Chapter 18: Chapter 4 – Part 1

Wren reclined in her pilot’s chair, smiling lazily.  Legs crossed at the ankle, with her feet up on top of the main piloting console.  The controller in her hand made little ticking sounds, auditory and haptic responses to her inputs, as she soared across the battlefield.  It was magnificent, on every level.

 

One of Jackson’s associates, Kuo, a man much more gifted in the softer side of computing, had put a little hack on her audio input feed.  Any time someone entered a ten meter range around her, where the game would normally allow others, teammates and opponents, to hear her talk, they would instead hear Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.  Each player would be hearing it from the start, so there would be as many iterations of the song, at varying timestamps, as there were players around her, so it took a little bit of computing muscle.  Not much, but not none.

 

She loved watching it happen.  Players on both sides would whip around, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and the volume of it was usually enough to disrupt whatever anyone else was trying to say.  It was, without a doubt, the most fun she’d ever had playing DBX.  It was almost perverse how much she liked being disruptive.  An agent of chaos.

 

She couldn’t play under her own account anymore.  It was a sad thing if and when she let herself think about it, so she tried not to.  Aside from the Daedalus, DBX was just about the last link to her old life, and she snuck it in wherever she could under a series of dummy accounts Jackson had purchased for her.

 

Including, sometimes, when Bonnie was out on a mission.

 

She missed the comm alert.  There was a thresher in play, and some of her teammates were pinned down between it and the front line of the opposing team.

 

She didn’t notice the docking portal entry request, or the override.  An enemy hybrid had shifted into guardian mode, and was redirecting an absurd amount of her team’s offensive power into a vortex, which was in turn causing all kinds of havoc at one of their outposts.

 

She was too busy taking down the hybrid, having successfully parkoured her way across the space between, to spot the airlock cycle sensors.  She scored a rare mounted takedown, to great fanfare, and was leading the charge into the gap and behind the enemy lines when—

 

“Wren!” Bonnie screamed, as she came charging into the cabin.  “What the fuck are you doing?!”

 

Wren jolted, a little nervously, but then relaxed when she realized who it was.  “Winning?” she muttered, as she tried to re-focus.

 

“We have to go!”

 

Wren rolled her eyes, and Bonnie had just come around beside her to notice.  She regretted it.  Sort of.

 

“Wren!”

 

Maybe she only regretted being caught.  The blue-haired girl groaned, exaggeratedly, put her avatar into a bush for cover, and put down her controller.  Then she sat forward and switched the display to a countdown.

 

“I rigged a request for take off clearance,” she explained, “from port authority, to fire as soon as the airlock opened.  We’re already at the head of the queue.”

 

Bonnie stared at her for a second.  “What if they had gotten here before I did?”

 

“Then they’d probably be dead,” Wren said, easily.  “I put a facial recognition scan on one of the drones in the hold, the one that looks all disassembled —spoiler alert, it isn’t— and it would have started liberating their calcium deposits from the rest of their fleshy bits.”  Then she smiled broadly, very proud of herself.

 

“What if I had failed the scan?!” Bonnie shrieked.  “Those things aren’t perfect!”

 

“Oh.”  Wren blinked.  “I mean, it’s pretty close to a hundred percent.  Ninety… six?  Maybe?”  Then she added, “Seven.  Ninety seven,” when that did not seem to impress the redhead.

 

If it was possible for eyes to burn holes through whatever they were looking at, Bonnie would have killed her on the spot.  And while that was troubling, her team was also on the verge of victory, so she smiled with a lot of teeth as she reached for her controller and said,  “I’ll be done soon!”

 

Bonnie stormed off, and this time Wren waited until she was for sure alone to let her expression show how glad she was to be able to play in peace.

 

***

 

Whoever it was Bonnie had been worrying about, they didn’t raise any alarms.  The Daedalus reached the Minimum Safe Distance Jump Point three hours later without any sign of them being followed or tracked (at least, not actively) and Wren’s skin was itching.  Maybe Bonnie had just given them the slip?  It was easier when their enemies came right out and chased them.

 

They still would have gotten away.  The Daedalus had been a hardy little ship to begin with, and between Wren’s overhauls, Bonnie and Wren’s cooperative tinkering, and a few choice upgrades Jackson had procured for them, Wren was pretty confident about their chances of escaping just about anything.

