The Outer Moon (A Sapphic Sci Fi Adventure)

Chapter 24

               It took several hours before Lexi was able to hurry back to the cookout and almost drag Pepper and the rest back to the cave. She'd impressed upon Kajna the importance of him getting the council of elders and their texts to the cave as well. The cave was just as impressive to the rest of them as it had been to Lexi, and she may have gotten a few kisses and butt grabs from Emma and Viv as a reward. 

They also made very sure that she knew there would be a much better reward when they had alone time though, and Lexi could barely stand as her legs got weak at the thought of the two women pleasuring her together again as a reward. Not that their rewards were the only reason she was trying to do so much of course. Maybe. But they certainly helped!

Pepper was sitting on the floor in front of the mosaic and reading what the Antuhsas called their ancient texts. The texts weren't much, just a simple set of memos about the little facility in the cave. Mostly missives about following protocols that they couldn't understand without access to information that wasn't there. But it broke her heart. Honestly, looking at the pictures depicted in the mosaic, she had a feeling that the part that was broken was probably the only reason that they had any chance of having any sort of relationship with the Antuhsas, because it was almost certainly a warning about the people that might come down in that ship, instead of looking as though they were bringing a gift.

["Hey, are you okay?"] Vanessa asked her, wiping away a tear that Pepper hadn't even realized was running down her cheek.

Pepper shook her head rapidly. "No, not at all. This is all so sad. We need to make this work, we really do. Those other humans hurt them so badly." She spoke in English, just because they needed to talk over a course of action before they did more.

"What can we do?" Nessa pulled her wife into her as more tears poured from her eyes. She didn't understand Pepper's thoughts at that moment but knew that she'd tell her when the time was right. She might even still be processing them herself.

"We need to have a talk. We need to decide how to handle this. Search the rest of the cave, I bet you find a damaged computer and some more of those memory rods," Pepper told her. "Then we need to say our goodbyes for a bit and have a discussion back on the ship. This isn't what I expected, but it all makes too much sense."

"Let me go look, stay here." Vanessa went over and talked to one of the elders, an older woman with a greying muzzle on russet fur named Ohavi, who pointed out what looked like a small alcove on the other side of the fissure. There was a simple wooden bridge butting up against the wall that could be used to cross over right up against the mosaic and over to the opening. Vanessa crossed, followed closely by Emma, and found a small room with a console that looked just like the one that had been up on the bridge of the original ship that they'd brought with them. Unlike the one that had been shot by Anton and Brody though, this one looked fine, just without power and with a fine layer of dust. She had to assume that the Antuhsas had been cleaning the dust off in here off and on over the centuries. Had the force that had created the fissure and damaged the capsules of the larger Antuhsas somehow damaged it, or interrupted the power?

"Hold on a second," Vanessa muttered, kneeling before it and pulling out the same drawer that had held the empty memory sticks on the ship. As she expected, this one contained a group of sticks too, ten of them, and each had a little number on them to denote the order they should be viewed. But if the Antuhsas had no tablets, and the computer was down, they couldn't have seen what was on them.

"Shit. I'm beginning to see what Pepper is upset about." Vanessa held out the memory sticks to Emma. "Can you bring these to Pepper? I'll be there in a minute. I just want to make sure there is nothing else here."