"Pheromone Pharmacopia"

by Brandy Dewinter

(c 2001, All rights reserved)

 

Chapter 20 - "Misplayed"

Marilyn pulled her teammate close as they drifted down the passage toward Seward’s control room. "Are you going to be able to do this?" she whispered.

"I think so," Vanna whispered back.

"We need to keep his interest away from his controls and whatever monitors he has," Marilyn said, "either by leading him away from the controls or by putting on enough of a show he doesn’t pay attention to them."

"Oh, I expect we can find a way to . . . distract him," Vanna giggled. Then she shook her head and said, "These drugs are having more of an effect on me than I thought."

"Me, too," Marilyn said, sighing. "But we’ll have to try and keep our heads clear."

"Yes, ma’am," Vanna said brightly, saluting. Then she frowned and shook her head again. "I think it’s getting worse."

"You might be right," Marilyn agreed. "Seward may be stepping up the potency of his pheromones. That could be a problem. Simple teasing may not be enough if he expects us to be more strongly aroused than we were on the shuttle." The pretty team commander looked at her companion and asked, "Are you really prepared to do . . . whatever it takes to distract him?"

Vanna gulped a bit, but nodded.

"We’ll have to see how it goes, but obviously we can’t really strip for him, like he had Jacqui do. I think the zippers to both our suits just got jammed," mused Marilyn as she twisted the one at her own collar.

"Won’t that make him angry?"

"Maybe," Marilyn said. "But that’s where the distraction comes in.

We need to be prepared to . . . help each other."

Vanna’s eyes showed a question, but before it made it to her full lips, her eyes widened as she answered her own unspoken question.

"Come in, come in, ladies," Seward said expansively as Marilyn and Vanna finally reached his control room. "Welcome to my home."

They hesitated at the entryway. Their reason for pausing was not immediately clear, not because there were no reasons but because there were so many it would be hard to pick which one stopped them.

The compartment itself was reason enough. With one notable exception, it was cluttered in a way that seemed disturbingly dangerous for a space installation where things wouldn’t just sit where they might have been laid. A moment of review and they realized that this was both more and less of a problem than they might have thought. The modification to that perception was based on the recognition that the clutter clustered around the air vents, drawn to them by the continuing motion of air even as they blocked the vents themselves.

"Don’t mind the clutter," Seward said, virtually reading their minds.

"Just think of it as your typical bachelor pad."

He delivered this excuse from the one location in the compartment that was *not* cluttered - the notable exception to the rule. That location was the control panel itself, spotless and gleaming in a bright combination of indicator lights and shiny reflections. His words drew their attention back to him. Their reaction was not pleasing.

"Perhaps it’s not the room that bothers you," he snarled, his tone turning ugly. "Perhaps you don’t find me personally appealing."

That supposition was probably a good one. The best information that the team had been able to find out about Seward was that he had moved into the station just over two years before. It was possible that he had last bathed on the ground. And brushed his teeth.

And exercised. The arms and legs revealed by a truncated coverall - the kind called a ‘romper’ when worn by a child - were emaciated to the point that one would suspect malnutrition. Yet the pudgy cheeks and greasy sheen to his forehead, plus the hint of a well-inflated spare tire within the loose confines of his stained coverall showed Seward was getting plenty to eat. It was loss of muscle that had attenuated his limbs.

One part of his appearance did not track with his obvious lack of cleanliness. His eyes were sharp, clear, and a complex gray that seemed to shift in color as his glance flickered between his ‘guests’ and his monitors.

All this observation took only heartbeats, just long enough for Seward to become irritated despite the fact their reaction might have been more justified. After only that short pause though, Marilyn recovered enough to put an empty smile on her face.

"Gee, Mr. Seward, I don’t know why you’d say that?" she simpered.

"Is it true that you have billions and billions of dollars?"

Despite his slovenly personal habits, Seward was not stupid. He knew that pretty women would not be attracted to his current state - at least not because of physical attractiveness. But he also knew he had ‘special’ advantages. Money was one of them.

