I dreamt I was in bed with Leanna and Jett, at the same time and they weren't fighting with each other. Instead, Leanna was seated behind me, her naked breasts pressed against my naked back and her dark arms were wrapped around me, holding me close as her hands kneaded my breasts. Jett was on her knees before me, kissing my pale thighs up to my crotch, where she took my clit in between her teeth delicately, tongue lashing out against the small bundle of nerves over and over. As I withered beneath their combined touching, Leanna kissed my shoulders, trailing up my neck before retracing her steps with small bites. Looking down, my body was so pale, paler than usual, in contrast to the dark and caramel skins pressed against me, and I absolutely loved it. Green eyes peered up at me from between my legs, the look so familiar and so much more beautiful in that moment. Then Leanna was whispering things in my ear, dirty, filthy things that brought me over the edge in a cry of ecstasy.
I woke up with my bedsheets twisted around my body as if I had been trying to escape from them, or withering around in pleasure. My red hair was matted to my forehead and neck as I tried to fix myself and go back to sleep, but I couldn't get rid of the remnants of the dream that still clung to my consciousness. Rolling to the side, I reached for my side-table drawer, pulling my hand back when it had wrapped around the vibrator I kept in there. Surprisingly, I didn't actually use it all that often, partially because I tended to be so busy building something or exploring that I was usually exhausted by the time I laid down for the night. Also partially because Jett tended to be readily at hand when I was in the mood. Since she wasn't around now, I got rid of my nightshirt and cranked the handle at the base of the vibrator. I had to slap the side twice before the gears inside caught and it began to vibrate in my hand. No, it wasn't steampowered, more like my own mad science creation based upon old steampowered sex toys. Those were too clunky though, and were likely very uncomfortable unless you got used to them, supposedly. So I had taken some basic designs from those and combined them with just some simple old clockwork ingenuity. Talk about a risk! Clockwork was way older than steampower in the twenty-second century, not a very common practice at all anymore. Still, it had worked quite perfectly.
My thighs were already moist when I reached between them, allowing me to slip the vibrator into myself with little resistance. Leaning back, I carefully held the toy so my hand didn't stop the crank from turning which would basically shut off the whole thing off. Leaning back on my elbow, I moved the toy in and out, closing my eyes and imaging Leanna's fingers pumping into me, then imagining Jett taking over and slipping into me with the strap-on she wore beneath her clothes sometimes. I don't know what possessed my mind to dance these images around in my head, but the more I imagined, the more aroused I grew. Sweat slid down my spine and my limbs trembled as I finally cried out, a name on my lips that I couldn't hear over the din of pleasure rippling through my body. Removing the vibrator, I stopped the crank and set the toy aside and flopped onto my back. This probably hadn't been a good idea, my dream and then this display of private debauchery, but what was done was done and I didn't really regret it.
I just felt conflicted about the name I had cried out.
"Are you sure you're okay traveling like this?" I asked for the fifth time.
Jett smirked up at me from where she sat in the cockpit. We all had agreed that in order to survive this expedition, I would have to sit in the middle seat, which left Jett to sit in the weird space behind the second seat. She had rigged it with a seatbelt though, something that held her in place without taking up any unnecessary room.
"I'm perfectly comfortable here, Az. Chill."
"If you say so..." I finally sighed. This drew Jett from her seat and she pressed a soft kiss to my cheek before sitting back down.
As she buckled up, I looked around the Underground Hangar for a final time. It was odd how in the last nine months, this had become something akin to a home for me. Eight of those months I spent them nearly everyday with Jett, and the last one had been spent trying to keep her and Leanna from coming to blows as Leanna tweaked the control panel so she could fly it without a hitch. Even now I could sense an uneasy tension between the two whenever they so much glanced in the other's direction. Still, Leanna had estimated our journey should take no more than a couple of hours both ways, not counting the time we'll spend actually searching for the mythical treasure, if it still existed.
Climbing into my seat, I buckled in and pressed the button on the small remote in my hand. Ahead, the wall began to violently tremble as it slowly pushed outward and then slid open into the backside of a cliff some yards away from the airport overhead. It had taken some doing to find the opening, but when I stumbled across the remote hiding beneath the old cloth sheets beneath the workbench, I knew it had to be important. Unfortunately, it had been broken, as if someone in a hurry had stomped on it before throwing the sheets on it, but it wasn't that hard to fix. Setting it in the indent beside my seat, I watched Leanna finish off the last of her routine maintenance checks on the control panel before she turned around.
"Ready?" she asked.
"Very."
"Hold tight then."
