is that right?" "I think I know what you're trying to say, Taela," he smiled, "I can think of a few things that we can do. Anyway, I'm sure that we'll figure something out. I'm just very surprised. I have the feeling that this is supposed to happen between us. I don't feel any reluctance on either side. We just seem to be a little nervous." "I am the same," she whispered as she put her head against his, "I feel like I have gone from nothing to having someone for me in a day." She looked up at him and he could still see a little of her nervousness there. "What else?" he asked and he supposed then that if it was possible for her to blush, then she must be doing that now. He could feel the heat from her face. "Sometimes, when I know that they are going to the pool, I go to, ... I like to see, and, ..." "You like to watch them?" He asked with a smile. "Y-yes," she replied, "They know that I do this. It is nice to see and I would go to watch and wish a little that it was me. I wanted to know if, ... you wanted to, ... go with me to watch, and, ... and then, when we are alone, ..." She knew that she'd have a tough time saying it -- but she somehow needed to see if this dream of a day for her might hold something of a final step -- or at least the beginnings of it. "... I think that I want to know if ... sometime soon, ... if you would want to, you know, .. try ..." Why was this becoming so hard for her to say? He smiled a little; waiting for the end of the long pause, "Try to guess what it is that you want to say?" She looked a little nervous, "Try to mate with me a little." "I'd love to try to mate with you a lot. It depends," he grinned, "I think that I can see that you're not really sure, and you know, we did only meet today. I'm a little nervous myself. I think that I'd be thrilled just to be near you." "I would be thrilled to have you against me," she admitted, "You do not want this tonight?" "Ok," he nodded, "Same answer, bigger thrill. But I don't know if it's the right thing to do, and you don't look all that decided either." He smiled, "I've never watched somebody else do it." "Do you want to go with me there now?" she asked a little nervously. "If they know that you watch, I guess I wouldn't mind," Ryan smiled, "I'm a little curious how they, you know, manage it." She took his hand, her good humor back instantly with her relief, "Oh, I'm so glad. I didn't know if it would be wrong to ask you," she said, leading him into a passageway. --------------------- "There you go, honey," Betty smiled, "all clean." Shorty smiled happily and turned to close the last of the distance between them. He slid his thin arms around her waist and laid his head on her shoulder with a sigh. She held him close with her arm over his wings and she stroked his head softly with the other. He lifted his head and looked up at her with a lot of affection. Betty looked down and she began to kiss him. From where they'd hidden themselves, Ryan could see that Shorty responded to it and a minute later, their tongues danced in the air between them for a little while before Betty pressed her mouth against Shorty's lips as she took command of this. Betty's hand reached down to take his hardness into her hand as she began to stroke it. His hand reached for one of her breasts and she groaned softly, "That's it, baby. Ohhh, Momma likes it so much when you do that." They stood like this for some time as Taela and Ryan watched through some leafy plants on their knees. He felt Taela's hand trying to hold his masculinity. She was having a bit of trouble since it was a little between his thighs, so he moved one knee farther away and reached to help her by guiding her hand. "I have never done this," she whispered, "Is this right?" He kissed her shoulder and told her that it was fine. "Sit down on the edge there, honey," Betty sighed, "so Momma can make us feel good." Shorty was out of the stream in an instant, sitting on the edge. She walked over to him and placed her legs on either side of his as he reached for her. While he began to squeeze and suck her breasts, Betty reached down and guided the tip of him to her cleft. She couldn't do much more that slide the tip of him against her like this, but they both liked doing it. She told him to slide backwards and lie down. The watchers saw Betty come out of the stream on all fours to him. When she was over him, she smiled down, "I'm so in love with my boy." The words seemed to excite Shorty more and he began to stroke himself, but she stopped him, "Uh-uh," she shook her head, "Momma wants some of that." He stopped immediately and took his hand away as Betty eased herself backward, lowering her hips as she did so that she could begin to slide her wet vulva along his straining erection. "Ohhh," she sighed, "Momma's needed you all day long, sugar. We'll need to be a little more careful now, that's all." She groaned as she worked along him for a few minutes. "It's one thing if Taela catches us now and then, but, ... I don't want Ryan to see us doing it around the house. I don't think I'd mind it if he saw us here, but not everywhere else." Ryan turned to Taela. She looked at him and nodded, "They do this everywhere," she whispered, "One day she just started doing it with Shorty. I see them all the time, it's why I leave to go somewhere else a lot. I don't mind seeing them like this, but, ..." He noticed that she'd spread her knees and was reaching for herself as well. "Get on your knees and watch like that, Taela," he said. "But I don't think that I can help you like -- " "It's ok," he whispered, "just let me help you, that's all. You just need to be quiet." She moved onto her hands and knees, and sighed as she felt his fingers begin to caress her. Ryan pulled her back so that she was squatting in front of him and he reached to toy with her mound while his erection slid under her. She got it right away and found a way to move herself against him. Betty's movements had begun to get a lot quicker. Finally, she stopped to lean down to Shorty and kiss him for a moment. "Momma needs more of your sweet thing, baby. Just hold still and let me do this for us now." She reached back as she straightened up and she had him inside of her in seconds. Shorty hissed his pleasure as she rode him. They noticed that she stopped several times to push herself down onto him and she groaned louder at those times. Whenever she opened her eyes after that, she always whispered her thanks to Shorty. "I'm so glad I've got you, Shorty. I know we're not the same, but I just love you to pieces, baby. You're so good for your Momma." After a while, Betty rose to get off her diminutive and adoring male to lie on her back beside him. "Come on, sweetie," cooed, "Come on and fuck Momma just as hard as you want to. I need you now, Darlin'." He was on her in a flash. It took him no time to slip inside Betty and he began to fuck her at a speed that Ryan doubted was possible for him. Betty cried out and bucked, but there was no way that she could keep up to that frantic pace. She didn't seem to mind at all, though, she just pulled her legs back and let him go. Taela kept her sounds to whispered sighs, but she wanted to show Ryan that she appreciated what he was doing. "So good, Ryan," she whispered. He understood and smiled at her face as she'd turned her head back toward him. Out by the stream, Betty raised her head to look at Shorty's face as he worked. "I love you, baby," she said a little breathlessly. Shorty just grunted. He was doing a lot of that, with his face moving from one breast to another. Suddenly, he reared his head back a little and bared his teeth. Ryan was shocked and he worried for Betty, but the older woman just coaxed him on more until he clamped his teeth onto one nipple gently. Betty screamed and began to buck again, so hard that it looked as though she might throw her lover right off, but he hung on and kept at it. Betty finally threw her head back and screamed out his name, and it brought the screecher to his climax an instant later. As her cry died away, Shorty hissed loudly and thrust himself in as far as he could get to freeze there, moving only a little, a few seconds later. "That's it, honey," Betty said hoarsely, "give it to me. I just LOVE it when my boy comes into me." She caressed his head and groaned as she wrapped her legs around him, "Give me all you got, sweetie. Momma loves you so much." It looked as though his exertions had caused Shorty to go catatonic. He didn't move for a long time after that. Betty waited for him to recover before she rolled them onto their sides. "Momma saw you looking at Ryan today," she said quietly. "I'll bet you want him, don't you, Shorty?" The watchers froze, staring. Taela turned to look back at Ryan with an open mouthed smile of surprise. He didn't know where to look. "Well," Betty smiled a little sadly as she stroked Shorty's wings, "I'm afraid that you just can't have any of that, honey. That male will belong to Taela really soon. I can see that they've got it for each other." She reached over her head to stretch for something there on the bank. "Momma knows that sometimes you want a man, darlin'. It's ok. I've brought your favourite toy along if you want to pretend just a little. I don't see any harm in that." From where they hid, they could see how large Shorty's eyes had grown as he stared at Betty. She pushed Shorty onto his back again as she reached past him for an old cloth bag. She pulled out a bright blue dildo. "Here honey," she smiled, "you just close your eyes and have a little suck on this for a minute while I get ready for you." He reached for the toy and a second later, his eyes were closed as he slipped the end of it into his mouth. From where they were, Taela and Ryan could hear his breath. Betty stood up and reached into the bag. She pulled out a harness and slipped her legs into the openings before she looked into the bag again. "Momma's gonna make her boy so happy tonight," she said as she looked around inside, "that is, if she can only find a couple of those green berries with the greasy juice in them. I just know I had a few left in here from the other night. Ah, here they are." She watched him for a minute before she smiled, "If you want that, Shorty, you'll need to hand it over." His eyes opened and he held it out to her in his fist, the tip of is standing up in the air between them. "Well wait a minute," she chided with a chuckling grin, "You've gotta give me a chance to get some of this on a couple of places, sweetie." She pulled an old knife from the bag and with that, she cut into one of the berries and rubbed it between his legs. She attached the toy to her harness and then she added a lot more of the juice to that. "Do you want me to fuck you a little bit?" she smiled. Shorty nodded emphatically and it was obvious that he was excited at the prospect. "You gonna need my fingers first tonight?" she asked him, but he shook his head with a hopeful smile. "Well alright, you tough little thing," she smiled as she helped him to raise his knees higher, "You just close your eyes now and pretend that some big male is gonna have you now." Shorty looked up and grinned. Betty smiled, "It's Ryan, isn't it?" Shorty nodded, still smiling. "You're a beautiful boy, Shorty," Betty said as she positioned herself, "Any male who likes this would be happy to love somebody like you. I don't think you'll ever get that one, though, so just keep your eyes closed and pretend a little, baby. Momma's gonna do all the work for you now." As she began to press the dildo against Shorty, Ryan looked at Taela's grinning face. "He can pretend if he wants to, I guess. But that's never going to happen." They heard Shorty hiss loudly and Betty froze. After a minute, she asked him if he was alright. He nodded with a gasp and she fed more of the toy into him. Ryan asked Taela if they could leave. "You don't like this?" she asked, "Is it the idea or is it Shorty?" He shook his head, "It's not Shorty. I like him, "Ryan whispered, "I'm just not a big fan of seeing --" "What?" Taela asked, "What is wrong? He is so happy. Look at him there. I like to see him happy like this." "I think that I probably would hate to watch two males doing this," he said, "I probably wouldn't mind if she hadn't told him to imagine that it was me doing him. I think that's what bothers me." "But he does the same thing to her sometimes," Taela whispered, "I've seen it and I have asked her. She told me that it feels good to her and it is another way to enjoy a male without thinking about little ones coming from it. I wanted to do this with you, Ryan. Don't you want me like that?" He looked at her and he saw some disappointment there. It made him feel like an ass. "You're right," he whispered, "and I'm sorry. I've done that before with a girl and I liked it. This has nothing to do with you, Taela. It's more that I'm having trouble thinking about doing this with him." "It is the same thing in the same place," she said. By now, the lovers on the grass had changed positions. Shorty was on his knees as Betty fucked him gently, though they could see that she would likely increase the pace very soon. In only a minute or so, Shorty whined a little and Betty knew what he wanted from her. She began to really rail him then, her hips slapping against his skinny backside a little loudly. He had his mouth open as he gasped, but his eyes were closed in bliss. The one time that he opened them, he was turning to look back at Betty. From where they were, the pair froze for that instant. Shorty was looking right at the plants where they'd hidden themselves. He looked for a moment, and then he looked back at the woman that he loved so much. "I think we'd better leave," Ryan whispered. Taela nodded and they crept away. They were halfway inside the opening of the passageway when they heard Shorty's shrieking cry. Taela froze and stared at Ryan. "What was that?" he asked, "Is he ok?" She grabbed his hand and pulled him inside the opening as they began to walk. "That was Shorty," she said, "but that is the first time that I have ever heard him use his voice to call out a word. That is the sound that he makes when my mother finishes him like that, but he never said a name before, not like that. He sometimes can hiss 'momma' to her, but he has never made this sound before. That is the sound that screechers use to find their way in the dark. Come on, walk faster. They will leave the stream very soon now." Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 04 "Wow," Ryan said, "I guess that he must have been feeling it." She looked over at him and in the dim light of the glowing plants, she saw his face. He shrugged, "I suppose that it must have been a moment for him. I just wish that it had been another name, that's all." "I want to do that with you," she said. It wasn't a request and Ryan picked up on that. "Listen," he said, "There's a reason why it feels so good to males who like that. They can finish like that, Taela. It's supposed to feel really good to them, and they can finish -- because they're males. I think that the best that a female who likes that can get is that she can use that as well as everything else. I think it might make everything better, but they can't finish from only that." "I don't care," she said as she stopped suddenly. He almost tripped. "Maybe not tonight," she said, "but I want that from you." She turned and began to walk briskly again, leading him until they were inside her chamber. She closed the door and reached for him. Her kisses almost drove him to his knees. I -- I want to be your mate, Ryan. If that is so for you, then I wish to know something." "Ask it," he said, "Ask me anything, Taela." "My full name is Ru'Taela," she said, "Only Taela for you, until we are mated. What would my name be if that happens between us?" "Do you mean if we were on Earth?" he asked, "and it became, um, ... permanent between us?" "Yes," he felt her nod a little, "What would I be called there?" "If we weren't married, you'd be Ms. Taela Rawlins or Taela Ru, depending on whose name you took as your maiden name, or you could always keep it as Taela" he said. "If you mean that we'd be married, then you'd be Mrs. Taela McCallum. The first part means that you're married." She stepped back and took his hand to lead him to her bed. He could tell that she was having one of the deep thought moments that he was coming to love about her. He even knew what was coming. He only waited for it. "Humans are strange," she said. "Uh-huh," he replied. "What are these?" she asked as her fingers traced the lines of letters on his arm. "They're uh, ..." he looked down to where her fingers were before he looked into her eyes in the darkness, "They're my combat record. The places that I've been, battles that I've been a part of." "They're so little, but they cover a lot of your arm," she said, squinting as she tried to read a little. "Well I've got small arms," he smiled, "I can't help it if I've got small arms." It made her laugh, "Your arms are bigger than my legs." "Well that's good," he chuckled, "you're always telling me that my legs are too thin. I think I'm getting a complex or something." "I don't know what that is," she smiled, "but now I am a little confused myself. I am beginning to like your legs, and that means that my legs are wrong." "No they're not," he chuckled, "I like your legs. Mine are the wrong kind." She pressed herself against him, breathing in his scent. "You smell so good," she sighed. "Well, no sunscreen and no bug spray has to be an improvement," he grinned, "Give me time to shave, and I'll probably manage to smell a little better." "No," she said, inhaling a second later, "I doubt it is possible." She stretched up a little to kiss him and she opened her mouth to let his tongue in, groaning quietly as she exhaled because she loved the way that his hands felt on her body when he held her close to him. Taela lowered her head a little to kiss his throat for a little while. She knew that it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that she'd decide to choose Ryan for her mate, but for a good part of what she was, her body had a vote in it as well. She let her tongue slide past her lips to lick his neck and when she brought it back to wet it a little more, the taste of him caused her heart to pound a little. She moved her kisses down to his collarbones. She began to kiss along one and the thought came to her that it was a good distance from the middle out to his shoulder, a sufficient distance, she thought, wanting to smile. She worked her way back in toward where they met, and found that she just couldn't resist licking him in the little hollow in between them as her left hand slowly found its way down to the bulge in his combat pants. She pushed it out a little to the side so that she could try to squeeze it a little. When she felt how firm it felt, she moaned quietly. She felt Ryan's hand on her head and she wrapped it with some of her hair, knowing that the ability would shock him a little but she didn't care. She kept it moving slowly to caress his hand as she lowered her head so that she could kiss his chest. Her intent had been only to kiss him over his heart, but before long, she found herself kissing and licking there for the taste and the way that it made her feel almost light-headed. Taela was a little amazed. She'd never done anything like this before, but it surprised her how much of this she was feeling, her pubic hair told her that she was already wet and she tried to suppress her urge to move her thighs so that she could feel the thrill of that, and of course, she failed at it completely. She knew the inevitability of what would come next and she just let it happen, opening her mouth to suck in the nipple that was under her lips. She just wasn't prepared for the way that they both groaned at that together, and as she turned her head to lay it against him while she held that nipple, she opened her eyes and saw the other one there, not far off. It made her regret that she didn't have two mouths, but at last she forced herself to release the one that she'd attached herself to so that she could begin the journey to the other one. By now, Ryan had the fingers on both hands in her hair, loving the way that it felt to him. His eyes closed, but he felt it when her hair relaxed on his hands while she moved a little lower. The first of her little bites on his abdominal muscles caused him to gasp and hiss between his teeth. Taela worked her way down, guessing that she wasn't doing this too badly, but as she began to squat down before him, she was faced with the conundrum of his pants. She wanted to rip the damn things open, but she finally managed to get the button undone and he helped her with the rest so that she could pull the garment down. Ryan watched as her eyes opened wide and she smiled at what she was looking at. She knew that her mother was right, and she wondered how it would fit, but she knew that it would somehow. She reached to hold his thigh high up at the top and she slid her hand around toward the back, loving the feel of his body. That mysterious part of him was already large and now that it had been freed, it rose toward her. With no conscious thought to it, she watched her hand go right to it, grasping the hardening firmness and while she was wondering about just what she ought to do next, now that she'd gotten this far, her hand already seemed to know what to do. She'd watched what her mother did with Shorty often enough. It felt so good to her to stroke it back and forth a little. Taela decided that she was at another watershed moment, but she didn't spend too long in wonder. She leaned forward a little and kissed him there for a moment, and before she knew it really, she licked her lips and opened her mouth to take him in, and for the second time, they both made a similar sound at the same moment. Taela found that she liked it as she sucked it in and out. Her hand slid back toward his body and she felt the swell of his scrotum against the heel of her hand, just where her forearm joined it, so she reached a little lower to feel there carefully. After a moment, she pulled her head back and began to slide her mouth along the side of that shaft until her lips found new territory to explore. Ryan looked down and saw Taela open her mouth wide. She was looking right into his eyes and she couldn't help the chuckle of delight when her tongue found that skin against it. She knew that this part of a male was sensitive, so she just enjoyed moving the lumps inside slowly with her tongue as she pet his erect hardness against her cheek with her other palm. She thought about it for a moment, wondering if something was possible, but finally, she decided that it might be, so she opened her mouth even wider and took the entire sac inside. Ryan was shocked. In his whole adult life, he'd had maybe a dozen partners or so. None of them, not one had this ability. He could feel her teeth against him here and there, but he already knew what was beginning here from a Morgarod perspective. If you were forming a hunting pair, then there had to be trust. He smiled down at her as she closed her mouth over it. Taela worked it slowly and as gently as she could, finding that he seemed to enjoy it if she sucked just a little bit. She knew that because whenever she did that, it caused him to close his eyes. But she knew that doing this wouldn't get him to his release, and that was what she wanted to do for him now. What surprised her was that, while it was a desire in her to please him, it wasn't something that she wanted to do for him as a favor or a gift. She felt that, but what drove her was a need. Taela was beginning to feel what her father's people called the need of the pair. It was doing something for the other person, while needing to do it at the same time for both. She'd enjoy it, but she wouldn't feel her own release just from this. That one of them finished was the achievement of both. Just like what happened during a hunt. It didn't matter who brought the game down, it was the same achievement then. She went back to sucking him, doing the best that she could do for him as she learned by watching and feeling his reactions carefully. She had to give up taking him in quite so deeply as she tilted her head backward a little and leaned even farther into him, wanting to try something for a moment. She worked the underside of him with her long, and very Morgarod tongue. She suddenly realized that she had an ability to do something which she doubted that he'd ever felt and she just had to try it. She didn't know, and she wasn't sure where it might have come from, but there seemed to be just one thing about him that she wasn't absolutely crazy about and that was his apparent phobia about one part of the male anatomy - whether human, Maragod, or even screecher. If she could have her little wish, she'd have liked to be able to get him past it. Drawing her tongue back to wet it, she thrust it out again, sliding it along under his scrotum and then between his thighs until at last she caused him to almost go to his toes as she used the tip of it to toy with his anus. Ryan gasped, but Taela wasn't done yet. She forced her long tongue to complete the sharp upward turn and she drove it in just a little as she tightened her hand and stroked his shaft near the tip a little more forcefully. Her efforts got him to swell and harden even more and she knew somehow that she had to be quick now, so she withdrew her tongue and replaced it with the pad at the tip of her index finger. She pushed just a little and then she pulled her head back to seize that fat thing of his with her wide-open mouth and she found herself swallowing something faster than she could taste it. She forced herself to slow down as his urgency began to fade and she found the time to try what she had in her mouth. When there was no more from him, she made a point of showing her affection to that part of him before she let it go to smile at him. Ryan thanked her, telling her quite honestly that he'd never experienced it in quite that way. "So I was good then?" she asked, as she found a few drops on herself which had escaped her somehow. She brought what she could get to her lips and licked her fingers "Wonderful," he smiled. "Thank you for your gift," she said as she stood up, "I enjoyed it very much." She wasn't certain just what she'd expected as a response from him, given that she was playing this from her Morgarod side, but she was startled when he responded by picking her up and placing her carefully on her bed. She looked up at him and wanted to caution him about what it was that he could do and what she wouldn't allow from him, but he seemed to know anyway and he moved himself to kneel over her. She felt his hands move over her body in the most wonderful ways and had a thought that she'd found that she liked his fingers, even as unlike her own as they were. He kissed her and she wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him down. It was far too soon for that and she knew it, but it was what she wanted to do. But he didn't allow it. He just continued to move one hand over her body at a time and then he began to kiss her everywhere. Taela thought that she'd lose her mind. It felt so good and she was a little surprised to hear the soft little sounds that she was making as he went. He'd been working at her breasts for long minutes already. His lips on her nipples and the way that he squeezed and kneaded them made her arch her back in happiness. "They are sufficient?" she asked, suddenly needing to know. He chuckled, "Now there's a word," he said. He looked up, "They're fantastic. I love the way that they feel against my mouth and the taste, ... oh the taste, Taela. I love your skin." He held his eyes right on hers for a long moment. "I love your skin," he said purposefully. She yanked his head down to her breasts again for the way that he'd said it and how it made her feel. Eventually, he eased himself down onto her, but that was when he felt something else, something that moved on her subtly and he felt odd little caresses against his manhood. "What are you doing?" he asked. She looked at him curiously, "Nothing. Why?" Ryan pushed himself up and ran the tips of his fingers down her hard belly. When they reached the top of that triangle, he gasped as something touched his fingertips softly. "Oh," she said, hoping that this wasn't anything to upset him or put him off, "That's only my hair. Is this wrong?" "No, it's just new to me, that's all, Taela," he smiled, "I guess I might have thought of this if I had a brain, but if the hair on your head can move the way that it does, it shouldn't be such a big stretch to think that this hair has the same ability. I like it." He moved himself onto his side and began to kiss his way down her front. Taela felt a little apprehensive, knowing now that this was something else about her that was different to any other women that he might have been with. But Ryan didn't even hesitate when he got to that place. He pressed his face there and groaned before his tongue came out of his mouth. The tiny tendrils of her pubic hair moved against his skin softly. "Is there a purpose for this?" he asked from below her field of view. Taela sighed, liking the warmth of his breath, "I think it is to encourage the male." "It's not really long enough for that, is it?" she heard him ask. "If you were inside all of the way, it might be," she sighed as she reached for his head. They ended up after a long while with Taela feeling a little hoarse and rough in her throat. Ryan loved the way that she sounded to him now. There had been some very challenging moments in it for him as he'd made love to her with his mouth, and he loved that even more. She'd bucked like a mad thing at times and they'd finally ended up with her more than half on her pillows -- and they hadn't begun that way. She was lying along them almost a little sideways. He'd kept up with her wild excursions though, feeling a little proud of himself for managing it. He'd never known one single human woman who'd thrashed quite like that. Where he was at the moment, his head was still buried between her long thighs and she was sighing softly, though every other breath or so, she seemed to allow her vocal chords to drag along and to him, it was the sweetest cooing sound that he'd ever heard. He licked on, very softly now, mindful that she might be a little sensitive. After a minute more, he began to lick farther back and she sighed very deeply as she reached back to caress his head in encouragement. "So you do like me there too," she smiled with her eyes closed. "Mm-hmm," he groaned quietly. "I think that I want to ... let you do it there to me," she whispered, "Only let me tell you something first. I do not know what happened to my father, but I did see his body months after he disappeared and my mother told me that he must have been killed hunting. I could not tell by then what had killed him, but I saw that his weapon was gone." She paused then, savoring the sensation of his tongue for a minute. "I know that my mother had it, and so I think that it must have been her who killed him -- and though I have never asked, I am almost certain why. He acted differently to me a little while before then and it made me very, ... nervous to be around him then. I didn't think about it much afterward because I was happy to not have him near to me anymore then." She paused again, stroking Ryan's hair. "Also, I had Shorty to look after a lot of the time. He learns quickly and it was not long before I knew that he could understand things that I said to him. I would find him playing with that part of himself -- where you are now on me -- if I left him in the bath for more than a minute. I asked him about it one day, and I was careful to ask slowly to make sure that he understood. From that, I had another reason to be happy that my father was gone. My mother does not know, but when Shorty was grown up, .... " She sighed and was silent for a moment as Ryan kept teasing her with his tongue. Finally, she just decided to tell him. "When my mother is out hunting for food for us, Shorty and I, ... I let him do that to me -- what she was doing to him in the garden. I have always liked that. Please tell me that you might want to try with me, Ryan." He stopped then, and Taela was almost terrified that she'd ruined everything with her confession to him, but he lifted her leg and looked at her, "I'd love that." She moved then and produced a few of the berries and a blade, teaching him how to slice one open and apply the greasy juice to them both. It went a lot easier than he'd feared and he was very gentle -- which seemed to be just what she wanted from him then, so they just did it slowly on their sides until he came, though he kept his hand busy on her front and she shuddered through three of her own orgasms very gently. "You have a way," she smiled back at him as they rested, "And I love it about you, Ryan. That was so good for me. I want to sleep with you just like this. Can we?" He leaned forward and kissed her softly before he hugged her to him a little tightly for a moment, "What do you think? He smiled against her shoulder and they closed their eyes. Ryan tried to think back to the last time that he'd felt this way, falling asleep with a woman. Aside from when he'd been certain that Sarah loved him more than anything, he had no answer. But then he remembered the first woman that he could say that he'd ever really been in love with and he knew where the feeling came from in him. Lovemaking between that woman and Ryan had always ended with them tired, happily sated, and lying together as closely as possible. It was never spoken about. They might end up far apart in the bed by morning, or they just might wake up still in some sort of human heap, but their best times were when they finished and actually slept together, as though the sleep bonded them better. Her name was Penny and he still missed her in a way. They'd only parted because her job had taken her across the country. