Princess of the Void

Their fourth date is on the agro level. Tea among the hydroponic hedge mazes and riotous blooms. He asks her about her family back on Aodok, her funny sister who’d visit sometimes.

“Her wife is some kind of big-deal recording industry exec,” she says. “They dropped a bundle on zygomatic encoding and now they’re on their second litter.”

“What about your brother? How’s he?”

“They fired him from the drydock and he had a breakdown,” she says. “He’s in a re-ed station on Torwik.”

“Oh. Shit.”

“Yeah.” She sips her webleaf tea. “Knew he should have enlisted. He was always too independent for the private freighters. They want a guy with loose anticomps and tight pants.”

Another hug when they depart. This one lingers. She takes a deep breath against his chest. Her tail wags.

“I’m taking you to Revelry this nineday,” she says.

“I might have plans.” He tries to keep the grin out of his voice. This is a little ritual they started on date two, where he pretends like he isn’t gradually reorganizing his life around her.

“You do,” she says. “You’re going to Revelry.” Her tail wraps around his and squeezes it. “Wear that red uniform again, okay?”

“You like that one?”

Her eyes gleam as they walk to the lift together, past the puttering agrodroids and their geometric furrows. “I’m obsessed with it.”

***

“A drink, Sergeant?” Revelry’s slim, dancerly waiter tarries by their table. “I’ve got a mushroom liquor in from Agro that’d put a kink in your tail.”

Ajax is about to reply when Meena cuts him off. “None for us, thanks.”

He frowns as the waiter bows and moves on. Normally he doesn’t mind when Meena makes the choices for him on these things; he’s grown to trust her understanding of his tastes. This feels different. “I was thinking of having a drink.”

“I know. Forgive me.” Meena touches his hand. “But stay sober for me tonight, okay? All the way sober.”

His lips purse. “Why?”

“Because I’m going to ask you a question after dinner,” she says. “And I wanna know you’re sure of your answer.”

He loves the ykrute here, usually—it’s his favorite curry on the Pike. But a queer anxiety is dulling his tongue tonight. He barely tastes it. Meena is acting… off. She keeps glancing his way and giving him this uncertain little half-smile.

He’s mopping up the last of the verdant dregs in his bowl when she tips her chair back. A forward lean as she stands, and she whispers in his ear: “Come to the bathroom with me.” She must read the consternation off his face or his tightening knuckles. “We’ll be quick. I just need to tell you something in private.”

He’s in tactical mode as he departs the table with her, scanning the dark oak dining room for anyone who might be looking askance their way. Nobody does.

He steps past Meena into Revelry’s spotless tiled bathroom. Her tail snakes around the lock and engages it.

“Before I ask you anything.” She turns slowly from the frosted-glass door. “I owe you the truth about something, Jaxy.”

He blinks. “The truth? Uh. Yes.”

The truth.” She takes a deep breath. “I was assigned to a different ZKZ.”

“You were? Which?”

“The Pyre Electric.”

“Pyre Electric?” Ajax whistles. “That’s half a counterspin around the Empire. That’s so far. They were down to sweep you that far?”

She nods. “There was no more room aboard the Pike—cutbacks on the junior crew thanks to the Princess disappearing. A mentor pulled a string or two and I landed a Specialist position on the Pyre.”

“A Specialist? Right out of apprenticeship? Shit, Meen. Why didn’t you take it?”

“Because, Jaxy,” Meena says. “The Pyre wasn’t the plan. The Pike was. The Pike’s been the plan for decacycles.”

A strange, zero-grav feeling is lodging in Ajax’s stomach. He sits on the toilet’s closed lid.

“So you know what I did?” Meena says. Her voice is low and quiet and urgent. The voice he remembers she used to have.

“What?”

“I did everything I could

“What’s so special about the Pike?”

“You, Ajax.” Her eyes flicker across his face. “You’re what’s so special about the Pike.”

His heart thumps in his ears. “What?”

“I knew you were on it, Ajax.” Meena is close to him. “I knew I’d get to see you again.”

“Meena.” The roof of his mouth is dry. “What the fuck?”

“I was tolerated by everyone else. Just tolerated. They only let me in where they did because of you, Ajax. You were kind to me. And strong. And sexy.” Closer, now—close enough to feel her breath. To count every freckle in the galaxy across her soft chest. “And I never stopped thinking about you. I’d look into the sky at night and imagine you out there somewhere. And I knew—I knew—I needed to come here."

"You—but—What if I'd had someone already?"

She breathes a quiet laugh. "Jaxy. I'd just fought off a whole graduating class. I wasn't about to let some hangarside hussy get in my way. Engineering wasn't all I learned at apprenticeship. Wasn't even the most important thing. Not really. What I learned is that I have to be greedy." Her hand lands on his chest. "What I learned is when Mousey Meena really really want something, she's good at getting it. I'd have found a way to take you from whoever I needed to."

