Princess of the Void

There are days that Ajax of the Black Pike thinks that his life couldn’t get any better. Days in the morning mess, surrounded by friends and comrades. Lifting in the bleeding-edge gym, shooting the shit with the other NCOs, the gravity field machines, the hardlight sparring targets. Standing guard outside the command deck, at a parade rest that’s become more comfortable for him than a warm bath. Gazing into the swirling firmament, thinking, this is you, Ajax. You were supposed to be a househusband and you’re a frontier marine instead. This is your home. These are your people.

Those are the nights he can go to bed ignoring the gap in his life where love goes. No calls with parents—he spat in their faces and lit out for the frontier. No clan ties or siblings—he disowned them, and they disowned him in turn. No girlfriend—he doesn’t have the time. His life is already so full. No room for a lady.

There’s other nights when he can’t fall asleep. Nights his bed feels so large and empty he gets lost in it. He’s having more of those days, of late, ever since the Princess disappeared.

Today, he’s standing guard outside the upper-level situated command deck. He’s thinking about the wicket game he’s got planned after duty with Corporal Pradak. The tiebreaker match. Some of the guys have money on it, most of it against him. Whatever.

He switches thoughts, to wondering how the agro harvest is going. He’s got an intermittent friends-with-benefits situation with one of the botanists there, a tough scrap of a lady with a barking laugh that used to get on his nerves.

He switches thoughts again. Like a radio broadcast. Anything to stop paying attention to the noises beyond the command deck door. Voices raised in argument and reproach, heedless of the marine who might be listening.

Heedless, as they should be. He is not listening. Listening is not what he’s for.

Eventually the pyrotechnics settle down. He hears boots on metal approach the door and straightens his spine a notch or two.

Majordomo Vora, his acting commander, stomps from the command deck. “Hellfire,” she grits under her breath. “Fucking hellfire.” Ajax salutes her, although his prediction that she wouldn’t even notice is proven correct. That woman is so high-tension that when she snaps, she’s going to dent the membrane.

A half-minute after the majordomo’s storm passes, his commanding officer slips from the deck. The snarl of uncertaintly in Ajax’s gut begins to untangle, just from her presence. No need to stress about the majordomo. It’s in Hyax’s hands, and so is he.

He salutes her. “Ma’am.”

She salutes back. “Sergeant.”

Ajax looks onto the command deck. No Chief Engineer.

“Waian didn’t attend this one.” Hyax is watching his glance. “She’s prepping for the new engineer corps’s onboarding. And she didn’t want to be in the middle of the talk we were having with Chancellor Fike.”

“Ma’am.” Ajax returns to his parade rest standby. “Permission to ask a question?”

“Granted, Sergeant.”

“The meeting with the chancellor. It didn’t seem like it went well.”

Hyax grimaces. “On second though, permission rescinded.”

Ajax straightens up and shuts his mouth.

Hyax glances at him and sighs. “The majordomo is capable, but she isn’t a Void Princess. And she isn’t Sykora. The new wave of recruits has come with a fuck-ton of strings attached. All the nobility who were terrified of the Princess are eager to sink in their teeth when she’s gone. All the funders and boosters who fawned and fell in line, turning on her enterprises.” She scoffs. “Makes you sick.”

“Ma’am. How long…” He trails off and shuts his mouth.

Hyax shakes her head. “Just say it, Sergeant.”

“How long until we give up the search?”

“Officially, we won’t. Not until the Empress assigns a new Void Princess to the Pike. Unofficially?” Hyax clicks her tongue. “The Imperial Core gets more insistent every day. If it was up to them we’d have a new leader already. Command group has an informal agreement. Two decacycles and we give in.”

“What do you think, ma’am? Where is she?”

Hyax examines him. He sees the decision form on her scarred, red-eyed face. She knows what everyone knows about Sergeant Ajax: he knows how to keep his mouth shut. “I reckon she’s dead.”

Ajax lets this pronouncement settle and breathe, like a wadded-up paper opening.

“If she was alive, she’d have made it back to the Pike by now,” Hyax says. “She’d never countenance an absence this long, from her ship and her people. But until we have our replacement Princess, there’s no reason to change what we’re doing.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You and I are tools, Sergeant. We aren’t feckless noblewomen. We are ZKZ marines. We stay honed, we stay ready to be taken up, and when a job is to be done, we do it. Remember that and you’ll be all right. Not our job to worry about what is we’re being used for. As long as the people who use us are people we trust. You trust me, Sergeant?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She reaches up and slaps his pauldron. “And I trust the majordomo. So we’re all right.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good lad.” She salutes him. He salutes back.

He watches the Brigadier stride away toward the lift, her stance wide and commanding. And a more complicated man wouldn’t be comforted by what she told him. Would think further on the subtext of her words, would micro-analyze the way she said them. Ajax knows, intellectually, that she might just be saying what she thinks he needs to hear.

