Moral Hazards 3 - rough version

---This is something of a rough draft which I plan on expanding out and adding more context to soon. Given it's meaty enough to stand as its own fic for now I'm happy to let people see it, but a tarted-up version will hopefully be going on my Ao3 account at some point in the near future---

---The full version is now complete. I'm leaving this here for posterity's sake, but the finished fic can now be read either elsewhere on my pastebin, or here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22687651/chapters/61686433 ---

The door to the hormagaunt enclosure opened with a quiet hiss. Merlina slipped in like a ghost, her black robes already parted in anticipation, and locked the chamber door behind her. No servitors accompanied her; no auto-turrets glared down from the roof as she paused, then shook herself and continued over to the low divan which had been set up along one wall.

They had done this often enough before. The old precautions which had once made their indulgences so complicated had, in the long run, proven unnecessary, allowing for a degree of spontaneity in their indulgences. Merlina sent a noospheric pulse to the cell's lumens, filling the area above the divaan with a dim glow and casting long shadows deeper into the chamber.

It was well into Antimedes' sleep-cycle. Jeanna had retreated to her quarters and most of the beasts lay silently in their cells, but Merlina had found sleep to be frustratingly elusive. She had spent the day overseeing the station's first cautious steps into the Cold Trade, reaching out to her old web of pirates and smugglers and turning their efforts towards maintaining Antimedes' ever-dwindling supplies. In her mind it seemed a simple equation - Antimedes could provide a wealth of alien subjects, living or dead, or information harvested from the station's ancient cogitator. In return they would take in food, raw materials, and new xenos-breeds for study.

Sadly in practice it had turned out less successful. Most of Merlina's old contacts were dead, and those who had risen to replace them were far less reliable. Something to do with the warp storm which had split the galaxy in two, Jeanna had speculated afterwards; she'd heard stories of it addling people's brains, turning those who plied the void for their living strange and cruel.

Merlina paused for a moment, there in the dark. The ocular lenses which studded her silver half-mask clicked and rotated. She was beautiful, yes, but it was a false, sterile beauty, the product of a mind which thought art could be rendered down into a series of precise ratios and equations. Her features were too delicate and finely-boned, giving her the countenance of a porcelain doll, something only reinforced by her artificially whitened skin and dyed red lips. Even her augmetics were wrong; where most Imperial cybernetics were brutal things which exalted the holy form of the machine, hers were slim, proportionate, almost alien in appearance.

She still remembered the first pirate she had invited to the station. A small man, wiry and scarred, with watery grey eyes and an ugly beard which clung to his chin like fungus. His eyes had roamed over her nakedly as they negotiated, as drawn to the supple curves of her body as he was repulsed by the eerie silver-and-brass sleekness of her augmentations.

By the time he had left, taking half a dozen hormagaunt eggs in exchange for a Q'orl warbeast and two months' worth of Imperial Guard-issue ration packs, Merlina had felt nothing but contempt for the ugly, stooped little man.

And deeper down, for herself. It had been a painful reminder of the past; that she had been assembled rather than born, extensively gene-edited in a glass and steel womb, then hacked apart and enhanced with a set of custom augmentations which were too advanced to interface with those used by her peers. She was neither one thing nor another, a perfect, flawless freak, and her master had discarded her as such when his artistic pretensions drew nothing but scorn.

A soft rattle echoed from somewhere deeper within the cell. Merlina answered it, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth and smiling mirthlessly as she heard the alien within begin to stir. Its compatriot was elsewhere, out to stud with the female. This one, tonight, was hers alone. She prayed silently to the Omnissiah it would be enough.

Merlina cast aside her robe and sat daintily on the edge of the divan, her pale thighs spread, her lips already flushed and glimmering with arousal. She had tried first to distract herself, twisting this way and that upon her cot as her fingers sought out a distraction which wouldn't come. Jeanna, perhaps, could have helped; the other woman was a clumsy if enthusiastic lover, but Merlina decided it would have been cruel to wake her. Not when Antimedes provided a wealth of alternatives.

As if called by that very thought, the hormagaunt slunk out of the darkness, its hooves clicking on the bare metal with every step.

The sight of it never failed to take Merlina's breath away. Amidst all the creatures in Jeanna's collection, she understood perfectly why the hormagaunts were her favourites. It was a whiplike thing of lean, sinewy elegance, its movements utterly inhuman and filled with predatory intent. Old scars and bullet wounds marred its waxy red carapace, and its chitinous black body glistened wetly as it approached. A long tail dragged behind, swishing lazily too and fro as the beast shook off the last vestiges of sleep.

