“Well done!” cheered Shirley. “See, I told you he was good.”
Grecca bucked and thrashed in my grip, but she didn’t have the strength to break free. I tried to tickle her, but with her arms bound in front of her chest, I only had access to a small area of her underarms. Forcing her narrow wrists together, I took them in one hand and raised them over and behind her head, and then I had her. I took her elbows in one arm, forcing them against my shoulder, being careful not to put too much pressure on her neck. She was completely immobilized. I let go of her wrists and explored her armpits with my fingertips, ready to begin searching for the right spot to tickle her.
She sputtered a bit as I ran my fingers along the fabric of her uniform on her armpit, but it didn’t have the impact I hoped it would. I caught Shirley signalling to me. She was lifting a curled hand, as if tugging on something. I got it.
I pulled up her shirt on that side to touch her bare skin. That was what it took. In seconds, I had her screaming with tickle-induced laughter. I gave her brief respites for breathing, just as she had done with me, in between thrashing, shrieking bouts under my fingers.
Oh, did that feel good! Having my tormentor at my mercy filled me with a sweet sense of power.
“Oh, please,” she gasped. “Stop, stop! Submit!”
I was probably enjoying it a bit too much. I let her go and stood up, helping her to her feet. The hem of her tight white shirt had ridden up over one small, pink-tipped breast and I felt my cock twitch in response. She had been so undone that she hadn’t noticed—or didn’t care.
Grecca caught her breath and straightened her shirt. I caught the faintest hint of sexual tension in the air.
She had a huge smile on her face. “I forgot how much fun that was.”
“Robert doesn’t like it?”
“Not really room on the ship for it. Too many hard things to run up against.”
Shirley walked out onto the mat. “So you like this game, do you?” Shirley smiled. “Ready for another round?”
“I think so.”
“I’ll warn you, I’m not nearly as ticklish as Grecca.”
“You’re also stronger. I can’t just power through with you the way I did with her. But we’ll see how it goes.”
I’d like to say that I held my own in that bout, but it was no contest, as it had always been with Shirley. She was a master of this kind of combat, and had taught me every trick I knew. There was a quick flurry of moves and countermoves, and I was face down on the mat. She scooped her legs under mine and pinned my legs between her thighs and ankles, then maneuvered my arms into the small of my back one by one. I could buck a little and kick my feet, but her balance was excellent and I had no chance to dislodge her.
“Oh, you’re in trouble now.” Grecca strode into view and knelt down just out of reach. “Give it to him, Shirley. I want to see him squirm.”
As a fighter, Shirley was my better, but she wasn’t the veteran tickler Grecca was. She managed to get a few twitches and squawks out of me, but she sure didn’t have me howling in hysterics.
After a few minutes, she grunted and sat back. “I’m not getting through,” she said. “How did you do it?”
Grecca chuckled. “It’s a light touch. You’re working too hard.”
I took the conversation as an unguarded moment and rolled suddenly to the side, knocking Shirley into Grecca. It was a little bit of a dirty trick, but if there’s anything Shirley taught me it was to use every possible advantage. While they thrashed around trying to disentangle themselves, I leapt onto them. The air whuffed out of their lungs and I easily took control of Shirley’s arms, locking them behind her back. Grecca somehow managed to wriggle out from underneath, but without use of her arms Shirley wasn’t going anywhere.
“Well ,well,” I said, “I think this is a rare victory.”
“No fair.” Grecca coughed, catching her breath. “I wasn’t even part of the fight.”
“You were giving aid and comfort to the enemy, so that makes you an entirely fair target.”
“All right,” said Shirley, “you’ve got me. Do your worst.”
“My worst, eh?” I made sure I had Shirley’s arms firmly in place, with one hand holding them against her back, and shifted slightly so I could use the other hand anywhere I wanted on her body.
“I can take it.”
“All right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I braced myself, then flipped her on her back, as suddenly as I could. I swept her arms under her back with my knees, pinning them underneath her. She tried to get her feet under her to push me up and off, but I grabbed one knee and hooked it with my elbow, curling it up and doubling her over. With the same hand, I grabbed her ankle, immobilizing her leg. Her foot, extended out in front of me, was the perfect target.
Slowly, I drew my hand closer to her foot. Her eyes grew wide. I saw her lips form the word
no
, but she didn’t
quite
say it.
I showed no mercy. As soon as my fingers drew the slightest touch across the sole of her foot, she burst into laughter, and it only intensified as I continued. She thrashed and flailed, but she was wearing herself out faster than she was wearing me out.
“Stop!” she shrieked, finally losing her dignity and composure after several minutes. “Please!”
“You want me to stop?”
“Yes!”
I let go of her foot and immediately grabbed her breast, groping it the way I knew she liked, with her nipple squeezed between my fingers.
Her eyes sprang open and she gasped in surprise. “What are you doing?”
“Doing my worst.” Her gasps turned to moans as I pulled her shirt up and worked my hand underneath. “You want me to stop?”
“Challers, you . . .”
“Yeah. You’re used to being the one in charge. Well you gave me permission to do whatever I like, and this is what I like.”
It was, I realized, the truth. I
did
like this game, I liked it a lot, and I was going to play it for all it was worth.
