In Body and Blade -- Ch. 34

Chapter 34 -- Katya

The audience was much more subdued at lunchtime that day.

I still had several of them wanting to speak to me, but nothing like as many as the day before, and they weren't as friendly either.

There were no more offers of limitless resources, no more declarations of support, and no more fawning compliments. Just questions. How does the augmentation work? Who designed it? What triggers it? Can it be reversed? Seriously though - who designed it?

I don't know why they thought I might answer them when I'd resisted the committee on the very same points. Maybe they thought they could catch me unawares, and that I might let it all slip out by mistake if only they could ask in just the right way. One thing was clear, though: Emile Cartier's rant had them rattled.

There were other questions too, though, from those inexplicably still on my side. How many razor-wolves have you killed? How long does a fight last? How much practice does it take to get that good? Can anyone learn to do it?

Valid questions, I thought, and I relished answering them, but the tone of those asking still unnerved me. This was no longer fascination or excitement. The honeymoon was over, and they wanted reassurances. Something solid they could take to their colleagues and just maybe forestall the coming collapse of our proposal.

I felt compelled to indulge them, obviously, and if it were down to me I might have stayed there for the whole lunch break, just like yesterday. Instead, Corporal Downey stepped in after a minute or two and pulled me out, reminding me I was expected elsewhere. Esther must have seriously scared her yesterday...

The interruption annoyed me at the time, but as we headed for the doors I remembered the need for it. It had been four hours since my last fuck, and I was starting to feel the effects. By Shelley's estimate I probably had a good hour left in me yet, but I couldn't afford the risk. Especially after Cartier got everyone doubting us.

Downey led me out of the crowded hearing room, but we found the hallways just as busy. Those who hadn't wished to speak to me were making their leisurely way to the dining hall, or on the phone with their respective governments, or just milling about, chatting. I could guess the main topic of conversation, of course.

Indeed, I may have lost their support but none of their interest. Threading my way through the crowd gave them ample chances to look me over close up, and they certainly took their fill. I'm quite sure as well that many of the gaps I squeezed through were deliberately narrower than they needed to be, but still, no one had the courage to touch me.

Out of respect? I wondered. Or fear?

To be honest I hoped it was both. With their trust in us wavering, I needed our mystique more than ever. Our unexplained, bare-skinned ferocity. All else aside, they still knew I could kill a razor-wolf with just a knife, and I needed them thinking I could do it without even that.

"It's this way, sergeant," Downey said, calling me back from a wrong turn.

I frowned, and double-checked my route. "Is it? We're not going to the waiting room?"

"There's no one there," she reminded me.

I frowned again, then realised, and then felt a fool for forgetting.

Of course...

There'd been seven of us here yesterday, in a vain hope that the committee might call for us all in quick succession. But with my testimony dragging on and on, the others had had nothing to do but fuck all day. So, today they'd stayed back in the suite. Still fucking, most likely, but at least there was a bed.

And I knew all this. I'd even argued for it when Shelley said the committee might see it as disrespectful. To hell with that idea. Half of them saw our existence as disrespectful.

I'd wanted Shelley in the room with me, not hanging around nearby on the off-chance they kicked me out and called for her in my place. And then she chickened out of coming at all. I mean, really, what was her plan? To be available, but not dare show up? To come when they called, but not when I did? Whose side was she on here?

I said some things I shouldn't.

We all had too much on our minds, clearly. Our sex cycle was dwindling, the committee was dragging their feet on approving us, I'd pissed off Europe's most powerful modern fascist, and one of our group had started acting like a damn anim---

Oh hell, that whole business had slipped my mind as well: Zara, the wannabe dog. As if we didn't have enough to worry about.

Dammit, I needed sex soon after all; my brain was on the blink.

Without really focussing, I followed Downey through the crowd until we reached the mansion's massive main doors, and there I saw a sight that shook me out of my daze. The tall, busty figure of Katya. All my other thoughts scattered.

Perfect, I thought. Just the woman I want right now.

And when I say she's tall, by the way, I really mean it.

If you saw a picture of Katya with no reference to judge her scale, you'd swear she was a medium height, curvy, slightly broad-shouldered young lady of average strength and a generous bust. Standing next to any other person, though, she was a giant.

