Xora 3: Shell Game

by Brandy Dewinter

 

Chapter 13 - "Are We In Trouble, Or Really Deep . . . ?"

 

*"I wonder if Darius would like to have you all quivering and helpless like this,"* mused Titania a little while later. As expected, Mordant had 'offered' me a chance to demonstrate my new-found willingness to please him - with my body.

*"Darius had me quivering any number of times, and he didn't need manacles and chains to do it,"* I snapped back. *"Besides, I am NOT helpless."*

*"Mordant thinks so,"* Titania pointed out.

*"Well, Mordant thinks he's the galaxy's greatest lover, too."*

He might have had some justification, at least for the first part of that. I had 'pleased' him by continuing to wear the ponygirl corset, boots, and collar, and as a reward, he had added the bells back to my costume. (*"To your nipples, you mean."* *"I *know* where they are, Ti."*) My rings (*"Your *nipple* rings, you mean."* *"Shut up, Titty."*) were also anchored to oh-so-convenient hooks on the bed. The addition of the wrist manacles had seemed anti-climactic after that, and I found myself kneeling on the bed while Mordant played stallion behind me. Meanwhile - aside from Titania's distractions - I was going over multiplication tables in my head. That was better than the alternative, because if I'd really been paying attention to Mordant I'd have had Titania grow me a long, sharp fingernail, then gelded the would-be stud.

*"If you don't start paying attention, he's going to get suspicious,"* warned Titania.

*"Him? First off, he's not paying attention to anything but himself. Second, he couldn't care less about whether I was getting anything out of this. And third, well, he's the galaxy's greatest lover. How could I *not* be thrilled."*

*"You were a lot more responsive last night."*

*"I was Tryx last night - experienced and eager. Tonight I'm Xora, and Mordant will be more than satisfied once he finally 'helps' me overcome my inhibitions. What greater demonstration of his prowess could there be than arousing a reluctant, innocent, shy . . . "*

*"Oh, stop or I'll throw up!"*

*"You can't throw up, Ti. Only I can do that."*

*"Exactly,"* she threatened. Not at all subtle, my symbiont.

Then there was another distraction for me, and this was one I did *not* want to capture any of Mordant's attention. However, I had taken some precautions about that. When we had entered his rooms, I had been shy and nervous and just a little less graceful than usual.

*"You clumped around like a cow!"*

*"It's these heels,"* I simpered. *"They're so terribly high and all."*

*"They're lower than the ones you wear in the base!"*

*"And whose fault is that?"* I asked.

*"The chase, Xora. You're getting off track again."*

Anyway, in my shy, nervous state (*"Do you *want* to throw up?"* *"Quiet, Ti."*) I had stumbled and *accidentally* pulled the signal plug from the terminal in Mordant's bedroom. That was the good news. The bad news, as I had just discovered, was that you could see the terminal in his sitting room through a tricky little combination of reflections among the mirrors he had everywhere.

*"You can see it, but he can only see it if he puts his head where yours is,"* observed Titania.

*"Or if he puts his head who knows where else in this room and catches another mirror combination."*

*"Oh, yeah."*

The worse news was that the terminal in the study had lit up with a flashing warning and a map that showed an intruder alert. You can guess where that was, and who the intruder was. The computer only sounded an audible warning at Mordant's location - or at least, that was the way it was supposed to work. Unfortunately (for him), due to my clumsiness the terminal where Mordant was didn't work right then.

Well, the reason I was there was to keep his attention on me until Tryx finished what she was after. Once I knew for sure she had made her escape, I could, ah, take care of my own unfinished business.

*"Do you really want to geld him?"*

*"Why not? It's not like he uses that thing effectively."* I snarled.

*"You really *have* crossed over to the other side,"* Titania said. *"I can't imagine the old Xora - the *male* Xora - wishing that on any man."*

*"What makes you think Mordant is a man? It's certainly not that puny excuse for a . . . "*

*"Lighten up, girl. It's not really that bad."*

*"Oh, I know, Ti, but it's so damn degrading. Tied down and used like an animal."*

*"While your partner - your outside partner - is getting the goods that will put him and his whole organization out of business."*

*"I *know*, Ti. Get off my back."*

*"No room for me,"* she snickered. *"Mordant is all over yours."*

*"I know that, too,"* I said, but I had to snicker a little, too. Sometimes I forgot Titania wasn't an, I don't know, a hovering angel instead of, well, on the inside.