"Last time I checked," he said, showing yellowed teeth in a satisfied grin. "And you wouldn’t believe how much richer I’m going to be."

"Oooh, tell me more," Marilyn cooed, drifting closer. Her path was not very efficient, though. She was going to miss his location at the control panel by several feet.

"Oops," she giggled, flailing a little.

"Here, I’ll help," Vanna offered, setting her spiked heels in floor clamps and pushing at her blue-clad teammate. But her shove moved Marilyn even further off course. Her ineffectual intervention attracted Seward’s attention to her, and the disdain she hadn’t adequately suppressed in her voice was reflected in a visible twist to Seward’s mouth.

"So, you at least are honest enough to show your true feelings," he growled. "Too bad for you that I’m perfectly happy with a compliant lie."

He pulled a spray bottle from his belt and pointed it at the disdainful blonde.

"No!" Marilyn called, breaking character.

"Don’t worry," Seward sneered. "You’re next."

He pulled a trigger on the device and was rewarded by a sharp spritz as a narrow stream of liquid shot toward the blonde in black. It splashed from her suit with no apparent effect. At least, none until enough time had passed for a similar stream to be splashed on Marilyn’s blue suit. In a moment, both girls were demonstrating that the stream was not innocent, however.

"Ohhhh, mmmmyyyyy," Marilyn crooned, still drifting, but interrupting the struggling motion of her limbs in a compulsive caress of her suddenly rock-hard nipples.

"Ahhhh," Vanna echoed her, in tone if not in exact words. She swayed above her anchored heels like seaweed in a gentle current, her own hands slowly sliding along the contours displayed so provocatively by her skinsuit.

Seward released a lap belt that was holding him to his console and started moving toward them.

"I think we better cut the shuttle air off from the station," Jacqui panted, fingers drifting without conscious direction to slide languorously along her smooth flank, then linger over an itch she had wanted so very badly to scratch. "I can hardly think straight."

"Tell me about it," Carol said over her microphone. "Once I started breathing pure oxygen, though, I got over it pretty quickly."

"I wonder how it is for the girls in the station?" the brunette mused.

"Sandy, I think you better stay with me, now," Jaymi said. "I’m still so damn hot from those pheromones that I’m afraid I’ll make a silly mistake."

"What makes you think that I’m any better?" Sandy whispered, blushing.

"You’re probably not," Jaymi giggled, "but between the two of us we might manage one clear thought, now and then."

"Maybe," Sandy said, but she set her own heels in an appropriate set of deck clamps and started absorbing what Jaymi was working on. Or trying to, though Jaymi’s full red lips seemed MUCH more interesting than a bunch of twisted wires.

Jaymi shook her head to recover from a plunge into the depths of Sandy’s green eyes and managed to report her findings. "This seems to be the main power feed, but from the waveform there has to be a transformer down the line somewhere, which probably means batteries out on the arm of the station."

"So, cutting it wouldn’t necessarily disarm the Pebbles?"

The red-clad brunette shook her head again, this time actually related to the problem at hand. "I don’t think so. This station has a pretty distributed system design. What I’m reading on the rest of the bundle is mostly digital traffic, so there’s probably a processor out there somewhere to translate commands into actions. I don’t know what it would do if the signal traffic is cut off."

"Then I guess we better not cut it," Sandy said.

"Not until I get it figured out," Jaymi concurred. Then her voice took on a warning tone as she said, "Or unless something changes."

"Damn," Seward muttered his own curse as he reached the languid blondes. "My stuff must be losing potency. With that charge, these women should have been completely over the top by now, locked in continuous orgasms."

Surprisingly, the next thing he did was take another, smaller spray bottle from his belt and squirt something in to the air around them. Inhaling deeply, his eyes seemed to swell with new energy, and he began to paw roughly at Marilyn’s skinsuit. His grimy fingers started pinching lasciviously at Marilyn’s shapely form, the touches far too crude to be considered caresses. After tugging at her distended buds, his hands moved to her high collar.

"Damn it, who the hell changed the design on this zipper? Sonuvabitch is stuck!"

