Editing Venus' Burn (section)

==The First Part==
“If it hurt more, I would black out,” Venus groused, her face rammed between two pillows.

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” I said, rubbing the crease as gently as I could.  The frigid green lubricant on my fingers was supposed to be soothing her back, though it apparently wasn’t working on her temper.

“Could have fooled me,” she said, fisting the sheets with a whimper.


I should explain.


A few weeks before I found myself massaging aloe into a hole in Lord Vulkan’s daughter’s back, I had attended a party at his house.  Venus, my girlfriend and quite possibly, as far as I could tell, the best-looking biped in the Imperium, had “invited” me to drive her over there and stay for the whole affair, culminating in watching an unbelievably stupid horror movie that had to be as old as the planet, with Vulkan sniggering every few minutes at the commentary track.  Venus had recited nearly the whole movie under her breath; this was clearly a well-worn ritual.  All in all, a stressful evening.

It had turned out to be worth it, though.  So, so very worth it.

The next weekend, I had taken Venus home to meet my own parents, who were smart enough to be almost worshipfully respectful of her, while at the same time picking up quickly that she found that sort of behavior distantly insulting.  After dinner, I drove her out to the park on the edge of the rich district where she lived, and she and a few of her cousins were congregating for a party of their own, celebrating Isis’ team’s victory in the volleyball regionals.  Venus wasn’t on the team; she was a swimmer, not a volleyball player.  She had the body for it, too, toned like a pro.  Muscular, but not beefy.  She was trim, except her ample breasts, which she had grumbled about once or twice.  She said they threw off her balance and hydrodynamics, not that any man who had ever met her minded.

The party held the air of triumph.  I had mingled for a while, but I had been very uncomfortable surrounded by so many of the Imperium’s finest.  The girls, I mean, the bodyguards I had long since grown used to from school.

Most of the royal girls had their boyfriends there too, so I was hardly alone, but I wasn’t used to it, and I had to excuse myself early.

“Aw, come on!  It’s not even midnight!” Venus protested, as I walked back to where we had parked.

“We can stay a bit longer if you want,” I said, turning back, but she was already shaking her head.

“No…it’s fine.  I can hitch a ride home with Freya.  Do you have to, though?” she asked, looking at me sadly.

“Sorry, hon, but I just don’t fit in here.  I feel like people are staring at me, waiting for me to fuck up and say something stupid,” I said, thinking of a few of the guys in particular.  Looking at me as if I was going to embarrass THEM instead of just myself.

“Aw…well, all right,” she said, those bottomless red eyes dimming a bit.  They really did tie into her emotions, then, just like the vids said about the Salamanders?  I felt my heart seize up.

“Well, hey, I don’t want to be a buzzkill,” I started, but before I could finish, she slid her arms around mine and pulled me in, leaning her head against my shoulder for a long moment.

I wrapped my arms around her and just held her, savoring it.  After far too little time, she pulled back a bit and stared at me for a second.
Then…then, she leaned back in and kissed me.  I thought I heard the music from the open pavilion stop for a second, but it may well have been time itself for all I could tell.

I was frozen stiff.  After a moment, realizing that it wasn’t a fluke, she hadn’t just lost her footing and tripped on me, I locked my arms back around her, probably looking like a cheap toy, my arms all jerky and shaking.  Her skin was hot, hot as a little flame, all over, probably another artifact of her Salamander heritage.  All I could feel was her, there wasn’t any wind, gravity was a total myth, my keys in my pocket were weightless.
After the best few seconds of my life thus far, she stepped back with a sly little grin.  I stood there dumbstruck and flushed to the gills, waiting for my vocal cords to unlock and say something profound.

“Uh.”

Smooth.  I tried again.

“Uh.  Thanks.  Venus.”

Yep, I was Dante Alighieri.  Master of language.

She bit her lip, then ran her tongue over her lips, as if she was trying to find words too.
“No problem,” she said, nearly as unsteady-sounding as I was.  Before I could lurch forward for an encore, she turned on her heel and bounced off, without even a ‘good bye.’
Well, I was in no shape to complain.  I turned back to my aircar, fishing my keys out of my pants, which were abruptly a few sizes too small.  I dug the right ones out and clambered in.  After slapping the ignition button, I leaned against the car door for a second and ran my fingers over my lips.

