Chapter 42 - You Choose Surprise

A smile grows on your face, a playful idea that maybe Olivera knows something you don't and that it might be fun to give Tomoe a little shock. After all the serious things that have happened over the past couple of days, a little humor would be a nice change of pace. You chuckle, wondering what she's up to.

"As long as we don't cause any problems coming in, I don't think you need to let Tomoe know just yet." You smile. "I am kind of curious what she's up to."

"It is... something..." The Heavy Trooper responds softly and looks over her shoulder to something off screen, leaning back and pushing her chest out in the process. You watch as her top is pulled taut against her heavy breasts, the large, globes held in place, as the fabric squished and squeezed with Olivera's motions. A sheen of sweat you hadn't noticed before catches the light and you blink to focus. "Here is our heading... Kapitan." She types a few keystrokes onto a console and you hear a message prompt from Felira's part of the shuttle.  "See you soon." She smiles, just a little smile, and the channel ends.

"She seemed," You start, "Calm," you say again, trying to remember more. Olivera was the second in command of the Troopers, taciturn until she needed to be heard. She practiced with you as much as she did the Sergeant when it came to hand to hand combat practice, she's probably the reason you're as well off as you are...

"Stance, is too wide." Her voice corrects as she slides her body against yours, tightening your posture. "Expose less to enemy." Her breasts press against your back, spreading over your shoulders as she turns you slightly. "Arms higher." Her arms slide under yours and you feel her grip your wrists as she puppeteers you into the right posture. "Now strike." She ordered. You start to punch, awkwardly with her pressed up against you and holding onto your arms. "Again." She orders, slightly correcting your motions as she slowly changes her grip; lower.

"Sol?" Zoraida's words wake you. "We're almost there." You see her smiling, knowingly, as you turn from her to look out the forward screen.

You see white snow and the peaks of mountains whipping past as Felira deftly flies the shuttle without a hint of worry. You can tell by your own experience she's probably flying just short of the the sound barrier, just barely.

"Coming up on it now!" The Half-Vedari speaks up, "Not a bad little lab, from the look of it." She flicks a switch and a feed runs to the screen beside you. You see a white and black domed building, set atop a cleared rocky face. There's other buildings around it, one looking like it houses communication hardware, judging by the array on its roof, and another which might be a vehicle hangar. Automated drones are plowing snow away from the buildings, and from an illuminated landing area.

"So," You smile, "What should I say?" You ask Zoraida, while the Felira slows the shuttle down to a hover over the landing pad. She puts a finger to her lip in thought, and you watch as her digit presses against her full lips, then as she runs her tongue slowly over the pad of her finger. "I mean... keep it simple: What's up Doc?" You shrug a moment before the shuttle softly lands.

"Maybe," Felira speaks up as she runs the shuttle through its shutdown sequences. "Hey, Doc, I'm a little late for my regular exam, can you 'fit' me in?" She chuckles and you shake your head at the joke. Maybe it sounded better in Vedari? 

"I don't know," Zoradia smiles, "That sounds like a set up for 'turn your head and cough'." She waggles her eyebrows and the three of you laugh. Anagyros yawns as you all get out of your seats, and you see someone in white coming out of the main building, and walking swiftly toward the shuttle.

"I'll think of something." You say, as you head for the shuttle door. It opens, and the warm air of the shuttle is sucked out as lower temperature and pressure equalize and there a soft pop in your ears. Ouch. You shake your head and step out into the bright white of the snow surrounded landing pad. The black material still has a layer of snow that crunches under your boots as you walk around to the front of the shuttle.

A woman in white armor has closed the distance between the building and the shuttle with surprising swiftness. Her long legs carry her with each powerful stride, and the wind shakes the tied back mane of curly black hair that bobs behind her head. Her dark chocolate features are as cool and calm as the snow around you, and you walk up to Corporal Olivera 'Treads' with a smile.

