[PATREON EXCLUSIVE] Commander: Chapter 2 [Short Story Narration] [Audiobook Style] [Erotic Romance] [Sci Fi] [War in Space] [Multiple Scenes] [Angst] [Worldbuilding] [Drama] [Denying Feelings] [Tension] [Arguing] [Sacrifice] [Under the Surface] [Vulnerability] [Danger] [Switchy] [Passionate Brat] [Rough Sex] [Slapping] [Hair Pulling] [Making Out] [Fingering] [From Behind] [Spanking] [Riding] [Soft] [Creampie] [Comfort]

On the edge of space, the Spiral People's Armada, called SPAR, holds the line against the colonizing violence of the Ascendancy. Outmatched and outgunned, their only hope are the brave crews of the strike squadrons, operating alone in the black. Leading one such squadron, a veteran commander battles not only the enemy, but herself, as she searches for something to fight for.

Hi!
I did it, somehow, and it's not even July 1 for the New Zealanders yet. This was a lot of fun to do, but really strange and half the time I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. Honestly it's for the best I didn't have more time to second guess it.

For those of you not looped in to the poll and stuff, this month's exclusive audio is a narrative, audiobook style short story with narration. It's been something I've been really wanting to try and this month it was a good fit for what I had capacity for.

It's a continuation of this audio, Quiet Staff Officer Confesses to His Squadron Commander. It has a good amount of sci fi world-building, nerd shit, and non-sexy stuff. It has drama and characters with names, and my descriptive, prose writing (SCREECH) which tbh I don't consider my strongest suit. It will not be everyone's thing.

Maybe tomorrow I'll post a document or link of it with better formatting. I would honestly consider all of this effectively a first draft. I might go on about this more, but I'll save that for an author's note below after the story.

Enjoy and take care! Normal audios next month, I promise!

august 🌨️

CW: Sci-fi violence and action, non-explicit mention of injuries. Some angst related to sacrifice and our inner feelings and the mission, pretty soapy stuff, honestly, nothing wild. Some rough-housing (M is pushed up against a wall and slapped, F is spanked). F character uses she/her pronouns and is described as a woman. She also mentions having a sexual encounter with another woman.


CHAPTER TWO

We need you. I need you.

And whatever you need…. I’m here.

The barbell chunked back onto the resistance rack with a clanging slam that bounced off the bulkhead.

Her fingers slipped from the bar and she fell back onto the deck.

I’m right here, sweetheart. I'm right here. I'm right here.

Rasha Vinh swiped the sweat from her eyes, squeezing them shut. Beneath her, the rumbling of the ship was so violent it jarred through gritted teeth, all the way to her back molars.

For a ship like the Wolf Spider, retrofitted with repurposed plating and thirty-year-old engines, faster-than-light travel was a deafening, stomach-churning affair.

Sometimes it sounded like the ship was going to tear itself apart in the middle of a slipstream, ripped in half by the forces of folded space, its reactors going nuclear to scatter everything inside across the cosmos, returned to nothing but atoms.

It would be quick.

And irresistible. A few seconds of warning—flashing lights and blaring alarms, but no time to bark orders and nothing to do about it. If you were awake and you’d had your caff, you might have just enough time to comprehend what was happening, the second before your consciousness ceased be anything but a concept. Conjured up by the electrical activity in a brain whose electrons were now spread across several star systems.

She lay there on the deck for ten seconds. She’d once asked Ikari about the actual odds of a catastrophic failure in FTL. Her chief engineer had made a wavering gesture with her hand.

“Average jump, average calculation accuracy… less than three percent.”

“That’s a one in thirty chance,” she’d said. “How many jumps do we make a year?”

Ikari had shrugged. “…That’s up to Command, ma’am.”

Ten more seconds later, her muscles were still aching and sweat was still crawling down between her shoulder blades, so she stood up.

The ship’s cramped P.T. bay had once been a cargo hold for mining drones, and the ventilation hadn’t been improved much since. A wash of cool air hit her in the corridor outside, battling the heat that seeped through Deck Three from the engines.

It was still hard for her to shake the feeling that the Spider was not a military vessel. She’d grown up on Norseman-class rangers, Vanguard-class destroyers, even an immense Archangel-class dreadnaught.

The walkways of those ships had been sleek and uniform, lined by mathematically perfect patterns of plating, endlessly repeating. Their doors had irised open with a purposeful grace, cold glow panels washing the color out your skin, exposing every wrinkle of your uniform or scuff on your boots.

The lights of the Spider burned amber, bathing the matte patina that decades of grease had baked into its every surface. There was no stark white, surgical silver, or tactical black to be found, only yellowing beiges, rusting orange-browns and tarnished gray. Not a square decimeter of plating was free of stains, scratches and dents. And that was between the panels that were missing altogether, leaving bare framing and exposed wiring beneath.

Instead of a pneumatic lift or a polished set of stairs, she climbed a railed step ladder up towards Deck Two, and the hatch above lurched open with a grating grind. The corridor here widened, running along one of the two pincer-like prongs that gave away the Spider’s origins as a Porto MCT-77 “Scarab” mining tug.

As she passed by the scratched strip of a viewport, her eyes couldn’t help but fall onto the ventral launch bay below. There, swathed in shadow and flickering tungsten light was the precious cargo that made the Wolf Spider what she was—a mother ship, devoted to the care and transport of her deadly children.

Where once sat ore loaders and drill miners was Strike Squadron 21 of the Spiral People’s Armada. Six fighters, two swarm bombers, and two light gunships, salvaged and stolen, patched and jury-rigged, waiting on their lift platforms to be launched into space like hornets from a hive. They weren’t pretty, even with the custom paint jobs that her wing-mates obsessed over, but every resource on the ship was dedicated towards keeping these ten battle craft operating at peak function.

The engineers serviced them first, the medical staff treated their combat crews first. When supplies were tight, the logistics chief ensured that pilots and gunners ate the best, that they had all available medications and supplements necessary.

No wonder they acted like this.