Have you ever tried Slide?  It’ll kill you, but to listen to the dealers, it’s almost worth it.  Kevin, Furia’s boytoy, tried it once; he told me it was something like a ‘full-body priapism.’  After tasting Venus, though, who needed drugs?  After a few pleasant seconds of remembering, I started the drive up and went on home, grinning like a complete idiot.

I don’t remember her acting very differently afterwards, for a few days, anyway.  I saw her at school like I always did, but aside from having a lot more time for me between classes, she really didn’t act like anything had changed.  After three days of that, I worked up the balls to ask her why.
She was surprised, I remember that.  “I don’t get it.  What’s the problem?” she asked over lunch, sitting in the last pair of seats at the table with me.  Farah was sitting a few seats down, trying very hard to pretend that she wasn’t listening, across from the twins, who weren’t even pretending.

“Not a problem.  Just curious,” I said, as if it was not even a thing.

She looked at me quizzically, as if she was looking for a hook in the words.  “I could promise not to ever do it again, if you want,” she said.

I whipped my head around so fast my hair could barely keep up.  “Don’t you even dare.  Don’t even joke about that.  Fuck.”  Farah smirked behind her sandwich.

Venus smiled.  Her skin was as dark as an onyx chip, and so was her hair, but her eyes were brightly glowing red orbs, no retina or cornea that I could see.  I can only imagine that the fact that she was Vulkan’s daughter spared her an endless torrent of bullying when she was little, before we were in the same class.  I admit I found it a bit disturbing at first, but I got over it; she was smart and funny and as cute as I could hope.  Plus, it made her easy to find in a crowd.

“I was kidding.  I just didn’t want you to leave the party unhappy, that’s all.  Really,” she said, sincerely.

I smiled back.  “Thanks.  You’re the best.”

She would have blushed, if her skin were light enough to see it.  I reached down and squeezed her hand, and heard Farah cough on her drink.  I hid a smirk.

A few more days went by, and the weekend rolled in.  I didn’t have much planned, so I was kicking around the idea of calling a few friends from school and seeing if we could arrange a get-together when my mother stuck her head in my bedroom door, holding a vox.  “Hey, Jake, call for you.”

“Yeah?” I stuck out my hand for it.  “Who is it?”

“It’s Venus.”  I perked up and grabbed the vox.

“Hey, Venus, what’s up?”  My mother discreetly closed the door.

“I was wondering if you wanted to come over for a few hours,” she said.  I loved her voice.  How could a voice that deep sound so feminine?

“Sure!  Be right over.  What do you have in mind?” I asked, grabbing my keys.

“I wanted to show you what the place looks like when it isn’t crawling with nobles and rich people,” she said.  I could see her smiling through the vox.

“Sounds like a plan.  See you then.”  I hung up and pulled my shoes on, jogging down the corridor of our crowded little apartment.

“What did she want?” my mother asked as I rounded the corner.

“She wanted to show me what her house looks like when there’s nobody else in it,” I said, tugging my vest off the peg and zipping it on.  When she didn’t say anything, I looked back at her.  Her mouth was hanging open, her eyes wide.

I realized what I had said.  “Uh, not like that.  She wanted me to see what the mansion looked like, because, you know, last time I was there it was, you know, the party.  Right?”

She looked at me like I was daemonic for a second, then slowly shook her head.  “Sure.  We’ll go with that.”

A mere fifteen minutes later, I dropped the car on the pad outside her house and locked it.  The front door was wide open, and Taxi came sprinting out like a bullet, slamming into me across the shins.  I stumbled and nearly fell, but he lunged back and crouched a few feet away, barking like mad.
“Taxi, you dumb slut, get over here!” Venus called from the door, arms crossed.  The dog flinched, but ignored her, jumping at me again, sniffing at me like I had rolled in barbeque sauce before I drove over.  Venus sighed impatiently and walked a few steps closer.  The dog flipped out and took off, running up and down the driveway like a Blue Ork on a sugar buzz.

