Surefoot 48: Immaterial Girl

(Author's note: this is a change to the story originally promised at the end of The Nanny State)

*****

THEN:

The short, slim figure in the distinctive scarlet robes of the Courier Guild snaked his way through the throngs of Orions in the docks of the Emperor Therriv Memorial Spaceport, a heavy- looking brown canvas bag slung under one arm. Furtive eyes glanced up from under the cowl at the Docking Port numbers as he passed them, the elaborate, beautiful script of his people standing out head and shoulders above the traders, the businessmen, the passengers, the workers and the slaves.

He found the desired port and strode up to the archway - only to be stopped by a burly Portsman, his bald green head festooned with scars and tattoos, his ears with multiple gold bands, his broad nose looking like it had been broken and crudely reset many times. "And where do you think you're going, boy?"

The Courier kept his head bowed, indicating the bag. "I am here to see your Shipmaster. His name is Hazaak Sur-"

"I know my Shipmaster's name, Sprout! What are you delivering to him?"

"A personal item, for Hazaak Sur's eyes alone."

The Portsman grunted, reaching out. "Let me see-"

The Courier stepped back. "I said it was for his eyes alone."

The Portsman sneered, shot forward and grasped the Courier by the shoulder, as his other hand clasped the hilt of the blade on his belt. "You're an impudent little runt! Maybe a scar across your cheek would teach you some manners?"

"Release me... or else."

The Portsman chuckled, drawing out his blade. "Or else what, boy?"

"Or else my Master will hear of it."

He pushed the curved tip of his blade under the Courier's chin. "So I'll send for him, and cut him, too!"

The courier never even flinched, except to inform him, "No one - no one - sends for Zaddo Natale."

The Portsman instinctively drew back his blade, releasing him. But he still summoned up some swagger to ask, "And how do I know your Master is..." His voice dropped to an almost-whisper. "Zaddo Natale?"

"Simple: impede me further from my task in any way, and I will tell him. And then he will send for you. And you will bask in his glorious, terrible presence for the rest of your life. For however long that lasts."

The Portsman continued to stand there.

Before sheathing his blade and stepping aside. "Take the Bullet. I will let the Ngoutuk know you're on your way."

"Very good, Portsman," the Courier replied, proceeding to the Bullet, the maglev transport capsule system that ran throughout the Spaceport, ferrying crew, passengers and cargo to and from the many starships spread out over the vast tracts of surrounding landing pads.

The Courier sat alone in the Bullet, setting aside the heavy bag and throwing back the cowl to reveal the young female face beneath, her hands wiping the sweat from her olive cheeks and forehead, and adjusting the braid she had made of her cherry-red hair, amazed that the disguise had worked as well as it did, and got her as far as it had.

To be honest, she was amazed that she'd somehow had the nerve to walk out of her home for the last time, to behave around Mama and Papa and her little brother Haikiv as if she wasn't seeing them for the last time. Compared to that, wearing fake Courier's robes and disguising herself as a boy to protect herself was easy.

Gods, she'd done it. She'd really done it.

Her heart continued to pound inside her, threatening to burst out of her chest at any moment.

She was going to fail. She knew it. She would be found out, cheated, turned over to the Guards and punished.

She should go back. She should tell them all it was a mistake, return the way she came, and go home before Mama and Papa discovered what she had done-

But as the Bullet began to decelerate, on its approach to a brick-red Meru-class Orion freighter with gull wings tipped with nacelles, and dotted with various weapons, sensors and other modifications along its hull, she fixed her braid and drew forward her cowl again. No. There was no turning back now. As the old saying went: In for a lecid, in for a darik...

A guard awaited her, as promised by the Portsman, and she was escorted to the Shipmaster's quarters: a cramped, cluttered enclosure, loaded with a wide variety of goods, dominated by a glass-fronted wall display of various hand weapons: intricately-crafted pistols, curved blades and things she couldn't identify, and didn't even like looking at. The air was thick with male body odour inefficiently peppered with more pleasing exotic scents, mostly cooked foods. But she was certain this was the most luxurious part of the ship, as befitting its occupant's position.

