Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 05

"He's wanted this with me for years," Taela smiled, "And I've wanted it too. You're the most important part, Ryan. You make this possible. If you hadn't landed here, we'd never have the chance to do this, not while my mother was alive, anyway -- and it's even better with you here. With a little luck, he'll get what he's really wanted forever."

They didn't try to get very fancy with each other; they were just looking for ways to keep everyone pleased. When Taela asked him carefully, Ryan had nodded and then watched as Shorty climbed on top of Taela and copulated with her very slowly. How he felt as he watched them surprised him. It was a very erotic thing to see, though there was no thrashing around or anything.

When Shorty had rested a little, they both had Taela at the same time in a very pleasing slow double-penetration which they managed to keep up for quite a while.

Taela was on her front for a while after that, groaning that she now had something which she loved to do, since she could please both of them that way at the same time. "It is not a little thing," she groaned as she lifted herself up a little.

"Why not?" Ryan grinned.

"It's not as easy as I'd imagined it," she said, "but in the middle of it, I just saw that with you both, I have two males and I love having my two males, so I hope that we can do that a lot. I don't want to sound sticky sweet here, but I love you both very much."

As far as he was concerned, real penetrative sex with Shorty wasn't on the menu to Ryan's mind -- at least not yet. But Shorty had other plans.

Something like this -- this first night where he was accepted and not as some half-simple boy in an older woman's bed -- meant quite a lot to him. By now, Shorty had known -- and for certain -- ever since Ryan had shown up, that he was actually a bisexual creature for a long time now and he'd had his little daydreams about something just like this.

He wasn't simple at all. But the emotions which fueled his heart were very pure. He loved Taela and always had. He'd just never been allowed to show it or to act on his feelings toward her before now. He loved Ryan as well now, and most of all, he knew his place with them instinctively. He was quietly determined to give himself to them completely.

So it wasn't good enough as far as he was concerned that Ryan held off, not wanting to hurt him in any way. Shorty had been hurt before, long ago. Now, he just didn't want these two who meant so much to him to give him any less than what he wanted from them, needed from them, really.

He'd finally been allowed to fuck Taela and she'd liked it. He knew that he wasn't the male that Ryan was. That didn't matter to him. But he had a want in him for that male as well, and tonight, he wanted to know if he could please Ryan well.

They were surprised when Shorty had gotten on top of Ryan while he was on his back. Shorty took hold of Ryan's manhood and began to work it -- even though it was behind him and as difficult as it was to do.

He looked into Taela's questioning face and he did his best to beseech her. "Berries, Taela. Berries."

She looked over at Ryan. "I think that he wants to ride you. I can help him. Will you let him do it?"

Ryan nodded, "I think that I have to. He'll feel like he's failed if I don't."

Taela sat up and she reached for the berries in the drawer of her table, "Are you sure, Shorty?"

He looked down at Ryan and he nodded, bending down to kiss Ryan. "I want Ryan," he whispered after a moment, "Ss-sometimes ... want to be ... yours, Ryan."

There were wide-eyed stares from the others at that. It was the longest sentence that Shorty had ever managed to put together in his life, so they couldn't doubt his sincerity.

Taela worked in the cramped space that she was given for it, lubricating both of them as best she could under the circumstances. He didn't want it, but Taela didn't care for his bravado at the moment.

"You want him inside you," she whispered as she knelt beside him, sliding a thick padded finger into him, "This is to give you the best chance, Shorty. We know that you're brave. That is not needed here. I want to make sure that it's good for you."

When she drew her finger out, Taela took Ryan's shaft in her hand and with a few quiet instructions to Shorty, she got them as lined up as she was able and then he began to press back. There was the moment of discomfort and then Shorty smiled down at Ryan.

"For you," Shorty hissed, "Taela and Shorty."

Ryan looked up and didn't know what to say. He reached up and ran his hands over as much of the screecher's thin body as he could reach, "I know."

Shorty's smile told Ryan everything as the screecher began to fuck on him. His eyes said a lot of how he enjoyed it as Ryan held him and sometimes pulled him down as he thrust upward and Shorty knew then that he'd been made for this.

He felt Taela's wide fingers on him as she caressed him as well and when he looked at her, he was a little surprised at the way that she lay there with her other hand working between her thighs as she watched them.

As it went on, both Taela and Ryan saw things in Shorty which amazed them, mostly just how deep this feeling went for him and the obvious way that he enjoyed what they were doing. He sped up at the end, lifting himself and then dropping back down to send Ryan's hardness deep into him over and over as he gasped and whimpered.

