Ginger had been named, when she was about two months old, because her mother had misread an ancient shipping label and presumed that it was good luck. Until then, it was tradition that any baby born in the Break had to go nameless, lest the Deep Dwellers wish to swim up and steal them. While the Imperial Creed had worked hard to stamp out the ideas of the Deep Dwellers, they hadn't quite managed it - instead, local superstition and church doctrines had somewhat conflated ideas around the Arch-Heretic Horus, oceanic depths, and fishlike mutations. This was why a popular saying in some circles was "Lupercal's Gills!" or "Wolfgills!" as an oath or expression about bad fortune, usually involving sinking.
So, one month of blissful namelessness.
Then, her mother, Lucien McGee, had proclaimed her daughter...
Fingers.
Fingers McGee.
The name had stuck, even after Fingers McGee had grown up and learned at the local schola - run by one of the more affluent shipping magnates for middle class children to ensure that he had a steady supply of non-administratum tied clerks to run his various concerns - how to read ancient script properly and she knew that she had been named for strips of fried, batter covered fish.
She went by Ginger instead.
Fin-Ger.
Ger.
Ginger.
It kind of worked, if you squinted.
But it also meant that when someone entered into the tavern in her off hours - while she was taking her time nursing a beer to let her aching wrist relax - and shouted: "I'm looking for a Miss Fingers?" she knew that it was about something official. She groaned and laid her head on the countertop, while the man in the bright, sequin covered uniform of her bosses firm hurried over to her.
"Miss Fingers?" he asked.
"Please, just...Ginger, please," Ginger said. "What is it?"
"We have a report on the...uh...the incoming shipment," the man whispered. "We need it filed and managed before the, uh-"
"Right, right." Ginger said, sighing. "Give me the documents, I'll get home and get to work on them."
The man nodded, handed her a folder, then bowed his way out of the tavern. Ginger sighed, then pushed herself up to sitting. She considered downing the rest of her beer...but no. She was fuzzy headed enough, and she would need to take a few hard hits of water and then a few oxypills and sacred ungents applied to her temples to-
"I know that feeling."
THe woman who spoke drew Ginger's attention around and arrested her. Ginger did not normally frequent bars where waveskippers and nere do wells went. So seeing one standing casually in this reasonably well to do tavern brought her up short - and made her entire face burn. The woman was tall and rangy, her skin covered in tattoos and scars. She was dressed in the leather harness that most people wore when they expected to go in and out of water. And nothing else. It crossed over her breasts, just barely covering her modesty, and was hung with a few knives, hooks, coils of rope. She looked like she had come straight from the docks. Her hair was cut into a narrow, long deathhawk that tumbled down her back and left the edges of her head firzzy with short, purple hair. Her teeth had been sharpened by a fashioner and she had a nose ring. Her eyes were gray-blue, like the sea themselves.
She looked at Ginger like she wanted to eat her right up, and Ginger found herself unable to even breathe.
"W-What feeling?" she stammered.
"Work hunting you? Though, at least they don't send press gangs after clerks," the woman said. She was, Ginger noticed, holding a jacket over one shoulder, like she had walked in with the jacket covering herself and shucked it off.
"Oh. Right." Ginger nodded. "Yeah. When you do papers for the Break's biggest shipping magnate, you...have a...a lot of work."
The woman smiled at her. "Be honest. It's your day off, isn't it?"
"...yeah, well, afternoon off. I get back into work tomorrow morning."
"When does your boss expect those forms to be finished?"
"As soon as possible," Ginger said, flushing hard as she looked at her cup. "I, wait, who are you, again?"
The woman grinned, lopsidedly. "Tirak."
Lower class name. Lower class girl.
"How did you get in here?" Ginger asked.
"Walked in," Tirak said.
The bartender had noticed her and was glowering. "Hey!" he said.
"Gonna walk out now," Tirak said, then winked at Ginger. Ginger tossed down a golden throne, then walked out...not after Tirak. But she did end up leaving at about the same time. And seemed to be going the same way. She flushed and then...then spoke.
"I'm not...what are you..." she hesitated. "I'm not that pretty!"
Tirak laughed. "Damn, seeing straight through me?" She arched an eyebrow.
"W-Well, you know what they say about sailors!" Ginger said, her cheeks burning. "I. Just. Why are you following me? I don't...I mean, you're not following me, we're going the same way. I-"
Tirak put out her arm, hemming Ginger in against one of the walls they were walking past. She leaned in, and whispered.
