Legion Candidate, Chapter 4

Darwin, CD-15-22, was a shitty little planet the same system as Pascia, CD-15-04, or at least that’s how Ilina figured it worked since two parts of the identifier were the same. Even after all this time traveling and dropping down to different planets and going on missions, she just couldn’t bring herself to care that much about those kinds of details. She especially couldn’t care what the name of the continent she was on, or what city she was in, since once she left she would never come back and unless something really interesting happened she wouldn’t even remember it in a few weeks.

It was a warm summer night complete with the sound of crickets, chimes in the light breeze, and the distant sounds of drunkards getting kicked out of their second bar of the night. She sat quietly next to Krystyn on the curb beneath the unflattering glow of liquor store signage waiting for the correct moment to dash into the bar across the road.

The familiar scent of cheap beer, bar food, and cigarettes was a siren song for a girl who had crashed too many boats into that particular rock. Always walked away from the wreckage with more bruises than friends, but never alone. New Dead Roads was a shitty little hole in the wall that doubled as a dyke bar and a gathering place for every rebel left on Darwin, and it might as well been systems away from her right now.

Krystyn, dressed properly in her broken-in leather jacket and worn out boots, looked like more of a kicked dog than usual — the way she’d been cutting her hair didn’t help ward off accusations of mange either — as she scratched nervously at her arms trying to make herself as small as possible. Her face was painted with guilt too. It was like nothing Krystyn had ever said to Ilina about standing out in Domon was anything more than projection.

“Do you two need help?” Some well meaning local meandered over from the safety of a nearby late-night business to watch the sob story of the century. Ilina shook her head and the man frowned and chewed his lip. “Then you ought to scurry off—“

“Read the room,” Ilina said loud enough for both him and his buddies huddled at the next shop over, and put a hand on Krystyn’s shoulder briefly. The guy took another look at her and deflated instantly. He had the same glossed-over, distant eyes that so many people in Domon seemed to have, and Ilina was getting really familiar with the source of it all.

“Sorry. If it helps,” he pressed instead of walking away. “They’re really nice in there, just uh…”

Ilina smirked and teased, “Not your crowd?”

“Yeah, yeah. You shouldn’t linger much longer.” He knelt down and fished some cash out of his torn-up and debadged dark blue military jacket, probably from some engineering division, and handed it over with a shaky hand, missing a finger. “They don’t take digital in there. Get her something to eat. Watch your drinks.”

Ilina took it and nodded, returning a weary smile like the one he wore but she couldn’t match his eyes. Domon soldiers found camaraderie in their guilt, atoning for all the same universal experiences, and there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that no matter what she wore or how she acted they would all recognize her as an outsider.

The streetlamps flickered as cars rolled by lazily and their guest returned to his friends and their safe haven in the shadow of a convenience store that not-so-secretly advertised their recreational pharmacy. A sort of malaise, quiet resentment, choked out life on the street despite the bursts of raucous cheers that escaped the bar.

It felt like home.

It felt so much like home it hurt.

Not the little apartment she shared with her parents, and not whatever dusty bombed out hole she crawled into for the nights before she joined Carrion. The bar back on the edge of Cryse, a year after she was abandoned, where she would walk in and half of the bar would call her the wrong name and the other half would call her a different, more insulting wrong name, but every bitch in the room loved her more than anything in the world. Caught in a booth between mama’s side piece and one of Irene’s old coworkers, sipping alcohol despite everyone knowing she was too young for it, while they all shared stories about her parents she had no business hearing.

Every bar back home was like that, even the ones mama had never been to. Ilina was a popular girl for a year or two. She liked to think she was still that good at making friends.

She stopped visiting those places when she joined Carrion — started working with the enemy. Most of the little warring factions didn’t care if she sold to them or the ever-invading empire, a dark and hateful imitation of distant Domon, but people did cock their heads at associations with the Corpse Eater for some reason. Ilina had forgotten how old she was when that happened, and Morian wouldn’t fare any better guessing how long they’d been together.

