“So this is the Aviary?” Jason murmured as he looked around the well furnished corridors. “Fancy.”

The exo training facility was certainly a step above the Crucible in terms of fanciness. Brass plaques, seemingly denoting famous exo pilots, covered the walls. Purple fabrics with gold filigree draped from the ceiling, each depicting some epic battle. And the floors were more often carpeted than not, with rich and no doubt expensive rugs.

The place had more in common with some mansions he’d been in than a military installation.

“It’s alright,” Kernathu shrugged.

Seeing that his fellow engineer looked a little embarrassed by the sheer opulence on display, Jason considered dropping the topic.

…For about three seconds.

Unfortunately for her, teasing the easily flustered female had become something of a guilty pleasure of his.

“Just alright?” he asked, leaning in close. “I’m pretty sure that rug we just walked past was worth more than a top-of-the-line exo. And this is where you’ve been training for the last month? Someone’s moving up in the world.”

He pressed against her as they continued to walk. “Makes me wonder if I shouldn’t retire, before you and Raisha start making the big bucks? Live out the rest of my days with a pair of wealthy sugar-mamas?”

He was joking, of course, but Kernathu flushed all the same, both at his proximity and the imagery his words had no doubt conjured.

“The, uh… Engineering is this way.” She squeaked at the end, gesturing as best she could with the large brown box in her hands.

Before he could say another word, the girl took off down another corridor. Jason smirked, before turning back to Raisha, who had apparently caught up to them at some point during the exchange.

“Any issues with security?” he asked.

The woman shook her head. “Some grumbling, but the rest of the stuff should be sent to Kernathu’s bay in engineering as soon as a dolly-drone is freed up.”

Jason nodded thankfully.

Truth be told, he felt a little bad about leaving the whole thing with Aviary security to Raisha, while he and Kernathu went ahead, but his lover had assured him that it was for the best.

She was the most senior exo-trainee in the party, and thus the one whose words held the most weight.

Which according to his experiences at the Crucible, should have equated to effectively no weight at all – but apparently things worked differently at the Aviary.

Either way, the rest of the exo-parts that should have been delivered to the Aviary yesterday, rather than cluttering up his apartment, would soon be on the way to the trainee exo-bays in engineering.

Sans the box Kernathu refused to let go of, he thought in amusement as he watched the girl in question turn a corner ahead of them.

He could well understand her excitement at receiving a bunch of top of the range parts for her new exo project, but he felt that physically refusing to let go of the box containing the targeting module was perhaps a step too far.

“Is that a human?”

“Oh Empress, I think it is!”

His smile turned just a little plastic at the words, as he glanced to where a pair of girls in exo-trainee uniforms were now unabashedly staring at him.

Though it did become genuine once more as he felt more than saw Raisha moving in closer toward him.

Once upon a time, he would have found the instinctive display of possessiveness from the alien annoying. Now though, he actually found it more heartwarming than anything else.

“I can’t help but note that it was incredibly easy for me to get in here,” he said, deliberately ignoring the pair as they walked past them. “Guards at the gate barely glanced at me.”

Raisha turned from her glaring back to him. “Aviary gets a lot of visitors.”

“Really?” he asked, eyes flitting over to the plaques lining the walls. “Is this place like some kind of military base / museum hybrid?”

He had no idea if those actually existed, but he had a feeling they might. It would go some way to explaining the sheer opulence on display.

Some way.

His lover shook her head. “Servants. For the noble-born.”

Jason nearly missed a step.

“You can’t be serious?” he said as he regained his footing.

“Deadly,” Raisha grunted, her usual carefree expression twisted into a scowl. “To make beds and do laundry.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said, trying to wrap his head around the concept. “This is a military base…”

“This is the Aviary,” Raisha said, resignation ringing in every word. “Exos are for the elite, and apparently that means they play by different rules than the rest of the military.”

He couldn’t help but notice that she used ‘they’ rather than ‘we’ there. Raisha was an exo-trainee herself after all. Kernathu was an exo-technician trainee. Though he had a feeling the elitism that Raisha was talking about didn’t quite extend to the repair and retrofit side of the exo-equation.

“What do they expect to happen when they’re on deployment?” he asked.

“Stewards. Militia. Whichever low-born happens to be closest at hand, if they can get away with it.”

Which Jason knew was not supposed to be the case. The nobility had certain powers and privileges over the lower classes, but those were superseded by military rank for military personnel.

Of course, theory and reality don’t always go hand in hand, he thought.

As he watched another trainee stop in her tracks at the sight of him, he leaned into Raisha, gripping her hand. Something she clearly hadn’t been expecting, given the way she tensed minutely, before relaxing, a small blue blush tinting her cheeks as she kept her head facing straight ahead.

“I take it that it’s been tough,” he said. “Surrounded by all these rich bitches?”