It is a truism of combat that no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. In this case, the only element of Marilyn’s battle plan that *did* work right was the jamming of her zipper. From there, things got worse in a hurry.

"Wha? Wha . . say?" Marilyn murmured. Her long eyelashes fluttered as she tried to overcome the effects of Seward’s diabolical potions, diluted though they were by her team’s only partial transformation into women. If anything, Seward’s most recent addition to the local air supply had tended to clear her mind, though it had created a problem of its own. One that Seward could NOT find out about.

Vanna roused as well, not so much dispelling the effect as overcoming it by force of will, buttressed by a building familiarity with the sensations singing through her body - including sensations that had once been much more familiar. She could compensate, at least partially, for the effects of Seward’s drugs. The two sprays, one directed at the women and one intended for Seward’s own gratification, seemed to be canceling each other out to some degree. It came to her that Seward was away from his controls, that now was the time - if ever there would be one - to capture him.

"Marilyn," she gasped. "Get him!"

"Hmm?" her commander asked, then the opportunity became apparent to her, too.

Unfortunately, Marilyn was drifting in the middle of the compartment and couldn’t move without an anchor to push against. Even more unfortunately, in her semi-cognitive state, Vanna had spoken out loud.

"What did you say?" Seward demanded, fending off Marilyn’s grasping hands.

"I want you," Marilyn whispered, trying to put an invitation into her throaty voice.

"Yes," he said suspiciously, "but for what?"

He reached for the spray at his belt again, but a frown showed on his face, coupled with a clear suspicion that it might not be effective.

"All of you, off my station now," he ordered, backing away. He moved toward a prominent red switch on the control console.

"Vanna," Marilyn said, a warning and an order in one.

Vanna produced a throwing knife from the back of her collar and called out to Seward. "Freeze!"

Instead of stopping, Seward slammed his hand on the red switch. Then he reached for a gun also hanging from his belt - an unusual weapon that they recognized as a multi-chamber tranquilizer gun even as he drew it. There was no way to tell what he had loaded the darts with - lethal potions were far and away the most likely - so Vanna sent her knife streaking at his shoulder to stop his motion.

She had practiced in the weightlessness of the Vomit Comet, but that simulation was not quite accurate. Her knife flew with a lightning-quick flicker, but instead of burying itself in the sinews of his shoulder, it found a home in Seward’s throat.

"Uh, oh," Jaymi said.

"I don’t like the sound of that," Sandy replied.

"We need to cut this line, quick!" said Jaymi,

"Got it," Sandy replied, pulling a tool from the kit she had been holding. It didn’t take long, but the expression on Jaymi’s face said it had been long enough.

Or had it? Nothing happened for a long moment.

"Sandy, what’s going on?" Marilyn’s voice sounded over their headsets.

"We were about to ask you the same thing?" Sandy replied. "We just cut some sort of wire harness, but I don’t know why."

Jaymi said, "It’s the control harness for the Brilliant Pebbles. I had just traced it to the junction box that heads out that arm of the station when I started picking up a lot of signal traffic. I figured we’d better cut it."

"Good idea," Marilyn said. "We’ve got a problem here, though. Seward’s dead."

Any further explanation was interrupted by the shudder of a distant explosion.

"Shuttle to Marilyn. Shuttle to anyone, can you hear me?"

"I hear you, Jacqui, what happened?" Marilyn’s voice replied.

"I don’t know what caused it, but there was just an explosion in the station airlock. We’re okay, but don’t try and enter it from that side without a helmet."

"Okay," Marilyn said. "Seward tripped some sort of switch before he died. I don’t know if we managed to stop whatever he had in mind or not. Apparently not all of it, in any event. All team members, head back to the ship."

"Ah, Marilyn, it’s not entirely okay," Sandy reported over the team net. "Our helmets are in that airlock."

"There’s more than that," Jaymi reported. "I captured some of the data stream we interrupted. It was targeting and launch commands. Some of those Brilliant Pebbles were told to attack! I don’t know why they haven’t gone off."