I didn’t know if she’d ever let me play it again.
I squeezed her breast, pinching her fat nipple between my fingers, kneading and stretching the flesh. “What do you say, Grecca? Should I stop?”
“Vack, no.” Grecca knelt again, a few feet away, watching us with one hand up her shirt and another down in her pants. “Make her come.”
“Gotta do what the superior officer says, Shirley. Unless you want to countermand the order?”
Shirley was shaking her head tentatively, but she didn’t say a word.
I twisted, getting my hand behind me and worming it up the leg of her shorts. One creeping push at a time, it approached her pussy. The angle was awkward, but she had stopped thrashing around, so I was able to get my hand right up to the edge of her cunt.
She was sodden—soaking wet.
I pushed on, working my way deeper, gradually slipping my fingers between her juicy lips.
“I think you like this, too. You’re not used to this. Most of the time, you’re the one in charge, the one deciding what will happen where and when.”
I pulled her shorts down under her ass. I couldn’t see very well, but I knew that her pussy would be much more exposed.
Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted, and I could feel her sweat soaking through my shorts. I reached behind me and put my hand on her pussy, finding her familiar sensitive places just by touch.
“Am I right? Are you as aroused by this as I am?”
She nodded, too far gone in her ecstasy to speak.
I didn’t need to see what I was doing to do a good job. I knew Shirley’s sex almost as well as my own. I rubbed and tweaked, and occasionally thrust a finger or two inside, watching her face for the clues as to which should happen when. After only a couple of minutes, I left her gasping and mewing on the floor.
Grecca helped me to my feet. “That was an impressive performance.”
“Why thank you,” I said.
Shirley made quiet little sounds, but they weren’t really words.
Everything, once again, had changed.
“Looks like he’s all yours,” said Shirley, as she stood up from the table, leaving her lunch half-eaten. “I’ll see you in a few days.” She gave Grecca a friendly hug.
“Have fun.” Grecca winked.
Turning to me, Shirley took my hand and kissed the palm, the same gesture she had made when she first met me, and then left without a word.
“What is that?” I asked Grecca. “Kissing my hand that way? At first I thought it was a Scout thing, but she seems to be the only one who does it.”
“I don’t know. Shirley’s done that as long as I’ve known her.”
“How long is that?”
“I met her during my time at the academy. She came to visit Robert much the same way he’s coming to visit her now.” She pulled out her tablet. “So, a free hour until Astronavigation class. What would you like to do?”
“I usually spend it working on my independent research project, but that seems a little impolite.”
“Why don’t you show me what you’ve been doing? I saw the work that Shirley sent to Robert; it’s really impressive.”
“Okay! That sounds great.” I pushed my lunch tray aside and took out my tablet. “My first project was on the Ovors. Now I’m working on the Sinden.”
She set her tray on top of mine and sat forward, her expression full of eager anticipation.
“I don’t really have anything compiled yet. I’m still just gathering sources.”
“That’s fine. Show me what you’ve got.”
I opened the Sinden directory. “Here’s a recording of a visit to a Sinden station.”
I pulled up a holographic record, and ran it forward to the point where the recorder was about to open a hatch from the landing bay into the station proper. The portal was all sweeping, graceful curves of white and green. There was nothing utilitarian about it, nothing damaged or dirty.
Then the hatch parted revealing a wide, bowl-shaped room. The whole station seemed to be one huge oxygen deck; there were lawns of grass and stands of trees dotted with small buildings of the same elegant architecture. Splashes of color, probably flowers, could be seen here and there. Above, a domed roof soared, all transparent, allowing a yellow star to bathe the interior in warm light.
Most stunning, however, was a group of a dozen or so people standing a short distance downhill. They were tall, willowy people with pale complexions and elongated features. Their faces were elegantly defined and, even though each of them had long, flowing hair, the tips of their pointed ears were visible. They wore knee-length tunics of a satiny material in greens and blues accented with silver. While there was a certain androgyny to their features, it was easy to see that this race did have two genders. The one at the head of the group spoke, but I had the volume turned down.
“Those are odd looking people,” said Grecca. “Beautiful, but odd. What’s the story behind that?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll find out. Some newgens have a practical body form, like Ovors, but sometimes I think it’s just fashion. It’s one of the more interesting things about this kind of research.”
In the hologram, the Sindens parted, forming lines on either side of a path leading down to the nearest of the white buildings. Drawing closer, we could see that the building was a tall cylinder, its middle pinched in just a bit, and at the top, an array of graceful spires probed upward and outward. Writing of some kind was inscribed on the outer walls in horizontal stripes.
I closed that recording and brought up a galaxy diagram with a few blue highlights.
“The Sindens have only a few stations, way out on the downstream end of the Coreward Reach. They don’t seem to be worried about expansion as much as preservation. According to some of my sources, they have records going back almost to the beginning of the Scattering, but for some reason, the Scouts have never gotten hold of them.”
“Fascinating.”
We paged through more of my sources, some of which consisted of passing references in logs, and external scans of their stations. What made them most fascinating to me was how little there was about them in the data banks.
“Have you seen many newgens, out there?” I glanced in the direction of the mess hall doors, as if they led directly out to the galaxy as a whole.