It was beautiful, Merlina thought. It was everything she was not - something pure and whole, flawlessly created to fulfil its allotted tasks, incapable of doubt or shame or self-pity. That it was an alien was irrelevant. It was perfect. The sight of the feral alien crouched before her, its scent-pits trembling in curiosity and the first signs of its organ beginning to protrude from between its legs, was enough to set her heart racing and rekindle her dim sparks of arousal into something far more potent.

The techpriestess let out a soft groan and reached down, running steel fingers over her sex. She was wet - she was so wet, so desperate, stringy beads of arousal clinging to her pale lips and dripping in long strings from her probing digits. Her legs parted wider, her fingers dipped deeper into her heat, reaching upwards and stroking indulgently along her most sensitive places, finally rewarding her with a soft curl of pleasure as she noticed the beast's cock was almost fully engorged.

"That's it," she whispered, "that's right. I'm ready for you."

Once, when Jeanna had first began her indulgences with the captive tyranids, she had been forced to use vials of breeding pheromones to excite their interest. Neither she nor Merlina had anticipated the simple-minded aliens would eventually accept them, learning to identify their scents as that of breeding partners and broodmates. The xenoarchivist had already written several essays theorising ways in which Tyranid organisms could be controlled or manipulated if bonded to human partners, but for Merlina, the implication was far more intimate.

The beast accepted her. It didn't love, or care, but neither did it judge or fear her. That was the joy of it - the blind acceptance it offered, and the sweet oblivion she found in its hooked, razor-clawed embrace. It sat for a few moments longer, its dead, void-black eyes watching her with alien hunger, and then it let out a sibilant hiss and pounced.

Merlina let out a brief yelp of surprise as the hormagaunt leapt forwards, its claws central limbs flailing for purchase as it fought for balance. Talons whickered through the air, screeching and sparking against the metal walls before the alien hooked them around the back of the divan and dragged itself into position. The techpriestess' cry of alarm melted into a deep, lusty moan as the alien landed atop her, its lithe, muscular weight bearing her down into the ragged couch beneath them.

She could feel the beast's phallus throbbing against her stomach, twisted with thick ridges which spiralled delightfully towards the gnarled head. It was already leaking precome, painting her smooth belly with a warm sheen as it violently sought her entrance. Merlina moaned again in sympathy and bucked against the thrashing alien, dragging her body further up the divan and rubbing her tender nipples across the hormagaunt's rough, chitin-sheathed ribs. Pleasure crashed through her, the techpriestess' arousal peaking higher and higher as she felt the beast's phallus slip south, thrusting madly into the crook of her thigh.

Her sex pulsed, an aching, soul-deep throb of need so intense it was almost painful. Merlina's breathing grew ragged as she desperately squirmed beneath the alien, giving voice to a sob of anticipation as the two mismatched bodies fought to align themselves. It was a torment she and Jeanna had experienced before - the xenoarchivist even coyly referred to the familiar struggle as 'dancing' - but on this night Merlina found she had no patience for it. She panted feverishly, whining soft pleas into the hormagaunt's chorded neck as it stabbed left and right, hissing and rattling with a growing frustration which matched her own.

Finally, beautifully, it struck true. The puckered phallus slithered over Merlina's sopping lips, glanced inwards and plunged smoothly into her, filling the writhing woman with one savage thrust. Waves of ecstasy bloomed out from between her legs as the hormagaunt drove itself deeper into her, the alien's hooves clattering on the metal deck as the techpriestess' silky passage clenched tight around the invading shaft. Merlina barely had time to catch her breath before the alien began fucking her in earnest, frenziedly pistoning its frenzied body back and forth between her legs.

Every thrust fed another inch of its rampant prick into her slender body. Every muscular buck drew another obviating shiver as the ridges which sheathed its organ rubbed across her inner walls. Soon it was taking her down to the root, its rough, sandpapery hips slapping against Merlina's prone body as she moaned and cried out for more. The ocular lenses which clustered across her silver half-mask clicked and spun, focusing on the bucking, drooling alien atop her, bringing it into sharp relief even as her mind grew hazy and drunk with pleasure.

The techpriestess had been with men before, of course; sometimes for pleasure, sometimes for duty. But such occurrences had been tainted things, ultimately unsatisfying and poisoned by the effects her eerie, doll-like countenance inspired in her partners. The hormagaunt showed no such squeamishness. It gave her no respite, fucking her all the harder as she shuddered and moaned beneath its whip-thin form, venting its feral lusts upon the slender, silver-clad creature it had taken as its broodmate. Its tongue ran along her neck and across her face, thick beads of saliva dripping from its bared fangs to soak deep into her black hair.

