Imposition (9 page)

Meitou released his grip and Therse bent upright again, the Imperial's hand sliding over his chest as he moved. “I'm not that kind of guy, remember?"

"Right."

Therse pushed his fatigues off and watched as Meitou stepped free of his uniform trousers and underwear. Standing naked in the deep orange glow from the bathroom low-light, he was breathtakingly beautiful. Meitou noticed Therse was staring.

"This is a first for you, isn't it?” he asked.

"No, I've been with other —"

"I meant this situation. You're not the type to jump straight into bed.” Meitou smiled. “You like a little effort first."

Therse looked down and shoved his clothes out of the way with his foot. “You make me sound like an old-fashioned woman."

"You are one."

"Thanks."

Meitou's fingers slid up Therse's thigh to his groin, combing through his soft, dark curls. “So, why are you doing this anyway? You barely took any seducing at all."

Therse stepped closer and Meitou's hand moved down to his balls. “I have needs, same as you,” he whispered, closing his eyes and concentrating on that feeling.

"Our needs are a little different, believe me,” the Imperial told him, body moving encouragingly beneath Therse's hesitant caress. He palmed Therse's balls fully, fingers slipping back to press lightly against the place behind. Therse widened his legs to let him down farther, pushing his face into the crook of Meitou's neck.

"We're all the same in the end though, right?” he breathed. “Fuck, breed, and die. That's all we're for."

"Such a bleak outlook,” Meitou said, sounding almost sad.

"I'm just a realist."

"If you're not careful, you could end up a nihilist.” Therse grunted as the Imperial's hand finally reached his cock. “Maybe the universe wouldn't seem so bad if you gave up the heavy weight on your shoulders...stopped restraining yourself so tightly..."

Therse looked at him with a start. That was an intrusion on sacred ground.

Meitou's hands moved to his waist, driving him backwards until they came to the bed. Therse climbed onto it, parting his thighs.

"Don't think I can't see it. You're bricked up like a fortress,” Meitou persisted, getting one knee on the bed and watching him carefully. “Eh, it's none of my business to ask you what your reasons are.” He bent down, mouth destined for Therse's cock. “All I care about is that you're a good fuck.” He looked up, cool blue eyes suddenly full of cold tactical reasoning again as he tongued the underside of Therse's glans. “And believe me, if you weren't, I'd already be trying the other one."

Therse went rigid and glared at him, mind too addled to rein in his response to what he knew was a blatant play.

"Oh, interesting reaction,” Meitou chuckled, making it up to Therse by pushing lips down over his cock.

Therse's head dropped back as his hips pulsed forward. “You're a bastard,” he breathed.

"You'll still let me make you feel good though, right?"

Therse answered his question by threading fingers into Meitou's hair, forgetting the man's comment amid the haze of pleasure tripping up his erection. “I should be apologizing to my best friend, not here screwing with you."

"You do enjoy the luxury of guilt, don't you?"

"Fuck you."

"You're about to,” Meitou sucked hard on Therse's cock, distracting him as two fingers slipped inside. Therse's back arched, thighs spreading, breath sucked through his teeth from the tangle of pleasure and discomfort at his groin. “Hey, go anytime you want,” Meitou told him. “I won't stop you."

But Therse had no intention of leaving.

Gen sat cross-legged on the warm grass, feeling the pleasant heat of the air and the fake sun on his skin as he watched the drones work. They paid him only a cursory amount of attention, buzzing at him in irritation when he was in the way of their activities but otherwise ignoring him altogether. There was something soothing about watching their busy little lives, so full of ultimate purpose and defined roles.

The air smelled sweet. If he closed his eyes, it was almost like being at home in his parents’ garden.

He heard the tell-tale crunching of footsteps up the dirt path, and looked over to where it met the clearing. He was disappointed when it was Meitou who appeared, seemingly not surprised at all to find him here.

"What are you up to?” Meitou asked him.

"What does it look like?” Gen replied, still finding him irritating.