“I wanna go home” Krystyn whined into her knees. “But I can’t let you do this alone. Fuck.” She forced herself to her feet finally, dusting off her jacket as best as she could before checking if anything had stuck to her legs. “We should get going.”

“You ever been to a dyke bar?”

“You don’t say that part out loud in Domon,” Krystyn pulled Ilina to her feet and fussed over brushing her off as she regained her focus. There was, amazingly, an amount of breathing exercises and therapeutic little mantras you could repeat that would eventually pull you out of your head, and Krystyn could get there if you left her alone long enough.

That part? Of course, of course. Domon’s eternal struggle between sex and sexuality: is kissing girls something only prissy little faggots do, or is it some elaborate act of dominance? No wonder Krystyn was so god damn stupid all this time, rattling around that nonsense in her head day after day after miserable day. Maybe it was easier to wallow in it if you had as cushy a life as anyone in Domon seemed to have.

“Is there anything you do say out loud?”

Krystyn flicked the notch in Ilina’s ear like it was a real answer to that question. Domon common-sense was nothing but paranoia and posturing against the existential threat that would never come. The state was both legally and materially accommodating, but the military was a god damn corpse factory churning out broken little girls and crooked toy soldiers.

Whatever. It didn’t fucking matter. Krystyn could handle finding whichever stupid dyke Morian had sent them to find while Ilina settled down and got drunk off the atmosphere and maybe found someone to take care of her for a few hours. Morian knew what Ilina was like and couldn’t blame her for her nature anyways. And if Krystyn was ready to go then there was nothing holding Ilina back!

Ilina took off across the empty street and down the steep stairs and through the heavy door where she was almost clotheslined by a tall woman that looked like she’d put up a fight against Symeon. “Hey. Show me some ID.”

“She’s with me, she’s with me,” Krystyn said as she tried to stumble down the stairs without falling.

The tall, tattooed woman eyed Krystyn up and down. Whatever visual test Krystyn was subjected to, she passed. “Still looks—“

Krystyn tugged at her collar and let out an embarrassed laugh. “She’s old enough, I promise. Hey, we’re actually looking for someone,” Krystyn leaned into the taller woman confidently, like the tumble down the stairs helped scrub off the last bits of anxiety clinging to her. She looked much more at home now that her guard was back up, slipping into some approximation of temporarily-embarrassed playgirl sleaze.

While it was the most attractive face Krystyn had put on in a hot minute, Ilina wouldn’t get too many chances to be unsupervised in her favorite playground. She slipped off as quickly as she could to put distance between her and her kept.

The vibe was very social with people drifting from table to table and drinking beer cheaper than the bottles they were sold in. Lots of them had well-worn military jackets with the patches stripped off or patched over. More women than men, but that was to be expected. Krystyn said it would be like this, an uneven and soulless celebration smothered by a nameless hunger. The rebellion won some concession, however small, and in a few years they would reach for something more. That would be the balance forever, every small shift in the empire’s policies bought in decades of blood.

A few booths along the walls, but there were mostly freestanding tables in the open space away from the bar itself. People playing cards as an excuse to do something with their hands. A lot of smokers for a place so cramped. A few lucky pretty girls cozied up to some handsome ones. If this was the bar back home Maxine would sit near the back at a table all but reserved for her and her friends.

Not even Manya’s drugs could reproduce the high of being back in this environment. Her head was swimming in adrenaline, her eyes traced currents in the smoke above, and she was already wearing a goofy little smile over it all.

Someone behind her shot up in their chair too fast, knocking Ilina face-first into some woman’s chest. The cliché hurt more than the fall. There was the briefest whiff of something in that collision that made Ilina grab the woman’s jacket and lean in instead of stepping back and apologizing. The entire place was a mess of familiar and intoxicating scents but there was something different here. Ilina lightly brushed her lips against the jacket’s surface to savor the brief moment she would have.