Merlina's only response was to give voice to a hitching laugh and wrap her legs around the alien's narrow hips, pale thighs locking tight and pulling it in deeper with every thrust, shamelessly encouraging own impalement. It was better face-to-face, she thought. Despite every logical argument she found there was nothing quite like being able to see the creature she was mating with. It made the reality of what she was doing inescapable. To own what she was doing, to look into the glassy, black eye of such a monstrous being and see nothing but her own lusts reflected back.

It completed her. Merlina had never believed her arrival on Antimedes was an accident. For years she had served the tech-lords of Stygies VIII with quiet devotion, hiding her sense of isolation and anxiety behind the bland smile which had become as much a part of her face as the lens-clusters which replaced her eyes. But every sleep-cycle had been ended with a prayer to Omnissiah for something - anything - which would make her feel whole, and as far as the techpriestess was concerned, her deity had finally answered.

The hormagaunt's prick throbbed inside her, hot and hard between her slick folds. Its gnarled head rubbed incessantly against her deepest and most sensitive places, raging against the loving prison that held it tight. Merlina Kesh felt her climax growing, felt the slippery pulse as the feral alien poured its precome into her, and felt whole.

And so she took everything it offered and begged for more, even as the hormagaunt hooked its secondary limbs over her shoulders and dragged itself into a hideous parody of an embrace. Her hands - one flesh and blood, one steel and brass - roved over its lithe form, stroking the hard angles of its exoskeleton, tracing chitinous ribs and feeling the alien heartbeat raging beneath. Whisps of steam leaked from the heat-sinks implanted along her ribs. Her peak was close, ecstasy humming along her augmented nerves like pulses of divine feedback, and she reached for it like a seeker upon the edge of enlightenment.

Merlina's body burned. It crackled. Each thrust brought her closer, each rattling hiss and lusty screech from her monstrous paramour feeding into her growing orgasm like prometheum upon a blaze. She whispered encouragement to the bladed horror as it rutted into her, wallowing in the sweet-sour alien stink and the clammy touch of its sweat and slime upon her limbs and chest, nursing the rampant beast closer to its orgasm even as she spiralled madly into her own.

It struck her like a blow from a forge-hammer, blasting the air from her lungs, the thoughts from her mind, hollowing her out and leaving nothing but ecstasy in its wake. Merlina gave one last passionate cry and hugged the alien close, silky walls clenching hard around the hormagaunt's prick as it began to spasm and jerk and come inside her. The tyranid let out a thin shriek as it found its own release, driving its shaft as deep into its mate's warmth as it could and flooding her with pulse after pulse of thick, sticky alien semen.

The techpriestess' legs shuddered around the hormagaunt's narrow hips, keeping it pinned helplessly in place as it emptied itself into her. Stinging notes of pleasure danced along her augmented nerves as it jerked back and forth, grinding in place and tormenting her aching nipples with its rough chest. It was only when Merlina was sure the very last drop had been poured into her flushed, sweat-slick body that she allowed herself to relax, falling slack and allowing the hormagaunt to wriggle free.

She lay there for some time, panting heavily, feeling the beast's seed drip slowly from her sex in long, burning strings with a drunken smile on her face. For a few precious moments, nothing mattered. Not the unnatural feel of her cyborg limbs, not the fading memories of the revulsion she had seen in the pirate's eyes. She felt whole. Complete. The hormagaunt had retreated back to the shadows, curling in upon itself and diligently licking itself clean, blissfully unconcerned of its partner's woes.

No, Merlina thought distantly. Chasing after the sort of star-scum to come washing out of the great rift would do them no good. Even those who could stand to deal with her would always be unreliable - too prone to turning on them or selling the pair out to the Inquisition. But there were other traders out there she and Jeanna could deal with. Creatures less squeamish than most humans could ever be, with a record of clandestine trade with those Imperial forces willing to take their business.

She pulled herself to her feet with a satisfied groan, slinging her robes around her shoulders once more and limping wearily from the hormagaunt cell. A thin trail of pearly drops marked her way, dripping down her legs to lie upon Antimedes' rusting deck, unseen and ignored as the techpriestess' enhanced mind lit up with plans and possibilities.

Eldar. Stryxis. Sslyth.