“Forget it, he’s in one of his moods,” Venus said, sighing in irritation.  “Come on in.”  Leaving the dog to his laps, I followed her into the mansion.
The décor was more or less the same in the main room, but she wasn’t showing me that.  She led me straight to the staircase into the basement at the end of the hallway, and into the first floor below ground.

It was a fully-equipped smithy.  In hindsight, I don’t know why I was surprised – her father was Lord Forgefather, for fucks’ sake – but I was.  She bounced on over to a rack of mystifying tools and pointed a few out.  “Those ones are mine.”

“Yours?” I asked.  “Really?  You use these things?” I took in the forges and other equipment with a sweep of my hands.

“Sure.  Dad taught me everything I know,” she said proudly.  She hefted a well-worn hammer with one hand and twirled the haft effortlessly.  “I make my own jewelry, too.”

“Really?  Cool,” I said, stepping closer.  She put the hammer down and lifted the small gold pendant around her neck.  It glittered in the harsh, artificial lights of the smithy, setting off a yellow tint in the tiny red ruby in the middle.  I’d seen the pendant before, of course, but it had never been more than a momentary diversion from the wonderful pair of breasts it was usually tucked between.  I love our school uniform.
The pendant was a drake’s head in profile, I saw, with the ruby set in the eye.  I gently took it out of her hand and looked at it, genuinely impressed by the craftsmanship.  Craftswomanship, I guess.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said, beaming, her teeth shining against her jet-black skin.  “Dad gave me the ruby as a present, last time he went back to Nocturne.  I should really go visit some day.”

I smiled and let the pendant fall back against her shirt.  Sadly, she had chosen a much more conservative green long sleeve tee-shirt over the delightfully décolletage-revealing white uniform I usually saw her in.  “Maybe I could go with you.”

She giggled and took a step back.  “Maybe you could.”  Maybe I was laying it on too thick; she turned around and continued the tour.  “This one’s Dad’s.  I don’t even touch it,” she said, gesturing at a massive black forge, easily half again the size of the smaller one she had shown me before.  “I mean, I could barely even reach it if I tried, but it’s the principle of the thing.”

“Right,” I said drily.  I had three inches on her and I doubt I could have even reached past the rack to the heating element.  There was something on the anvil, I noticed, something gold.  “What’s that?”

“Oh, Dad’s latest toy,” Venus said disapprovingly.  “He’s always leaving things half-done around here.  It’s irritating as hell, he told me never to do it but he does it all the time.”

“Grandpa was the same way,” I said, remembering the state the lab had been in when my father inherited it.  I’ll probably have to be the one who finishes digging all the shit out of there, someday.  “Packrat, he was.”

“Oh, Dad’s not a packrat, just a collector.  You should see his trophy room,” Venus said, shifting her head as if her eyes were rolling.  Like I said, it’s hard to tell.

Just then, I heard a faint beeping from one of the walls.  Venus jogged over and tapped a recessed blue button next to a grille.  “Hello?”

“Hey, Venus, what’s up?” Farah’s voice came from the wall.

“Showing Jake around the forge,” Venus said.  Farah’s voice hitched.

“What?  Which one?”

“The one in my basement, obviously,” Venus said sarcastically.

“I mean which Jake?” Farah said suspiciously.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Venus started, growling.  Farah giggled.

“Relax, sister, I was kidding.  Eh, that’s gonna be awkward.”  I squeezed my eyes shut and massaged them, sighing.  I had allowed myself to completely forget that Farah’s boyfriend was named Jake too…we had never even met outside of gym class, but I had a feeling the girls were going to ride that joke into the ground reeeeally fast.

“You are an asshole, you know that?” Venus said shortly.

“Yes.  Yes, I do.  We still on for Thursday?  Roberta booked us a floor,” Farah asked.  I looked at Venus curiously, but didn’t say anything.

“Hell yeah we are!  I’ll bring my Jake and they can be awkward together,” Venus said, smirking at me.

“Good idea.  I’ll let you get back to your booty call,” Farah said airily.

“Oh, FUCK YOU TO HELL,” Venus snarled into the grille.