*"Thank you, Xora love."*

I just sent her the mental equivalent of a hug and got back to business. I figured it had been long enough for shy, innocent Xora to become aroused by Mordant's matchless sexual prowess, so I started to move a little more sensually to meet his rutting.

"Oh my god, Oslo, that's . . . I mean . . . it's never been . . . like that before." Thank God.

"Ooh, Oslo, whatever you're doing it's just . . . just . . ." Disgusting.

To show how thrilled I was, I started to move back to meet his . . . 'thrusts' is entirely too flattering . . . even though it, ah, rang my chimes as the chains pulled on my nipple rings. His decadence ratcheted up another notch when he made it clear he had been waiting for me to do that. As soon as the bells tinkled, he reached around me to pull their chains taut and ring them even more vigorously.

"Ohhhhh," I moaned, but the slow wriggle I added made it clear that was not a complaint.

"I knew I could conquer you," he grunted.

I think he took the quiver that his words provoked as good news. At least he didn't recognize it was suppressed laughter.

Unfortunately, the most challenging acting job of my career was mostly wasted when Drem came running into the room only moments later anyway. "Mr. Mordant, there's someone in your office!"

"Tryx," Mordant snapped, guessing accurately. Not that it was a particularly difficult deduction.

He, ah, spared me the final act and quickly dressed, leaving me bound to the bed, desperately moaning in my awakened need.

For about six seconds.

Then I had those cuffs off and the damn nipple rings loose. I shucked the ponygirl outfit and had Titania form me a jumpsuit in shadowy camouflage colors, then headed out to see what I could contribute to the situation.

My first contribution was confusion - and it was mostly mine as I almost stumbled on a frantic Mordant. Only Titania's camouflage magic kept him from seeing me, even though I was close enough to hear his communicator squawk with a message from Drem to his master.

"Xora was seen in Corridor 8 a couple of minutes ago."

That obviously wasn't me, so Tryx must have decided on another shell game. *"Good idea,"* I told Titania. *"With my figure, she'll be able to see her feet so she doesn't stumble around."*

*"See her toes, maybe,"* snickered Titania. *"But apparently it didn't work. She, ah, stumbled on someone anyway."*

"That bitch," snarled Mordant. "She must have gotten free. Or . . . damn, she's part of it. They're in it together. I should have known Tryx gave up that incredible brunette too easily."

"All right," he continued after a moment. "I want them both alive, but I don't care if they're fairly close to the edge. Let me know if you see them."

I waited until he scurried on his way before I even breathed. Then I talked to myself a little. Luckily, there was someone there to answer.

*"Why do you think she's in Corridor 8? That's further from the office than the shuttle port."*

*"Which is exactly where Mordant will expect her to go, right?"* she offered.

*"Of course, but we don't really have any choice. The shuttles are the only way off this rock and we'll have to go there eventually."*

*"Well, it won't do any good if we get captured, even if Mordant doesn't want us dead - at least not immediately."*

*"That much I had already figured out, Ti,"* I grumped, but it was as much at my own frustration as at her. *"Where would you go, if not to the shuttle port?"*

*"I don't know. This is not really my sort of environment,"* she reminded me. *"I'm a lot better at natural enemies."*

*"Oh, Mordant and I are natural enemies. You can be sure of that,"* I declared, but fell in to frustrated silence again.

*"I wonder why she's in Corridor 8,"* Titania mused, and just like that the answer fell into place.

*"The store rooms!"* I exclaimed, and started heading that way as I explained. *"I just assumed she had been seen passing from one place to the next, but she might be headed for the store rooms themselves."*

*"Why?"*

*"Hellooo, Titty! With the galaxy's second best chemical engineer at her beck and call, just think of what she could do with, oh, cleaning supplies and nutritional supplements."*

*"Oh, I see, I think,"* she said doubtfully.

*"Trust me, Ti. You'll see what I mean when we get there."*

*"But that's where Mordant is."*

*"Likely so, but we're pretty good at hiding in dark places,"* I said dryly.

