Authors: GP Joyner
Reyna jerked back her head at that, startled to hear him bring up the very thing she had been following on the Hypernet before she received her orders to rescue him. She blinked at his answer: ""The supervolcano eruption--the disaster relief effort going on there. Of course I know. What has that got to do with you?"
Callum replied in a bitter voice, with a darkness seeming to descend upon his face, "When the Patrol gave you your marching orders to come and get us at Xerxes, they didn't include my bio, did they? Captain Talbot...I'm from Tau Eridani. My family was one of the first to settle there, before I was born.
Reyna blinked harder and suppressed a gasp, totally unprepared for this. She looked into his expression, as stricken now as if the disaster had just happened, and could not find her voice.
The whole quadrant had been buzzing with the story of what happened to the Earth colony on the planet Tau Eridani. It was the most terrifying and tragic demonstration of the last remaining limits on human technology. They had been able to create atmospheric modification grids that could blunt or dampen the power of storms, or even dissipate them. But against the violence that lurked inside planets, humanity often found itself still defenseless. It had been known since the early 20th Century that under North America on Earth lay a ticking time bomb of planet-devastating proportions, the Yellowstone Supervolcano which, if it ever erupted, could cause continental firestorms, inconceivable worldwide famine, and perhaps even conditions resembling a Nuclear Winter, destroying civilization across the planet. The Commonwealth government had provisions in place for evacuating large sections of Earth in the event that Yellowstone ever exploded. Ironically, while Earth never faced such a fate, one of its colonies had a Yellowstone of its own, and the supervolcano under the largest continent of Tau Eridani had blasted out its full fury, throwing the planet into chaos and millions of settlers into jeopardy. The planet was even now encircled with a ring of ships and space habitats filled with shocked refugees looking down at the swath of grey volcanic clouds enwrapped around what had been their home--and knowing that their home was now a forlorn, frozen thing of ice and snow, solidified lava, and ash. It was a galactic disaster.
Callum went on, "A lot of my crew are from there too. We were looking for the best, fastest way to help out at home."
"But Earth is pouring huge amounts of resources into helping there already--money, people, technology," Reyna said. "There's a major effort already being made there."
"I know," Callum said. "And we both know what shape the planet is in now. Restoring it with terraforming will take generations. And most of the population are refugees now. The money we could have gotten out of Xerxes, and other places like it, would have at least helped speed up the process, selling off what we collected and trading with other planets outside the Commonwealth. You see, we were ready to stop being mercenaries for a while and just live on our share of the Commonwealth. We were ready to spend a few years being...I guess you'd call it humanitarians instead. We're ambitious, Captain Talbot, but we're still human. Home and family mean something."
Her voice lowering in sympathy, Reyna simply said, "I had no idea."
"We weren't exactly spreading it around. Bad for our reputation, you know."
There was another silence--not an awkward one this time, yet still a silence of shifting and stirring emotions, of feelings uncovered and beginning to sort themselves out. And together with the feelings, something stirred beneath the sheets of Callum's bed.
In the wake of this latest quiet, Reyna said, "It'll be a while before your ship is spaceworthy again. You'll be out of Sickbay before the
Morrow
is out of drydock. You and your crew are going to be guests of the Patrol unless you make some other arrangements."
"My ship is my home," Callum said. "I stay where it stays. I'll be sticking around here for the duration."
Reyna smiled softly. "Get some rest, then. My crew and I are on leave right now. Maybe I'll see you before we leave base, Captain."
"If you're going to see me before you ship out again," he suggested, "maybe you don't want to go on calling me Captain."
"Would you rather I call you Ty?"
"Most people who don't call me Captain just call me Callum. Ty is usually something people earn...Reyna."
Now there was an exchange of smiles--a wry one from Callum, who was obviously and blatantly flirting, and a knowing one from Reyna. "Get some rest, Callum," she said.
Taking her knowing smile with her, she turned and exited Sickbay. Callum watched her go, her hips swaying in a most un-Captain-like manner. Most of him would get some rest as she said--for the benefit of what was not at rest but hard as a spaceship's hull, stiff, and eager under his sheets.
_______________
Whether by design or accident, Callum's guest quarters aboard the Station had a viewport that looked out directly on the
Morrow
in drydock, surrounded by scaffolding and by moving dots and specks of light that Callum knew were Commonwealth and Patrol personnel flitting about, starting the repair work on his ship. Some members of the
Morrow's
crew were out there among them, assisting and supervising, as they knew the ship better than anyone else but Callum himself--and as soon as the bloody Chief Medical Officer aboard this damned floating hotel gave him the okay, Callum would be out there with them. He frowned, feeling guilty for thinking that way about the people who had taken such exemplary care of him and his people. It was partly that he was impatient and partly that he felt guilty--guilty about the men and women who had lost their lives under him, and guilty about the promises he had made to those waiting and suffering back home. Promises that now faced a disheartening setback. Callum knew that they would not blame him for trying or for the attack of the Urchins. But it was the way of Captains, whether commissioned by the Commonwealth or striking out as freebooters, to take everything on themselves. It made him feel just a little better to think that Reyna would understand.
At the trilling of the hatch, he called, "Enter." The hatch to his quarters slid open--and in she walked, the hatch sliding shut again behind her. This was not the officially uniformed, proper Reyna Talbot who had come to his rescue at the Xerxes Supernova Remnant. This was a woman with her brown hair falling in curls, dressed in a burgundy-colored tunic that hugged and ruffled in all the right places, with just the most subtle coloring about her eyes and lips. "Well now," Callum said. "When you take your shore leave, you really go all the way on leave."