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 05 ***Depending on how the last part crunches out, I think this is the second-last chapter. This one's a bit short again, but I needed the room in the upcoming one to bring in the final character. I wrote this five years ago at least, but reading through it, I see that I'll need to add one more person for the ending. This is still largely the recollections of Ryan as he worries about the two most important people in his life and it's a strange thing to him, which makes it worse. He's lived his life - the latest part of it anyway, alone. Now he cares about Taela and Shorty and they're missing. But that's for later. The hot chocolate? ~grin~ I added it since that's what I was sipping a big mug of while I was checking this over. 0_o ***** ----------------------- A year of earth time had gone past. Taela and Ryan had grown their relationship into something that neither one could have ever expected to have. They had the odd disagreement now and then, and a few of those had even grown into minor fights, but they'd never lasted long. Long before the winter set in, they were a true hunting pair, a couple so in love and in tune with each other in all respects, though they went about it a little differently. Ryan taught Taela as much of the technology of Earth as he had on hand in the shuttle and they spent days out there inside it. It was during one of those times when Ryan had an idea. He accessed the old beacon that Betty had set out from her probe ship ages before and, finding that it was still functional, he queried it for everything that it still had, and he learned a lot. "What are you doing?" Taela asked him one day as she sat in the co-pilot's seat with Shorty. It hadn't taken Ryan long to see that the two of them had their own relationship in a very real sense. He guessed that it had come about from their time together when she was younger and had to look after the screecher when Betty was out hunting. By the time that he'd figured it out, Ryan found that he didn't mind it very much. In fact, he liked it a lot. Seeing the two of them walking together was a nice thing, he decided, since they were close, a little like a girl with her younger brother, though it was a lot different from his own relationship with his younger sister had been when they were kids. They'd hated each other as children and that had matured as they did themselves to the point where he hadn't seen his sister since he'd left home and had no desire to ever set eyes on her again. There just wasn't anything there, other than mutual avoidance. Of course, it was also a bit of a moot point, he realized, since by now, she was more than likely long dead. But Shorty and Taela had something. One of Ryan's favorite sights was to see them walking without their knowledge that he was watching. They were different, but it was obvious that they fit together and the way that they looked together always gave him thoughts about ... Left alone or in only Ryan's company, they were affectionate toward each other, though not sickeningly so, as though they'd discovered a piece to each one's completion as a person in the company of the other. He liked to see it, and he guessed that something about the two of them had changed the way that he saw Shorty as well. The screecher still had his odd relationship with Betty, but as time went by, she seemed to be finally beginning to age to a degree and for a time, it had caused Shorty some difficulty, since he hadn't understood it at all and took it to be a little bit of rejection of him on her part. It had been Ryan who had stepped up for Shorty then, seeking to give him more of his friendship as well as a bit of mentoring in a way. He just hadn't interpreted Shorty's adoration of him in the correct way -- at first. The sound of Taela's question to him put him in mind of the day that Betty had gotten angry with him when she'd walked in on them as Ryan was teaching Shorty about PDWs. She'd about lost her mind when she saw the little guy practicing with field-stripping the weapon on a table while sitting on Ryan's knee, since he liked to do that whenever Ryan allowed it. And Ryan allowed it because he saw that Shorty learned things even faster when he had a teacher to be in physical contact with, as though part of what he learned flowed better for him that way. "What I'm doing," he replied, "is getting Shorty over his fears. He's not a minor in age and he's not retarded, the way that you like to tell yourself that he is. I've found that he's got quite a sharp mind in his head. I'm just giving him a way to use it and I guess that I'm also empowering him here a little. I'm slowly learning how to talk to him so that he understands a lot more. One of his biggest fears is that one night, his nutty relations outside will get in here with us. He's always felt helpless fear over it. You've got racks of Morgarod weaponry. I've got my stuff. He's had only his fears and his utter dependence on the rest of us. Even after I gave you and Taela a PDW each, there's still one for me and one left over. I've given it to him and I'm training him how not to shoot himself or any of us. You know what I've found?" Betty had been almost furious. "What? That he can now kill us without meaning to?" Ryan had just shaken his head, "No, Betty. I've found that he can calculate how much to lead a flying target by almost innately. After only about three mags through his weapon, he already knows the trajectory that this ammunition flies at over any given distance -- and we both know that he's not exactly an idiot savant. He's got a lot of processor between his pointed ears. I've learned that his difficulty in speaking is not due to the lack of mental horsepower. It's quite the opposite, to my mind. He's something which can only engage his vocal chords as a screech for the most part. He's got a brain and it's hungry. I'm feeding it, and my reward is that he's finding that he CAN speak - he just only has the ability to whisper and hiss the words, that's all." She'd turned on her heel then and stormed out. Shorty had looked over at Ryan with an expression of concern then. "Don't worry about it, Shorty," Ryan had smiled, "I'm sure that you know just how to get on her good side again in a little while." Shorty's face showed that he was thinking about it and then the screecher had grinned and nodded. "Now," Ryan had said, "start from fresh and take this thing down and then put it back together with your eyes closed. It's really important that you can do this blindfolded and by only feel." Shorty had nodded and then went to work with his eyes tightly closed. He had it apart, field-stripped right down and then back together in less than a minute -- and that included the strong and wickedly devious spring which was a bitch to get into place and hold while one screwed in the gas adjustment plug against its compressed force. When Ryan told him that he'd done it faster than he'd ever seen anyone do it, Shorty had half-turned where he sat to hug Ryan tightly. It was the way that Ryan knew that the screecher expressed his happiness over something that he'd been either given or had learned and he'd smiled at his smaller friend. But then Shorty had done something that Ryan knew had taken him months to get his courage up for and he didn't know what to do, not wanting Shorty to feel badly over it. All the same, Shorty's soft kiss on his lips had come as a total shock. Even more as Ryan found that he'd really liked it. While he'd sat there wondering how to respond without causing a setback, Shorty had laid his head on Ryan's shoulder and sighed softly with his eyes closed. After a moment, he'd raised his head to look at Ryan very searchingly for a moment, and then -- as if what had happened hadn't been enough - he'd actually managed to form a very rare whispered question. "Is it ok, Ryan?" The veteran soldier had been struggling for a long time over Shorty anyway, out of the way that he liked him and felt for him. This -- while it had been a bit of a rude shock to him, didn't seem to be that far wrong somehow. Ryan had what he might have called a 'what the hell' moment and then he'd just kissed Shorty back for a second or two, and the soft sigh that he heard felt so good to him. Just then, Taela had walked in and she chuckled at them, "That's been a long time coming." Shorty looked as though he'd have blushed -- if he'd had the ability to -- and he got down from Ryan's knee to pick up the PDW, taking it over to Taela and showing her what he'd learned a little proudly. "What do you mean?" Ryan had asked Taela as Shorty worked. "Just what I said," she replied, smiling, "Shorty loves you, Ryan. He loves us both quite a lot. I've been wondering just how long it would take you to see that." She watched as Shorty repeated what he could do with the firearm and she fussed over the screecher a little. "I've loved him since we were kids, him and I, and now, well I know that he's dying to go a little farther and begin something more with us." She asked Shorty to put the weapon down and then she put her arms around Shorty's waist and the response was almost instant. Shorty groaned softly and put his arms around Taela's neck as he looked up at her. In turn, she began to kiss him and Shorty's wings unfurled to wrap around her a second later. When they broke the kiss, Taela turned her head to smile at Ryan. "You don't mind, do you, Ryan? I'm really hoping that you're not going to start feeling jealous. I've seen the way that you like to look at us when we're together. We both love you, Ryan. That hasn't changed one bit. I really don't think that it ever could." Ryan shook his head, feeling the way that his sudden erection throbbed against the restriction of his pants, "No. It's just something that I guessed that I preferred not to see coming, though now I really don't know why." As the screecher hung in her embrace, Taela said very quietly, "I'm going to tell him that the next time that Mom sends him away, that I don't want to hear him sniffling as he looks for a place to sleep. I want him to come to bed with us, Ryan. Because he needs it from us both, and I think that we need it from him too. We already do a lot of things together. When the time comes again, I want to take him hunting with us. I know that he's always wanted to come along -- and he knows what we do then. That's another thing that he wants from us." Ryan looked up at them, "I've seen how you two are when you're together, Taela. I don't actually think that I mind it all that much, for some reason. I think that I'd love to see it. I just don't know if I can actually DO what he wants from me." She led Shorty back around the table to Ryan who stood up then. "Show Ryan," Taela smiled, "Show him how you really feel, Shorty. It's alright. I think that he's ready to know now." Shorty nodded up at Taela and then he looked very shy once again as he took the two steps to where Ryan stood. It suddenly hit Ryan after all of this time, just what the screecher's shy way really meant. Shorty placed himself in front of Ryan and he raised his thin arms to place them around Ryan's neck. When Ryan reached to hold him, Shorty stretched up and kissed Ryan so softly for a long minute before he eased himself back down onto his feet. "I love Ryan," Shorty hissed and then he laid his head against Ryan's chest and closed his eyes. "You ought to see the little smile on his face," Taela said softly, "He's so happy whenever you hug him, and I know just how he feels. You always make me feel so good every single time that you hold me." Ryan lowered his head and he kissed the top of the screecher's ear, "I love you too, Shorty. I guess I just didn't really think about it enough to really know." As Shorty let go of Ryan and backed away, he looked embarrassed again, but neither Ryan or Taela allowed it, both of them telling him that between them all, his erection wasn't a big deal, and Shorty's face showed his relief. "I don't know about this, "Ryan said, "Could you please try to explain it to him for me? I know that he understands things from you instantly. Me? I usually need to tell him in about three ways before I'm sure that he gets it and believe me, I do love him. I just don't think that I'm ready to love him in quite the way that he'd like -- at the very least not yet, anyway." Taela nodded, and she spoke quietly into Shorty's ear. He came back to Ryan and hugged him again. Taela said, "He understands. He wants you to know that he loves you anyway. I think that you ought to give a little thought to what you could have with both of us, that's all. It's what we both want. We're not the same in a lot of ways, Ryan, but we're just the same in one way, and that's how we both love you." ------------------------- Ryan came back to Taela's question, "I'm looking for something. I've just realized that in order to have this degree of completion in her data, ... I've never asked her how long she had before her ship's sick engines began to give out on her, but from what's here, she didn't do the usual three Earth day thing and make a few passes. She must have been here for a while, since I know that there's always been an emphasis to look for worlds which are at least a little compatible to ours and then if at all possible to map them as completely as possible. And here it is," he grinned. "What?" Taela asked, looking over. "She must have been here right about at the time of the big seasonal weather shift," Ryan smiled, "Let me just configure a drill-down of the faunal types and their activity at that time, ... It'll just take me a sec, ..." He sat back with a wide grin as he pointed to one of the displays, "There, Taela. She probably didn't do this as a thought, other than when she set up her sensor arrays, but if I can just plot this, we'll know of at least the relative time -- datewise -- and the places for the herd migrations. With that, we know just where we need to be and when." ------------------------- The results took a couple of days of study, but Ryan showed it to Taela when he was done. "We're really too far north for the best hunting, since we always go on foot and that limits us to how far we can go in a day, leaving enough time to hunt, kill what we're looking for, butcher it out roughly and then trek all the way back so that we're under cover by the time that the sun out there goes down. Look here," he said; pointing to another display, "They all just go there to stand around munching the whole winter. And there, after dark, there are no screechers at all. The only predators that I've been able to see in that area are things something a little like the lions back on Earth, and there aren't many of those, if I query for their positions. After dark, there's only some other cat-things. I might be wrong, but I don't think I am. We could fly there, up high to conserve fuel, land somewhere there and then hunt for a couple of days before we'd have to come back." They showed Betty that afternoon and she was surprised, "I never thought of it," she said, "but then, I didn't have a shuttle to take advantage of it anyway." "We want to go when it's time," Taela said, "and we want to take Shorty with us." Betty considered it for a moment and then she smiled, "I assume that what that also means is that you three want to go there to do more than hunt together." Ryan and Taela nodded and when Betty looked over at Shorty, he looked nervous for a second before he nodded very firmly as well. Betty's response surprised them all. "Oh thank God," she laughed, "I know that turning him down was hurting him, but I just, ... I guess I'm finally really getting to feel my age, but, ... well, I just can't keep up with him anymore." She turned to look at Shorty and she reached out to take his hand, "Baby, I think that this is something that you need quite a lot. So from now on, if you want to sleep with Taela and Ryan, well you just go on ahead. It's got nothing to do with you, but these days, Momma just wants her sleep, alright?" Shorty nodded and then he walked over to hug Betty for a moment. ---------------------------- That night, after locking down, they walked to the hot stream and bathed together. Ryan found that, more and more, he was coming to like the thought of what it meant to them all. He was in bed, looking over the printed data for the upcoming trip when they walked in. Even after thinking about it for most of the day, Ryan still found that his heart seemed to skip a beat when he looked up. The weather had begun to turn cooler in the evening, though the effect there in their home was minimal. Only Betty had really taken to wearing the flightsuit that she'd been given. Ryan tended to wear only combat pants these days and Taela and Shorty were still fine walking around with nothing on at all. To see them coming to him like that was a rather large thrill, no matter what he told himself. The sight of Taela like that always caused his heart rate to ramp up a little and he knew pretty much that it always would. And when she walked with Shorty, he just felt so, ... He couldn't describe it, really. Shorty was a male, though like this, the way that the two of them came to him, ... well, it felt a little like Christmas, no matter how he looked at it. "We found some hot chocolate powder in the survival kits," Taela grinned, "and we put it all together and there's enough for all of us twice over once we added the milk powder to it. Shorty and I want to celebrate a little tonight, since I'll have my males and he'll finally get to have his man and you'll get -- " "Probably shagged out, I'm hoping," Ryan grinned. They all laughed as they got onto the bed and sat together sipping something that Ryan had quite forgotten about. "When I was a kid, I used to love hot chocolate over the winter. We used to live in a state called Minnesota and one thing about it; as nice as it was to live there, it was always a cold place in the wintertime. My mom always kept some in the kitchen all winter, a big cardboard tub of it. But the very best to me, anyway, was when Dad would take us all to a coffee place. They had the best hot chocolate there. Now that I think about it, that's about the only thing that I miss about the place, all of it." After a time, they found that the drink caused Shorty to feel a little sleepy and Taele took his empty mug and set it down on the little table beside her bed. She patted the mattress in about the middle and Shorty moved there. Then she moved to lie beside him. "Come on, Ryan," she smiled, "just lie on the other side of him and I'll teach you what he likes." Shorty looked a little uncertain at first, but he relaxed soon after as they kissed him and they took turns caressing him. It was a very new thing for Ryan, though it wasn't as strange as he'd have thought. "Just remember how you feel about him," Taela said very softly, "Just show him that you want to make him feel good and then he will, because that's how he is. We all don't really know how to do this between us -- Shorty least of all, but I think that if we try to keep it quiet and slow, we should do alright." What began with Shorty in between them slowly turned into something where he played a more active part. It took a little time, but Shorty came over Ryan's hand from the way that Ryan had been stroking him. After that, Shorty had moved and finding Ryan hard, he just began to suck while Taela caressed him all over his back end and she found that it wasn't too long a stretch to where she could kiss Ryan and Shorty was thrilled when Ryan came. Ryan himself was astounded by it all and the ease with which they seemed to fit with each other. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 05 "He's wanted this with me for years," Taela smiled, "And I've wanted it too. You're the most important part, Ryan. You make this possible. If you hadn't landed here, we'd never have the chance to do this, not while my mother was alive, anyway -- and it's even better with you here. With a little luck, he'll get what he's really wanted forever." They didn't try to get very fancy with each other; they were just looking for ways to keep everyone pleased. When Taela asked him carefully, Ryan had nodded and then watched as Shorty climbed on top of Taela and copulated with her very slowly. How he felt as he watched them surprised him. It was a very erotic thing to see, though there was no thrashing around or anything. When Shorty had rested a little, they both had Taela at the same time in a very pleasing slow double-penetration which they managed to keep up for quite a while. Taela was on her front for a while after that, groaning that she now had something which she loved to do, since she could please both of them that way at the same time. "It is not a little thing," she groaned as she lifted herself up a little. "Why not?" Ryan grinned. "It's not as easy as I'd imagined it," she said, "but in the middle of it, I just saw that with you both, I have two males and I love having my two males, so I hope that we can do that a lot. I don't want to sound sticky sweet here, but I love you both very much." As far as he was concerned, real penetrative sex with Shorty wasn't on the menu to Ryan's mind -- at least not yet. But Shorty had other plans. Something like this -- this first night where he was accepted and not as some half-simple boy in an older woman's bed -- meant quite a lot to him. By now, Shorty had known -- and for certain -- ever since Ryan had shown up, that he was actually a bisexual creature for a long time now and he'd had his little daydreams about something just like this. He wasn't simple at all. But the emotions which fueled his heart were very pure. He loved Taela and always had. He'd just never been allowed to show it or to act on his feelings toward her before now. He loved Ryan as well now, and most of all, he knew his place with them instinctively. He was quietly determined to give himself to them completely. So it wasn't good enough as far as he was concerned that Ryan held off, not wanting to hurt him in any way. Shorty had been hurt before, long ago. Now, he just didn't want these two who meant so much to him to give him any less than what he wanted from them, needed from them, really. He'd finally been allowed to fuck Taela and she'd liked it. He knew that he wasn't the male that Ryan was. That didn't matter to him. But he had a want in him for that male as well, and tonight, he wanted to know if he could please Ryan well. They were surprised when Shorty had gotten on top of Ryan while he was on his back. Shorty took hold of Ryan's manhood and began to work it -- even though it was behind him and as difficult as it was to do. He looked into Taela's questioning face and he did his best to beseech her. "Berries, Taela. Berries." She looked over at Ryan. "I think that he wants to ride you. I can help him. Will you let him do it?" Ryan nodded, "I think that I have to. He'll feel like he's failed if I don't." Taela sat up and she reached for the berries in the drawer of her table, "Are you sure, Shorty?" He looked down at Ryan and he nodded, bending down to kiss Ryan. "I want Ryan," he whispered after a moment, "Ss-sometimes ... want to be ... yours, Ryan." There were wide-eyed stares from the others at that. It was the longest sentence that Shorty had ever managed to put together in his life, so they couldn't doubt his sincerity. Taela worked in the cramped space that she was given for it, lubricating both of them as best she could under the circumstances. He didn't want it, but Taela didn't care for his bravado at the moment. "You want him inside you," she whispered as she knelt beside him, sliding a thick padded finger into him, "This is to give you the best chance, Shorty. We know that you're brave. That is not needed here. I want to make sure that it's good for you." When she drew her finger out, Taela took Ryan's shaft in her hand and with a few quiet instructions to Shorty, she got them as lined up as she was able and then he began to press back. There was the moment of discomfort and then Shorty smiled down at Ryan. "For you," Shorty hissed, "Taela and Shorty." Ryan looked up and didn't know what to say. He reached up and ran his hands over as much of the screecher's thin body as he could reach, "I know." Shorty's smile told Ryan everything as the screecher began to fuck on him. His eyes said a lot of how he enjoyed it as Ryan held him and sometimes pulled him down as he thrust upward and Shorty knew then that he'd been made for this. He felt Taela's wide fingers on him as she caressed him as well and when he looked at her, he was a little surprised at the way that she lay there with her other hand working between her thighs as she watched them. As it went on, both Taela and Ryan saw things in Shorty which amazed them, mostly just how deep this feeling went for him and the obvious way that he enjoyed what they were doing. He sped up at the end, lifting himself and then dropping back down to send Ryan's hardness deep into him over and over as he gasped and whimpered. Just before Shorty came, Taela managed what she'd originally thought to be the impossible. She was able to get her face down there far enough to take Shorty's throbbing, rock hard shaft inside of her mouth and he'd almost screamed out in joy as he let go. He had no strength left after that, but Ryan wouldn't allow him to collapse just yet and he held Shorty up until he'd slipped out and then he eased Shorty down on him. Shorty rolled off slowly with a satisfied groan to lie partially on Ryan. Taela positioned herself to use the space on the human that Shorty left to her and they both looked up at Ryan. "So we are a herd or a pack or, ... " "I think we're a flock," Ryan smiled, "I've never felt something like this." Shorty raised his head wearily and laid it down against Ryan's shoulder as Taela had done. "Happy." Was all that he said. --------------------------------------- When it was time, they took the shuttle for a short test flight, with Ryan handling most of the controls, though Taela did what he'd taught her. It went perfectly. The next day, they set off as early as they could after the few screechers in the area had gone. Even so, they'd almost run into a couple of them as they passed on their way up, climbing to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Once they got high enough, Ryan gave them a second's warning before he rolled them over twice before he leveled out again and came to his heading. When he looked over and back, he saw that they both had wide eyes, but even Shorty was laughing. The hunting was unbelievably easy and productive and their night in the shuttle afterward was far more lust-filled than they'd imagined. Both Ryan and Shorty enjoyed Taela a couple of times each and Ryan learned a little of the art of fellatio on Shorty while the screecher had his head buried between Taela's thighs. She came to love the way that he could buzz that amazing tongue of his. After Shorty's semen filled his mouth, Ryan moved up and the two males took the last of Taela's sanity temporarily, using their mouths in her front and back at the same time. When they were done, she was hoarse and she couldn't keep her thighs from trembling. They didn't mind it when she refused to let either one go for a long time afterwards. Taela had brought her mother's harness and she fucked Shorty in a bit of preparation for his bout with Ryan, but he'd surprised her by using one of the condoms in that miracle of a survival kit of his. When Shorty cried out and went almost limp onto his front after Ryan had pulled out, Ryan discarded the condom and used berry juice as a lubricant and then he took Taela the same way as she writhed a little while lying in Shorty's embrace. The three of them slept in a rather odd and yet satisfying pile after that. When they got back and had hung all of the meat in the ice locker that Ryan had built for them, they were all exhausted from all of the butchering and getting it all to hang properly and finally, the work of stretching out the hides so that something useable could be made from them afterward. They just fell into bed and after they'd both fucked Taela, they just began to drift off. "Not so quick, Ryan," Taela whispered as she lay on her side with Shorty, "He may not be asking in a loud voice, but I don't think he'd give you an argument right now if you wanted him the way that I know that he hopes you do." Ryan lifted himself up and leaned over to look down at Shorty there in Taela's arms. Shorty only smiled and lifted his leg to place it over Taela's hip. Ryan moved down and slowly worked himself into the screecher until they both gasped a little and then Ryan began to love Shorty very slowly. ----------------- The next day, Betty gathered the three of them up and led them to a part of the volcano where they'd never been. "I want to show you something," she said, "I don't know if any of it still works, but you've got that shuttle and there are the two fuel tanks that you salvaged from that wreck that you almost rode in here on. I dunno, maybe you can put something together so that you can get off this rock one day, if you ever want to." She moved a few tarpaulins aside from a large opening and they stared as more and more of what had lain hidden there for so many years came to light. "I've got the full set of manuals, but they're in Morgaron, obviously," Betty said, "Taela can read it and translate for you when you need it." Ryan walked into the space slowly, not quite believing what stood there in all of its dark and slightly menacing - if somewhat dust-covered glory. