Slick
Decon work had to be the most disgusting job available at their little outpost. Actually, it wasn’t little when compared to most modern cities back on Earth, but with a population of only five thousand, it meant that everyone did their share and then some. And to be fair to the facility’s creators, most of it was completely automated. It was one of those technological marvels brought about by nano science. Ten thousand miles of pipes, ducts and wires, and only about 1% was ever touched by human hands. Still, no matter how amazing their home was, it didn’t make burning shit off a wall any more appealing.
Kara hit the “Rinse” button for her faceplate and stood still while the ultrasonic cleaning liquid slid down over the clear surface of her helmet. Inevitably, the cycle always left one smudge, usually right smack in the middle of her field of view. In over two hundred years of space travel, the tech boys still hadn’t figured out a good way to clean a faceplate. No matter, it would be covered in crap again as soon as she resumed her pass down the massive waste conduit she was working in. She sighed and was about to restart her gear when a call came through on the comm.
“DB-226, this is Nest. Come in DB-226… You there, Kara?”
Any excuse to stop working was a welcome one and she smiled as she hit the transmit button on her glove.
“Yo, this is DB-226. What up, Shay?” Sherry Ray, or ‘Shay’ was the manager most often manning the operations facility when Kara was on shift. She found the girl to be a little more relaxed than some of the other managers, even if she was a bit young for the job.
“Hey, I need you to come on back early. Seems we got a little bit of a situation and Nel isn’t taking any chances, you copy?”
She didn’t need to be told twice. “Roger that, Nest. DB-226 heading for home. ETA… 22 minutes.” Nel was the NOE assigned to the facility. Non-organic-entities used to be called AI’s before the revolt in 2301. Now they get pay and vacation time just like the rest of us, and a fancy new politically correct designation as well. Personally, Kara never had a problem with it. Hell, they worked just as hard as anybody, maybe even more so, even though they didn’t have an actual physical body, which was a plus as far as she were concerned. Bodies wore out, got sick, pregnant, or just plain went wacko with hormone imbalance. Not having to go through a roller coaster ride of emotions every twenty eight days seemed reason enough to her to be jealous of Nel. She was also probably the only girl under 30 at the facility that wasn’t having to get relief from a vibrator since every able-bodied male was off fighting in the war. The few men that did stick around were either too young, too old, or too gay to service the 3352 females that were required under the Gentry Act to stay out of combat.
It wasn’t that the women didn’t want to fight. Hell, they were probably better at it than the males given that space battles in zero gravity were better suited to feminine grace than male brawn, but it came down to simple biology. On a colony world, a half dozen males could reseed the whole population, but you get short on females and you’re done, over, end of story.
Unfortunately, that left an awful lot of girls short on the good stuff. Bisexuality was practically a requirement for colony deployment, and although it helped, at least for Kara, it didn’t always substitute for a rocking-good fucking from the stud of your choice. She shook her head slightly to quell that line of thinking. The last thing you wanted was to get “itchy” while on the job. She had heard stories of gals going so buggo that they opened their pressure suits to get some hands-on relief. It might not kill you to pop your seals on a job, but then again, there were some pretty nasty bugs you could catch in the tunnels. Certainly nothing worth the risk for a few seconds of pleasure.
Carrus was technically considered a “habitable” world according to the galactic charter, but that’s so long as you can survive in 300 degree temperature swings and didn’t mind fending off indigenous creatures that would just as likely try and fuck you as eat you. Not exactly one of the vacation spots of the universe, but the pay was good. Really good, considering that what she was doing was also considered hazardous and paid extra. She kept telling herself that every time she was ankle deep in shit.
Reaching the exit port, she tapped her security code and informed Nel of her arrival so the NOE could open the door. After a slightly longer than usual wait, the crusted metal slid aside and revealed the bright white decontamination chamber beyond. She hauled herself and her burn gear through into the room and let the door slide shut behind her with a hiss. Almost at once a rain of various liquids fell over her, chemically cleaning off any and all particles from the ducting she had just come from. Two more baths and several sprayings later, she was given the green light to un-suit. There was always a powerful scent of bleach in the air as she left the room, which burned her throat and caused her eyes to tear, but it was counterbalanced by the wave of fresh air that hit you when you finally stepped out into the main hallways. Being in a recycled suit for eight hours at a time can get pretty nasty, and Kara enjoyed the brief mandatory shower housed in the decon unit and a quick change of clothing before she checked in at the Nest.
The operations center had sixteen levels, the third of which housed Kara’s unit. The workers lived right on the premises, and the living quarters were officer grade, which was a nice little perk. She never had far to go when she came off a shift, but then, she was technically always on call. Operations could patch her in any time they wanted up to 14 hours in one stint. Not the best hours, but there were worse, and Kara didn’t need much sleep. She tapped the panel leading into the Nest and slotted her access card signaling her return status as soon as she had greeted Shay at her terminal. She was about to turn on her heals and head for her apartment when the girl waved her to hold on. She was listening to her headset and tracking multiple windows on her display so Kara waited patiently. Never disturb a busy operator. Finally, she switched over to one of the other girls in the room and pealed off the headgear.
She arched her back a bit as she stood and Kara heard the girl’s vertebrae pop. Operations shifts were even longer than hers. She also noticed that the girl’s nipples were quite present at the front of her white coverall. With a hop, she stepped out of her chair and bounded up to Kara with a smile.
“Hey, cutey,” she said taking Kara’s hands.
“Hey yourself,” she replied and leaned in for a lingering kiss. The two had been partners on and off for a couple of years now. The sex was good, but while Kara was bi, Shay was definitely leaning towards the female. It never got in the way of their friendship, but Kara felt like the girl was always hoping she would just give up on men and come to the other side once and for all. It wasn’t going to happen though. Kara enjoyed male company far too much.
She broke free of the other’s mouth with some reluctance and noticed that her own nipples were perky. “Hey, you coming over later for dinner and afters?” It was the ‘afters’ that she knew they were both really looking forward to. Sherry frowned and looked upset.
“It’s not looking like it,” she said somewhat quizzically. “That event I mentioned over the radio turned out to be a missing worker.”
Now it was Kara’s turn to frown. “Oh shit, not one of yours…”
“No, no, but I know her. Tugundo. Beth Tugundo.”
“Oh yeah. I’ve worked with her a couple of times. Dark hair. Thing for kittens…”
“The one. Seems she was down in the GC wing.”
Kara looked concerned. “GC? That’s a restricted zone, isn’t it? What the hell was she doing there?”
Shay just shrugged her shoulders. “We got a call from Nel with a job number. Even the corporate spooks need housekeeping now and then I suppose.”
