The Ides of Matt 2014

Solar Stupid

Solar Stupid

I love science fiction, it was my first true reading joy, long before I discovered romance and became known for my romance tales.

And this is an odd little story that I’ve always liked.

Some stories are about the plot, others about the character. This one was about the voice. I’m not even quite sure where my nameless heroine arose from, but I love her voice.

Can you tell that I’m partial to powerful women? She is definitely one.

Attitude, sass, and fun.

That’s all this story was about.

1

I’d prowled through some pretty seedy dives before. I’d picked up men on Pluto and managed to drag down more than my fair share of able male bodies at Tycho City. I’d found solace in the dark recesses of Europa’s Launchpub, suckin’ down brews from the ocean that washed a hundred meters below the surface ice and then humpin’ some man blind. But Mercury station was something else.

First, one look at the friggin’ planet was enough to make a lady sling her rig down through the gravity well and just move her load right on back upsystem. What i***t back in engineering decided that this half-frozen, half-baked planetoid needed a terraforming anyway?

And they had me land a hundred klicks from the one lousy base to set down my load. How’s a girl supposed to get a decent drink and an overeager man, when it’s a friggin’ three-hour rolligon journey ‘cross the hell these people call a terrain? So, after six weeks of dry space, I start unloading the gear without even a little break for some male-female recreating.

Now, mining-bots can be a great help, once you have them set up. That was two days right there, and then we, just the bots and lonely me, unloaded the mass drivers and started drilling the anchor holes.

Some whiz-b***h who’d clearly never been in space had cooked up this stupid idea. Set up a rack of mass drivers along the equator of this non-spinning world. Service them with a couple hundred mining-bots and fire them all off pointing in the same direction. Bots feed bits of Mercury, rocks and ice and stuff, into the hoppers and then fire the mass drivers like mad for twenty years or so and the whole dumb thing starts to spin.

Then, instead of having a planetoid with one side the temperature of deep space and the other side way the crap above the iron melting point, you get a spinning boulder that no one cares about an’ that’s still too danged hot to fry an egg. It would just hit the surface of Mercury, spinning or not, and flash into steam before it could cook.

But you try to point this kinda common sense out to engineering and they tell you to go jump yourself. You’re just a dumb rocket jock and you don’t know squat. They’re all whacked on Earth. They’re all whacked on Earth.

Upsystem they aren’t nearly as bizarre. By the time you haul your sorry a*s across the asteroid belt, everything gets lots mellower and much less stupid.

Maybe stupidness compresses more and more as you get down toward the sun. Solar stupid could explain a lot of things. Like the i***t plan to break Venus’ cloud layer and let the sun shine in by ionizing the atmosphere to turn it all into rain. First off, any moisture that would land on that surface would just flash back into steam right away. Second, nobody thought about that setting off the thirty nucs all at once might react funny with the atmosphere and irradiate the planet for the next couple million half-lives of Thorium-232. Now instead of being a friggin’ hot, dead planet under a bank of clouds, it’s a friggin’ hot, dead, radioactive planet under a bank of clouds. Solar stupid.

2

So after three weeks of me and the bots setting up the massive drivers in the cold and dark of the space-side, and me moving the ship three times to place the drivers, with not a pinkie’s worth o’ help from the frickin’ Mercury base, it was all good to go. Then I lifted a few hundred clicks up in case one of them blew. I didn’t want to be marooned too far from the nearest beer if we got a planet quake or somethin’.

And screw ‘em. No way was I gonna warn them if they weren’t gonna come on out and help a girl like they was supposed to.

I hit the fire button.

And them mass drivers fired off like lasers into the night. The contrails cleared the edge of Mercury shadow a few hundred klicks from the drivers and the solar wind whipped the exhaust away like a snow storm in a hurricane whips ice up a polar bear’s behind. Shudders must be running all round that rock. It’d be probably a decade before the planet even rotated one extra turn per orbit, and it was gonna be a rough ride down on the planet ‘til then. Low, pulsin’ vibrations that would jar against your brain just below hearing for every hard-earther there. That’d show the bastards for leavin’ a lady alone on such a dirty job.

Man, firing off them drivers sure lit up the comm channels at long last. But I’d be darned if I was gonna answer the hard-earthers after they’d ignored me all these days. I set her down as sweet and polite as Queen frickin’ Victoria setting her toosh down on some Elizabethan powder-puff pillow.

They’d have tore the airlock off the hinges trying to welcome me, if it had hinges.

They was shoutin’ and cussin’. And I was getting set to shout and cuss right back at ‘em. That was ‘bout the time I noticed my message cue. I’d written the arrival message, just seems I forgot to hit the old send key. I deleted it real quiet-like and calmed down after I’d ripped them only one or two new assholes ‘stead o’ the ten or twenty I’d planned on.

So, none of us was too happy by the time I got into the base and I sure needed a beer and then a good man between my legs. Or maybe other way ‘round would be okay, too.

Now a beer out on Europa, that’s somethin’. The water is different, soft kinda and sweet. Martian ice beer at the Low-gee, that was somethin’ else too, so dark you could practically chew it. Here on Mercury station, sitting in a back booth that had clearly been stolen from some drive-in diner back in the Age of Democracies right down to the flickerin’ lights and squidgy music, they served recycled-urine pale ale.