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you just how many times I almost filled my pants to see one of these come rippling out of the sky at us," he said, "I almost want to run right now. What sort of crew does it need?" Betty nodded, "It seats four and with a full galley, you can live on it for a couple of months. Up front, there's the craft commander and the co-pilot, and just behind them, there's the offensive and defensive officer's stations. Fuel cells," Betty said, "It needs fuel cells, mostly -- which you have a full set of on the shuttle. That and the fuel, well, it ought to get you to somewhere half-assed civilized. I think it still has cryo-juice, since it doesn't ever go bad, but you'll need to reset the running doses to accommodate all of you, since everybody is a little different in what they are. A good thing," she smiled, "since your shuttle isn't equipped for cryo, is it?" Ryan nodded, still not believing what his eyes were telling him. "Only landing skids?" She shook her head, "No, it has skids and wheeled landing gear selectable as an option. Ru'Torgh set it up on the skids because of what's in the hold. He found deposits here and they're almost pure. I can show you where to look if you want. His plan was to get back home in this, but he didn't have the fuel for the engines. It needs fuel to get to the edges of the atmosphere. After that, you switch over to the drives and run them off the cells for the space part of the flight. With the weight of what's in the hold, the drives would only melt down in this thick atmosphere. You need to get to at least a fair-sized trading post to sell what's here. After that, you can probably buy whatever the fuck ship you want. As she sits here, she's got a belly full of almost pure, better than lab-grade Rhenium -- a little over five tons of it in sealed packages. Ru'Torgh spent over ten years at this. Now I want to give it to you. Sell it and do whatever you want, Ryan. Just take care of my daughter and Shorty. I'll stay here. I don't ever want to leave here anymore. I don't think that I've got all that long left to live anyhow." -------------------------------- It took two years of Earth time to get everything in order and working, but aside from a couple of glitches, it all worked eventually. There were modifications that they'd all decided on, and then there was almost six months of testing, one system at a time. Whenever Taela or Shorty looked to be flagging a little, Ryan just told them that they had no margin for error and that as much as possible, now was the time to find out about failures, since once they were on their way, it was bound to be an awfully long walk back -- even if they all walked away from the scene of the crash. The sad part of it all was that not quite two months before the date that they'd set for their departure, Taela suddenly realized that it could take them years before they ever came back -- if they ever did. She knew then that there was very little chance that she'd ever see her mother alive again. "I know that," Betty said to her, "I was hoping just a little that you wouldn't think of it until after you'd gone. I'd rather that you remembered me like this." The two women sat weeping for a little while and sadly, Shorty found out about an hour later and it grew worse right then. "Doesn't it bother you at all?" Taela asked Ryan as he worked to diagnose a problem with the flight deck lighting. He stopped working and turned to look at her with a sigh, "Yes Taela, it does, it really does. I figured it out about three minutes after she showed this ship to us. And she knew that I knew, because I've lived most of the time of my life in cryo and I know how travel in space makes everything that you left behind into memories and nothing more than that. I guess that I'm a little more used to the idea, and she's not as close to me as she is to you guys. Another thing that I know is that doing something while I grieve helps me." He laid his tools on a ledge and he tuned to take Taela into his arms. She slipped back into her weeping then and he held her for a long time, saying nothing. Taela was learning things as quickly as she could, since she'd be sitting in the co-pilot's chair and Shorty went from knowing nothing about flying -- other than flapping his own wings feebly -- to understanding how to at least begin to protect them from threats -- especially in peacetime. "There's really no such thing," Ryan told them, "There are always folks who want to take what you've got -- and we'll be carrying what a whole lot of people want. You need Rhenium if you want to make engines or drives. It doesn't occur on a lot of worlds and it's a rare thing on Earth as well -- if there's any left there at all." Something that Ryan and Taela loved to watch as it happened was that Shorty's ability to speak seemed to blossom as he learned, since his position required him to communicate with them both. As far as test flights were concerned, there had been only about a half-dozen, since they didn't want to eat too far into the reserves that they had. Finally, the day came to leave. Their goodbyes to Betty almost brought Ryan to tears of his own just to see it. He knew that for both of them, there hadn't been what might be termed the usual chances to learn to cope with separation, and he knew that it was worse for Shorty, since Betty was the second mother that he was losing, though to his surprise, the screecher was the one who was able to shake off his outward sadness sooner. Ryan had programmed as much of the trip as he could and he'd set up a selected destination out in open space where the ship would park itself as he was brought out of Cryo-sleep. If he found anything, such as communication signals, he'd point them that way and go back to sleep to be awoken near the first place they'd found. The ride toward the upper atmosphere was breathtaking and quick before Ryan leveled off and set them up for the transfer to the drives. With that done and the engines shut down, they ate a dinner of a little meat and a lot of greens, since they likely wouldn't see much of them again for a while -- other than what was in the freezer in the galley. They sat up front with Ryan in the commander's chair and Taela sharing hers with Shorty as he watched them stare at the stars for a long time. After that, he got them both set up for sleep before he went under himself and the dark shape slid silently ever deeper into space. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 06 ***Looks like there'll be a chapter 7 to this, since after I added the character, it went a little all over the map. I just need to paste her into what I wrote for the ending. I didn't intend it, but when I was looking for a name, I wanted to stay middle of the road, but what came to me after I defined her personality in my head was Mischka (MEESHKA) - and I don't even know why. It got stupid after I added her last name, going for the unusual in the first name and yet something more commonplace in the surname, but it worked for me and I was a little satisfied - until somebody began to sing an old ad song - which I'll just call the wiener song, and we laughed our asses off. And I've had that thing in my head now for half a week! @#%@^$# Americans and a few Canadians will probably see what I mean when they get to her name. 0_o **** ------------------ In the event, it hadn't been all that much of a deal. As much of a concern as the automated awakening might have been to Ryan, it worked flawlessly and he awoke to the sounds of radio traffic. Since it took more than a minute to wake up out of cryo in any event, Ryan guessed that the shipping lane that they were a little close to must be one of the busier ones. As he was 'coming around', the first thing that he did was to hit the releases for the cryo-juice sleeve and use his other arm to swivel the smaller status panel toward his field of view so that he could see what was what. He noted right off that the internal gravity had come on, so that was good. He hated pissing into a plastic bag. Everything seemed to be about perfect, he thought as he looked at the timer display on the cryo panel when he'd gotten up a little carefully after being in the same position for a while. It brought him the usual aches and pains. They'd been traveling for slightly more than two months. That reminded him that he was parched and needed to drink. It also reminded him that his bladder was full. He sighed. A vicious cycle. He walked over to the commander's chair and retracted the screen shields to have a look and no surprise, it looked exactly as what he'd seen when he'd been preparing to go under, only the positions of some of the stars had changed, since they'd covered a lot of uh, space in the meantime. He found a positional marker beacon not all that far off and he queried it so that he could place their present position rather exactly. Ryan almost broke into a wide grin when he learned that there was a trading post – Nanworth Colony, the ID tag flashed at him – within about two days of easy motoring at sub-jump velocity. By then, two days in the slow lane sounded just fine to Ryan. He hit the can and then headed off for a quick shower, quick being the operative word, given the rather finite supply of water available for washing. It was while he was in there that the wants of his body came to him. He'd forgotten about it. It was always this way coming out of cryo, he sighed, noting that at the moment, he felt the need to do a rather impossible combination of things; eat, sing, screw, eat, get a little drunk, have a cigarette – even after years of abstinence – screw, eat, screw and last of all, screw. He only gave in to one of them, and it wasn't even on the list directly. Ryan walked over to look at the two people that he was traveling with, and after kissing them once very lightly, he leaned against a bulkhead and began to masturbate. Given the way that he felt, and the length of time that he'd been under, it didn't take too long, wasn't terribly invasive as far as Taela and Shorty were concerned, and it felt just great. He gave in to another desire then and made himself a cup of instant coffee with the dwindling supply of the powder from out of the survival packs carried in the shuttle. He did his best not to try to calculate just how old the stuff might have been at this point, but it just had to be well over a decade old, and that was from the view that it had traveled with him. From the view of the place where it had been grown, it had to be well over a century by now. He looked at the little packet in his hand for a moment. If nothing else, it told him that the packaging industry had their shit down pretty good. He finished the cup a little slowly, not knowing exactly when he might have a chance at another in the next little while, and he rinsed out the mug before he placed it back in the rack under his name and re-clamped it into place. Then he walked over to set the controls on Taela's bed to awaken her slowly. After that, he sat down next to her and he just looked at her as she slept. He'd gotten his wish, he thought. He had the love of this lovely person. He knew that just about as soon as she figured out that they'd be at a place in a couple of days where there were likely human females walking around, she'd begin to feel a little uncertain. She'd wonder how she measured up in his eyes against them. It made him smile a little and shake his head. He knew what he wanted forever, and she was lying right there in front of him, not far away from the other person who'd grabbed his heart in a tight grip in the most surprising way, given that he'd never had a thought in his life before of loving another male. Now, ... He couldn't imagine living without them. But he was well aware of the way that life can take a sudden left turn. It had happened to him before. All that he could do was what he did, finally. They couldn't hear him as he spoke, but that didn't matter to Ryan. He promised them that if he could, he'd do his best to always take care of their hearts. It caused his eyes to sting a little and he stepped away long enough to wipe his eyes and tell himself not to be an idiot and that it was only the effects of coming out of cryo. But he knew better. Taela opened her eyes a few minutes later and looked up as soon as she could focus her eyes and she smiled. The moment was worth a lot to Ryan. After she reached for him to lower himself enough so that she could kiss him, he removed the cryo-juice sleeve for her and told her to just relax for a minute. In that time, he told her where they were and what was going on. "I think I'll need to pee soon," she said in a small-sounding voice, "but right now, ... I want, .. I want ..." "Shh," Ryan smiled, "I know." He reached for one of her breasts and she sighed as her hand moved down her belly toward her opening. "I'll do that for you, if you want. You just work the sweetest tits in the universe a little for me, ok?" he whispered and Taela nodded a little as she moved her hands, "Oh, please." As his fingers brushed her there in a first grazing touch, he felt her pubic hair stretch a little to try to hold onto what they felt in the softest caress of their own. It always amazed him, the way that they moved, always slowly, and most of all gently, unless she was actually having an orgasm. That was the way that he always knew, whenever it happened. At those moments, it was as though there was a connection between her vaginal contractions and her pubic hair, the way that it tried to grasp anything near her lips to hold on and pull it in a little more in a hopeful way. And when it happened while he was licking her there, the sensations to him were, ... well, he supposed that they were indescribable in human terms. That was ok with him; he just knew that he loved her for it just that much more. She began to move her hips against his hand, moaning a little about her need and how good it felt to her. Ryan just smiled and leaned down to kiss her until she lifted her bottom up off the seat and cried out, her wonderful pubic hair doing its best to grab his hand and pull. "I've never, ... that was the fastest that I've ever gotten there in my life," she said in a bit of wonder. "The wonders of cryo-juice," he smiled. As her breathing settled down, he reminded her to pee and to keep her shower as brief as she could, "It'll take a little while to re-process the water and heat it up again for Shorty. I've already had a quick one, but I doubt there'll be enough unless we give it a little while. You go on, but get up slowly to give your inner ears a chance to get used to being upright again, and I'll make you a bowl of noodles while you shower. How does that sound?" Taela smiled as she pulled herself up, "Right now, it sounds amazing, but, ... " she looked at him with a hungry expression, "Do we have any of those old chocolate bars left?" Ryan laughed quietly with a nod, "I've been saving the last one for you – just for this." He stepped away and pulled out the ancient-looking Mylar packet. "Eat this slow, ok? It's the last one, though I'll try to get some more whenever we get somewhere. I read something once about post-cryo cravings. Do you know what the two strongest ones are for females? Chocolate and sex." She shook her head as she tore the packaging open, "Wrong order – for me, anyway," she grinned. But then the faint bit of aroma that the bar had still retained came to her nose and she looked up, "Wait, ..." Ryan laughed until he had to wipe his eyes again. ----------------------------- "He looks so peaceful like that," Taela said as the two of them looked down at Shorty, "I remember him looking like this not long after he came to us. It was a long time ago, but I've never forgotten it. I used to sit and watch him sleep for hours. Look," she pointed, "he's starting to grow hair. That's rare for a screecher. I've hardly ever seen a male with hair before." She looked a little lower and she chuckled, "It always amazes me the way that males get hard in their sleep." She looked over at Ryan, "Even in cryo?" He nodded, "Even in cryo. I'll set his controls to wake him up now. It ought to take just a minute or so, I hope, anyway. We only did the trial one time before we left and none of us really know all that much about screecher physiology. I just had to base things on his Morgarod side of things, pretty much." "Do it then," Taela smiled, "and I'll give him something good to wake up to." She moved to position herself as best she could and then she licked her lips just before she began to suckle the thin hardness standing at attention in front of her. Her two males were very different between them, she thought, but as far as she was concerned, this difference was one of her very favorites. The only limiting factor for her was the length of time that it took for her lips to go completely numb. Other than that, there had been times when she'd happily done this for them one after the other over most of an afternoon. The trick, she'd learned, was to not ever hurry things. It gave them all that much more time, and anyway, she thought, she was sure to always get them there no matter what. Shorty began to come around about twenty seconds later and by then, Taela had his small scrotum in her hand, cupping it and caressing gently. There had been a time when Shorty felt a little deficient in this regard when he'd compared himself to Ryan. But it had been the human who had set Shorty's mind at ease by taking the time to actually measure their comparative outputs, so to speak, though he felt a little silly to have to do it. Shorty had been amazed to find that the volume that his little balls put out was actually just a tiny bit more than what Ryan gave. Of course, Ryan knew that it was also a matter of how much seminal fluid they each delivered as well, but he left well enough alone, having made his point and most of all, caused their smaller lover to feel a lot better about himself. Shorty opened his eyes and smiled up at Ryan for a second before he grew a wondering expression and raised his head to look. Ryan removed the sleeve and Shorty reached for Taela's head with a whispered sigh, his fingers slipping into her slowly moving hair as it wound itself around his hands affectionately in response. None of them knew it, but Shorty was at a stage of his life which marked the final destination signpost on the road to screecher maturity, and it happened some years after young adulthood for them – assuming that they lived that long, of course, since they tended to have a rather dicey lifespan among others like themselves. All that really happened at that point was that he actually began to grow a mane, signalling to the females that he'd lived long enough for it to happen and so must then be a successful male, thus making him more desirable as a mate. Shorty was actually a lot closer to Taela's age than any of them knew – especially Shorty. It was only about an inch and a half of fine blondish hair at this point and a little difficult to see, given that it was the same shade as his sandy-colored skin, but it caught Ryan's eye then and he leaned a little closer for a better look and then he smiled. It was moving, so that feature carried a little Morgarod in it. It also showed him that it could never be cut, just like Taela's hair. But Ryan didn't mind. He tried to envision what Shorty might look like with a long mane of hair. From the very occasional look at the ones that he'd seen, it might end up most of the way down Shorty's back in a long stripe, reaching almost all the way back to where his thin tail began. None of them could see the extent of it given Shorty's position at the moment, but it had already begun over the two months that he'd been in cryo and for some reason, the growth rate had been accelerated under the influence of the fluid. Shorty came then and Taela groaned a little before she got to work swallowing what she could. The taste was very different between them as well, but she loved the taste of them both in her mouth equally. They didn't say anything as Shorty walked away to urinate and have his shower, but after he was gone, they looked at each other with raised eyebrows. "Did you see?" Taela asked in a whisper. Ryan nodded, "He's growing a mane. I love it on him, but, ..." "But nothing," Taela smiled, before she feigned a frown, "I'm already jealous." Shorty was back right after his shower, "I am, ... " Ryan nodded, "We know. I think it looks great." Shorty looked a little dubious and Taela was beside him in an instant with a towel to dry his back a little more and to offer her reassurance," We like it, Shorty." ------------------------------ None of them seemed to be able to help it a little while later. Ryan set the controls to an automated course just off and parallel to the lane while Taela and Shorty scanned for nearby vessel traffic and came up dry. After that, Ryan made them a hot meal in the galley, and after eating that, ... They just couldn't help themselves. Taela found herself on her back with her head on a pillow, looking at Shorty while he held up her legs as he copulated with her slowly. She had one hand on Ryan's flank above and behind her as she toyed with his genitals while he waited for his turn with her. "There will be at least some human females there when we arrive, won't there, Ryan?" "Probably," he said, "Why do you ask?" "No reason, really," she said quietly and punctuated it with a little groan, "I guess that I'd like to see how they dress. Other than a flightsuit, I don't really have anything else as clothing to wear – other than my fur bikini." "I'll make sure that we access some of their ad programming on the way in," Ryan said, "just to give you a look at the current fashion trends, but out here this far, and given that a lot of them are crew on the ships passing through, I'd guess that what they mostly wear are –" "Fur bikinis?" Taela asked with a chuckle. "I was going to say flightsuits, the same as yours, pretty much," he smiled down at her. "Lean forward," she said, "I want this in my mouth now." Ryan leaned forward and placed his hands on the floor on either side of Taela. Shorty leaned a little as well and he kissed Ryan for a little while as Taela sucked. Ryan reached to run his fingers along either side of Taela's labia until Shorty came a few minutes later. Taela hadn't gotten there yet, but it wasn't a problem, since Ryan took her the rest of the way in minutes as Shorty watched. "I think that Ryan wants you now," Taela smiled up at Shorty, "I'll bet that he's dying to run his fingers over that new fur." Shorty beamed and moved to position himself over Taela as he moved his tail aside for Ryan. A long minute later, Shorty was on his forearms, kissing Taela and hissing out his pleasure as she and Ryan ran their fingers over and through the soft beginnings of his mane. "Our big male likes you like this, "she whispered to Shorty as he whimpered softly, "Ryan loves his boy just like he loves me, Shorty." "Lucky," Shorty hissed quietly through his teeth, "I love, ... him and, ... you." Ryan said nothing, but he sure felt fortunate, and he ran his hands over Shorty's hips for a moment before he reached for that new mane again. It seemed to spur him a little and he picked up the pace. Taela noticed and she reached for Shorty's balls to caress them, feeling the way that Ryan's bumped against her fingertips softly. She only had minutes to wait and then Shorty began to whine. It signalled that he was close and when Ryan groaned loudly, she moved her hand to hold the smaller phallus and she worked it as Shorty cried out, and then she felt the warmth of his seed as it sprayed onto her belly. She sighed, "My beautiful Shorty." -------------------------------- As they neared Nanworth, Ryan called and set up the inspections that he knew would be required to fully register the craft. He also inquired about whether there was a representative of the company who he'd worked for while on the freighter on hand. He was in luck and his next call was to that office. He identified himself and said that the ship had been a total loss with him as the sole survivor. The conversation took a while and he was informed that there would be a rather informal, though official board of inquiry when he arrived regarding the loss. "What was that about?" Taela asked with Shorty next to her looking very curious. "I need to tell them what happened out there. I was careful not to say anything in that call, since it's nobody's business. But that ship – even as lightly loaded as it was at that point, represented a fat pile of money to them. I'm sure that they'll get a ton of it back from the insurance, but it all needs to be told – especially what was going on and what happened to the rest of the crew. I'm not sure who it was even now, but somebody committed quite a few murders out there – and there is the other thing as well." They looked at him, waiting and wondering what else and Ryan grinned, "They owe me a pile of pay and I want it. Seven years of flight pay, plus bonuses for coming out of cryo and going back in each year, plus almost three years while I was there with you guys. As soon as I can, I'm going to make out a will, so that if anything happens to me, you two won't have to worry about anything. I'll register this thing as mine to keep it simple, though it'll be yours if I die or anything." He turned in his seat slightly, "And as soon as I can sell what we're carrying, I'll see about getting your wing finally fixed properly, Shorty. I want you to be able to fly the way that you were meant to." ------------------------- They only learned what Nanworth really was by seeing it. As they hung in the thin atmosphere of the thing looking at the bay through the open doors, Ryan was rather concerned. "They tell me that this bay is large enough for us to get in and turn completely around in, but I'm having my doubts. I'm going to fold the wings in and give it a slow try – if this wind doesn't slam us against the side of the doorway." Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 06 They made it in and did manage to hover it around and set down. As the outer doors closed, Ryan set the craft down on its skids and shut down the engines after starting one of the auxiliary power units so that they'd have a little power and stay warm inside. "Well," he smiled, "here we are. We just have to wait for the bay to warm up enough to get out – it ought to take about half a day." ---------------------------------- The deal for the Rhenium was cut the day after that, and Ryan stood outside the craft in the cold while they were off-loaded. "Keep something in mind," he told the foreman of the handler droids, "The quantity has been verified and the funds have been transferred. What's here already belongs to the metals outfit, so if one of your mechs here buggers off with a packet, you're not stealing it from me, your stealing it from your bosses." "Keep your shirt on, pal," the burly loadmaster grunted, "We're bonded for this." Ryan nodded, "I know and I believe in that about as much as I believe in the tooth fairy – pal. Why the fuck do you think that your employers are paying for all of these armed cops to watch you and not me? No tooth fairies for them when they go to sleep either, I guess." ----------------------------------- Finding that there was a group of surgeons on Nanworth who had a practise there to make money on the normal and fairly regular mishaps which occurred on almost any trading post, Ryan waved a little of his newfound wealth at them and Shorty's wing was repaired two days later. Taela and Ryan were there at the small hospital the whole time, waiting. Shorty was told that he was not to attempt any sort of flight for at least a week, and he didn't mind it much, though he was a little impatient to get the wrappings off by the end of it. But his first hopping tries in the cold of the bay told them all that he'd finally be able to fly properly. He was so happy that he cried for most of a day after that. Whenever he wasn't crying, he was outside in the service bay for as long as he could take the cold, flying with his eyes squinted down against the bright lighting. ------------------------------------ "I want to go outside and see some of this place, "Taela said a few hours later, "We've been here for a little while and I am beginning to feel like I live in a cage." Ryan nodded, "I know. I feel the same way myself. But I have to hang around to take care of things a little longer, like my back pay and there's the inquiry about the loss of the freighter and, ... Christ a ton of things I have to do. Can you wait for another day, Taela? I want to go too, but, ..." Taela slipped into a bit of a mood then, "It's alright, Ryan. I'm sure that I'll be able to find my way just fine on my own." Ryan tried to caution her, though he knew that with the slightest wrong move here – "It's not like I'm a child," she said in the exact tone that Ryan had been a little afraid to hear from her. It meant that she was going and there was nothing that could change her mind. He tried once again, especially about the kinds of places and people that facilities like Nanworth tended to attract, but by then, it only got her back up. He sighed and held up a set-value card that he'd gotten for her to shop with. Taela walked past him on the way to the door, taking it from his fingers as she went, "I won't spend much," she said, "I still want to go with you, but since you haven't got time for me ..." And then she was gone. Shorty was concerned and Ryan was about to tell him that no matter what happened, that he was to remain on the craft and that as soon as he could, Ryan would look for her. "You need to let that wing heal a little more to get strong. She'll be ok, Shorty." And of course, that was when he was reminded about the inquiry and Ryan had to leave himself then. ----------------------------------- The inquiry went off fairly quickly, though it was a little sticky at some points. There was an individual there who was paid to ask the pointed questions, but Ryan kept his cool when it was suggested that he had been the murderer. He produced the recorded traffic which had passed between him and Mandy. It was something that he'd always done, just in case he had to prove what he'd been commanded to do by a superior, though in this one case, it was of far greater importance than just needing it to prove that a screw-up in load handling hadn't been his fault. He had it all in its entirety from the recorder plugged into his suit and as well from the shuttle's communication equipment once he'd gotten inside it near the end. His wondering about Mandy wanting to know where his cryo chamber was left the board with the same wondering doubts that he'd had all along. "We conclude that the deep-space pilot, Amanda Berkov, had some sort of falling out with Flight Commander Harris. One of them then committed the murders, and our assumption is that it was Ms. Berkov, given her obvious desire to leave you behind and continue on alone. Where is the shuttle now?" "The last time that I saw it, it was oxidizing peacefully on a rocky plateau, about a mile and a half walk from where the ship came to rest and burned," Ryan replied, "I found Ms. Berkov's remains, some of them, in what was left of the command portion of the ship. Her oxidation was faster. I used the fuel cells from the shuttle to power my craft for my return here as well as the contents of two of the fuel tanks which had not ruptured on impact. I am prepared to reimburse the company for what I used." But they waved it off, saying that the value had already been recouped from the insurance and that a man trying to return from something as horrific as what Ryan had gone through ought not to be concerned with anything other than what any other person might do in order to save himself if he found a way to do it. They tried to ask about the planet where he'd been, having heard that there was likely at least one sizable deposit of Rhenium there. Ryan