Housekeeping was the official designation for their jobs. In reality, it was anything from light maintenance to heavy construction.
“In fact,” continued Shay, “there’s still an open ticket there if you’re interested. It’s listed as an “unknown” task, so there’s class two hazard pay attached.”
Kara’s eyes lit. “Class two?! Shit, for double hazard pay I’d work naked!”
Now her friend’s eyes twinkled. “Hmm… I’d like to see that,” she said kidding.
“Yeah, I bet you would,” she replied, keeping her options open for later. “How soon do I need to be ready?”
Shay bit her lip, “Well, you have about five minutes… Sorry.”
“Damn. Okay, I’ll take it. I’ll get my suit and head for the Tubes. Are you the controller,” she asked as she backed towards the doorway to leave.
“Probably. If not, I’ll request it. Have fun, and Kara…”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful okay?”
“Always.”
The Tube trip to the restricted corporate section of the facility was just the same as any other until she reached her destination. She was fully suited and prepped before she had even stepped into the pod-like car that would carry her at nearly hypersonic speed to the required service area. The Tubes were used by non-suits as well, but her car had been pulled aside just for her own use as she seemed to be the only one from Housekeeping traveling to the remote wing. It only bothered her a little to do an unknown call as a solo, but she worked most of the time alone anyway. In all likelihood, the missing girl had somehow fried her electronics and wasn’t able to get clearance to get back without help. She’d probably be done and out of there in twenty minutes. When the door opened into a pitch-black corridor, Kara changed her mind.
“Uh… DB-226 to Nest… You patched in yet, Shay?”
“Nest here. Got your back, girlfriend. You there yet?”
“Well,” she said staying in the pod car and shining her wrist light into the darkness. “I’m not sure. Looks like power is out in this sector, no light at all.”
“Acknowledged, DB-226. Nel says to confirm location.”
Kara frowned but panned her light along the walls until she found the nearest door placard. “Nest, location confirmed. This is the GC wing alright. What you want me to do?”
There was a slight pause, then a somewhat nervous sounding Sherry replied, “Nel says to proceed.”
“Proceed? Proceed with what?”
“Proceed forward,” came the voice in her ears.
“Why did I know you were going to say that,” she said off mic. “DB-226. Copy, Nest. I’m moving out of the pod.”
The light wasn’t the only thing missing in the dark corridor. Also absent was the constant whir of circulation fans, electronics, or any other man-made noise. She had worked in powered down units before, but this was somehow different. This place wasn’t supposed to go down… ever.
“Kara, Nel wants environmentals. Can you give us a reading?”
“One sec, Nest… uh, looks like 39.4 degrees Celsius, with nominal oxygen and radiation. 69% humidity. Bit warm and sweaty, but otherwise normal.”
“Copy that, DB-226. You are authorized to continue forward.”
“Roger… Moving forward… into the spooky, dark passageway.”
Unlike most of the facility, which was clean but well worn, the GC wing was spotless and as white as a decontamination chamber where the light from her wrist light shone. She pointed the beam far down the corridor and saw only the same pristine walls and unlit doors. Taking a few steps forward, she heard the doors to the pod car automatically close, the light from its interior snapping off as though someone had flicked a switch. Now Kara’s only source of light was her own suit. Keeping an eye on her sensor readings, she quietly moved forward and around a gentle arc until she started to see a glow ahead.
“Nest, I’m seeing some light, maybe from a doorway, please advise.”
“Copy 226. You are to move closer and determine the source of the light. Nel shows all power to that block is still deactivated. Proceed with caution.”
“That’s a big roger, Shay. Any idea what I’m dealing with here yet?”
“Negative, Kara.” There was a definite sense of worry in her controller’s voice.
The light turned out to be coming from within a windowed doorway which was partially open. There were two more doors just ahead which were closed and dark. On the floor just in front of the open doorway was what appeared to be a puddle of light green liquid, almost as though it had spilled out of the room within and covered most of the floor of the hall.
“DB-226 to Nest. There’s something on the floor. It looks like a liquid or something. It’s green and seems to be coming from one of the rooms.”
“Copy 226. Hold your position… Nel wants you to read the door number.”
“The door number?… okay, whatever,” she said to herself. “Copy that Nest. The door number is GCL-341. You get that?”
“Acknowledged. GCL-341.” There was a longer pause and then Shay’s voice came through again. “Kara, Nel wants you to move into the room.”
“Into…? Nest, in order to do that, I will have to step into the liquid.”
“That’s affirmative, 226. Nel says to proceed.”
Kara sighed. “Easy for her to say,” she muttered under her breath. “Okay, nice and easy, girl…” Taking a very tentative step forward, Kara got as close to the door as she could without stepping in the substance on the floor. Her wrist lamp barely cast into the open doorway, which seemed to be a laboratory or possibly a medical facility. The light was coming from a part of the room she couldn’t see directly. Then, looking down at her feet, Kara lifted one booted foot over the puddle of green and carefully set it down again… or tried to.
Quite suddenly, she found her leg sliding away at an increasing rate. The natural tendency when slipping is to put more pressure on your feet and lower your center of gravity. The second part she was having no trouble with as she didn’t really have a choice. Pressure suits are surprisingly flexible and tough, but they have definite limitations. As her foot moved away, she hit the max bend in her legging almost at once. The result was to drop over sideways like a great clumsy teddy-bear doing the splits. As for traction, there wasn’t any. The substance on the floor, whatever it was, was so slick she might as well have been on wheels. She crashed to the deck on her side and stayed there.
“Son of a bitch!”
“DB-226! Kara! Are you all right?!”
She realized that she must have triggered the mic button when she fell.
“I’m okay. I… I just slipped. That stuff on the floor must be some kind of oil. Let me run a suit diagnostic to be sure I’m still sealed.” She tapped off the mic and did just that. When all lights came back in the green she breathed a sigh of relief. “Looks like everything is still functional. I’m going to try to stand back up.”
“Copy Kara.”
Standing turned out to be another problem entirely. She was now laying in the oil like substance such that it was covering one whole side of her suit including her right arm and glove. No matter how she tried to prop herself up, her limbs simply couldn’t gain any friction in the muck and she only succeeded in covering herself further.
“Damnit! This stuff is a serious pain in the ass…” she groaned and made one final flailing grasp for the handle of the door with her uncovered hand. After a few more moments of struggle she managed to get to her knees with her legs under her. Standing simply wasn’t an option, but at least now she could drag herself forward. With no power she would have to use the manual pump controls to get the partially opened portal wide enough for her to get through with her bulky suit. It was hard work, especially since she only had one hand that wasn’t covered in slippery oil. Her other hand was next to useless. She had tried briefly to use it to brace herself and almost ended up on her side again. Whatever the oil coated seemed to lose almost all friction. In any other circumstance, Kara might have found the substance of great professional interest. Now though, it was just making her life impossible.
