A Solid Core of Alpha (8 page)

Anderson gasped as though he’d been slapped. “Are you
insane
?”

“No. We’ve officially outlived our usefulness, Anderson. You’ve just come in to tell me that you don’t need me anymore. Go do it. Pull the plug. Kill us.”

“I can’t do that!” Anderson thought about his life without his family and fought valiantly not to throw up or pass out. Lose his family? Again? Impossible. “You asshole! How could you even
suggest
that?”

Alpha nodded and started to prowl aggressively around the room. “Yeah, I get it. I’m the asshole. That’s fine. I’m the one who made you fight for your survival. That makes me a bad person, and I can live with it. But in five minutes, I won’t have to. All you have to do is walk out this door, go up to the bridge, and kill us all.”

“I’m not going to
do
that!” Anderson protested, angry in a way he didn’t think he could ever be—hideously angry, a black rage falling over his skin like a spiked curtain, blood thundering in front of his eyes for a textured patina of red. “These people are my
family
. You don’t
kill
them just because they’ve outlived their usefulness!”

“Not even me, Anderson?” Alpha taunted. God, he was tall. He was a good six inches taller than Anderson and still muscular and strong. Anderson’s diet had been affected by the synthesizer rations—not as much protein, not as much vegetable matter, in spite of the biosphere—and he was underweight and fragile.

“Yes, you!” Anderson was shouting, even though Alpha was right up in his face, right in front of him, holding his shoulders in those hard, rough hands. “You’re my family. You’re a bastard and a son of a bitch, and I still love you, dammit! I’m not just going to kill you just because we’re almost to port!”

Alpha stopped that bone-jarring shaking and moved closer, smiling with that arrogant glint that had first made Anderson love him. God, he’d been so sure of himself, so in charge, and Anderson had been alone and making the decisions without guidance for so, so long.

“Yeah? Well, that probably means you still need me. Bully for me!”

Anderson flinched. He didn’t want it to be true. “You are a bully,” he whispered, and he was practically transcendent with joy when the expected blow to the face actually arrived.

“Yeah? Was that violent enough for you?”

Anderson closed his eyes. He deserved it. He deserved more. Disposing of people like they were tissue, choosing his own life over the collected lives of his colony, over their culture, over the proof of their existence. He deserved it. He deserved everything Alpha gave him.

But he’d proved today that he still wanted to live.

“That’s more than enough,” he whispered, his eyes closed, feeling like a coward.

Alpha’s mouth covered his, mashed against his until he tasted his own blood. “I think you’re lying.”

Anderson opened his eyes in real fear. This was Alpha, defying what was best for Anderson. Or was he? Alpha grinned, his mouth hard and uncompromising, and went to kiss Anderson again. This time, the kiss was soft, gentle, sweet, and Anderson closed his eyes in longing.

He longed that Alpha would be done with him quickly and that the wounds would heal soon.

Part 2: C.J.

Chapter 5

A Collective Voice

 

 

C.J.’
S
monitor was going off unmercifully. He groaned, stretched his nude body, and clambered over Jensen’s sheets, and the five zillion multi-colored pillows on his gi-fucking-normous bed, and then over Jensen’s girlfriend, and then, finally, over Jensen himself, who was, unbelievably, still stroking himself hard, practically in his sleep.

“Jensen!”

“God, really?”

“Jensen, you asshole, if you’re awake enough to beat off, give me my fucking monitor!”

“But we’re not done fucking!”

Oh, wonderful. He could make dirty puns in his sleep too.

“Jesus, you really
are
an asshole, you know that?” C.J. draped himself over the end of the bed, and over Jensen too, and went hunting for his pants in the puddle of discarded clothing at the bottom.

“I thought my asshole was the part of me you liked the best!” Jensen feigned hurt, and he also used his opportunity to grope C.J.’s bare bottom as it presented itself. C.J. was busy looking for the monitor—and he enjoyed the touch
very
much, especially when Jensen found his… oh, yes… his balls… and then a thumb, sliding along his crease—

“Got it!” he cried in triumph, just when that clever, clever thumb found its way home. C.J. groaned, and for a whole second—long enough for Jensen to trickle a little lube down there and massage with some serious intent—he contemplated not answering this call.