smiled and told them that he'd registered a claim on the whole thing. "We can talk about it if you'd like," he said, "but I hold all of the mineral rights. It's not inside anyone's territorial zone, and if past history counts for anything, then it belongs to Morgaron. Do you wish to contact them and ask about it?" "How do you know that? "the pointed question guy snapped. Ryan laughed in his face, "Do you think that I flew here flapping my arms all the way? Have you seen what I rode in on? I found a Morgaron strike fighter and made it flightworthy. From what I know, there was a whole squadron of them there long before me." He leaned across the table toward the man, "Or are you about to suggest that I killed all eighty-odd Morgarods single-handedly as well?" That ended the inquiry. ---------------------------------- Ryan came back to the present then, still upset, still worried for both of them, and still quietly pissed off at the cop. He heard a soft alert from the security console. Ryan looked over at a display as a feed from the craft's security system flashed on. Underneath the ranked threat warnings, there were four feeds from cameras on different parts of the exterior of the hull which were capable of seeing in that direction to varying degrees. He moved them over to one of the larger displays and peered. Taela was coming back with Shorty and another person. That other person was a little engaged in looking concerned for the other two, sometimes reaching out to steady Taela a little. He got to his feet and began to walk back. As the narrow ramp whined down, he stared as they came through the clouds of water vapor. Shorty was holding his head. Taela was crying a little. As they came aboard, Ryan was prepared to thank the stranger for whatever assistance she'd provided and get rid of her, but it soon became apparent that it might not be the best idea. With Taela and Shorty sitting down where he could get a better look at them, Taela told him what had occurred and what the stranger had done. He tried to arrange her upset and slightly slurred words into something which might play through his mind and it wasn't working. He looked over at the newcomer and he was a little struck by her appearance. She looked something very generally like Shorty though she was an inch or so taller, and she had the sort of mane that male screechers might grow, though her skin appeared very human-like in texture. She was a little pale-looking and her hair was jet black with a very pronounced widow's peak visible on her forehead. Ryan had never seen anyone with the feature this pronounced. It went most of the way to the line of her eyebrows. Her eyes were rather strange in their appearance to him as well, since her irises were a light gray – almost white, and her pupils were black vertical slits. He tried to ignore the slightly smeared blood on her face, since it didn't appear to be hers in any way. Other than that, she looked rather human to him, until her saw her clawed feet and hands. When she turned to see if Taela was alright, Ryan noticed – well, he couldn't help it, really – that she had a tail and wings which must be larger than Shorty's for the height that they reached above her head, almost towering over her from behind. That's when he noticed something else. She stood a little taller than Shorty, but it was only because of her longer wings. She stood with her feet a little flexed quite naturally, and that gave her the slight height increase as far as he could tell. He guessed that she had to do that or they'd drag on the ground, almost being there as it was. When he mentally subtracted for the effect, he guessed that she must be about the same height as Shorty or very nearly so. "This is my friend, Mischka," Taela said, "She helped us, Shorty and me. There were something called vampires in one of the places where we were and they wouldn't let us leave at the same time when other people were trying to throw us out. One of them attacked me from behind in front of everybody, but Mischka killed him. Ryan looked over and then he thought that as weird as this sounded, ... He held out his hand, "I'm Ryan McCallum. Can you please tell me what happened? I'm afraid I'm not getting a lot of this." He was very surprised and a little relieved to find that she spoke clear English. She looked at his hand and for the briefest moment, Ryan though that she'd ignore the gesture, but she reached out and shook it for a second, "Mischka Myers," she said, "I guess I can try to tell it. Have you got a First Aid kit? They've both got a few cuts and scrapes." "Not much of one yet, "Ryan frowned, "I'll get some water heated in a second and I've got a few clean cloths. Pardon my asking, but, ... I'm afraid I've never, ..." "I'm what they call a vampire around here," Mischka said, "I'm one of the things that everybody here is terrified of. I'm a little different from the others, I guess." Ryan looked a little confused then, "I've never seen somebody like you, Mischka, so please allow me a little uh, stupidity and tell yourself that I'm probably too dumb to really know better, but as it was explained to me, the vampires around here were all very dark and, ... well, you look a little pale for what I was told." She shrugged, "I've never seen any of the others change colors the way that I can, but I'm normally the same color and I've found that along with my other features, I scare the crap out of people even more. I'm not pretty then, not with my eyes and mouth and the rest of me. I'd kill to be able to have lovely dark brown skin like Taela, but it's not possible. So I can look, ... " she rolled her eyes, "like I need to be under a sun lamp. I can't help it and I know that I look like a piece of paper like this, but it saves always freaking people out when I show up to dance. Among other things, I'm a dancer. It takes a little conscious effort most of the time, though. If I'm feeling anything other than calm, like angry, or frightened – or especially, well, ... horny, then it goes by the boards and I look like somebody's bad dream." "No you don't," Taela said, shaking her head, "You only look farther from human that way because of your light eyes. I saw you that way first, when you killed the one who was trying to pull me away. I liked the way that you looked then, Mischka, so don't say you look like a nightmare." "Thanks," Mischka smiled, though in her view there was at least a little alcohol talking. "But that's to you, Taela, and not in the eyes of a human – any kind of human." When Ryan carried over the bowl of water a few minutes later, Mischka set to work cleaning the cuts. "I work in a few places down in the 'commerce section'", she said, "I have to work a few jobs to pay off somebody who's leaning on me. She makes sure that I'll never get it all paid off, but I try because I really haven't got much of a choice. Anyway, the place where this happened is a strip joint and I'm one of the dancers there. I usually hang around squatting up in the rafters and ceiling beams until it's time for my act. It's the only spot in the place where I'm not always having to peel some asshole's hands off me. If I grab the guy's hand and snarl at him, I get shit for scaring off the customers, so I go where they can't follow me. I guess it just shows how fucked-up this place can get. Almost nobody will speak to me. A lot of people are afraid of me – downright scared. But they come to watch the lesbian vampire dance naked for them. I was supposed to do a dance set on stage with another girl, kind of a girl on girl thing, only she didn't show. I didn't know it then, but Taela here already had a few drinks into her and she wandered onto the stage and stood there. The DJ must have thought that she was a new dancer for my act so he cranked the music and Taela started to dance in the lights. I didn't know what was going on, but I looked at the clock and it was time for my act, so I figured that they'd gotten me a new partner. I was pissed over it, but that's the kind that the asshole manager is. It's just the sort of thing that he'd do, but I need the money so I dropped down and landed next to her and just started. Now that I think about it, it was pretty funny. It took Taela a little while to figure out what I was trying to do with her and then she started telling me that she didn't like girls. I told her that I don't either, but it's how I make my money, so we danced." Mischka rolled her eyes with a chuckle, "And then, ... Shorty showed up. I could see that Taela was surprised and happy to see Shorty and they just hugged right there on the lighted stage for a second and then he started trying to dance too – only he doesn't know how. I figured that out about three seconds later. By the end of the first song, we were all having a lot of fun just dancing a little naughtily, though some of the men watching were getting loud because they wanted to see some fem stuff, so I uh, .. got down on my knees for Taela, who still kept on telling me that she didn't want to play with a girl. She'd back away still dancing while I chased her on my knees, trying to get her to at least hold still for me. The bouncers got into it then and they were trying to hustle these two out of the place. I just took off for the ceiling again, trying to figure out what the hell was happening. From up there, I saw that there were three vampires following and I knew that as soon as the bouncers threw Taela and Shorty out that they'd probably get killed. I didn't know Taela and Shorty from anybody, but I knew that they wouldn't be up for that kind of fight not knowing anything at all going in, so I took off and dropped down onto the closest one. I ghosted him and the others buggered off and I got your friends here out of the place and back here before the cops showed." She looked down for a moment, "This whole place is the butthole of the universe. That person I mentioned who's extorting me? She's one of the cops, and knowing her, she'll charge me with the murder of the same kind of 'perceived threat to public safety' that everybody wants to see killed off, me as well." She looked at Ryan a little uncomfortably, but she needed to ask, not having another option at the moment, "Look, uh, Ryan. I know that you probably don't like me for what I am either, but, ... well, I didn't have time to think things through when it happened since these two were about to need some big help in a hurry. But I can't go home – at least not now," she said as she dabbed at a cut over Shorty's eye. "Is there a way that you could let me stay here for a couple of days? You're not in any danger from me. I don't know what you've heard or anything. I don't drink blood, though I could, I guess." There was a pause and just as Mischka was about to tell him to forget it, thinking that the silence indicated a 'no', both Ryan and Taela began to speak, trying to tell her that she could stay. "How did you uh, kill the other vampire?" Ryan asked once Mischka understood. "I ripped him," Mischka said quietly, "You oughta just leave it there. Is there somewhere that I can wash my face? I must look like, ..." He pointed her to the shower, "I guess I have to ask this, so don't think I'm um, prying, but why are you ..." She shrugged, "My wings. I can't really wear much in the way of human clothing. I wear a skirt sometimes, but my tail sticks out a little no matter what and it makes my ass look weird. I can wear pants, but it gets uncomfortable for the same reason – and my ass looks even stranger then. About the best I can do if it's cold is to wear pants, a wrap of warm cloth over my boobs and wear my cloak over that – all of which I left at the club. I used to have a couple of halter tops that tied up at the back of my neck and on my back below where my wings are, but, ... well, I haven't got much to my name these days. I thought we were going someplace warmer since they're naked too," she said indicating Shorty and Taela. "They're like that so they can hide if they want to," Ryan answered for Taela, "They can just sort of disappear, though really, it's just the way that their bodies can mimic some of what's around them." He got up from where he'd been sitting, "I've got a clean flightsuit that you – " Mischka shook her head, "My wings." Ryan nodded and looked down, thinking. He shrugged, "I've got a poncho – naw, that's out too and it's not warm anyway. Alright, I'll give you a couple of blankets. You can wrap one around your waist, and I'm sure that Taela can help you to get the other one wound around your top half somehow so you don't catch cold. I'll turn up the heat a little as well. Go and have a shower, Mischka. That'll warm you a bit, but it can't be a long one, I'm afraid." "I know," she smiled, feeling surprised and thankful, "I know how it is on these things. I used to be in the military." Ryan's eyebrows met his hairline right then, "Really?" She nodded, "Yeah, just another of my failed attempts to fit in. If you're bright, come from an old military family, are fit, and most especially if you're human, they've got a job for you. I didn't meet all of the criteria. Pretty much all that I had was my Dad's last name and that I was in good shape so I passed the physical. He got stranded on a rock where things like me live. I can't imagine how it could have happened, but he and my mother, ... well, here I am, so to speak. While he lived, he was a good father to my brother and me, but if I think about it, it was only a matter of time before somebody got to him. It happened when he got caught outside at night when I was a teenager. We didn't find much of him the next morning, though we all searched for him all night. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 06 Once I was grown up, I decided that I didn't want to live where I'm the brightest thing going, since it makes for a really boring life and I'm the kind of girl who likes to have a guy to talk with after the sticky part. Not a lot like that where I'm from. They just want to jab you and then leave – and by then, that's about all I want from them too. There isn't really a human name for what I am, since no human biologist ever came there to give us a Latin species name. That vampire shit is something that Maria the dirty cop cooked up to instill fear of us. I don't even fit in with the others a little like me, besides being another female for the males to chase after, so I don't have much to do with them. They don't trust me much anyway, since I'm half human. I've never fit in anywhere. Anyway, there was a probe ship that came, and it actually landed almost in front of where I lived, so I ran out in the freaking sunshine with my eyes almost closed and I stood there jumping up and down and waving my arms for a while until the pilot noticed me. She took me with her, since I begged her to and she was on her way back anyway. She helped me a lot along the way by teaching me so that I could speak better. A few months later, I was on one of those big moving bases that they've got and I joined up after they matched some of my DNA to what was on record from my father. Nobody took me very seriously, though. I opted for a strike pilot slot, but they routed me for offensive weapon suite operator on a bigger bird after flight training – even though I've got faster reflexes than any human walking – their equipment just showed error messages, since I'm faster that they're designed to handle. All that got me was a slot on a craft with a crew who wouldn't speak to me much. I hated every minute of it. One day, there was a murder on the base and I blundered in through the door just as the creep was arranging things to look like a one of us had done it. There were two others; one in the kitchens and one in the laundry as non-mil service staff. Since the victim was the only person on that whole thing who'd been at least a little friendly to me, it pissed me off, but she pulled out her phone and her gun and dialed the meat-heads. Before I could blink, I was in cuffs and as it turned out, the murdering bitch had done it for a little fun and recreation. She was also one of the lead criminal investigators, so you know who got to work the case against me. When they began their hearings, I yelled and screamed that I was innocent, but you know how far that got me. The next hearing, I sang a different song, wanting to speak to the ombudsman – that they didn't have – so I asked about forensic evidence – and there was nothing that pointed to me definitively, no matter what that bitch Maria said. But she hung enough ribbons and decorations so that they couldn't say that I was innocent either, since there was evidence that I had been there and knew the dead guy enough to have been intimate with him. Just another couple of nails in my coffin, from their point of view. Well, he'd been the closest that I ever got to having a real boyfriend, not that there was all that much of a relationship. He was better than the males where I come from, though. Anyway, they finally tried to pin me with 'Conduct unbecoming an Officer', though I was still just a cadet, officially, since I'd joined off-world and my time wasn't up yet. They couldn't make that stick over a technicality, and they still hadn't proven that I was guilty of murder. But Maria saw her chance and she got them to hand me a dishonorable discharge and then she convinced them to dump me here, since by then, they were tired of the whole thing. I'd never even heard of the place and I sure didn't want to come here. But she wasn't done with me yet by a long shot. The reason that she had them toss me out here is because she'd decided to leave the service and this dump is where she was born and grew up. To cut down on travel, since we were in the area anyway, they accelerated her release request. So guess who got dropped off here with me? She got a job in Security as a cop and was promoted real quick to be an investigator based on her military record – which is probably as phoney as her calling us vampires, but every so often, she cooks up some 'evidence' belonging to a crime. Like if another vampire kills somebody, she makes sure that nothing is done, but she's holding the cards which point to me having done it." Mischka chuckled bitterly, "I bet I've killed twenty people and more that I've never even seen, let alone hurt in any way. Those killings never even get much more than a really fast crime scene checkover – by Maria herself, of course. All that she does is use me for her bedtime toy and kick me around. One of these days, I'm gonna kill her myself and then they can do whatever they want to me." She turned to head for the shower, "Sorry about the bedtime story. Now you know most of my useless life, I guess." As soon as they heard the sound of the water running, Taela began to make a case for Michska to stay with Shorty adding his two cents when he could find an opening. Ryan held up his hands, "Whoa, slow down. She can stay for a couple of days while whatever this is dies down. I think I'll need to talk to her anyway. If she can handle a weapons suite, there's a chair for her right over there. But I'm not going to just say that she's in right off the bat, since we don't really know her yet. I'm thankful that she helped you, and," he smiled, "she even sounds like she'd fit here, so I'm leaning that way anyway. I just want a little time, ok?" He smiled at them a little playfully, "So you were exotic dancers for a little while, huh?" It was the wrong thing to say. They told him that it had been very unpleasant. Well, not the dancing specifically. "But there were all these males yelling things at us. I was grabbed a few times pretty hard on the way out, Ryan," Taela said with a disgusted expression as she inspected one breast, looking for any bruising. "Are all human males like that? There were only a few females that I could see and they were worse – especially to Shorty. I don't think I like it here very much." Ryan was about to remind her that it had been her idea to go out to see the place and that without him there – since he couldn't be at the time, in the middle of working out a lot of other things which required his attention – she'd managed to wander into the very sort of place that he'd have preferred that she didn't go to. But he bit it back, not wanting to annoy her, seeing that she was still a little upset, mildly scuffed up and drunk. "No, all of us aren't like that, but this is a crap dive out on the edges, and that tends to attract the rougher types when they get here and want to unwind. How did you get the drinks?" "They were offered to me," she said with a little defiance as she slapped down the card that he'd given her, "I didn't have to use any of this." "By uh, men who were doing their best to appear friendly, I'll bet," he suggested quietly and she nodded, not getting it at all. "You're lucky you aren't lying in an alley, dying of poisoning from a dose of sedative," he said, "Some men like to have really quick relationships." Mischka walked out of the shower then, toweling herself off, "What's up? Why are you angry, Taela?" Ryan sighed, "I'd like you to do me a huge favor, Mischka. Could you please explain to Taela that it's not a great idea to accept free drinks from men in a place like where you were?" Mischka's eyes widened, "You didn't, did you? Is that how you got so blasted? I could hardly hold you up on the way here. Taela, you never do that, not unless you can see the bartender make the drink and you take it from his hand directly. Honey, some of those people, ... I get free drinks handed to me all the time, since a lot of them won't take 'no' for an answer and keep insisting. I just set them down and forget about them. I never touch one of those drinks – ever. I get the feeling that you don't know enough about a garbage heap like this to even be walking around loose." She turned to Ryan, "Why weren't you there with them? It's like they're too innocent to be out in a place like that." "Fuck, I dunno," he groaned, "Why don't you ask Taela or Shorty? She insisted that she was old enough and she wanted to see what humans are like. I told her that this was not the place for that, since she'd only be seeing the worst. I told her that I'd take her after I sorted out the business side of things here. She left anyway and after I got our cargo sold, I went to the offices here to register the ship because by then I had to. They won't let you come in here with no registration and stay for long. And they sure won't let you do very much business without it. The only reason that they allowed it was due to the value of the cargo and the urgent need to get it into lockup. While I was out doing that and making sure that the funds got transferred – as well as my back pay, Shorty decided to go look for Taela." He sighed, looking down and running his fingers through his hair, "I've been here chewing my nails ever since." Taela looked at Ryan a little accusingly, "You could have warned me." "I did," he said, turning away, "You weren't listening." --------------------------------- Ryan brought Mischka the blankets and she wore one around her hips and the other was just draped around her neck, where Taela tried to tuck it in a little where she could. Mischka used the opportunity to get Taela calmed down a little and she recommended that both of the adventurers drink a lot of water and then try to get some sleep, since it was bound to happen anyway that they'd crash. Ryan was sitting in his seat, looking at the state of the craft's systems when he felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned his head. "I'm sorry," Taela said, "As Mischka said it to me, I was being stupid." He shook his head, "Not stupid, just impatient, that's all. What you did was really dangerous, but you didn't know any better and with all of the pretty lights and the music, I can see how it could have been a lot worse. I'm just happy that you came back alive." Taela kissed him for a moment and then she wobbled off to her seat for some sleep. Mischka saw Shorty as he stepped up to her. One look at his face showed her that he was having much the same thoughts that she'd had in her head since she'd seen him on the stage. They looked rather similar to each other in a lot of ways, though they were from different worlds. He looked a little uncomfortable. "He's often a little frustrated over his speech," Ryan said, "Sometimes he has to rely on what to him are slightly childish gestures to get his point across. I know him pretty well, and I'd say that right now, he's wishing for an eloquent way to thank you for your help, and he hasn't got one – at least one which won't take him longer to struggle to get out for fear that you'd lose interest or fall asleep." Shorty nodded as he looked at Mischka with an embarrassed and sad expression. She understood and reached to hug him. "It's alright, Shorty," she said, "I used to be the same way at first." She drew back and looked at him for a moment, "What helped me was knowing that when I got the chance to apply for military service, I knew that I had to be able to speak clearly. I drove the pilot who picked me up crazy while she helped me to learn." He nodded, and then he hugged her again. "I have always been this way," she heard him say in her mind as her eyes opened wide in shock. "I think we are the same, or at least, we are a little like each other. Thank you for helping us and, ... I think that you are more beautiful than any of the females where I come from. I hope that you can understand me." Mischka pulled her head back and she stared into his eyes for a moment. What he'd done was very rare for her kind, communicating via thought. She couldn't do it – at least she didn't think that she had the ability for it, so she did her best, trying in another way. The sounds from her throat then were a quiet mix of growls and inquiring squawks and hisses. Ryan looked at her and wondered what the fu ... Shorty began to make similar sounds and then the two of them were chattering to each other and hugging again. When Shorty leaned in and kissed Mischka for just a moment, she hugged him tightly and nodded. He turned and walked to his seat with a confused smile. "What was that?" Ryan asked, "You two can talk to each other?" Mischka nodded, obviously happy herself, "Yes. It's not the same dialect, I guess, but there are a lot of the same sounds to it and we can feel the things that can't be said in words. He's really tired now, but I can't wait to talk to him in the morning." She was silent for a moment until she looked at Ryan, "He has a name and it's not Shorty." "What is it then?" Ryan asked, but she shook her head. "I don't know it yet. We're the same in that way too. A name is only given to others like ourselves once we know each other really well. I'm a little different, I guess. 'Mischka' is the nearest thing to my real name that I could find among human names. My real name sounds very similar, but it's more what we can say and humans can't say it right. Our names are very secret to us," she said, "I just didn't think that it was important back then. I never thought that I'd ever see anyone like me and I was pretty overwhelmed as it was trying to figure out everything to fit into a culture where knowledge and tools, " she indicated everything around them with a sweep of her hand, "are everything. I come from a place where we get by with our wings and our teeth. I guess it must be the same for him." A few minutes later, Ryan asked Mischka to sit in the co-pilot's chair so they could talk with less chance of disturbing the others. They hadn't really gotten started talking about what Ryan saw as an opportunity for her when there was a notification of an incoming call from the security group. Mischka had enough sense to get out of the chair and stand out of the view of the camera which was pointed at Ryan for this sort of thing. It was a canned message that there had been a murder in the commerce section and that the suspect was at large and that members of the public were advised, etc., etc. "She's already hanging this thing on me," Mischka said when Ryan motioned that the call was over, "I'll bet she heard a lot of accurate accounts of what happened, but for damn sure she didn't write any of that down. When Maria gets her mind made up, there's no reason to think of looking at facts. "Was that this Maria character?" he asked and she nodded. "Oh, that's her aright. My personal walking, talking curse." Ryan glowered, "I've only had one conversation with her, but I already know that she's got no business being in that job." He switched off the camera and began to place audio-only calls then, "She's got absolutely nothing that does anything for me, Mischka, but now that I know a little about her, you just can't imagine the incredible need that I feel right now to fuck her." He turned and leered a little at Mischka, "In a figurative sense, of course." She nodded, "I already figured that it was um, figurative. What am I going to do now? She's pretty well closing the place down on me, if she's even making these calls to the ships in the bays like that." "You're going to stay right here, "Ryan said, "I wasn't officially paying attention to the call, so I don't know that I'm harboring a fugitive, do I?" "You can get yourself in a lot of shit like this, you know," she said. Ryan grinned, "As of five hours ago, I'm the single richest person on this blob. I sold over five tons of something worth eighteen and a half thousand credits per pound. I think that I can afford a good lawyer if it comes to that. Speaking of which," he smiled as he began to make notes to himself on a paper pad, "You said that you could run a weapons suite? What's here is really old and it's Morgarod stuff, but most of it answers that it useable when I query the weapons network. I don't have anybody for that chair. You want a job? I hate to put it this way, but if you say yes, then you work for me and then I can legally invoke the old bullshit about the sanctity of a vessel. She might be making those calls because she hasn't been able to locate you and she plans to visit every ship to search it. But as owner and commander of this tub, I can refuse to allow it in order to protect my crew and the worst that they can do is kick us out of here – at which point I'll leave without settling the bill, and the port authority here knows that, so they'll probably tell Maria to take a pill. Murder is one thing, but money is money. Without the prospect of making money, there wouldn't be a soul on this ice cube. The only way that I'd submit to a search would be if I was ordered to allow it by a military vessel in free space, or a port authority one with a bigger dick than I've got – so to speak. I've seen the cutter this place uses. I'm not worried – and hey, you'd be the weapons lady then, so you might get to blow her ass to Hell, who knows?" He watched the slow smile spread across Mischka's face for a moment and it showed him her wicked set of teeth – which he liked about her instantly since they were a little like Taela's like that only a little deadlier-looking, "I already like you. Yeah, I can run it if I can figure it out." There was a short silence between them until Ryan cleared his throat, "I uh, ... I need to hear you say –" "Yes," Mischka grinned, feeling a little overwhelmed at this turn. "Alright," Ryan grinned, "Welcome aboard. On paper, I can't call you a weapons operator, so you'll be our navigator and bodyguard. Do you know your way around the neighborhood, like where the other rocks are and how many there are in this system? Can you help keep my friends out of trouble like they got themselves in? Then you're hired, I'd say." "What kind of money does it pay?" Mischka asked. "Well that's the next order of business," he said, "I want to find some way to get Maria off your back permanently," he winked, "so that I can pay you less. Just kidding," he laughed, "While we're here, I'll cover your costs personally as a thank-you for what you did and for saying yes. Also, you need clothes and things and we need to load up with food no matter what. I've registered us as a light trader, so at some point in the not too distant future, we'll need to try to find something to haul." Mischka shook her head, "You could make a ton more if you start up as a bondsman and bounty hunter. Out here, there are lots of folks hiding out for one reason or another uh, five. Besides, that gives you all the justification that you need to run armed and even HAVE a weapons suite for me to operate." It was Ryan's turn to smile, "I like you already, "he said as he mimicked her earlier remark. "I do have a suggestion – if you're really thinking of going that route, "she said, "I guess it depends on how secure you are in your uh, .. little male world." "How do you mean?" he asked, looking over. "Look, Ryan," she said a little earnestly, "I don't care where you sit me during regular travel, but I'd strongly suggest that any time that the shit begins to impact upon the fan blades at an alarming rate – and even before that point, that you give me control of the vessel. Since you're in the command chair and I assume that you flew here, you know how to pilot something like this, but have you ever had combat flight training?" He shook his head, "No. I'm just an adventurous and misplaced shuttle pilot. Have you?" Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 06 She nodded, "Yup. And I've got reflexes that'll test most any craft's responsive ability. I'm not doubting yours at all. It's just a species thing. Hold your other hand up with your thumb and fingers apart about this much," she said, indicating a gap of maybe four centimeters. She took his notepad and held it up so that it hung in that gap. "Try to catch it when I let go." He tried it ten times and managed to just snag it twice as it fell right through. When they reversed their roles, she had it every time, and Ryan doubted that it had fallen more than five millimeters each time. "I can't even call this a gender thing," she said, "it's just the way that my kind comes equipped for life at large. So my suggestion is that I sit either in this chair or that one and I slave the weapons suite to your displays then. I take control of the craft, and you handle the fireworks when I tell you that I'm giving you the shot that I set us up for, if it ever comes to that. The only thing that I want under my thumb is the rotary cannon and its target acquisition subsystem, that's all. For everything else, I might only make suggestions. You can push those buttons. It'll give us the best chance of success." Ryan looked over, more than a little impressed, "How do you know that there's even a rotary cannon in this thing? I haven't said a word about what it's carrying. I just said that most things answer when queried." Mischka smiled, "This is a Morgarod Type78 strike and interdiction craft, Ryan. I knew that as soon as I saw it walking into the bay here. I don't know the exact variant from my one look, since it looks to be modified a little, but I'd guess that it's about the middle of the run, so most of the bugs were worked out by then. They ALL carry a rotary cannon in the nose, under the forward sensor array, twenty millimeter, and fourteen hundred rounds a minute if you hold the button down, though they hold only about eight hundred rounds. If you can't saw what you're aiming at in half by that point, you ought to just go home," she laughed. "I can't even begin to pronounce the Morgaron name for this thing, but to the human military, it's reporting codename is 'FoxFire' and when it was current, the grunts on the receiving end used to call it -" "The Devil's Switchblade," Ryan smiled. "I used to be a line grunt a long time ago. I recognized it the first time that I saw it, but I guess that I forgot what we used to call it for the way that it would just appear, swing out its wings as it slowed and then light us up and be gone again. How do you know all this? This thing just has to be pretty dated." Mischka shrugged, "They used to make us study the warcraft type recognition handbook back when I was in. I can tell you one thing – if there was a war on with the Margarods again right now, you'd have been intercepted even before you showed up on the landing controller's screen on the way in. These things were feared back then. If you do decide to make a go of bounty hunting, you've already got the best bird for the job. Anybody running from the law will just crap themselves when their craft ID's what shows up on their tail like black lightning." She began to chuckle, "I've just thought of something even better than that. You just have Taela make the call ordering them to stop and be boarded. With her looks and growling out her commands to them, ... You get the picture?" Ryan laughed quietly, "Oh this is rich. I think that I can tell you that my little male world is just fine with what you've got in mind. But first we've got to get your name cleared so that you can at least walk around without getting shot at. You'll need to be able to suck it up and scratch up the courage to walk in and give yourself up. I'm almost certain that they'll tell me that when I call in a minute." "Who, Ryan?" Mischka asked, trying her best not to become fearful. "Your new lawyer," he said, "He or she will probably want to accompany you so that there's no way that Maria can twist things around on you again." Mischka heard the soft sigh from behind them and she twisted in her seat to look back just as she heard, Taela groan Shorty's name very quietly. Her eyes widened as she watched them fuck very slowly for a minute before she turned to look at Ryan. "I guess I must have been wrong," she smiled, "I thought that Taela was with you, from what she told me on the way here. Do they, ... um, ... do they do that a lot?" He nodded, not embarrassed in the least, "Taela is with me. Shorty too. It's a little hard to explain, but we all love each other." Mischka blinked for a second and then she covered her surprised expression instantly, "You and Shorty too?" He nodded with only a slightly strained look as he sought to define it. "I'd never have even had the thought of it, but that's the way that it goes for us. Taela and her mother took Shorty in and raised him. He's a horny little guy by nature and he likes to have a male sometimes. I only thought that he was affectionate – and he is if he likes somebody. But watching him and Taela sort of got me to look at things a little differently." Ryan chuckled a little self-consciously, "I can't really tell myself that I'm homosexual even now, since I've never seen a guy who does a thing for me in that way. But Shorty does somehow. If they're walking toward me, holding hands and they've both got that hopeful 'I want a good time with Ryan' look to them, then yeah. Clinically then, I guess, I'm officially bisexual with regard to only one male – Shorty." He looked down for a moment, "I hope that it doesn't make you uncomfortable, and I'm very sorry if it does. We can try to hide it a little, I guess." "No," Mischka smiled, "please don't, actually. I think that I'd kind of like to see it sometime." She looked back again and then turned to Ryan, "A lot of things make sense to me now, that's all." She looked at the displays there in front of her, not wanting to make eye contact for the moment. After several seconds of silence, she spoke to the displays quietly, "I've had to make a large part of my living here as a dancer. I get to see a lot of things. Something like what I do with another girl on stage is hard to hide when you're faking it, so we don't. I'm not really into girls, but I can do what I'm told by the manager – so if you had ever seen my act, you'd know that I really do the oral thing on that other dancer – which is why I get just a little pissed if the manager springs a new one on me with no notice. I'm really glad at how this big kerfuffle worked out though. Taela and Shorty are so, ... I dunno, I like them a lot. I don't think that I can help it. But most of the audience in the places where I dance is made up of hetero males, and about all that two male dancers can get away with there on stage is mostly suggestive and at best, only simulated. I've never seen two males make it with each other before, but I have this little fantasy sometimes. In it, I get to watch two guys doing it – and then after that, ... " She faded out then and Ryan sat waiting for her to finish what she was saying. He nudged her elbow and she looked over, appearing a little embarrassed. "And then after that, you fall asleep or something?" he asked with a little smile, "You didn't finish your thought." She shrugged and looked at the displays even more then. "After that, they come to have me," she said, almost in a whisper. She looked up and over at Ryan then, "Only I've never done that. The guys who look good enough to me for it always seem to just look through me – if they're not already running away as I try to talk to them. They just want guys anyway, I guess. Just another club that Mischka can't belong to. Part of me has all the same fucked-up mating patterns as anybody else, I suppose, the human side. The rest is even stranger. Mating pairs are possible with uh, vampires," she said, "but somehow, there are more males born than females and they tend to get killed a fair bit. So a girl most often takes two males who work things out between them in case one of them dies, but there's never any action between them. They might be brothers or just friends or not even that – just a pair of guys who really like one girl. But love is possible for them. They just work together and help each other. It's a strong drive in vampire males if they find a female who wants to make a go of it. They just screw like anything else up to that point, but if all three are thinking the same way, then it's done in a kind of pattern. The males go and kill something for them all to eat and they lead the girl to it. If she likes them, then she starts to eat in a kneeling position and if the feeling gets to her, she'll move her tail aside for them. That signals her acceptance of things and one of the males will mount her. They take turns with her and if they change position after that, each male will help the other, and that's how they start their family between them. They never do it that way if it's just fucking. The female won't allow it and she'll fight them off. If she's in it for just a fuck, she'll only do it with one guy. If there are two of them, she'll refuse to fuck with either one." "That's a little different," Ryan nodded, "most human males don't want to share a girl and most human girls want –" "I know," Mischka sighed, "I am one, remember? Well, partly. Mostly, I'm more human than vampire in the way that I am over about anything. But there is that other thing in me. Somewhere, I kind of want that." She smiled, shaking her head at herself for even talking about it to somebody, "I guess it shows that I'm as fucked-up as the rest of this place." How so?" Ryan asked her. Mischka smiled at him for a moment before she turned back to the displays. She took a little time to get comfortable in the blanket that she had around and over her, as though she wanted to snuggle in there and hide a little. She didn't say it, but she was thankful that there seemed to her to be at least three people who appeared to care about her well-being. "In my fantasy, I don't want a pair of males who just cooperate. I want them to love each other too. I think that's the part that gets to me about it. And I don't just want to be the monkey in the middle, holding still while they fuck me one after the other." She sighed and then she shrugged to herself, "Maybe it shows that I'm different – which is fucking obvious to me about every other second all the fucking time, but I want them and I want to help them with each other too. That's something that female vampires never, ever do." She turned onto her side, lifting her legs up to pull the one blanket over them, facing Ryan in the uncomfortable-looking position, though she didn't seem to mind it. "I'm a little happy for more than the obvious reasons if I now have the kind of job that I always wanted and people who'd help me if that's even possible anymore. If Taela has two guys for her and they love each other too, I'm even happy for that, because that means that I'm not nuts to want that. It means that what part of me dreams of can happen to the other part. Goodnight, Ryan. I haven't thought about it in a while, but God bless you for everything." He looked at her after she closed her eyes and then he reached over and gently pulled a little of the other blanket over her cheek to shield her closed eyes from the interior lighting. Mischka smiled for a moment, though she didn't open her eyes again. After he'd heard her breathing shift, Ryan got up and brought her another blanket. He covered her with it and then he sat down again and looked at her for only a moment or two. He thought about her situation and he knew that she'd never say it, but he had noticed the way that she'd seemed to look to be a little cold to him. He eased his chair back and closed his eyes. He'd have likely wanted to help her just because he'd found that he liked her. But she'd saved Taela and Shorty. That made it personal. He found that he didn't mind if he now had somebody else to care about. ----------------------------------------- The way that it happened, Maria was at first delighted to see Mischka surrender at the detachment offices, but as time passed, she began to become frustrated since things weren't going the way that she'd planned in any regard. With some rather officious strangers there in the offices, Maria shifted gears and abandoned her more usual ploys of keeping Mischka on her hook in favor of just frying her outright to save herself – since she was now under the baleful stares of a few people. "I'd say that you have an issue which will be a little problematic for you to pursue, " Mischka's lawyer said, "From your documents here, you wish to charge Ms. Myers with murder in the second degree." She lifted her data screen and pointed, holding it so that Maria could see what was on the display, "The problem is that you yourself have gone on record - and even to the press – as stating that these creatures which you have dubbed vampires are not sentient beings. 'They're just animals' – was your exact phrase at the time and even before. Since they've only been very rarely encountered, from what I've read, you seem to be the only one who has gone on record to define what they actually are. And I've checked; you have no accreditation to make your remarks and no scientific research to indicate that your findings are any more than your imaginings and opinions. Yet the legal system on this small world has accepted what you've told it whenever one of these creatures has been encountered here – so for the purpose of this investigation, it is assumed that you are correct- though not by me or anyone anywhere other than this place. So let's go with that for the moment then." She looked over at Maria with a pleased smile. "You can't charge an animal with murder, Ms. Lundqvist, any more than you can charge a male dog with rape if he encounters a bitch in heat who holds still for him. Given that I've met and spoken to this 'animal', as you call her, my office is prepared to allow that you are wrong in your beliefs. That makes Ms. Myers a sentient being and a legal individual under the law. As such, she has the same rights, protections and obligations as any other member in a human society – especially since she is partly human. I've seen the military assessment based on her DNA. So you could charge her with murder, theoretically - but only if she'd killed another human, since the definition of that crime specifies that one human kills another. With the absence of any human DNA in the victim at all, those assumptions are not valid until we as a society learn more about them as a life form. Until that time, I'll be forced to accept your definition as far as the victim is concerned. So logically, Ms. Myers killed an animal. Sorry for your luck, but that's still not murder in the legal definition." Every ruse and tactic that she attempted, and every fishy charge that Maria thought to lay was stopped almost immediately by Mischka's council, who clearly kept things dead center in the middle of Mischka's rights under law. To Maria's uncomfortable surprise, the attorney was openly dismissive toward the legality of the justice meted out by the colony. "No matter what, Ms. Lundqvist, there won't be anything less than a full legal process applied here and not the very abbreviated and one-sided flavor which I see applied most often by the security detachment here where the mayor often acts as the prosecutor AND the judge for the kangaroo court which is held occasionally, depending on the number of tickets sold for people to be in attendance. I've been screaming over this farcical stupidity for a year, and thanks to you and your flagrant disregard of common rights, I'll now get my chance to pull this shit show apart." At about the time when Maria was about to tell Mischka that she'd be moved to the holding cells with her characteristic and threatening leered smile, her watch commander appeared and ordered her to surrender her firearm. "What the fuck for, Charles? I've got this bitch dead to rights," Maria asked in annoyed surprise, "I'm arresting her for murder – no matter what Loretta Legalbeagle here says, so she stays right here." He shook his head, "You're suspended pending an investigation. For now, it's with pay, though I don't know for how much longer. I've got twelve people camped out in my office, Maria, and they're all here screaming for your blood this time. About half of them are military, so my hands are pretty much tied, I'm afraid. When this is all said and done, the military wants to re-open a few files, including the murder which this creature was charged with originally. Ms. Myers stays here for now, but she'll be under armed military guard while in our custody overnight. Please hand me your firearm and your badge, Maria. You're relieved of duty." Maria knew Charles to be a more than typical bureaucrat, ready to offer up her skin just to keep the spotlight off him, since he was her sister's husband and well and he'd been fucking her ever since she came back. 'Shady' was about normal for a lot of the officials here. Maria grew livid, though she had sense enough to comply with his request. "Military? What authority have they got out here?" "I dunno, something about them being the present government – even out here," Ryan grinned, "There's a military attaché with an office here and I went to speak with her yesterday about re-opening Mischka's case file in light of your involvement at the time. They can't be everywhere by their own admission, but they find it an interesting coincidence how you came to be here – right at the place where Mischka was dishonorably discharged on your recommendations. They also find it a little disturbing that you were the one who arrested her the first time as well as the investigative lead in her prosecution. No one ever got a good look at the evidence that your investigation produced. It'll be looked at more closely now. She's also here to work with Mischka's council about other frame-ups against other people on both sides of the military line, as well as begin the process of reversing your honorable discharge. With any luck, they may charge you with the murder of the male on the base, but that's their thing. Charles here is also under investigation for why he chose not to rein in an obviously self-serving officer and over just how much of a look he had at your background. For certain, he'll want a closer look so that something like this isn't allowed in future, not that it'll help you much. And his review will happen, now that you've turned out to be such a liability and hazard to his own pension. He'll have a much closer look now, since the attaché can point out any fabrications in your account of your service record. From what I've heard, the falsification of evidence on a regular basis tends to be frowned upon in a criminal investigator by both the civil and military authorities." Maria was escorted out, but she did return late that night to go to the holding cells. The pistol in her pocket set off the detectors and she spent the night in a cell herself after that. -------------------------------------- The only thing that Mischka didn't get was an apology from the military over her treatment at their hands during her hearings and courts-martial, but she didn't care much. Her charges in every case, military and civil, were dropped and she was free and exonerated by the following afternoon. Taela, Shorty and Ryan were there when Mischka was informed of it. They'd been there, at least two of them at any time for the whole day. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 06 Mischka's expression after she'd been told was a little odd-looking as she stood there in a bit of shock and disbelief. She kept asking if it was really happening. As she came to comprehend it at last, she stood there for a moment with a strange little smile on her face. But it only lasted a moment and then she burst into tears and almost fell into the arms of her friends, her coolness and all sophistication gone as she wept. ------------------- One of the first things that they all did was to go shopping, and Ryan dropped some money at Taela's insistence for some slightly custom-made clothing for Mischka, so that she'd have something to wear. In her case, a lot of Velcro was required due to her wings and her tail. Ryan took the opportunity to have things made for Shorty as well, since he faced the same issues. About half of the people who saw Mischka walking around in the commerce section appeared uneasy, but neither Mischka or Taela cared very much. Taela admired the ease with which her friend just knew her way around and not only with respect to knowing where the clothing stores were. She was very savvy and smart and her confidence was something that Taela wanted to develop in herself, now that she was in a place where there were actually people to interact with. And of course, Mischka knew places where one could buy great food. Shorty loved her for that. He also came to regard her as someone who he could learn from, since she understood what he'd have to do when they started looking for fugitives. After a long discussion, they changed their crew positions and Taela and Shorty would handle defenses such as jamming and decoys, though Taela was also going to handle the communication traffic as well. There was still something a little wrong with that, but they registered themselves as a light freight and bond company and that required some courses. Shorty was reluctant about it until Mischka told him that he didn't need them, since his position had more to do with the craft. Ryan also had basic extra seating installed along with cryo stations and restraint anchors. Their first trip out to try to work together as a crew went well enough, but then there had been no threats to their craft and no fugitives to look for. He was just wanting to try Mischka out in the left seat. Mischka proved that she was as good as her word. Even before the doors to the bay had fully opened, she had the craft up in a low hover and was retracting the gear. Outside, there was little to be seen but heavy snow blasting past in a swirl which indicated a strong crosswind just outside and Ryan had looked over, about to suggest that she let him get them outside before she took over what had to be a new thing for her to pilot, since he doubted that anything which she'd flown in her time of flight training was much like this craft in any way. But before the thought had gotten to his lips, they were gone, out through the opening and climbing. "She feels great," Mischka smiled as she nailed the sharp right turn to join the traffic pattern. "Listen in while I get us clearance, Taela. You don't need to be fancy with the controllers. You just gotta tell them what you want. All they're interested in is that everybody goes with the flow. I've already filed with them, so they know what to expect." She made the call and requested clearance around the back side of the small planet, since it was uninhabited. When she heard their acknowledgement, she banked right again to leave the pattern - not that there was really any other craft in it at the time. "The speed limit here is 240 knots," Ryan reminded her. He watched Mischka smile, though she didn't turn her head, "Check the panel." He looked at his displays and he was a little surprised. The wind was buffeting them slightly, and that meant that it was gusting and as changeable as he'd been told in the weather report that he'd requested. He looked at the perceived wind direction and speed which his sensors guessed at and he blinked. As hard as the prevailing wind was trying to toss them around ... He glanced over at her hand there on the throttle quadrant, watching the tiny continual adjustments that she was making. He looked over at her eyes and she wasn't even looking at her displays at all, and yet ... He looked at his own displays. 239.6 - like it was locked there. There was a mountain out there, Ryan knew, but before he could mention it in case Mischka wasn't aware of it, he felt the upward surge as she lofted them over it to roll them over and down over the other side, rolling again to their new heading. "I have something," Taela began. "I know," Mischka smiled, "Shorty and I are hooked up now. We figured it out between us. I know what he knows and it goes the other way too. Look at our tails." Taela and Ryan looked. Shorty's tail was lying beside him, pointing forward and lying on the floor. Mischka's was lying behind her seat and they were spiraled around each other tightly for about a half a foot. Shorty was grinning and he let out a quiet sort of squawk in acknowledgement, already making changes to cause their craft to fade in the view of another craft which might be seeking for them, based on Mischka's instructions to him in his head. It likely wasn't that they were being sought or tracked, other than a need to keep up a continual check for other traffic nearby, but there was only the one craft out there, so ... They passed each other miles apart and then Mischka spread their wings as she pulled up and rolled them around, slowing as she did. An instant later, the wings slid back and they were accelerating. Fifteen seconds later, they were on the tail of the other craft, just a mile back after she'd pulled back on the power. "Monitor the traffic channel Taela," Mischka said, "We'll see if they're aware of us hanging on back here. I'd like to sort of creep closer to see how close we can get before they notice us and yell, but I know we're legal at this distance and I don't want to get written up." After more than a minute, she peeled them off and headed off in the other direction. "Good enough, I'd say," she smiled over at Ryan. "That was plenty long enough to do just about anything that we would have wanted to do to anybody." "How can you do that?" Ryan asked, amazed, "I wouldn't have even dared to think of flying the way that you're going here." She smiled, but didn't look over, "To say it a little gently, you're human - which I really like about you. But you're not a creature made to fly. Humans have found ways to fly by surrounding themselves with hardware. Even so, it's a foreign thing to them. I'm half human, but the rest of me - in fact most of me, other than I guess part of my head and all of my heart is something which was made to fly. This big-assed tool of yours that we're in is just a high-speed extension of what I am, and I just fit into it better, that's all." ------------------- Ryan was hesitant to make that final business step and he held back. When asked by Taela, he said, "Mischka told me that there are runners who the system would just rather see as having fallen off the list. They're the ones which are ranked and wanted dead or alive. As far as I can tell from asking people in the business, what that means is that there's often a preference and it's not 'alive' if they're given a choice. A lot of those ones pay huge, since they're basically asking you to hunt somebody down and kill them in as legal a way as you can. It's a lot cheaper for the system in the long run. But a lot of those ones have their own ships and crews to make their gold out of robbery, kidnapping, and things like that. We can't just float over and knock on the door to ask them to surrender. They'll likely shoot first." He put his arm around Shorty's shoulders, "We need to improve the stuff in Shorty's office and then we need to get him trained better." Shorty looked up at Ryan nervously, but then he felt Mischka's hand on his as she reached over, "I'll teach you everything." For the first time that either Taela or Ryan could remember, Shorty's face showed an expression of hopeful confidence without the usual air of uncertainty to it that they'd always seen there. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 07 *** Argh! This is gonna spill over and I can't have a Chapter 7a and 7b. So there's gonna be a Chapter 8. The more that I read it over, the more I had to grin, though I sure didn't think of it as quite this much of an action comic at the time that I wrote it ... And I'm laughing to read the weird (to me, anyway) collection of tags that I used for this. I doubt that I could have come up with this particular combination if I'd looked at them and THEN written it, lol. For the later parts of this chapter, try to remember that some of these things do 'love' in a different way to humans, though I'd say that they mean it in just the same way, once they're there. With the exception of two, the others in the final scene of this are all mixtures of some sort, and by their own admission, their 'other side' is a fair bit more ... animalistic. Mischka is one like that and in this, she finally comes to grips with the mixture. 