They were spread around the launch bay, looking like a gang of layabout teens in a scrapyard. Draped over the noses of their fighters, lying flat on the deck and clambering around the lifts.

And they were drinking, of course. Time spent traveling through the slipstream before a mission was a specific combination of stressful and boring. The perfect time to spend your alco ration.

When she descended the stairs from the catwalk, a shout of laughter was echoing through the bay, along with the buzz of tools as a handful of engineers did some tune-ups.

“I’m not lying!”

“Eat my ass, Laundry, you…”

The commotion died when Santana spotted her, her short legs swinging off the fuselage of her interceptor.

“Oh—Commander.” The baby-faced young woman dropped to the floor, looking around for a place to put her drink down.

“…At ease,” Rasha said, before the pilot could actually snap to attention. The others didn’t scramble up, but backs straightened and heads turned towards her, smiles slipping away.

“…Commander.”

“Ma’am.”

They murmured, nodding to her, but the conversation didn’t resume.

“Sorry, chief, I told them we should take this to the mess, but…” Harland, one of the flight leads, gestured to the open cans of paint. “…Flight Two wanted to do some decorating before we drop out. We’ll pack up the drink, though, I know there was that memo—”

Rasha had sent a memo, just a few weeks into her tenure—“RE: the consumption of alcohol from open containers within proximity of essential machinery in operations areas of the ship”.

They admire you, they fear you, they respect the hell out you, but…

She unclenched her jaw, shook her head. “As you were… just be smart, okay?” Her eyes narrowed, falling on her youngest wingmate. “You get an alco ration, Santana? How old are you?”

The girl went rosy, blotchy blood vessels at her cheeks and forehead, up by her tied back curls. “…I’m twenty, ma’am. And I was… uh…” her hand lifted in the direction of the rest of Flight Two, then off their looks, fell back to her side.

“It was just one cup, ma’am…” The stringy pilot they all called Laundry cleared his throat. “We figured since she just had her first engagement—”

“—Fine. One cup… and if the kid’s not one hundred percent by the time we’re in real space, your alco’s docked for the rest of the deployment. Flight Two, you’re responsible for her,” Rasha said, the clipped words coming easily.

Santana stared at her boots, holding the cup away from her like it was full of acid.

Rasha sighed, out through her nose. Now she was the officer coming in to ruin their fun. “You better enjoy it, Santana. You did… good enough.”

The kid’s brown eyes met hers. “…T-thank you, ma’am.”

“That means drink!” Someone called, and Santana took a big sip. Rasha could smell the antiseptic bite of the stillshine from here. Hopefully it was sweetened with one of the better powdered flavor packs.

“Care to join us, chief?” Okonkwo got up from where he’d been kneeling next to Flight Two’s gunship, wiping the paint from his hands. He was outlining a black hooded snake on the nose, fangs bared to spit over the bow cannons’ twin ports.

The anatomy was good, but simple. Smits had been the best artist in the squadron, but he was in med recovery on a planetside base after his turret had been melted half to slag with him inside.

“I believe we’re playing Three Shots, though there was a bit of a dispute…” Okonkwo brushed his braids off his shoulder, looking at Laundry and Harland. “Something about eating someone’s ass…”

Laundry snorted, rubbing his head where his buzzcut was growing in. “Hey, hey, Oko, the Commander doesn’t wanna hear about this…”

She knew if she walked away right now, they’d all breathe a sigh of relief, go back to bickering and barking with laughter.

In less than thirty hours, they’d be back in the cockpit, fighting for their lives. Who was she to ruin this time for them? If the opposition in the Varda system was as they expected, it could be some of their last.

You don’t… connect.

“How do you play?”

They all looked at her.

“It’s, um… pretty minor, really…” Harland mumbled.

“Here…” Okonkwo took the flask of stillshine, grabbed for some cups. He poured one of liquor and two from a water canteen, set them on a crate in a column. “Three questions. If it’s water, you can lie, but if it’s liquor, you tell the truth.”

Rasha raised her eyebrows. “How do you win?”

“Well, if someone guesses which was true, you’re supposed to drink two more, but…” Harland shrugged, scratching at the tattoos on her neck. “…That assumes you admit it.”

“—I wasn’t lying!” Laundry said. “It’s a rigged game, ma’am.”

“…I’ll keep it mind.” Rasha took a knee on the deck in front of the cups, swapping them around. The maintenance crew had paused their work and wandered over, so there was only the thundering drone of the ship until she looked up. “Well… don’t all ask at once.”

“Who’s the… who’s the best pilot in the squadron?” Bains piped up.

“Garbage!” Laundry said. “They’re supposed to be personal questions. Like she was gonna say you, anyway…” Bains, broad and towering, flexed his shoulder and Laundry scooted away. “Joking—it was a joke!”

“What’s your biggest regret?”

She could swear a cold draft blew through the bay. Rasha kept her back straight so there was no chance of a shudder.

The others had to look around before they realized who’d spoken. In the squabble after Bains’ question, she hadn’t heard his footsteps coming down from the catwalk, though he always moved quietly.

While her combat crew wore teal coveralls that matched their flight suits, Squadron 21’s Staff Liaison Officer was dressed in the pressed gray jumpsuit worn on SPAR Command bases by logistics officers, armada strategists and intelligence analysts.

He actually maintained the officers’ grooming recommendations, too. Only the stubble that had grown in by the end of a day’s rotation dusted his hollow cheeks, and his hair never touched his collar in the back. It was almost the same color as his uniform. It must have turned early—they were born in the same year. She’d checked his file.

“Easy, string… you gotta to be in the game to ask a question.” Harland said, pushing off from where she leaned on a step ladder. That sounded fair to Rasha, but she wasn’t about to let her flight lead come to her rescue.

“Apologies. It just seemed like you needed some help,” Evren Quire said in his soft, even voice.

Rasha didn’t turn towards him. “It’s all right. Next round, you can be in the hot seat.” Her biggest regret… it was pulled straight from the psych eval. Bastard.

She picked up the first cup and tipped it back, tasting, as she expected, only the metallic hardness of recycled water. At least the sour look on her face might fool some of them.