"Corporal." You nod, and she stops in front of you, snapping to a smart salute. You return it, and release yours, "At ease, Olivera." You look into her eyes, flashes of warm nights and soft words struggle at the edge of your mind. Olivera closes the distance and grabs you by the shoulders, pulling you in for a deep, wet, kiss.

Her lips push yours aside so her tongue can plunge and wrestle with yours, pinning it as she tastes you and moans into the kiss. You push back, with your tongue, and she turns her head into the kiss as she breathes in through her nose, drinking in your scent. After a long, hot, moment, that's left your armor feeling a lot tighter below the belt, she pulls away with that small subtle smile.

"It is good to see you, Kapitan." She turns to Zoraida. "Warrant Officer," She licks her lips, "You are in good health, I taste." She looks back to you, and you feel your cheeks burn hot, from the kiss or in response to the chill of the wind, you're not sure. Zoraida laughs and then Olivera looks over your shoulder at Felira, while one of her hands rises to pet Anagyros behind the ears.

Introductions are made, and Olivera invites you all in before you freeze your noses off. Even the short walk to the lab's door feels brutal once you have the heated interior of the building to compare it too. 

It looks like a hospital or lab interior that could have been on any world. Prefabricated and with all the generic signage that you'd expect. Reception desk, restroom indicators, chairs and tables, food dispenser, the basics.

There was a large green sign labeled 'Habitation and Luxuries' that lead to the immediate left, and you could see a sealed doorway not far down the hall. There were three other signs, without labels; a blue, a yellow, and a red.  You also see a clock, that reads that it's just a few minutes before noon, local time.

"So," You look to Olivera, "How have you been since?" Since, what, you got shot in the head? Damn, you hadn't through about how to talk to your troops about what had happened. You'd gone off on your own and gotten yourself shot up. Captured and frozen while barely alive, you left the rest of the crew to cover your ass.

"Well." Olivera answered. "It has not been easy though, many nights I have had nightmares. About when you were shot." She says plainly, and her gaze bores into you. You see the weary lines under her eyes and the accumulation of stress that they imply.  "Long nights, cold and lonely nights." She continues. "Ensign Inari tries to help, but she is... clumsy in that way." She sighs. "She is out on a supply run," She change the subject. "To Gamma Central, for restocking essentials. She should be back in maybe an hour, or two."

"Inari..." You say the name and you feel a memory pull you back.

You're in the back seat of a training Flyer. In front of you is another pilot. You're being flown through a desert gorge, a river runs across the bottom. Your pilot is whipping through the gorge. Her movements are natural, instinctive, and totally unImperal. You hide your smile, and try and get her back on task before she gets booted.

"Cadet! Your movements are pushing the frame beyond specs. Tighten it up." You say with boilerplate trainer talk. It tastes like bile in your mouth, just saying it.

"I know what this thing can take, Sir. She's fine." The pilot sasses back, and normally you would agree. But you can see a read out of the Flyer on your trainer's screen, and things are not proceeding as she expects. She should be able to see that on her dials and readouts, though.

"Mind your ship, not just the stick, Cadet!" You shout out as she drops down under an overhanging rock bridge. You see the altimeter read 4 meters off the deck, before she smoothly rises up to double digits once again, if only to avoid trees growing along the riverside. 

"They read fine, by me, Si- what the fu-?!" She shouts as something 'pops' the engine explodes, the Flyer starts to brutally torque in mid air. You briefly feel perfect weightlessness before you slam into the river.

The simulation ends and you hear the canopy start to pop open automatically. What was that? You think, and immediately lean forward to see the dials the Cadet had been looking at. Before they flashed off, your helmet cam captures a slide image of the dials, but you read enough to know that nothing she could have seen from her point of view would have indicated the engine failure.

"Sol?" You blink and you're standing in the waiting room. You look around and teh women are all staring at you. Olivera is right in front of you, her bright eyes staring into you with a quiet intensity. "Another memory?" Zoraida asks, now that she has your attention, and you nod, as you feel Olivera's warm breath on your face.