It wasn't quite as easy as my nonchalant attitude indicated. At times, Ti did an instant freeze on me and for once I didn't complain. At others the only way I survived was through her skin magic, because I didn't dare breathe for long moments. But in the end, we managed to make it from the frying pan into the fire.

The first thing we discovered when we got to the store rooms area was that Bee was no slouch at camouflage himself. I had walked right past a rough section of tunnel wall, only to hear an amused giggle behind me.

"Stars, girl, if swung my tail like that, I'd be in traction for a month."

"Tryx!"

"Accept no substitutes, not even from the Federation's second best agent," she said, a grin appearing in a reverse Chesire cat trick that even impressed Titania.

*"I could do that,"* she muttered.

*"I'm sure you could, now that you know it can be done,"* I agreed, then dropped the zinger. *"The trick is being the one creative enough to see the need."*

She didn't seem to have any answer to that, for once, and I was wise enough not to push the issue.

"So, Tryx," I said with a falsely casual tone. "Are we in trouble here, or in really, really deep . . . "

"Moderately deep," she admitted. "But I think I got what we were looking for. I found his stash of thionite and a few references in some hidden papers. Have you ever heard of 'Trenco?'"

"No. Who or what is that?"

"Well, actually I don't know," she admitted. "But I found out his thionite comes from Trenco, and there is someone or something called Boskone involved. With Jonesy's resources, I'm sure we can get a line on those names."

"If you say so," I didn't disagree. "But don't we, um, have to get to Jonesy with the information first?"

"Details," she said airily, though she didn't seem to have any immediate ideas. "But surely there's something around here we can use."

Our planning was interrupted by an ominous, distant boom, heralding a breeze that hadn't been there before. Titania's report on the situation was interrupted by a raspy voice echoing from multiple speakers.

"Xora, I know you're in there," Mordant's voice said. "And I expect Tryx is there, too. You've got about 5 minutes to surrender. After that, even modern medical technology won't be able to save you. Oh, did I mention that we're evacuating all the air from this whole corridor?"

His voice took on an increasingly tinny tone as the air pressure dropped, and he concluded with his offer. "Come to the end of the corridor with your hands empty and we'll spare your lives - while you still have them."

"Well, that puts a bit of focus on the problem," mused Tryx.

"Indeed," I agreed. Then Titania picked an extremely inappropriate time to make an extremely inappropriate mod to my prior enhancements.

*"Damn it, Ti, I do NOT need this now!"*

*"Actually, you do,"* she countered. *"Where else do you want to store oxygen, your hips?"*

*"Store oxygen?"* I repeated stupidly.

*"Trust your symbiont,"* she teased. *"Though, by the time we're done, I expect your hips, your arms, your legs and your back will all be rather . . . dramatic, also."*

*"Everything but my waist?"* I teased back, but I was more than a little relieved to have her handling the problem.

Tryx was, ah, experiencing an expansion of her own attributes, but either she was not surprised or she recovered a lot faster than I did. We couldn't talk about it anyway. As the air pressure dropped, our symbionts had formed face masks to retain what air we had, cutting off speech. We didn't need to talk anyway and Tryx was already on her way into one of the store rooms. I picked another one just to expand our search opportunity, and this time it was my turn to be successful first.

*"Cleaning supplies and - what did you call them? - nutritional supplements,"* repeated Titania. *"I should have known you meant bulk organic chemicals. I can indeed do something with these. What do you want?"*

*"A fair size explosion, and a means to trigger it,"* I declared.

The details of what she did were confusing even as I watched her do it. It might as well have been magic the way she had me pour something into my palm, after which something very different dripped from the back of my hand. But in moments - much less than the time Mordant had allowed us - she had a pasty goo that she promised me would make a most satisfying bang a few minutes after one last tweak by an extruded black tendril.

Then it turned out we weren't all that far in advance of Tryx after all. When we moved back into the corridor with our bomb, we found Tryx with a bottle of milky fluid in her own hands. She was pleased to see our own success and used our symbionts as a conduit for her plans.

*"One bomb should be placed where Mordant will trip it,"* Titania reported. *"She wants to know if we can make ours pressure-activated."*

*"Well?"*

*"Of course,"* Titania sniffed.

*"What about her stuff?"*

*"She's going to put that where it will blow a hole from this corridor into the shuttle bay. In the confusion, we'll be able to get away."*

*"Sounds like a plan,"* I agreed.