"Know what they say about clerks?" Tirak asked.
"...no..." Ginger whispered.
"Not very much," Tirak said. "Wanna fix that and do something absolutely irresponsible and crazy?"
Ginger gaped at her. She weighed up the two possibilities in her mind. On the one hand, there was lunacy, madness, doing something that would be definitely talked about - she lived at an apartment, people would notice if she came home with a strange woman. Doubly so, her room's walls were not...very thick. Her very life could be in danger, if people wondered if she was...differently inclined. But on the other hand, there was the endless, dreary drudgery of working for the Break. And for what? More thrones that she had nowhere to spend? Ginger gulped, then whispered.
"I...I don't know," she whispered. "People will talk."
"That's the idea," Tirak said.
"And get pitchforks?"
Tirak considered that, then chuckled. She slid her jacket on, zipped it up, shifted her posture, stood a bit differently, and then finally, tugged a small breathing mask from one of the jacket pockets. She fastened it on and said: "Mr. Tirak, at your service." She had pitched her voice a bit lower.
"P-People are still going to talk!" Ginger whispered.
"And say he blew your back out, thank you very much," Tirak said, voice still low and husky.
Ginger gaped at her. "Y-You're serious!?"
Tirak waggled her eyebrows.
Ginger considered, again.
Insanity, on one hand.
Tedium, unto death, on the other.
Ginger blushed, then said. "...well..."
***
"Oh Emperor! Oh Emperor!" Ginger gasped, her legs locked tight around the limber, skinny hips of the tall and powerful sailor. Her fingers clutched to her shoulder blades as she laid her head back on the pillow, her ankles crossing one over the other. A hazy part of her reflected that, well, at least
some part of the truth might be told. If she ever could speak about what was being done here without turning as red as her hair. She threw her head back against the pillow, her back arching as the sleek cock of plastiform and synthetics plunged deep into her warmths, the leather straps affixing it to Tirak rasping against her skin with delicious roughness. Tirak grunted low in her throat, her smallish breasts pressing hard against Ginger's chest.
"Fuck, ah, Star Children, fuck!" Tirak gasped, her own pleasure mounting - either through some elaborate construction that the strap on was pressing to her...or purely from the pleasure and the friction and the slippery heat of their bodies intertwining.
"Tirak!" Ginger gasped, quivering as she felt her pleasure crest, peak, ride high, and then sweep through her body. SHe felt as if she was floating on a cloud, while her lover remained above her, panting softly.
"Wanna know the fun part?" Tirak whispered.
"Uh...this...this wasn't?" Ginger asked, dazed.
"I, uh, mmm, I don't get soft."
"Huh?" Ginger asked. "Oh."
Tirak leaned forward and kissed one of her nipples. Her sharp, sharp teeth grazed her flesh and she stroked along Ginger's flanks, rubbing down to her hips - which she took a firm hold of...and them began to languidly pump into her again, sending new jolts of pleasure through Ginger's body. Ginger gasped and grabbed onto the headboard with one hand, purely to keep herself in place.
"OH!" She gasped, then moaned. "Oh
Tirak!"
Afterwards, the two women laid together, languid, satiated. Tirak, of course, had a lho box, which she tapped two sticks into. A sweat streaked, frazzle haired, completely besotted Ginger blinked in confusion as Tirak offered, her shark tooth grin lopsided. "You've never had dyke sex and you've never smoked lho? Really?"
"N-never," Ginger said. "Too low born to get high, too high born to get tipsy. That's how my mates always said, in schola. I mean."
She took the lho stick nervously, then put it between her lips, while Tirak pulled from her dangling jacket - tossed carelessly over part of the headboard - a small lighter. The tiny lasspark hissed to life as she lit her lho stick. She drew slowly from the smoker and then blew out a long, thin gray stream. The scent was acrid, but not entirely unpleasant. Maybe it was because was mixed with Tirak's intoxicating smell - the smell of sea and woman and something deeper that made Ginger want to bury her nose against her side and inhale off her. Instead, Ginger simply laid there, timid as a mouse, as if she had not been just fucked silly by the other woman.
"Here," Tirak said, softly.
She leaned in...and pressed the tip of her lho stick against Ginger's. Ginger froze and her entire face turned bright red.
This woman has been inside me with a strap on, she thought.
How is this making my heart race so?
"So," Tirak said. "Just breathe in."
She breathed in.
Then she started to cough raggedly. "Ack! Ack!"