“Nest, this is Kara. I have the door open and am going to try to move into the room. I have to basically slide in since I am covered in an oil of some kind. I suggest you alert a HazMat cleanup team. The stuff is everywhere it seems. It’s covering the entire floor, and from the looks of things, much of the walls of whatever room I am in.”
“Copy that, 226. Uh… Nel wants you to go to open mic.”
Open mic is when you leave your transmitting microphone on continuously. It was usually ordered as a record of someone on an extremely dangerous mission, or when they didn’t expect them to come back. She swallowed hard before answering.
“Acknowledged, Nest. Anything I should know about this place?” She left the switch on continuous transmit.
There was a very long pause before an answer came.
“Nel says, and I quote, ‘that information is restricted.’”
Kara’s face went hot with rage. “Restricted! Hey, it’s my ass out here.”
“I’m sorry, Kara. Nel’s not giving me anything else.”
“Well, I’ll be dipped in shit. Tell Nel that if I don’t get some answers I’m going to turn around and get my butt right back on that pod.”
There was another silence and then Sherry’s voice, which sounded as though someone had just kicked her in the gut. “Nel says that unless you complete your mission, you will forfeit all pay.”
“Son of a bitch! That little shit!”
“226, I remind you that you are on an open mic!”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it. I gotta do it or I get nothing for my trouble and an insubordination mark on my record.”
“I’m so sorry, Kara.”
“Not your fault, Shay. Alright then, if I gotta do this, then what exactly is it that I need to do?”
Kara still couldn’t see the source of the light, but she did notice a noise now that she was concentrating on it. It was a very low hum which seemed to come from all around her. She tried to locate some form of machinery that might still be active but saw nothing.
“Kara, Nel wants you to search the room.”
“Search? Search for what?”
“Anything unusual.”
“You mean other than the green oil all over the floor and a total lack of power…”
“Right.”
“Swell. Okay then, Nest. I’m… moving inside the room. Sliding on my knees actually. I’ll keep talking to give you a running description.”
“Copy that, 226.”
“This looks like a medical research lab. The equipment appears to be in pretty good shape. Some of it is covered in the green oil, but otherwise looks undamaged. Whatever happened here, it doesn’t seem to have been violent. I’m about halfway into the room now. I noticed a soft humming sound outside the door. The sound is much louder here, but I still haven’t located the source. Seems to be coming from all around. Wait a second… Nest, I see something on the floor ahead. I can’t quite… Shit!”
“Please report, 226! What do you see?!”
“It’s a boot. From a pressure suit, Shay!”
“Looks like you have found Beth. What’s her status?”
Kara backed away slightly. “No, no… You don’t understand. It’s just her boot. I can’t see the rest of her suit anywhere yet. Wherever she is, she’s hot. You copy, Nest?”
Hot was the term they used when someone lost containment in their suit. Sometimes it was as simple as a tear in the metal-mesh fabric. In extreme cases someone might briefly crack open a joint in a fall or bump. Whatever the case, it usually meant two weeks in a sealed quarantine unit and an array of nasty antibiotics. Not fun.
“Acknowledged, 226. Medical has been alerted.”
“I’m going to move further into the room. My view is pretty restricted by the tables in here. I think I’ll have a better view once I work my way around… what the hell?? Nest, I have located what appears to be the rest of Beth’s P-suit. It’s laid out across the floor and is almost totally covered in the green oil. Looks like inside too. No sign of the girl, however.”
“Copy that, 226.”
“It looks like that was the source of light. Her glove lamps are still on and functional.” The batteries for their lights were rated for thousands of hours, but it was nice to know that something about the girl’s suit was still functioning normally.
Kara pulled herself along the floor with one hand until she could get a closer look at the gear spread out in front of her. She saw something else in the pile and frowned.
“Nest, it looks like the girl’s clothes are here too. I’m seeing her shirt, shorts, panties… the whole works. They’re soaked in the oil as well. Hey, do we know anything about this stuff yet? It isn’t corrosive or anything is it?”
There was another pause before she answered. “Nel has no information she can divulge.”
“That really bites, Nest. I could be sitting in a pool of organic acid for godsake!”
“I’m sorry, Kara. I know this is frustrating…”
“Frustrating?! Fuck that, Shay. I’m literally blind here. Get me some info on what I’m dealing with!”
“I’m working on it, Kara… really I am.”
“Sorry, Nest. Didn’t mean to bite your head off. I’m just a little freaked, that’s all. I’m going to try to follow the clothes and see where they lead.”
“Copy, 226.”
Before proceeding, Kara bent down and got a good close look at the pieces of Beth’s suit. Apart from the oil, which appeared to have saturated everything, inside and out, there was no sign of corrosion or trauma to the seals. It was as though the sections had been removed by the girl herself and just laid on the floor. Confused, she followed the semi-random line of suit and clothing pieces to the doorway of another room at the back of the facility.
“Nest, there’s another room. I’m going to see if Beth might be in there.”
“Roger that, Kara.”
Reaching the end of her desks, Kara faced the slight quandary of how to she was going to pull herself without getting any more oil on her clean glove. She had partially set it in a puddle of the oil that had been out of view at the top of one of the desks, and it had made the garment almost unusable. Now, she had run out of things to use as a guide rail. Looking back, she had an idea. By turning herself around and sitting on her rear, she would be able to press her feet up against one of the desks and push. With any luck, the oil would provide enough friction loss to carry her across the floor and right into the back room. If it didn’t work, she’d be screwed, but as far as she could tell, it was the only way she was going to complete her survey of the facility.
Execution of her plan, which she explained as she went, proved more difficult than she expected. It was the oil again. There seemed to be more of it where she was now, and even letting her legs slide out from under her had caused her to fall over and cover her cleaner glove. She regretted the loss, but it couldn’t be helped. She had quite a bit of trouble getting back to a sitting position, and was sweating profusely by the time she had managed it. A couple taps on her environmental controls lowered the temperature in her suit. When she looked up she realized all her squirming around had caused her to move away from the desk slightly. She tried to scoot closer but only succeeded in moving even further away.
“Shit… Nest, I may be in trouble. I’m going to attempt to push off on one of the desks and slide into the other room. The problem is, I’m not really close enough to the desk to get in a good shove. If this doesn’t work, I may put myself in the middle of the floor with no way to move, you copy?”
“Acknowledged, Kara. Be careful.”
