Where Do We Go From Here? (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on 27 Sep 2015 @ 5:23am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm

2,274 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 09 - Empires
Location: USS Galileo, Lirha's Quarters, Deck 1
Timeline: MD 1: 1850 Hours

[ON]

Gyce pushed a stray hair from Lirha's face with a giddy smile. Youthful and carefree. Why did this green woman turn Gyce into such a softy, so fast? It was both liberating and infuriating for Gyce to ponder.

"Anywhere you like, My Love." Gyce felt at ease the moment she hugged Lirha very warmly and kissed her forehead.

Lirha took that to mean the couch. And it was a fine couch, indeed, very plush with an automatic pull-out bed. She grinned at the Bajoran and set her cutlery down on the table before wiping her mouth and green chin clean, then laid down against the far corner of the sofa and tugged on the bottom of Gyce's uniform to pull her down with her. "Take off your uniform," she ordered in a soft and airy voice.

Gyce was not so sure if she had the stamina for dating one of Lirha's race, but she did not balk at the order. Even with butterflies in her stomach, Gyce stepped out of her pants casually while she started to pop-kiss Lirha's neck.

"Pretty sure such order is considered illegal and grounds of sexual misconduct of a superior officer," Gyce teased her lover.

"Not while you are consenting to it...." Lirha's voice trailed off while feeling the wet kisses being laid against the sensitive and erogenous skin of her neck.

Her hands reached down to tug at the bottom of Gyce's uniform top and she helped her peel the fabric up over her head.

"Oh... but to refuse an admiral's order..." Gyce paused for breath here and there as she continued to tease and kiss Lirha. "...It's bad luck."

Wrapping her arms around Gyce's waist, Lirha mumbled a few dirty words to her friend in her native tongue and gave her a mischievous grin, one filled with desire and passion and a warning to not tease her too much further.

Ignoring the ever present nerve pain in her leg, Gyce took Lirha's right hand gently and brought it to her chest. Then went back to work with devouring Lirha's neck.

"You... taste... good," Gyce spoke between pant kisses.

"..Mmm..." mumbled the Orion, her eyes now closed while her free hand snaked down past her hips and began to caress her curvy bottom.

Thinking Lirha might still be dazed from her bump in engineering, Gyce went gentle, yet sensual. First tiny kisses on Lirha's neck, then a back run added in there to make the Orion feel more relaxed.

"We... should have a... picnic at some point," Gyce posed between breaths, for with what Lirha was doing to her body, it made it a tad more difficult to concentrate on forming coherent sentences.

"Oh. I think you are my picnic for tonight," Lirha answered with a seductive whispered. "Computer, light level one," she commanded, and suddenly the room was bathed in darkness except for a faint soft glow of ambient light seeping in through the bottom of the wall panels.

Lirha's free hand traveled down from Gyce's chest to her abdomen and then in between her legs, where it began to rub through the fabric of her pants against her core.

Gyce began to lean back on the cushions of the couch and bit her bottom lip to keep outbursts to a minimum. But one small, soft moan she emitted confirmed to anyone that Lirha was quite enjoyable to her.

"What is it you like so much about me?" Gyce asked once she felt she had control of her voice.

The rear admiral paused and bit her lip while she pondered the question. In truth, she wasn't sure she could put her finger on the exact reasons. Every once in a while she simply had more feelings for someone than the others and had never really stopped to question the reason for it. Perhaps it was Orion intuition?

"I am not sure. I suppose...it is the little things. Like your hair," she grinned, twirling a lock of red around her olive index finger. "Or maybe your eyes. Or your cooking."

Gyce took that moment to nibble on Lirha's upper lip before she added, "Well I like how you make me feel welcome... And I can tell you care a lot about people in general."

"Not the best trait of a senior officer, I suppose," smirked Saalm. "We -- especially in the admiralty -- are expected to make difficult choices under duress. It is hard to make some of those decisions when one cares too much about their colleagues."

Gyce thought Lirha was eluding to the big incident on the mission prior to the Bajoran coming aboard. She read about it but felt it did not need to be brought back up. So instead, Gyce put a finger on Saalm's lips to sooth her.

"Name me an admiral with a flawless record, Lirha... There is none. Because it is our corporeal natures to make mistakes from time to time and learn from them," Gyce explained. Then kissed her lover on the forehead.

"Easy to say when you do not have the 9th Fleet commander to answer to," she smirked, leaning into the affection. "I am under a lot of scrutiny. After all, I am the first Orion to serve as an admiral in Starfleet."

Gyce slid her left hand up Lirha's chest and gently caressed her lover. "So make a plan with people. Find out where your loved ones in the fleet want to be viewed incase a situation like that happens again."

Lirha laid herself down on top of Gyce and pulled her close for a warm embrace. The couch was small yet still big enough for the both of them, and it could be pulled out into a proper bed if necessary.

"Plans do not always work out," she sighed, then kissed the Bajoran on the cheek. "It is the Starfleet way...to disrupt the best laid plan with new deployments and assignments. That is why I relish the time we have together."

"That's how it was in the Resistance... After a hard mission with tough losses, you grabbed the next person to you and made the most of it," Gyce casually admitted. Then she hugged Lirha tightly, lovingly. For she did not want this moment to end.

"But I doubt you ate so well after a long day before slipping into bed," she grinned. Lirha was quite full and Gyce had managed to concoct a very nice dinner for her. Cooking was a pain for Lirha...not so much the preparation and eating part, but rather the cleanup.