"Orbital mechanics," explained Jacqui, breaking in. "They have to have some sort of de-orbiting retro charge, but it has to go off at the right time or they won’t come down close enough to their target for terminal guidance to work. They’re waiting for that right moment."

"How long will that take?" asked Marilyn.

"I don’t know," Jacqui replied. "It might be any second, or it might take more than a full orbit to get into position. I can get a rough estimate for different target sites, but it will be a guess."

Jaymi’s voice sounded over the comm system, "If we can get back on the shuttle, I may be able to decipher these launch codes. There’s probably a time stamp in them."

Marilyn said, "That will take a while. We have to work out some sort of interim airlock in order to get you your helmets."

Carol’s voice broke in, carrying a slight echo from the inside of her bulbous helmet. "Well, I guess it’s a good thing I’m ready to go EVA."

"What are you suggesting?" asked Marilyn.

Carol paused for a moment, thinking through the steps she would have to take. "Okay, it’s like this. Even if you get your helmets, you don’t really have air packs. You’ll have a couple of minutes of air - not much longer than just holding your breath - inside your suits. But that’s enough to get you past the blown-out airlock. So, here’s the plan. I’ll go out and gather up the helmets and put them in the next compartment, closing it off behind me. Then you can get into that compartment from the other side, put on your helmets, then scoot past the open space into the shuttle airlock. It’s still working okay."

Jacqui joined in, "Yes! That will work. Only . . "

Sandy’s voice completed the thought. "Only the shuttle airlock is limited to two people at a time, and the cycle takes too long for the other two to wait outside with only the air in their helmets."

Carol said, "Okay, then I’ll bring some air packs, and . . . "

Sandy interrupted again. "And how long will it be before those bombs start dropping? We’re not working the right problem here."

"It’s a start," Marilyn said, her command voice announcing a decision. "But we’ll cut to the chase a little. Here’s what we’ll do . . . "

The stark white of the open bay seemed pristine and untouched by whatever had caused the angry gash in the module bridging from the shuttle to the rest of the station. Carol’s dark green skinsuit was a surprise as jarring as the damage itself when she suddenly appeared through the shuttle main airlock exit. Working her way carefully up the side of the ruptured station airlock, she eeled her way inside through the gaping hole.

"Just as we thought," she reported after she disappeared inside. "There’s some debris blocking the lower door. Everyone will have to go outside. But the helmets are all okay."

Within the station, Marilyn sighed and turned to the other three who were still trapped on the wrong side of a lot of nothing. "It looks like Seward’s plan was a little more thorough than we gave him credit for. If Carol weren’t available on the shuttle, we’d be trapped for real."

Sandy shook her head in disagreement. "But she *is* over there, and so is Jacqui. He must have known we’d be able to work our way past this."

"Eventually," Marilyn said, nodding. "But it all takes time. Time we don’t have."

She continued. "Seward didn’t really want to kill anyone . . ."

"He didn’t?" Vanna interrupted. "You coulda fooled me!"

Marilyn shook her head and continued, "No, if he wanted to kill us, he could have blown out a lot more than an airlock. Look, his whole strategy was based on his pheromone defense, effective against all-female crews. Like a lot of arrogant SOB’s, he figured women could never be a real threat."

"So, why blow the airlock, then? And have us move our helmets before that?" asked Vanna.

Thoughtfully, Sandy said, "Well, it means he knows where they are, for sure, and if the helmets are in a compartment open to space then we can’t get to them without help. It’s a delaying action, one that lets him regain control of a situation without mass murder."

"Yeah, right," Jaymi joined the conversation. "This is the guy who’s going to rain death on half the world, and he didn’t want to hurt anyone."

Marilyn contradicted her, "Actually, he didn’t. Either part. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, because if he ever really did commit murder then someone would *have* to take action. It was the *threat* that mattered. Once he had to use it, he’d already lost. And he hasn’t actually ‘rained death’ on anyone yet, either."

"Oh!" Jaymi said, a light dawning in her eyes. "That’s right! I’ll bet that’s why none of the Brilliant Pebbles have launched yet. He was, I mean, was his plan that he could use that as a sort of ‘ticking clock’ to regain control if his station were invaded? ‘Surrender and I’ll stop the launch.’ That sort of thing?"

