Chapter 6

Commonwealth Navy patrols were an occupational hazard of Cas’ job. They were, in the grand scheme of things, one of the less dangerous of those hazards.

Unlike some of the less savoury customers that Cas dealt with, the low-ranking blue caps assigned to inspect cargo and intergalactic transport papers were not especially dangerous. They tended to avoid going in guns blazing, least of all on innocent-seeming cargo ships being piloted by boyishly handsome and charming captains who honestly, officer, had never so much as even heard of “contraband”.

No, the problem wasn’t so much that they were dangerous as it was that they were pricks. Cas was having a stressful enough week without some sneering little insect of an officer crawling on board his boat and peering around.

He could imagine that expression already, a face like someone sniffing sour milk. Add to that the fact that they were pricks with badges, which meant they had the power to throw Cas into some very hot water if they so much as didn’t like the look of him, and Cas would have fancied his chances with any number of gangs, syndicates, clans and Triads than deal with this right now.

“God damn it,” Cas growled, still buck naked from the waist down with his cock still half-hard. Merc and Roxy had barely had chance to move from where they were sat before him, his cum still glistening on their skin, their hair a mess from the wild threesome that had just unfolded on the galley floor in Cas’ ship.

Hoisting his pants back around his waist, Cas marched straight from the galley to his room. He was so focused that he barely even noticed the way that the girls’ eyes followed his muscular ass as he exited, fully dressed by the time he arrived at his massive bed.

He knew he’d left his blaster here, hung on the wall in its holster before he’d flown out of Cortez. It had been right before Roxy had come out of stasis-- which was why he’d had to sneak around with that pipe wrench that Roxy herself eventually used to knock Mercedes off of him. A glance at the wall told him that the holster was empty, though. He saw nothing but the worn leather.

“God damn it!” he cursed again, louder this time.

That blaster was the only thing he’d inherited from his father-- or so his mother had told him. As far as he knew, his mother didn’t even know for sure who his father had even been. Still, family heirloom or not, it was his damn blaster. He’d need it in case things went sideways with the blue caps-- and knowing the blue caps, it was always a possibility.

“Alright. Which one of y’all took my gun?” He scowled at the girls, who had gathered in the doorway.

They stared back at him blankly.

“I never saw a gun, Captain,” Merc responded, flicking her fingers across the cum her cheek and licking them clean. “Would’ve noticed if there had been one, back when you had me tied to the bed.”

“Tied to the bed? Fascinating,” Val said, looking smug. “I can’t imagine why such a great liberator of defenseless women would need to resort to bondage-- can you, spacer?”

Cas redirected his scowl at Val. He didn’t need input from the uptight upperclass peanut gallery at the moment. But in Mercedes’ case, Cas believed her. He knew from experience that if Mercedes Skybreaker had a shot at you, she took it. No need for subterfuge or cleverness when you’d taken the only gun on board.

Pushing past the three women, Cas headed to the bridge. The soft padding of their bare feet against the metal floors told him that they were following him. But unfortunately, a quick glance around the cockpit told him that the blaster wasn’t there, neither.

“Figured the only shooter you had was the one between your legs,” Roxy expanded, seemingly unphased even as the Commonwealth ship drew into view, closing the cosmic distance between them in what seemed like mere moments.

Cas didn’t like that. She’d been out of the box the longest. Had he really left his damn gun back on Cortez? That hardly seemed like him.

“Well, damn it straight to hell,” Cas grumbled, unsettled by this latest surprise. He’d never liked surprises to begin with, and now that they were beginning to include things like unexpected run-ins with the Commonwealth Navy and missing guns, he was liking them less and less by the minute.

Cas’ thoughts were interrupted by a sudden crackling voice over the hailer. The patrol ship was now visible through the windshield at the bridge’s head, the squat grey bulk blocking out light from the nearest star, itself little more than a dim light on the cosmic horizon.

“Conveyor-class Adonia, you have five minutes to open your gangway hatch and prepare for officer boarding. Failure to comply will result in the sanction of your trading licence and potential seizure of your vessel.”

