3rd World Products, Book 16 (29 page)

Tanya abruptly turned and strode toward me saying, “Let’s get back in the air. On the boards. Or go somewhere on this flitter. Anywhere but here.”
 

“That might even be a good idea. It’ll give Elgin and company something more to think about, anyway.”
 

“It will? How? Can they see us?”
 

“Not yet. How about a tour of the mountains?”
 

She grinned. “Sounds good to me. Which mountains?”
 

“You pick. East or west?”
 

“West. I’ve always wanted to see Aspen, Colorado.”
 

“Want to take a coat or anything?”
 

Apparently considering the matter, she shook her head. “If I need one, I’ll get it there. Mine wouldn’t be enough anyway.”
 

“Okay.”
 

As we lifted, I put up a screen with a map of the Aspen area. We studied it as a road map and then as a satellite view.
 

Well, only Tanya studied it, actually. I studied her as I stood behind her left shoulder. Tanya knew my interest wasn’t the map, she chuckled and reached back to grasp me.
 

Fondling me, she asked, “How much time do we have?”
 

Kissing her shoulder, I said, “As long as we want, and I’d hate to show up in Aspen like this. We should probably do something about it.”
 

Chuckling as she turned around and rested her forehead on my chest, Tanya snickered, “Yeah. Good idea.”
 

“Got a surprise for you, ma’am.”
 

She lifted her head, squeezed me, and asked, “Other than this, you mean?”
 

“That couldn’t have been a surprise. Watch.”
 

When a field bed appeared, her hand froze around my dick. I set my coffee on the deck, picked Tanya up, and carried her to the bed, then I got in bed with her and knelt between her legs. After some nibbling to stir us both up, I prepared to enter her, but Tanya rolled over on her hands and knees.
 

“I wasn’t kidding,” she said, “I liked it from behind.”
 

Letting my hands roam her hips and thighs, I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. As you say, milady.”
 

I slid into her somewhere over Tallahassee and we were probably above Jackson, Mississippi when Tea’s console came on and a woman spoke.
 

“Dragonfly, this is Carrington. Are you coming here?”
 

I linked to turn off the video as Tanya startled hard and turned her head to face me with a shocked expression. She then stared at the blank console and sighed her relief.
 

Putting a finger to my lips, I kept posting into her as I answered, “No, Carrington. We’re on our way to Colorado. Glad someone finally found a use for my call sign.”
 

“Is there some reason you aren’t using a screen, sir?”
 

Was there a trace of humor in her tone? It seemed so. Tanya tried to cover her mouth to stifle a burst of laughter and almost succeeded. Some of it got out around her hand.
 

I said, “Carrington, we’d really prefer not to use a screen at this time, if you wouldn’t mind.”
 

Tanya stifled another laugh, then froze in place and groaned softly. Her head descended to the bed and she took my gentle poundings almost limply as she faintly, but intensely murmured, “Mmmm,” with every stroke. She knotted our field-generated bed covers in her fists and hissed softly every time my dick rammed into her.
 

When she stiffened and took a deep breath, I barely had presence of mind to close the Carrington link just in time. Tanya let forth a long, low groan and sucked in another deep breath to hiss, “
Yes! Yes! Yes!
” as I slammed into her.
 

It all got to me, too. My heels tingled, then I felt the familiar surge and came so hard it almost hurt. Tanya screamed softly and reached around to grab the backs of my legs and pull me into her. I felt her nails dig in a bit and they seemed to make me squirt a bit more.
 

When we managed to relax a bit, I let myself drop next to her on the bed. Tanya slowly straightened herself to lie flat, then rolled over on her back.
 

After another few moments, she said, “That was
good
.”
 

“Uh, huh. That it was.”
 

A few beats later, she asked, “You think she heard us?”
 

I answered, “Hard to say,” but only because it might be hard to tell Tanya what I thought, which was that the woman had probably seen a second of so of our activities before I cut the video.
 

Looking at me, Tanya said, “I’m glad there was no picture on the screen. If we can see them, they can see us, right?”
 

“That’s how it works, yeah. Two-way unless someone shuts down the video feed. Which I did.”
 

She nodded. “Good.”
 

“I just hope I did it in time.”
 

“What?”
 

“What I said, ma’am. I slammed the link shut, but I’m not sure whether she saw anything in that first second or so.”
 

“Oh, hell.”
 

“Yup. Want me to call back and ask her?”
 

Looking at me as if I were nuts, Tanya slapped my thigh and grinningly yelped, “
NO
, I
don’t
want you to call back and ask her, you idiot!”
 

Chuckling, I said, “Galatea, please don’t allow active video links for future calls. Let me decide whether to use them.”
 

Tea replied, “Yes, Ed.”
 

“Thanks, ma’am.” Turning to Tanya, I said, “All fixed,” but Tanya was now staring at the console.
 

“Uh…” she began, “Is Galatea watching us?”
 

“She monitors the health of anyone aboard.”
 

Tanya nodded, but that seemed to make her think.
 

“So she’d know something was going on, but not what was going on?”
 

I shrugged. “If she cared, she could probably guess from our vital signs.”
 

“But she doesn’t care?”
 

“No need to care. We weren’t hurting each other.” Then I pretended doubt and asked, “Were we? I mean… for a while there, it was hard to tell, y’know.”
 

Glancing down at her hand on my leg, she stated, “I could slap higher and pretend it was an accident.”
 

Putting my hand over hers, I said, “Understood, ma’am. Hint taken.”
 

With a smug little smile, she said, “Good.”
 

Chapter Nineteen
 

We snuggled for a while before my implant pinged with Angie’s chime. I answered with, “Yes, Fearless Leader?”
 