And the walls were the same friggin’ color as the ale. Since when was piss-yellow primer a friendly color? Upsystem the plassteel always got painted. First thing. On friggin’ Mercury it just matched the sad excuse for a beer.

Them waste processors on my ship always made water taste just fine, but they sure didn’t get it clean before makin’ this Mercury pisswater. The waiter came over to offer me another, but the chances of my keeping this stodge down at all was pretty slim as it was, so I only ordered one more. Needed some buffer against the subsonics rippling through the rock and right up the old mastoid.

I watched him walk away. Now that was a cute a*s. Not many men wore them tight pants and even fewer should, but on this one it sure was nice. Course, I’d never been much of a one for the pretty boys. Always been partial to the ones that had a chance of winning a wrestlin’ match agin me, always liked a challenge in my bed. But this one. Somethin’ about him. He moved smooth and graceful in the light gee as he drew my half-liter.

He was running the joint and I was about the only one left. The other five tables were deserted except for one loser snoozin’ it off two tables over. Everyone else had cleared out and headed for their racks. Not one decent man among ‘em had offered to buy a lady a drink or invite her into their bed.

Men. Just solar stupid jerks.

But that waiter was a comin’ back. From the short, buzz cut, down past that fresh face and clean sweater, I focused on them hips and thought about ‘em. The little bit of an apron for holding a bar rag and some credits looked kinda like a tool belt if I squinted right. Somethin’ ‘bout a man’s hips and a toolbelt . . . They was nice thoughts I was thinkin’. Course a pretty boy like that might not pack much of a punch, but my options were gettin’ slim unless I was interested in Mr. Passed Out.

I glanced over. He was a-droolin’ on the table. I turned back to that waiter in his heavy red sweater, so bright it made my eyes swim a bit it did. And them tight pants just hangin’ there so nice.

“Hey, good-lookin’. How’s ‘bout you’n’me go check out the ‘commodations in this place?” Not one a my smoothest lines, but a girl can get away with just asking sometimes, so I jus’ asked.

The waiter set the mug on the table and stared right at me. Now them is some of the dang bluest eyes I ever did see. They looked right through me into the back of my head. I couldn’t even blink. It was like I was already laid out bare before him. I could feel my whole body tightening up with some serious kind of interest. I might just have to reconsider my policy of avoiding the pretty boys.

“Sure.” His voice had a throaty quality that wasn’t pretty boy at all. It was pure lion, king of the pride, s*x. Like a sleek panther just dying to leap down on ya’ and lay waste.

I slugged back the brew and was outta there with my hand around his waist faster than you could low orbit around a friggin’ pebble. My ship was just across the hall and down a few steps, this base was so small you couldn’t get lost if you were a lousy teeny ladybug. I’d go bug-crazy inside a week, and I was used to months alone in my rig which wasn’ so big to begin with even if you counted the cargo space.

I cycled the lock behind us and slammed into him. He wrapped his arms round my neck and rammed his sweet tongue about half down my throat. I grabbed his pretty butt that barely filled my hand. But man it was nice and hard with some serious muscle.

Now this was clearly one boy who worked out, slender or no, and I could sure appreciate that. I think I fell in love at that moment with his tongue and mine wrestlin’ for ground back and forth. I never felt that way for no man. Sure they was fun. Catch ‘em and let ‘em go, just like Pap and his fish. But I wasn’t solar stupid. It’s all them men was good for anyway.

But the way this pretty boy made me feel, I was glad the gravity was so light or my knees’d be gone and I’d be down on the deck plating. He dug eager fingers into my big breasts and was makin’ me crazy.

Finally with a roar like some wild beast, comin’ from someplace deep inside me I sure as heck didn’t know, I flipped him onto my shoulder and dragged ‘im back to my rack. I pulled off his sweater and we slammed back together.

Now that was when I noticed somethin’ funny, other than being in love of a sudden and all. We fit together good, but we fit together different. There was more keepin’ us apart than my massive melons.

Next time I got a chance I looked down and danged if the pretty boy didn’t have a pair o’ melons of his own. Now I was surprised as an ice hunter finding a swimming hole on Old Luna with a slide and divin’ board all built in. I looked back into them blue eyes. They regarded me with that look-down-into-your-soul-like-you-couldn’t-lie-to-nohow kinda look.

I went and looked back down at them unexpected extra parts. They was right pretty ones, nice and perky they was, with the cutest little tips just tight as could be. I slid a hand around from that nice firm behind and reached under that little bar apron. Sure enough there weren’t no male equipment there. My pretty boy was a pretty girl.

Well, that was sure as heck news to me.

Then she leaned in and kissed me and my knees did go out. She took me down on the decking and pinned me there with them strong, sweet lips o’ hers like there was no tomorrow. At least not one that I’d ever live to see. No ma’m. I took a fresh hold of her tight behind as she rode against me and pulled her in hard.

Why I’d never thought to look at the pretty ones before was sure beyond me.

Just solar stupid, I guess.