 

Or, at least, she was as confident as she could be with space travel.  It really only ever took a couple busted bulkheads to fuck up everything, but Wren could compartmentalize that fear pretty well.  She could trust her ship.  It had never failed her before.

 

Wren honestly wasn’t even sure what job they were on, or that this was the kind of mission that might have made any enemies at all.  Oftentimes, in their ‘briefings’ (which usually consisted of drinking with Jackson), Wren mentally checked out if it was clear she wouldn’t be doing very much.  She could infer, based on the time the airlock spent open, that Bonnie had only made the one trip in, so whatever she’d been getting was one armload at most, but that only narrowed down the things she could have retrieved from infinity to pretty close to infinity.

 

Wren entered her authorization code, engaged the GA drive core, and marvelled at the way distant lights blurred and swirled as she shifted into t-space.

 

Their jump was a four-parter.  The initial trajectory, from which some destinations could be extrapolated/theorized, was a ruse.  After eighteen hours, they would shift back into n-space, reorient, and start heading on a different trajectory that took them a safe distance around a star cluster on their way to Cheng Shih Station.

 

Wren really wanted to go check on Bonnie.  The redhead hadn’t come back up to argue with her even once, after storming off.  Passion was a good sign; resignation and frustration was not.

 

Or, as Wren found out as she went back into the galley, it was neither.  Bonnie was up to her eyeballs in the disassembled parts of some kind of gun.

 

Bonnie said nothing.  Just gave her a look.

 

“Is this what you were getting?”

 

The redhead didn’t look up.

 

“You’ve already got a lot of... rifles?” She wasn’t super confident in her assessment, and the look Bonnie gave her said she’d missed the mark.

 

“It’s a compact,” she said, rolling her eyes.  “Totally different type of… what the fuck am I telling you for?”

 

“No,” Wren said, eagerly.  “I wanna know.”

 

Bonnie gave her a level look, sighed, and then quickly snapped three pieces together into something rectangular-ish that was maybe about the size of Bonnie’s upper arm from shoulder to elbow.  Wren was becoming quite fond of comparing the size of things to different parts of her girlfriend; for example, her drone’s main thrusters were thicker than Bonnie’s calves, but smaller than Bonnie’s thighs.

 

She sighed happily, and tried to focus.

 

Bonnie picked up a little brush with a bright light attached to the handle, and worked it slowly into the barrel.  “Most of what I have is just straight military hardware.  Combat zone stuff.  Point and shoot.  Everyone is a target.  That counts on me to make a lot of decisions in the heat of things, and it gets worse around civilians.  This,” she said, holding up the barrel demonstratively, “is a smart gun.”  

 

Then she blinked and sat back, and Wren realized she’d taken two steps forward, very quickly, to pick up the part of the stock that contained the grip.

 

“Smart?” Wren asked, suddenly extraordinarily curious.

 

“Sort of.”  Bonnie gestured around her with her tool.  “It was supposed to come with some kind of, I don’t know, other part that I use to help with targeting, but that all seems to be missing.”

 

“Of course,” Wren mumbled, “it wouldn’t do the targeting itself.  That’d be madness.”  She turned the grip over in her hand, and ran her fingers over the two exposed leads in the handle.  “I see how this works.”

 

Bonnie said, skeptically, “You do?”

 

“I mean, I don’t know what language this little guy speaks, so that’ll take some experimenting, but sure.”  Then she narrowed her eyes and looked at Bonnie.  “You don’t have any implants.”

 

The redhead balked.  “Fuck no.”

 

Wren made a little sound in her throat, and her voice was low as she talked, mostly to herself.  “Seems like this is designed to where you’ve got some kind of hand thingy, and it interfaces with that.  Wide leads to accommodate a variety of positions, grip styles, hand sizes, et cetera.  Could probably rig something with a glove and a pair of glasses.  You’d look hot in glasses.”  Then she looked up abruptly, made eye contact, and said, “Wanna fuck?”

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Bonnie dropped whatever tool she’d been using like it had bitten her hand and raked her fingers down her face.  “This was all just a pretense to get me talking, so you could...”

 

Wren smiled a little wider.  “Is it working?”

 

“Of course it’s working,” Bonnie groaned, angrily.  “Why do you think I’m so pissed off?”

 

“Because you wanna have seeeex,” she said, dragging out the word, “but you wanna be mad at me.”

