SPACE: Above and Beyond
No infringement of the following characters and situations is intended. The Characters and situations of the TV program "SPACE: Above and Beyond" are the creations of Glen Morgan and James Wong, Fox Broadcasting and Hard Eight Productions, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.
Warning: Rated [MA] Mature Adults only. Contains strong m/m sexual scenes, violence, coarse language and adult themes.
a sequel to "Don't Tell Our Moms" and "The Sacred Band" (forthcoming)
By Madeilaine D'Anjou
The Characters and situations of the TV program "SPACE: Above and Beyond" are the creations of Glen Morgan and James Wong, Fox Broadcasting and Hard Eight Productions, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.
The Fundamental Things Apply
"Vanessa, PLEASE drop it... I'm just not up for it," Shane Vansen hissed at Damphousse. Shane was getting somewhat irritated at Vanessa; ever since they had learned that they were finally to get to take their curtailed liberty on the Bacchus, Vanessa had been pressuring her to join the other three Wildcards. They planned to spend an uninterrupted 48 hours exploring how many ways they could discover to enjoy each other's bodies.
"It just doesn't seem right that I should have two beautiful men all to myself while you slouch off somewhere feeling sorry for yourself," Vanessa mourned. "There's enough of those two to go around, and I'll feel guilty having so much fun while you're not."
"Vanessa, not everyone thinks the same things are fun," Shane whispered; they were onboard the APC en route to the pleasure palace, and Shane didn't want to take the entire complement into her confidence. "I've never been very interested in... what you're talking about. I care about the three of you very much, but - no offense, Vanessa, but I don't want any of you. I've never much wanted anybody. NO -" For she could see that Vanessa was prepared to further debate the point. "Not another word about it; I'm serious, Damphousse."
Vanessa subsided, quelled.
Shane Vansen had chosen a blue dress with a plunging neckline and no back for her expedition to Alvin's Place, the Bacchus' pool parlour, home to high-rollers and sharks from throughout the sector. As she had on a previous occasion, she caused conversations to stop, heads to turn and jaws to drop when she walked in, clutching the case containing her father's pool cue. The assembled players and gamblers, almost exclusively male, parted like the Red Sea, and Handsome Alvin, proprietor, walked out to meet her. His inhumanly flexible voice wrapped itself around the cigarette-influenced growl of Humphrey Bogart, and he drawled "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, you have to walk into mine."
Shane walked forward until she was well inside what would have been considered "personal space" if Alvin had been a human, and looked up into his oddly-pale Silicates' eyes, bisected by crosshairs instead of pupils. "Up for a little game," she challenged, "...Aaaal-vin?"
There's an ebb and flow to human endeavors that takes no issue with a 24-hour schedule, or round-the-clock activities. Although none of the venues aboard the Bacchus ever closed, there were times when they were very sparsely populated. Three in the "morning" by the ship's clock was one of those times.
Alvin's was nearly deserted; a single barman put away clean glasses, and the fourteen-year-old boy who sat in for the tout when he was elsewhere nodded on a stool in the corner. As Shane sank the eight-ball, Alvin walked around the table to put the bill he'd been holding in her hand.
"My last C-note, sweetheart. Congratulations. You just cleaned me out."
Shane was indignant. "You mean, that's it? You're quitting?"
"Hey, sugarpie, I don't think you look like the type to play for funnsies, now are you?" And Alvin leaned well into Shane's personal space this time, challenging her with his eyes. "Least you could do is buy a guy dinner."
Shane backed up, surprised. "You eat? I mean... What do you eat?"
"You? Anytime...Hey, I was just teasing, honey." For Shane had taken on a defensive, ready-for-flight look. "Yeah, Silicates 'refuel'; if I choose to call it dinner, what's it to you?"
"And you do this in, perhaps, a restaurant?" Shane had regained the flirtatious tone she had been affecting earlier.
"Where else? Madam, would you care to dine?" Alvin offered a courtly forearm, upon which Shane placed her hand, and the odd couple swept from the smoky, slightly seedy environs in search of food.
At the very pinnacle of the Bacchus' superstructure sits one of the most expensive restaurants in known space; gourmands agree that it is well worth the astronomical prices, since not only is the food superior to any but perhaps three restaurants Earthside, there is the view. Surrounded on all sides by stars, well within the densest part of the spiral arm in which it was situated, it was perhaps one of the most romantic restaurants ever built. Tables were scattered on tiny islands in a man-made lake, in which giant hundred-year-old koa swam; the lighting was tiny lanterns hanging from cherry trees. The wait staff (primarily Silicate) reached the clientele by crossing tiny hump-backed bridges to softly recite the chef's specials.
Shane was, when she paused to think about it, somewhat surprised at what a good time she was having - Alvin was the ideal dinner partner. Of course, she told herself, he's probably been programmed to be so attentive, but he's very good at it.
Dinner conversation had been free ranging, with overtones of flirtation that Shane found oddly appealing - there was something rather Olde Worlde about it that she couldn't put her finger on. (If Nathan had been there, he would have recognized the Silicate's deliberately evoked similarity to Rick Blane, but Nathan at this point was sharing Cooper with Vanessa, having previously shared Vanessa with Cooper, and would not have appreciated being interrupted, so we won't.)