I should probably explain.

Our current version of augmentation offered a wide variety of configurable settings, and in Katya's case, her body had been scaled up by forty percent in every direction. Seven foot seven, she was. 2.3 metres of elegant, feminine flesh, and within that body was a battering ram's worth of force.

For the rest of us, augmentation gave us a strength level roughly triple that of a normal human. Good enough to jump six feet straight up, give or take an inch. Katya, meanwhile, had that same tripled strength, but multiplied further because her muscles were physically larger. Although, it was then also divided by her... mass? You know, I'll be honest: Lis explained it to me once and it made sense at the time, but it didn't stick. All I remember is that there's a square cube involved. I think. That might have been for something else. Aren't all cubes square?

Anyway, suffice it to say, Katya was fucking strong.

Along with her daughter Anna, whose dimensions were far more standard, Katya was one of the very last additions to our group, and though we didn't always understand each other well I had come to rely on her wildly different perspective to balance out my own. She was also one of very few women I had here who didn't see me as her natural superior, and that made her advice all the more valuable.

She was leaning against the frame of the mansion's huge doorway, admiring the gorgeous view outside and oblivious to those admiring her. For a few long seconds I became one of them and promptly forgot they were looking at me, too. It wasn't just that her body was perfect -- curvaceous and silken, with a milky-white complexion and big, soft, hypnotising breasts, defying gravity, begging to be touched--- uh... Yeah, as I was saying, it wasn't just her perfect body, because augmentation had left us all as near to perfect as you could wish, in different ways. No, Katya's gift was the way she held herself. So still. So steady. So lost in thought that sometimes she'd stay in one position for hours at a time with no movement except the gentle rise and fall of her impressive chest. Like an artist's model. Or maybe a lake. Serene and tranquil, yet suggestive of so much depth.

And honestly, if you knew her you'd want her to stay that way, as well. By nature she was stern and humourless, with little patience for anything beyond the task at hand. I swear, there were times when I thought she'd never cracked a smile in her life, but glares, scowls and grimaces came to her naturally. Pushed too far, she was known to get violent, and her definition of "too far" was altogether too near for my liking. It was like sharing a bed with the Hulk.

Nevertheless, I approached her, and I became aware once more that we were being very closely watched by everyone around us. To my slight embarrassment I realised as well how small I must look to them beside such a graceful giantess. Seriously, my eyes were level with her nipples.

"Kat?" I tried, quietly.

She concluded her meditation with a final sigh, and then turned her head towards me.

"We need to talk," she said flatly.

"I--- Yeah, we do."

She was already striding past me, back into the building, her every step a thump heard across the whole building. The crowd parted for her instantly, and I followed quickly in her wake, only a little put out that none of them had eyes for me any more. The gasps and small yelps of fright were satisfying though. Respect and fear, I'd wanted, and there it was.

Eventually, after weaving through what felt like the whole damn mansion, we reached a nearby door. Smaller than most in this place, but still ornate and richly decorated. Katya opened it and ducked through without slowing. Beyond was a reception room. A comfortable, well-appointed parlour that had somehow survived the GDA's intrusion with its decor intact.

I closed the door behind us, with my apologies to Downey, and used that time to settle myself. This was going to be tough.

When I was ready, I turned round, drew breath to speak, and---

"I suppose you need sex," Katya said, and she made it sound like a chore.

"Uh... yes. I mean, it's not urgent, but---aah..."

She went to work on me without another word, forcing one thick finger inside me with all the delicacy of a seasoned butcher carving up a carcass. My back hit the door behind me, and then my feet were off the floor as she lifted me up. Within seconds my pussy felt like fire. It was so far from my idea of pleasure that it seemed to approach ecstasy from the opposite direction.

She held me aloft with one hand on my stomach, pressing me against the woodwork, while the other attacked my vagina as if she had a grudge against it.

And that was the biggest trouble with Katya. She was a rough fuck, every time. She saw sex as a necessary but deeply distasteful part of our lives, best dealt with rapidly and with as little pleasure as possible.

You see -- fuck that hurt -- she'd come from a background of hard, manual labour. She was more used to handling a pickaxe than a clitoris -- even her own. But worse than that, she had lived through one of the very worst-case scenarios that I kept warning the committee about. Augmentation without guardrails. Without vetting. Without morals. That was why we'd brought her here -- as a case study. To tell her story, right at the end, as a final, full-colour nightmare to scare the committee into accepting our plan above their own.