Cas weighed up his options. Even if he threw everything he had into making a break for it, there was no way he’d outrun a Commonwealth patrol ship. And if he did escape, they’d still know to be on the lookout for The Adonia in every sector of this quadrant. Starting a fight was worse. Mercedes might have been a seasoned professional, but he had no idea if the other two knew how to handle themselves. Winning would almost be worse-- they’d be cap killers, right at the top of the Cluster’s most wanted list more-or-less automatically.

“Alright. Alright.” Cas moved over to a console, pressing the buttons to open the hatch which would provide access to the ship. Mechanical shuffling and clanging echoed from the cargo hold. The officers would be aboard in moments.

While Cas handled the officers, Mercedes took charge of the girls, moving Roxy and Val down the passageway and walking them into Cas’ bunk. Cas followed a moment later, trailing at their heels with.

“Don’t make a sound. I’ll try an’ keep ‘em outta here. There ain’t no need for a routine stop to go pokin’ around a man’s private livin’ space.”

“Cas,” Mercedes informed him, an urgent look in her eyes. “If they figure out we’re here...”

“Yeah,” he responded, his tone as grave as hers. He looked at all three of them. None of them were cowering, but there was no pretending that the situation wasn’t a serious one. It hung over them all like a funnel cloud just before a twister, all heavy air and puke-and-piss skies.

Mercedes looked like she wanted to punch something, positioning herself in front of the rest of the girls. Val stood just to her right, chin stuck out in a show of proud defiance, like she planned on giving a royal spanking and a verbal undressing to anyone who so much as looked at her wrong in her makeshift finery. As for Roxy, she stood close to Cas’ bed, looking unphased as ever. She looked confident in him, even. Like there was a holo-flick about to play out before her and she was just waiting on her popcorn.

“Captain Cassius Dawson. Sir?” A male voice echoed from down in the hold. The officer must have come on board while Cas was still trying to make sure that the girls were protected.

“I’ll deal with this.” It was the most reassurance he could offer. Barely even thinking, he kissed Mercedes and Roxy one after the other. It seemed appropriate, somehow. Mercedes’ green eyes were sharp as a knife to the kidney. She kissed him back, firm and lingering. Like she was fully prepared for it to be the last time.

If he played his cards wrong, it very well could be.

“Captain,” she said, closing her eyes and giving him a nod as she backed away. Cas could respect that. If anyone knew what was at stake here, it was her.

As for Roxy, she kissed him back with a smile.

“Come back safe,” she said, voice full of confidence as she patted his scruffy cheek with her soft little hand.

For a second, his eyes slid to Val. After a long moment’s pause, he nodded at her stiffly. She grimaced and returned the nod. Wasn’t much, but it was something.

With no other options left, Cas turned and headed to confront the officer.

The man greeting him down in the hold was burly, fat layered over muscle such that he almost rivaled Cas for bulk, though Cas’ diet of protein packs kept him as lean as cheap steak. The man was dressed in the uniform of a Commonwealth Navy patrolman: a black leather vest with a badge insignia of four interlocking golden circles glittering on his chest. Under that, a deep blue shirt with black pants and, of course, a midnight blue service cap, the garb after which they took their name.

“Ah, howdy, officer,” Cas greeted, making his way down into the hold from the catwalk above. “What can I do for you today?”

“Just a routine inspection of your goods an’ cargo, Captain. Nothin’ to worry about-- unless you’ve got somethin’ to hide.”

That hardly put Cas at ease. He’d known men who were doing 40 years on Devil’s Basin for things discovered during routine inspections. Hell, he’d known men who were six feet under because they said the wrong thing to an itchy-trigger-fingered patrolman casually perusing a cargo bay. With blue caps, routine was doing whatever the hell they wanted and damn anyone else.

“Inspect away,” Cas replied, unable to do anything but offer the best hospitality, lest he wanted to end up like one of his dear departed comrades. “Y’all got a copy of my manifest? I uploaded it right before I flew outta Cortez. Three medical supply crates on their way to Liberty Terminal.”