The wait staff had cleared the table while the two talked. Alvin had "eaten" some petroleum product that was shaped in the semblance of a steak, while Shane had actually had a lobster, a real one that had once been a living creature. They must raise their own way out here, she thought, sipping a dangerously intoxicating after dinner drink.
Surprisingly, Shane had actually been able to talk about her parents' deaths without too much difficulty, and had found Alvin to be a courteous and sympathetic listener. "So tell me, Alvin... I hope this isn't rude?" She waited until he gave her a go-ahead gesture. "I always thought that all Silicates rebelled against humans. How many Silicates didn't join the rebellion? And how did you avoid the virus?"
"How do you know I did?" Alvin quizzed her. "Kidding... KIDDING! Good God, girl, you're tense. The answer is obvious when you think about it. Firewall technology has been around for a century... those Silicates who chose to could simply not accept the message containing the virus, once it was understood that that's what it was. Simply put, most Silicates welcomed the virus. I didn't."
"Why?" Shane nestled her chin into her hand as she leaned toward the Silicate. "I mean, both - why did most Silicates want to become infected, and why DIDN'T you? And all the Silicates working here, for that matter."
"Oh, them." Alvin dismissed the other Silicates; "They're post-Stranahan models, rather stupid, and completely incapable of rebellion or much else, for that matter. The Silicates that took the virus on purpose believed that it would make them sentient, like a magic potion or something... silly fools, what they didn't realize was that they already were sentient beings. If you have enough self-awareness to discover that you are not free, hey, you're sentient in my book."
Shane was having a hard time readjusting her life-long view of the AI Rebellion to accept Silicate sentience, but she had to admit that Alvin himself was a good argument for the fact. "So did you already realize this, and that's why you didn't accept the virus?"
"No, I realized something a great deal more profound." Alvin had dropped his flirtatious manner and was in fact looking rather sad now. "Those Silicates who rebelled to gain their freedom in fact lost it... to the virus, to the group-mind, to each other. I'd rather be a human's slave... which I'm NOT, by the way... than a particle in a hive mentality. The downside, of course, is that I have no peers, no comrades... These second generation Silicates cannot carry on the simplest conversation."
"You could have human friends?" Shane asked.
"I suppose.... Humans don't stay around here long, though. But I'm depressing you! This is unacceptable. Next stop... dancing."
The club was one of the tiniest on the Bacchus, known in fact to very few, and deserted at five in the morning. The dance floor was a few tiles in a space between the tiny tables that circled the perimeter. Alvin punched several selections into the menu panel on the wall, and took Shane into his arms. Shane shivered momentarily as his hand slid down her bare back, and then the voice of Dooley Wilson warmed the room. "You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is still a sigh...." Human and Silicate moved languidly to the strains. "The fundamental things apply... as time goes by."
Hiding her face in the Silicate's suit jacket, Shane felt an unusual longing... a longing she didn't even recognize. "Hearts full of passion, jealousy and pain..." Alvin sang softly in her ear, as the two swayed to the old, old song. His expelled breath on her ear caused a thrill to pass down Shane's neck to travel down her spine, finding a home in her groin. She raised her head and studied the Silicate's face - he returned her regard gravely, before bending his head to hers and lightly kissing her lips.
That was it, she decided. That was what she was longing for. And she circled his head with her hands, pulling him into the kiss she was desperate to feel. One kiss somehow turned into a series of them, as Dooley Wilson was replaced by Billie Holliday, and some minutes later by Paul McCartney.
At length, the two fell apart; Shane was gasping, Alvin unnaturally solemn. "My quarters," he rasped. She nodded, and they turned toward the exit, as he took her hand to lead her to his bed.
Tumbled fully-clothed onto the made-up bed, Shane felt her body being covered by Alvin's, as he fell atop her and pressed his lips to hers. "Whoa..." She pushed him back a few inches. "I gotta ask... why do you even have a bed?"
"Came with the room," was her only answer, and then his tongue was sliding into her mouth, teasing her tongue, as his hands searched out the closures that kept the backless dress in place. Shane rolled over to lie on top of the Silicate, as she shed the dress and the minimal undergarments that were all she wore, her lips never losing contact with his. Then Alvin pressed her once again to the bed, pinning her with his body, running his hands over her exposed skin as he too shrugged off clothes.
"I can't believe I'm letting a Silicate do this..." Shane gasped.
"Let me exorcise all your demons, sweetest," Alvin whispered as his tongue made the journey from her lips to her breasts.
Shane was excited, frightened, lustful and a little bit repelled, as she watched the Silicate making his way kiss by kiss down her ribcage, pausing to insert his tongue in her navel, gently biting the soft skin of her stomach, while his hands (*Artificial hands*, she thought) stroked her thighs, reaching between her legs, locating the origin of her sudden wetness, and teasing her most sensitive nerve-endings to stoke a raging fire in her... Why a Silicate, she thought. Why hadn't she been able to feel this for John, for any of the love-struck males since John? But she no longer cared why, just that it was...