In the end, it wasn't quite that simple. Not that either of us expected it to be. (*"Hey, I knew it, too."* *"Okay, none of the *four* of us expected it to be simple. Stars!"*) The only room that backed up against the shuttle bay corridor, as best we could determine, was completely empty - exposed enough that we wouldn't be far from the blast.

*"Can we set it off by timer?"* I asked through Titania.

*"It's not that sort of explosive,"* she explained. *"Tryx was expecting to set it off manually - hers is pretty unstable and all it would take is a good rap - but we can't do that from the other side of the door."*

I looked around for inspiration and found it in Tryx's huge thighs.

*"Meow!"* Titania teased. I ignored her implication. Tryx *did* have huge thighs. At least, right then.

Anyway, Tryx's, ah, expanded fundament reminded me of our trip down the mountain in Teton, and that gave me an idea for the solution to our problem, one with which I was unfortunately familiar.

*"Tell her to crouch down and then have Bee freeze her like you do with me,"* I said. *"You can cushion us against the blast, and we can ride it out even if we get bounced around a little."*

It turned out we didn't have time for anything more sophisticated anyway. In much less than the promised five minutes, we felt an explosion at the entrance to the corridor.

It takes a fair amount of explosive to send a rumble through a solid moon. (*"You're welcome."* *"Yeah, well, this old rock is probably not that solid anymore anyway. But you did good."*) There wasn't enough air for sound, and the converse worked as well. The explosion of Tryx's fluid was probably a lot less dramatic - for someone a hundred yards away. We were up close and personal though, and it seemed quite impressive to me. It was also quite effective. We were suddenly engulfed in a whirling roar.

*"More air left in here than I thought,"* I muttered.

The hole she had blown was large enough for half a dozen people to walk through - or barely enough for our two bulbous bodies to carom through.

*"We're being pulled *toward* the shuttle bay,"* I realized in shock.

It wasn't long until we found out why. Bouncing along like soap bubbles in a breeze, we were nearly sucked out into the void.

*"Oh, that's what's going on,"* I thought with a strange sort of fatalistic calm.

*"What?"* asked Titania.

*"Mordant has turned off the force field for the shuttle bay. It's open to space. He probably figured we wouldn't be able to get through the vacuum."*

*"Lucky you had me around,"* smirked Titania.

*"Very, very lucky, love,"* I agreed warmly, wondering if our association would end up with us slowly drifting in space as our air ran out.

Once we had safely skidded to a stop - short of the open port - I had a greater appreciation for the irony that Mordant's own strategy became our salvation, since if he hadn't pulled so much air from the storeroom corridor we might indeed have been blown right off the moon. As it was, we found ourselves virtually at the boarding hatch for Mordant's luxury yacht.

Since we were in pretty hard vacuum at that point, Tryx just pointed at the hatch and I gracefully swept my arms in a gesture that she should precede me. Well, it would have been graceful if my arms weren't the size of watermelons and my 'girls' so big she could only see the gesture from the elbows down.

*"Quit complaining and get inside so we can deflate,"* Titania ordered.

There wasn't any reason to argue with that, so I squeezed through the opening behind Tryx's huge derriere. (*"Ha! Like yours is any better!"* *"Hush, Titty, I'm enjoying this while I can."*) If there'd have been any air, I'd have laughed at the comedy of errors as we tried to fit both our huge figures - definitely figure '8's - into the tiny airlock. We actually had to spill a little of our stored air to get the door closed, but by then it didn't matter.

"Oh, Xora, if Darius had only seen you in, um, in all your glory," Tryx chortled as soon as the lock cycled and we could talk.

"Tryxie, dear, if you ever even *hint* at what we looked like to Darius, I'll . . . "

"You'll what?" she asked innocently.

"I'll have Titania start giving Bee ideas," I threatened with a theatrically ominous tone.

"Oh, no, anything but that!" she cried, recoiling in alarm - a response unfortunately undermined by her pealing giggles.

The flight deck had another of those palm locks, but Tryx bypassed that readily enough. Thanks to Mordant's generosity in, ah, leaving the door open for us, we soon launched out into the void and completed our escape.

  

 

 

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© 2003 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.