“…To regret is an action. If I could go back and do things over again, sure, maybe I’d do some differently. To learn is another action. That’s the one I choose to take.”

There were murmurs of assent and some mumbling. “Hear, hear…” Bains said, lifting his own cup. Now he was sucking up.

Quire nodded, crossing his arms. “Sounds like Kartika academy doctrine.”

She scoffed through her teeth, holding up a hand. “…Oh, write me up to Command for disseminating counter-revolutionary ideals, then.”

They still sounded afraid she’d turn and browbeat them at any moment, but at least that got a laugh. Quire was probably the only one on the ship they were less happy to see than her.

The SLO wasn’t part of the squadron’s chain of command. He gave no orders of his own and did little in the way of useful work around the ship. He just supervised, reminded, recommended, and compiled. He wrote reports to send back to Command, relayed and clarified orders from on high.

He was neither a puppeteer, nor one of them—a little toy soldier tugged to and fro. He was just the “string” that attached them.

The easiest of targets to cut down, but she needed all the help she could get.

“Next question?”

“…Ever been in love, chief?” Harland said.

The crowd oohed. Rasha’s trimmed nails dug into her palm.

“You’re cracked—” Someone said.

“—You trying to get us docked?”

She paused in case someone properly shut it down. A tactical error, because Laundry was brave enough to make it even worse.

“No yes or no questions—who—who was the last person… you loved?” He coughed, trailing off.

She picked up the cup so she had something to look at. They all quieted down, breath bated, as she drained it. The water helped with the lump in her dry throat. Lying was supposed to be the easy part, wasn’t it?

“Back when I first joined up with SPAR… there was, uh… a medical officer…”

Harland sighed, swooning against the gunship. “Oof. They’ll get you…” Danai, the Wolf Spider's medical officer, happened to have a meltworthy smile and soft hands. Rasha had often heard his professionalism lamented by certain members of the combat crew.

“You were together?” Santana asked softly.

Rasha found herself nodding. “She got assigned to a Command flagship, I think. Haven’t seen her in years.” She turned the cup over in her hands and put it down.

He was a gray shape in her peripheral vision that she willed her eyes to move past.

“She was… a great dancer,” she said, for some reason.

“You dance, ma’am?” Laundry blurted.

Rasha gave him a warning look, then shrugged. “I… watched.”

The crew made suitably doggish sounds. What was it about flying rocket-powered death traps that made you so horny? Now she was pandering to her squadron’s overclocked thrusters and lying to do so, which was even more pathetic.

She’d never seen Tarin, the medical officer on Echelon Base dance, but she’d looked like she’d be good at it. Their “love” had lasted all of thirty-five minutes the night before she’d shipped out. She’d had to remind the woman of her name throughout.

If Quire was here to supervise her “opening up” to her crew, he’d had have to settle for this nonsense.

“Last one. Better make it good.”

“…What scares you?” Santana said, looking like she was going to cover her mouth, but she rubbed her nose instead.

Traitor. She shouldn’t have let her keep drinking. This is what happened when they weren’t scared of her.

“You trying to learn all my weaknesses?” The stillshine fumes made Rasha’s eyes water as she lifted the last cup. It burned like a chemical spill on the way down, sending a spike up into her sinuses, with the tang of an acrid citrus flavor.

He was still staring at her, hands clasped in front of him.

She refused to meet his gaze, but she knew what expression he was making. The tilt of the head, the slight furrow to his dark, broad brows.

It was just like she was giving a briefing to the squadron and support chiefs. All eyes on her, but while her subordinates listened, he observed. Evaluated. Getting his information from what she wasn’t saying. It made her skin itch.

Her jaw was locked in place, but like the reluctant hatches of the Wolf Spider’s lower decks, she forced it open. “…Staff Liaison assessments.” She wiped her mouth and spun the empty cup on the crate, finally meeting her SLO’s eyes.

Around her the crew whooped, snickered and jostled Quire. But nobody clapped her on the back, and when she stood up and walked out of the circle, it was like she’d never been there at all.

“Can I have a word, Commander?”

He said from the bottom of the stairs. She glanced over her shoulder, then away. What was there to look at?

Only on a war ship in the depths of space would anyone call him good-looking. His features were irregular in that average way. From a distance, he was practically plain.

“…Are you observing my off-duty time now?”

He climbed after her. “You don’t have off-duty time.”

She sighed. “…Not with you around.”

“Ma’am…”

She stiffened as his voice softened and her left hand twitched automatically, ready to jerk away from a touch that didn’t come.

“It’s good to see you connecting. Maybe next time you can be more honest.”

“Not the point of the game.”

“Really?” He said, drawing breath.

Up on the catwalk, she rounded on him. “What do you want, S.L.O.? You gonna tell me that you know which ones were lies and which one was the truth?” She said quietly.

Drawn up to her full height, they were eye to eye, almost perfectly. Anyone would look better close up. Anyone with dark, hooded brown eyes like that. “…It doesn’t matter. Has nothing to do with doing my job.”

“Respectfully, ma’am, I disagree,” he said from behind lashes that were too damn long. “But I understand.”

He pulled his datadeck from the clip on his belt. “Updated intel on the strike. Their front keeps shifting as they advance into the system, so the signal station should be lightly defended if we time it right.”

When he started talking strategy, it was like a hand released her neck.

“Heard that before…” She pulled out her own deck as the intel report scrolled across its readout. Taking down the enemy’s comms, even temporarily, was the only thing stopping an entire Ascendancy battle group coming down on them as soon as they attempted further strikes in the system. “How many hours until we’re in system?”

He checked. “Coming up on thirteen.”

“Battle rest cycle starts in one. Ship-wide, everybody rack down except essential personnel.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll relay it.”

“…You do that.” Rasha turned away from him. There was a pounding behind her right temple. She needed protein and sleep to flush the poison from her system, and to put several meters of steel bulkhead between herself and Evren Quire’s voice.

Naturally, it wasn’t to be.