The man who was obviously Hazaak Sur sat behind a table facing his door, tearing apart a crispy roast bird on a gold platter with his thick, stubby fingers. He was a broad-shouldered, beefy male in leathers and jewellery, maybe three times her age, his head adorned with carved plates of pure latinum and gold denoting his wealth and success as a Free Trader, and he wiped the grease from his mouth with his bare forearm as he looked up at the guard, snarling, "Return to your post."

As the guard departed and the door slid shut and automatically locked, Hazaak Sur regarded the visitor. "So... according to my Portsman, a Courier had arrived with a delivery for me from the Great and Powerful Zaddo Natale, huh? A Syndicate Head whom I don't know, have never dealt with, and whom I'm not even sure exists except as the stuff of legend? And that idiot believed such a tale? I should scar him for such stupidity."

He smirked. "Throw back your cowl... girl."

*

NOW:

Alpha Squad Leader Zir Dassene pressed against the young human male, their mouths grinding together, their tongues darting about as if having done this all their lives. Niles made a pleased sound into her mouth, as she felt his hands reaching up to cup the back of her head. He was pushing back, until she felt the warm, damp rock wall against her back and rear end, the moisture on the rock attempting to seep into the insulating materials of her cadet's uniform. Gods, this was amazing!

She felt his arousal between them, unmistakable, unignorable, and a surge shot up through her- "No- wait-"

She had practically shoved him away. Niles Angstrom, Gamma Squad's Medical cadet, swayed a little, his pale face flushed but confused. "Zir- I'm sorry- was I- did I hurt you-"

She closed her eyes, embarrassed, unable to look at him as she shook her head. "N-No, Niles, you didn't-"

"Are you sure?"

She breathed out heavily, nodding. "Trust me, I've been hurt before, so I'd know. It's not you- I-" But the rest of her explanation, if she had possessed one to begin with, was missing. The weeks since they first met and grew closer during shore leave on Sherman's Planet had been amazing; he was kind, gentle, funny, and he knew so much about her people's culture, as he studied their medical history as part of his training.

Somehow along the way, they had started holding hands, and then they were exchanging brief kisses that lingered and grew. He had awakened feelings in her that she'd never felt for anyone else before.

But then, something would happen, some subtle sound or action, a response.

And then her mind would conjure another male, another face and hands and lips and body, pressing against her and laughing and grunting and grinding and defiling- "I'm sorry, I, ah, guess I have a lot on my mind. It's- It's not that I don't want to-" She wiped the sweat from her brow, offering an apologetic smile. "Please don't hate me."

Niles smiled, his big puppy dog eyes and curly blonde hair enchanting her. "I couldn't do that, Zir. Min Sevi Sevirim."

She couldn't help but grin at his attempt at an affectionate phrase in the Orion High Tongue. She forced away her earlier thoughts to approach him again, reaching out for his hands. "Be careful, Mister. I might have to hold you to that promise." She ignored her quickening heartbeat, pretending to attribute it to her growing passion for this wonderful young man as they began kissing again-

"Zir?" came a familiar male voice from down the corridor.

"Fearless Leader?" added an equally familiar, feminine voice, their footsteps indicating their imminent arrival.

Zir immediately pulled away from Niles and made a show of adjusting her uniform and hair, motioning - a little too loudly, she realised afterwards - for Niles to do the same.

"Zir?" Alpha Squad's Medical Cadet Peter Boone repeated, stopping in his tracks, clearly grasping what had been going on seconds ago, but too much of a gentleman to say anything. "Sorry, we would have called ahead, but the kelbonite in the walls is still inhibiting communications."

Beside him, their Flight Ops Cadet Astrid Michel just smirked, equally cognisant of the amorous activities of second before... and loving it. "That's not the only thing being inhibited here, Pete."

Zir straightened up, fully aware that Niles and she was the main topic of gossip among the Surefoot cadets, and knowing there wasn't a blessed thing she could do about it. "Stow it, Michel. What brought you both down here?"

Peter pretended not to notice his Squad Leader's chagrin, focusing on rummaging through the medical kit slung under his right arm and producing a hypo spray. "Well, Cadet Grehk has officially identified an entirely unfamiliar parasite in the water, one that requires us to take boosters." He drew close and administered shots to each of them. "She's christened it Acanthamoeba Donatu Grehk."