"Yeah. Inari's cadet days, I think... someone hacked her simulator?" You bring up the memory and Zoraida smiles, nodding. You see the clock on the wall now reads a full five minutes past noon. 

"That's how you met her, yes. You defended her case and helped find the person who tried to ruin her." She said, but didn't give you any more than that. "She was quite attached to you, after that." Oh boy. You blush darkly.

"Well fuck all." Felira sighs. "How far back in the line am I going to have to wait?" She frowns. Olivera taps her chin and counts off three fingers and holds them up. "Eh, not that bad."

"So it was just the three of you here?" You venture, not sure whom else you've fucked in your crew. Olivera nods. "So, which way?" You indicate one of the three unmarked halls, given that she's probably not testing in the habitat. Hopefully not anyway.

"This way." She points at the yellow marked hallway and leads you down to a set of heavy security doors. Zoraida and Felira follow after the two of you, while you watch Olivera punch in a short numeric code. Slow enough you can memorize it. The doors open and your eyes widen at what you see. A long hall runs to another pair of security doors, and on either side you can see sealed doors and thick security windows that run wide along the hallway. 

You step forward, and confirm that each door leads to a sealed lab, and as you get a look, you see destruction. In the first room, all the computers and devices have been smashed to pieces. The tables are broken, and glass is everywhere. There's one intact chair, sitting next to a pile of stacked computer circuit boards.

The lab across from it looks like its been set on fire. The walls are dark with pitch, and fire retardant foam is caked on the walls. You look to Olivera but she slowly walks down the hall like none of this is a surprise. 

The third lab has a green glow to it, not from radiation, but from the light reflecting off of all the plants growing on every shelf surface possible. They all seem to be the same plant, too. a long narrow leafed looking plant. You cock an eyebrow at the familiar greenery and make note of this room for a later date. 

The last lab looks almost perfectly intact, and at first you aren't sure what's wrong with it. Something has to be. 

Then you see the fish swimming by at eye level, over a table, and the reality of the lab's alteration dawns on you. You want to laugh, but you worry about what this says about Tomoe's mental state.

"What is all this?" You indicate the first two, and last, rooms; the third, you're not judging.

"Doctor Tomoe sometimes hits 'blocks' in her research, she uses these rooms focus." Olivera explains. You thumb a finger at the fish tank lab and she shrugs. "She needed somewhere to put Doctor Banana fish after she moved him out of the ship." She says and goes over to the closed security door. You turn and see a long yellow fish swimming near what you thought as a stack of flasks, but is actually a scientifically themed fish castle. 

"Huh." You nod as you follow after Olivera, Zoraida chuckling as she assures Felira that she's not in any danger.

The next set of labs don't do much to support that. A massive hole is melted through one of the lab windows, and across the hall, a perfect mirror matches it, except that the debris from one of the holes is in the hallway, and in the other, its inside the lab. You look at this one, and see a large metal square standing in the middle of the room. It seems like everything around this square, including the stand supporting it, has melted or suffered from massive heat damage. But the square panel is a perfect black square. 

You turn you head, and see what could only be called a cannon. The barrels are ridged and at the end is a cylinder just more than a meter in diameter. It's a huge weapon, as big as you. You look back to the panel, then back again at the weapon.

"Huh." You say, and continue to follow Olivera, whose stopped in front of one of the last two labs. To her back is a lab with a number of machines that appear to be fabricating parts out of raw materials, and the one she's facing, is filled with lightning.

Part of it is, anyway.

The far half of the room seems to be an enclosure designed to contain massive amounts of energy, judging by the way that lighting is arcing off the two white hot rings floating inside it. Blue fissures of lightning burst out from them, between then, and into collectors above and below them as they are suspended in the center of the chamber.
 