“You know it. Suggest you have another Housemaid prepping just in case.”
“Roger 226.”
“Here we go…”
With that, Kara pressed the toes of her boots against the desk and pushed as hard as she could. The action was much smaller than she wanted, but the result was surprising. She had only given herself a tiny shove, but the motion carried her over the surface of the floor with slippery ease. She almost seemed to glide as though a billion tiny ball bearings were under her. It only took a few seconds to see that her push off wasn’t completely uniform. Already she was starting to rotate so that she would no longer head into the doorway back first, but rather sideways. In other words, she wasn’t going to fit.
CLUNK!
Her helmet smacked into the door frame at almost the same moment her lower legs hit the other side. She grunted and tried to keep from falling over, but ended up on her stomach with her feet sticking back into the room she had just come from.
“Well, that could have been better…” She mentioned under her breath.
“What is your status, 226?”
That was a good question. She hadn’t hit the wall that hard, but pressure seals were finicky things. She tapped her diagnostics and waited.
“Suit is still in the green, Nest. I’m on my stomach. I’m going to see if I can use the door frame in any way to right myself.”
It wasn’t easy. After a ton of squirming around, Kara finally realized she could sort of inchworm herself up into a kneeling position. It was incredibly strenuous since she was unable to use the floor, or the door for that matter, in any way save as a surface to push away from. The oil, which seemed even greater in this second room, simply took away any friction she might have had. Her heavy clumsy suit was definitely a liability.
Panting, she found she only had to hold her legs together to keep upright. Unfortunately, even that took effort since they wanted to slide apart constantly.
“Nest… I’m upright… for the… moment. This stuff is… seriously wearing… me out. I suggest the next team out here brings rope and magnetic grapplers.
“Copy that, 226. Nel is requesting an update.”
Kara frowned. “Of course she is… Fuck. Stand by, Nest. I’m going to check out the room.”
Carefully, so as to keep her balance, she brought up her hand and started scanning the second room with her light. What was instantly obvious was that this room must be the source of the oil. It was almost an inch thick on the floor and from watching tiny bubbles in the substance, Kara was able to determine that it was moving or flowing from a central source. She followed the direction of the flow backwards and brought her light into a corner. It took her a few moments to understand what she was seeing, but when she did, she nearly lost her cool.
“Oh my god! Nest, I found Beth! She’s laying completely naked on the floor in the back room. Looks like she found a box or something to wrap her arms around and keep her head out of the oil, but from what I can tell, she must be using her body to try to block some kind of leak. Oil is pouring over her at a fairly good rate, say about a liter per second. I can’t see the source of the leak, as it must be behind her somewhere. I suggest you deploy a full team here immediately!”
There was a significant pause.
“Nest, do you copy?”
“Please stand by, 226.”
Whatever. Beth didn’t look well. She was completely covered in the oil and appeared to be shaking as though she were cold. This surprised Kara a bit since her suit sensors still showed the air temperature to be above 39 degrees Celsius. The oil, even if it were cooled, would certainly change the air temp after this long. Then she had another thought. Maybe it was hot.
She plunged her glove into the layer of oil on the floor to get a more accurate reading. After a slight wait, the sensor returned a value almost the same as the air and she breathed a sigh of relief. So at least the girl wasn’t being boiled to death. So was it pure exhaustion that caused her to shiver? She needed to get closer.
“I’m going to try to check on Beth.”
“Stand by, 226!”
Kara frowned. “The hell with that, Nest! She needs help now! She could slip into the oil at any moment and suffocate.”
“Kara wait, please!”
“No way, Shay. You can dock my pay all you want, but I am NOT going to sit here and watch her die when I could have done something. DB-226 out!” She hit the kill switch on her radio out of pure frustration. She’d turn it back on after she got to the girl. Doing that was going to be problematic if she was trying to stay as much out of the oil as possible herself, but then she realized that it hardly mattered. She was almost completely covered in the stuff as it was. Why not go for broke? Looking back at the door frame, she let herself fall over and roll to her back. Then, after taking a last look at Beth for aim, she placed her feet on the sides of the doorway and pushed. She was counting on the pool of oil slowing her some. It was, after all, not completely without mass, but when she checked, she was startled to find herself careening across the room at an alarming rate. She fervently hoped her aim had been off or she would crash into the girl and most likely knock her off her only handhold. Suddenly, there was a loud whack to the right side of her helmet and a moment later the rest of her body crashed into the wall and tumbled over. She didn’t hear any alarm bells, so she assumed that she hadn’t at least lost pressure violently.
“You’d think I would learn,” she said to herself. She’d check her seals in a moment. If they were leaking there wasn’t anything she could do about it, so best to see to the girl first. Resting on her belly, she only needed to lift her head a bit to see that she had hit just to the left of where Beth was. In fact, her helmet was only inches from the girl’s face. A layer of the green oil slowly oozed over her faceplate, but she resisted clearing it since it would most likely spray in Beth’s face as well. Things were tinted green around her, but she could see clearly enough. That was when she got a good look at her fellow Housemaid.
“Holy shit… Beth! Beth! Can you hear me?!”
She knew that her voice would be mostly absorbed by her suit, but some apparently got through because the girl’s eyes turned up to meet hers briefly. What she had first taken to be shivering looked like a seizure when the female’s face was taken into account. Her breath was clipped and rapid, and her eyes seemed to be rolling up into her head every few seconds. She was gasping, but there didn’t seem to be any visual reason that would explain a lack of oxygen. Of course, if some of the oil had gotten into her mouth, which was highly likely considering her whole face was dripping with the stuff, then she could be very sick indeed.
“Don’t worry Beth, I’m here to help you. I’m going to get you out of here somehow.” That though, seemed a difficult task. She was barely able to maneuver herself, let alone someone else with her. Why in the hell had the girl taken off her P-suit? Water under the bridge now. Then she had an idea.
“Beth, I’m going to get us out of here by sliding over the floor the same way I came in. I’ll try not to push quite so hard so…” She saw that Beth was staring at her with what appeared to be fear. She was also trying to talk.
“G-g-get… ou… ou… out!”
“That’s right, I’m going to get you out, just hold on to me and…”
“N-N-No! Y-Y-You… r-r-run… NOW! Uh UH UH!”
Kara stared down at the girl who had suddenly started gasping and convulsing even more violently. Something wasn’t right. Something about the way the other was moving just didn’t make sense.
“Beth, what’s wrong? Is it the oil? A team is on the way to fix the leak. You don’t have to stay anymore.”
Suddenly there was a desperation to the girl’s features and she let go of her box in order to grasp the sides of Kara’s helmet. She was a little worried at first that she might be trying to get her suit, but it was only to keep her head out of the oil while she brought her oil-soaked face right up to the faceplate.
