Urban Cowgirl
----------------------------------------
Laying on his platform bed, Miles sucked on the hookah’s pink plastic mouthpiece, making the gin tank gurgle. The charcoal ball rolled into the aluminum bowl, making a cracking sound as it glowed in the darkness. The smoke the former pilot exhaled sparkled in the moonlight before being shredded by the ceiling fan in a shower of golden stars. The small particles twirled before landing on the shoulders, back and buttocks of the woman settled against his chest.
Jessica Webber’s ivory smile was as bright as her heart-shaped green irises. Her electroluminescent gaze fixed on him, she brushed the skin around the Alliance’s man purring life assistant from the tip of her fingers; following a plastic tube from the black box to its entry point’s swollen scars.
“The principle’s almost the same as Holosex booths,” Miles explained, his voice smothered by the 0-g tobacco fumes still stuck in the back of his throat. “You pick the nose.” With the pipe he pressed Jessica’s. “The mouth…” Presenting the plastic tip to her, she took a deep puff. Smoke slowly flew over her blue lower lip before her nostril inhaled it. “ …the cleavage you want…” Placing his other hand on his concubine’s breast, he made her giggle. The golden fume smelling like fresh citrus came out of her nose and mouth. Through the alcoholic vapor still shone her verdant eyes. “Except instead of a holographic projection and more than questionably sanitized equipment, the ghost’s palpable.”
Before he could make a different use of his wandering hands, she removed his fingers from her chest before kissing him in the neck. Picking the pipe for another puff, she straightened up as the synthetic coal redden again. The entertainer exhaled deeply and stretched her neck and arms covered in colorful tattoos. As he took the pipe back, she said: “What a bunch of fibs, Miles.”
“Ain’t no liar,” the latter insisted, standing up straight against the iron headboard. “And it ain’t no 3D-printed on a robotic frame…” Smiling, he ran his fingertip over the linear hero-valve on the girl’s collarbone.
“How then?” she challenged him. Pouting and brushing away his finger, Jessica played jealousy to perfection.
Miles didn’t bite the bait. “I don’t know how those Belter engineers do… the ghost materializes into thin air! Like magic!”
Starting to be genuinely offended, Jessica grunted before grabbing the hookah pipe from the man’s hands. “Your conjurin’ tricks ain’t very reassurin’… my future dates appeared to be highly compromised.”
Miles’s finger followed her tattooed shoulder, then her arm, dodging on her elbow pit the semi-healed wounds caused by medi-shots regular overuse. “Since when do you care about your future, Jess?”
She slapped him gently on the nose.
Miles grabbed the mouthpiece of the hookah from her again and placed it in the notch near the apparatus’ valves. The hose retracted and the drone carrying the water pipe went to silently land on the chest of drawers by the open window. “I’m reassurin’ you. Just as the horny booths didn’t put sweet brick house girls like you out of business, I doubt this new—still-proto gear, would.” He looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “I reckon…”
Jessica gasped. “You reckon?” As she bit her lower lip, her hand slipped under the polyester sheet on Miles’s pelvis. “Wanna experience my counterpoint, smooth talker?” she teased him, making him hard through a set of back and forth.
Her gaze fixed on him, she let her warm hand wander again as she crawled back between his skinny legs. The wavering electrocardiogram jumped off the chart. And for good reason. Playing with her tongue, she made him escape a couple of moans as his artificial heart beeped. Nothing would ever beat a real partner made of warm meat.
“So?” she asked. “Still aroused by your magic ghost?” Resting her head against his left thigh, she appeared to be particularly upset about his story.
Miles moved forth. After muting his life support, he delicately grasped the girl’s chin with his finger. As he lay down again, Jessica slid over him. She laughed before grabbing the brick of alcohol on the nightstand, knocking the lamp and a pile of medi-shots. The gal downed the warm gin in one go as Miles reached with one hand for the radio cassette on the other side. Fumbling across the moon’s different channels, he stumbled upon the first verse of Then Came the Last Days of May. With the other, he had begun dealing with Jessica.
“That’s my jam…”
Jim smiled. “The song?”
“You’re a clown…” She stuck her tongue out at him, brushing away his cold yet adventurous fingers. As she slid closer, he reached for her lips, stealing a citrus-flavored kiss. “I like your new scars, by the way.”
“I don’t.”
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
“Don’t ‘grumpy-ass’ me, Miles. The box on your sternum’s cool. Cyborgs have always been seggsy,” she gulped. Alcohol ran on her quivering chin and dropped on both their chests.
“I know. This is why you fell for me back in the days. Remember?”
“That and your ship, champion. What a beauty she was. Still flying her across the ice meadows?”
“No.”