But Ajax is not a complicated man—he’s a marine. And he trusts his Brigadier.

He’s all right.

***

They tell Ajax that his afternoon assignment is commanding the hangar marines, so that’s where he goes. Corporal Talem’s the handoff watch. He salutes as he unstraps the section command shoulder pad. “How’s the horns, sarge?”

Ajax takes the proffered pad. “One longer than the other.”

Talem chuckles. “Don’t pull anything helping them unload, yeah? I’ve got five recs on you tonight.”

“Gambling recreation scrip is against regulation,” Ajax says.

“You wanna report me, you’re gonna bury your odds deeper.”

“Maybe I want that.” Ajax straps the symbol of his temporary station to his spaulder. “Maybe I’ve got money on me, right?”

Talem takes his leave. Ajax returns the salute to the clutch of privates he’s overseeing. That’s Goran, Pentine, and what’s-his-face with the lisp.

A piece of the night outside the Pike detaches and ripples through its membrane, the frequency-match causing a pale fire that heats the exposed skin on Ajax’s wrists for the moment it takes the carrier’s membrane to harmonize.

Pentine goes ooh under his breath. Kid’ll get used to it.

Hangar crewmates scurry through the catwalks, bringing docking hoses and guiding in scaffolds and skybridges. The shuttle carrier’s doors slide open, and disgorge a chattering cadre of new blood for the Black Pike’s increasingly anemic roster.

It’s the engineer corps today, and predictably it’s almost all women. Ajax can count the number of male Navy engineers he’s met on one hand. The awe shines on the recruits’ red-eyed faces as they take in the Pike’s bleeding-edge stardock.

His attention strays across the line of engineers, and snags on a woman, in the middle of a laughing conversation with her neighbor. She’s one of the shortest of the Pike’s new complement, can’t be more than 90 centimeters.

A lot of girls approach you when you’re a marine. It gives you the opportunity to learn your type. Ajax has been with thin, delicate women. It was not for him. Ajax likes his partners sturdy and bouncy. Ajax likes a girl who you can eat with and drink with and get a little rough with. Ajax likes a girl who can keep you warm at night.

Ajax likes this new girl a lot.

Button nose, full lips, wide expressive eyes that crinkle as she laughs at whatever her friend said. Her body is curvaceous and cuddly, like a stuffed animal come to life. A galaxy of freckles covers her round face and the tops of her heavy breasts, which are visible beneath her ribbed top and her partially-zipped coveralls in Pike black-and-red. Colors aren’t easy, really, through the amber anticomp filters, but he’s pretty sure those are pink highlights in her fluffy brown hair. Pink like the rest of her.

There’s always an adjustment with every batch of new recruits, where they think they have a chance with you just because you’re a marine. He doesn’t go to bed with newbies. Even the ones he has chemistry with, he prefers to let marinate for a while in the Pike and get a few sweeps under their belts, so they understand that marines aren’t just coin-operated dick appointments.

But this newbie—

“Well met, marine.”

He looks toward the voice. A pitted and scarred woman, rangy and gray at the temples, tugs her glove off and holds out her hand. “I’m the one in charge of these folks. Specialist Jora of Antroc.”

Ajax shakes it. “Sergeant Ajax of the Pike. I’m the one in charge of these.” He nods toward the line of marines. “Welcome aboard, Specialist. How was the flight?”

“Long and cramped,” Jora says. “Good practice, hey?”

He grins beneath his visor. As a marine you learn how to smile so it’s audible. “Yes, ma’am.”

A voice like a thrak-horn, clarion and sweet, says “Ajax?”

He looks to the voice. The curvy little pink woman is staring at him. “Pardon me for the interruption—you said your name was Sergeant Ajax?”

“That’s right.”

“Dude.” Her big round eyes light up. “We know each other,” she says. “I’m Meena? From Aodok Academy?”

Shock straightens Ajax’s tail. “Meena. Hey, girl.”

She’s right; they do know each other, although it’s taking Ajax a moment to separate her from all the other acquaintances he made in the academy. She was a gangly girl then, awkward angles and shrugging shoulders. She wasn’t an outcast, really, but she wasn’t part of his circle. She was one of those peripheral figures, like an animal at the edge of the firelight, silently pleading for scraps. The girl you invite to the party after you’re sure there’s room for all the important people. Smart and surprisingly funny, when she talked. He remembers that. She just didn’t talk much.

Mousey Meena, that’s what some of the girls used to call her. He vaguely remembers getting into a couple of arguments about that.

He recognizes the smile, now that he’s overlaying his memory across it. Big and a little crooked. And the freckles; he remembers them, too, now. But the rest is different. Very different. If she’d have looked like this at the academy, she wouldn’t have been on the edge of anything. She’d have been able to have any boy she wanted.

“Holy shit, Ajax! Hi!” Meena jogs up to him and hugs him around the middle. The two biggest differences between how she was before and how she is now smush against Ajax’s waist.