It was half true. He filed the manifests with just enough detail to keep the blue caps happy. Doc Clayton’s operation generally made a point of packing the top whatever shit they were sending off in enough synthetic gauze that only a thorough dig would uncover anything more sinister.

The key to good smuggling, in Cas’ experience, was flying just below the radar. Never give them too much of an excuse to look too closely. No one questioned bandages and boxes of gloves when there were bigger fish in the Outer Rim to fry.

“Your manifest says there’re three loaded medical supply crates,” the officer pointed out, narrowing his eyes at the three cyro-chambers and kicking at one of them. Now that the girls were no longer contained within, the crates had returned to the same unassuming state they’d been in when they’d first been placed aboard. When introduced to the officer’s boot, though, the crate he’d kicked skidded forward a few telltale inches. “And yet what I’m seein’ is three empty boxes.”

Shit. Loaded-- Cas had forgotten he’d included that particular detail to explain the crates’ weight. In all fairness, he’d hardly suspected that what was within the crates would go springing out and sucking his cock, but giving too much away was always a dangerous game. That was sloppy. And now sloppy was going to get him into serious trouble.

The officer turned to Cas. To his credit, he didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by the much more muscular, taller man he was facing down. In Cas’ defence, the patrolman had a gun and he didn’t. “So, you wanna start tellin’ me where the rest of your cargo is, son?”

Fuck.

“Well,” Cas began, thinking fast. Not as fast as he would’ve liked, but he’d been put on the spot here. “Y’see, the thing about that is...”

He contemplated a number of options.

He could claim that he’d made an honest mistake, though given the draconian blue caps, that would still get him a hefty punishment and bring on attention he could do without.

He could claim that these were different boxes from the ones he had listed, empty crates that he hadn’t seen fit to detail, but that left the question of where the loaded crates were.

He could claim he had unknowingly been coaxed into shipping wild varmints, that there were now dozens of them all over the ship and the officer had better get out of there before they came back hungry. Touching the spot on his neck where Mercedes had bit him, he did figure he sufficient evidence that he might be able to pull that one off. Now that they’d gotten a taste of human flesh, maybe they’d developed a craving for blood?

But no-- too flashy. Too hard to corroborate if the officer turned out to be a little braver than he looked. Sometimes, the simplest lie was the easiest one.

“I got out of Cortez and decided to take a look at what exactly it was I’d been sent out with. An’ wouldn’t you know it, it was medi-gel.” Cas shook his head forlornly. “Now, what kinda idiot decided to put medi-gel in a cold storage crate, I dunno, but by the time I checked it, it’d already dissolved from the cold. Medi-gel, you know, it’s gotta be kept at--”

The officer didn’t waver for a second. He knew a rat when he smelled one. “Awful large crates for medi-gel. Awful expensive mistake to get cold storage pods for somethin’ that don’t need it, too.”

Cas was feeling cornered. Between his missing blaster and now this, he’d shot straight past suspicious right into paranoid territory. He’d not been stopped by a Navy patrol in more than a year, and that’d been by a half-wit who hadn’t known which end of his blaster did the shootin’ part. But now, suddenly they were taking an interest? Maybe he was being paranoid, but it didn’t hurt to be paranoid when people had gone reason to be after you.

“Look, this is all just a huge misunderstanding. You know, I got a bottle of Shimmer City gin tucked away back in my bunk. How about I go grab it and we puzzle this out together? Smart man like you, I’m sure we can...” Cas began to move toward the officer, raising one hand in a gesture of conciliation.

The officer was having none of it.

“You stay right there!” The officer’s hand went for his blaster with a draw faster than Cas would have imagined a checkpoint patrolman to be capable of.

This, at least, Cas knew how to tango with. It’d earn him a shot in the shoulder if he was lucky. A shot in the gut if he was less so, and then he’d be wishin’ that he had all that medi-gel he’d just lied about. Either way, he’d take his knocks if it meant getting to that blaster before the officer could fire again.