Tirak laughed. "Yeah, uh, not so fast." She grinned. "Here. Cough some more. Let me." She drew in a breath, then with one long fingered hand, she pinned Ginger's head back against the pillow like a pouncing predator. She leaned in and kissed the lho smoke into her. When she drew away, Ginger was hazy headed and whimpering.
"Whow..." She whispered, smoke streaming from her nostrils. Then, with the air of a girl opening a present. "...are...you a spy?"
Tirak arched an eyebrow. "Huh?"
"Y-You're...so cool and..." Ginger gulped. "And I'm
me." She paused. "And I work for a shipping magnate. It doesn't take a genius."
Tirak shrugged one shoulder. "Yeah. I'm a spy. And a pirate." She grinned. "And sometimes, I ravage unsuspecting women purely for sport."
Ginger flushed. "Was I for sport?" She sat up. "Or...did you need something from me?"
Tirak looked at her, clearly measuring her. "...if I just needed something, I'd have stolen it, then left. I wouldn't have gotten my strap out. That's for special ocassions."
"Really?" Ginger asked, narrowing her eyes.
"Babe, it's actually more fragile than it looks," Tirak said, laughing. "They don't exactly make 'em to cogboy standard, they're dicks for dykes." She shook her head. "I ran a considerable risk losing it inside of you, clenching like you did."
Ginger looked somewhat unsettled at that.
"It's more annoying for me than you," Tirak said, laughing. "Since I need to get the fun part reattached."
"...right..." Ginger paused. "But you still want something from me, don't you?"
Tirak shrugged one shoulder again. "Mostly, I want to see you again, after this."
Ginger's entire face burned. "Liar." She whispered.
"Cross my heart, hope to die, may the Aquilla start to fly," Tirak said, taking her lho stick out. "If I speak true, you can stick this out in my chest."
Ginger took the lho stick, then gulped. This kind of ritual was common in the Imperium - let the Emperor guide your hand in such things. If the spirit moved you to righteous pain, it meant that the Emperor had interceded. Ginger wasn't sure how much she believed it. She hesitated, then pushed the lho stick gently forward...and then drew it back. "I-I can't do it," she whispered. "...does that mean you're lying?"
"Sure does," Tirak said.
Then she took Ginger's wrist, yanked forward, and there was a soft hiss noise. Tirak grunted as the lho stick's blazing tip let out a thin stream of black smoke. Ginger's fingers opened and the stubbed out drug fell to her thigh, scattering cooling ashes against her skin. A red welt shown on Tirak's breast, near one of her achingly hard nipples.
"Tirak..." Ginger whispered, then leaned in. She kissed the burn mark, gently.
"S'all better now," Tirak crooned. "So." She caressed the back of Ginger's head. "How about turning pirate?"
"I-I..." Ginger hesitated, then looked away. "I...will I have to...wear a dumb hat?"
***
She, in fact, did not have to wear a dumb hat.
The information that came back to the airship Levithan was...
interesting. The Slagdog Corporated Solutions was beating the bush looking for them - but had had no luck. The Administratum had a scribe on the planet, who had been seen in several meetings with mid to low level Slagdoggers but nothing had come of it.
But what was most interesting of all?
Three Whaleisland Hunters were returning from the deep wilderness of Aquiocrypt.
And between their airships, they were carrying something
big.
And it was no whaleisland. No whaleisland at all.
And the Break was very interested in buying it.
---
THE AIRSHIP LEVITHAN
MONTH THREE, WEEK TWO
MIGHT: 2 | TREASURE: 3(2) | INFLUENCE: 1(0) | TERRITORY: 0 | SOVEREIGNTY: 2(0)
Kelermorphs: +2d to unconventional warfare (not escaping)
Areospace Assets: +2d to might rolls involving airspace
Revolutionary Rhetoric: -1d to raise Sov or Might
[ ] Attack BLANK (Might + Treasure VS Might + Territory)
[ ] Being Informed (Influence + Soverignty vs Diff 1)
[ ] Spying on BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Influence BLANK to do BLANK (Influence + Treasury vs Influence + Territory)
[ ] Increase your Sovereignty (Territory + Treasure vs Diff [Current Sovereignty])
[ ] Police BLANK (Might + Sovereignty vs Influence + Might)
[ ] Rise in Stature (Sovereignty + Treasure vs Diff [Current Influence]
[ ] Train and Levy Troops (Sovereignty + Territory vs Diff [Current Might]
[ ] Unconventional Warfare (write plan in)
