HTHStudios - Handle With Care

from 'Nights In The City of Steel'

Night approached Tykon’Mach differently from the western trade roads. Along the lower eastern shelves, where the jungle pressed closest against the foundations of the Pyramid State, the great city seemed less to rise from the wilderness than to have been driven bodily through it.

White retaining walls vanished downward through curtains of mist. Ancient trees crowded service causeways and freight pylons, their crowns illuminated from beneath by the cold blue glare of navigation beacons. Above them, the Capital Structure climbed beyond sight, its mirrored faces transformed by darkness into vast black planes crossed by thousands of moving lights. Freight skiffs descended through those lights in orderly streams, banking away from the inhabited terraces and following illuminated approach channels toward the industrial levels buried beneath the pyramid.

Far below, waterfalls continued their endless thunder through the foundations, unseen except where spray drifted across the route and turned the navigation lamps into pale floating halos.

The approach bent gradually inward, leaving the open canal roads for a broad freight corridor cut directly between the pyramid’s lower structural masses. Here the gardens disappeared. The polished ceremonial architecture of the upper city surrendered to load-bearing columns, armored retaining walls, maintenance galleries, and enormous ventilation mouths breathing warm industrial air into the night. Signal lamps marched along the corridor in red and amber intervals while suspended direction boards flashed berth assignments in Imperial script.

Cargo haulers moved nose-to-tail beneath them: squat ore barges riding low beneath mineral containers, narrow courier craft slipping impatiently between lanes, livestock carriers screened behind slatted hulls, and heavy commerce-skiffs whose engines made the surrounding steel tremble as they passed. Every few moments something immense descended from the darkness overhead, blotting out half the visible pyramid before settling toward some deeper receiving tier with landing lamps blazing beneath its belly.

At last the corridor opened beneath the Capital Structure itself, and the docking bays appeared. They occupied the pyramid’s base in stacked ranks stretching farther than the eye could follow, thousands of rectangular mouths cut into white steel and blackened by generations of exhaust. Floodlamps turned the nearest aprons almost silver beneath the night while loaders, customs clerks, fuel crews, merchants, hired guards, and dockhands moved between landed craft in ceaseless little currents. Cranes crawled along overhead rails carrying sealed freight from one illuminated platform to another; somewhere behind the walls, cargo lifts larger than houses groaned upward toward the markets sleeping—or pretending to sleep—many layers above.

Beyond the open bays, Tykon’Mach remained visible as an impossible vertical constellation reflected in its own canals.

Down here, however, the Capital was reduced to its oldest and most practical truth: ships arrived, cargo changed paws, silver changed owners, and nothing stayed still for long.

---

Here, a cargo skiff sat on its gear with the patience of a thing bought in installments. Its belly plates still held the day’s lift. Through the deck grates came the smells of oil and hot sealant, and the thin metal-sweet tang of spent capacitor dust. Tanir had the silver arranged in four stacks across the fold-down chart table and had counted it twice. The numbers agreed. He did not trust them.

He was nineteen. The fur along his forearms was still the short, dense coat of a Lynx who had not yet wintered the outer runs. His father’s coat hung from a bulkhead hook, too broad across the shoulders. Tanir had not put it on. His shirt sleeves were rolled, the cuffs dark where he had wiped his hands throughout the day. The City of Steel laid hard bars of light through the open cargo hatch. Somewhere down the quay, a winch screamed and abruptly quit. Tanir shifted one stack of silver a finger’s width and began again.

The cot was bolted beneath the conduit run along the port bulkhead: a thin pad, one blanket folded neatly at the foot. He had not lain on it. The night log remained open beside the silver. His eyes kept leaving the stacks for the dark square of the cargo hatch.

Vanessa came up the companion ladder without a sound from the treads. Yanatarian make, silver from throat to ankle, her jackal muzzle was finished to a polish that caught the hatch-light and returned it narrower. She stood tall enough that the overhead nearly brushed the tips of her ears. Clerk’s hands. A body built to be looked at across a counter: long in the leg, heavy in the chest, silver skin drawn over engineered mass that moved when she moved and settled when she stopped. Her duty wrap hung open at the throat. The wrap did not pretend.

“You counted it at second bell,” she said. Her voice had the clean edge of a unit that did not tire. “Correct then. Correct now.”

“Father said if the off-brand guild shorted the deposit, I’d see it in the silver before the manifest.”

“Deposit cleared. Manifest matches. You are short of sleep.” She placed two fingers against the nearest stack. The coins did not shift. “Sit on the cot.”

“The night log—”

“Writes itself if the hatches are dogged. They are dogged.”

She watched the tremor in his wrist.

“Do you want a blowjob?”

He looked up. The silver muzzle remained level. Yanatarian units did not joke unless the joke had been paid for.