When was the last time Meena blinked in this conversation? He’s not sure, suddenly.

"And then I came here. And you hadn’t given yourself to anyone. And I couldn’t fucking believe it.” Her fingers tighten on his uniform's lapel. “This treasure. You haven’t given it away yet.”

“I’ve—I’ve had girlfriends.” His heart hammers against her palm. “I’ve dated.”

“I’m not talking about girlfriends. Or dating. I’m talking about you. All of you.”

Her hand travels up. It wraps gently around his anticomps.

“I came here,” she whispers, “to claim you.”

His breathing goes shallow. A whole-body shiver flows through him. He was supposed to be claimed already. By the woman he was supposed to be wed to. The woman he was supposed to be the possession of, to obey. He fled to the furthest frontier of the Empire to escape it.

Her little fingers are undoing the strap of his anticomps. Why isn’t he stopping her? She's unstable. This woman. She's obsessed.

He feels like he’s in a dream. Like his body won’t respond to him. Like the logic he’s been operating on his entire life is drifting elsewhere.

The protective amber lifts away. The true colors of the world rush to replace it. He stares into her magma-red eyes, and it’s like she’s holding him at gunpoint. Like there’s a knife to his throat. She could flash him now. Flash him and take everything from him. His body, his future, his life. They’re all in Meena’s hands.

And he’s afraid. He’s more afraid than he’s ever been. His pulse is racing. But there’s something pushing through the fear. Something hungry and desperate and joyful. And when she doesn’t flash him, when she cups his face with her soft, humid hands, it blooms and sings.

“You don’t remember, do you?” She strokes his face. “You don’t remember that night by the lake.”

The night by the lake. What’s she talking about? He racks his brain. “When I gave you… a piggyback ride? Is that what you mean?”

“I mean what happened next. What you told me.” She smiles strangely. “I don’t think you remember much about me at all, Jaxy.”

“I’m, uh—”

That’s okay. I’m glad. I left every bit of that sadsack little girl behind. But try to remember this for me, okay?”

She leans forward.

“You were gonna put me down.” Her voice is a liquid whisper. “And I said please don’t. Please, Jaxy. And you looked at me. The way you’re looking at me right now. And you ran off into the woods with me. And you carried me to the lakeside. Near the shitty little pier nobody used.”

Breath on his cheek. The skinny little teenaged girl on his back laughing in his ear, higher and prettier than he’d ever heard her laugh. The twigs cracking under his feet. The receeding smell of woodsmoke.

“It was the night you told me your secret,” Meena says.

***

“Wait wait I’m slipping.” Meena giggled. “Jaxy. Wait. Put me down. I’m gonna fall on my butt.”

Ajax slid to a halt on the silty leaves. They’d fled the sounds of music and conversation and the crackling of the bonfire. Now all he could hear was the lapping of the lakeside, and the billow of his own breath. He let Mousey Meena off his back (don’t call her that, she doesn’t deserve that) and squatted on the ground, looking out at the lake. No clouds that night; it was a cauldron of stars. He looked into their depths, at the firmament reflected within, and thrilled inside, at the thought he’d be up there someday. Someday soon.

“Naro shouldn’t have been giving you shit.” Meena’s voice was back to its mumbled bashfulness. “He was being such a cock.”

“A cock.” Ajax grinned as he sat on the bank. “Look at Meena. You got a Navy mouth on you already.”

“Well, the cocksleeve fits.” She crossed her arms. He chuckled. Meena’s funny, he thought. Why doesn’t she talk more?

“He is a cock,” he said. “But whatever. I don’t care about his cock opinions. Man’s just an Imperial Core burnout, jealous I threw away what he couldn’t even get.”

“I think you’re really brave, Jaxy. Leaving home like that. I think it’s really cool.”

“Meen.” He gestured her over, a wavering come hither to the water’s edge. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Uh huh.” She sat next to him. So slight that the wind off the lake might pluck her up and blow her away.

“It wasn’t the marriage that was the problem,” he said. “I didn’t give a fuck. It wasn’t belonging to someone else. I’d have let that happen.”

“It wasn’t?”

He shook his head. “I grew up in the Core. And I pretend otherwise, but I want that. I want it. I want to be obedient. I’d be someone’s fuckin’ househusband. I would. But who it was. I mean, who was she? Some bitch I didn’t even—shouldn’ta called her that.” He burped. “I’m drunk.”

“That’s okay.”

“I want someone who has a use for me. Not for their business that involves me. Some Imperial Core magnate who’s gonna use me as fuckin’ collateral.”

She stared at him. The distant fire’s gleam caught in her eyes. “You deserve better than that.”