She tossed and twisted in her bunk until the thin sheets were half-off the cot.

They’d just been washed in the ship’s central laundry with hot water and scouring chemicals. What were the chances that the clean bedding was even the same set?

It wasn’t physically possible for the scent of him to linger this way.

Sleep only came when Rasha rolled off her bunk and did push-ups until her arms shook and her chest ached. She dragged the sheets from the bed and curled up there on the floor, sweating and fully clothed, not having dared to take off anything but her boots.

*

The launch bay was flooded with light, crawling with engineers, pilots and gunners.

It looked frenzied, back and forth, bulky power cables hauled away and jump ladders rolled into position, but they all moved at the same urgent pace, flowing around each other easily, in sync.

Rasha’s flight suit was sealed to her throat, her helmet in hand. She stepped sideways, ducked and turned without breaking her stride.

“…Commander.”

“Ma’am.”

“Chief.”

There was no surprise now, no awkward interruption. Now the weight lifted off their chests when they saw her, their backs straightening, their shoulders dropping down to mirror her own.

She ran a hand along the flank of her J-40 Falchion attack fighter. There was no grace or elegance in its columnar design, tapering down to the fin-like tail. It lay on its back for launch, but its bulky twin engines jutted up like it was bench-pressing.

Just between the two of them, Commander Rasha Vinh allowed herself a smile, then put a foot on the base of the wing and swung herself into the open canopy.

“Launch check-in. Twenty-one Alfa, green.” The instrument panel lit up, flicking green, green, green.

“Twenty-one Boron, green.” Harland’s voice crackled through her helmet comm.

“Twenty-one Chroma, green…”

“Twenty-one Dagger, green for go…”

On “Twenty-one Praxis”, Rasha engaged her launch sequence. “Stand by for launch.”

“You’re all good, Alfa. See you soon.” That was Ikari in her ear.

Strapped in on her back relative to the deck, Rasha looked up through the tinted bubble of her canopy at a silhouette on the catwalk. He was holding the railing with one hand, looking down.

“Clear the bay. We are go, go, go.”

He stepped back, hand dropping loosely from the railing and disappeared, upwards from her view.

Rasha flicked the visor on her helmet down. Braced for the vacuum of space.

The bay doors yawned wide, the lifts dropped away, and her fighter plunged downwards into blackness.

In silence, the Wolf Spider released her spawn, their engines flaring, unfurling themselves into attack position.

Rasha touched the steering yoke a practiced centimeter, rotating her fighter ninety degrees as her squadron fanned out around her, the spearhead assembling around the sharp point.

“Twenty-one. Proceed to target.”

Space in the Spiral was messy and crowded, all things considered. A large debris field would give the Wolf Spider cover to wait for their return and a cloud of swirling gas masked their approach to the station.

It was a spike of silver with three rotating rings, surrounded by a mine field, loose enough for a single strike squadron to slip through. The intel was right—there was no hostile frigate or flight of corvettes on patrol.

“Flight one, on me… we’ll target the array. Flight two, on those hanger bays. As soon as they launch, you hammer them…”

“Copy, Alfa…”

“On it, chief…”

Numbers and markers raced by on her dash, the distance closing. A red light pulsed on her comm display and her head snapped towards it.

“Comm from the Spider?” Laundry said in her ear. “Oh, shit…”

She didn’t need to hear the drop in his voice to know it was bad. Any transmission from the Spider during a mission was an emergency.

She jammed the switch with her thumb, patching it through to the squadron channel.

“Wolf Spider to Twenty-One. Contact at rendezvous. Hostile patrol in pursuit. Taking fire.”

It was his voice. Why was it his voice?

She could hear shouts in the background, klaxons, all muffled by the comm filter.

She imagined the panicked bridge, shaking from impact. Noel, her executive officer, in command, the pilots pushing the old engines to their limits, engineers trying to staunch the damage.

And her useless Staff Liaison Officer, with no other way to help but to call out, thousands of kilometers away, his voice in her ear.

“Carrier rendezvous not secure. Repeat. Not secure. Complete mission, fall back and go dark.”

There was a hiss of static.

“…Wolf Spider out.”

The channel was dead for an endless moment. She was alone, with green numbers ticking down and the station looming in her viewport.

“…Orders, Commander?”

“Stand by…” Was all she could manage. “Stand by.”

“Closing on target, t-minus one minute.”

“Fifteen seconds until we hit sensor range.”

“Arming torpedos.”

“Orders?”

Rasha took her hand off the steering yoke and ripped the oxygen mask from her helmet, gasping the recycled air of her cockpit.

Sometimes I think about a version of the universe where you feel the same way. And it keeps me going.

“Abort!” It was weak, strangled, almost lost in the chatter.

“What? Say again?”

“Abort! Abort approach—all units pull up!” She pressed her comm against her face with the heel of her gloved hand, reined back the yoke with the other.

“Copy?” Her confused squadron swooped upwards, splitting off into two.

“Proceed to rendezvous.” Her chest heaved. “Needle formation, attack speed!”

“Confirm, Alfa, we’re going back to the Spider?”

“Confirm…” Rasha said. “…We’re going home.”

*

The Vesper-class Ascendancy ranger was elegant and austere on the bridge display. From space, it must have been quite a sight, a dark monolith looming behind the battered carrier, its plasma cannons blossoming, torpedos streaking towards them.

Another impact lurched the deck beneath them.

“Aft shields at fifty percent…” the tactical officer said, voice taut.

“When they hit twenty, divert the power to propulsion…” Noel said. To the executive officer’s credit, he was calm. “They won’t be much help then, anyway.”

“Copy…”

Evren nodded, tapping the knuckle of his index finger against his bottom lip. There weren’t many orders for the XO to give, but it was a fine one.

The bridge crew, the engineers, they all knew what to do. Running for your life wasn’t an overly complex task.

“The jump?” Noel asked.

“We’re in range of the FTL relay, initial calculations okay.” The voice came from navigation’s control pit, sunken into the floor. “But… you know…”

The nav officer trailed off.

Noel nodded. “Understood.”