The only sex she'd had before we came along was the violent, competitive kind, imposed upon her by big burly men with too much to prove. It had left her stubborn, defensive and very cynical about the whole thing. It was all too easy to follow her ingrained thinking: Sex is a painful act of cruelty. Thus, only the truly evil enjoy it. Thus, to enjoy it is evil, by definition.

And so she never did. It was a chore to be endured, even when she desperately needed it.

And, to top it off, before all that she'd been raised in a culture that treated homosexuality as immoral and disgusting, so she had a hard time adjusting to it when it was thrust upon her. She took all of that out on my poor, unsuspecting cunt, as if it had personally offended her.

"F-f-fuck---" I wheezed. "Jesus Kat, slow down! Kat!"

"Huh?"

She stopped altogether, her fat middle finger still inside me and my toes still a foot off the floor.

"It's okay to be gentle, you know," I said. "Just go a little slower. A little softer. Okay?"

"Takes too long. We need to talk after."

I put my hands against her chest, on the upper slopes of her heaving breasts. "We can talk during. That's how the rest of us do it, all the time. It also has the benefit of my pussy not feeling like a fucking war zone, which, you know, would be nice."

I felt her finger shift inside me, and then she took her other hand away to clench her fist in frustration. This left my entire weight resting on my tender pussy for a second before I got a grip on her shoulders. She pulled away instinctively, slamming her free hand back into me to keep me pinned against the door. Still off the floor. Fuck, she was strong.

"Can we try, at least?" I begged. "Please? At your normal pace I won't survive my orgasm, and then we can't talk at all."

She grumbled under her breath, thought for a long while, and then nodded.

"Thank you," I said. "So just--- I dunno, just move gently, like... yeah, like that. Not quite so deep. There. Right there. Ohh yeah..."

All my tension slowly drained away, undoing first the damage she'd done to me with her impatience, but then also every pent-up knot of stress from the last few hours.

"That's just right," I mumbled. "Oh wow... Mmm..."

My hips began to grind of their own accord, and a moan escaped my lips. Suddenly her touch sharpened into a pinch and I yelped in pain.

"Talk," Katya demanded. "Sub-vocal."

"Uh huh. Yeah okay, sorry."

With two fingers I tapped a short sequence on my neck, just below the left ear, and I heard a quiet click in my ear confirming the switch to sub-vocal comms. Since Kat's hands were occupied, I tapped out the same sequence for her, and she nodded in confirmation.

"Check," I said, noting the muted, tinny sound of my voice.

"Check," she echoed, with the same effect.

It was another wonder of augmentation, of course, and one that suited my tactical mindset perfectly. I couldn't pretend to properly understand the workings of it, but to quote those who do: our vocal cords were temporarily paralysed, while an internal mic and speaker generated an inverted sound wave to deaden even the sound of our whispers, making us all but silent even to people standing right in front of us. Meanwhile, an encrypted radio signal carried those whispers to the ears of our comrades with only a slight distortion. Perfect for covert ops, as well as sensitive conversations in unsecure surroundings.

Reluctantly, she resumed her slow strokes, and this time I kept my focus on her. Her lip was curled in a permanent scowl at this filthy, sinful pleasure she was forced to give me.

"Shelley's... experiment," she said darkly. "Measuring cycles..."

"Uh huh," I answered, breathing through what would have been a long moan if my vocal cords still worked. "How's it going?"

"Now at three hour, fifty minutes, average. Fifteen minute drop since morning."

"Seriously? Jesus... that's getting low. And fast. At that rate we'll be down to nothing in--- what?" I tried to calculate it, but I was bad at that even when I didn't have a hand like iron pistoning in and out of me. A fifteen minute drop after four hours, minus... wait, what was it? Ohh damn my pussy felt gooood...

"Three days at most." Katya supplied. "And you won't get through tomorrow's testimony without many, many breaks."

"Ohh shit... Mm. Yeah, you're right. Any w... ahhh... any word back from--- oh man, right there -- don't stop, don't stop..."