Much like the Interior was the traditional home of the nobility, the same was true for exo pilots. He’d never really thought about it before, but Raisha was probably horribly outnumbered as one of the rare few commoners who had managed to earn her way into the elite program.

“It- it’s not been that bad,” Raisha mumbled, deliberately standing tall. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

Typical Shil bravado, Jason thought with amusement. All about being tough.

Well, it wasn’t like he had room to talk. He wasn’t one to talk about his problems either – much to his protocol mandated shrink’s frustration.

Well, if Raisha didn’t want to talk about it, he wasn’t going to make her.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t do something nice for her though.

Likely next week, he thought as his eyes turned to where Kernathu was waiting impatiently in front of a pair of double doors. ‘Engineering Bay Six’ was emblazoned proudly in classical Shil across the plaque above them. This weekend’s about Kernathu…

-------

He liked to think of it as one of those universal realities of engineering, that despite using mostly new space age parts, he and Kernathu were still somehow streaked with grime by the end of the first few hours.

Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, Jason thought as he idly wiped some muck off on his chest.

While he wouldn’t go quite so far as to call it a fetish, a woman wielding a wrench with just a small streak of grime across her cheek did things for him.

The tanktop helps too, he thought as Kernathu reached down to grab a spanner, her loose top displaying just a hint of the perky peaks within. The nerdy girl might not have been the most buxom of individuals around, as evidenced by the fact that she had chosen not to partake of a bra today, but that mattered not a whit. The occasional glimpses of Kernathu’s lithe form were driving him to distraction. He couldn’t decide if the girl being entirely ignorant of her appeal made it better or worse.

Hell, she didn’t even blink when I took my top off, he thought, wiping away a bead of sweat that was dribbling down his torso.

The Shil’vati baseline tolerance for heat was just a little higher than humans, and as such, just about every building he walked into on Shil was just a little hotter than he was comfortable with. Normally it was tolerable enough, but when combined with mechanical work, the only reasonable recourse was to strip down a bit.

Which often had unintended and unwanted consequences.

“If you’re feeling hot, human, I wouldn’t mind giving you a wipe down!” A voice shouted out.

He resisted the urge to sigh, or to look in the direction of the bay doors, where a small audience had gathered since his arrival. Most of those present were exo-trainees, but he could see the odd technician in there too.

Instead of acknowledging them, he looked toward where Raisha was sitting on a crate, her feet drumming a rhythm against the side. He actually had to resist the urge to say something as… cliché as ‘are you going to let them talk to me like that?’

He’d like to think he’d been slowly adapting to the strangeness that was life in the Imperium, but didn’t think his masculine pride could survive that.

Instead he settled for something a bit less… plaintive. “Any chance they’re going to get bored and wander off soon?”

Raisha cocked her head to the side. “It’s a base full of horny trainees. You’re a dude doing maintenance on an exo without a top on. Being half-naked would be good enough to draw a crowd, but doing exo-maintenance at the same time?” She shrugged. “I’m pretty sure every exo-jock has dreamed of seeing something like this at least once.”

Trying to ignore the crowd of onlookers, he grinned at her. “Present company included?”

Raisha’s cocky grin disappeared as she flushed a bit, turning away. Which he took as a definite yes.

“Just be glad it’s the weekend,” she mumbled. “Most of the girls are out on leave.”

He nodded, glancing in the direction of his avid audience and wondering just how much of the Aviary’s population was present. And also if his image was about to be splashed all over the data-net.

He could already see the page titles: ‘Hero of Gurathu, nude, uncensored’.

“Goddamn Shil’vati,” he murmured.

To his surprise, Raisha was surprisingly quick to rally in defense of her race. “As if you’re one to talk. You’ve been making bedroom eyes at Kernathu since the moment we got here.”

The fact that she was grinning as she said it – and still blushing – took some of the sting out of the words, but the instinctive part of Jason’s mind still defaulted to the baseline human setting of, ‘my girlfriend caught me ogling my… other girlfriend’.

Sure, they’d all been living in the same house, which inevitably meant that Raisha had inevitably walked in on him mid coitus with Yaro or Kernathu at least once – and vice versa – but some part of him still felt odd about the whole thing.

Subconsciously, he kept expecting her – or them – to be mad.

“Is that a, uh, problem?”

And just like every other time he’d asked a question of a similar ilk, the woman just stared at him as if he was mad, before that little gear in her head switched to ‘is a human’.

“No,” she said instantly. “A little jealous of the attention perhaps, but not mad.”

“Ah,” he said slowly, before lapsing off into an awkward silence. One that only grew as Raisha didn’t seem to know what to say either.

“Jason, come help me with this.”

“Gladly,” Jason said, glad for any excuse to escape the awkward moment that had formed.

“Lie down and hold this in place for me while I screw it in,” Kernathu said as she bodily shoved him onto the creeper, before placing both hands on a coolant unit that sat just beneath a thruster on the exo’s left thigh.