“Out of the aisle, girl,” the woman said with a hand in the small of Ilina’s back, guiding her a step or two to the side so she wasn’t in the way. The woman leaned on one foot and propped her other up on its heel, covered in spilled beer from the crash. “Look at the mess you made—”

“I’ll clean them,” Ilina tried to tamp down the excitement in her voice, but judging by the smile on her new friend’s face she wasn’t succeeding. With the few rough spikes of hair on her upper lip and some shadow along the jawline, the imposing woman reminded her a lot of one of mama’s friends, though with a softer mid-section. “I’m new here.”

“That’s obvious,” the woman laughed and traced a finger along the notch in Ilina’s ear. Callouses scraped across the cauterized skin slow enough that she could actually feel it through the deadened nerves, forcing out some embarrassing shuddering breath. “I wouldn’t miss something as pretty as you round these parts.”

There was that predatory edge in her voice, she didn’t even try to hide it. Ilina was grateful for it, even, letting her know what she was getting herself into as she was led to the back of the bar. Where Maxine’s table would be back home. Ilina hadn’t gotten a better look at her new friend just yet, she was tall and broad-shouldered and fat, coarse but charismatic, and Ilina was in love with her jacket — what pervert wouldn’t love something so well taken care of?

"Got a name, kid?” Husky and intoxicating.

Ilina tried to move a step away, a more comfortable distance for talking, but the woman wasn’t about to let her go. Good. Oh, she was getting it real bad. “Hunter,” she responded absently, without thinking. That wasn’t her name anymore, she’d given it up. Why did she say that name again?

“Cassie,” the woman said as she let Ilina go, sloughing into an empty chair at a freshly vacated table. She grabbed a clean rag off someone passing by and tossed it into Ilina’s hands and kicked out her boots in front of her.

Cassie. The name rolled around in Ilina’s head for a moment, finding no purchase. It sounded familiar, but it was a common enough name that she’d heard it dozens of times and it wasn’t powerfully associated with anyone. Cassie looked like Max in the ways that used to make Ilina uncomfortable when she was a kid — body stuff, mostly. She used to be really fussy about her tastes when she was younger, but Max fixed a lot of those little hangups.

There were a lot of details to Cassie’s bar-going leatherdyke outfit, but the thing that caught Ilina’s eye was the light off the two parallel lines of chrome rivets along the entire length of her belt. Ilina found herself staring until Cassie let out an expectant noise and snapped her out of her happy little daydream. Right, right.

The floor of a bar was a familiar, magical place to little Hunter. Cigarette smoke created a visible cloud-layer near the ceiling that always looked so far away, and all those tall dykes that always harried her looked like the tall trees from mama’s books — except the old-growth forests didn’t accidentally step on your hands or kick you for choosing a bad place to kneel and work. That was why the back of the bar worked best, right up against the wall where you could feel like a filthy little sideshow animal with nowhere to run.

It would be nothing to simply wipe the splash of beer from the boots and without her kit she wasn’t going to get any quality time to work on them. She had to extend this opportunity the old-fashion way. Hunter — a different one, not the girl of action and violence, but no less filled with purpose — knelt forward and brushed her lips against the surface of the boot until she felt something wet. She sucked at the pooled liquid like she was giving it a kiss before tracing the runoff down a crease with her tongue to catch as much as she could. Using a small bit of the rag she was given she wiped where she’d just been, to clean off the saliva before it dried. Enough saliva could do bad by the last girl’s work, and Hunter had always been the type to respect that. Dedicated to her task she worked at the boot until she was sure she’d gotten every drop.

Cassie was kind enough to shift the other one in front of her without prompting so Hunter could make sure that it received the same care. Hunter hadn’t spilled anything on it, but she went through the motions of seeking with her lips the same way just to feel the texture and to taste the polish properly. It wasn’t a fresh coat, tasted body safe, and the sheen said no more than a week old. Cassie seemed to put the pair through a lot too, Hunter could see some faint dappling where someone rebuilt the toe box a little unevenly. You wouldn’t notice it unless you were this close.