Just before Shorty came, Taela managed what she'd originally thought to be the impossible. She was able to get her face down there far enough to take Shorty's throbbing, rock hard shaft inside of her mouth and he'd almost screamed out in joy as he let go.

He had no strength left after that, but Ryan wouldn't allow him to collapse just yet and he held Shorty up until he'd slipped out and then he eased Shorty down on him. Shorty rolled off slowly with a satisfied groan to lie partially on Ryan. Taela positioned herself to use the space on the human that Shorty left to her and they both looked up at Ryan.

"So we are a herd or a pack or, ... "

"I think we're a flock," Ryan smiled, "I've never felt something like this."

Shorty raised his head wearily and laid it down against Ryan's shoulder as Taela had done. "Happy." Was all that he said.

---------------------------------------

When it was time, they took the shuttle for a short test flight, with Ryan handling most of the controls, though Taela did what he'd taught her. It went perfectly.

The next day, they set off as early as they could after the few screechers in the area had gone. Even so, they'd almost run into a couple of them as they passed on their way up, climbing to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Once they got high enough, Ryan gave them a second's warning before he rolled them over twice before he leveled out again and came to his heading. When he looked over and back, he saw that they both had wide eyes, but even Shorty was laughing.

The hunting was unbelievably easy and productive and their night in the shuttle afterward was far more lust-filled than they'd imagined. Both Ryan and Shorty enjoyed Taela a couple of times each and Ryan learned a little of the art of fellatio on Shorty while the screecher had his head buried between Taela's thighs.

She came to love the way that he could buzz that amazing tongue of his. After Shorty's semen filled his mouth, Ryan moved up and the two males took the last of Taela's sanity temporarily, using their mouths in her front and back at the same time. When they were done, she was hoarse and she couldn't keep her thighs from trembling.

They didn't mind it when she refused to let either one go for a long time afterwards.

Taela had brought her mother's harness and she fucked Shorty in a bit of preparation for his bout with Ryan, but he'd surprised her by using one of the condoms in that miracle of a survival kit of his. When Shorty cried out and went almost limp onto his front after Ryan had pulled out, Ryan discarded the condom and used berry juice as a lubricant and then he took Taela the same way as she writhed a little while lying in Shorty's embrace.

The three of them slept in a rather odd and yet satisfying pile after that.

When they got back and had hung all of the meat in the ice locker that Ryan had built for them, they were all exhausted from all of the butchering and getting it all to hang properly and finally, the work of stretching out the hides so that something useable could be made from them afterward.

They just fell into bed and after they'd both fucked Taela, they just began to drift off.

"Not so quick, Ryan," Taela whispered as she lay on her side with Shorty, "He may not be asking in a loud voice, but I don't think he'd give you an argument right now if you wanted him the way that I know that he hopes you do."

Ryan lifted himself up and leaned over to look down at Shorty there in Taela's arms. Shorty only smiled and lifted his leg to place it over Taela's hip.

Ryan moved down and slowly worked himself into the screecher until they both gasped a little and then Ryan began to love Shorty very slowly.

-----------------

The next day, Betty gathered the three of them up and led them to a part of the volcano where they'd never been.

"I want to show you something," she said, "I don't know if any of it still works, but you've got that shuttle and there are the two fuel tanks that you salvaged from that wreck that you almost rode in here on. I dunno, maybe you can put something together so that you can get off this rock one day, if you ever want to."

She moved a few tarpaulins aside from a large opening and they stared as more and more of what had lain hidden there for so many years came to light.

"I've got the full set of manuals, but they're in Morgaron, obviously," Betty said, "Taela can read it and translate for you when you need it."

Ryan walked into the space slowly, not quite believing what stood there in all of its dark and slightly menacing - if somewhat dust-covered glory.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you just how many times I almost filled my pants to see one of these come rippling out of the sky at us," he said, "I almost want to run right now.

What sort of crew does it need?"

Betty nodded, "It seats four and with a full galley, you can live on it for a couple of months. Up front, there's the craft commander and the co-pilot, and just behind them, there's the offensive and defensive officer's stations.

Fuel cells," Betty said, "It needs fuel cells, mostly -- which you have a full set of on the shuttle. That and the fuel, well, it ought to get you to somewhere half-assed civilized. I think it still has cryo-juice, since it doesn't ever go bad, but you'll need to reset the running doses to accommodate all of you, since everybody is a little different in what they are.