Niles made a disappointed sound. "She's got to name a whole new lifeform after herself? I'm jealous."

"I'm not," the other male replied. "I have better things to hang my name onto than some river parasite that could give you explosive diarrhea."

Zir grunted, looking to Astrid. "And did you just come along to play Nurse?"

"Just practising for when we're sharing a tent tonight, Darling." The dark-skinned human female gave her customary cheeky wink, but then followed up with a more serious, "Actually, I overheard something I thought you should know: your fellow Squad Leaders have apparently changed their minds about what to do about the chamber."

"What? Why? The Regulations are clear."

"Don't ask me, Fearless Leader. I'm just here to pilot us around and give my fellow cadets inspiration. In so many ways."

Zir shook her head, though more at the antics of her fellow squad leaders than her friend and squadmate. Their field trip to Donatu V was four days into the week allotted them, and they were already ahead in the various scientific, medical, historical, engineering and security tasks assigned to them by Commander T'Varik.

And their current task - the exploration and study of an ancient ruin built a thousand years or more ago by the former inhabitants of the planet - had yielded something remarkable, courtesy of Alpha Squad's Science Cadet, the Horta Stalac: a hitherto-undiscovered chamber... with intact mechanical devices of an unknown nature.

Starfleet Regulations recommended immediately alerting the Federation Archaeology Bureau based on the Federation settlement on the other side of the planet, so that a fully-qualified team could be dispatched. Donatu V was strategically important in this sector, and had been the site of several key battles between the Federation and the Klingons, but of almost equal significance was the mystery behind its natives, a humanoid race who had been wiped out a millennium ago from solar flares, leaving many ruins like the one the cadets were camped in, but little detail about themselves and their culture.

But if there were sophisticated machines below here, and intact, it could yield answers that had been sought for generations. "Fine, I'd better join them and find out what's going on." She turned to Niles. "We'll, ah, discuss that medical matter later, Cadet, about, uh-"

She looked at Peter and Astrid, who just stared, smirking at her attempts.

Zir gave up, turned back to Niles and kissed him. Then she faced them again, silently daring either of them to comment. And when neither took the bait, she shooed them all towards the exit. "Go on, we have to stay on schedule!"

Astrid smirked, slipped an arm around a flushed Niles and led him away, offering, "Come along, my boy, you'll need to get the blood flowing back to your legs..."

Zir started after them, but Peter stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Wait, I need to have a confidential word with you- a medical matter." At her reaction he elaborated, "Uh, not like the one you just had with Niles."

That made her pause; he had proven himself not only dedicated to medicine, but also capable and mature, no doubt supported by the fact that he had a young daughter waiting for him on Gault. "A medical matter? About whom?"

He looked slightly uncomfortable now. "Well... you. I was running some diagnostics on your implant."

She felt herself turn a darker green. When she had earned a place at Starfleet Academy three years ago, one of the stipulations of her admission was the implantation of a suppressor on her sudoral gland, the organ in Orion women that produced pheromones that, over time, could influence others around them.

It was a feature of her race and gender that had been greatly exaggerated over the centuries by lurid erotic fiction and drunken rumour - and by Orions themselves, in order to sell their women as love slaves, often giving them enhancements to accentuate their pheromone production temporarily.

She had agreed to the implant, at the time so eager to join Starfleet that she probably would have agreed to have her arms replaced with cybernetic limbs. And many told her that it really wasn't that much different from Deltan cadets requiring to take an oath of celibacy to prevent distraction while among sexually-immature races, or Betazoid cadets requiring to take oaths to ensure non-consensual telepathy.

Zir could see their point, and certainly an implant was better than what she would have undergone back on Orion. But still, she didn't like to be reminded of it, or that others knew it was... down there. "What about it?"

"It needs a quick realignment before it causes you hormonal imbalance. I can do it easily enough anywhere with my tricorder, but I thought you'd rather get it done privately."

She nodded, appreciating his discretion. "Yes, thanks." She waited for him to begin.

But instead he reminded her, "It, ah, needs dermal contact-"

Zir cursed a little and began undoing her trousers, lowering them and her underwear just enough to let Peter kneel beside her and bring the tricorder's interface wand against the spot on her right pelvis where she knew the implant lay. She looked away. "I'm glad you're gay."