"They're working on it," Katya answered my unfinished question. She sounded very distant to me, muffled by the orgasm now rushing towards me. "Maybe they answer tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe no answer ever."

"M---" I started to answer, but not even I knew what I was going to say. Other thoughts overtook me. "Oh fuck yes! I'm gonna cum! Faster Kat! Fuck me!"

I lifted my left leg high, hooked it at the ankle over her shoulder and grabbed the back of her thick neck with my opposite hand, bracing for a big, juicy climax.

Katya sneered at the contact but obliged me, keen to get it over with.

And then, like a rollercoaster cresting over its first climb, I crashed down on the other side. My body jerked, rattling the door at my back. My nectar squirted, hard, splashing Katya's belly and spraying back onto me like sweet, warm rain. I clung onto her desperately, gushing like a firehose and screaming in total silence. Five, ten seconds at least.

The pressure pushed me into a second orgasm and my hips rolled upwards, turning my pussy into a fountain between our bodies. It hit Kat in the face, and me, and the wood above my head, and the lintel over the door, and the wall above that. Maybe the ceiling too; I was too dazed to see.

It turned to spurts, and it was still going when Katya decided she'd had enough. She knocked my foot off her shoulder, set me down on the floor and stepped away, leaving me to slump against the door on very weak legs while my cum continued to flood down my thighs. Every time I thought it was done, another jet erupted from me, each only slightly weaker than the last. I caught some in my cupped hand and drank it, and then again, and a third time, quenching a desperate, breathless thirst.

Finally, it slowed to a dribble, and I took a moment to recover. My body responded quickly, though, flooding with fresh, nervous energy. I was still short of breath and very light-headed, but I forced myself to stand and take a step. The rug was spongy between my toes, thoroughly sodden. I felt bad about that; it looked expensive.

"Shit," I said. "We are seriously fucking up this family's home..."

Katya shrugged airily. "GDA is doing worse."

"Hm." She had a point. And that reminded me... "We, uh... We have another problem, too."

Katya sat against the back of a couch and raised her brow at me expectantly. She and I were both drenched from head to toe in my nectar, and for a second I faltered, freshly shocked at what we'd come to consider normal. Kat's face in particular was dripping with it, and unlike most of us she had little interest in the taste, so she just let it be.

"Uh..." I tried. "You remember that guy from the Callahan Trust? The clever one we asked for?"

"Da."

"Yeah well, he's figured out that augmentation was designed for humans. He's convinced himself that sending us into battle will trigger an arms race we can't win. And I think the others trust him on it. They could scrap the whole plan over this."

"Arm race?" She looked perplexed. Despite her heavy accent I still forgot sometimes that her English wasn't great.

"It's, uh..." I waved a hand vaguely. "Like the Cold War. Two enemies competing to build bigger weapons. He's saying we can't win because the razors' creators have too big a head start."

"Ach!" Katya scoffed and sneered with annoyance. "Razor-wolf creators are dead."

"Yeah, but d'you want to tell the committee how we know that?"

She said nothing for a moment. Then, softly: "Nyet."

"Exactly," I agreed. "They'll start a whole new war amongst themselves. We can't risk it."

We both fell into silent thought, though in my case I was also absently rolling a half-dried blob of my own cum round my mouth with my tongue. When it finally dissolved I picked a few more off my thigh and popped them in like a mouthful of sweets. Fuck, I tasted good...

After a short while, Katya stirred. "This man..." she said. "Clever, you say? They trust him?"

"I think so."

"And he is not military? Not government? He has no, uh... loyalty?"

"Uhh.... well, the Callahan Trust is international, if that's what you mean. They're not tied to any particular country."

Katya nodded. "And what is their goal?"

I eyed her suspiciously. "What are you getting at?"

"What is their goal?" she repeated firmly, and she took a step towards me.

"Well it's to---" I faltered, then finished with a sigh as I realised. I nodded. "To end the war and restore world peace. Yeah, okay. You're saying we can trust him just like they do. Right? Because his goals align with ours rather than any one country's national interest."

"Da."

I could tell she wanted me to continue, to let her off having to think of the English words for it. The trouble was I hated the idea already.