And with that, the glass dome closed, control panels around us flickered on, and we rolling forward, our breaths held. Perhaps it would have been ideal to test out whether Isis would fly or not beforehand but that had seemed risky, especially before Leanna had joined our crew. The gears in the engine could be heard pulling themselves into place, igniting a fire within the engine's very center that began pushing out billows of white smoke out the sides of the spacecraft's hull. Then with a literal spark in the rear, large flames erupting from the backside and we were thrown back into our seats as Isis sped forward into the open air. Clearing the ground, there was a tense moment as Isis went low, the fear of dying rapidly spreading through my mind, before Leanna turned a crank by her hip and Isis was arching upward into the sky. Higher and higher we went - my knuckles were white as I clenched my hands in tight fists. Behind me, Jett let out a curse and lapsed into a barely audible prayer. We were smashing now through clouds, the atmosphere bleeding into the black of space and then...
"Whoa!"
That was the only word uttered as the sky gave way to space and we were left with nothing but stars and black over our heads. It had been a few years since I last visited space, not since my years with Leanna, unsurprisingly. It still took my breath away though and judging from Jett's silence behind me, it took hers away too. Further helping the experience was that Isis seemed to hold together well as Leanna turned several more cranks and sighed a breath of relief as she pulled a lever and turned Isis toward Mars.
Believe it or not, once the awe passed, space was a little on the boring side. Please don't misjudge what I'm saying. I love space! It's wonderful to be able to see the stars and planets like this, but there was only so much you could do once you were out here in a spacecraft or a shuttle. It was the same as being in a car on a long road trip, only there was no radio to distract you, at least not aboard Isis. There wasn't much to say to each other that hadn't been said already, or that wouldn't start an argument between Jett and Leanna. So we mostly stared at Mars as we drew closer to it. The Red Planet was primarily settled upon in an attempt to end Earth's problem with overpopulation, but humanity found special resources on it that turned out to be more valuable and so now the several sprawled out colonies over the planet held less than half of the population they were meant to hold as the other half traveled back and forth everyday to mine the special resources or work at any number of factories on Mars that broke down the special resources so we could use them on Earth. Overpopulation on Earth is unsurprisingly still a problem.
There was one thing good about the small population on Mars, at least for us - it was less likely someone had accidentally stumbled across the treasure. Which was good because it's supposed location wasn't all that far from one of the of colonies and I wondered if that was a poor coincidence or purposely planned that way. It was hard to tell and the journal held no notes or theories about it because obviously, how would the author had known? When we finally entered Mars' atmosphere, Jett let out a breath.
"I thought we would never make it this far."
"Is this your first time out to space?" Leanna asked.
"Yeah. Problem?"
"Oh, no. No problem. Just asking."
I could hear the teasing tone in Leanna's voice. She was well accustomed to these long, solitary flights, but Jett was not and it was likely she was cagey. I'm positive Leanna knew this too as she chuckled just loud enough for Jett to hear. Before they could get into it, and I was literally caught in the middle of their arguing, I cleared my throat and prayed to distract them just long enough for us to get there.
"How much further, Lea?" I asked. Behind me, Jett huffed, clearly peeved about being cut off before she could rip into the pilot.
"Actually, not too much longer," Leanna answered. "You know, I've been meaning to ask you something, Azura. Why was it so important that we used this spacecraft and not something newer? We could already be heading back with our jackpot by now."
"You knew me so well for five years. Why do you think?"
Leanna turned her head so I could see her scrunch up her nose. "Please tell me it's not because you just liked how it look?"
"Mostly because of that, yeah, but also because it felt... Important to do so."
"How so?"
"Someone went through all the trouble of building this craft but left behind the map for it. That tells me one of two things: Either the person died before they could set off, or they chickened out at the last minute. So it feels right to take their craft and complete their goal."
Leanna laughed. "And what if they already went and found the treasure? What if they just left the craft and the map behind just because they didn't need them anymore?"
"No," I quickly said. "I'm positive that isn't what happened."
"How could you know?"
I opened my mouth but Jett jabbed me with the tips of her fingers. The tattoos on her arms made it hurt pretty badly, but that pain was welcomed as it reminded me to watch my tongue. "You didn't see how we found the papers about it. It was too well hidden for it to be have just tossed aside."
There was a tingle in the back of my throat though as I realized that my hesitance and argument over a moot point made me suspicious. Leanna did not like suspicious and she defintiely didn't trust suspicious people, even if she did use to fuck them. I shot Jett an apologetic look before explaining myself.
"Actually, I know because..."
As I began to tell Leanna about the journal, I could hear Jett curse in spanish and slap her forehead, the sound ringing in the cockpit around my words. I knew I was doing something stupid but if Leanna didn't trust us, it could easily end badly for Jett and I. Because I wasn't a good liar, especially not to someone that once had been pretty acutely tuned into my emotions, it was better to tell the truth for me. I did try to keep the details about what was in the journal to a minimal, but some things did accidentally slip.
"Wallace, eh? Now that's a name that sounds familiar."
"Really?" Jett asked, both disbelieving, yet curious all the same.
