Thrax

Agena stretched Thrax out on his back on the bed.

She climbed up to lie at his side, and he gathered her up in his arms and kissed her. 

“Thank you for that, Agena,” he said.  “I’ve never felt so completely wanted, so totally desired.”

“That’s because you are,” she said.  “I know now—I think I’ve known all along—I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you.  Not just to give me a child, but to give me everything you’ve given me.  Thank you, Thrax.”

Thrax pulled her head to his chest and held her.  And for a while, they were still and drifted off back to sleep.

*****

Late in the morning or early in the afternoon, their sleep abruptly ended.

Thrax was the first to bolt awake.  He had cast off his duty to be with Agena, but not his training or his instincts.  He recognized the sound from drills and demonstrations that every Knight and Corpsman knew, and from tests that every citizen of Lacerta remembered.  It was a howling, loud and insistent, that rolled along the skin and made the nerves dance.

 He jumped upright on the bed, as if prodded by an electric lance, and listened.  Agena stirred awake, frowning and shuddering at the sound and the feeling that it produced, and sat up beside him, wrapping her arms around his arm.  Half-groggy but growing tense, she asked him, “Thrax, what is that?”

Without looking at her, he replied, “The Colonial alarm.  There’s a situation.  I’ve got to get my badge.”

He jumped up and out of the bed and raced from the room.  Agena, unnerved at seeing  him instantly flip from lover back to Knight, gathered up the towel from the foot of the bed and wrapped herself in it as she got up to follow him.  They were in her bedroom, on her side of the suite.  He was heading for his side, where he had put his armor skin, powerblade, and badge. 

She did not need him to tell her that something must be terribly wrong.  That howling sound and the fire of urgency in his stride made that clear.  For days on end, she had seen him naked and ready for s*x.  Now, she was seeing him naked and ready for anything.

In Thrax’s bedroom, his armor skin hung on one wall, and beside it, the hilt of his weapon.  Or his other weapon, as the case may be.  Not even bothering to dress, he simply removed his badge from his armor and at once, a holographic image leaped  from the metal object into the air.  At the same time, the sound of the alarm was muted, at least here in the suite.  It was still audible, though muffled, coming from outside.  Agena found herself standing on the opposite side of a hologram of Thrax’s Mentor that floated between her and her suitor.  She thought at first to step all the way around it, but instead, she stepped off to one side, letting Thrax address his Mentor alone.