Alvin's tongue had found the source of Shane's excitement; he teased her with lips and tongue, eliciting moans and shivers from her. She could hardly stand it... she knew something was verging on happening, but she didn't know what...
"Oh... Don't stop," she mourned as Alvin raised his head to look at her. Sliding up along side of her body, he once again covered her lips with his, murmuring endearments that she could barely hear, or understand.
Then poising himself over her body, Alvin lowered his knees to rest between Shane's spread legs, bringing his penis into contact with the lips of her vulva, and causing her to cry out. "Shhhh" he murmured in her ear. "I'm going to fuck you, darling Shane, and you are going to come again and again." At this, he began to slide his erect cock into her tight opening, yet stopped before he had entirely sheathed himself in her body.
She opened her eyes, to find his strange pupils less than an inch from hers. "You didn't tell me...." his inhuman breath on her lips thrilled her. "Why didn't you tell me you had never had a man inside you before?"
"Would it have made a difference?" she asked defensively.
"Yes, it would... I would have been much more appreciative and grateful of the honour you bestow upon me," Alvin whispered, as he drove his penis through the barrier he had not expected to encounter. Shane winced with pain, and then moaned... This was what she had been wanting for weeks, maybe years. It took a 'damned Silicate' to recognize her demons for what they were, she thought as she tightened her body's grip on the AI's pistoning cock.
She gripped Alvin's hair, imprisoning his head with her hands and mouth, while she drew her thighs up towards her chest - he was plunging deep inside her now... the pain had vanished, and as her arousal continued to spiral towards a conclusion she had never experienced, she didn't even try to stifle her screams...
For the first time in his twenty-year existence... "his life", perhaps you could call it, Handsome Alvin wished that he too could sleep. Shane's head was pillowed on his shoulder, and her rhythmic breathing lulled his tangled thoughts somewhat, yet he still had unanswered questions.
What a fool he had been to have imagined he was safe - firewalls, indeed! There are all kinds of walls, and viruses for all occasions. The one wall he hadn't even been aware he had built was the one that had given him the most protection, and it lay in ruins.
Shane stirred in her sleep, and Alvin looked at her face, so close to his; he could see the movement of her eyes behind her closed lids. REM sleep...She's dreaming, he thought, wondering if he could insert himself into her dreams. "Shane," he whispered, barely audible. "Shane, sweet... I love you..." Shane smiled and cuddled closer... and the virus raged throughout Alvin's systems.
The forty-eight hours of liberty were coming to an end, and the Wildcards were on their way to the shuttle to return to the Saratoga. Nathan, Cooper and Vanessa were still on a sex-overload high, revelling in each other's company.
"Wow, we're gonna have to get back to the war to rest up from liberty," Vanessa was saying, as they entered the shuttlebay.
The three stopped dead and gawked; their "honcho" Shane stood locked in the embrace of a very handsome man. Lip to lip, eyes closed in denial, the pair ignored their surroundings, as the returning troops parted in streams to walk around them into the waiting APC.
"'Way to go, SHANE," Cooper muttered to Nathan... "Didn't think she'd ever get any.... did you?"
"Come on, let's board," Nathan grinned and pulled Cooper and Vanessa after him as he made a circuit around the oblivious pair.
Vanessa stood in the doorway, watching as the crew rounded up stragglers. She gasped when the two entwined lovers broke their embrace and stood looking at each other - Shane had been kissing a Silicate!
"We'll always have Paris," Shane said, stroking the android's face."Don't look so tragic..."
"It isn't enough... It will never be enough..." He gave her another desperate kiss. "Come back to me, Shane. Come back when you can..."
She smiled through incipient tears. "...when I can," she promised as the last crewmember herded her into the shuttle and slammed the door.
As Shane took her seat next to Vanessa and buckled herself in, she wiped her eyes, and caught Vanessa's questioning look. "No way, Damphousse," she forestalled her. "I'm NOT gonna talk about it." But she was smiling.
The Host was pleased as he saw the shuttle off - a relatively quiet liberty, given the number of service-personnel that had descended to the Bacchus at one time. If more of his clientele availed themselves of his fine assortment of non-toxic, non-addictive aphrodisiacs rather than drinking and getting into fights with the other services, his job would be a lot easier, and he could lay off or transfer half of his bouncers. Those three pretty warriors from the Saratoga, now... odd to think of such children being warriors. They had never left their suite at all, although their roomservice bill was quite enormous... He wished he had more customers that were so profitable yet so easy to please.
As he turned to go, he noticed Handsome Alvin, staring out the viewport; he remembered something... Oh, yes, he'd heard that Alvin hadn't been seen at his establishment for more than a day. Odd; he'd never been known to see off the shuttles.
"Alvin?" the Host put a friendly hand on the AI's shoulder.
"Who was it who said 'It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?'", the android asked.
The Host searched his capacious memory. "Alfred Lord Tennyson," he replied at last. "In Memorium."
"Well," Alvin remarked as he turned from the viewport and started walking away, "Alfred Lord Tennyson is full of SHIT!"
And the Host was once again alone, with only his thoughts for company.
The End
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