Before a ship like the Spider entered a slipstream, it had to slow down to a crawl to spool up, syncing with the FTL relay. The moment they did, the ranger would be on them, unleashing its entire arsenal. Enough firepower to obliterate a ship twice their size.

Regardless, they’d have to try it in a few minutes. This chase around the debris field could only end one way.

They’d returned some fire at first with the carrier’s paltry weapons, meant for clearing hazards and dissuading enemy drones. The splashed against the ranger’s shields like ripples on a lake. Waste of power.

A junior officer moved across the bridge to another console and Evren stepped back and out of the way, just in time.

“Sorry…” he murmured, looking down. He had no purpose here. His function on board this vessel had been rendered obsolete by the circumstances.

He might as well return to his cabin and get into his bunk. He was tired—maybe he could fall asleep. At least that way he could be certain of his final thoughts.

What would she do?

It wasn’t an uncommon question to pop into Evren’s head, though it never gave him an easy answer.

She wouldn’t go back to bed, that was for sure. She would do… something. Something he was incapable of even fathoming, let alone executing.

A ruse. An exploit.

Detach one of the ship’s modules and somehow propel it at the ranger like a kinetic energy weapon. Find an angle through the debris field that would slow their pursuer just enough to let them escape.

He’d seen her do it before.

He’d also seen her eyes lock onto his, watering as she clung to him with her whole body. Seen her press her cheek into his chest, fingers tracing his jaw.

His chest rose and fell, shallowly, beneath his uniform.

Evren took a deep breath in, summoning the scent of her, the feeling of her hands on him. Then he released it.

He’d gotten a transmission out to Command before he’d sent one to the squadron. They could lay low, alone and unmoored in the system for days, maybe a few weeks, until another carrier could make contact for recovery.

Her fight would go on. Someday, she would lie in bed with someone else, touch their cheek and kiss their shoulder. And they would hold her and speak to her, softly.

That calmed him more than anything else.

“Sir… we’ve got incoming.”

“More of them?”

“Friendlies…” the tactical officer breathed. “…I think it’s the squadron.”

Evren’s eyes snapped open. “What?” He was at the sensor display, looking over the officer’s shoulder. “That’s not possible…”

“They’re hailing us!” The comms officer called. “Patching them through…”

“Twenty-one to Spider…” her voice filled the room over the loudspeaker, rumbling in his chest. “Prep for recovery and immediate jump, we’re gonna give you as much time as we can, but we’ll only have one shot at this.”

“…Copy!” Noel said, breathless. “You heard the Commander. Prep the bay for recovery and get set to jump on her mark!”

“That thing’s gonna light them up.” Evren watched the screen with horror as the green blips descended in a tight attack formation on the much bigger capital ship. “…What is she doing here? What the hell is she doing?”

Everyone ignored him, barking orders through comms, diverting power back to shields, spooling up to interface with the FTL relay.

The signal station was still up. The entire squadron was screaming down in a head-on attack on a Vesper-class ranger.

And it suddenly dawned on him that it was all his fault.

*

It was the fight of her life. She didn’t think, not once, like her fighter was a body in motion and her body was the brain inside.

The first hit took her down to a blinking sliver of shields, the next knocked them out entirely.

She must have flown for upwards of a minute with naked hull plating, waiting for a glancing plasma blast, a scrape from a piece of debris to tear her fighter into burning pieces.

But it didn’t.

She danced through the maelstrom of torpedo tracers and blazing cannon fire, spinning and diving through the void. Forming up with her wingmates for an attack run and then scything apart to evade the reply.

“Fore torpedos down! YEE—” Laundry hollered.

“They’re turning, they’re turning!” Santana shouted.

“NOW—back to the Spider now!” Rasha screamed into her comm. “Spider, doors open—on my go, you jump!”

She wrenched her fighter around in a snap-hook turn, the g-forces flattening her into her seat.

Sheltered by its prongs, she saw the bay doors on the belly of the Spider fly open. “Go, go, go—everybody in!”

One by one, plasma-scored and wobbling to straighten out in time, her squadron disappeared up and into their mothership.

“Shit—” Santana yelped as a stray cannon shot winged her, and her interceptor careened into the side of the opening, her fin crumpling against the hull.

“Easy, easy—just get up there, kid—” Rasha said, on her back and looking up at her, just meters above her. If she had to shove her up there with the nose of her ship, she would.

“I-I’m good, I’m good…” Santana panted, her fighter limping upwards, and the lights of the bay welcomed them.

“We’re all in—jump, jump, jump!” The hard bump of her fighter setting down on the platform rocked her against her crash straps.

Then everything lurched again and she heard only the glorious thunder of the Spider being sucked into a slipstream that had a three percent chance of smashing them all to bits.

“Clear… we’re clear.”

Rasha lay there on her back, gloved hands on her helmet. Shaking, she reached over, making sure her comm was off. Then she screamed.

“YES. FUCK YES.” Her breath gave out. “Y-yes…”

When her canopy opened, he was descending from the catwalk faster than she’d ever seen him move.

“I can’t believe this—borderline dereliction of mission—”

“Don’t talk to me, string.” She was hoarse. She tossed her helmet to a nearby engineer and snatched his offered canteen, pouring water into her mouth and over her face, though it didn’t do much to cool her burning cheeks.

“What were you THINKING?” She’d never heard him shout. His voice cracked, but had enough power to cut through the klaxon, the hiss of pneumatic lifts, the sparking whine off a scorched panel being torn off her fighter.

Rasha’s chest rose as she sucked in two lungfuls of air. “ENOUGH!”

Even in the chaos of a post-battle launch bay, heads turned. Santana, clambering out of her half-wrecked fighter with oil smeared on her face, flinched hard enough that she nearly fell.

Quire pulled up short on the last step, catching the railing for support.

“Write your damn report! Make your recommendation of discipline, send me to a fucking tribunal—but don’t forget whose ship this is!” In four strides, she was off the lift platform, and mounting the steps below him, boots slamming the deck.