“Everyone says Ajax is a masculinist. Ajax is gonna get his anticomps stapled to his face. That’s not even—like I’m just a regular dude. I want to serve. I really fucking do.” He looked at his hands, at the lines of his palms. “I wanna girl with a cute face and a fat ass who’ll run my life.” He laughed, loose and woozy. “I’m being such a cliche marine right now.”

She giggled. “No you’re not.”

“I want to get compelled,” he said. “And get taken care of. And give someone my kids. And all that shit. I just wanna know they want me because I’m me. I’m fucking cool. I’m strong and I look good and I want to be owned. I do. Just by someone who deserves me. That’s all.”

“Who, though?”

“Hmm?”

She swallowed. “Who could ever deserve you?”

He looked at her. The little outcast. Always heads down with her. But her hair. It was nice. Fluffy, like a sheep’s. He blinked. “Your horns.”

She flinched away.

He breathed a laugh. “Your horns are out, Meen.”

“Oh. I—I uh.” A look on her face of shame and deprivation. It drilled a hole in his stomach. That wasn’t what he meant, to make her look like that. “It’s cold.” She scurried to her feet. “I’m gonna go back.”

He wanted to say wait or don’t worry or he wasn’t even sure, really, what he wanted to say. And in that indecisive moment she was gone, back into Aodok’s shaggy treeline. And he was alone.

***

“Your horns are out.” He murmurs it again. They are. But Meena doesn’t look ashamed. And she doesn’t run away. She just lets him stare, at her wine-dark horns, as they rise through her locks. And she stares back.

“That was the most important night of my life, Ajax of the Black Pike,” she says. “That was the night I realized. What I was made to do.”

“Engineering?”

She shakes her head. “No. I like being a hangar tech. I’m good at it. But it’s not what I was made to do.”

“What, then?”

“Let me show you,” she whispers. Her thumb slips to the edge of his mouth. Her head tilts. Her eyes are drifting shut.

“You—wait, wait.” Ajax reaches into the confused, aroused mess the night has made of his brain and fishes something back out. “Did you get a fat ass because that’s what I said I wanted?”

“I got a fat ass because I love bread and I do a lot of lunges.” Her laugh is a quiet music-box melody. “Do you like it?”

He nods.

“Then touch it,” she says. “And kiss me.”

He does. His hands sink into the softness of her body. His lips meet hers. He tastes her sugar-fruit lip gloss.

He feels her fingers creep up his chest. They end up just below his jaw, wrapped light around his throat. His heart gallops.

When his tongue recedes, her grip’s pressure increases. Gentle but uncompromising. She is not finished with his kiss. He leans back in. Her weight shifts; she’s climbing into his lap. Her little red romper (she lives in rompers when she’s not in coveralls, he’s found) is riding up her thighs. She’s so short, but her ass is so substantial beneath his palms. His thumbs hitch into her belt loops.

Her touch slides around his neck, from throat to nape. Her fingers lace into his hair. A brief, firm tug and his head is tilted high. His jugular exposed to the little predator in his arms.

She nuzzles his neck. The light poke of her fangs. His entire body tingles.

“I wasn’t good enough for you, then. And now I am. Everything I’ve done was to be good enough. So that when I ask you, you’ll say yes.” She pulls his head gently forward again, until they’re nose to nose.

“Ask me what?”

“Will you let me compel you, Ajax?”

“What—” He licks his lips. Her taste is still on them. “What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to take you to the conjugal hab,” she says. “And I’m going to fuck you.”

“The love lockers? This late, they’re gonna be full.”

“I reserved one this morning. A room for two.” She is so small and yet somehow her shadow looms over him. Over all of him, over his future. Her horns are high and dark. “Let me compel you, Jax. Say yes." Her eyes bulge. "Give yourself to me. Let me prove I deserve you."

Yes.

“Yes,” he says.

Flash. The Gods of the Firmament have a voice, and a pair of plum-colored lips. “Stand up, marine.”

Never could Ajax have conceived of such fluffy infatuation paired with such unyielding domination. It’s like he’s collided face-first with the world’s biggest pillow. The sheer force of Meena’s compulsion on him. The covetousness. He feels it close around him. Feels his body engulfed in the immobilizing comfort of it. Like she’s closed that warm, soft hand over him and he’s held tight inside her fist. He lays his head against it, and lets her carry him. And he knows he’s done something irreversible. He’s trapped.

You’re trapped if you want to leave, Ajax. And you don’t. Face it. Big, strong, silent Ajax. You’ve waited your whole life for someone to do this to you.

She holds his anticomps out. Another staggering flash edits his brain. “Put these back on and follow me,” she says, and he might as well try to stop his own heart as to stop the hand that takes the anticomps and slots them back over his face. He straps his anticompel goggles on and follows the curvaceous little engineer, with an inevitability to his footfalls like lead, like destiny. There is no path to take but the one that brings him to her.

He follows her out of the bathroom.