 

Bonnie tilted her head in both directions, touching her ear to the muscled mounds of her shoulders.  “I’m not mad.  There’s a difference.  I’m angry… but not at you.  Not exactly.  I just… this is who you are.  You surprise me, and challenge me, and I…”

 

Wren did not remember sitting down, on the bench seat that curved around the corner behind the table.

 

“I mean, if I think about it, you trusted a machine thing you built, and I didn’t, and-and-and… that’s the… the… 关键.”

 

Wren’s brain translated 关键 to crux, and then repeated yes, crux, saying ,“对, 关键.”  Translating was always a process she had to work through in her head, but the way Bonnie looked at her, when she made the effort, was so worth it.

 

Bonnie said, “Yeah.  Central.  I mean, I still have nightmares about flying through that asteroid field, but you were… you were calm.  Because you built the thing.”

 

“I did,” Wren said.

 

“And you’re thorough, and you’re smart.”

 

“I’ll give you the first one.”  The blue haired girl smirked and rolled her eyes.  “Although, you gotta admit I’m pretty lazy, and you shoulda seen some of the brains in that room when—”

 

Wren cut off with a yelp as Bonnie grabbed her shirt and pulled her into a kiss.  It was good, and Wren loved kissing Bonnie, but all she could think about were the fists balled up in her shirt, and how hot it was when Bonnie just did stuff like that.  She was such a sucker for arms.

 

“I trust you,” Bonnie whispered, lips brushing faintly against hers.

 

For all her thirst, and for all her surface-level sexuality, Wren was surprised to find that she had such a depth of emotion for her redheaded freedom fighter.  Sure, she was sexy, and tough, and when she took charge it was hot as hell, but Bonnie also had a lot of vulnerability, and Wren knew she didn’t let most people see that.

 

Hardly anyone.

 

Maybe just her?

 

“I love you,” she found herself saying.  Maybe it was hormones.  Maybe it was brain chemistry.  Maybe it was her brain trying to process the odds of her being the one person in the entire—

 

No, her subconscious said, cutting in.  It’s just that you love her.  You moron.

 

Bonnie twisted her wrists, pulling the shirt tighter around Wren’s chest, and brought their foreheads together.  “You do?”

 

Wren said, surprisingly hoarsely, “I thought you said you knew how I felt.”

 

“Yeah, but…  You hadn’t said it yet, so...”

 

Wren licked her lips and swallowed, to buy herself a moment.  “Did I take too long?”

 

Bonnie laughed, bleary-eyed, and shook her head.  “Perfect timing.  As usual.”

 

After what felt like a heartbeat, but was probably several minutes of them with their heads together, quietly sharing the same air, Wren said, “Listen, if you don’t feel up to—”

 

“I do,” Bonnie said, interrupting her.

 

“Oh thank god,” Wren said, laughing, “because I’m horny as hell.”

 

It had taken some tinkering with her custom pills to rebalance them, and she’d taken out two of the ingredients all together because it seemed like any amount of them ramped her heart rate up ridiculously.  As a result, they took a little longer to start working.  She felt something pretty quick, but it was more like a wave of tingles compared to pins and needles.  Before, she was ready to go in a few minutes, all the while losing ground to the animal brain underneath.  Now it took closer to twenty to be hard enough for penetration, and she almost never got as hard as she had before, but that was okay.

 

At a certain point, hard enough was just that, enough, and the extra time at the start, every time, had allowed her to rediscover one of the great loves of her life: eating pussy.  Once upon a time, Wren had been a connoisseur of pussies, and lived for the subtle differences in smell, taste, and texture.  The way the folds grew a little differently, or a plump mons she could bury her face in.  

 

Like many women who worked out a lot, and for whom testosterone was more old friend than complete stranger, Bonnie’s clit was fairly sizable.  It peeked out from dark folds.  To Wren, it looked like she was looking down on a woman’s head, and the lips below formed a trailing dress.  This was an observation she had made after staring at Bonnie’s gorgeous pussy for hours.  Cumulatively, hours and hours.

 

She liked the way she could get her arms under and around Bonnie’s thighs.  She could feel the power in them whenever Bonnie fought her, and pushed.  Whenever Wren’s tongue was too much.  

 

Wren always let her get away, but not for long.  The best part of her reformulated pills was that they weren’t going to kill her if she didn’t stick to a hard timer.  The second best part was that they lasted longer, and so if Wren wasn’t done eating Bonnie out by the time she was hard, she could just keep going until she was.