He smirked. "I'm kind of happy about that myself. Probably for different reasons, though."

Despite her chagrin, she couldn't help but smile at his response. "Thank you for keeping this between us."

He never took his eyes from his tricorder screen. "Medical confidentiality is a cornerstone of my training. After all, I'd never tell anyone about Stalac's gallstones, or Urad's fear of butterflies, or Astrid's chronic flatulence-"

Her smile blossomed into a laugh, quickly dressing again as he completed his work and rose. "There, you shouldn't have any problems."

"Except of course being the latest butt of everyone's jokes about me and Niles."

She was moving towards the exit, but Peter stopped her, his expression amused but not mocking. "You're not the butt of any jokes, Zir. Yeah, they're talking about you and Niles, but it's not nasty. Most people are happy for you both. You make a cute couple."

She stared at him, trying to read for any deception on his part, but finding none. Still, she couldn't help but point out, "'Most', huh? What about the others? What are they feeling? Disgust, judgement-"

"Envy, Zir," he assured her, smiling. "Envy for Niles. There's a lot to admire about you: your strength, your intelligence, your leadership abilities, your empathy-"

She raised a hand. "Enough, please; I'm not built to take too much praise." She smiled back. "But... thanks. We'd better get moving."

But as they strode through the dark corridors, the portable lights fitted here and there illuminating their way, Zir thought back to moments before, to her time with Niles... and the memories which kept intruding on any opportunities she sought for... happiness.

And maybe... after all she'd done... she didn't deserve happiness? No matter what the Counselor and the Captain and the others who have supported her might say otherwise?

She didn't want to contemplate that.

You've come a long way, but you can't rush the healing process, Kami once told her. And accepting what you had to do - and make no mistake, you had to do it; everyone who knows your full story agrees with this - is not going to be easy. Guilt clings, like a cub with his claws in you when he doesn't want to get in the bath.

Yes, it clung, Zir agreed sourly.

*

THEN:

She started. How- How did he know-

He pushed the bird aside and wiped his hands on his trousers and chuckled, as if he'd read her mind. "Couriers are only boys. And boys generally don't have mosos." He made cupping gestures with his hands in front of his chest in crude, needless illustration. "Granted, yours don't look like much, but they're obvious, if you have eyes. Bet they're firm and juicy."

She pulled her bag closer to her own chest, and felt herself turn a darker shade of green at his words. Not that she hadn't heard such crudity from men before - working in her Papa's shop from an early age exposed her to such remarks - but she never had them directed at her. It left her momentarily speechless.

Hazaak Sur, on the other hand, remained completely relaxed and in command. "I said throw back your cowl, girl."

Still holding the bag in her hands, fighting her anxiety, she shucked back the cowl, struggling to look strong and confident in front of the smuggler. That was the key.

He took in her face. "What's your name?"

She swallowed. "M-My name... my name is immaterial. It's why I'm here that's-"

"And how old are you, Immaterial?"

"Wha- I'm- I'm twenty-"

"Liar. I bet you haven't started producing a Woman's Musk. I bet your little cuksir hasn't even been touched by yourself, let alone any man." He chuckled.

She felt herself darken into shades she never thought possible in nature. "How dare you use such vulgarity to me!"

"Oh? Are you High Born then, Immaterial? You use big words for a woman, but your accent, and the calluses on your fingers, tell me No, so don't put on airs and graces with me. Why have you come here?"

She shuddered, hating feeling so vulnerable and small in front of this man. She needed to maintain control of the situation. It was a business arrangement, a deal, like she'd seen her Papa do a thousand times. "Shipmaster, I am here to arrange immediate passage for myself into Federation space. The exact location is not important, but your discretion and speed is. I have been reliably informed that you are a Free Trader who keeps his side of any bargain reached."

She set the bag down at her feet, knelt before it and unfastened it, drawing out a small, elaborately-carved wooden chest, rising up again and lifting up the lid to display its contents. "The combined value of the items here should be more than sufficient to provide me with passage and board-"

"Enough." He rose to his feet, a head or more taller than her, and approached, picking meat from his teeth as he peered down at the strips of latinum, Spican flame gems and gold Orion darik coins. "Hmph... where did you find this little treasure, Immaterial? Under your grandmother's bed?"