Ceteroquin: Trap Strip Poker

This is the fourth part of The Trapping of the Ceteroquin. This story appears in full in M/U's 2020 speculative fiction anthology, Demiurges and Demigods in Space, Vol. 1 and will be run as a serial online every Tuesday and Thursday for the next couple of months and each entry can easily be found here. To read this in its entirety, along with all of the other brilliant pieces included in the collection, you can obtain paperback and PDF copies in our store, with Kindle versions available on Amazon.

Frank, to his mild chagrin, was stuck playing kids’ games with the novitiates in the small living room between their two respective chambers, the smallest on the ship. It was just wide enough for a square table and for three or four people to sit around it on cushions on the floor. If perhaps he were not actually as agitated as he had earlier appeared, he was nonetheless far too high-strung to retire.

At 35, he was older and more seasoned than anyone on the ship aside from the Doc, Laura, and the Captain. He’d seen as much as any of them – or very nearly so. He knew a trap when he sensed one, and knew there wasn’t much to be done about it. He’d made his protests in the meeting merely as a procedural formality. It wasn’t written down anywhere, but he believed firmly (and perhaps correctly) that it was part of his role on the team to issue futile and perfunctory objections to dangerous and potentially foolish plans. Somebody had to do it. For whatever reason, it usually fell to him.

The Doc had gone to pass out, the old lush, and it was pretty obvious that neither Laura nor Hancock were in the mood to be social. He did not need to linger in the hall outside Ben’s door to know that he and Molly were fucking like cheetahs – an unquestionably good occupation when one could get it – and he correctly assumed the priest was heavy into his own particular pomp and circumstance. 

That left the kids, the two novitiates, Melissa and Jason. They’d been the quietest in the meeting because that was their role. They had been in the same novitiate class together in one of the clandestine locations in which the Group was nominally safe to operate a bit more in the open. Remote places where friendly officials, well compensated, could be persuaded to give cover. Having recently graduated, they’d boarded the ship just before the gig from which they were now departing. 

The Ceteroquin was a prime, highly-coveted assignment they’d each been fortunate and honored to be granted – and yet, now…

Just one gig and headed for a trap, Frank thought grimly behind his smile. Melissa was shuffling the cards. She looked as young as she was, with reddish hair and slight hints of freckles on her cheeks. She was of medium height but quite thin, almost bony. She sat across the table from Frank, while Jason sat on the side between them. Jason was the one, with his short but curly dark hair, darker complexion, and thin beard, who had captured Frank’s eye. He was on the shorter side, but he was stacked.

All three of them wore comfortable exercise clothing. Frank was generally inclined to let it all hang out during travel, but novitiates were sometimes unused to the casual nudity that was common aboard ships. It was considered polite to avoid waving any genitalia around in their direction, at least until they’d been around for a while. 

“What are we playing?” Frank asked. 

“Strip poker,” Melissa grinned. 

(Jason, he noticed, blushed a little, in that funny way that people of his complexion can blush.)

“Oh!” Frank said, momentarily caught at a loss for words. 

“You just assume we’re too innocent?” Jason said teasingly, no longer blushing. “You think we’re gonna stay shy forever?” 

“You never know!” Frank said. “Count me in, I’ve never said no to a game of strip poker. You both just didn’t…as far as I could tell, I wasn’t sure how…integrated you were in our free-flowing, er, casual ways.”

Melissa laughed. “We’re not, actually. Both of us have yet to undress outside our rooms.”

“Even in front of each other?” Frank probed.

(Jason was blushing again – but in what way?)

“Gotta be a first time sometime,” Jason said. 

“Time to get to know each other better – all of us,” Melissa added.

Frank nodded. “They teach you that in the school?”

“Not officially,” Melissa said, “but everyone has somebody to tell them how it is.”

So they played and laughed, drank a little, and got to know one another, slowly shedding the layers of clothing they’d put on just to take off. Inside of twenty-five minutes, they were all in their underwear, taking hits from Frank’s vaporizer. Frank and Jason each wore standard boxer briefs. Melissa wore silky white bottoms with red flowers printed on them – Frank found them uniquely suited to her personality – and a thin purple tank top through which the distinct outline of her very small breasts could clearly be seen. Frank had little to no interest in them (although he did occasionally admire a nice pair, as a thing of natural beauty, from time to time), but he was watching Jason’ eyes lingering on them and even drifting down between her legs, which were open as she sat cross-legged. Then again, he’d also caught him (he was almost certain) looking him up and down as well. 

Melissa could sense pretty quickly that Frank was less interested in her, but she was undeterred in her interest in Jason and saw where his eyes were going. What better way for two novitiates to begin their journey? To bond? 

They told stories about their lives and backgrounds, families and loves, alternating between the wholesome and, increasingly, the erotic. Frank felt an upwelling of compassion. He held up his hand, and through the substantive buzz he’d nurtured thus far, tried his best to sound a bit serious. “Now that we’re getting to know one another, I feel like I owe an explanation for that meeting and why everybody was so tense.”

“It’s all right,” Jason said coolly, locking eyes with him. “We know.”

“It’s a trap, right?” Melissa said, trying just a pinch too hard to be cool about it. 

“Well – yes,” Frank stammered, now surprised for the second time. 

“They do give us training,” Melissa teased.

“Or are you maybe too old to remember?” Jason asked. 

“And you aren’t nervous?” Frank managed to ask.

“Of course we’re nervous,” Melissa said, with Jason nodding along. “Why do you think we’re so intent on spending the time like this?”

“Sooner or later, traps come,” Jason said. 

Frank was impressed. “I’m impressed,” he said. “They do. And there’s not much to be done.”

“Not much to be done,” Jason said.

“There’s one thing both of you need to do,” Melissa said triumphantly, laying down her cards. “Diamond flush, beat you both. Let’s see what’s under those shorts.”

Frank and Jason looked at one another and shrugged. They stood and dropped their last remaining garments. All three of them took in what there was to see, and all three nodded. Melissa also stood, pulled off her shirt and sent the silk flowers plunging to the floor. 

“Game’s over,” she said. “I win.”