With saccharine cheeriness, she said, “Hello, Ed! For some reason my control officer reported that you refused a vid screen and hung up on her. Can you imagine that?”
 

“Actually, yes, I can. Was she pissed off or laughing?”
 

Angie chuckled, “She was trying to keep a straight face. For future reference; any unusual commo interruption requires a report. The computer decides what constitutes ‘unusual’. The operator only explains things.”
 

Rolling out of bed to retrieve my coffee and Tanya’s juice pack, I said, “Thanks, Angie, I’ll keep that in mind.”
 

“I’m sure you will. We haven’t had a game of pool since… was it August?”
 

“Sounds about right. Sorry, but you were busy making colonel and I didn’t want my presence to screw things up. Some of the honchos there still don’t like me much.”
 

“Well, you’re right about that, but see if you can make some time for us soon, okay?”
 

Climbing back into bed, I said, “Will do.”
 

“Okay. Bye, Ed.”
 

She dropped the link. Tanya sucked on her straw for a moment, then said, “She’s an old girlfriend, isn’t she?”
 

“Not all that old. Pushing forty is all.”
 

Snapping her fingers against my thigh, Tanya said, “I can slap a little higher.”
 

“Ah. Yes,‘m. Okay. An old girlfriend.”
 

“Thank you. I was just curious.”
 

“And I was just protecting my assets.”
 

Tanya snickered and choked lightly on her juice, then asked, “So that control woman
did
see us?”
 

“Angie didn’t say. Seems likely she heard us, at least, if she had to try to keep a straight face.”
 

Sipping again, Tanya asked, “Is that a problem for you?”
 

I shook my head. “Can’t see how. How about you?”
 

Shaking her head, Tanya said, “I can’t see how, either. I guess it might matter if I worked there. Hey, you called her ‘Fearless Leader’. How many of those do you have?”
 

“Two. Linda was the original, but she retired. Colonel Angie was best qualified to inherit the title.”
 

“I thought you were retired too.”
 

“I am, but if either of them had a crisis, I’d help.”
 

We lay there sipping and chatting for a time, then Tanya said, “I’m curious about something and I don’t know how to ask, so I’m just going to ask, okay?”
 

“If it’s that personal, I might not answer.”
 

With a little moue, she replied, “Okay. If I read things right, Linda was your boss and Angie became your boss. And you’re always calling me ‘ma’am’ or ‘milady’. What’s your thing, Ed? Are you into being dominated by women or something?”
 

“Well, they do seem to have all the pu…”
 

She grinningly slapped my leg. “I warned you. That was a serious question.”
 

“I was gonna say ‘pulchritude’.”
 

“Sure you were. What exactly is that, anyway?”
 

“Beauty. Loveliness. Desirability. Everything that makes men hot for women.” In a confidential tone, I added, “You seem to have a lot of it, ma’am.”
 

Smiling, Tanya said, “Thanks. I’ve noticed your interest. Back to the question now?”
 

“Ah. No, I’m not into being dominated. Nor do I want the bother of dominating someone else. Linda and Angie were my bosses because someone had to tell me what needed to be done where and do all the talking.”
 

“All the talking?”
 

“Oh, yeah. Talking to the chain of command, explaining to investigators and politicians…” Something clicked in my head and I said, “Just a minute,” and called up a screen.
 

Tanya asked, “What is it? You look as if you’ve just seen Jesus or something.”
 

“Not even close. More like Senator. It just occurred to me there was a subpoena for me, too, but it never got to me. Linda intercepted it at the airport.”
 

Letting my core do the search, I found a numbered subpoena with my name. Tracing references from that turned up a list that turned up more lists. Hearings had gone on most of the year concerning ‘presumed intelligence transgressions’. Presumed guilty, too, apparently.
 

I tapped keywords here and there as the core sifted. Mostly petty crap, nothing about anything major, like assassinations or kidnappings. Lots of apparent expense fraud, but most of it proved out with receipts or statements of necessity. No references to me with regards to budgetary or procedural misdeeds or actions in the field.
 

Then the core spit out a specific incident in which a Senator and two of his foppish flunkies ended up in a canal during a ‘fact-finding’ visit to our main offices. I’d been detailed to escort them and they’d become assholes the minute they got away from everyone with heavy rank.
 

When I’d had enough of their shit, I pretended to trip along the top of a canal embankment and the assholes had tumbled down to the water in front of two dozen or so people.
 

Their testimony claimed I caused the incident deliberately and called it assault. Not one witness came forward to back their version. No surprise there; except for them, everyone else on hand had been spooks or military.
 

Marking that place in the file, I looked up the Senator and found him in a cemetery. One of the aides was dead, too. Bryce Gate. The cause of his 1984 death in Britain was pneumonia. Really? Healthy enough to run all over Europe as a Senator’s aide, but died from pneumonia in a modern western nation with the kind of medical care politicians get?
 

He wasn’t even thirty when I’d knocked him into the canal. Neither was the other one. I looked up his name and found passport photos and news articles. Brian White. Never heard of him, but I remembered him. A prissy, arrogant human pet and the Senator’s step’n fetchit boy. Always whispering to the other aide or to the Senator, usually just after having met somebody. Lots of shared snickers and tittering laughs.
 

Okay, I didn’t like them, partly because they were causing our groups a lot of hassles and partly because they were supercilious assholes living large on the public dime. That wasn’t really enough to tie any of them to something like Mike’s car crash.
 

But it was enough to invite more investigation. I searched for info about White’s whereabouts at the time of Mike’s death and discovered he’d resigned his job with the Senator to go to work for a documentation law firm in Verden, Germany shortly after his canal swim.
 

He was a lawyer? No. Just experienced in Embassy and State Department procedures with connections in various offices. Yeah, he’d have been useful to them. Real useful.