"I didn't have you down as the type of guy to have an affinity for nature."

"Well, I didn't have you or Therse down as the type for fucking guys. Everyone's an enigma,” he muttered.

"'The type'?” Meitou repeated. “What century are you from? He's looking for you, by the way."

Gen grunted and turned back to the plants.

Meitou came up beside him, standing a little too close for comfort. “You're not very talkative."

"What the hell makes you think I'd want to talk to you?"

"What makes you think I give a shit about what you want?"

Gen glowered up at him, but the man was grinning. “What are you here for?” he asked.

"Oh, I'm just out for a walk...” Meitou said, looking around. “I've been thinking, you know,

about your denial."

"My ‘what'?"

"The fact that you'd never realized your best friend was a fag.” The man walked over to the edge of the clearing by the projected field, eyeing the same red fruits Therse had been so interested in some days before. “Kind of a big one, that.” Meitou was just tall enough to reach them, with a stretch. He picked one, making the tree's foliage shudder as it snapped free.

Gen watched him, trying not to give anything away.

"What makes you think that was denial or whatever?” he said, voice raised so Meitou could hear him. “How am I supposed to know if he doesn't tell me? Why am I even talking to you?” he muttered, mostly to himself.

"Don't you think, though? You've known him what, five years? And in that time you've never known him to fuck anybody."

Gen stood, brushing himself down. “I never asked."

"You know how attractive he is, right?” Meitou said, turning back to raise an eyebrow at him. “He's so damn hot I could barely take my eyes off him when you were so insistent on your interrogation."

Gen thought of them together and felt his cheeks go the color of the fruit.

"The women must have been fawning all over him, and yet nothing ever happens. You never put two and two together?” Meitou opened his mouth wide to take a bite.

"I just thought he was shy. He's that kind of cerebral, reserved type."

The Imperial laughed. Gen glared over at him. Meitou shook his head, keeping Gen's eye. “He's not reserved,” he said, with a knowing smile. “Maybe you don't know him that well after all."

Gen wished he'd hurry up and take a big, juicy bite of that shit-fruit. “Just because he's fucking you doesn't mean you know him."

"Oh, getting defensive?"

"Piss off."

"Sometimes we don't ask difficult questions of others because it means we might have to ask difficult questions of ourselves. You might want to spend a bit of time thinking about why you're so annoyed,” Meitou said, weighing the fruit in his palm and inspecting it.

"I'm not gay."

"I know that,” he said. Gen was surprised. Meitou lobbed the fruit deep into the forest, as though he'd known all along it wasn't edible. He waited for the sound of it landing, disturbing things out in the jungle. “That wasn't the question I was thinking of."

And with that, he walked away.

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The eerie still of the air. The smell of fear. Genham Drisjic sat in the exam hall, stylus poised over his screen, heel tapping distractedly against the base of his chair as he ran the question around in his mind. The diagram displayed on the flat surface of the desk patiently awaited his final answer.

He had no idea.

Give him an aggressively complicated battle scenario or tell him to decipher the inner workings of some fancy new military technology and he was fine, he'd have it done in no time. But this, this was something else.

Indicate xenon flux valve.

The question perched at the top of the screen above a schematic diagram of an Expediator-class fighter, innards shown within an outline of the body shape. He'd known which craft it was immediately, and it had made him hopeful for the nature of the question. He'd hoped too much.

He knew the craft. Knew from the sims how they handled in vacuum, in upper and lower atmospheres, knew what it felt like to turn one through a stiff wind, knew how to dip and dive, holding out against the fear in your gut and the warnings on the display.

But he didn't have a damn clue what a xenon flux valve was. It wasn't important. He'd spent the lectures on the inner workings of fighter craft largely in a daydream, knowing that they would be irrelevant and that he didn't need to care what the various parts did or how they worked. They had technicians for that, after all. And now, seeing the question, he was furious. They could have asked anything about compensating for sudden drops in air pressure, anything about coping with changes in gravitational force if a fight escalated to out-of-atmosphere, but no, they had chosen to ask them something technical and irrelevant, the knowing of which would most certainly not be a determining factor of aerial combat.