The monitor buzzed again. It was Cassidy. Her ringtone was undeniable, because he’d programmed the monitor to play an old Terran song about having ninety-nine troubles, “but a bitch ain’t one.”

Cassie loved that song. She liked to say she was the one bitch who was still trouble, and he liked to tell her that he had plenty of women, and more than a few men, who’d like to say the same thing.

“Dammit, Cassidy, am I or am I not planetside?” he snapped into the monitor. One of the perks of having a sister who was also your boss was that you got to be a total bear to her when she woke you up when you were down on the planet enjoying some hard-earned leave.

“You’re gonna want to be here for this one, Cyril,” she said, and he grimaced. God, he hated his given name.

“What, another ship full of fools who tried to get too close to that nebula cluster?” Once a year there was always someone—somebody who thought that they could brave the time-space-reality-warp of the Ariadne quadrant, complete with the madness that accompanied it. C.J., junior engineer and specialist for all weirdness space related, was particularly good at figuring out what mechanical problems were just wear and tear and what stuff was seriously bizarre—like the time-space parasite that liked to slip between the molecules of the ship’s hull, scuttle along the wiring, and then make its way to the frontal lobe of the passengers and mess with the neural cluster there that humans used to regulate reality.

C.J. was good at the little mechanical details; in fact, he loved them. The big hairy psychological shit, he left that to his sister, who, in turn, would hand over the worst cases to Jensen. But the small human-engineering interfaces that frequently got fucked up in outer space? That shit was C.J.’s bread and butter.

He liked that stuff. He liked the people who came with it. Everyone had a story, and he could listen to them all. And the best part was, most of that shit? Most of it was easily dealt with. A little radiation to the right places, some medication that his sister, the space-counselor, had on hand, and it was all good. Those nice people could go on their merry way, and C.J. had another story to tell, and the world kept turning, and space kept being just hilariously fucking weird. The long-term stuff, well, that got turned over to a long-term counselor, someone more able to deal with things deeply rooted in the psyche. (Someone like, say, the big-thumbed, handsome fucker who was currently burying his thumb in C.J.’s ass while getting his girlfriend to spread her thighs and warm herself up. Jensen, you—
oh, God, yes, don’t stop
—asshole!)

The basic space things? Hyperdrive side-slipping so that time turned back on itself in small increments? Spaceships developing a fear of space and needing a total memory wipe to start up again? Time-space parasites that dicked with the wiring? Electronics overdosing on a blue sun’s rays and recording stuff that didn’t happen? The basic, nuts—
c’mon, Jensen, don’t forget those… uh, yeah… good
—and bolts, give-’em-a-dose-and-a-sympathetic-ear stuff?

C.J. was great at it.

“What’s right up my alley?” he asked, and he pretended to ignore Jensen’s evil chuckle as something went up his alley that made him want to pant. He was glad he hadn’t triggered the video on the monitor—Cassie would never let him live it down.

“We’ve got a guy coming in from… Jesus, do you remember that mining colony that got destroyed? Like, ten years ago? You were still at university, squandering your education….” She paused for a second to see if he’d rise to the bait because she had more letters behind her name than he did. He had Jensen, pulling his thumb out and adding two fingers and spreading them, while his erection rubbed up against Jensen’s hairy thigh and Molly caressed his backside. Who needed letters behind him?

“Go on,” he said, trying to sound bored.

“C.J.,” Cassie said suspiciously, “what are you doing?”

C.J. took a shuddering breath and spread his thighs a little more. Molly’s hand snuck down and grasped his cock, and he wriggled in appreciation.

“Trying to figure out why you’re bothering me on my month off,” he said, thinking his voice sounded firm.

“You’re having sex, aren’t you?”

“Not. Yet.” Molly squeezed, right at his head, exactly when Jensen plunged inside his ass with three thick fingers.

“Oh, for God’s sake. We’ve got a guy who’s been in space for ten years without a soul to talk to coming in three days. He’s apparently tricked out his ship in ungodly ways to make the journey. Do you want the case or not?”

For just a moment, C.J. forgot that he was in the middle of having sex. “Hell yes!” he said, and then,
oh hell yes!
as Jensen’s thick finger found his gland and began to massage.

“Good. Then finish your little orgy and be on the next shuttle to the station, you hear me?”