The bob in his throat was satisfying, but the fucker held her gaze. “It’s the armada’s ship, Commander, they all are, entrusted to you to achieve an objective—”

“—Not. Feasible.” She nearly knocked him over the railing as she shouldered past him, up the stairs.

“How would you know—you abandoned the mission!” He gasped, starting after her.

“The carrier is our most important asset—” The excuses came without pause, the sweat from her hair dripping into her eyes.

“The squadron is the asset, Commander! You had time to wait for another carrier to recover you, if you’d destroyed the station!”

He hurried after her through the door, close enough she could clock him with her elbow if she wasn’t careful.

“OH!” Rasha threw her head back and laughed, stripping off her elbow-length flight gloves, throwing them on the deck. “That’s a SPAR promise—wait for another carrier that’s never coming—hide away and let them hunt you down like rats!”

She slapped the activation panel to the war room and stepped inside. It was empty, and dark except for the tac-table, where a greenish, gridded projection of the Spider rotated slowly. Damaged areas flashed, lines of data scrolling by.

“No, instead you desert the mission and lead the whole squadron to the enemy.” He darted through the door before it closed behind her. “You know for a moment, I thought, maybe we shouldn’t even send a transmission. But I never thought you’d be so…”

She whirled. “What?” she barked. “So what? Since you know every damn thing about me!”

His lips were taut as he searched her face. “…Selfish.”

“Selfish? I just saved your ass—I saved everyone on this ship!”

“No. You saved yourself.” Quire looked down, fists clenched. “You couldn’t face it.”

“What… stop—” It came out in harsh breaths, almost a cough.

“—You blew the mission, you needlessly endangered the squadron and yourself. Because you couldn’t sacrifice one asset…” In the ghostly light, his upper lip was shiny, below the shadow of a day’s worth of stubble.

She huffed through her nose like a bull. “The Spider…”

“Not the Spider…” he hissed. “Not the Spider.”

She couldn’t breathe—the phantom sensation of the g-force compressing her into her pilot seat. “What are you—you… you really think you know everything, don’t you?”

“I don’t see any other explanation,” Quire whispered. “Not once—not once in your entire command over this squadron have you put anything or anyone ahead of the mission.”

The vital monitors in her flight suit must have been racing. “You needed me!” It tore from her lips, thoughtlessly loud. “You said…”

His face twisted, like she’d punched him in the stomach. “Not like—” he put a hand to his forehead. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault…”

She shook her head, ears burning. “Don’t… don’t do that…”

It doesn’t make you weak.

Liar. Fucking liar.

“I am an asset, Commander.” He straightened. “I’m a device with one purpose—”

Now she really wanted to hit him. “Stop—you said—you said we’re all just people—”

“I… overstepped…” he took an awkward gulp of air. “I was just trying to help you, but…”

She shoved her forearm against his chest until the back of his thighs hit the console of the tac-table, the image flickering into a star map.

“Maybe you’re an asset, string,” she spat, stirring the hair falling onto his forehead. “But I’m not. And if you think what you did was maintenance so that one of Command’s devices could operate at peak functionality, you can take a long walk off my ship right now.”

“No…” Quire bit out. “No. Never.”

“You wanted me to open up, right? Then listen. I run this squadron. It goes where I say it goes. I decide what’s worth sacrificing.” Rasha’s fingers tightened, wrinkling his uniform. “And I’m not losing this ship. Ever.”

“…Yes, ma’am.” His breath fluttered against her cheek, his weight shifting beneath her own against the table. His lips were full and curving when he wasn’t making them small. “I just…”

The door slid open. Noel paused with one foot inside. “Commander… Quire.”

Quire nodded to him, head jittering. Slowly, Rasha leaned back, letting her arm drop. “…Casualties?”

Noel shook his head. “Everyone’s okay. Damage diagnostics on the Spider aren’t good, but they look manageable so far. Nav calculated a route to the other side of the system. Any orders?”

“Prioritize any repairs to propulsion—we’re gonna be on the run for a bit. Get me a full after-action report before we leave FTL,” she snapped. “I’ll be on the bridge in thirty. You’re dismissed.”

“Copy that, chief.” Noel stepped out and the door hissed shut.

Quire was still catching his breath. “…Commander, I really think—”

She turned to him. “—Get out, Quire…” It almost caught in her throat. Then she set her jaw. “…Or lock the door.”

His brows knitted with that same pained look. Then he turned on his heel.

The panel buzzed, the bolt sliding into place with a clunk.

But he lingered there, leaning in the doorway.

When the seal on her flight suit unfastened, he turned back around. It was vented and internally cooled, but she was overheating, her skin prickling as it fell open to her waist.

“Ma’am…” It was shaky and hesitant, nothing like the look on his face.

Rasha said nothing, just kicked off her boots one by one. She had no orders to give. And, anyway, he wasn’t under her command.

He crossed the room before her top was off. Then his lips were at her throat.

“Hh…” She sucked in air as his teeth grazed her. Just like before, her fingers locked into his hair, her other hand spreading across the surprising bulk of his shoulder.

Last time, Rasha had pushed and pulled, shoving him off of her, only to tug him closer again. Squeezing her eyes shut so she didn’t have to look at him, her lips trembling against his.

Not this time. This time, her eyes were open, so she could see his hands tugging her suit down her legs, his fingers, closing around her bare hip.

This time, there was no half-hearted pushing away. She dragged his head down to her chest and when her legs were free, she was up on the tac-table, parting them for his body.

“Unh—Commander…”

Up by his ear, where he couldn’t see, she bared her teeth in a breathless smile. Why did she love that so much? The word, the grunt, that hard shape grinding into her…

She hugged his waist with her thighs, wrapping her body around the warm weight of him, like she would crush him if she could.

His mouth was hot on her chest, even through the thin material of her top, kissing and sucking at her breasts behind the fabric. She huffed, her hips lifting into him, blood rushing into her core.

Uniforms and flight suits, utilitarian under layers. She’d been starting to feel like even her own nakedness existed purely for the practicality of showering.