He sneaked a look around, and saw that everyone else was in the same position as him. They all knew the basics of the engine's function; that much was important to know, so that you could exploit certain facets to your advantage. Knowing which specific part sat where was not within their jurisdiction as far as he was concerned. It wasn't just him; he could see they were all stuck at the same place. All except one.

Genham felt his top lip curl as Therse Bodan stowed his stylus and folded his screen away. He'd finished the three-hour test in under an hour. They all watched him leave the hall with a sense of envy and collective dislike. No doubt, he would be the top scorer. He always was.

"That fucking valve question."

"I know, I had no idea about that one; I just skipped it."

"But what the hell were they asking us that for anyway?"

"You going to eat that?"

"I mean, why would we ever need to know about that?"

"Yes, Byrn, I'm going to eat that."

"But you haven't touched it. Are you sure you're going to eat it?"

"I didn't come here to be a tech, I came to fly fighters."

"I haven't touched it because it's the only part of this delightful spread that doesn't remind me of vomit —"

"Well, that's me done. Thanks a-fucking-lot Mal."

"— so I am saving it for last. And are
you
shitting me? You'll drink your own piss but complain at me for being vulgar around the dinner table?"

"Gen, how were you with the rest of it?"

"Hey, that was a matter of life-or-death, I had no other option."

"Eh, I probably did okay, not great..."

"That's why I told you to study a little. It's only going to get harder from here on in."

"You do have an option when it comes to continually recounting the tale at every available opportunity."

"Hey, don't worry about me, I'll just coast it. Doesn't really matter to me if I graduate into Command or not. All I want to do is fly. I can't believe it's been a whole fucking year and we've still only been in sims."

"It was you who brought it up this time, not me!"

"You see, that's your problem. You can't coast this, Gen. It's not like before."

"She's right. The exam should have shown you that."

"But I just don't need to know these things, so what's the point in learning them? I'll just forget them immediately afterwards anyway..."

"Just take my fucking bread if you're going to sit there and drool over it. Look, Gen, imagine you're deployed to a planet from space-side, the gases in the atmosphere or the magnetic field screws up your instruments and your comms, forcing you to take manual controls and ditch in the middle of nowhere. The xenon flux valve is the most fragile and liable-to-break part of the whole engine complex during landing, which you
would have known
if you'd read the research Isjerin gave you. The reason you need to know what it does and where it is, is because it is probably the piece you will need to locate and replace if you're ever going to get your bird air-borne again."

Gen pushed his chin into his hands like a scolded child.

"You're a good fighter in the sims, no one would question that, but when we get out into the real world you're going to need to know your shit, ‘cause if you don't, you'll make a mistake that'll screw everyone else over."

Iss slid him a compact screen over the table with a kind smile. He took it and started it up, flicking through some pages on engine theory and trying not to sulk openly while Mal's eyes were still on him.

They started talking again, and Gen only half listened as he tried to get his head around his friend's notes. They made no sense to him at all, and that meant he'd actually have to put some effort into learning them. He supposed Mal was right, though. She was always right. He hadn't even considered that there might be a situation where he'd need to perform a manual landing or fix his own craft. The thought of being unprepared in that scenario made him uncomfortable enough to want to learn what he was supposed to.

He rubbed his temple and tried to concentrate, zoning out their laughter and background noise. He glanced up momentarily and noticed who was sitting pretty much opposite him, three tables down the mess. Gen glared across the space, secretly hoping he would look up at that moment and see. Therse was on his own, fingers of one hand running lightly over the compact screen by his side on the table top, forking the occasional mouthful with the other.

He was always alone at mealtimes. Gen had seen him sit beside people, but never
with
them. He always had his screen, so that if no one talked to him it didn't really matter.

Gen supposed he should feel pity, but couldn't bring himself to. It was the man's own fault he sat alone, after all. No one ever wanted much to do with him.