 

Such was the case, as she lay there between Bonnie’s legs.  It was her favorite place to be, of late.  Most of the time, Bonnie would lay on her back and Wren on her front, and it was heaven.  Every once in a while, though, Wren would get all charged up, grab Bonnie’s hips, and pull her nearly upside down so that Wren could sit upright.  Bonnie’s legs, thrown over her shoulders.  Both arms wrapped around Bonnie’s waist, possessively.  This was the angle she liked the best, because she could really get in there.

 

It was in this somewhat upside-down state, as Wren lavished attention directly on the opening itself, that Bonnie started writhing.  This was one of the ways Bonnie came, like a full-body squirm that locomoted her up and away.  Her back curled, and she slid down along Wren’s front without a shred of the composure a woman of her musculature would normally exude.  Bonnie looked like a human puddle, and it was just about the hottest thing Wren had ever seen.

 

As she rolled onto her stomach, clawing her way across the bed in mindless motion, Wren stared at her.  The sweat-pebbled flesh.  The toned brawn and sinew straining underneath the skin across her back and shoulders.  Wren had never wanted anyone or anything so much in all her life.

 

She caught Bonnie with one leg extended below her, and one knee brought up to the side.

 

Because of the changes in her pill, Wren sometimes found anal difficult to manage.  Her shaft wanted to bend before she could get inside.  If Bonnie wanted it, and Wren wanted it —and they often did— they could work Bonnie up to it.  Tongues, and then a finger, and then maybe two or three fingers.  One time, a fist.  It took some concerted effort, on both of their parts, and that was still a very regular element of their sex life, but Wren had found that she needed no extra effort to slide inside Bonnie’s beautiful pussy.

 

Wren crawled over her, body sliding over Bonnie’s backside, and the redhead braced herself.  There was a low, audible hnnngh as Wren guided the head up to and between the outer folds.  Wren’s chin and lips were still slathered in Bonnie, and the scent of her made Wren giddy and lightheaded.

 

On the one hand, Bonnie was not equipped to take her full thirty-five centimeter length.  On the other hand, if Wren took her from behind, and some of that length was spent reaching between Bonnie’s thighs, that was just about perfect.  As Wren pushed inside of her, groaning in exalted delirium, Bonnie brought her legs together, crossed her ankles for leverage, and squeezed.

 

Wren’s head ballooned, mushrooming as the pressure in the middle forced the blood everywhere else.  The delighted nerve endings in her engorged head filled Wren with a joy she had no name for.  She hooked her arms around Bonnie, reaching up and under to grab Bonnie’s shoulders from the front, and lost herself in the rhythm.  The channel she bored between Bonnie’s thighs kept her from sliding out, keeping her path very straight.  The first few thrusts stretched her skin, but so much fluid came back out on her shaft that soon the whole length of her was coated in Bonnie.

 

She nuzzled the crook of Bonnie’s shoulder, in the place where her trapezius muscles met the neck, and kissed her tenderly.  The heat radiating off the redhead was intense, but she soaked it up.  It fed a flame she was so much more aware of now.  So much more purposeful.  She wanted Bonnie, in every sense of the word.  

 

More than that, though, sometimes she just wanted to ruin Bonnie.  Wren’s cock didn’t always reach that peak, that steel wrapped in velvet feel, but when it did it was hard to think about anything else.  Pill or no pill.  However much Wren looked up to and envied Bonnie’s physique, she could top the redhead in one area: core strength.

 

Wren could go for hours, and Bonnie had never given any sign that she didn’t want that too.  They had so much time to kill during jumps, and fucking the night away was a passion they shared.

 

After an amount of time Wren was not capable of determining, she whipped one hand down underneath Bonnie, and attacked her clit with two fingers.  Bonnie immediately cried out, reached down, and clamped a hand on Wren’s wrist like she was going to pull her away, but that death grip was there to keep her in place.  To make sure Wren pushed her right up to the edge.

 

Wren sent her soaring over it, driving through the orgasm with all the momentum of one of her asteroids.

 

The grip on her wrist went slack.  The tight squeeze between Bonnie’s thighs loosened, and the redhead once again collapsed into a puddle.  This time, Wren collapsed with her, panting and red faced.  She had more in her, and could have kept going, but she found that she loved being in tune with what Bonnie could take.  With hitting a sweet spot rather than trying to rack up the highest number of orgasms before the bell rang.

 

Bonnie turned toward her, eyes closed and the ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips, and Wren melted too.

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