Val woke up feeling cold and horny. She couldn't remember the details of her dream, but it had been sexy, and her crotch was dripping wet. That had been happening more, of late. Shaking off the haze of sleep and arousal, she thumbed the intercom. "What?"
"Got a ship hailing us, Cap. It's military, looks like UNSDF. They're asking to speak with the captain."
"Be right up." Val slipped off her soaked panties, then decided against putting on a fresh pair. She had every intention of continuing where the dream had left off once she dealt with whatever it was the UNSDF wanted. They may be pains in the ass, but at least they were usually brief.
Val pulled her utility jumpsuit over her legs, making sure not to tangle her pubes in the zipper as she pulled it from the crotch up. She could feel the moistness of her crotch against the rough fabric of the jumpsuit, but luckily the jumpsuit was grimy enough that it would not be visible. The jumpsuit was a little short around the limbs and not particularly comfortable, but it helped her fit in with her crew.
After zipping up, Val gathered her hand back into a ponytail. In the small mirror above the stainless steel sink, her cheeks were still slightly flushed. Luckily, splashing some cold water on her face made her seem less aroused than she felt.
God, she needed to get laid. She had been a sheltered girl growing up on the Olympus orbital base, so she had been a virgin when her father had given her a freighter to run, but that hadn't lasted long. She lost her virginity to her first mate, another Orbital, on her first payday. When you're piloting a small metal can through the vast expanse of vacuum with a bunch of people for weeks on end, stodgy upper-middle-class repressed sexuality starts to seem silly. Still, they had both been drunk, and had agreed that it was a bad idea afterwards. When he was promoted to captain a freighter of his own, that was the end of that.
That had been two years ago. She hadn't gotten laid since then. It wasn't that she was a prude. She'd definitely fantasized about the more attractive men in her crew before. But there was a pretty strong taboo (for good reason) against sexual relations between crew members of different rank. Since there was only one captain per freighter, this meant a lot of lonely nights in her bunk with only her fingers and a bottle of Mare Nectaris wine for company. Lately, with the big shipment of perishable luxury foods she was hauling, her entire energy had been devoted to keeping inventory and making sure they didn't spoil.
Val yawned, and felt the knots of fatigue around her body. She checked herself in the small mirror again, and pushed a stray strand of dark hair out of her eyes. Her appearance would never have passed muster back home, but it was acceptable for a ship captain.
Val bumped her head against the bulkhead coming out of her quarters and cursed her carelessness. Having grown up in the low gravity of an orbital base, she had always towered over most people. This was never a problem on wealthy Olympus, where corridors were broad and spacious. In an industry where square footage was at a premium, wide corridors were the ultimate display of ostentatiousness. Elsewhere, as she had learned in the past couple of years, she was forever bumping into bulkheads and low ceilings.
Her pilot was lounging back in the comm seat on the bridge when she strode in. "Bring the UNSDF on, Brett." He nodded and vacated the seat. A grizzled-looking meathead of a man winked into existence on the screen. Every inch of him screamed 'military'.
"UNSDF corvette
Basilisk
, this is Captain Valerie Saroyan of the
Vaspurkan
speaking. How may we help you?"
There was a pause. "They let teenagers captain ships now?"
Val felt annoyance flare up inside her. She had agreed to take this job so that people would stop treating her like a teenager. So much for that plan. "I'm twenty-two. What do you want?"
"Please transmit your cargo and crew manifest for inspection." A pause before the intercom crackled again. "This is just a routine check. Nothing to worry about. M'am."
So they had woken her up from her very torrid dream for something they could have pulled directly from the ship computer. "Typical military jagoffs," she muttered under her breath, punching the transmit button harder than was needed.
Aloud, she said, "If there's anything else I can do for you boys,
please
let me know." She winced as she said it. She had meant it as a sarcastic parting shot, but instead it came out a sultry drawl.
Dammit, Val. Pull yourself together.
A veteran captain would not let her sexual frustration get in the way of her job. She cleared her throat and thumbed the intercom again, then thought better of it. Trying to qualify it would make the situation even more awkward than it already was.
The corvette captain's lip curled in contempt. He glanced at a datapad someone handed him and made a few signals to his subordinates off-screen. After a few seconds he turned back to the screen. "
Vaspurkan
, stand by for docking."
Beside her, Brett cleared his throat uneasily. "Captain, uh, you want to see this."
Val went over to the side workstation Brett was occupying. He had a display open. The window said "Victory flyover at Deimos:
SDF Austerlitz, Basilisk, Qianlong
", and showed a recent newsreel of three imposing battleships looming over Mars' asymmetrical moonlet.
Val felt a sudden pang of uneasiness. "The
Basilisk
is not a corvette."
"No." Brett shook his head. "I knew there was something fishy about this."
"Can we hightail it out of here?"
"Not now, we can't. The engines are powered down. They'd blast us to stardust before the engines even warm up."
Before Val could think of a plan, a thump and hiss announced that the corvette that wasn't