"Not so much," Gyce agreed with a toothy grin as she pulled a strand of hair out of Lirha's face. "But many of the monks around our village would give us vegetables and fruits from their secret stores if a family was extremely sick... The monk gardens of Tenda were the only ones the local Cardassian military did not want to touch, out of superstition. And I recall around the Gratitude Festival, Legate Sadokt would permit our monks to prepare huge dinners as a reward for making our quarry quotas."

Lirha pursed her lips and reflected on one of the central-most aspects of Bajoran culture that Gyce had just mentioned. "It is strange how spirituality can often be a common bond. Even between sworn enemies," she mused. "Perhaps it is even an unifier, at times."

"Depends on the warden who gets rotated in," Gyce agreed. "Some feared our Prophets, I think. Others thought our religion was too backwater for them. And some Cardassian legates believed that by giving us small moments of open worship, like the Gratitude Festival, that it would help with their production quotas... Regardless, I think it's safe to assume that trying to deny our worship, would only embolden us further."

"An angry workforce is an unproductive workforce," recited Saalm from one of her cultural economics classes at the Academy. Now, there was a bigger question brewing in the rear admiral's head and she hesitated to ask it for fear of spoiling the cuddling moment. She began to reason with herself and realized it would eventually come out sooner rather than later, and so she decided to be blunt and ask after a few moments of silence.

"Do you still carry hatred for Cardassians?"

"When I was a teen, I wanted nothing but their extinction," Gyce admitted none too proudly. But then she hugged Lirha, as if wanting comfort. "...Then the day of the massacre happened and I found that some of the Cardassian Military were no older than I. Scared, brainwashed, and blindly following orders to something they didn't entirely understand. And so I could not hate them as a whole. But I do long for justice from the ones who stuck me to my cane."

"...How do you tell the difference?" Lirha wondered out loud. It was hard to judge a person just by looking at them, and if the only common denominator was their species, she feared for any sort of general prejudice -- as deserved as it might have been given the circumstances.

"Because I saw the look in their eyes right when they stepped on one of my pressure plates..." Gyce answered quietly, and with tears running down her face. "...or when they survived an IED I made and laid dying on their ground... I saw pictures of their loved ones tucked in their pockets, as well as heard those boys cry out for them when they knew they were going to die."

Bad memories. And she loathed pulling them up and talking about it. All it did was bring the nightmares back. The horrors to the forefront of her thoughts.

"Truly evil men die for a cause... Those boys didn't," Gyce said, then swallowed away the bit of nausea in her stomach.

"Sometimes evil people coerce those around them. Through propaganda, lies, deceit. All for an agenda...or for political gain." Lirha was all-too familiar with that aspect of manipulation. Orion society had once had a huge problem with special interest groups who had almost ruined the Empire and had ultimately been responsible for the Orion's subjugation to the Klingon Empire. It had been a horrible history to read, and it was even worse to read it and see it's sprouts in modern-day societies.

Gyce began to caress Lirha's bare arms as she sought comfort from her lover. "...I rarely speak of that time. Guess it's why I'm all emotional."

Strange. The Bajoran getting emotional while the Orion was happily content. Lirha didn't mind and leaned up to kiss Gyce once again to reassure her of any possible troubles or doubts that might be flooding through her head.

"They say...secrets are a person's worst enemies. Are you sure there is nothing you want to tell me?"

"Bombidere training is similar to what I went through," Gyce spoke quietly and with watery eyes. "You're trained to set the bombs off without pause. Without worry, because the mission goal is the most important part... You don't normally see the innocent bystanders injured and killed by your ordinance."

Slowly sitting up, Lirha felt a painful and uncomfortable twinge in her heart. "You mean to say, your people killed their own civilians?"

"Resistance had a saying..." Gyce sat up slowly. Pale and very guilty. "If you're not with the Resistance, you're against it. I suppose, then, that's what the cell leadership engrained upon us so we could stomach the things we were forced to do."

Though Lirha had not been stationed on Bajor during the Occupation and had little personal experience with the hardships, she nevertheless knew of the pitfalls which befell any revolutionary force. And in her mind, those were the biggest opportunities to enact change and work towards educating future generations to avoid the previous' sins.

"What does your conscious think about it?" Lirha asked. It was one thing to be indoctrinated by a regime's mindset, but what made each individual unique -- in her opinion -- was their ability to think for themselves and determine their own moral code of ethics.

"No war is fought clean," Gyce spoke and took a shaky breath. "...My heart says I did the best with the worst situation my people could have been faced with... But everytime I see an orphaned child in the streets of Bajor, I'm reminded of the collateral damage I caused. And I don't like that feeling."

Lirha remained silent for several long moments. Then, she began to slowly graze her sharp nails against the skin of Gyce's back in an effort to comfort her. "Does Starfleet offer some sense of soul redemption for you?" she wondered. "Scientific discovery and humanitarian aid missions?"

"It's the only avenue that makes me feel like I can get some of the blood off my ledger," Gyce admitted, sniffed away her sadness, and took a few more calming breaths. "...As painful as it is to talk of, I am glad I could share it with someone."

"You know," began Saalm thoughtfully, "you can always talk to Belle about it. I find she is a great listener and always gives comforting advice." Belle, of course, was Lirha's pink tribble who resided in the open terrarium cage of her bedroom, and was one of Lirha's favorite non-humanoid companions.

"I admit I never had a pet," Gyce confessed with a small grin, then kissed Lirha on the lips. "You're not bad to cuddle with either."

[OFF]

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RADM Lirha Saalm
Mission Advisor
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Benice Gyce
Chief of Security/Tactical
USS Galileo

 

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