Now she fell back onto the table, propped up on her elbows so she could watch his lips close around the stiff peak poking through her top. He shoved it upwards, hands exploring each new centimeter of bared flesh.

She kicked and squirmed and raised her hips so he could yank her shorts down, reveling in the luxury of someone else undressing her. She’d taken off her own towel the first time. What a waste.

The first time. When she thought of it again, a sharp pang hit her in the chest, screwing her face up.

This is what you need… let me give you what you need… all for you, gorgeous…

Had it all been for her? Or was it for the mission, the objective, the war.

When she looked up, his eyes were already on hers, reading the change in her expression. Always assessing.

“You okay?” he panted into her skin.

“Fuck you…” she said and pulled at his silvery gray hair. The motion brought his sharp chin back and angled his stupid, pretty face just right, so she slapped him.

It was harder than she’d meant to, battle fever still jittering through her muscles, but like before, he just breathed out, no sound, barely a flinch. “What—what do you want…”

“You’re not sweet-talking me this time… no gorgeous, no beautiful, no sweetheart…” she mocked. “What, is that not what I need? Not the maintenance I require this time?”

“That wasn’t—if you don’t think I meant it—” His slender, strong fingers dug into her thighs. But when she slapped him again, he let go and just stared at her.

“—Oh, you’re just gonna take it? You’re not my subordinate, don’t act like it. Don’t fucking service me.” She glowered at him, flicking sweat out of her hair. “…Do you want me or not?”

His dark brown eyes could be so warm. Now they turned deep and cold like the blackness of space and she saw muscles she hadn’t seen before shift in his jaw, his shoulders hunching.

She’d spent her entire life around soldiers, warriors, fighters.

Evren Quire had never looked like one to her until now.

One hand took hold of her chin, the other plunged into her underwear. She’d been getting wet, but at his touch, at his grip, the heat came flooding in, drawing a gasp out of her.

“Do I want you—” He kissed her hard enough to bruise, that persistent stubble rough on her chin and cheeks. He cupped and rubbed, he pinched her clit between his sliding fingers until she was opening for him and he was entering her again.

His lips were at her ear, his voice low and harsh.

“Gorgeous, beautiful, sweetheart…” As he fucked his finger inside her, hooking up against that aching spot. “Sweet enough for you? Huh?”

She was soaked, she could hear it, but she drowned it out with choked moans she couldn’t fully stifle.

Finally, her top was up around her collarbone and he was all over her, palming her, squeezing her.

Finally, he was filling her again, two fingers, stroking deep and pressing inside.

Not full enough. Not deep enough.

“You like that? Is that what you need?” He was panting into her ear again.

“What… I need?” She said through groans and gulps of air. “Who the fuck cares?”

“I do…” His forehead almost touched hers. “What do you need—I just wanna give you…”

What was wrong with him? “Don’t give it to me…” she moaned, looking up into his eyes.“Fucking take it. Take what you want.”

“God, you—you—” For once, he had nothing to say, so he crushed his lips to hers, a blazing, shivering kiss. She could only see stars against her eyelids, but she heard his jumpsuit unfastening and reached blindly, helping him tug it off with desperate strength.

“Yeah, yeah…” Up and under his shirt, she traced her nails against the solid muscles of his chest, through the trail of hair down his firm stomach. Then, too soon, she was being hauled away, sliding off the table. Rolling over, until her hands slapped down flat against its glowing surface. “Oh, fuck yes.”

Rasha hoped he hadn’t heard that, not that the arch of her back and the rise of her hips wasn’t giving it away. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in this position.

She looked back at her Staff Liaison Officer, calm and quiet and prematurely graying, as he pulled his undershirt over his head. It was like a transformation, shedding the starched slate uniform like a cocoon to reveal all that bare skin, tawny and warm in the light, with just the right amount of dark hair.

Her eyes fell to the tenting bulge in his underwear as he stepped out of his jumpsuit. Her mouth watered.

She wanted to bury her face in him, map out every square centimeter with her lips and her fingers and her tongue. She wanted his weight pressing down on top of her, his arms around her and his chest against her breasts, like last time.

But that wasn’t what he wanted.

When his hand clapped down on her ass, she almost turned around and hit him back.

Instead another landed on the other cheek and it stung so good she said his name.

“Evren…”

“What did you just say…”

He still hadn’t said hers. Damn it.

“Say it again…” he slid a hand from the back of her neck up to grip her hair. The other reached down to play with her, her clit throbbing against the pads of his fingers.

“Evrennnn—” she groaned. If he didn’t put it in, right now, he might be taking that space walk after all.

He got off lucky this time, because after a rustle of fabric, his hot, stiff length slapped against her thigh. She craned her neck to look, but he tugged at her hair, just hard enough to make her nails slide across the table’s smooth face.

Then she didn’t need to see, because she was feeling every ridge and curve against her core, her body memorizing it better than her eyes ever could. First, the blunt crown, rubbing at her, parting her, and then with a sliding push, more and more and more.

She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until the impact of his hips forced it from her lungs. “Huhh…”

He was so deep inside her, the groan he let out vibrated through her, almost buckling her knees. For a moment, she was seized with the fear that he might take it slow. That she would have to beg and plead.

But she must have taunted him enough. Her mouth fell open at the second snap of his body against her, and a smile slowly tugged at her parted lips as the next came faster and faster.

“Fuck… fuck…” he practically snarled.

Her hips fit into his grip like they were made for it. She couldn’t have thrown herself back onto him if she’d wanted to. She wasn’t a small woman, but the way he held her seemed to defy gravity, rocking her into his crashing thrusts, hard enough that she had a damn good excuse to scream her lungs out.

It was all she wanted to do. Lose control of her vocal cords, say his name over and over and over. Feel him, all of him, surging, stroking, stretching all of her.

I need you…

Old news. Everyone needed her. He wanted her.

She could tell from how he grabbed her thigh and put her knee up onto the tac-table, so she was open for him. So those strong hands could roam her body, squeezing her like he could press his thumbprints into her bare flesh, clutching her close even as he jostled her forward.