Between this light show and the lab window, a woman is sitting in a chair. A white lab jumpsuit lays abandoned behind the chair, her legs up on the console. She's watching the screen in front of her, and you can see a line graph being plotted in real time with each bolt of electricity that is discharged.

One of her hands is gripping a swollen nipple, pinching and pulling at it. The other, you can't quite see, but you imagine its working an equally swollen and teased clit. Sweat coats her smooth skin and you can see her incredible ass flexing and squishing against the worn out cushion of the chair. You smile and look at the woman standing beside you.

Olivera looks on without surprise, Zoraida bites a knuckle too keep from laughing, and Felira's eyes don't know where to look, tits, ass, or lightning.

"I guess I should go in and say hello?" You offer, none of the woman raise an objection, and you key in the same code you saw Olivera use to enter the lab. The sounds of lightning and ozone are muted by the chamber; the sounds of wet pussy, groaning chair, and moaning woman are not.

"Fucking PEAK...." Tomoe Maeda pleads as she fingers herself deeply, you can see her fingers are wet and sticky as she plunges two knuckles deep. "Peak!" She growls at the screen with each lightning strike. You pad quietly behind her. Your armor is surprisingly quiet when you want it to be. Nothing rattles or rustles. "Come on!" She howls and you see that the line chart is only going half as high as the scale seems to allow, and there's a dotted line that the input isn't reaching.

You step behind her and watch as she continues to finger herself, oblivious to your presence. The lightning start to die down and she sighs in exasperation, leaning back, her eyes closed, as she exhales and slows her fingering. If she would open her eyes right now, she would see you. Instead, you watch her blindly switch her grip, so the one that was now sticky and wet held the breast that had been ignored previously.

Then the computer speaks.

"Beginning sequence. Variant Four. Observers: please mind, the Discharge." It was a mechanical, automated voice that pieced words together than that an AI constructing coherent phrases.

"Observers?" Tomoe mumbles. "Stupid thing's broken again." As she starts to watch the lighting start up again.

"I don't know about that, T." You lean in close to whisper, and with a screech she leaps out of the chair and spins around to face you, while grabbing at the back of the chair with her sticky hands. You kick away the chair as she backs up against the console, her ass squishing flat against it as she comes down from her panic to look at you, blinking the sweat in her eyes away. "Hey." You say with a smile.

"Sol?" She asks, and cocks her head to the side, anger on her face.

"Need a hand, Doc?" You ask, the opportunity too good. She narrows her gaze and slaps you across the face. Ah but it was worth it.

"When the hell did you get here!" She ask, "Olivera!" She looks past you to look out the window, and then recognizes whose standing there. "ZORAIDA!" She squeals and runs out of the lab, naked, sticky, and sweaty. "It's you, it's you, it's you!" She squeals and wraps her arms around the golden woman. "I missed you so much!" You can hear her as she hugs the woman close.

You blink. "Huh." You wonder, as you look at the screen and the data being plotted just above and below the dotted line. You walk back outside to Zoriada introducing Felira and after a curt nod from Tomoe, who stood there like being naked was perfectly normal for her, the Doctor rounds on you.

"YOU." She points at your face. "That was funny." She points back into the lab, then back at you, her sticky fingers just under your nose. "Don't do it again," she says, then presses the fingers that smell of her hot sex to your lips. "When I'm working on serious business."  She pulls her fingers away.

"Speaking of, I think your peaks are peaking." You point back at the screen, and Tomoe spins to look at the screen. She lets out a cry of victory as she starts working nobs and buttons, on the consoles.  You lick the taste of Tomoe off your lips and smile. Yeah, that felt right. As soon as she was done with this, you'd bring up your condition, no question. The sooner you had it addressed, the better.

You try and gather your thoughts. When it came to what had happened to you, what detains specifically stand out to you?  What things that had Zoraida said, that IVORI had said, or the assessment device had reported are particular in your mind?

Once she's pulled away from her experiment, what do you want the Doc to look at first?