"Wasn't there a Wallace Marigold that robbed over twenty banks in the early 2060's? They called him 'Jetset Wally' after it came out that he was the one behind the crimes," Leanna said seriously. "He supposedly got close to a billion dollars through his many heists."
"Oh my god! Wasn't it because of him that they ended up regulating jetpacks?" I asked as it all began to dawn on me.
"Yes, because he was in his sixties by the time they found out it was him and realized that if someone at that age could do it so well, then anyone could."
"That was in 2065, right?" I asked.
"Right," Leanna nodded.
Looking back at Jett, my brows were raised in amazement and shock as I pieced together everything. Wallace Marigold, when they finally tracked him down, was a dying man. They arrested him but he never saw trial, dying in his sleep peacefully a week before his trial date. That had been, believe it or not, in my history books as a child. At the same time they were preparing to try him, the government was hard at work trying to figure out ways to keep anymore 'Jetset Wally's from happening every again. That was in 2065, the year on the calendar in the office. Likely, sometime just before he was caught, Wallace left a will to his nephew or niece, leaving them with all they would need to find his loot. Close to a billion dollars was honestly far more than I had hoped to get out of this. I thought maybe there was a few hundred thousand at the most, and maybe some kind of old technology buried with it. It would have been a perfect score like that, but this revelation had changed the game - the rules shifting and changing around the three of us with every breath we took until I wanted to hold my breath to make it stop.
Money was an evil component of man. We lusted for it because it brought our lives ease and carefree thoughts. Almost a billion dollars was enough to kill people for. I wanted to believe I could fully trust both of the women seated with me at that moment, but the truth was, we all had become our own man in this game. The once united team now divided into three separate ones, and it was all because I opened my big mouth. Okay, so yeah, there was a possibility we would have found the treasure and realized we had a shitload of money from it, but by then we would have been back on Earth. A more neutral playing ground for the three of us. Space was no man's land, because after all, in space, no can hear you scream.
Not being able to see either women's face at that moment only made the knot in my throat grow bigger as I tried to pretend that I hadn't just realized what I did. Yet that same tension I felt anytime Leanna and Jett were standing in the same room was now trying to drown me. Maybe it was best that we didn't have weapons with us, just tools to do digging. Okay, tools that could be used as weapons. Fuck, we were all fucked.
The rest of the flight was silent, deathly so. At least before there would be the occasional cough or yawn or even a breath of awe at something that was seen, but there wasn't any of that now. My silence was brought about from the lump in my throat, the other two I could only imagine why they were silent. Thankfully, it wasn't long before Leanna was pushing buttons and levers, turning the crank as she prepared us to land. From beneath our seats, we removed the breathing helmets stored there. There had been old breathing helmets here but no one was willing to take a risk with them so we swapped them out for newer ones. They weren't much different than their ancestors in anything other than new design and the fact that the new ones were more reliable and less likely to fail because of an accidental bump. Before I put mine on though, I looked up at the tawny Martian sky above.
"If this is Wallace Marigold's treasure, there's no way it could be that large, and even if it is, we're all mature adults capable of thinking clearly and splitting a treasure of that size in equal parts, right?" I asked.
Silence for a moment and then Leanna said, "Sure, Azura, we are."
Jett remained silent as she put her helmet in place and gathered the pack with our tools from the hatch beneath her feet. When I met her eyes, she gave me a small nod, perhaps in agreement to what I had asked, or perhaps to merely assure me that she wouldn't kill me. I wasn't comforted by it though. Helmets in place, Leanna opened the glass dome as I turned on the communicator in my helmet. We leapt out and followed Leanna who had a digital version of the map in a handheld device. For awhile we trekked in a straight line, the silence from Isis following us like mourners behind a coffin raised on pallbearers' shoulder. Trailing off to my left side, Jett purposely lagged behind as we walked. I tried to start up a conversation with her but she shook her head and kept her eyes trained on Leanna's back. Jett was prone to being either one of two things: Moody, but reasonable unless angered or silent and angry. It had been a long time since I had seen her this silent, and even still, I had never seen her this distant before. Not since immediately after my father's death.
We came to a large series of rocks, thrown here likely during construction at one of the colonies. A rock dumping ground, if you will. The device in Leanna's hand beeped loudly, flashing a dot on the screen. Looking up, Leanna frowned until she realized where the map was indicating the treasure to be. I followed her to the rocks, watched as she tested the stability of the rocks and then climbed up them. At the top, she checked the device again and sighed when it beeped again.
"Looks like we have to move these rocks to get to it," she said, pocketing the device and grabbing a large rock at her feet.
Looking at the pile before me, Leanna was currently standing at least ten feet off the ground where she stood, I sighed too. "All of these here?"
"Seems so, Azura. I give it to old Wallace, this was a smart place to hide a treasure of that size-"
"Supposedly," I quickly said.