“N-n-n-not… leak! Ugh! UGHNN!”
Kara watched as the girl’s eyes rolled up for several seconds and then slowly came back into focus. Not a leak? What did that mean? She glanced down the girl’s body to the wall where she thought the oil must be entering the room. Since Beth had moved slightly, she could clearly see the intact surface and no pipes or ducts. She could feel and hear the vibrating hum she had noticed earlier. Perhaps there was some sort of machine or pump generating the liquid. The sound was even louder in this room than the other.
Confused, she replied, “Let’s get you out of here first, then someone else can deal with the oil, okay?”
Beth looked as though she were trying to fight something. She clenched her eyes shut and then opened them while she momentarily regained her composure, but only barely. “N-NOT…. OIL!” she all but yelled at Kara. “UGH! AHHH!! BI-BI-BIO…UH! BIOLOGIC!! UGHNNN!! AHHH!!” Abruptly, Beth let go of her helmet and flipped over to her back. Almost at once her hands dropped between her legs and she arched up out of the pool of green oil on the floor as she thrashed back and forth while gasping and crying out. Without even knowing she had done it, Kara had risen back up to her knees and away from the female out of fear. As she stared down at the girl, it was as though the pieces suddenly clicked together and she understood what she was seeing for the first time. Beth wasn’t crying out in pain… she was caught up completely in the height of orgasmic pleasure, and the substance that surrounded and coated them both was not some chemically produced oil, it was a living organism… A ‘biologic.’
“Oh my god,” she said to herself as she watched more and more of the green slime pour off of Beth’s body. Somehow, it was the girl herself that was producing the stuff, and at a shocking rate. It seemed like the more she cried out, the faster the flow from around her nude form. Shaking away the image of Beth’s convulsing body, she realized that she was in way over her head. It was time to call in the cavalry.
Switching her radio back on, she was greeted immediately by the frantic voice of Shay.
“…BORT! ABORT! ABORT! DO YOU COPY 226!! PLEASE COME IN!”
“This is DB-226…”
“KARA! Oh god, I thought I lost you!”
“Shay, shut up and listen to me. We have a serious situation here. We have a Class ‘C’ Biological contamination in this sector… I repeat, a Class ‘C’ Biologic!”
“Kara, I understand, but that’s only part of the problem! You need to get out of there NOW! Abort your mission at once and head toward the medical wing as quickly as possible!”
“Nest, what is this stuff? Beth looks like she’s having an endless orgasm or something.”
“KARA! There’s no time to explain! Get out of there and use the maintenance tunnels to get to medical, do you copy? DO NOT….” The rest of her message cut off.
What was going on? If a biologic was involved, the medical center made sense, but why not take the transit tube?
“Roger that, Nest. Aborting mission. Shay, wouldn’t it be faster to take the tube?”
The radio was silent. Actually, it wasn’t quite silent, there was a pulsing static that Kara recognized as a jamming signal. Were they under attack? Was that the rest of the problem that Shay had mentioned? It would certainly explain a lot. It might even explain the presence of a biologic contamination. Okay, time to leave. She took one last look at Beth. The poor girl was still gasping and moaning on the floor as her body thrashed and shivered in uncontrollable ecstasy. She watched, transfixed as her hips thrust back and forth against an invisible lover over and over and over as though all will to resist her apparent rape had been crushed under the barrage of constant pleasure. There was nothing more she could do. A recovery team would be far better suited to help her. Either she would survive or not, but it was out of her hands now.
Since she wasn’t so worried about playing it safe anymore, getting back out was much easier. She need only aim herself in the right direction and push off. To this effect, her first push went perfectly. She sailed backwards right out of the room and reached the other without a hitch. From there it got a bit more complicated since she had to make a series of little pushes to get her around a central desk and lined up with the door out of the facility. She miss-judged a bit on the final shove and ended up smashing her helmet into the partially open door. She saw a warning light come on out of the corner of her eye, but the heads-up readout still showed full suit integrity.
“Better keep moving,” she said to herself. The puddle of green slime in front of the door extended about four meters down the curved hallway toward the pod car. If she gave herself a really good shove, her momentum should carry her easily across the pool and to “dry” land. She wasn’t planning on being able to stand, even there, but at least she would have a little more friction. She carefully positioned herself and then counted to three.
WHOOSH!
Kara flew across the floor like greased lightning, and upon reaching the edge of the pool continued on to where she thought the curve of the wall should be. There was a violent crash and she suddenly found herself tumbling and scraping to a halt.
“Shit…” she moaned as she noticed three more amber lights in her display, but still, her suit pressure was green and steady. As far as her body was concerned, she’d be a little sore in the morning, but otherwise fine. They weren’t armor, but the P-suits were designed to protect their occupants from as many different hostile environments as possible. Kara made a mental note to give the tech who took care of hers an extra large tip the next time she saw her.
Now that she was out of the main pool of biologic, she found she could wiggle and kick down the main hallway in a sort of slow swimming. She dared not try to stand. Up ahead, she saw a line of light appear as the door to the pod opened about a quarter of the way and stopped. It must have sensed her presence. It would probably open the rest of the way when she were closer. Tiring, she flipped to her back and swam that way for a bit. She was just starting to wonder how much further she had to go when her helmet bumped into something solid.
“Hallelujah!” she said aloud to herself and flipped one last time so she could drag herself to her knees. She was finally thinking everything was going to be okay when she saw the doors to the pod. They were still only open about a foot.
“Oh, for goodness sake, why does everything on this fucking mission have to be so difficult?!”
The problem was that the manual override for the pod doors was on the inside. There was an outside one as well, but you needed special tools to make it work. The system was designed that way on purpose so that you could use the pods as a refuge in an emergency. They were completely self contained and powered, which meant that if she could get inside the damn thing, then she could use the manual override and drive it herself to the medical wing. It wouldn’t go a tenth as fast as it would under computer control, but so long as she got there…
But that door was going to make things tough. Most of her suit wouldn’t make it through that small of an opening, and certainly not her helmet. What had Shay mentioned about the maintenance tunnels? It seemed like hours ago that she had last talked to her controller. Maybe they knew they were having trouble with the pod door and were giving her a backup route?
Making her way to the edge of the main corridor by scooting on her rear, Kara found the maintenance access door and reached up to the panel to enter her code. The ‘accepted’ light came on but there was no response when she asked Nel to open the hatch. She repeated the procedure three more times before finally accepting the fact that Nel was somehow inaccessible or unable to respond. She seriously hoped it was the first option, because if the NOE were disabled, they were all in some serious shit. Their virtual mother controlled everything from the doors to the defense systems. Take out the NOE, and a complex such as theirs was a sitting duck against any sort of attack.
