Asking Aaden · Part 2

Asking Aaden · Part 2 (2/2)
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r into microwaves which then get masered to receiving stations on the walls. The accuracy required is pretty intense, but we've never had a problem. An alternative method was to build the reflecters beyond the ring, and have the maser beams shot into receivers along the underside of the ring. That become untenable when we realized we were going to need the underside for environmental maintenance and the like. Besides, the ring walls are fifty kilometers thick and the beam spreads to a maximum of two kilometers at any given moment. There's backup upon backup upon backup to make sure that nothing ever goes wrong."

David nodded. "Sounds like a dangerous plan."

"It can be. It means that along the circumference of the southern polar rim there's a good chance of running into a fatal dosage of microwaves at any second. We're talking about millions of Joules per second. But we keep traffic away from the region."

"I bet it would make a good defense weapon," David said.

"It will," Shardik smiled, "if we ever need it to. That's why there's a matching set of projectors on the northern polar rim of the shadow squares, even if there are no receivers on the northern polar wall."

People started filtering in slowly. David found himself surrounded by an array of Pendorian species, and Denni was kept busy catching up on old times and introducing everyone to the mel she was going to marry. Some people found the idea positively entrancing, although others seemed to think it was a bit silly. But all of them were willing to go along with the plan, if that's what she and her coimelin wanted.

Dinner, David found, was a relatively informal affair. A small cadre of people were apparently volunteered to serve dinner that night, one of whom was Shardik himself. "What'll you have, Captain Elohim?" he asked, smiling.

"Uhm…" David pointed to a few items, and Shardik dished them out of the wheeled cart he was leading around the table. Finally, after everyone seemed to be served, he sat down between Aaden and a femTindal that David guessed, although it was pretty apparent from her white eyemarkings, to be P'nyssa Traken. Denni sat next to Aaden, and he next to her. Shardik looked down the table. "So, tell me, David, can you promise my little girl a long and happy life?"

"Daddy!" Denni objected.

"No, wait. It's a fair question. I should be able to answer it. All I can say, sir, is that I will try to give her the life she wants."

"Fair enough," Shardik said. "Denni, do you really want to be a starship crewfen for the rest of your very long life?"

"Yes," she said easily, smiling. "Absolutely. It's really the only life I can imagine for myself. And now, with David, I think I could do it as happily as I could ever after." She reached down and took his hand. He squeezed back.

"Sounds like a match made in heaven," Aaden said, smiling.

"Or at least in a vacuum," P'nyssa observed. Shardik laughed.

As desert was being served, Aaden turned to David and said, "Can you tell me something? What does the name of your ship mean?"

"Oh, that," David replied, smiling. "It comes from something my parent's Patrons used to say. I was a very inquisitive child, but I would ask first before I tried to take something apart. I was always asking questions. Even though I was the second child in the household, and my Patrons had already raised my folks, they always called me 'the rat.' I guess because I was the runt in the house at the time, being only four or five when this happened. But they would say, 'The Rat's asking again,' when I wanted to know something, like where do babies come from or how does an oven work. 'The Rat's asking again,'" David repeated. "I attribute my success to my ability to ask questions over and over until I get to the right question with the right answer. I figured, when I bought my first starship, that it needed a name to symbolize that success. 'The Rat's Asking,' was it."

Long after night had fallen, Aaden led David and Dennielle to a room that had been set aside for them. "I understand I won't be seeing you in the morning?"

"No, we'll be leaving early. Almost at half-past 13," Denni replied, turning to face her father.

Aaden nodded, pulled Denni close into a hug. "You're as bad as Rainy is, Denni. You know you'll always have a place here."

Denni nodded. "Give everybody my love, Dad. I know where you think my home is, but I really think my home is in the stars, and I need someone like David to share it with."

Aaden seperated himself from his daughter, turned to the nervously shifting rat that stood to one side. "I don't know if you know what you're getting yourself into, young mel, but I agree with my coimelin; you've always taken good care of your loved ones in the past, even if that loved one was a starship. Take care of my daughter; I don't have very many."

David nodded, gulping air. "I will sir."

"Good man. Well, goodnight you two. I'll probably be up for another three hours or so, and our dom is right there, across the hall. Just knock."

