Partner Trader OXZ

Sign of Four

by Tea Mereso

Love plays odd games with the perceptions. If we are not careful, we are overtaken by the illusion that the Universe centers and must center around our own dear one. Just so, tuners, had it started to be with yours truly and Zita Lavre... Until a chance encounter near our twin berths at Onrira Torus Tradecenter's vast and cavernous spacedock.

From the umbilical hatch of "Legacy of Gavros", Zita's immaculate and in every way potent Mamba IIe - oh yes a lot went down after my last holo! - my travel-mate of the spacelanes floated free not only into 0.1 Lave G but straight out against a passing humanoid body, limb and hip locked with yet another's of that species I have learned to so adore.

Apologies and smiles were traded - for who cannot smile bumping into Zita... and lengthier introductions proceeded when your faithful informant debarked from "Bemaera's Bond" (gift of a mere week, tuners, after "Buber's Bane" became space-salvage on a fated run-in at Laenin witchpoint, a fracas during which pure fright prevented holo-vidding and only Zita's cool head the Random Void apotheosis of your Tea.)

So here we four find ourselves, reclined in a commodious and dim-lit alcove at the Onrira-franchised Queer Lodge Inn - Zita with her near-drained Sotieran screwdriver, we with our barely-sipped Anlian Rickey, and Domeni and Duna with their customary bowl of Leestian Punch before them, to be imbibed through twin straws.

Tuners, we sense a crackle of some kind of energy in the space barely dividing us across the table, and your virtuoso of the holo-vid sees 'Human Interest' up in lights before us.

Wading in with "How did two Delightful D's start... trading together?" elicits a not-quite-so-subtle elbow-jab from Zita. But nothing deters us, tuners - this you know.

"Oh, Tea," space-black tressed Domeni Karas gives us back with cheeky quirk of eyebrow and lips, "How doesn't it surprise me you've sussed Duna and I are not a 'purely business arrangement'"?

Duna Itar, after a long suck from her even longer straw, cannot, it sounds, suppress a giggle. "Could that be because we've watched one too many Mereso holos?"

"Indubitably." Domeni with mock-staid expression. "Honestly, we worship you Tea, who in Chart One doesn't?"

"Giles! even Contratius Phlebor is under my Tea's spell. And not a few miscreants we've run into on our travels." Zita, with this, takes our hand in hers, softly squeezes.

We expel a harsh 'ha!' and add, "Those last ones... melted the Bane's hull and I swear I heard that entity chortling under the static as they did it."

"But... it did say 'sorry' before letting rip with mil lasers. We nearly always get something like that. Not to say that's why I'm so happy we hooked up. But Tea exudes an air of ... confidence, security, even when hardly knowing a Merchanter trick."

"I feel that with Domi." Duna plants a kiss on Domeni's flushed cheek. "I have from the start." I notice the long faded scar there where her lips brush, perhaps a burn? Tuners, I forbear asking about it (for now).

All three but your sober correspondent re-order similar. Zita Lavre is intoxicant enough. I am nearly successful in shrugging off an impatience for pillow and mattress and her warmth between. There has been a heaven-sent delay on-planet for the tech items - 'computers, ok?' - requested by our wholesaler contact on Erlaza.

For a second we let our eyes close in blissful anticipation of that and perhaps something more.

"Will D and D spend the night?" - Tuners, on our Xexedian Oath, we do not know how that came out. Zita kicks my ankle, twice, while smiling sweetly at our two instant friends.

Duna transmits a single-band subliminal wink. "Blonde as blonde as this intertangled with jet as jet as that?" She tousles Domeni's gloss of utility mop. "Double double or single double?"

"I've already booked," puts in Zita primly. "Single."

Domeni grins. "As it happens, so have I. We could have halved the cost."

"Ever the merchant!"

"It's in my blood. Six generations."

"Have you not", asks Zita, perking up, "touched planet-soil? Since birth?"

Domeni shakes her head. "Have you?"

"Never. What reason is there to?"

The shadow of a cloud darkens Zita's features. "You are not Guild or League? - Either of you?"

After a prolonged straw-suck, Domeni and Duna look at us, all mirth gone.

"We", says Duna quietly, "are Partner Traders. We follow no strictures or dictates. Our rituals are our own and private. And I don't have to ask if you and Tea are like us. Independence is written all over you. Right?"

I manage to waste a moment in nearly draining my tumbler of Anlian.

"Well, 'we' are, that is 'I' am--"

"Soon to be a partnered Trader," our Zita is not slow to curtail and clarify.

"Oh!" Domeni lights up. "We did that, can you believe, after our first two runs together."

"The Church of Giles is so accommodating. On Leesti Station, big diocese. A full service. We didn't even bother with a Notary. And I'll bet you opened a Joint Trading Account and share half your Market earnings."

"Every trip without fail, Duna," we affirm, mimicking her own kiss of a beloved cheek.

Tuners, the ways of synchronicity! - Here we sit, four beings, two duos, and we might as well be a single pair. I have a burning urge to embrace and feel this couple, and the sooner the better. And while we do so, faithful tunerites, I promise to stay on air. Zita will come around, for I sense an eagerness for the same awakening in her.

Our nightside foursome in the single double within Onrira's magnificent and de-luxe accommodations demanded, we know, no linguistic commentary. Tea never makes a promise she does not keep. For 'she', as you witnessed, 'we' very much became, the more so as Station 'night' transitioned languidly to Station 'dawn'.