"Thank you," she said with a grin. To be honest, she dressed this way for shore leave only when there was a specific person for whom she was dressing, but why let him know that? And speaking of "him," this was not the harried and stressed Ty Callum who had been in such danger at Xerxes, nor the wounded man she had visited in Sickbay. He was still scruffy-faced, which she took to be his general look, but now, clad in only a tank top and a tight pair of shorts for lounging about his quarters, he was a study in dark, casual, muscular male sensuality. This was a man built not so much for space as for sex. "You're a bit different when you're not out prospecting yourself."
"I hope that's a good thing," said Callum.
"It is," said Reyna. "And...I hope you'll think this is a good thing too." She reached into an inner pocket of her tunic and plucked out her personal screen. She tapped it on and it lit up with data. She handed it to him.
"What's this?" Callum asked. Taking the screen from her, he read its display. "A grant proposal to the Commonwealth Bureau of Resources?"
"That's right," said Reyna. "A proposal for spaceship refitting. To be exact, a proposal to refit and enhance the shielding of a non-Patrol ship to Patrol specifications."
"A shielding upgrade?"
"Yes. I spent a little bit of my leave doing some asking around about the Tau Eridani relief effort, and it came up that a lot of Captains of private vessels had the same idea that you had, collecting precious elements from nebulae and engaging in trade with planets outside the Commonwealth to help the colonists. And a lot of them have been petitioning Earth about upgrading their ships' shielding against...well, mainly the kind of thing you went through. There are a lot of applications being filed, and the Commonwealth frankly likes the idea. And it occurred to me that an application filed with the help of a Patrol Captain who has...let's say a few connections...might be moved along through official channels a little more quickly than some others. At least it couldn't hurt."
Amazed, disbelieving, Callum looked back and forth from the data and specifications scrolling on the screen to Reyna's smiling face. Reyna thought he seemed thoroughly flabbergasted, taken completely by surprise. It almost embarrassed her to see him this way, looking like a little boy finding his gifts under the Solstice tree. He even sounded a bit like a child when he rested his stubbly face on her and said, "No one's ever done a thing like this for me before. I...I...," his voice faltered a moment. "Thank you, Reyna."
"You're welcome, Callum," she said, feeling warm all over, and not just from his gratitude. She felt warmer yet--and as surprised as he was at her gesture of help--when he lunged forward and threw his big and generously muscled arms around her. Suddenly she was wrapped up in his maleness, pressed against the T-shirt-clad plates of his pecs that felt like spaceship siding panels covered in flesh. It was a feeling she welcomed.
Callum held her there for much longer than just a casual embrace and much more than a mere expression of thanks. He held her until at last he pulled back a little, but kept his face near hers. With a gulp, he said, "Well, that was a bit sudden, wasn't it? It's just I wasn't prepared for anything quite like this."
"Neither was I," she admitted.
"Would it be too much right now to say there's something I am ready for?"
"Depends what you mean?" she replied, half-teasing.
Callum answered not with words, but with an action. He bridged the space between her face and Reyna's and brought their lips together. The kiss was as moist as the clouds in Earth's sky and as fiery as the arcs dancing on the surface of a star. They locked themselves together, arms encircling each other, with a force as strong as gravity. When at last they parted, Reyna moved one hand to the exposed skin above the neckline of his tank top and ran her fingers along it. She watched her hand slide against his chest, then moved her eyes back up to his. She said nothing to him. She only nodded
yes.
Immediately Callum's tank top and shorts lay on the floor with Reyna's tunic, underthings, and shoes. Callum and Reyna themselves sat a few steps away on the bed, naked on their knees facing each other, their hands exploring the new worlds of each other's body. The kisses came in long, slow, tender succession, with their mouths playing and sucking at each other. For all the men she had ever known, Reyna could not imagine she had ever experienced a finer body than that of Ty Callum. This man who spent his travels in quest of the treasures of space was a treasure himself. His every muscle was a piece of round, smooth, firm perfection--chest, arms, stomach, buttocks, thighs. He was every bit a heavenly body, a celestial object. His body was subtly, lightly haired, touched with just a tiny bit of fuzz on the pecs and forearms. And reaching out to her from the thicker, denser hair at his crotch was something like a torpedo of galvanized flesh with a blunt and tingling warhead. Reyna's heart raced at the prospect of being the target of that weapon of manhood, even as his kisses devoured her lips ever more urgently. They descended together onto the bed, two Captains, each now in command of the other.
Callum spread himself out on the bed, his torpedo becoming a mighty rocket standing erect on a launchpad. With Reyna lying half atop him, he whispered, "Put your head down below and your woman parts up here," at the latter part gesturing to his lips. Reyna at once took his meaning and maneuvered herself as he requested, going down to service his rocket while straddling his face with her pubis, and they moved together like docking spacecraft into a "69." What followed was a sensation more wonderful than free-fall, as Reyna slipped the tower of Callum's erection into her mouth and Callum explored her moist and glistening pink entrance with the wet probe of his tongue. Soon she was filled with Callum in two ways, his steely shaft throbbing him her mouth and his slippery tongue passing into her channel. Callum bent his knees to feed her all of himself and she took all that he had, while moving a hand around one of his thighs to caress the round, tender softness of his sac and the sensitive man-berries it contained. She gulped in a dizziness of delight at their simultaneous eating of each other, pulling at his wondrously hard length and letting it slide along her tongue, while his own tongue lolled in and out of her womanhood and lapped up the female nectar that it poured forth. Withdrawing his tongue from inside her, he sent his fingers into her next, while the tip of his tongue sought out the bulbous little nexus of her pleasure and teased at it, sending quakes of euphoria up and down her body. For each tremor of elation he gave her, Reyna gave his sac a tender squeeze, creating a shared rhythm between them.