"Jerry Oltion - Battle Lines" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oltion Jerry)

Battle Lines
by Jerry Oltion
This story copyright 1995 by Jerry Oltion. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All
other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


"If you love me, you'll do it." Zofia's soft, sultry voice filled the patrol plane's bubble cockpit, warming
Gordon like sunlight pouring through a gap in the clouds. He looked over at her in the seat beside him
and she smiled, her lips open slightly, a hint of teeth behind them. Her iridescent silver wings, held tight to
her body, rustled softly as she tilted her head sideways and turned to look at him out of just her left eye.
A wisp of dark hair fell forward to partially hide her face.
God, how he loved that coy look. She knew just which buttons to push. Still, what she was asking him
to do...
"Love don't have nothin' to do with it, darlin'," he said, falling into the pilot's cant that he knew turned
her on. "We're talkin' survival here. I don't have those pretty wings of yours."
"But I do," she said, extending them as far as she could in the narrow confines of the cockpit. They
touched either side of the double-wide cabin, and wrapped around to nearly block his view ahead. "I will
catch you. And then--" her voice grew softer "--then we will make glorious love in mid-air."
"Fallin' like bricks the whole time." He banked the plane around in a slow circle, looking for more of
Relig's warriors, but the battle was over. It had been a rout; even bio-enhanced warclones were no
match for a squadron of battleplanes. Zofia's people were free--and now she wanted to celebrate.
So did Gordon, but on the ground.
"I won't let you fall," she insisted. "I love you."
"I don't doubt that," he said, doubting it immensely. The two of them had spent twelve hours a day for
four days on patrol in a crowded airplane without killing one another, but that didn't mean it was love. He
didn't say that, though. What did it matter if she loved him? That wasn't the issue. He said, "What I doubt
is whether you can keep an extra ninety kilos in the air. Like as not we'd both go splat if you tried it."
"Thanks for the compliment," she said sarcastically, and he realized he'd just belittled her secondary
sex characteristics. Accipitan women might not have breasts, but their chest size was still a matter of
importance to their lovers. Vital importance, if Zofia's description of their mating habits was true, for
those shapely mounds that mimicked a normal woman's breasts were the powerful muscles that drove
their wings.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean it that way. You have wonderfully big, rippling--one could even say
heaving--pectorals. But I won't be any help at all in keeping us aloft. Not like an Accipitan man."
She laughed. "Hah. Our men are no help either. How could they be? They're upside down!"
Gordon supposed she had a point. He'd never seen an Accip fly inverted. The way their wings
attached, he doubted if they could. Did the women actually carry their mates during sex? He supposed it
was possible.
"All the same," he said, "I'm heavier than they are."
"Maybe, but not by that much. You certainly don't weigh ninety kilos." Her voice held a note of
reproach.
"I do with my flight gear on."
"Silly, you won't be wearing flight gear."
He laughed at the image. "You want me to bail out of my plane with nothin' on, hopin' you'll snatch me
before I get to fallin' too fast for you to keep up, and then you expect me to--to perform--while I'm
hangin' on for dear life? I hate to disappoint you, but human physiology doesn't work like that."