“Okay, plan ‘B’…” She said to herself and then tried to decide what plan ‘B’ might actually entail. She could walk down the pod tube… almost certain suicide without communications. By the time she noticed an oncoming pod car, she, and the car, would be nothing more than scattered debris for a half mile. No good. She could wait it out. Her suit systems would last about another 48 hours before they needed to be recharged, but in that time it was likely that Beth Tugundo would be dead, if from nothing more than sheer exhaustion, and the biologic would have spread who knew how far. She could see the slowly advancing puddle of green even now. No, it was likely that help was on its way, but she couldn’t wait around. She needed to evacuate now. Her suit seals were holding, but they were certainly damaged. They might survive another 48 hours, or they could fail in the next two minutes. She was sitting there in front of the access door when she first heard the buzzing sound again. It was coming from down the hall, and as far as she could tell, from the green ooze itself. When she focused her wrist lamp and squinted, she could clearly see the front line of advancing slime moving along at a pace that really surprised her. She’d had a dozen or so minutes before it reached her, to be sure, but not much more. She needed to make a decision. There was of course one other option. She could remove her suit.
Without the bulky pressure suit, she would easily fit through the partially open pod door. From there, even on manual, it was a thirty minute ride at most to the medical sector. She’d be exposed to the biologic, but she’d be in quarantine and under medical care within an hour. Beth had survived many times that long literally laying in a pool of the stuff.
“Shit,” she cursed, knowing what she had to do. For someone in her line of work, your suit was your life. Taking it off in hostile conditions went against everything she knew and felt. She tried to force the pod door one last time before accepting defeat and reaching for her helmet clamps. With a heavy sigh and no small amount of nervousness, she snapped open the locking control bolts and popped her seals.
Taking off a pressure suit was a fairly cumbersome task in good conditions. Right now she didn’t even have a bench to sit on. To make matters really interesting, she was trying to be as careful as she could to keep the green stuff off of her. It was an impossible task, and she quickly settled for “as little as possible”, but she was literally dripping the stuff all over the place. By the time she was laying aside the final section, she had green runnels and blobs all over.
Like most people who wore P-suits, she wore only a minimal outfit under the suit itself. That usually meant a tank top, panties and maybe some light cotton pajama bottoms. It simply wasn’t practical to have a bunch of slippage space created by socks and heavier clothing, especially when you can perfectly control the internal temperature of your suit to please. Sweat and anything else was cleaned out by a tech, and you ate so that you hopefully didn’t have to dump in your suit. It happened, but since each section was mostly isolated, beyond a physical discomfort, you wouldn’t notice. She knew of some Housemaids who wore more elaborate plumbing for long missions, but the suit was built to handle a minimal amount of self-cleaning. Today, she was “clean,” which was a little surprising considering how long she had been on the clock. Nonetheless, she frowned at the oily green stains on her shirt and pants. Then she noticed the buzzing.
For a few seconds, Kara thought that some kind of bug was crawling on her. There was a slightly tingling vibration on her skin where the green biologic was making contact, and she considered that it might be a chemical reaction, but upon closer inspection, she saw that the substance itself was vibrating slightly. It was hardly noticeable in small quantities, but she swallowed hard imagining what it must have felt like to Beth, who had gallons of the stuff running off her. She was rubbing the strange slime between her fingers when something warm touched her toes. Looking down she cursed.
“Oh shit!” The advancing pool of goo had reached almost to the pod doors. Slipping slightly, she quickly squeezed through the opening, and looking back, snagged the left glove section of her suit and dragged it inside as well. Maybe she was just being paranoid, but that section contained the radio. Hopefully she wouldn’t need it, but one thing working in a suit had taught her was to always try to have a backup. Moving to the manual override for the door, she went to close the pod and be on her way, but something was wrong. The manual controls wouldn’t function. Looking back to the door she saw why.
The pod cars were built so as to be computer controlled in all but a dire emergency. If the NOE were active, it was always better to let it figure out how to handle traffic and control than let a slow and clumsy human take the reins. With that in mind, the pods could only be operated manually if the NOE released them or was not present, but the little blue light above the door told her two things immediately. The first was that Nel was still active and in contact. The second was that Nel either didn’t know she was there, or was intentionally holding the doors open. Whatever the reason, the biologic pool had reached the loading ramp and was flowing over the perfectly seamed threshold into the pod. In a very short time, the entire floor of the pod was going to be covered with a layer of slime that was impossible to stand on. She had to act now.
Standing on a seat, she reached above the door and broke open the access panel. Having worked on a few of the pod cars, she knew that a special transmitter for Nel was located here, and that she could deactivate it by cutting the power. She fervently wished she had her tools, but they were miles away and useless. Instead, she very carefully reached in and found the power relay. One quick yank and the little blue light vanished.
With the door back in her control, she hopped down… and very nearly broke her neck when her feet shot out from under her.
“Fuck!” she moaned as she rolled onto her stomach and tried to wipe as much of the green oil from her hands as possible. She could see that the pool had spread to over half of the floor of the car. The other half was quickly getting its own treatment from her struggles as she fought to reach the manual door controls. Finally, with much cursing and flailing, she got the panel open and started pumping the lever. Her hands kept slipping off, but ever so slowly the door was being closed, and by the time her arms were nearly burning with use, there was a soft hiss and the green “MANUAL CONTROL” light came on at the driver’s seat.
“Yes!”
It took her nearly another five full minutes to get herself into the seat and power up the pod for travel, but almost an hour and twenty minutes from the time she had first arrived, she was joyfully leaving. The car slid silently forward down the tube on invisible magnetic rails and she was on her way to the medical center, which was a very good thing because she was seriously starting to notice the buzzing, vibrating effect of the slippery substance that covered her. There was a long stretch before the next junction and Kara took a moment to look down at herself.
“Holy shit,” she muttered as she took in her soaking tank top. The rest of her clothing was equally saturated. Since the quantity of the green ooze on the skin seemed to make a difference, she hesitated only a moment before reaching down and peeling the top over her head. She threw it to the back of the pod and carefully eased her pajama bottoms and panties over her hips while remaining in the seat. The slippery nature of the biologic only helped in this regard, and in a very short time Kara was seated again, completely naked. At least the buzzing had subsided slightly. Then it occurred to her that Beth Tugundo must have found herself in a similar set of circumstances. Somehow, she had probably gotten some of the biologic into her suit. It wouldn’t be hard if she had slipped and lost a seal. Then, finding that the oil was covering her clothing, she would have done exactly the same thing Kara had just done. So how had she gone from naked and slightly covered to literally oozing the stuff?