"I get it," I said, reluctantly. "You're saying we tell him everything privately, swear him to secrecy, and then have him convince the others to trust us, because they trust him. But that--- I mean, I dunno Kat, that's very shaky. We swore an oath, and for damn good reasons. What if he fucks us over? I don't want to be in his private army any more than Stein's or Lytkin's."

She shook her head, frustrated with me. "Don't tell everything," she snapped. "Only what he needs to know, to kill this talk of... 'weapons race'. Get plan back."

"I--- Wait..." Did that make sense? I couldn't tell. "Hang on, I need to think about that."

Katya grumbled something in Russian. "You think," she said, heading for the door. "I go back."

"Okay. No, no wait. Tell me first -- did you speak to Zara?"

It took her a second to realise what I meant, but then her face darkened to a storm. I'd never seen her sneer quite so viciously. "She is stupid girl. Wants to be dog. It is patetic."

"Patet---? Oh, right. Yeah well, we still need to know why, don't we? What did she say?"

"She---" Katya started, but then she huffed and spat out a long string of Russian curses.

The way she moved was menacing. In anyone else you would call it pacing, but her stride was so long that she ran out of space after barely a step and had to keep turning back and forth.

"Katya..."

"She say life is hard! She want to be dog and do what you say! She is weak, like child! Like---" She gave up on English and slipped back to her native tongue, and punctuated her words with a swipe at a table lamp that sent it flying into the far wall in pieces.

"Hey!" I snapped. "That's enough!"

She huffed again -- not too far off sounding like a dog herself, I noted. If she'd had working vocal cords it would have been a growl. She stopped her pacing and towered over me, tensing to throw me across the room as easily as that lamp. Something stopped her, though.

"We don't talk about each other like that," I said. "Ever. Okay? We're a family. Aren't we?" I waited for an answer. "Say it, Kat."

She nodded her head, but her grimace remained even as she muttered her reply: "Family."

I wasn't sure I believed her, and that worried me.

Until recently we'd been inseparable. All of us, I mean. The whole group was bonded by a common cause so powerful that we'd become almost a single entity. We loved each other, deeply, and though we often disagreed and sometimes even came to blows, the core of it never changed. That connection. It had seemed as unbreakable as our skin. But now, after just six weeks in this place without recalibrating, we were falling apart. Our cycles and our bond, both withering. Was our commitment next?

Fuck.

If we didn't recalibrate soon, this would be all for nothing.

In the meantime, I knew only one sure way to settle an augment's temper, and Kat didn't always respond well to the attempt. I approached her, carefully, wordlessly, and slipped my fingers between her legs. She hissed in distaste, and shifted her powerful, seven-foot body from one leg to the other, but she didn't move away. I found her pussy wet, and four of my fingers slid inside without even trying. If the angle had been different, my thumb would have slipped in, too.

I looked up to her face, high above me, and saw that clenched jaw of reluctance. She was staring off at nothing, seemingly quite unaffected by my touch so far and perhaps even trying to ignore it.

To help her along I stretched up the extra inch I needed and took her big, rock-hard nipple into my mouth. I tasted my own sweet nectar on her, making it all too easy to get lost in licking her entire breast -- which was easily bigger than my head, I might add.

It heaved when she breathed, almost knocking me off my tiptoes, and at least that told me I was getting through to her, because her face still showed no pleasure at all. So as not to fall, I contented myself with her underboob, licking and kissing the soft skin below her nipple, while my fingers continued their assault on her pussy.

Soon enough she tired of my slow approach. Her big, strong hand closed over my shoulder, and firmly pushed me downwards. Not gentle encouragement. Not a suggestion. A push. Far too strong for me to resist. With anyone else from my team I would have objected to such a blatant presumption -- I was the leader here, dammit, and leaders don't give oral sex on demand -- but Kat was too big and too strong to refuse without making a stink about it. And so I sank down, slurping up more of my nectar as I went, and found my mouth level with her pussy without even having to bend from a straight kneel. God she was tall...

She helpfully propped one foot up on the arm of a couch, and with this new access it was very easy to let my thumb join the four fingers inside her. Before I'd even really tried, my hand was in well past the wrist, and I paused then to take my time with a first, soft lick on her hairless mons. She grunted with annoyance at that and roughly pushed my head lower, to her clit.

"If you do this to me," she told me, "you do it fast."