0_o *** ---------------------- "I think that I can understand it from his point of view," Mischka said as she and Taela folded the blankets and things. No matter how civilization had advanced, there was still a need for laundry to be done and it was an even greater need if one didn't really have any convenient way to get it done – especially here on a trading post. So there were still laundromats. "I also hear what you're saying," she smiled, "He needs to get us out of the bay where it costs us like blood to keep the craft in there. I'm pretty sure that he doesn't want to be there either for much longer. We need our own place, and somewhere that we can park for free – or at least for a lot less than it's costing now – and this rock isn't worth even thinking about as far as living here is concerned. We can't leave our ship parked outside here. We'd have to shovel it out of the snow about every three days at the outside." "Then why don't we go somewhere else?" Taela asked. "He wants to," Mischka nodded with a smile, "As far as I know, he's looking into better places right now. But he also needs for us to be located where we can get the 'wanted' listings and go track them down. That makes the location even more important and harder to find. Fugitives tend not to live around a whole lot of other people, since that means that the law is just that much closer, right?" Taela nodded and as she looked at Mischka, she also saw past her across the mall hallway to a bathhouse where travelers could take showers long enough to get clean as well as feel better for having done it. Mischka saw Taela looking and she turned around to look herself. She turned back with a smile, "How much have we got left out of what we decided to spend on the laundry?" It wasn't all that much, but Mischka had an idea, "If we double up on the shower cost – like we buy two showers back to back in the same stall and we wash real quick, we can stand there and actually get warm – and if we do it that way, though it's the same thing, I'm hoping that we'll have enough left over to get something hot to drink before we head back, I think." She could see that Taela was thinking about it but ... "What's to decide on?" Mischka chuckled, "We met without anything on, Taela. I think we must have seen all there is to see on each other, but hey, if there's something that you're curious about on me, just say it and I'll show you. It's just a shower, you know. And then we can sit down and relax with a drink afterward." Her face showed that another thought had come to her and she reached out for Taela's shoulder, "I think I get it. That was when I was working and didn't know what was going on. I meant what I said about not liking girls either. I'm not gonna – " "I know," Taela nodded, "I'm being a little stupid about it, I guess. I like your idea. Let's get a locker for this stuff and do it." As they walked across the hall a few minutes later, Mischka smiled after Taela had asked one more time just to be sure. "Absolutely not. Not if there's nobody paying me to do that. About the only time that I'd get the idea in my head would be to help a friend while she's making it with her guy, but even then, that's really stretching things." "How do you mean?" Taela asked and Mischka shrugged, already kicking herself for even mentioning it, though as far as she knew herself, it was the truth. "I mean like if there's sex going on in sort of a ... I dunno, a shared way. I think that I could help to make it feel better, but it doesn't matter even hypothetically, does it? I only have four friends; you and your guys are three of them. I wouldn't even think of doing anything to mess it up. I'm not all that heavy a sleeper, you know. I know what you and your guys do while you're trying so hard to be quiet about it and you know that I don't mind at all. All I'm saying is that under the right circumstances, and only if I was a part of it, then I might try to help another girl." Taela looked over, "But that's - " Mischka shook her head, "Not to me, it's not. Look, if it was you and me alone together someplace, then in my head, messing around then is what I don't want to do, because, ... well, it wouldn't feel right to me. But if I was at an orgy – to exaggerate - like where everybody's doing it, that's different to me, and if I knew the other girl, I don't think there's anything wrong if I give her a hand while she'd getting bopped anyway. I even know what to do to make it good because it's what I had to do, isn't it? I'd just see it as being nice for a person that I care about. In a situation like that, I think that everybody involved should just want to help anybody else so that they all have a great time. I mean, that's what it's all about then, right? I doubt that I'd care then if I found that the hand down between my legs was yours or anybody else's, just as long as I knew them well enough." They found the place deserted except for the attendant. After paying, they just got undressed and stepped into the shower together and they carried on with their conversation. "I did like it when we were dancing," Taela smiled, "it was really nice." Mischka nodded, "That's my favorite part. You ought to dance for them one time, you know. You're pretty good at it, from what I saw anyway, and you know that guys love it when a girl does that for them." "I'd feel like an idiot doing that alone," Taela laughed, "I didn't mind at all when we were dancing together. I'd probably love it if you danced with me then." Mischka lowered her arm after rinsing the soap from her armpit, "Uh-uh. If we did that, then I'D feel like an idiot, wouldn't I? They're your men." "I don't know, " Taela began, "I mean, I know about that, but you're living with us and I love having you there. You're a part of us now, and I think Shorty's in love with you anyway – and if he's not, then I think that he ought to be, for the way that you help him so much with everything. You're not the only one with eyes, you know. I've seen the way that you two sit together in a corner while you teach him." "That's because he learns a lot better and faster if I'm against him. That's why we sit like that. I know that he has thoughts, but he's not mine. Are you kidding? It's not like I've ever had a ton of female friends, Taela. I don't take it lightly." Taela nodded, "Ryan found that out about Shorty. He understands what you tell him very well, but if he is taught by somebody who is touching him the whole time, then it is the difference between understanding some and knowing some, or knowing something as though he owns it." "His speech is getting a lot better too," Mischka said, "What makes me a little sad is that I can hear him in my head when we do that but you can't and Taela, he's almost eloquent then." They started in on washing each other's hair and after that, Taela adjusted the spray so that it came out as more of a thicker stream. She grabbed Mischka gently and stepped back so that the almost hot stream poured down on them both and they stood there with their eyes shut and their heads together , just enjoying the heat. "Ohh," Mischka groaned, "Finally water warm enough for me. This is fantastic!" Taela sighed, "This is something that I miss so much. Where I come from, we lived partly inside an old volcano crater, and there was a spring which ran as warm as this and there was a pool where it poured down into and then ran as a stream. Even in the middle of the coldest winter, I was never cold in that mountain and I always had that hot cascade to wash under." "If I had something like that, Taela, I don't think I'd ever leave there, "Mischka said. "The rest wasn't much, but it was our home. It's dangerous to be outside there after dark. Now that Shorty's wing is fixed, he could probably live there, though I doubt that he'd want to. I think that he knows that he still looks different to the rest of his kind. You could probably live there too." Mischka shook her head a little, "It sounds alright, but though we're different from each other, Shorty and I both know the way that we are inside. I'm probably no different from him that way. But I'd bet that I don't look much like what Shorty's kind are either, and I'd probably be fighting for my life there forever. That's something that I already know because we are the same like that. Shorty and I think the world of each other, but we know that we're different enough from what's on our home worlds to make the pea brains there want to kill us for it. Between us, we each think the other one is awesome because we know that we are so different from each other – kind of like you and Ryan – but that's here. If I took Shorty to where I'm from or he brought me to the place you came from, it would be the same thing; we'd both be fighting for our lives and each other." The water slowed and then stopped and unconsciously, both of them made the same sound of regret and then they laughed a little and drew apart to get out and towel off. As they left the place, Mischka pointed to one of the large bathtubs and Taela almost groaned as she said that she wanted a bath like that so much now. Mischka looked out into the mall again and her eyes lit up. "We can do it," she said. Taela shook her head, "No, we've probably barely got enough for those hot drinks. A session in one of those tubs costs like five and a half credits, and that's not including whatever bath gel you want in it." "Just follow me," Mischka grinned, "The place where we met is right over there – and they owe me my last pay. We'll have enough then, and we still won't be over what we agreed on. Come on." She almost dragged Taela over and they walked inside. The place was a little dark and quiet at that time of the artificial day. They only saw one of the DJs. "Hi Thomas," Mischka called over, "Is Murphy around anywhere? I came to get my clothes and my last pay." The man shook his head, "No. I dunno where he is, but I heard about you and what happened the other week and I'm glad that you got everything straightened out. Go take a look in the dressing room for your stuff – if it's even still there. I've got your pay here in the drawer. Murphy was gonna pocket it in another day or so. He's still some pissed over the blood and all." Mischka asked Taela to stay there for a minute while she got her things, and for the next few minutes, Taela spoke to the DJ just to pass the time. "I wasn't here that night," he said, "but I heard about it all. A bit of a shame that the assholes had the place filled that night. From what I heard, it was pretty good to watch you guys dance, even though they tell me that you didn't know what was going on. I'd have loved to have seen that. I know that you're a Morgarod or close to it, but you're lovely all the same and your looks set you apart in a dive like this. I think that if this were a better place for it, you could do well dancing here. They'd come from all over to see you dance – especially with Mischka. I'm gonna miss seeing her dance too, but this place is about the best joint here – and it's still a shithole." "Aw, that's sweet, Thomas," Mischka said as she walked over with her things. Thomas unlocked the drawer and pulled out the card which would allow him to transfer her pay from the bar's bank to her account in hers. "It's the truth, Misch," he smiled, "I'm just a guy like any other under the skin, but I've never been the kind to hoot and holler out shit talk at a dancer. I've always loved it when you'd dance, either alone or with another girl. I know you're really not like that, but the way that you put so much into it, " he smiled, "honey, there are dancers on this rock who can only dream about dancing the way that you do – and there are lesbians on this rock who come in here to dream about you doing that for them. I think I must have been asked at least three times each by them all when you were coming back, every one who knew that you danced here." ------------------------------------ As they walked out of the bar on their way back to the bathhouse, Taela rolled her eyes, "I can't believe the way that I let you talk me into dancing with you like that again." Mischka chuckled, "And now you're going to tell me that you feel embarrassed over it, huh? You ought to be feeling a little proud of yourself, Taela. Think about it. That guy DJs for more than one club. He sees naked women dance in front of him every single night, all kinds, all colors, all species – and he begged us to dance for him, just for him, me and you. He's complained to me before that most of the time, he's fighting to keep his eyes open from working so many jobs to come up with the money to send his little girl for an education when she gets old enough so that she doesn't end up having to stay here and can make her own life for herself. I know him. He has naked women around him all day long and twice as many all night too. He says that after a while, it's a little like watching cattle. Morgarod dancers are rare hereabouts, though he's seen the odd one come through here on the circuit. But he asked for you and me, just one time, for old time's sake. And don't worry about him using a cam. He didn't. He's built his livelihood on being trustworthy to tons of dancers. I got my pay and now we're going to have that bath, Taela. Go on and tell me that you hated every minute of it. You didn't even blink when I took off my clothes. Yours were off even faster after that." Taela began to laugh then, shaking her head a little in wonder at the two of them, "I loved it, Mischka. I really love dancing like that with you. I can't help it. I didn't even mind your fake kisses very much, either." Mischka looked over, "They were mostly for show, but they weren't all fake, Taela. There wasn't anything really in the ones I planted on you but my being thankful for the way that you've helped me and my absolute joy over having a friend like you. I'm always feeling happy these days, and it's a huge change from being afraid and paranoid all of the time." The attendant looked surprised to see them back as Mischka paid for a long bath in the large tub with the bubble bath that they took eleven minutes to decide on by smell. Seven minutes later, they were lying in a mountain of fragrant foam with almost hot water buoying up their breasts, sipping something cool. "What are they like?" Mishka asked after a few minutes. "Who?" Taela asked in return. "Your men," Mischka smiled, "Who else? What are they like in bed?" Taela thought about it for a moment and then she said, "They are often almost completely unlike each other. Shorty is sometimes a little shy for some reason. But he's, ... well, he's a lot of things. When it's slow with him, it's so nice. He's not large, but it feels so good with him inside me. I just want to hold him there and wish for it to go on and on. He can get excited sometimes too, and then, ... I don't think anyone can fuck faster than Shorty can when he's feeling it. I just hang on then and try not to rip the sheets to shreds because it feels so wild and good. The really wonderful thing about him is how you can make love to him. It's a little like being a girl and having a girl to make love to – but he isn't one. Once he trusts you, he lets you do anything to him and I really like that a lot." She held up her hand, "I have wide fingers. With a little lubrication, I can fuck him very gently and he's so happy then. He's not ashamed and he knows that I mean it. He hangs on to me any way that he can and I just take him along for as long as I want to and his kisses to me are so gentle and nice before I finish him in any of a couple of ways. Ryan is a human and he fucks like one, I guess. I am always so taken with him. I love to look at him then if I can. He's always gentle – unless I don't want that, and he's unbelievably strong. Sometimes, I lie down and he takes me, so I wrap my legs around him and then ... " She smiled, "It's hard to explain. He rises up on his knees with me hanging on to him with my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck and he just fucks me until I can't hang on anymore. It always amazes me how he can do that – lift me up right off the bed as though I weigh nothing then. He has this way about him, too. Sometimes I want it very slow from him, but deep and strong. He knows just when I want that, though I never tell him that I do. He just knows it somehow. My favorite way then is on my back so that I can look at him and hold him to me. When it's like that between us, he can make me so happy that I just start to cry very slowly and softly. I can't help it. There's no other thought possible for me then and it's that I'm his – and I want to be his. There are so many differences between us, and yet at those times, we are not very different at all. He's larger than Shorty and he spreads me wide open when we fuck like that, and still I want more of him. He gives to me like that. We've done it for so long like that and then at the end, when I tremble in his grasp over the way that he holds me so carefully, and I begin to sob from the longest and sweetest finish, I sometimes find that he came before me and said nothing and gave no sign. For all I know, he didn't even notice it in himself, though he says that he does. He does that all for me, Mischka. The whole thing, for me, because he knows that I love it that way with him. I tried to explain it to my mother once and she told me that she'd never had a man like that for her. As far as using his mouth on me, he's very good, but Shorty is even better, because Shorty can make his tongue tremble. I like that a lot, but I have to be careful when I let him do that, because after that, I can't feel much of anything for a while there." She looked over at Mischka. "Is that what you wanted to know?" Her friend laughed a little as she nodded, "Yes. I think you're so lucky to have them to love you. If we weren't in this bath, I'd probably have been fooling with myself as you said it, it sounded so good. And then it would have gotten stupid, wouldn't it? With me asking you to back up or elaborate on some point or other until I squeaked from holding back when I finally came and then feeling like a bloody idiot. But I have another question, though I think that I can guess the answer. When we were in the shower and you were pulling me to stand with you, I felt something against my leg for a minute. Then you moved and it was gone. When we were dancing and I got down to fake the other part, I almost fell over. I finally got to see what that was, ... But, ... um, ... what was that?" Taela shrugged a little in embarrassment, "My hair down there. It's the same as what's on my head, thicker than most people's hair and it moves by itself, that's all." Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 07 Mischka's jaw was dropping a little, but she caught it, not wanting Taela to feel strange, "That's wonderful, well I think it is, anyway. I'd love to ask you to let me see it here where there's enough light, but I think, ... well, I don't want you to get shy over it. I'm happy that I can see you without any clothes today. Since we bought them, you're always wearing them, and I think you're so beautiful without anything on." "I think that's what I've been enjoying today with you," Taela smiled, "I like seeing you like this, since it's just us and, ... I don't know, I just like it a lot. I still don't want to do anything you know, ... well, at least I'm pretty sure that I don't. But I like spending the day like this with you, Mischka." She had a thought then, "We can make a deal out of it. I'll let you see that hair if you'll let me see you dark the way that I first saw you that other night, and, ... " She hung there. "Go on," Mischka grinned, "What else were you gonna say?" Taela looked down for a moment, "I like to look at Shorty's body a lot. You're a little like him that way and I love the way that you look, but I am a little curious about something. You said to ask if there was any part of you that I wanted to see, and ..." She forged ahead then, "Can I see where your tail is attached? I always want to look there on Shorty, but the chance to ask him goes by so fast every time, and, ... well, could I see that on you?" When Mischka nodded, Taela got to her knees so that her pubic hair was clearly visible and she watched as Mischka sat spellbound watching it. "That's amazing," she whispered in a little awe, "Can I touch it? I won't try to feel you or anything. I just want to feel it moving on my fingers." Taela nodded and after a minute, Mischka laughed a little, "I love it this!" She rose up on her knees too and she put her hands onto Taela's shoulders to look at her, "Listen, Taela. I'm still the same girl and all, but, ... ok, promise me something. If you ever get it in your head that you might like to feel a girl's kisses there, promise me that I can be the one. I know what to do, honey, so I can guarantee that you'll love it. I just want to feel that against my face one time at least. So promise me if you can, alright?" Taela laughed self-consciously, but she nodded a little, "You might be waiting a long time, since I've never felt that way yet, but alright, Mischka. I promise." Mischka leaned forward and kissed Taela on the lips very quickly, "Thanks." She moved away then and went to all fours, turning away from Taela and then looking back. As she did it, her skin changed color to a dusty-looking, almost-black shade of gray. Her skin now matched the skin of her wings exactly. Only her hair was darker, both on her head and down along her spine right to her hips, attached as it was the whole way there. Taela gasped to see it and she smiled, "I'll never know why you don't look this way more often, Mischka. I really like to see you like this. You always look so beautiful and mysterious to me, but like this, I think you are the loveliest female that I have ever seen. I think the color and the wings are the final touch for me." Mischka was a little dumbfounded for a moment. She'd been certain that on the evening that they'd met, Taela had been too bombed to really know what she was looking at. But that clearly couldn't be the case now. Taela grinned after a moment, "And I've learned something about you too. When we danced, both times, that night and today, your tail was always moving, back and forth like a long serpent or, ... or like a ribbon being waved slowly in the air." Mischka nodded, "Yeah. I do that to keep the males a little tantalized since I've got the tail and everything. I think it helps to hide the fact that what I'm doing with my other end then isn't maybe as um, passionate as it might be if I was doing it for real. I can't really say, since I've never done that because I really wanted to or anything. What's your point, Taela?" The other girl smiled widely, "There are no males here now, nobody here at all but us – and you're doing it right now." She looked up, "I think that you're a little excited." Mischka shook her head, "No I'm not." Taela wasn't really convinced, though she let it pass. "Can you lift your hips a little more and move your tail up? I just want to get a look underneath." "Underneath my tail?" Mischka was surprised, "All that's under it is my asshole unless you look a little lower. You want to get a look at that?" Mischka had said it that way because she felt silly and she was a little uncomfortable with the idea and she hoped that saying it like that would end the moment. She wasn't prepared at all to see Taela's hopeful little nod. Then it hit her. From the time that she'd spent with her three friends on their craft, Mischka had noticed more than enough about Taela to conclude that she had to be the most 'anal' girl – to put it nicely – that she'd ever met. She thought it over for a second and knew that she probably felt the way that she did because it was a place on her body that she'd really never had the thought to include in any playtime during the infrequent times when she was having any kind of sex. By way of contrast, Taela obviously had no such reservations at all. Mischka leaned down so that her hips rose a little more and she looked back again. "Is this good enough? If I get any lower at this end, I'll have bubble bath in my mouth." She watched the sweetest little smile begin to widen on Taela's face. "Your tail, could you lift it a little more?" Mischka was slow about it, wanting suddenly to appear nervous. She wasn't nervous, though. Not at all, really. She was feeling a little adventurous and she even knew why. She'd already come to admit to herself that she was starting to love Taela for her friendship and company. To someone like she was, it was something that she'd never really had and she knew that it was the same for Taela because they'd spoken about it. She was attracted to Taela, but she could still tell herself easily that it wasn't really a sexual attraction – well it was, just not what Mischka told herself that girls who liked girls felt. To Mischka, it was the exciting feeling of something very sensual, and THAT was what she loved. It was why she could dance with another girl so well, because to her, females just had much more sensuality built right into them than males of any sort – other than proper dancers, at any rate. Mischka would argue with anyone who tried to tell her that she was beautiful. Hell, she'd barely rate herself as even mildly pretty on her best day. She thought that her mouth was too big and toothy, her eyes could frighten the dead to her mind and the rest of her even when she was paper-white, was too bony. She wasn't quite correct by any means, but that was how she saw herself. She just wouldn't argue with Taela. When Taela told her something like that, she had trouble with it, but she could at least believe that the girl really felt that way. She raised her tail a little more and blinked right afterward. She was certain that she'd heard Taela sigh very softly. "I am looking at the place where your tail just joins your body," Taela whispered, "It's fascinating to me - probably because I don't have one, but I really like it. Can I touch it, Mischka? Please?" Mischka told Taela yes, though she bit back the joke which she'd been about to make about being thankful that they'd had the shower so that she knew that she was clean. It suddenly felt like a rather crude thing to say, and then she had a rather startling thought. When they'd been in the shower, it had been Taela who had soaped and washed her there, attracted by the tail of course. She'd liked the way that it felt very much, but she'd just told herself that it was because of her feelings for Taela and how good it felt to be able to trust someone for once in her life. She felt the grasp of Taela's hand around her tail at the base and she almost wanted to purr from the sensation when she felt Taela run her thumb over the skin gently. She tried to hold it back, but a very quiet sigh slipped past her lips anyway. At least she hoped that it had been quiet. She'd really wanted to groan. She felt Taela's fingers slide over her flank just a little very cautiously and right then, though she wasn't exactly certain of just what this was, Mischka was almost terrified that it might stop suddenly. "Something that almost no girls have, and yet, it is something that most should have," she heard Taela say. "What?" Mischka asked, wondering if it was some sort of riddle. "A tail, silly," Taela grinned, "Everything else here is the same as what I have, isn't it?" "Except for that amazing hair of yours, "Mischka pointed out and Taela nodded, giving her friend the point. Mischka turned her head to look back and she couldn't see Taela's face because she was leaning forward. She wondered what was so fascinating about her asshole to Taela for a moment. But then she felt her sigh coming out. She wasn't sure what the sensation was which had caused it, other than something warm and wet against the bottom of her tail back there. "Taela, what are you doing?" The sensation stopped then and Mischka cursed herself silently. She'd wanted to know what that was. She sure hadn't wanted for it to stop. "I'm licking the bottom of your tail," Taela whispered. "You want me to lick it some more. Don't you?" "Yes," Mischka heard herself whisper right back, "Please do that again." The sensation began again and Mischkas' vocabulary shrank down to only "ohhh" right then. "Besides," Taela's soft voice came to her when she stopped for just a second before it continued, "you want me to keep going, ... because then, ..." She chuckled, "You can hope." Mischka felt her own wickedly lascivious chuckle deep down in her throat, "That feels so good, Taela. But what am I supposed to hope for?" "You're supposed, ... to hope, ... that I, ... do, ... this...." Mischka felt her chest heave to expand as she gasped. Taela had moved her tongue forward. She almost collapsed from the way that it felt. But she didn't and it was a good thing. She'd have inhaled a lot of water if she had. She felt Taela's palm on the inside of her thigh, high up and nudging so lightly against her sex. Taela wanted to tease her at least a little, but no more than that, since she was feeling unsure about it herself and the position was murder on her neck. "You'll have to move if you want some more of that," Taela said, hoping that Mischka would agree and not back away and leave her feeling stupid. "Put a towel there on the edge where it's deepest and lean out of the bath standing up. I want to be under your pretty tail again." Mischka nodded, though she knew that Taela wouldn't see it. She moved to the deeper part and did as she'd been told, not daring to speak. Not even daring to look back for fear that it wouldn't continue. But her fears were groundless. Taela had her face back there again in no time, licking Mischka everywhere back there but one part with that thick tongue of hers. The only part which was excluded was Miscka's cleft, though it was nudged a little every once in a while. Mischka relaxed completely and she felt her tail ease down onto the side of Taela's face to lie over her shoulder, the end of it twitching feebly in the water. Then she felt Taela's soft kisses as they receded to the point where they were only placed on her cheeks. Mischka groaned when she felt Taela's finger slip into her. "I think we're the same even about this," Taela decided aloud, "since I can tell that you like it." "I – I lo–love it," Mischka hissed between her teeth, "Oh, please don't stop, Taela. I never knew ... oh, ... ohhh." "I hate to sound, ... demanding of my best friend," Taela chuckled as she placed her cheek on top of Mischka's hips, "but I'm trying to get you to want something a little more there. Do you want me to finger you harder, or, ... " Mischka shook her head, "No, this is so good. Just keep it up. Maybe I'll be more adventurous - ohh,.... the next time." "The next time?" Taela laughed softly, "Alright. If you want to explore this with me, I'd love to help. And you'll need it, you know, the practice." "W-why?" Mischka groaned huskily as Taela's finger went deep then for a moment. "Because I've decided on a few things for us," Taela smiled. "I'm still not sure about doing the licking thing, though I am beginning to like the idea. I like thinking about it in the way that you said – about helping. I guess that I'll have to face it sooner or later, Mischka, since I'm going to need to help you when Shorty finally fucks you here." Mischka's eyes widened and she turned to look back, but Taela saw it as the movement began and she began to mimic the motions with her finger. Mischka moaned and arched her back, pressing back onto the finger several times. "Shorty's with us, but he needs a female of his own. Ryan and I have talked about it a lot and we know how you two feel about each other. I'm thinking that it could be the best thing for everyone. I think that you ought to try it with him. If you do and you both find that it works, then I'll play with you too if you want me to, and I'll even share Ryan if you still let me have Shorty sometimes." She lifted her head then, "But that's for later and we need to talk about it. Right now," she began , though she let it hang there as she began to use the fingers of her other hand on Mischka's cleft, running her wide fingertips lightly over Mischka's clitoris while her extended and thick middle finger fucked the other opening a little more vigorously. Mischka lowered her head and began to moan while trying to get her hips into the play at the same time. ------------------------------ "I still don't feel like one of those women, " Taela said as they relaxed over their drinks in the little café, "More and more, I am coming to like your definition of it. It gives me such nice thoughts in my mind and it's what I do a lot of anyway." She grinned a little as she looked over, "Only I do it to a pair of males, though it would be exactly the same intent if they were females. So as far as it goes, I can agree with what you said about helping. What did you want to ask Ryan about?" Mischka nodded, after having to think for a moment, "I was going to ask him if he could maybe help me a little later on. Before we all met, I was staying at a rooming house. It's been a couple of weeks, but I'd like to see if my few possessions are still there. I don't have very much, maybe about three boxes of stuff, but I'd kind of like it if Ryan could come with me. The landlord there is a dick and there could be trouble. The way that he always stares at me and makes rude suggestions really creeps me out and I'm afraid that he'll go farther if he knows that I'm not coming back after this one time. I'd really hate it if, after finally having my name cleared, that I had to hurt an idiot in self-defense. It worked as an explanation for why I killed to protect you from the one who was trying to drag you off that night since I made sure to include my personal safety along with yours, but it's not something that I can just trot out as a defense every other week, is it?" ------------------------------ Ryan and Mischka walked along the deserted back alleys toward where her room had been. There was little if any lighting to make one's way by on these grimy pathways. Ryan looked around, feeling a little bit of a mixture of trepidation and disgust at what he saw around them. His thoughts turned back to the confident and slick way that the security detachment liked to portray their tenuous hold on things in the trading post and he mentioned it to Mischka quietly. She nodded, answering in the same soft, guarded tones, "Yeah, like you'd ever find one of their patrols down here unless they'd gotten themselves lost. It's happened once or twice before and they had to come down here like the fucking cavalry in force. They only did that because they were all scared shitless and it was the only way that most of them had agreed to go at all – that and the scary thought that it might be them the next time." She looked down an adjoining alleyway and for just a moment as they passed, she saw one of the others of her kind hunkered down over the corpse of someone and gorging. Whoever it had been was still twitching feebly and the sound of their soft footsteps caused the other female to look up, suddenly nervous. Their eyes met and the wild female hissed quietly as she withdrew deeper into the shadows. She came back, returning to her meal just seconds after Mischka and Ryan had passed by on their way. Her meal was still warm and she wouldn't go far even if she'd been forced away. With a careful look around, she leaned down again, pressing her gore-covered face deeper into the abdominal cavity as she began to eat once more. Ryan had seen nothing of it due to his human vision, but Mischka had seen far more than enough to be thankful all over again for the way that her friends cared about her. She didn't have to live that way, though by her efforts, she'd been able to sidestep most of this sort of life because she'd put herself out there as a dancer to capitalize on the latent prurient lust of humans and others. But as they walked, she was coming to wonder about someone else who couldn't do the things that she had, and it began to worry her. The locks came undone with a lot of clacking, rattling, and clanking as the door to the place was opened. The grimy lump of a human grinned as he peered out at Mischka. "You're back, eh?" he smiled and on him, it looked hideous, "I can't let you into your room until you pay me the rent for the last two weeks, ... or we might work something out, " he said with a leering grin. "I know you're always a little broke, Misch, so just pay me for one week, that is, ... if you'll let me – " Ryan stepped around the doorframe and pushed past Mischka then and the greasy gnome almost tumbled over backward in his attempt to get a look at the tall human, "What the –" "Here you go," Ryan smiled a little evilly as he held out some real, honest-to-goodness coins, "One week's rent. Now let her into her place." The man changed his mind instantly, "I'll want two weeks, plus - AAighh!" He groaned a little and it ended in a whimper as he found himself hanging by the material of his filthy shirt from Ryan's grip as he was carried further inside and Mischka closed the door. "I haven't got any of that," Ryan grinned, "so how about just settling for me allowing you to breathe – after we're gone?" "Alright, ... "the gnome nodded desperately, "o – okay." He led them up a set of creaky steps which sounded as though they were hard-pressed to bear the combined weight of the three of them until they arrived at a door. "I've forgotten the key," the wretch said, "I'll just go and get it. Be back in a moment." The door crashed inward and fell off its hinges from the force of Ryan's throw. They walked inside, stepping around the unconscious form of the landlord. Mischka frowned as she saw that her things had been disturbed in her absence, but she also saw that nothing was missing – with the exception of only one thing and she groaned. "I had a little picture there on the nightstand," she said sadly, "It was just one of those little things that you can get at an arcade. That's where I got it from. It was only a cheap little photo of me and Rhani. She's a little vampire. She's not like the regular ones either. She's a smaller breed from somewhere else. But I'd see her around sometimes and if I had any extra coin, I'd try to buy her something to eat. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 07 Other than you guys, Rhani is my only friend. She's small and for her to get anything that she could manage to kill, ... well, I'd rather not think of what it might be." Mischka looked around and then she looked up at Ryan, "Let's go." When they were outside, Ryan unhinged the small collapsible parcel dolly that he'd brought and they fastened her boxes with the straps and they walked off, retracing their steps. As they approached the intersection where she'd seen the feeding vampire, Mischka was startled to hear small cries from that direction and she nudged Ryan's arm and held her finger to her lips. Ryan jammed his hand into his pocket and came up with a lightstick. Snapping it once in a bending motion to activate the chemicals inside, he put it back into his pocket for the moment. As they rounded the corner, Ryan heard the faint sounds of a quiet struggle and he tossed the lightstick down the alleyway. In the unearthly blue glare of the device, they saw the female vampire, but now she wasn't hunkering down at her meal. She was holding down a smaller form and snarling, though the one under her held up a pair of thin arms pleadingly. From the sounds now, the smaller one was begging to be allowed to leave – and remain among the living. It didn't appear to Ryan as though it was working at all well. Ryan looked up, finding himself alone suddenly as Mischka climbed straight up on her wings. She was fully dressed in the clothing that he'd bought for her, but that clothing allowed the use of the large appendages on her back. The brief glimpse that he got of her features showed him that she'd lost her ability to maintain whatever conscious effort it took for her to remain light-colored. Her face and any parts of her skin that he could see had gone dark. And then she was gone into the darkness up above them. He looked at the scene before him and it didn't seem right to him somehow, so he reached for his PDW, about to draw back the cocking handle if this looked like it was going to go on toward the conclusion that he could easily foresee. But he never got there. The female on her knees over the smaller one was bowled over in the next instant and swept aside. Ryan looked over and he saw only a ball of flailing limbs for a moment before he heard a muffled screech. What he saw then ... Mischka looked to have flames in her eyes from the heat of her gaze at the female – who was now struggling ever more feebly as her lifeblood sprayed off into space to the side. The female tried to cover the gaping wound on her neck, but the blood still pumped out past her weakening fingers while this very new to Ryan, dark-visaged Mischka looked to be just barely able to contain her obvious wrath. She looked down in some rage with her long teeth bared in a very primal way for a moment until it became obvious that there was no fight left in the dying one. She turned away to get to her feet and then she was almost bowled over herself by the smaller form, who now hung from her and hugged her, almost wailing her tears out. Mischka put her arms around the other one and held on, "Rhani!" she hissed quietly, "Oh Rhani, are you hurt?" The smaller form shook her head against Mischka's and a moment later, Mischka stood up and took the smaller one's hand to lead her away. She felt something in her friend's small hand and when she saw what it was, she almost burst into tears herself. It was the little photograph in a cheap plastic frame. Rhani didn't have enough for even a stitch of clothing, but she must have been holding that little article in one hand ever since they'd last seen each other. "Come on," she said, wiping her eyes as her darkness began to fade, "I've always told you that this place would be the death of you. I don't ever want to see it once I'm finally right. I need to get you somewhere where you're safe." Ryan found himself looking at, ... well he wasn't really sure. This 'Rhani' appeared to be a dark, obviously naked - and very dirty female something like Mischka of ... - he couldn't tell at all accurately - maybe twelve at a stretch – and that was a long one, too, and though she wasn't more than four and a half feet tall, she looked taller, due to her lankiness . He knew that he was more than likely incorrect, knowing that it was a little silly to be trying to apply human standards out here to creatures who were not human. As they drew a little near to him, Rhani saw him for the first time and she drew back, looking afraid, but she settled down as Mischka spoke to her in that strange half-squawking form of speech that she and Shorty used. From what Ryan could see, Rhani got it, but she kept trying to tell Mischka something and she was insistent. "Tesem," she said clearly, trying to pull Mischka in a slightly different direction, "Tesem, ... Tesem." It was followed by a whole lot of other things, not one of which Ryan had any sort of clue about. "This is Rhani," Mischka said, "She's filthy and she smells right now, but I'm happy that she's still alive, at least." She stopped and Rhani stood in front of her, pleading and beseeching as she tugged at Mischka's hand, and when she finally made herself understood, Mischka's eyebrows disappeared right against her widow's peak. She looked at Ryan in astonishment, "She wants to go to the animal impound." Ryan blinked, "What the hell for? I didn't think that this trip would take all day, Mischka. I don't mind helping, but I'm not going there if she wants to look at the puppies." Rhani squawked and chattered and Ryan could see that Mischka's eyebrows weren't going to be very visible for a little while yet, by her expression. When she finally understood it to Rhani's satisfaction, she turned and blinked, looking at Ryan. "I'd guess it happened about the time that you and the others were helping me. I didn't even know anything about this." She looked to be feeling incredulous for a moment and her eyebrows still hadn't reappeared when she stared at Ryan again. "They're holding her husband." ------------------------------------- The Anubian sat on a small bench with his arms restrained straight out on either side of him. The tranquilizer that he'd been hit with was finally wearing off, though slowly, since they'd kept the dose topped up and he found himself trying to work his consciousness through the fog of it. He'd been drugged, though he'd never fully lost consciousness. He wanted to snort in derision. Humans and their stupidity. It even went as far as what they thought that they knew about his kind. He did hear the door to the cell being unlocked very quietly, though, and he waited with his eyes closed; his head not hanging down quite so much anymore. He felt the bonds around his wrists which held him there, but he also felt that his bracers hadn't been removed. He guessed that they'd either been overlooked somehow or that more likely, his captors hadn't thought them to be important. He activated the cameras in the left one with a curling motion of one finger. The tendon in his forearm stood out and he heard the barely-audible click. He had a feeling that he'd want a record of this. The female pound guard crept into the cell, barely moving – barely daring to draw a breath as she came. She knew that what she'd been trying to fight off in her mind was unconscionable and very likely highly illegal as well, given her position. She didn't want to harm him in any way, though the thought in her mind of what she wanted to do would still constitute abuse in the strict legal sense once she was living her little fantasy. But she couldn't help herself anymore. He'd been here under sedation for the maximum allowable time. She felt drawn here, and it was going to have to be now or never. She hadn't been pulled here by any conscious thought of desire from 'him'. This was all something inside of her and she'd finally lost her ability to fight off her desires any longer. It happened to her fairly often. It was one of the reasons that she was working here, after all. She looked at him, sitting there with his eyes closed. Her own eyes ran over his lean and muscled body. Side to side and top to bottom, he was the single most wickedly attractive male that she'd ever seen and, ... God, she thought; he must stand well over six feet tall. Well, when he was on two feet anyway, As she crept closer, she barely felt her tongue as it slipped out of her mouth to lick her own lips, though she noticed after a moment and gently bit her lower lip as she edged nearer. It was as hard as anything to do, but she brought her face as close to his muscled body as she could and inhaled his scent a little slowly. What she smelled was a little foreign to her, but that didn't matter. His scent screamed 'MALE' to her. Pure, heavy-balled musk hit her brain and it told her a lot about him if you were a female with eyes to see his power and beauty as well. He was the kind who could bang you until you threw your head back into the pillow so hard that you could hear your own vertebrae grind, as well as the way that your jaw threatened to snap its ligaments as you screamed for him. And if by some magic miracle, you managed to retain enough control to lunge up and bite one of those nipples in your joy, well, he'd just roar at you and fuck you even harder. He was the kind who'd laugh softly as he watched you get up on aching and trembling hips to stumble uncertainly to the can for a piss - if he didn't change his mind and fuck you all over again right then on the floor. It would come to you then that it wasn't out of cruelty or anything stupid - he actually cared and it would amaze him that you'd have put it off for that long when you didn't need to at all. He was just amazed that you did. Hell, he'd CARRY you there if he thought that you couldn't make it. To one very lonely female guard working alone at the animal impound, that was love if it stayed with you. She knew the kind. She'd had one once upon a time; an incredible male who could make her grab her pillow and hold on in a white-knuckled grip so that at least she had something to lay her head on while he held her up on failing knees and caressed her everywhere that he could reach so softly and well while he STILL fucked her brains out and chuckled over the staccato slapping of his hips on her ass. But she'd lost him one night as he'd worked overtime on the outside and an avalanche took him from her forever. She'd never been the same since, though she tried never to let it get to her too much. When it did, there was always the ones that the cops brought here, wasn't there? Most of those ones couldn't hold a candle to her Robby's memory - though this one might, she guessed. It was just too bad that he was likely an animal. Why if he could even speak to her a little, she'd do anything in her power to free him... Just as long as he fucked her like Robby used to and he stayed around and never went to the outside. But she guessed that he wasn't like that; he was just a fuck in an animal impound to her, just passing through on the way to wherever they threw these things after the quick hearing. She lowered her nose and inhaled again. She wanted to groan, but she didn't; being so careful to not even exhale against him in order to draw another breath of him into her nostrils. Her knees felt a little weak for it all the same and she sank onto them onto the floor there between his legs and looked up at his face. He was something, she thought. With those pointed ears standing straight up the way that they were, and, his coal black fur ... And she could just make out the tip of one tooth at each corner of his long, narrow mouth as they extended barely past his sweet-looking lips. To her at the moment; he was sooo sexually attractive to her. She actually felt a little lost. She was already wet. She'd always had thoughts of fucking with one of these dog-men things. She wanted to touch the very short fur which covered those long muscles. She almost ached to do it, too. She stopped as she consciously forced herself to remember that she had turned off the surveillance cam in this cell. Just to make certain, she looked up and she saw that the tiny LED was out. It was a moment of pure coincidence, but as she turned her head back to look at him again, she didn't see it as the tiny LED winked back on. She sighed inaudibly. She'd done this before to other males – just not one like him and she wondered if she might ever get the chance to even meet one of these ones for herself one day, though she supposed not. She saw them only very rarely, most often in the company of their females, and there was no ignoring the looks of disdain with which they regarded humans. She shook the thought out of her mind. Even the females looked so good to her, and from the very little that she'd heard at all of their kind, they were all known - once you got their fuses lit properly - to be such incredible sex beasts. She guessed that the best that she could manage here was to fuck him while he was still out of it and satisfy herself with that. She knew what she'd do after that, of course; though waiting for her shift to end would feel like forever passing. She'd run out and scour the vidshops in the commerce sector, looking almost frantically until she found her favorite seller in the corners, knowing that he probably wouldn't let her down. But she was confident that at some point later today, she'd go home and shove the wolfish-looking dildo that she planned to buy into her as she watched the illegal porno that she'd hopefully find. The worm in the little shops was good to her, knowing that she was a little bent and he always kept odd things in stock just for her – since she kept coming back. What she didn't know in her ignorance of his kind was that no such video existed. No Anubian would have ever consented to be a part of such a thing, even if he was starving and needed the money. There was nothing illegal about inter-species relationships out this far, but pornography of it was illegal to make, sell, purchase, or own. Humans were still humans, and their lawmakers knew that if they didn't at least try to keep some sort of lid on things, sooner or later, somebody somewhere would start screwing potted plants or other things which couldn't say no. She'd done this before to male prisoners of various species that the cops brought here sometimes if they didn't know what to do with them, though she'd never had a shot at one like this one ever. It was her very personal and delicious little kink. She was actually beginning to hope that they'd forgotten about this one. With a little luck, this might work out and she could maybe make it a regular thing to help her get through her long shifts. You had to time things right, that was all, she told herself. At the right time, they'd still be under, pretty much and she'd suck to get them hard. It usually didn't take long at all, thanks to the particular sedative that was used here. Once that had happened and she could see what they had, she'd climb up and ease herself down on them for a hopefully fine fuck until she was happy. The contraceptive foam in her pussy would deal with the spermatozoa and with a quick wipe of a towelette, no one would be the wiser. Best of all, they'd never really be sure of what had happened. She opened her mouth and her tongue slipped out to lick the end of his sheath. Now that it had begun, she felt a little emboldened and she began to try to get her tongue into the end of it. She felt the tip and the heat which was beginning there and in only moments, she felt it as the end of it grew to emerge for her. With a sigh that she couldn't contain, she began to fellate him. She gave in to her want and her hand reached out to caress and hold his scrotum. The balls in there felt so large and heavy to her and when she felt that he'd reached what had to be his full size, she started licking it up and down over it's long and darkly pink length. A good thing that she was already on her knees, she thought, the taste and the heat of it would probably have driven her there anyway. She reminded herself that time was against her, so she quickly stood up and pulled off her trousers to prepare herself for the final sweet part. With her hands on him in such private places, she doubted that he'd notice her weight as she sat on that fine long prick of his. But she landed on the floor, jumping off just in time as he'd opened his eyes and snarled. The way that his teeth had snapped shut almost over her nose had been a hell of a fright and a very near thing. She heard the hallway door open behind her and she jumped up to get her pants on as quickly as she could. It didn't help that the prisoner was almost barking the place down in his rage at her. "What were you doing?" the shift super asked as she came to the open door with three others, one of them a human male. "N-nothing," the pound worker said. "Oh fuck off," the older woman groaned, rolling her eyes, "Nothing, huh? Think you can come up with a good lie here for the public about how your belt is hanging undone and your shirt is outside of your pants?" She pointed to the camera on the wall above them, "Try hard, Debbie. I need to hear a really good fairy-tale after what I was looking at in the monitor back there a few seconds ago. I just happened to look at the panel on my way by and I found just one cam switch in the off position. I turned it on just for the hell of it and guess what I was looking at." Debbie stuttered and mumbled for a moment, and the super told her to unlock the restraints. She looked up, her mouth falling open, "But, ... but, .. he, ..." "Just unlock him," her superior said, "As usual, the Security types can't tell something intelligent from a rock and they brought him here by mistake – since their own IQ is a lot closer to the rock." She turned to the others, "It happens here now and then. If I hadn't been out on my lunch at the time that your friend was brought in, I'd have set them straight." "But that was about two weeks ago!" Mischka said, "It takes you that long to come back and look in yourself?" The supervisor ignored her and she turned to the quiet, though still angry individual on the bench, "I'm very sorry about all of this, Sir." His ankles were free as Debbie worked with trembling fingers. He didn't move a hair, though he glared at her, waiting. When both of his wrists had been freed, he moved faster than anyone would have believed possible, grabbing Debbie by the throat, lifting her clean off the floor to growl in accented, yet startlingly clear English. "Do not ever dare to try to stand in my sight again." He threw her against the single barred wall next to the door as though it was nothing. Her head slammed against the bars and she fell into a heap on the floor. Rhani was against him the next instant, holding on for all that she was worth. It softened things for him in a heartbeat as he looked down at her for a moment as he held her, and then he looked up. "I have video of the whole incident," he said coldly, "and now I will go to swear out a complaint against this one, you, and this whole place," he said quietly, "There is an Anubian embassy here – as you call us – and I will seek what aid that I can there." For what he'd just said, Ryan liked him already. But Rhani spoke then and she managed to calm him down to a degree, and he looked at the others for a moment as she led him away down the hall. Outside and with the introductions made, he regarded Ryan without suspicion after he'd heard what had happened and he offered his thanks to him and Mischka. After that, he leaned down and nuzzled his face against Rhani's for a moment. It ended in a soft kiss between them and he sank to walk on all fours with them after the smaller vampire jumped up to ride on his back. Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 07 ---------------------- Back in the depths of the impound, Debbie had regained consciousness and she began to sputter about calling the cops herself to have the creature charged with assault as she tried to hold her head. "Just shut up and have one of these headache pills, sweetie," the supervisor said quietly as she sat on the floor with her arm around Debbie, "With a little luck, nothing will come of it since the cops here are such fools. The only problem will be the record of you trying to fuck yourself on him." "I don't know what I was thinking," Debbie sobbed, "I'll lose my job if anybody ever sees that." The other woman nodded, "Listen, you're not the first one who's done that. I've been doing it forever. I just don't get as many chances for it these days, that's all. Hey," she paused, thinking things over, "have you ever, ... you know, ... uh, with another girl? Maybe we could get together later after I wipe that video. I've got the key, you know." ------------------------ They walked to the Security detachment offices where Tesem – as he was called, proceeded to roar out his indignation over his arrest and treatment at the hands of the security patrol. He leaned over the watch officer's desk, almost trembling with suppressed rage, "I did nothing wrong. I only approached your people and asked for directions. How does that merit my arrest and what happened to me?" The watch officer nervously paged her manager and Ryan began to chuckle as he recognized the man. "You'd better get this mess straightened out quick, Charles. I've got a lawyer who's just dying for another reason to tear this farce here apart." "I demand the return of my belongings," Tesem snarled, "as well as my personal weapon before one of your imbeciles here manages to kill himself with it." Charles nodded, his face a bright shade of scarlet as he began to see to things personally. "You're not allowed to carry a weapon like what was impounded while you're here," Charles said, trying like hell to manage some tone of officiousness. "I had no other place to put it," the Anubian growled, "It would be worse if someone else stole it. Then you WOULD have a reason to arrest me." "Besides, "Ryan grinned as he fought back the laugh that he felt, "You let your idiots walk around here loose armed with shooters and tasers, Charles. And we both know that they're not even to be trusted if they were only armed with rubber bands and paperclips. He can leave it on my ship, since I'm licensed for weapons." Tesem looked over, "My thanks, Ryan. Through Mischka, I am finally finding one human who I wish to begin to trust." ------------------------ It had been one of the strangest hours of Ryan's life, he thought to himself afterward as the four of them sat in the food court in front of a little eatery and he watched as the little slip of a girl put away more food than he thought that he could eat after starving for half a week. Before that, as Mischka led them through the mall, she felt a little odd for the quiet way that Tesem smiled at her for a while, so she asked and he shrugged, "Forgive me for staring. It is very good to see the one in Rhani's little picture. She has spoken of you often and I have seen how she missed her friend." Mischka had led them to the bathhouse and gone inside – almost dragging Rhani, who'd protested all the way while he'd stood out front waiting with Tesem the Anubian as Mischka got her small friend cleaned up in the shower. "So you're married to Rhani?" Ryan asked, wanting to see if he had this straight after all, "Congratulations." The large male nodded, standing as he was in order to wait, "I had not thought of it, but when the merchant craft that I was on docked here, I'd reached the end of my compulsory service. I met Rhani and, ... well, we fell right away. I do not know if humans take a recreational period after being wed, but that was what I was trying to arrange, and I sought help to find a vacation seller." "What was your tasking on that craft?" Ryan asked and the Anubian shrugged, "I was part of the security group there. It was my last assignment before release." He looked down for a moment, "Back home, there had been a coup attempt and several members of the royal family were harmed. My family has always guarded the members of the royal house. I was not there then, but many of my family were killed in the fighting – as I would have been very likely had I been there. The rest of us were shamed and scattered. I knew nothing of it, being off-world at the time. My combat record was taken into consideration and my punishment was to serve for a time as security on the merchant ships. I will never go home again for the shame of it, but I never expected to meet someone like Rhani, either. Aside from this unpleasantness and your gracious help in it with Mischka, Ryan, I am happy here with her, though I am looking for work before my share of my family's fortune is gone." Ryan had to smile, "We seem to have at least something in common, Tesem, I was security on the freighter which brought me to this corner of the galaxy. I'm trying to start up a bounty business. We ought to maybe talk a little later." The two of them fell into a sort of easy chat then, just swapping war stories for a while until the females emerged from the bathhouse. Ryan could see that for all of his cool and collected outward appearance, Tesem was quite obviously very much in love with his diminutive bride. "What happened after Tesem was arrested?" Ryan asked, and he learned that Rhani hadn't known what to do, knowing that if the cops had arrested Tesem for only asking directions, she didn't think that there was any better treatment possible for herself at their hands – if they didn't just shoot her on sight out of what she was. So she'd waited, only leaving when she was so hungry that she couldn't think straight any longer. It had been almost two weeks. Mischka had led them here to buy something to eat and as Rhani began to put away more food than Ryan thought could have been possibly packed into that thin little frame, Mischka tried to tell of it while she sat braiding Rhani's long black hair into lengthy pigtails for her. "As far as I can tell," she said in a way that Ryan saw was revealing her happiness and relief, "Rhani came here from someplace – and neither of us has any idea where – after stowing away on a slow passenger hauler. I met her here, and we'd sometimes hang out together, though it was always me taking care of her, like I'm doing now." Ryan looked at Rhani, who looked back now with interest, since she wasn't feeling the hollow and almost constant pain of her gnawing hunger and fear. "She looks like she'd just a kid," Ryan commented, "well, with wings." "She's not," Mischka smiled, "though she's lost track of the time. We seem to agree that she's about twenty-two, twenty-three, or thereabouts. This is as mature as she says that she's going to get. Her kind doesn't get very big, not that I've ever seen very many like her. The ones that I have seen tend not to live for very long around here. They just can't compete with the others for food. Can I ask you for a really big favor, Ryan?" The words hung in the air between them for a moment as Ryan looked at Rhani and her husband. Rhani looked back, trying to smile around the last mouthful of food in her mouth. She tilted her head a little, as though she was trying to figure him out in some