The door to their own room opened as Aaden retreated down the hallway, and they entered the room as the door closed behind them. It looked like a living room; to their right was a fully stocked kitchen. The back wall was apparently a sliding glass door; David stepped out onto a narrow porch (barely two meters wide) and looked out. To his left, the ocean; to his right, the mountains. Leading away in front of him was the flat stone surface of what he knew must be the Marbletop Mountain Range. "David?" Denni asked, her voice floating by him.

He turned. "Yes?"

"I'm going to take a shower and get ready for bed. Would you… like to join me?"

David thought about it. It's not true that starships are usually desperately low on water supplies; in fact, most ships have an abudance of water that would have shocked the maritime sailors of yesteryear. Nor is it that starships lack hot water exclusively; starships very often have an overabundance of heat, and engineers are constantly looking for ways to redistribute that heat about the ship. Cold water is more likely to be the missing commodity than hot.

What starships lack, more than anything else, is space. So much of the wallspace, floors, ceilings and hull of the ship is dedicated to either life support or cargo that there's usually very little room left over for creature comforts like a shower that can hold two. Despite the largess of his bedroom, David's shower was still nothing more than a cubicle built to the specifications of one (1) standard human frame. For him, it was quite spacious. But Denni, who was both taller than the average human and probably a little thicker about the middle, filled his stall to capacity. They could never shower together onboard.

Now, though, he was land-bound, and probably they had ample room in the shower downstairs. Shardiks did have reputations as a bit sybaritic, and that probably extended towards their bathrooms as well as anything else. "Denni," he replied, "I'd be delighted."

"Come on, then." She held out her hand, and he took it. He wasn't surprised to find another gravity well leading downwards, this time into a bedroom. "That's the bed?"

"Uh-huh," she said. "Huge, isn't it? Come here, you've got to see the showers. I grew up in these things!" She giggled and led him through a very ordinary wooden door into the bathroom. Done entirely in blue tile, the room was dominated by a giant, frosted-glass box in the far corner from the door he had entered. "That's the shower?"

"That's it. Go on, get in. I need to use the toilet. I'll see you when I get in there. The controls are easy." She opened the door and shoo'ed David inside before closing the door again.

David surveyed the room; Vaguely square, but for a slice that ran across the two main walls of the bathroom, giving the room a lopsided- pentagon geometry. On one wall a small spherical showerhead made of gray was stuck into the tile. Below it he found three touch controls marked "Temperature," "Pressure," "Massage." He touched the "Temperature" control. Nothing happened. Then the "Pressure" control.

Suddenly, water spat out of the showerhead and flowed into the stall. He ducked under the falling stream and put his hand out. "Ow!"

"Too hot?" Denni called.

"Yeah. How do I turn it down?"

"Run your finger down the 'Temperature' control until it's where you like it." David did so, and he finally found a temperature he liked. A bottle of liquid soap completed his needs, and he dove into the needling stream, sighing.

"Like that?" Denni asked as she entered the stall.

"I feel like I'm washing in a basketball court in the rain." He laughed, glancing over at her beautiful, naked figure. She laughed and stepped forward, hugging him. "I love you," she sighed.

"I love you too," he replied, his hands reaching down to caress along the insides of her thighs. She shivered slightly. "Your tickling me again," she warned.

"I know."

She grabbed him tightly and pivoted on her heel, turning him around until they had rotated half way and she was in the shower stream. "Let me get washed, would you?"

He smiled and said "Can I wash you?"

"Would you?" she asked, smiling down at him.

"You'll have to kneel for me to get your headfur." He felt thrilled as she dropped down to her knees. There was something vaguely obscene about the gesture, but he ignored it as he poured soap onto his paws and began stroking it onto her head and about her cheekruffs, down the backs of her rounded ears and onto her neck. She let out a soft moan of pleasure as his hands worked against her fell, stroking deep against the tired muscles underneath. "Can I take that showerhead off the wall?" he asked.

"I think so," she said. "I don't imagine they'd have the guest room arranged differently from the rest." David reached up and pulled the showerhead away, and the sphere came free in his hands, still spitting water. He was surprised at the amount of strength it took to hold the thing still. Three controls, like the ones on the wall, were located on the back of the ball, and he dialed the pressure down low. Once satisfied, he rinsed her head and face clean of soap. "There, now you won't get suds in your eyes."