“Tee hee hee haaah ahahahaha!”  Farah’s voice cut off with a *click*.

Venus stared at the grille angrily before turning on me in a huff.  “Booty call.  Come on,” she grumbled.

“Well, I dunno, I like her suggestion a lot,” I said, straining to sound casual.  Venus cocked her head and looked at me funny.

“Are you for real?  Just…ugh,” she said, stomping over to the far side of the room.

I thought I was going to die, right there.  Had I offended her that badly?  I nearly ran over to where she was standing, still mumbling to herself.
“I’m sorry, Venus, I didn’t mean to make this weird,” I said, desperately trying to salvage the conversation.

Her shoulders lifted and slowly fell as she exhaled.  She turned around, back to normal.  “It’s OK, I was just pissed off.”  She squeezed my shoulder and pecked me on the cheek to show she meant it.  “Really, I’m not weirded out.  Come on,” she said, walked deeper into the forge room, “there’s more stuff I want to show you.”

The rest of the tour was far less eventful fortunately, though I still felt a bit awkward.  As much of a tech geek as I was, I was blown away by the stuff Venus had in her basement.  Well, her dad’s basement.  I had visited Canstrides on Mars, where Grandpa used to work, and I thought I had seen what human technology could do, but Vulkan’s discarded experiments were enough to prove me wrong (I refuse to call them what Venus did: Vulkan Droppings.  I’m fairly sure that would be treason).

The first floor and roof garden I had seen, but I hadn’t explored the top three floors, so Venus gave me the grand tour.  The theater where I had watched “Attack of the Unliving Grox” was deserted, but the other rooms on the second floor looked like they saw more use anyway.  Vulkan’s trophy room took up half of the floor, and was decorated with the kinds of stuff I thought people never stored outside of classified vaults on Luna.
Venus pointed out a corroded-looking bolter behind a stasis field on one wall.  “That’s the Blue Death, right there.”

I was stunned.  “The Blue Death?  The gun that killed Viscount Morring?”

“Yep,” Venus said proudly.  “Dad was the one who captured the assassin.  He got to keep the gun after the trial.”

“…Wow.”  I was at a loss for words.  I felt like I was violating someone’s privacy just by being there.  Venus must have noticed.

“What’s wrong?”

“I dunno.  I just feel weird looking at all this.  Like I’m not allowed here,” I said uncomfortably.

Venus stood back a pace and crossed her arms.  “The house is protected by twelve twin-linked storm bolters in underground pop-up turrets, and six dual-launch Sapper missile/cyclic macro-stubber turrets.  There’s a laser wire around the estate hooked up to four different local Enforcer precincts and an Arbitrator Courthouse.  The house has two escape tunnels and a bunker rated to eight kilotons.  There’s a teleporter in Dad’s office that connects to the Imperial Palace Custodes garrison.”  She smiled contentedly.  “If Dad wasn’t cool with you being here, you wouldn’t be.  Trust me.”

I must have looked even more out of my depth after that little recitation, because she huffed an impatient sigh and walked out, with me tugged along in her wake.  “Jake, hon, really.  It’s all right,” she said.

“Right.  Sorry.  I must look like a complete pussy right now,” I said, shaking myself down.  She muttered something I didn’t catch.  “What?”

“Forget it,” she said, bouncing up the next set of stairs.  “The third floor is mostly studies and offices, for me and Dad.  Want to see my room?”

Well, THAT got my attention.  “Sure, I’d love to.”

“I bet,” she said wryly.

Her room was on the top floor, looking out over the edge of the district and the hive wall beyond it.  Her suite was the biggest one, to my surprise.  
“This is yours?  I thought the master bedroom was usually the biggest one in houses,” I said, inadvertently reminding her that I just lived in a hive.

“Usually, but Dad spends most of his time on Nocturne or at the Palace, for months at a time usually, so Mom said I should have the big one,” she said proudly.  She pushed open her bedroom door and let me in.

Her room was bigger than my apartment.  The bed alone had to be sixteen feet on a side, and she had an entertainment center nearly as big as the one downstairs on one wall.  A very, very nice gaming rig occupied a table in the corner under the armourcrys window, and a skylight with wrought-metal framing was centered over the bed.