And we are woken by a screech of personal comm followed by notification that Erlaza's much-desired containers of dubious but uninvestigated tech have at last arrived for loading onto "Bemaera's Bond" and "Legacy of Gavros". With just a fraction of the profit-bringing swag left over to fill out the more modest cargo spaces of Domeni's "Ray of Raale" and Duna's "Rilace's Respite", un-refitted Cobras both. In bed with us, they caress that alliteration - of girl-name and ship-name - and how it lit the fuse of their affinity, rather as the B's brought Zita to be a part of our own life as we bonded among the stars.

We, Tea Mereso, quite undeserving, were gifted with "Bemaera's Bond", Zita Lavre's home since birth and home of her abducted father, Gavros Lavre. On this, now our, vessel they lived their lives as merchanters, never once knowing any yen to touch foot onworld, not even upon the ancestral soil of Bemaera. We for our still-virgin part, yet miss with fierce longing the marshes and wetlands and eternal overcast and sweet rains of beautiful Xexedi, at whose Torus we dock often but have sworn nevermore to descend to. Zita will keep us to it!

This stay at Onrira's Queer lodge has been the exception: When onstation we sleep aboard the 'Bond' together in the berth Zita has fragrantly occupied since childhood. In truth, we are at the Inn for two reasons: Domeni and Duna. And, tuners, don't they know it!

"We do now." Duna is listening in while Domi and Zita shower. When they emerge dripping, they hastily towel and dress, spurred by the urgency of getting a good start on traffic and Jump allocations. Duna, as you have watched, took a dry shower, the norm on-ship and a habit, once acquired, hard to break. The amphibioid derma of yours truly is self-cleansing.

Oddly, naked, though ranoid, our form and contour, our 'ins' and 'outs', exert an attraction on several species including humans. But do I need to tell my tuners this? You tune in! YOU - YOU alone have brought us wealth and fame and notoriety. We might yet sway the million worlds on our own, even rescue Dor Reval or find Gavros and free him, if still alive. We gladly leave the quietus of Phlebor's Asp to the trigger finger of Zita. Her fearsome 'Legacy' is more than equal to that task.

She is aboard. Domi and Duna are aboard. Yours sincerely are aboard. Immediately we switch to four-way intership holo. We might as well be aboard the same craft. At all events, there is the illusion of togetherness. Our holoshapes merge, and sometimes there comes the mirage of Oneness too...

"So it's Erlaza?" - Domeni.

"Erlaza and onwards," we reply. "Your choice to accompany and make a quartet of Partners."

Duna, childlike, claps palms together and performs a little jump. "Gladly!"

"We make the Sign of Four in every System - we shall get a symbol painted on our hulls. We are serious about this, I get the strong sense. A.. a family sense."

"Zita, we sealed it last nightside."

"No stopping the R's and the D's now!"

We each savour the ear-grating scrape of umbilicals unclamping - the last real noise we will get until Erlaza stationfall. Our quartet of tradeships pushes away from Onrira Torus Dock Four (oh yes, tuners, when we said 'synchronicity' we meant it!) and drifts out under inertia toward our assigned Jump point an hour away.

We are seated at pilot-ready now, and properly alert, each alone in her cockpit above and in front of the huge bulk of what is being propelled outward. The silence engulfs. No, we are not really together, but quite on our own - each inside her capsule of serenity.

"Not to be the party-pooper, love-sisters..." - Domeni again. "But how exactly are we getting away with this run? Our cargo rather conveniently bypassed Galcop Customs. Just asking."

Indeed, Galcop Viper presence has paid no heed, either to our ships or their broadcast manifests. This is nothing new to us, is it, tuners? - what are we if not a veiled soror of the Guild? Oh, even apostate perhaps - veiled again, but nothing like Phlebor, no. No.

And ten-to-one they are all enwrapt watching us. Who wants to spoil a good story? Especially a story lived and 'live' with lashings of inter-species sex and promise of more to come?

"Nothing we won't handle, sweet one." Zita unzips frontally as if to make her point stronger. "Tea has it all in hand."

"If you say so. And as for the in-flight deshabille..." Duna makes a similar downzip of her trader's catsuit, followed by Domeni, and three sets of human fingers descend to the stop-points. "Nothing new to the D's."

Tuners! Is it not now time to tune out? Let three girls alone for ten minutes!

"Yes, all in hand," I echo. "Sweet as."

"Tea makes a solemn promise that we shall all remain unmauled and unmolested. Galcop is lapping up our holo. And it will be the same at Erlaza." Zita might have taken the words from our mouths, but our mouths are suddenly engaged elsewhere.

And so passeth another empty pre-Hyperjump hour.

Then Jump. And brace-and-breathe as we come full circle in our bodies and minds, time-folded, space-twisted, nauseous and floaty and dreamy as we plunge back into realspace. Guaranteed, this time, none of us heard the klaxon moan its eerie wail, but pushed the black button as if asleep, unprompted.

They talk now about 'Jump medication' to ease 'Hyperspace trauma'. Today we need no drug but each other.

The Four burst out into the stellar brilliance of distant, oh so distant, Erlazana.

"This will be a long transit girls, even on Torus-drive. Any other ideas for passing the time?"

"Domi, all I feel like right now is a long nap, and not on the 'Legacy'. I wants my own berth," Zita whines, almost as if witch-sick like the rest of us.

"Just think about Onrira," sighs Duna, "Remember the night at Onrira."

"Oh there will be others." Isn't that right, Tuners? We do want more of what that gave us, correct?

And this will be Tea Mereso of The Four - ex-Xexedi Enquirer, crypto-Guilder, soon to be married by Giles Pastor wherever one can be found - signing off until we meet again on the far dark side.

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Version	Released	License	Features	Category	Author(s)	Feedback
1.0.0	2025-05-02	CC BY-NC-SA 4	Enhances Trading	Mechanics OXPs	Reval	N/A