"Right," Marilyn said. "And without our helmets, we couldn’t be part of any effective assault force - especially since we’d be, ahem, under the influence of his drugs."

"But now he’s dead, and we’re still stuck," Vanna sighed.

"Not for long," Carol’s voice broke in on the tactical net they were using. "I’ve put the helmets in the connecting node. First two, get ready."

"Jaymi, that’s you and Vanna," Marilyn ordered.

"I should go," Sandy said. "Jaymi needs to work on the data, of course, but I need to start pre-breathing."

"No," Marilyn said. "One EVA is enough for you, dear. You and your . . . war wounds."

"But . . " Sandy began, then stopped at the look in Marilyn’s eyes.

Vanna and Jaymi had the wisdom to be quiet, though in part it was forced as they breathed deeply to get in as much oxygen as possible before they went into space without an air supply.

"Besides," Marilyn said gently. "Vanna is our best in zero-g. We need to get her out there helping Carol as soon as possible."

Sandy nodded, recognizing the wisdom in Marilyn’s order even as she worried about her teammate. Two of them, actually, since Carol and Vanna would be facing similar risks. As second in command, it was Sandy’s responsibility to watch out for her teammates, to protect them with her own life if necessary, but it was her *duty* to obey orders. And in the brutal logic of command, Marilyn was right. Vanna was better qualified.

Carol’s forest green led the black and dark red suits of her sisters through and around the damaged areas on their way to the shuttle airlock. As soon as they were safely inside, she turned back to her remaining teammates.

"How did it go?" Marilyn asked anxiously, peering through a small viewport from the connection node where they had already obtained their own helmets.

"Fine," Carol reported. "Forty five seconds until air was filling the shuttle lock."

"Good," Marilyn nodded, but there was a pensive note in her voice.

"What’s wrong?" asked Sandy.

"Do you think you can make it without Carol’s help?" Marilyn asked.

"Um, sure," Sandy said, though there was little certainty in her tone.

Marilyn nodded, recognizing what Sandy was really saying. If Marilyn felt the risk was worthwhile, then Sandy would take it. The curvy blonde reached out to her friend and colleague and gave her a quick hug.

"Carol," Marilyn transmitted, "and all of the rest of you, too. Listen up. Sandy and I will make our own way back to the shuttle. Carol, I want you to work your way over to the Brilliant Pebbles and do a careful reconnaissance. I do NOT want you approaching them closely, but we have to start figuring out a way to disable them, and I guess you’re elected."

"I need to help you back to the shuttle," Carol said.

"We can make it," Sandy said, backing up Marilyn - though they all knew she was speaking more from willingness than justified confidence. If they got lost, if they got delayed in any way, there wouldn’t be anyone to drag them to safety.

Jacqui offered another objection. "No one is supposed to leave the shuttle bay without a backup astronaut ready for EVA."

"I’ll put on an airpack," Jaymi said from the shuttle, beating Vanna’s offer by a margin so small it sounded like an echo.

"Don’t be silly," Marilyn countered. "Holding our breath is easy. But if you tried breathing at airpack pressures without purging the nitrogen from your system, you’d get the bends and wouldn’t help any of us. Jacqui, I recognize your objection, and normally I’d abide by it, but this is not optional. You have your orders. Carol, get on your way. Vanna, are you and Jaymi out of the lock?"

"Yes, Marilyn," Vanna reported. "It’s ready for you, but . . ."

"But what?" demanded Marilyn Vanna’s voice carried a note of surprising embarrassment. "Um, we, that is . . "

"Damnit, Vanna, spit it out," Marilyn ordered.

"It’s our nipples," Jaymi explained. "Without the pasties covering the thin spots, it’s pretty uncomfortable. And you and Sandy are . . "

". . . are more, ah, at risk. Is that what you mean?" asked Marilyn.

Jaymi’s assent was more sigh than words, but it was nonetheless clear.