He crouches and hugs her back. “Meena. How have you been living? I didn’t know you’d gone Engineering Corps.”

“Yep!” Her tail is nearly a blur, it’s wagging so quick. “Smallcraft focus. Guess I was too much of a softie for officer school.” The plump warmth departs him as she backs up. Her hands linger on his forearms. “It’s so good to see you, dude. I wasn’t sure I’d know anyone on the Pike.”

Jora clears her throat. “Glad you two have reconnected. I’ll get back to it, yes?”

Ajax straightens up and salutes. “If you need any assistance unloading or guidance around the Pike, we’re at your disposal, Specialist.”

“Thank you, marine.” A faint grin on Jora’s face as she looks from the bulky marine to the buxom engineer. “I’ll let you catch up. Hangar muster in five, Meena.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Meena salutes the departing specialist. Ajax tries not to pay too close attention to what it does to her chest. He’s glad the visor is covering his face as she looks back up at him. “It’s been, what? A hecto or so, right?”

“Just about,” he says. “Been a while. It took me a second to recognize you. You’re, uh… you’ve grown up.”

She smirks and cocks her hip. “You talking about how I got kinda fat?”

His blood goes cold. “What? No.”

“It’s cool, Jax.” She giggles. “I know I’m cute.”

Ajax’s shoulders sink with relief. He needs to get a handle on himself. He has underlings watching him.

“I had some problems with anxiety at the academy,” Meena continues. “You remember. Stressed and skinny.”

“Uh huh,” he says, but he doesn’t. Not really. He doesn’t remember much about Meena.

“Anyway one day I’m assigned to the hangar, just on maintenance, and the floor chief offers to show me some stuff, and it was like—” She mimes throwing a switch. “Bam. It made sense, all of a sudden. Like I realized where I was supposed to be. It really was just like that. So I applied for a transfer, and I found out what I was good at, and started taking care of myself. And now I’m happy and fat.”

“No, you aren’t,” he says. “Fat, I mean.”

She laughs. Her tail gives her butt a light slap. “Parts of me are.”

“Well, you look—”

She looks healthy. She looks cute. She looks ready and robust, like she exults in her physicality. She looks like she likes to eat, sure. But she looks like she likes to move, too. To live in her body. She looks made for hard work, and heavy lifting, and raucous dancing, and energetic sex.

She looks—

“You look great,” he says, because you look hot isn’t what a guy says to a girl coworker on her first day.

Her smile makes her cheeks glow. “You do too, Jaxy. What I can see of you, anyway.” Her knuckle taps his gauntlet. “Nice outfit. Very macho.”

“It’s been a second since anyone’s called me Jaxy,” he says. “Kinda left that at the academy.”

“My bad,” she says. “Ajax. I’ll remember.”

“No, hey. It’s all right.” He holds his fist out. “Aodok grads get special dispensation.”

Meena giggles and bumps it.

The truth his he never liked that nickname. It made him feel juvenile. But hearing it in Meena’s mouth, he wants to pick it back up and dust it off, get a better look at it. Maybe he didn’t give it a fair shake when he was at the academy.

“Well listen, I gotta go do the rest of orientation.” She jerks her thumb toward the other engineers, who are starting to gather in the center of the hangar. “But word is that the engie corps is having some kind of taphouse thing tonight at the hab level and they’re okay to bring plus ones. Come through, yeah? We could have a drink and catch up.”

“You don’t have to use your plus one on me.”

“Who else am I gonna use it on? Everyone I know I flew in with, and they’re all engineers. And like ninety percent chicks. Engineering school was such a clambake. That’s the only thing I really missed from the academy. Now I’m out and I wanna meet some dudes.”

She laughs, and he laughs with her. “All right,” he says, and then his brain catches up with his tongue. He’s got that wicket game. “Uh, actually—”

Her smile shrinks a little at the edges; and on second thought, fuck wicket. It’s a money match. He’ll make up some kind of excuse and get it rescheduled. He’s been doing what he’s supposed to all day. Maybe he’s hearned a little detour off the regimented path of his life.

“Actually, never mind,” he says. “Yes. I’ll come through. What time is this drinks thing?”

“Twenty two hundred,” she says. “You wanna meet me at the hangar at ten of, we can walk over together?”

Sounds like a date, he thinks.

“Sounds like a plan,” he says.

“Awesome.” She leans forward and hugs him again. Then she hurries away to join the rest of her incoming cadre on the hangar floor.

Ajax watches her go. The coveralls are baggy, but her butt is big enough that they cling snugly to the curves of it as she jogs. For the first time in a long time, he feels that big-empty-bed feeling while it’s still daylight.

“See you tonight,” he calls, louder than he intended. His troops glance over. He should care more about that.

She looks back at him over her shoulder. Her tail bobs her affirmation. Her smile is as sweet and scintillating as the rainbow sweep.