She could tell from he didn’t slow down, even though his breath was ragged and he was moaning almost as loudly as she was. Between sucking bites on her shoulders, frantic kisses on the nape of her neck, that made her squirm, she caught snatches of often incoherent, jumbling filth.

“Take it… take that cock… so good… pussy’s so good… fuck, Rasha…”

Had it sounded the same for him? Had his name from her lips bypassed his frontal lobe, jolting directly into the pleasure centers of his brain?

Tingles flooded down her spine and she made a noise that nobody who people called “Commander” should ever make.

“Rasha… gonna fuck you… oh God, Rasha…”

Your first name, it turned out, was the cheapest drug in the galaxy. Just go months without hearing it, then terrorize a mild-mannered man until he’s moaning it in your ear and fucking you like it’s his last day alive.

Maybe it helped that it almost was.

Her eyes rolled, his voice pouring through her head like a tidal wave, his cock barreling against those hard to reach spots again and again and again.

Then his shaking fingers found her clit and a nebula’s worth of stars and colors exploded onto the dark canvas of the war room ceiling.

She wrestled the throbbing, quaking waves down just long enough to get out in a razor-thin whisper. “I’m gonna—fuck—Evren, you’re gonna make me come…” That was the last recognizable word before the pleasure overflowed in a cascade and she went completely non-verbal, her mouth hanging open.

“God, yes… do it, do it now, come on my cock, Rasha…” his free hand clamped onto her shoulder, still circling her clit, the rhythm of his fingers and his cock driving her onward through every clench and shudder of her orgasm. “Come for me, you’re so fucking pretty when you come…”

Thank God for this noisy ship and the reinforced war room door, because that made her whine, actually whine, reach back and cling to his face as she shook, almost toppling over on her quivering legs.

The warmth that washed over her from her curling toes to the tips of her fingers on his cheek was overwhelming. It was better than winning, it was better than escaping with your life, it was pure, unconditional ecstasy that felt so foreign it was like it belonged to somebody else.

But it was hers, all hers. She collapsed back against him, throwing her limp arms around his neck, tasting him. He leaned back, holding her, until she got her feet under her, locked her knees in place so she could steer him back into a chair.

He whispered to her, called her gorgeous and sweetheart, softly now, into her lips and her neck and her breasts. This time, he didn’t stop her from straddling him and she drank in the hitch in his breath as she sank down onto him.

It was awkward at first because she was almost too big for it, but she folded up her legs so the backs of her feet were up on his knees and she was completely in his lap. Off the floor, off the chair, only in contact with his body, like an extension of him. She rode him like that, urgently rocking her hips and then slow, savoring every grinding drag of him inside her.

He traced caressing patterns in her back, took greedy handfuls of her thighs and ass. She lapped at his neck, tasting clean sweat and leaned back so she could watch those dark eyes slide over her, staring up at her. No judgement, no assessment, nothing rational, just mindless, worshipping awe.

She didn’t talk much—who knew what she might say, but when she felt him squirm and buck under her, lifting her up on his hips, she took his hands in hers and urged him on with quiet moans that didn’t stop.

“Yes… yes, please… do it inside… that’s it… inside me…”

The gentleness in her voice was alien to her, belonging to another woman, one who might have lived a different life in the same body. But she kept going, repeating the same things, until it started to feel like her own.

When Evren groaned and whimpered, when she felt his heartbeat pulse deep inside as the warmth came spilling forth, his fingers entwined with hers so tightly she couldn’t let go. Holding only him, seeing only him, she sighed and gasped, forgetting which life belonged to her, which woman was which.

Which one had faced this imperfect universe and which one had stayed locked away deep within her.

Hands still clasped, they moved together. She murmured to him and he kissed her everywhere he could reach.

Then they were still.

“Thank you…” he whispered. “I wanted that, I want you.”

“Shh. I know…” she said. “I’m right here. I’m right here… I’m right here.” 


AUTHOR'S NOTE

Welcome to the official Ao3 style Author's Note yeehaw! Speaking of which, I really hope you take this as it is, which is (hopefully) above average fanfic quality prose writing. I would love to write a romance novel someday, but doing this has only reinforced to me that it will be SO much work and that I have so much left to learn. I'm not trying to be hard on myself either, it is genuinely enjoyable and freeing to me to accept that this is a first draft and discuss the things I think could be improved about it.

I am not that confident with my prose writing. My strength has always been dialogue and lucky me, that's all my usual audios are! I'm sure there will be those of you who want to like this or like parts or moments of it, but sentences or turns of phrase or writing choices will take you out or turn you off. You don't have to tell me what those moments are, I know there's bound to be some stinkers.

Like I said up top, I consider this basically a first draft, though I did edit it as much as I had time for. I'm sure I would change a lot if I were to go back and do this again. The action scene is so compressed! The stakes of the mission and war itself aren't really dramatized, which make the conflict between the characters kind of weird!

The characters and their dynamic are perhaps not even that consistent with the original audio. Re-listening to the audio, they actually get SO lovey-dovey and tender with each other, which I thinks works great for that audio as a standalone piece, but my instinct in continuing it was to walk some of that intimacy back and put them on more tense, contentious ground again. M especially maybe feels like a different character, because this version of him works better for the story I wanted to tell here.

I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing but I imagine it's something some people will be disappointed in. Again, think of this as fanfic/first draft/adaptation, where the "canon" of this world is a fluid thing.

I also struggled with getting in the heads of the characters, which I know is the big advantage of this medium over audios, but I find it really hard! I love dialogue and action, and I struggle with illustrating or dramatizing what characters are thinking.

Finally, writing the sex felt embarrassing and vulnerable, even though I've said all these filthy disgusting things into a mic. Writing out a descriptive sex scene is hard! I know there's some corny romance novel stuff in there that's really very different from how sex is depicted in my work! Maybe there's other weird stuff. I don't know! Sue me! I'll get better.

Okay, that's it. I'm sure I'll do a SFW talking about this. Hope you enjoyed the experiment and curious to see what you think. Bye!