"Very well," Marilyn said, "it can’t be helped." She looked a question at Sandy, who nodded, gulping air as they prepared for their own challenging extra-vehicular excursion.

The hissing of air seemed terribly loud in the small compartment - when it started. All too soon it faded away as the air required to transmit the sound disappeared into the void. Then, it didn’t seem like it was happening quickly at all as they held their breath, waiting for the pressure to drop far enough they could open the hatch. They could hold their breath for long enough. They both knew they could. Yet, when they also knew they didn’t have any option, it seemed critical to breathe immediately, as though they were already suffocating after only seconds.

It didn’t help that it was hard work to move toward the shuttle. That seemed counter-intuitive, since they were weightless and virtually frictionless in the airless vacuum. But the effort required to work in weightlessness had been proven over and over. Without the stability of gravity to provide a base to push from, much of their effort actually worked against themselves, rotating their body instead of moving it in the direction they wanted.

And all the time, the pressure in their lungs, the feeling that they were running out of air, the need to *breathe* was a demand that became so compelling it seemed like the movement through the void was the secondary effort, the throbbing in their distended nips only a minor irritation.

And then it was over. They were in the lock and the sound of hissing air was back, this time sweetly beautiful and the grandest music they had ever heard. Gasping, they would have fallen into the main shuttle compartment, except in the absence of gravity all they did was drift into the arms of their waiting team-mates.

All but one. Carol was making her way through the open lattice of girders toward the waiting bombs, most of the standard safety rules thrown out by the grinding need to hurry, a need as great as that felt by her air-deprived sisters but with even less hope that it would be quickly met.

"Okay, I’m at the bombs," Carol said, panting into her open mike.

"What do you see?" Vanna asked, then kicked herself mentally when she realized that Carol would report as soon as she could.

"There’s a, um, rack, I guess," the distant redhead said. "And about, let’s see, two, four, six, eight, by two, four, six . . . what’s that? Forty-eight? Right?"

"Right," Sandy confirmed, not that her comment was necessary either.

"Each one is a four-foot-long rod, with some fins near one end and a, well, a curvy cone or, um, bell at the other. I don’t even know which end is the front."

Sandy was sketching as Carol talked, then she pondered her sketch.

"Is there anything in the cone?"

"Don’t get too close," Marilyn cautioned, trying to get a look at Carol through the camera on the shuttle’s remote arm.

Carol didn’t reply, except by moving closer to the array despite the warning. "Yes," she reported. "There’s some sort of ball in each one. I can’t tell what it is, but it’s not, um, well, it doesn’t look like metal."

"Right," Sandy said, thinking out loud. "I think the end with the bell is the front end. The ball is probably some sort of explosive that is used to de-orbit the rod. The cone itself would burn off during re-entry. Then the rod is guided by steering the back end."

"Makes sense to me," Jaymi confirmed, looking up from her computer console. "That’s the good news. The bad news is that I think the first one will start launching in about 5 minutes."

"Where?" asked Marilyn.

"I’m not sure," Jaymi said. "All I’ve got is a time hack."

Jacqui said, "I may be able to help with that. Let’s see . . . "

Then she frowned and said, "Uh, oh, I need to have some sort of estimate of how much the charge will slow the rod down. It can be a very gradual de-orbit, or a fairly quick drop."

"The impact from the test impact was about 3000 miles downrange from the de-orbit blast," Marilyn reported.

"Test impact?" Jacqui repeated. "You didn’t tell us about that."

"Just figure the orbit," Marilyn said unrepentantly.

Jacqui nodded, then worked for a moment at her console, muttering out loud. "Okay, if we figure forward 3000 miles from where we’ll be five minutes from now . . . . shit!"

"That didn’t sound good," Vanna observed.

"Eastern seaboard, US," Jacqui said flatly. "Too much potential variation in the de-orbit impulse to tell exactly, but figuring where our own landing footprint would be, with a burn five minutes from now we could come down right on Washington DC if we wanted to."

 

(continued in next part)

 

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SMITE 2 - Pheromone Pharmacopia © 2001 by Brandy Dewinter. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.