But with the officer’s fingers only inches away from his hip, all of a sudden the man froze up entirely.

Huh. That was new, then.

Moving like a sleepwalker, the officer closed his fist and stood peacefully. He blinked his eyes three times without speaking.

Cas didn’t say nothin’ neither. His damn mouth had already gotten him into enough trouble for one blue cap boarding, thanks.

“Gee,” the officer eventually said, his tone bright and perky but his face completely expressionless. “I’m sorry for the misunderstandin’, Captain Dawson. I see now you had your papers all correct and there’s no problems at all.”

It took Cas a second to catch on to what was happening. He turned and looked back over his shoulder, anticipating a flash of silver hair and finding it.

Val was stood on the catwalk staring down into the cargo hold, trembling, slender fingers pressed to her temple. Violet eyes closed, and an expression of serene concentration on her face.

Psykers weren’t common in the Outer Rim. There would be no reason for a Commonwealth Navy trooper to expect one, least of all on a ship with only one declared occupant. The officer was completely defenceless as Val ran roughshod over his brain.

“You have a nice day now, Captain Dawson,” the officer continued in that unnaturally bright, cheerful tone. “I’m gonna get back on my ship in an orderly manner, finish up my shift and go home to think about my life choices.” A flicker of confusion crossed his face for a moment, but then he turned on his heel and stumbled off like a varmint pulled fresh from a barrel of Lost Landing moonshine.

Without another word, the officer made his way back through the tunnel that had extended out to connect their ships, disappearing out of sight. Still feeling his heart pounding away inside his chest, Cas turned to Val, who was now looking paler than ever, breasts heaving laboured beneath her makeshift gown. She was good, he had to admit, but even so, the effort of maintaining such a psychic stranglehold had worn her out after only a few moments.

“I thought you were meant to be a ... a smooth talker, spacer.” Val chastised him breathily. By the time he reached her, her voice was as weak as her body looked. “Whatever ... happened to...”

Before Val could finish her jab at him, her knees gave out and she crumpled. Moving fast, Cas took her delicate weight in his arms without any effort at all. Her eyes stared up at him weakly for a moment, violet flickering like extinguishing neon, before her long, dark eyelashes fluttered closed. Lifting her up in his arms, Cas carried her through to his bunk, the faint scent of expensive perfume-- jasmine and roses, Cas thought-- still clinging to her skin.

“Looks like the princess just saved our asses, Captain.” Roxy commented, observing from the door as Cas gently placed her on the bed. “She gonna be okay?”

Val appeared to be sleeping soundly. Cas had read somewhere once that a psyker could burn thousands of calories when they were pushing themselves that hard. He’d cook her up some extra rations when she woke up.

“Reckon so, yeah,” Cas murmured, sat on the bed, his eyes locked on Val’s sleeping face, delicate and gorgeous once that haughty expression had faded. “Just needs some rest. I guess maybe she ain’t quite so determined to leave us all behind as all that.”

“Mm. And look at you, Captain,” Roxy cooed from across the room. She closed the gap between the two of them and stood in front of him as he sat on the bed, her tits jutting out, almost eclipsing his view of her face as he looked up. Her bare pussy hovered just inches from his face. He could smell the scent of her in the air. “Our big, strong protector from the blue caps, standing tall in the face of danger then taking such awfully good care of us.” Her nimble fingers caught his hair, pushing through the chestnut waves. “And here I thought you were meant to be some kinda bad boy spacer.”

“I am a bad boy spacer,” Cas insisted, a little growl reverberating in his throat as Roxy’s lips lowered to his cheekbone. “I’m a scoundrel and a bastard and...” Her lips dipped lower, kissing his collarbones as she unbuttoned his shirt. “And a no-good ... lyin’ ... thievin’...” Roxy’s eyes flashed up at him, deviousness glinting in the electric blue as she tugged at his belt. “Cheatin’ ... whorin’ ... Aw, fuck it straight to hell.”