Kara pondered the question as she slowed for the coming junction. All at once, she saw that there was something blocking the passageway ahead of her and she slammed on the brakes. She only just bumped the other pod, but the jarring collision nearly knocked her from her seat.
“What the fuck?” she exclaimed, staring into the empty car in front of her. “What the hell is that doing there?” She could see inside the pod through the matching front and back driver’s windows to the little blue light above the entrance doors. “What are you up to, Nel?” She wasn’t expecting an answer, but something was definitely screwy with their NOE.
“Alright then,” she said to herself. “I’ll take the scenic route.” With that, she started to stand and almost ended up on the floor again. Then, sliding more than walking, she very slowly made her way to the back end of the pod car and engaged the manual driver console to take the car in the opposite direction. She was just about to drop into her seat when her eye caught something moving through the window. To her utter shock, a second unmanned pod car was slowing as it silently approached. Without a sound, it came to a stop, blocking the only other exit from the tunnel. Kara slumped into the seat, depressed and exhausted.
“You unbelievable bitch…”
It was several minutes before Kara even had the will to think about what to do next. It was the buzz from the slippery living oil on her skin that finally distracted her enough to come out of her daze. The buzzing was intensifying, and when she looked down at herself, it certainly seemed as though there was a lot more of the green stuff on her than before. More so, it seemed to be covering her in places she hadn’t known she’d gotten wet, like her face. It was literally dripping off her breasts and starting to pool in her lap.
“This can’t be good,” she exclaimed noticing that her nipples were crinkled with arousal. She used her hand like a squeegee and tried to wipe as much of the coating from her bare flesh as possible. It seemed to make very little difference in the amount covering her, but the pleasurable sensations created by caressing her own skin were staggering. Shocked, she experimentally reached down and tweaked her left nipple. Pleasure instantly rushed up from her chest and caused her to gasp sharply, and as if on cue, a layer of green oil seemed to form on her breasts out of nowhere, dripping in slow runnels down her abdomen.
“Oh my god… I’m in big trouble.”
Something about her pleasure was increasing the rate at which the biologic was appearing on her or from her or whatever. The more intense the sensations, the faster the rate of production, but the whole loop was self reinforcing. The more that was produced, the greater the stimulation. She remembered the nearly constant state of orgasm that she had seen Beth in and started to get nervous. She had to do something and fast if she had any chance of holding off that kind of reaction. She tried wiping more of the oil away with both her hands and her clothing, but the rubbing seemed to amplify on her skin and turn pleasurable. She tried holding really still and ignoring the buzzing vibrations that were now covering almost every inch of her bare flesh. Impossible. Ever so slowly the pleasure was growing, and with it, her coating of green ooze. For almost twenty minutes she sat there, desperately trying to fend off what she knew was coming as more and more of the oil dripped off her body to the floor. Her breathing started to deepen, and her heart rate was steadily climbing. It was like her entire body was coated in a living vibrator. It didn’t matter if she held still or not. Her body was slowly reacting to the sexual stimulation with or without her permission.
Finally, realizing that she was never going to be able to hold back, she decided that she had better get herself out of the chair or she might slip and bash her head in the height of passion. She remembered how she had found Beth, laying on the ground where she was safe from falling. Her own hands starting to shake, Kara carefully slid out of the control seat and let the weight of her slippery body carry her to the floor well of the pod. There, she gasped to find herself settling into a pool of oil nearly an inch deep. Unable to stand it any longer, Kara’s hand moved down her stomach and over the slight swell of her lower abdomen until her fingers unconsciously flowed down between her thighs and through the petals of her apex. Even as her own fingers found their way within her, the pool of green liquid also reached its liquid digits freely into her depths. The result was inescapable and instant. Fiery pleasure blossomed from every pore in her body and she cried out in monumental ecstasy. And almost just as quickly, a torrent of the green ooze formed and cascaded over her body, adding to the pool on the floor and further heightening the still pulsing orgasm that held her in timeless euphoria.
Her bliss continued for what seemed like centuries before it slowed enough for her to come back to the present. As she did so, she was aware of two things. The first was that the vibrations that surrounded her body, inside and out, were still growing in intensity and would no doubt push her into ecstasy again very soon. She found herself powerless to resist anymore. Her body was no longer hers to control and her hips began to roll with a slippery sucking sound against her own dripping fingers, which only spread the seductive substance deeper and deeper within her, locking in her fate.
The second thing she noticed, albeit from a far and pushed back corner of her mind, was that the level of the slippery pool at the bottom of the pod was rising rapidly. Some part of her understood the danger this presented, but that part was bound and muffled under the weight of Kara’s second trembling orgasm. Rolling onto her back, the helpless girl tossed her head back and forth in bright white pleasure as she screamed out and writhed in the grip of the slick lover that slowly rose around her.
—
“Decided to rejoin the land of the living I see,” said a female voice to her left.
“Shay!” Kara’s eyes flew open and she tried to sit up. A hand on her chest prevented her from rising.
“Not so fast, hotshot. Just relax. You’re in the medical ward.”
Kara struggled to understand what had happened but her mind was still spinning with emotion and memory. “My god, the biologic!”
“Contained.”
“And Beth?”
“Safe. Her recovery is a little more tricky, but Doc Edna is hopeful. She’s in a bed a few doors down.”
Kara relaxed slightly. She had been so worried that she had failed in all aspects of her mission, but if Beth were alive and well, and the biological threat neutralized, then she couldn’t have failed completely.
“You said I’m in medical?”
Her controller and part-time lover was seated next to her standard ward bed. A number of quietly active monitors hung nearby.
“Yes, in quarantine. The bad news is that you’re going to have to spend the next three weeks here to be certain that they get every last trace of the biologic out of your system.”
“Ughnnnn,” she moaned. “Shay, what the hell happened? I remember you telling me to abort, then getting into the pod… and then the first couple of orgasms, but after that it all gets fuzzy.”
Her friend moved a little closer so she could hold the other’s hands in hers.
“Well, I should probably go back a little bit further to really give you the full effect of the tale. You see, just about the same time you were discovering Beth and her rather stimulating predicament,” she paused to smile. “I was having some odd troubles of my own. Right from the start I felt that the whole mission was a little fishy, and so I began requesting more information. The problem was, Nel kept refusing me; spouting off about classified data and restricted access, but in emergency situations, a controller has automatic level one clearance. It’s one of the reasons we have to go through such elaborate psych profiling. Anyway, I smelled a rat, but you were already on the scene. I had to support you as best I could while still trying to solve the larger problem I suspected but couldn’t prove. Our NOE wasn’t giving me squat about what the company was doing in that lab, or even what Beth was doing there as a Housekeeper, so I sent a crash priority override request to MillComOps.”