"Thanks," she smiled. He poured more soap into his hands and began his way down her back, scratching in small, sudsy circles. She sighed gently, and in a moment of daring he reached around her chest and stroked her breasts. She moaned softly, and he caressed them with a little more strength, enjoying their massive firmness, enjoying the feeling of her large nipples passing underneath his fingers. She cooed. "David…"

He grinned as his hands slid down her belly, rolling the soft skin under his palms. "I love you, Denielle."

She turned slowly, the suds still covering her body, and leaned forward, taking his unerect sheath into her mouth. David gasped as the warmth of her tongue spread over his sheath, and he felt the blood rushing into his groin, his erection becoming apparent almost instantly. Her mouth slid along the length, and he hissed into the echoning showerstall at the intense pleasure her suckling mouth was causing him. "Oh, Denielle…"

"That got you excited, I see," she said, grabbing the soap and pouring some over David's erection. "I need to be cleaned, David. Outside and inside." She grinned. "Can you do the insides, first?"

David smirked. "That, my love, I can do right now." He slowly pushed her down to the padded floor and slid between her legs. Between the soap and her excitement, his cock slid into her cunny without hesitation. "Oh, yes," she gasped. "I love you inside me."

"Good," David said. Holding himself up by the arms, he began a slow, easy stroking as his cock slid between the lips of her cunt. The slickness was almost too much; he didn't feel much, but looking down at the sudsy mass of foam collecting between their groins, watching his cock sliding in and out of her blackfurred and tight cunny, made his pleasure seem all the more intense.

Denni's hands reached down between them and held her lips open, a finger stroking her clit softly. The top of his pubic bone struck against her fingers every other stroke or so, and he found the sensation odd. He knelt between her legs, making love to her, his hands pressed against her sides. He felt his climax rise, and when he came he growled loudly, his voice heading into high octaves and ending in a whimper. "Oh, Denny," he gasped. "I love you."

"Love you, too," she said. "Hand me the showerhead, would you? I need to rinse off."

"Huh?"

"Watch," she said. She aimed the water at her cunny, dialing the pressure low and rinsing the sudsy mess out and off with the water. David watched, feeling somewhat peculiar as she dialed the pressure higher and higher. Her breathing became rapid and shallow as her cunny seemed to swell, pushing out against the pressure of the water. When he looked into her face, her jaw was off-center, biting her lip, and eyes were clamped tightly closed. Her breathing came faster and deeper, and suddenly she came loudly, moaning and shaking. "Oh, wow!"

"Denni?"

"David?" she replied, looking up at him. "What?"

"Your orgasm seemed really strong. I can't do that with you."

Denni reached out, her hand stroking his cheek. "You do other things for me, David. We don't know what we're capable of as lovers, but even if you could never bring me orgasms as powerful as that, it wouldn't change that I love you. That's different, it exists for different reasons."

David nodded, then lunged for her and hugged her tight. "I love you."

She murred her reply, hugging him closely. "Let's get finished."

"Okay," he said, reaching for the soap.

A soft buzzer went off over David's head. He opened his eyes and looked up at the mirrored ceiling and shook his head. "David," the AI's voice said over the speakers, "You said you wanted to be awakened at thirteen and twenty."

David yawned. "Yes, thank you, Dave." He felt a little self-conscious about addressing a room with his own first name, but he figured he would get over it eventually. He nudged Denni lightly. "Denni?"

"Hmmm?" she said, looking up. Her eyes were pale and unfocussed.

"Ship pulls in an hour and a half. Let's get ready to go."

She was immediately sitting upright. "Let's go, then." They dressed efficiently in light-blue jumpsuits with The Rat's Asking logos, a rat, rampant, with a questionmark hovering before its eyes, emblazoned over the left breast pocket. She kissed him softly on the cheek as the SDisked back to Parma. Twenty minutes later, they were in their respective stations.

David took the microphone and pulled it towards him. "Okay, people, we're going to watch Tasha do her stuff in reverse, and in less than thirty hours we should be seeing the beautiful blue skies of Terra.

— "Asking Aaden" The Journal Entries of Kennet R'yal Shardik, et. al., And Related Tales are (c) 1989, 1990 Elf Matheiu Sternberg. May be freely distributed by cybernetic media; hardcopies are limited to single printings for personal use. — (Elf Sternberg)

Asking Aaden · Part 2 (2/2)
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