Grabbing Jesssica by the hips, Miles turned her over against the warm mattress. The empty bottle ran over the edge. “Sorry.. You don’t want to talk ab—hey, there! Humm… that was really sneaky…”
They became only one, her shivering legs and arms tucked around him.
The mixtape went on, covering the barely-muffled sounds of love, until a less pleasant noise came out of the corridor.
Voices and heavy steps were heard, as someone loudly climbed the narrow stairs leading to the hall, scraping the walls and the wobbly handrail.
“There’s still a garrison at the hotel?” Jessica grew worried. Lifting her head from the pillows, she glanced at the door.
“Soldiers slept at the Monteleone before I arrived?”
“Yes. Rubs from Iapetus and Dione—damn! They’re makin’ a fine racket with their stupid armor.”
Miles kissed the depiction of a tattooed two-headed Greek god above her right breast. Jess possessed an entire Pantheon drawn over her cleavage and stomach. “Don’t bother. Belvedere will teach them manners if they wake him up!”
A mischievous glimmer in the eyes, the girl escaped. She turned around, rearing her back. “Can you believe they’re makin’ more noise than the two of us takin’ a roll in the hay?”
“Is that a challenge?” Softly grabbing her ribs, Miles set her back upright. On the wall mirror, he glanced at the girl’s body bathed by moonlight. “Don’t you remember that night on Callisto?”
“I do…”
But as the music stopped, a crash echoed in the hallway. The main door rattled on its hinges, and the shutters clapped. Someone was making a scene in the stairs, and Miles recognized the concierge.
Jessica moaned. “You can’t cum in peace on Bourbon Avenue tonight…”
It was moments before the door flew open, freezing the two embraced lovers. Cut-in-half, the faux-wood panel jumped out of the frame before falling on the floor, revealing four 6-feet tall hunched shadows with broad shoulders and glittering optics.
Miles swore before toppling backwards. Terrified, Jessica pulled the white blanket. She stood up and pressed herself against him on the other side of the offset mattress, against the brass-framed mirror.
Without announcing themselves, three of the men strode towards the bed while the last one behind turned on the dim lights, smashing the switch with his elbow. The Sputnik chandelier floodlighted the golden buttons on their coats. All of them were indeed wrapped up in gray capes, and wore the sunken top kepi of the Freedom Ligue.
What really struck Miles however, appeared to be the colossus’ cyber-gear. Their eyes have been surgically replaced by aluminum frames and one-way mirrors, gleaming in their hollow orbit. The same ash-tainted Kevlar mesh running over their throat and cheekbones, fusing with their synthetic epiderm covered their bulging lips and ears. Their fleshy nose appeared to be the only feature that would make them slightly human. Or vulnerable.
Such advanced enhancements couldn’t be found on the abundant markets studding the Outer Worlds. These henchmen have been obviously dispatched from the Medium System—Techno-spies sent by Mars. Or corporate thugs—Lunar pawns on a mission.
“Miles Villanueva?” the first cyborg breathed through a small round crate on his chin. He pointed his gun from a safe distance. Judging by the motif on his epaulet, he stole the uniform of a Separatist Quartermaster Sergeant to sneak into town at night. Brown blood stained his sleeves.
The man’s mirror-eyes glowed in blue as a program appeared to be running an identification procedure; a procedure searching for Miles’ FID. With no response from the Forlorn pilot, the enhanced thug turned to another cyborg with red Artillery insignias and kepi on his right. Breathing heavily, he then pointed to Jessica with his thumb. “Let’s be quick. Zero the whore.”
“Whore? You piece of—” she shouted, clenching her fist over the drape.
As she stepped up, the cyborg with the red kepi lifted his cape, revealing a machine gun with two rounded guards: a brand-new P-90. The same weapon Fate waved around Miles’ nose back on Saturn I, but customized with a pointless silencer as long as a soda bottle.
The blue-haired woman froze. “Wait! No!”
“Don’t—” Miles intervened, holding out a hand towards the rifleman as he violently cocked his weapon and took a stance.
Jessica cried. The sheet fell at her feet. Stumbling away from Miles, she hid behind her trembling arms.
He couldn’t leap to protect her. With a barely deafened crash, the cyborg emptied half his clip into the woman’s chest and stomach, slamming her like a ragdoll against the mirror smashed to bits. The sharp bullwhip-cracking sound associated with the bullets’ high-frequency shockwaves barely covered her scream which turned quickly into a gasp.
Miles swore. Sliding down the wall, he found himself on the floor amid the dust and the shards of glass slashing his palms and feet. As the strong caustic odor of Pyrodex made him cough, Jessica’s lifeless body collapsed on the carpeted floor on his left. A trickle of blood ran from her wide open mouth, forming a crimson lane slowly pacing down her cheek and ear. Fixed on him, her heart-shaped apple green iris stopped glowing in the night.