You could tell Vulkan had designed the place; the dragon motif of her jewelry was everywhere.  The metalworking was covered in drake icons, and the blank red eye of the Salamander was on the corner of every table.

“Did you make the furniture yourself?  It looks like your necklace,” I said, walking in.

“Yep!  Well, not the bed, but the tables, yeah,” she said proudly.  “We bought all the stuff in the bathroom, though.”  I hadn’t noticed the door on the far side of the room.  I was too busy staring at the furnishings.  Venus wasn’t, and walked in and indicated the skylight.  “Installing that was a complete nightmare, but totally worth it.”

“What is there to look at?  You’re overshadowed by hives on all four sides, aren’t you?” I asked, leaning over the bed and trying to see through it.

“Nope, it’s a viewscreen.  See?”  She picked up a remote and tapped a button, and the skylight buzzed with static for a second before resolving into a picture of a moon orbiting a planet.

“Awesome.  How many channels does it get?” I joked.

“Har har.  It’s a looped picture of Prometheus and Nocturne,” she said, as if it were obvious to someone who had never even set foot outdoors until high school.  “I can look at Dad’s homeworld whenever I want.”

“Scenic,” I said, still unable to quite see it in any detail.

“Go ahead,” she said, gesturing to the middle of the gargantuan bed.  I hesitated as knowledge (and implications) of what she just said filtered through my brain.  She must have noticed.

“Oh fine, don’t,” she said, full of mock annoyance.  My knees unlocked and I kicked off my shoes, then waddled across the mattress that was bigger than my bathroom.  I stopped under the screen and tilted my head back, impressed despite myself.

“It’s beautiful.  What are the red lines on the planet?” I asked.

“Lava.  The planet goes through massive tectonic upheavals every fifteen years or so.  Every continent moves a bit when the moon gets too close,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“You made that?  The whole screen, and the scrollwork, and everything?” I asked, pointing at the screen.

“Well, we bought the actual SCREEN, but I made everything else, yeah.  Took me like eight tries,” she said grumpily, kicking her own shoes off and knee-walking over to me.  “The last thing I wanted to do was look up at bad work every night.”

I barely heard her, to be honest.  She was…maybe a foot away from me.  On her bed.  With the house to ourselves.  My heartbeat was echoing in my ears so loud that I thought there was someone with a subwoofer on in the next room.

“Cool,” I managed, hoping to high hell she didn’t look below my waist.
It didn’t matter much.  She flopped down on her back and stared at the screen, and I managed to arrange my legs such that my rapt attention was well concealed, though in hindsight I’m sure she could tell what was up.

“I leave it on every night,” she said, smiling up at the cosmic display.  “It’s nice to see, you know?  To see where I came from.”

“You mean Lord Vulkan?  Or…I mean, I thought you were born on Terra,” I said, crossing my legs with some effort and sitting next to her on the bedspread.

“What?  No.  I was born on Nocturne,” she said, waving at the display.

“Oh.  Well, oh, ok, I just thought you weren’t, when we were in the trophy room you said you should go visit,” I said, babbling.

She didn’t seem to mind.  “I moved here when I was two.  I don’t remember it.  Dad goes back all the time, but it’s usually to induct a fresh batch of Initiates or marshal a campaign.  I’ve never been back,” she said gloomily.  “Mom was born on Terra, but she transferred to Nocturne’s Imperial Administratum office.”

I nodded, trying to keep my voice casual.  “Oh, ok.  Cool.  Did she work for the Salamanders or something?” I asked stupidly, then slapped my hand over my mouth in instant regret.

She looked at me, eyes wide in surprise.  “What is up with you?”

“Sorry, sorry…that was none of my business, Venus, my bad,” I said contritely.  She snorted.

“I don’t give a fuck.  It’s public record, you could go bother some Adept at the Archives about it if it mattered that much to you.  No, they met years after that, after the Project started.”

“Project?” I asked, confused.  “What Project?  The Grand Crusade ending?”

“No, that was before even that.  I mean the Progenitor Project,” she said.  I shook my head, still confused.

“Yeah, you know.

“Me.”