A good thing," she smiled, "since your shuttle isn't equipped for cryo, is it?"

Ryan nodded, still not believing what his eyes were telling him. "Only landing skids?"

She shook her head, "No, it has skids and wheeled landing gear selectable as an option. Ru'Torgh set it up on the skids because of what's in the hold.

He found deposits here and they're almost pure. I can show you where to look if you want. His plan was to get back home in this, but he didn't have the fuel for the engines. It needs fuel to get to the edges of the atmosphere. After that, you switch over to the drives and run them off the cells for the space part of the flight.

With the weight of what's in the hold, the drives would only melt down in this thick atmosphere.

You need to get to at least a fair-sized trading post to sell what's here. After that, you can probably buy whatever the fuck ship you want. As she sits here, she's got a belly full of almost pure, better than lab-grade Rhenium -- a little over five tons of it in sealed packages. Ru'Torgh spent over ten years at this. Now I want to give it to you.

Sell it and do whatever you want, Ryan. Just take care of my daughter and Shorty. I'll stay here. I don't ever want to leave here anymore. I don't think that I've got all that long left to live anyhow."

--------------------------------

It took two years of Earth time to get everything in order and working, but aside from a couple of glitches, it all worked eventually. There were modifications that they'd all decided on, and then there was almost six months of testing, one system at a time.

Whenever Taela or Shorty looked to be flagging a little, Ryan just told them that they had no margin for error and that as much as possible, now was the time to find out about failures, since once they were on their way, it was bound to be an awfully long walk back -- even if they all walked away from the scene of the crash.

The sad part of it all was that not quite two months before the date that they'd set for their departure, Taela suddenly realized that it could take them years before they ever came back -- if they ever did. She knew then that there was very little chance that she'd ever see her mother alive again.

"I know that," Betty said to her, "I was hoping just a little that you wouldn't think of it until after you'd gone. I'd rather that you remembered me like this." The two women sat weeping for a little while and sadly, Shorty found out about an hour later and it grew worse right then.

"Doesn't it bother you at all?" Taela asked Ryan as he worked to diagnose a problem with the flight deck lighting.

He stopped working and turned to look at her with a sigh, "Yes Taela, it does, it really does. I figured it out about three minutes after she showed this ship to us. And she knew that I knew, because I've lived most of the time of my life in cryo and I know how travel in space makes everything that you left behind into memories and nothing more than that.

I guess that I'm a little more used to the idea, and she's not as close to me as she is to you guys. Another thing that I know is that doing something while I grieve helps me."

He laid his tools on a ledge and he tuned to take Taela into his arms. She slipped back into her weeping then and he held her for a long time, saying nothing.

Taela was learning things as quickly as she could, since she'd be sitting in the co-pilot's chair and Shorty went from knowing nothing about flying -- other than flapping his own wings feebly -- to understanding how to at least begin to protect them from threats -- especially in peacetime.

"There's really no such thing," Ryan told them, "There are always folks who want to take what you've got -- and we'll be carrying what a whole lot of people want. You need Rhenium if you want to make engines or drives. It doesn't occur on a lot of worlds and it's a rare thing on Earth as well -- if there's any left there at all."

Something that Ryan and Taela loved to watch as it happened was that Shorty's ability to speak seemed to blossom as he learned, since his position required him to communicate with them both.

As far as test flights were concerned, there had been only about a half-dozen, since they didn't want to eat too far into the reserves that they had.

Finally, the day came to leave. Their goodbyes to Betty almost brought Ryan to tears of his own just to see it. He knew that for both of them, there hadn't been what might be termed the usual chances to learn to cope with separation, and he knew that it was worse for Shorty, since Betty was the second mother that he was losing, though to his surprise, the screecher was the one who was able to shake off his outward sadness sooner.

Ryan had programmed as much of the trip as he could and he'd set up a selected destination out in open space where the ship would park itself as he was brought out of Cryo-sleep. If he found anything, such as communication signals, he'd point them that way and go back to sleep to be awoken near the first place they'd found.

The ride toward the upper atmosphere was breathtaking and quick before Ryan leveled off and set them up for the transfer to the drives.

With that done and the engines shut down, they ate a dinner of a little meat and a lot of greens, since they likely wouldn't see much of them again for a while -- other than what was in the freezer in the galley.

They sat up front with Ryan in the commander's chair and Taela sharing hers with Shorty as he watched them stare at the stars for a long time.

After that, he got them both set up for sleep before he went under himself and the dark shape slid silently ever deeper into space.