Hunter was tapped under the chin by the toe of one of the boots and jolted upright out of shock more than pain. She felt instantly chastised and grounded as she briefly made contact with Cassie. The woman leaned forward and grabbed her by the face, fingers rough and calloused and no longer so gentle and guiding as they were earlier. “You haven’t looked at me once, kid,” her voice grave, “what exactly have you been looking at?”

Hunter’s eyes took a moment to focus through the head rush to really take Cassie in, but she couldn’t find anything to take note of. Rough-and-tumble dykes were a dime a dozen in Domon, she wasn’t anything special to look at and Hunter would rather pull a tooth than imagine the woman naked. But Cassie seemed to know and appreciate the game, the dance, the flow of these interactions and so Hunter could respond in kind. And more importantly to Hunter’s spirit, and to Adeline’s teachings, Cassie treated her leather right.

No wheedling little responses. Don’t stammer. Don’t break eye contact. Tell her exactly what you want, otherwise you’ll never get it. Hunter adjusted her kneeling posture so she was sitting up with confidence.

“I really like your belt,” Hunter rolled her cheek into the rough hand. “I can’t stop thinking about the marks the rivets would leave in my back.” The crooked smile on the woman’s face indicated she passed the first test. “Your jacket felt great against my face, and I want to know what you used to treat it. And I might have a crush on your boots.”

“You have no idea who I am, do you?” Cassie let her go and leaned back in her chair, propping up one of her boots on the heel and giving Hunter a little nod. Hunter edged forward until it brushed between her legs.

Hunter’s lip curled back to reveal her fangs, “Should I?” She placed a hand forward to steady herself against Cassie’s leg. Despite keeping it together for the most part, her legs were shaking with need from the briefest little touch. Her mind flashed scenes of being taken over the table by all the faceless strangers that had gathered in her periphery. No, no. Cassie should make her beg for that kind of release.

“Stay,” Cassie said before turning to a gathering crowd of her close friends. Hunter tried to brace herself better but promptly gave it up when her slight adjustment drew Cassie’s attention back for a moment. As the woman spoke the boot between her legs shifted slightly, this way and that, applying just enough pressure to tease her.

Obedience had been trained into Hunter since she was young. Well, Irene failed to do it, but her first dommes found Hunter to be an exceedingly eager study. Holding her height against the arousal wasn’t the worst stress position she’d ever held either. But right now, there was nothing else in the universe except the feeling of her soaked panties and the presence of the woman in front of her. Life was so simple like this.

Words not meant for her ears slipped by with laughter that she wasn’t invited to join in on, the jeering tones and conspiratorial tittering gently reminded her that she was the only person in the room that mattered. The center of attention. Needy but not desperate, both dutiful and demanding. Maxine would have looked at her and called her the spitting image of Adeline Falke. The highest possible praise to her ears.

Eventually Cassie shoved an open bottle into Hunter’s hands, passed to her by someone in the crowd. Her reward for a job well done. Hunter eyed the amber rim and tried not to squint too obviously at the liquid within. It was too dark to see.

“Drink up.”

Hunter couldn’t help but grin under the eyes of the gathering crowd. She was already drunk off of leather, smoke, and atmosphere, the alcohol wasn’t about to make her dumber than she already was. A slight adjustment to relax and put more weight on the foot between her legs. Her hips nearly bucked on their own, and surely Cassie didn’t miss the impulse. “Did you spike this?”

Cassie glanced at a few of her friends with an awful, knowing smile. “Would knowing stop you?” That was the right response. A trust fall with a stranger, who hadn’t given her a single reason to believe in her. But Hunter had danced to the woman’s tune so far, so why stop now?

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Expectant eyes bearing down on her, chanting silently, drink, drink, drink. Hunter wanted her so badly, the boots, the jacket, the rough calloused hands pushing her around, and above everything else she wanted to feel the welts that belt would leave on her back. Even though she hadn’t put on a show for the crowd so intentionally, Hunter couldn’t just get everyone in the bar worked up and then disappoint them. That was a quick way to not be invited to the afterparty.

Hunter clutched the leash beneath her shirt as hard as she could as she emptied the bottle down her own eager, willing throat.