way. Whatever it had been, he thought, she must have arrived at some decision for herself for the way that she seemed to settle into her seat a little happily with a quiet sigh. "What uh, ... what was that about?" Ryan asked. There was a pause as the two girls exchanged some of those odd sounds. "Rhani likes you," Mischka smiled, "She says that she can't see anything in you that's nasty or cruel." He looked very confused, "Nasty or, ... what does that mean?" Mischka smiled again, "Rhani's got this weird little sense to her. She can feel things about somebody – sometimes astonishing things – and she knows almost right off if there's any danger to her from someone else." "Wasn't it working earlier then?" Ryan asked. "It probably was, Ryan," Mischka nodded, "Probably perfectly too, but when you've gone hungry for a while, ..." She left it there, seeing his nod of understanding. He still looked skeptical - until Rhani growled and squawked her way through a quick little paragraph and Mischka said, "She says that you were hurt once by your mate – a female named Sarah, and she told me that the little scar under your lower lip is from fighting another human male like yourself. He hit you, but he was holding a small blade in his glove and you killed him not long after that. From what she senses, that human managed to get your weapon from you, but you crushed his throat with your knee and he strangled. Even so, you hit him with your fist twice before he died, because you were furious by then." Ryan sat with his mouth hanging open, nodding a little after a moment, "He was Brazilian Army. We fought them on Titan, a moon of one of the planets where I'm from. How the hell would she – " Mischka chuckled, "She says that she likes the pictures that you carry in your heart. She thinks that those people are very fortunate." Mischka looked down for a moment, swirling the last of her beverage around in the cup, "So, ..." Ryan grinned, since he couldn't help it and he nodded, "Yeah. If she'll do this thing of hers for us once in a while if we need it." He looked at Tesem for a second, "I'm thinking that if you need work, maybe we can come up with something together." Tesem smiled and when it had been translated for her, Rhani nodded seriously. "She says that she'd do it for you as well as the others that she's seen in you," Tesem said. Rhani spoke again and Mischka looked a little embarrassed by what had been said. "What was that?" Ryan asked. Though Mischka tried to tell him that it had been nothing, Rhani disagreed, knowing somehow that her friend was doing it and she looked at Ryan and began to elaborate, though she knew that he couldn't understand her. Finally, Mischka relented and said only, "Ok ok, I don't know where to look now thanks to her, but since you seem to need to know for some reason, she told me that I'm one of the fortunate people in your heart and she wants to meet the rest. OK now? Is that what you wanted to hear?" Ryan sat there, more than a little embarrassed himself for the moment and at a loss for words. Rhani spoke up again and he just knew. "Tell her that we'll see how it works out, but for right now, "he rolled his eyes, "please tell her that I'd like it if I didn't have to hear any more of my secret thoughts, ok?" He waited as Mischka translated for him. Rhani sat there looking at him and she tossed him a smiling shrug and a nod and he knew from her motions that she couldn't really help it. Her expression changed then and Ryan groaned, holding up his hand. "Fuck," he groaned, "tell her I don't even know myself right now, but I guess she'll be the first to know if and when she and Tesem here make the list, alright? In the meantime, I'm gonna have to get a real tight handle on my inner male retard." Rhani sat still as she picked up her drink to slurp up the last of it. She looked up at Ryan and she nodded knowingly with a sweet little smile as her husband grinned a little. ----------------------------- After a quick stop to buy Rhani some clothing and to make a few other purchases, they went to the docking bay where the others waited inside their craft, hurrying a little due to the time and the want to eat at a reasonable time. Taela was smitten with the little vampire female right off the hop and it quite obviously went both ways as Rhani surprised Taela and Ryan when she attempted to speak. "Tae-la," she sighed, testing the sound as she looked up, "so ... nice ... hair." She grabbed Tesem's hand, "This Tesem. Husb-and for ... me." Taela found herself grinning as she stepped forward to shake Tesem's long hand, "I'll bet that he is, too." She looked up into the Anubian's long face, though his build caught her eye for a moment as well, "I'm Taela, Ryan's female." Tesem bowed deeply, "I have found a friend in his kindness and it is a moment of honor to meet the one who holds his heart." Shorty was in awe of Rhani almost as soon as they began to converse with each other and he stared at Tesem, though it was obvious that they'd both met someone who'd impressed them. Tesem could see that they'd have some things to wonder about in him, so he just tried his best in his quiet way to explain what he could. "It is a bit of a coincidence, my name. We knew nothing of it, but I have since learned a little of humans and others. There was once a civilization on Earth, known to humans as Ancient Egypt. There is absolutely no connection in it to us, but humans call us Anubians, though it is not what we call ourselves. Their old civilization had many deities, it seems. One of them was a god known as Anubis. It seems that there is a resemblance between us and this deity to humans. Another coincidence is my own name. 'Tesem' to us is nothing other than a male name. It means 'one who acts correctly' in our speech. I have learned that there was a breed of canine once in that land – a sort of dog, as I understand it. They were prized there and famous or their hunting ability. That is what I read of it anyway. As I hope that you can see, I am not any kind of these dog creatures. From what I have learned of them, they are rather simple things where we are not." Ryan nodded, "I doubt that your research would have indicated it to you, Tesem, but those simple things are famous to humans everywhere, in any of the breeds in which they might be seen. To humans, there is nothing as pure as the unconditional love that a dog shows his master or mistress, once the dog has chosen that one. I've never heard of your name, so I'd suggest that you forget about meanings. Your name sounds fine to me." Tesem nodded his thanks, though he sighed a little, "I have still not decided whether I ought to be pleased or a little annoyed that my name to that long ago group of Humans translates to 'hunting dog'. Worse still from my viewpoint is that I was trained as a hunter in our military – one who seeks to find and learn of the strength of our enemies. But I am very happy to have met you all and I hope that Rhani and I can be of use to you soon." Rhani looked around and asked what this place was. When it had been explained to her, Rhani grabbed her husband and stepped right up to Ryan, chattering all the while as Mischka tried to translate as quickly as she could. "She says that if this is how we will make our living, then you will surely need her. She says that she can tell how many are in a group and maybe more than that without even seeing them, and from what she knows, Tesem is a proven warrior to his people." Mischka grinned a little then, "She wants to know when we will start." "Not long after I finally get done with configuring the import of the wanted poster data," Taela frowned as she went back to her seat. "I have trouble with only one thing, ..." She held up her fingers, wiggling them a little, "Morgarod fingers just don't work well on the Human-based QWERTY keyboard taken from Ryan's shuttle. I've been trying to use that since the Morgarod ones which were in here had all failed due to their age. I can manage on a QWERTY keyboard, but it goes slow because of my fingers and there is no Morgarod keyset. My old keyboard wouldn't ID to the system correctly." Her shoulders sagged a little and she sighed with a soft smile as Ryan held up two largish boxes, "I found Morgarod keyboards, Taela. I bought you two – in case one doesn't work or fails or whatever." He shrugged, "For all I know, it's possible that neither of them will work here, but I tried to find one anyway, and they tested out ok where I bought them." She tilted her head, her smile still there for him, "Where on this lump did you find these? I hope they work, but, ... I have to say that I'm amazed." He laughed, "Well it's a trading post. You just gotta look around a lot and ask a little. I got them at the "Everything for 10 Credits Store, Surplus, and Hair Care Center in the mall. Everything cheap you could want while pretending to be a trooper and you can look your best while you do it." Taela laughed as she took one of the boxes and within two minutes, she was smiling as the data feed filled their own on-board database, "I don't have to peck at the keys with a fingernail anymore. What are all of those rolled-up things there on the floor?" "Sleeping bags – military surplus sleeping bags," Ryan said, "We checked them out by unzipping them in the store. There are no holes or rips in any of them and they've been dry-cleaned too. These are Arctic-rated back on Earth – as long as you're sleeping someplace cold but sheltered out of the elements. There's a whole other kind if you're going to be out on the open. These ones can be unzipped completely and then you can zip two of them together if you want – kind of like a sleeping bag bed then, so two can sleep together in a bit of comfort. Sleeping in the seats on this thing is killing my back and we also seem to have picked up a couple of new crewmembers in Rhani and Tesem, I think. They were having a tough time of things out there." "Where will we all sleep then?" Taela asked and Ryan shrugged, pointing at the several sections of open flooring. "Rhani and Tesem can sleep together obviously," Mischka said, "She and I always used to before when we stayed in one place. That way, we – meaning her mostly – could feel a little safe comfort. I kind of doubt that she'll need that from me now, though. You and Ryan pick out a place for yourselves wherever you want and I'll find a corner someplace too." Shorty looked over and Mischka chuckled, "You can sleep wherever you want, Shorty. But I was thinking that we ought to go on with what I was teaching you about jamming earlier. We can sit in the corner together the way that we always do. I just need a little time to put away my stuff here and then I want to get started on the dinner. We bought a few things that I only have to heat up in the quick-oven," she smiled, referring to the microwave oven in the galley. Shorty stepped over, wanting to know if he could help her in any way. She pretended not to understand him at first, so he leaned in to place his head against hers so that she could get his thoughts to her, "What can I do to help? I still do not know where I will sleep, though maybe I could put that sleeping bag thing over my seat and sleep in it there." Mischka glanced around at the others for a second. Tesem and Rhani were looking around, her out of wonder for the most part and he out of what Mischka took to be professional curiosity. Ryan and Taela seemed to be involved in their own discussions as well. She saw that no one was looking at them for the moment. She did her best to try emulating the way that he could speak into her head. "I think that, after the meal, things will quiet down in here. I do have things to teach you about the types of jamming. Rhani and Tesem are newly-married, so I can guess what will cross their minds, and you know Taela and Ryan well enough." She took a breath then and decided to go on before he could think anything else to send to her. "Tonight – that is, if you think that you like me enough, I want to do just a little more than sit with our legs touching. I want to join my sleeping bag with yours and we can sit as we always do. When you have your thoughts about us, well, I want you to know that I've been having the same ones, so if I'm a little lucky tonight, I might come to know your name." Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 07 Shorty pulled back his head and he stared at her for a moment, his yellow eyes searching hers. Mischka's tail slid between his legs, searching for his, and when they touched, Mischka wrapped the end of hers around his tightly. They both gasped as they looked at each other and then Mischka smiled very softly and she kissed Shorty in a slow and very different way for a couple of minutes. He hadn't moved a muscle squatting as he was in the most pleasant sort of shock and realization. She opened her eyes and saw Taela grinning to her. When she got Shorty to look as well, Ryan was nodding too. Mischka didn't mind. She just reached for him and she touched her forehead against his as she spoke to him in their silent way, now that she knew his true name. "Thank you, Deym-yan. I think that you have a fine name and I feel special to know it at last." She settled her arms around him a little better as she sighed, "I've wanted to know it for a long time now." ------------------ Mischka opened her eyes and looked off across the dark cabin. The lighting was very low, but the dimness hid nothing from her eyes, being what she was. She could see Ryan on his knees, holding Taela as she hung from him and she knew what Taela had meant about it, though at the moment, it was only slow. She looked over to where the newlyweds were bedded down and her eyes widened a little. Tesem was on his back, half sitting up a little, while Rhani sat on his prick and held his face to her tiny breasts. Mischka could clearly see that Rhani had the mechanics of this worked out perfectly to take the wide differences in their relative sizes into account. She was moving slowly, and yet, she was driving herself down forcefully on the downward strokes and working her little hips to maximize things for her male. Mischka just couldn't figure out where she was putting that pole of his inside of her. Still, she decided that it was very nice to see, as well as being a little inspiring to be able to watch. The first time that she'd really looked over at them, they were going at this in much the same manner as Taela and Ryan were doing it at the moment, but ... She'd watched as Tesem had mounted Rhani from behind. She guessed at the time that she'd have expected to see her on her knees and leaning forward in the same way that she would have done it, but no ... Where she'd have thought that their size difference would have worked against them, they'd already learned ways to capitalize on it. Tesem held her to him tightly with one long arm - right off the floor, though her legs hung down a little. He clutched her to his front to thrust into her while Rhani's face showed a mixture of love, lust, and most of all, quite a lot of absolute delight to be held that way. When they'd moved so that she could lie under him, Mischka thought that her expression to him just had to mean so much, and before very long at all, he'd picked her up again and held her so that she rested on the tops of his muscular thighs, her head hanging back while she made the sweetest little noises and her wings wrapped themselves around him. Mischka liked to see it. Her little friend had always had such a tough time of things. She figured that Rhani deserved to have the love of someone like Tesem, since they looked to be so good for each other. As her thoughts came back to the way that she rode him at the moment, she saw Tesem's hand begin to move toward her hip. As she watched, Mischka had a thought about him. He was pretty inspiring to look at in any way, she decided. Large and muscled, much like Ryan, he appealed to her eyes in a way that took nothing from the way that she admired her new lover's smaller body. Tesem's hands were a bit of a mystery to her, however. When he was bipedal, they looked like regular hands anywhere among the humanoid races; five fingers, one of them a thumb for grasping. They were long like the rest of him in many ways and appeared to be just as dextrous as anyone's hands. But when he leaned forward and wished to move on four feet, those fingers had a way to join together in a way and what they looked like then were paws. She didn't get it and knew that other than asking for a demonstration – which she thought would be a rude thing to ask- she'd need to content herself with her own observations over time for the answer. Her eyes widened then. She watched more carefully as Tesem lifted his hand from where it had been resting on Rhani's hip to bring it to their mouths for a moment. She watched carefully as they both licked his fingers and then, she observed as he moved it back to her bottom end and reaching around her – because he could, she guessed – she saw her little friend's eyes open as she'd gasped and then smiled down at him sweetly when his finger pressed its way inside of her gently. Was everyone here so fixated? She wondered about that, though after a few seconds of whatever Tesem was doing for his wife, Mischka couldn't doubt that it seemed to be heightening things for her to a good degree. Her thoughts came back to Deym-yan then and she lifted her head to kiss his cheek very softly and slowly, though she left a wet smear on it as she did, hoping that his kind of what they were might understand the gesture. "You surprise me, Deym-yan," she thought to him, "This is the way that I have always ached to be able to begin with anyone, yet not one ever did before now. You are so good to me just like this. How did you know it was what I wanted, when even I had forgotten that I might have a hope for it?" She felt his sigh against her ear and the way that he rubbed his wet cheek against hers, "I have always wanted this too. Tonight, I just knew that you were the same, so I hoped that you would allow it." "Male," she hissed quietly to him in the way of her kind, using her actual voice instead of her thoughts, "for something as nice as this for a beginning, I find that I would allow you anything with me, because you alone seem to know how to prepare your female in this way. It is not a little thing to one like me." She felt him raise his head, so she did likewise, to look into his yellow eyes while he peered into her whitish ones for a long moment as their hands worked on, "You say that you are my female?" He'd asked it so softly and in such a careful tone without any of his characteristic and cautious pauses, and even in English, that Mischka felt her heart melting. Again, she told herself, how could he have possibly known? She smiled at him very softly, "A lover such as you seem to be to me can drive me past my own too-stupid and careful obstacles. Where I thought that I held a hope to only mate with you this night, I must admit to my male that I find a much larger hope in my breast for only one – you. I suppose that we must still be cautious, Deym-yan, but in this speech, the human girls would tell you that they were thinking about it. For ones like us, the thought is absurd, for my kind does not love in that way. As far as I might make a guess, yours does not either. What are we to do? I had a want for you this night, but now ..." She stopped suddenly to moan very softly over what his fingers were doing to her and more, over the way that he'd kissed her cheek just as wetly as she'd done it to him. She slid her face against his slowly. "There are things," he whispered, "things which, ... must be done, I think." He paused then, while her mind whirled in a bit of wonder over what he might be talking about, since she wasn't sure. His thought came to her again, since he was a little afraid to ruin what seemed to be beginning with his voice. "We live here now, wherever this family of ours takes us. I think that mating with the others will come into it at some time, so I wish to know what is meant so that I do not mistake it. Do you wish to be my female in this family, even though there are two other males who will probably want to mate with you? They are larger than I am – both of them – and you would offer me your love even so?" She raised her hands to hold his head, "Yes. I want you because of who and what you are, and to me, I also want to have the wonder of you as mine alone. I know what you say, and I am prepared to allow it with them – especially since I see it as my way to allow you to mate with their females." She brought her face even closer to his and she kissed his lips very softly, "I even know that you would want those males yourself, Deym-yan. I know this about you – and still I want to be the only one who knows your hidden love, just as I am the only one who knows your name. Think a little, Male. You might not see it, but it is the best and only real way for us two here. Mate with any that you want from among us six. I will push so that no others can join. Five others are plenty for anyone. I will likely mate the same as you with them. What I think to offer is that we might mate with them, but each of us holds only the other one in our love." She drew her head back a little, "For that, Deym-yan," she smiled as she whispered, "I would give you anything that I have to give. Try to say the same to me and let us begin." She looked up and almost laughed softly for a moment, "And I am offering you this even before we have joined, though I think that we ought to reserve the last of it until we learn that we can do it well between us." "But, ..." he hesitated, "but Ryan has told me that your kind always seeks for two males, do you not?" She shook her head, "That is what most of us do. But I am not like that for the most part. Do you love Ryan in your way? I think that you do." He nodded, "Yes." She smiled, "That is enough, Deym-yan. At some point, I would want you both at once. It is a fantasy that I carry, that's all. I am also human enough to NOT want that as a way of life, if I can have you for as long as we can make it last between us. As far as the other males, I might like it with someone that large now and then, maybe even a lot, I cannot tell yet. But I know myself, Deym-yan. I know what you have now, and I tell you that it is not as small as you seem to regard it. There is plenty enough there to make this screecher's female happy, I can tell you. You do not even think of it at all, but we have been here playing slowly for hours, Deym-yan – hours long - and what you have there is still like a hot metal bar in my hand. Something else," she smiled, "Be gentle, but try with two fingers in me for a moment." She gasped for an instant and she watched his eyes widen, "You are tight." "I can loosen to allow something like what Ryan has to pass, but slowly," she said, "and once it opens, it is looser. The next day, it is like this once more. I have learned this of myself in my life. When I give myself to you, it will always be tight. We come to know our mates once we have chosen, my kind. Rhani is the same. My mother was like this after birthing two – and I was large and hard for her to pass. When Rhani mates with her fine husband, he must wait for her to open for him. We – whatever we are - her and I, always return to that size, especially if we have our male for us – another reason to want your love for me. I do not know what the girls are like where you come from, so I cannot say much of them. And another thing," Mischka chuckled, "since I seem to be pleading my hopeful troth to my male; you and I are a little unique among the pairs here. Ryan is human. Beautiful Taela is half human and half Morgarod, so she gets her lovely hair from that. Tesem is Anubian. Rhani is, ... whatever she is with me. All of them are different to their mates. You are half Morgarod – " "I don't have lovely hair?" he asked in a joking tone. Mischka chuckled, "With all of your lovely hair, but you are the closest male to what I am. I am whatever Rhani is, but a larger breed and I am half human. Have you ever seen it when two of your kind mate?" He thought back and he nodded, "Yes. They scream at each other and then they fall over slowly, still joined. They lie still with their eyes open. I used to look for pairs like that when I was little, because they did that after eating together. I would arrive then to steal any food they left unguarded," he smiled, "Their eyes were open, but they saw nothing then." He began to run his other hand over her shoulders and back, "I think that you have the most beautiful hair of us all – of any that I have ever seen, Mischka." She smiled at the heartfelt compliment, but then she said, "That stillness that you used to your advantage, I don't know if you know what it is. Has it ever happened to you?" He shook his head, "No, never. What is it for?" Mischka smiled, so happy to learn that his breed retained the mating characteristic, "Wherever our kind once began, I am sure that they were together - the same creatures at one time. How they split, we will probably never know. Deym-yan, the pause then is the second ending, and I guess that it is only possible for what we are. I have felt it and even though the male was a low and selfish turd to me, that long few minutes was so good. I only thank my larger brain that I guessed its purpose. If one of us has this with her male, it is what the humans call heaven, but it also assures that the seed finds the egg. The pair cannot move while the male's seed seeks the egg. With no egg, it lasts for a long time, this joy, but if an egg is found, the joy fades almost right then. Until it passes, the lovers stay locked together." She closed her eyes and leaned against him, half-turning so that she could feel the way that her breasts were pressed against his chest. After a moment, she opened her eyes. "We can have this joy, Deym-yan, where none of the others here can. We only need to think about when I am not fertile until we wish to make our young together." She lifted her hand to push his hair back for him, and she whispered to him very softly, barely making any sound at all. "You might be the only one here who can give Rhani little ones as well, though I do not know that yet." She sat back then, reaching to touch his shoulder, "Have I told enough of my heart and other things to win you as my male?" He smiled and nodded, "More than enough, Mischka. I have found myself staring at you since you saved us that night. I wondered how someone like me could ever hope to get you to notice me very much at all. Now I find that you have noticed me. I will do as you say. I never had a hope to have a female to love me just for her and I. Now?" She stared as he faded from her sight. He was gone as far as she could tell, but then she felt his soft kiss on her lips. "There are still things to be done," he smiled, and then she felt his tail slip from the grasp of her own. Mischka sat wondering for several minutes and then he was back before her with her dinner plate. She could see and smell that there were a few pieces of meat there on it. "I couldn't find anything to kill so that you might eat," he smiled as she felt his tail connect with hers, "I hope that this might serve." Mischka's eyes widened as she stared at him, "You – you really mean this? I never expected something such as this, Deym-yan. This - this says to me that your hopes to have me are real." He nodded as he set the plate down carefully, "As real as your hidden hopes as you said them to me. I have the same ones about you." He smiled a little then, "We know enough now as what we are to prefer meat that is cooked. Eat this, Mischka and we can begin. I will always give you meat somehow, whenever you want to say what we are telling each other right now." She moved then and got to her knees before his offering. She knew that they ought to be a little quiet for this part of it at least so that their intent wasn't mistaken by the others. Mischka tied her long hair back into a crude bun as quickly as she could, looking over her shoulder at him as she did it. "You really do want me as your female," she sighed, seeing the way that his yellow eyes regarded her. He nodded, "For as close to forever as we can get. I'll do my best not to ruin it." She wiped a tear from her eye and then she nodded, "I'll be working even harder then, Deym-yan. " She looked down for a moment, "I never thought that anyone would ever – " She looked up at his eyes again, "You must be the best male of whatever we are anywhere. I accept and you have your female. Since I have come to be here, I have ached so much to know your touch." With that, Mischka moved to position herself and she leaned down on her hands as she knelt there. Her tail let go of his and it began to sweep back and forth a little languidly to cause him to look at her hips and what she had for him. She inhaled the scent of the cooked meat for a moment, thinking about them together. Her little slideshow passed through her mind rather quickly as she saw her memories of any male that she'd ever liked in her life. Then it seemed to be about the three males right here on this craft. She saw him next to each of the others, the scenes moving past her mind very quickly. But she kept seeing him, more and more. Finally, all that Mischka could see in her mind was him, nothing but him, scene after scene. At that point, Mischka Myers came to her moment, and she opened her mouth and began to gorge on what he'd brought for her. She wasn't aware of it at the moment, but he stared at her as he watched her lovely skin turn dark. Her hips rose a little higher and then she swung her tail aside in a definite movement and she held it there for him. She felt his legs as they slipped in between hers and then she felt his hands on her body. It was different now to what she'd felt before. It was different from what she'd ever felt in the hands of any male who'd taken her this way. These hands belonged to Mischka's male - the only one that she'd ever really chosen and who was enough like her to know how she felt. She whimpered a little, as she felt his prick seek her entrance, but after a moment, she felt him begin and she also felt it as she opened for him and he slid inside of her. A piece of the meat was a little too large for her, so she grasped it in her hands and began to gnaw while her male began to take her away with him. Her human side felt a little foolish, but the rest of her knew the importance of eating it during this first coupling between them. She felt that he was being so careful and she wondered why it would have surprised her to realize that out of any of the males that she'd ever had – not that she'd have allowed them this in this way – he was the only one who would have shown her a concern over her choking. She finished the last piece of the meat as she listened to the soft slapping against her bottom. So nice, she thought, so very good for her. But she was something other than what the humans here had termed a vampire, and so she also felt that she had gravy all over her face from her rooting around for the meat like the animal that she was partly. She held up her hand and saw it run over her fingers and she reveled in the combination of her genes and his as she heard the very quiet grunts from him. She'd seen what he had and even felt his little scrotum for the past hour and then some. As a part human girl, what he had might cause some to think of it as something not quite as masculine as what Tesem or Ryan might have swinging there. But she knew that it was only a sign like that out of the dark human past and their ancestors. To the girls in the other long dark past which she carried, small was better – since it couldn't be ripped or bitten clean off as easily in a mating fight by other males – and she knew that back where she'd come from – even today, that thing was a target.