Resisting the urge to chuckle at his fellow engineer’s one track mind, he dutifully lay on his back and held the black block in place. Though he did find an eyebrow twitching up as Kernathu moved to straddle him.

Not that she seemed to notice the fact that she’d just put the pair of them in a rather compromising position. No, her attention was entirely on the task in front of her as she set about screwing the coolant unit in place.

Jason admired her poise – though he could not imitate it.

The lithe Shil’vati’s groin hovered just inches from his own, and every subtle shift of movement had it brush – ever so lightly – against him.

Which, normally wouldn’t have been too great a problem. If nothing else, his interactions with Shil’vati women had given him a greater degree of control over his libido than most. Unfortunately, these weren’t normal circumstances.

Ignoring the fact that Kernathu had been teasing him all afternoon with tantalizing glimpses of her in her mechanic’s outfit, his current position gave him a rather excellent view up her loose tank top.

Now, Jason didn’t particularly consider himself a connoisseur of breasts. He, like most men, liked them all. Big or small, it didn’t matter much to him. The same went for angle of viewing. Sideboob. Boob window. Cleavage shot. It didn’t matter much beyond… breasts.

He would admit though, that if he were forced to admit a particular viewing angle of preference, it would have to go to underboob.

A great example of which fluttered above him. It wasn’t a perfect view by any means, but the occasional glimpses of tantalizing soft purple flesh hovering just above Kernathu’s taut and toned stomach were perhaps all the more enticing for their fleeting nature.

And I’m getting an erection… he thought with resignation, as his lower half decided to come to its own conclusions about the nature of his current activities. Christ, I can only hope our audience can’t see it.

Fortunately, Kernathu’s bow legged stance had seemed to be hiding it from view. For most of their observers at least.

Raisha could definitely see the tent forming in his pants, and as a result, he was very determinedly not looking in her direction.

He could imagine the shit eating grin she’d be wearing right now just fine without having to look upon the genuine article.

Which was how the next few minutes passed. With him sporting a raging erection and staring upward, while Kernathu fiddled with the device above him.

Oh yes, and occasionally someone standing in the entrance made a lewd comment, but he’d pretty successfully tuned them out.

“Seems to be taking a while,” he noted once enough time had passed.

Kernathu hissed, twisting the screwdriver. “It’s fiddly.”

Jason smirked, but knew better than to offer to take over. So instead, he just lay there, trying not to jolt each time Kernathu’s movements had her rub against the engorged and sensitive head of his member.

He’d like to think he was doing a decent job. Right up until he felt a brush that seemed slightly more… deliberate. Then another. Harder.

Looking up, he could see that the Shil’vati’s hand movements had slowed, a slightly puzzled expression running across her face. She dipped again, and Jason twitched as her posterior rubbed against his aching hardness.

She paused, before looking down at him. And for the first time in a few hours actually seemed to notice him as something more than a convenient extra set of hands.

She flushed, her eyes widening as they ran across his bare chest. The poor girl looked positively frozen in place, as her face turned brighter and brighter shades of blue. Then finally, her head snapped up and she looked around, noticing the crowd of onlookers who even now were avidly watching from the entrance.

“So… are you going to get off me now?” he asked, teasingly, despite being pretty flushed himself.

Kernathu’s face shot back to his. “I… ah…”

Jason jolted a little, both in surprise and pleasure, as her groin pressed against his again.

Looking up in alarm at his fellow engineer, he was shocked to see that she almost looked as surprised as he was by the bold move.

Slowly, that look twisted into realization.

“I… ah… don’t think I will?” she said, as if speaking to herself.

Jason grunted as she slowly started to grind against him. Slowly. Sensually.

“We, uh, kind of have an audience,” he felt compelled to point out. “And I’m also holding up a rather expensive piece of equipment.”

One that was only partially screwed in, so he couldn’t just lower it without possibly breaking a connection point. The thing wasn’t exactly heavy but he could feel a small ache building in his arms just from holding them in place for so long.

That seemed to break through Kernathu’s fugue of lust long enough for her to stare in concern at the device in question. Then, slowly, a devilish smile slowly started to form on the usually shy engineer’s features.

“You better not drop it then,” she smirked.

And continued slowly grinding against him, a small pleasured sigh leaping from her lips, as her groin rubbed against his hardness.

At which point, between resisting his own grunt of discomfort and pleasure, Jason remembered something rather important.

Raisha, for all of her boisterousness, was actually a bit of a softy in the bedroom. A real romantic at heart. Soft kisses. Long hugs. Lots of cuddling.

Yaro was a submissive hiding behind the veneer of a sadist. The cultured wolf-woman always started strong, but by the end of the first hour, Jason would inevitably be the one on top, and she’d be howling with wanton abandon.

Kernathu though…

Kernathu’s a bit of a freak…