"Right," Leanna said slowly. "Anyway, this is a smart place to hide a treasure. I don't think anyone has come here for anything but to dump more rocks."
This brought a smile to my lips as I felt a surge of energy rush through me. Thanks to the gravity, moving rocks wasn't so hard, but it still took our combined effort a good while to clear enough rocks to not only uncover the red soil but also to feel confident we had enough room to dig. Jett passed out the shovels when we were ready and we set to work, our heavy pants now filling the previous silence. It seemed like forever that we dug, the hole growing wider and deeper, but nothing but red Mars soil, and some ice, appeared. Taking a rest, I leaned against my shovel and watched the other two work, realizing for the first time how hot and sweaty they looked despite the cold tempature, yet so fiercely determined to find the treasure. I imagined the lines of their bodies bunching and stretching as they moved around in the hole we had created. The wind was picking up, not a good sign, sweeping red across their breasts and down their backs. Ordinarily, I would say I wasn't that highly a sexual person, but that was because I tended to be busy with my little projects and explorations. There was something about these two that lit a fire inside me, and even though I knew things were currently toeing the line of danger, I still had faith that neither one would turn on the rest of us.
Just in case though, we all seemed to be working separately, but with plenty of room to see the others as we dug. I wasn't sure whether that was coincidental or accidental, but Jett was still shooting Leanna cold leers every so often so I had a feeling what the answer was. Sighing, I went back to work, hefting another two shovelfuls before clanging down on another layer of ice. We had discovered several small patches already, not unusual considering the environment, but a nuisance nonetheless. I dug around the edges, hoping to find that perhaps this was another random slab of ice, easy to remove with a little effort. Instead, I realized after a minute that this wasn't ice I was scrapping at. It was metal. Growing excited, I quickly worked the shovel around, looking for an edge. When I found one, I followed it around, scooping away soil without realizing that Leanna and Jett had begun to help me, excitement sparkling in their eyes. Beneath the soil was a five-by-five metal box top with probably just as much height going down into the soil. Getting down on our knees, we looked for a latch until we found two on three of the sides of the box. We had to dig out more soil to uncover them fully and when we did, we looked up at each other and reached for the latches on our side of the box at the same time. Because the wind was still growing strong, we could only take a peek in, but that was enough. Enough to confirm we had hit the mother of all payloads.
"Shit," Leanna breathed in awe, "It's filled."
"Filled," I somehow managed to repeat in my awe.
It was the first time since we had left Earth that any of us smiled, really smiled. Even Jett looked overjoyed to the point of tears despite all of her scowling and cold gazes. I leapt up and hugged Leanna, who was the closest to me and then tackled Jett onto her back. It took a moment for us to disentangle long enough to realize that Leanna was frowning as she stared down at the box.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Isis can't haul that thing all the way back to Earth."
Thinking about it for a moment, I began to frown myself, all the excitement draining out of me as quickly as it had came on. Isis was by no means a big spacecraft, barely able to fit all three of us within her cockpit. The rest of her body was bulky, but that was all room for the intricate mechanisms that helped her fly and whatnot. It was going to suck, but we only had two options: Leave the treasure behind and find a bigger spacecraft or bring it back home a bit at a time. Neither option was desirable.
I had become so distracted puzzling this all over that I hadn't realized what was going on around me. I hadn't realized that the wind was now kicking up the soil, a dust storm getting ready to brew. I also failed to realize that Leanna had drawn a gun and was aiming it in my direction. Time slowed down as I finally looked up, finally noticed the gun. The most I could do was gasp before time caught up and to make up for slowing down, it moved quickly to catch up to where it belonged. My eyes squeezed shut as the gun went off, the phaser beam impossibly bright against my closed eyelids as I waited to die. A scream filled my helmet, but it wasn't my own. Opening my eyes, I swung my head around in time to watch Jett finish falling onto her side, the impact of the beam having struck her in the chest and spinning her around as she fell. Screaming her name, Leanna grabbed my bicep to hold me from running to her.
"She was coming at you with the shovel," Leanna said, her voice strained.
That was crazy, but the evidence was right there in front of me. The shovel, the one I hadn't even noticed in my the shock of the moment, was still clenched in Jett's hand. Leanna stepped forward and yanked it away, kicking Jett to see if she would flinch but if the small pool of blood was anything to go by, she wasn't going to flinch ever again. It took all my willpower not to throw up right there in my helmet at this revelation. Jett had become such an integral part of my and now... I didn't want to think about it.
"Don't worry," Leanna cooed to me, hugging me to her. "You're safe now."
Shaking my head in my grief, I couldn't find the words to convey how I felt. I wasn't freaking out because I thought Jett had tried to kill me, I was freaking out because Jett was dead. The digging claws of pain that accompanied grief finally settled in as I sobbed loudly and finally began to scream.