“When…?” Oh God. “When is that going to be?”

“Three hours.”

Oh thank the gods. “I’ve got time,” he moaned, and then he switched off his communicator and turned to Jensen’s girlfriend, Molly, of the mischievous green eyes and the slender, cool hands.

“Molly, shift over here a little, ’kay, darlin’?” She did, and he adjusted his position, spreading his knees as Jensen pulled his fingers out and positioned a hard cock at C.J.’s happy, stretched entrance. Molly’s thighs were open and inviting, and her labia were wet and swollen, and
ohmigod
, Jensen’s cock was big, and it looked like breakfast was
served.

 

 

T
HREE
hours later, he was on the shuttle, relaxed, happy, and well fed with
real
food—in fact, some out-of-this-star-system pecan pancakes that were Molly’s specialty and a big thank you from the both of them for coming down planetside and providing a little recreation.

Jensen may have been one of the best head-shrinks for three star systems, but he was also one kinky bastard, and Molly matched him kink for kink. C.J. loved them both and really loved being along for the ride, but he was pretty sure this was the last time he would be invited into their bed.

They were starting to look at each other
that
way. That totally exclusive, “I want you and nobody else but you, even in bed, even forever” kind of way that Cassie had aimed at her husband, Marshall, about six seconds after she met him. C.J. knew the signs. At twenty-nine, he’d seen enough of his friends start to settle down—not all of them, not by a long shot, but it was getting to be that time. People stopped wanting a flavor of the month in bed and started wanting a flavor of a lifetime, or at least five years of a first-time marriage contract to see if “forever” was in the cards.

C.J. hadn’t met anyone, man or woman, who had made him want to check that out yet, but then, he’d thought Jensen would be fucking around forever after they broke up too.

Apparently not. C.J. would miss the guy (and the really hot women who liked to accompany him in bed), but it sure was nice to see him this happy. A little part of him wondered if maybe he couldn’t be happy that way too. But not today. Today, he put on his shades and hoped to catch a couple of Zs on the eight-hour trip between the planet and the station.

“Hey, good-lookin’, you been having some fun planetside?”

C.J. suppressed a groan, but he liked Julio, so he pulled the shades down and gave the stocky, muscular man who came to sit next to him a lazy grin. “Hey, Jules, didn’t know you were going up this trip too.”

“Yeah, well, apparently there’s some
n
th level holo-shit going on in this shuttle. They’ve been scanning it since it made contact, and we’re talking shit like no one has ever
seen
on this ship.” Julio shook his head. “I don’t know how he did it, man. He’s like, my age, and he’s done shit my old teacher ain’t never heard of.”

C.J. laughed a little, intrigued. “I know, man. It’s like, what am I doing with
my
life, right?”

Julio turned sly, round brown eyes in C.J.’s direction. “I know what you’re doing with
your
life. Jensen still a big-cocked monster?”

Happy sigh. “Ooohhhhh yeah!”

Julio laughed a little more. “He still with Molly?”

“Yeah. I think maybe their playing days are about over though, you know? They’re getting that… that vibe. That….”

“That ‘I don’t care how good-looking you are, this bed is about to become exclusive’ vibe?” Julio laughed, and C.J. met dancing eyes over his sunglasses.

“I take it you’ve felt that vibe too?” Well, Jensen’s bed was pretty big for a reason. Julio was normally not C.J.’s type otherwise—a little too broad-shouldered, a little older than C.J. liked them, and a little too perceptive and shrewd. C.J. liked less analyzing and more fucking in his sex, but that didn’t mean Julio wasn’t damned good-looking for a man in his late forties, and they’d had fun together the last time they’d been down planetside.

Of course, anyone in Jensen and Molly’s bed was bound to have fun, right?

Julio nodded emphatically. “Oh, yeah. Well, it’s to be expected. That boy’s had his share and my share and your share, and three times what your sister could have had. It really is time to settle down.”

C.J. sighed. “Yeah, I was just thinking that. Seems like everyone’s doing it.” Suddenly his gaze narrowed. “How come you never did?”

Julio—the guy who could shrink your head, repair your holo-hard drive, and then fuck you into the ground after hours—suddenly looked very young and very sad. “Who says I didn’t?” he said softly.

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