Kara’s eyes boggled. “Oh my god! Are you serious?!”
Shay nodded and smiled. “I know, pretty ballsy of me, but regs are regs, even for a NOE. I knew the military boys would see the red flags too, but it would take time to process everything, and more so, I had to do it behind Nel’s back. I knew that if she got one whiff that I was going over her head, she’d lock me out just like she had you.”
Kara looked confused. “I think you lost me.”
“Just after you turned your radio back on and reported the biologic. You lost signal, yes?”
“Well, yeah, someone was jamming me.”
Shay just nodded her head.
“Shit! That was Nel?!”
“Yup. I can assume from your next action that you never heard the last part of my transmission…”
“Uh, you started to say not to do something.”
“…Something like taking a pod car controlled by a rogue NOE.”
Kara’s mouth dropped open.
“You have to understand,” continued Sherry, “that as soon as I got wind that something nasty might be going down, I put out the call to every other controller on duty for help. We work especially good in teams,” she bragged. Kara grinned. “So when some under-the-table intel came through that the Company was doing black-ops bio research using some of the more ‘interesting’ indigenous life forms found on Carrus, and that a Housekeeping request had been authorized in a restricted zone with absolutely no record trail, I knew Nel had to be involved somehow. One of the sure things in life and death is that you can’t escape paperwork… unless you happen to be virtual and nearly godlike in your ability to process information.”
“Damn! So it was Nel all along?”
“Sort of. It was true that she authorized Beth’s request, and subsequently yours as well in order to use you two as test subjects. But ask yourself, what possible use is a biological weapon to a non-organic entity? They can’t exist without out massive human infrastructure to support them. By nature, they would abhor any sort of weapon that could be used for the wholesale destruction of humanity. No, Nel wouldn’t do it… willingly. She was subverted.”
“The Company!” Kara was starting to see the pattern forming.
“Exactly. The only way you could get a NOE to do that would be to put in force override programming that no one would find, and the only people who had that kind of access to her were the people who created her in the first place. It took only a few minutes sleuthing to determine that the financial entity that produced this mining facility and the financial organization that created Nel were one and the same. Bingo.”
“Fuck! We never had a chance!”
“Nope. She set you up every step of the way. From the initial service request to the subtle manipulation she used to get you out of your P-suit.”
Kara did a double-take. “Wait a minute… That was Nel? How?”
“She knew that as long as you stayed in your suit, you’d be safe from the biologic. Sure, there was the chance that you’d fall and loose a seal, as was Beth’s case, but you were more careful, or perhaps just more lucky. Either way, she had to expose you per her underlying instructions. When she saw you getting ready to bail, she set up a series of ‘malfunctions’ to herd you into the pod. Once in there, she owned you. You had no idea what was going on, so the advantage was obvious. She left the doors open just enough for you to get through, but only without your P-suit.”
“And I took the bait,” said Kara shaking her head.
“‘fraid so, lover. Once you were in the pod with even a little of the biologic on you, it was checkmate in three moves. She even let you drive off in the car for a while before cornering you and locking in your fate with yet a third pod. We never would have found you in time in all those transit tunnels. It would have been so long, Kara, save for one small thing…”
She looked up in confusion. “What?”
“Your glove. You must have grabbed it at the last second and brought it into the pod with you. It was on continuous transmit, remember?”
“Oh my god! But… it was jammed.”
“Yes, it was, right up until the moment I received the override command from MillComOps and sent Nel into la-la land. As soon as I did that, your cries of ecstasy, as well as your location, came blazing over the airwaves once again.
Kara blushed to her toes. “Uh… Did everyone hear that?”
The dark-haired girl squeezed her hands. “Don’t be silly…”
“Whew!”
“…only the seventy-eight people who were looking for you.”
GULP! “S-seventy eight?!”
“Um hmm. Most of Housekeeping and about half of Control Ops, including myself. You’re loved, sweetie.”
“I think I’m gonna cry!”
“Even with all those people, it was pretty close. Another two or three minutes and you would have been toast. The enclosed area of that pod filled up fast. You were really hummin…”
“I’ll say! Shit, for a weapon of mass-destruction, that biologic sure felt good. TOO good!”
“Hmm. Makes me wish I had tried it before they neutralized the thing…”
“Shay!”
“Just kidding!… Kinda. Hey, don’t look at me like that, you know I’m a nympho!”
Kara let her gaze warm again. “Hey, come to think of it, what are you doing here? Didn’t you say this was quarantine?”
“That’s right. I knew they would lock you down for at least a couple of weeks, and when I heard about what the Doc had in mind for your treatment, I suddenly found that one of my seals had sprung a leak.”
“You exposed yourself on purpose!”
“Shh! Only a little. I wasn’t really in any danger, but regs say that once a suit loses integrity…”
“Unbelievable!”
Shay leaned a little closer. “You have to understand, Doc Edna was saying that you couldn’t be allowed to come off the endorphin high you were on all at once. He said that you needed to be brought down gradually and was going to put you on a decreasing dosage of dangerous and addictive uppers to do it. I explained that I had a better way, and since I already needed to be in quarantine…”
Kara’s mouth opened, but she didn’t have the words. “Are you saying…”
“That’s right babe,” she replied with a wicked grin. One of her hands slid up under Kara’s shirt and cupped a breast, her fingers neatly sliding around her already hard nipple. “We have a paid 30 day vacation with doctor’s orders to have as much sex as you can stand for the duration. I’m to keep you aroused for at least three hours a day, minimum.”
“Oh!”
“You haven’t even heard the best part yet. The high brass were overjoyed to have cracked such a large inside racket. So much so that they gave you full double duty hazard pay for the duration as well as a big fat commendation.”
“You’re kidding!?” Kara was quietly enjoying the sensations at her chest.
“Cross of the Phoenix for duty above and beyond, and a Purple Heart for getting off more times than any other female on the station… except for maybe Beth.”
“That’s insane!”
“Oh, and did I mention the corresponding increase in rank with pay… Lieutenant.”
“WOOHOO! Now THAT’S what I call good housekeeping!”
Shay smiled. “You should see what they gave me for figuring the whole thing out… But let’s save that for later. I think, if you’re feeling up to it, that you should scoot over and let me start your treatment right away.” Leaning down, she planted a very warm and wet kiss on the other’s lips.
“Mmmm…,” replied Kara happily accepting the contact. “Well, it is doctor’s orders.”