“I—”

“Yes or no. You are shaking. The count is good. I can take the shake out of you faster than sleep will.”

He went to the cot because his legs had already decided. He sat on the edge, boots planted on the grating, hands resting stiffly against his knees. The thin pad gave beneath him. Vanessa followed and stood between his boots until he had to spread them to make room.

---

Miles away, a hired skiff ran low over the scrub with its running lights killed. In the cabin, three merchants sat with knees apart and cups between them, the City of Steel reduced to a dull weld against the horizon.

The boar merchant Roland filled most of the bench. Thick through the neck, long in the tusk, his forearms carried scars accumulated across decades of honest labor and more interesting pursuits. He drank like one who intended to be drunk later, but not yet.

Skeer had the board. The dog lad’s hands knew the trim, and he said nothing while he flew.

“And so, we have our miracle worker to thank once again.” Tamir, the elder of the two Lynxes, sounded pleased, though caution still tempered his optimism.

“Please, ha!” Roland waved the praise away, modest in gesture if clearly pleased with himself. “Hardly a miracle to have one’s eyes open and one’s wits about him, eh, Tamir?”

“Indeed. Just rare.”

The boar laughed at that.

“How did you manage this again?” asked Yalus, the younger of the two cats in the cabin.

“Charm!” Skeer called from the cockpit.

“You heard the lad.” Roland smirked.

“Aye, but this is legal, old boy,” Tamir said.

“Better, Tamir. Far better. Certified.”

All three chuckled and settled deeper into their seats. At least two of them could already smell the increase in silver stacks.

“You know, Wan Warril is still furious.”

“Wan Warril wakes up furious and goes to bed seething,” Yalus added, grinning with third-party triumph.

“Likely why he can’t focus.” Roland took another drink. “Stress is contagious in this line of work, me boys. The client can smell it. Puts them ill at ease for free, I’m afraid. Never keep your nonsense on the bar.”

“Good advice.”

---

Meanwhile, back on the quay, the skiff rocked once on its gear, a small motion a passerby would put down to barge wake. No one looked up.

Vanessa had the duty wrap off her shoulders and down her arms. The silver was not paint. Synthetic Gloss Skin, grown warm over a lattice, finer than his fur beneath his hands and meant to be handled.

She undid his belt without hurrying. His cock came up hard against his belly, inexperienced enough that the touch of air made him jerk. She pushed his shirt up, spread his knees wider, and went down between them on the grating, eye-level with him where he sat.

She lifted her breasts in both hands and pressed them around his shaft until the head stood clear of her ample cleavage. The weight was real. When she moved, the engineered give dragged him from root to crown, slow, then slower. He remained seated, hands gripping the frame of the cot as the thin pad creaked beneath him.

“Breathe,” she said, and took the head into her mouth.

Tongue, hot and exact. She sucked only the tip while her breasts worked the length, and one hand left her chest to cup his balls, rolling them with the pressure of a clerk counting coin. Tanir’s hips tried to follow and met the edge of the cot. A sound escaped him that he had not meant to make, high in the throat. She held him where she wanted him. Her muzzle worked. Silver breasts shone with the spit she let run down the cleft. Out on the quay, one loader shouted at another. The landing gear took another small rock and gave it back.

The pull started behind his balls, where her palm worked, and ran upward into the wet ring of her mouth. He tried to warn her. What came out was a squeal, then a gasp, then nothing useful. She did not pull away. She stroked him through the cleft and sucked the head while he came, the first thick stripe crossing her tongue, the next breaking past her muzzle to paint the silver cheek, the bridge, the corner of her mouth. She milked him until the pulses thinned, licking the slit clean between them. When he finally sagged against the bulkhead, she turned her face and dragged her tongue slowly through the mess on her own cheek, finishing the task.

---

“Well then.” Roland snorted contentedly, hauled himself from the bench, and crossed the skiff to a battered cache trunk. He threw back the lid and began rummaging through its contents while the scrub rolled black beneath them.

Tanir’s father, Tamir, turned his cup slowly between his hands and watched the dark country passing beyond the glass. Yalus sat with his back against the bulkhead, listening to the engine the way a creditor listens to a debt.

“Boy’s on his first night solo,” Yalus said.

“He’ll hold.” Roland chuckled from somewhere inside the cache.

“He counts when he’s scared,” Yalus added.

“Then the silver will be right.” Tamir drank. His eyes remained on the scrub. “Roland. This Haldo of yours. Jotunic-pattern or copies?”

“What the trench shops move.” Roland’s voice came muffled from the trunk. “Slug throwers chambered for the long case that don’t burst your wrist on the third magazine. Not Core stamps. Not Core prices.” Something knocked against the side of the cache as he dug deeper. “You want the craft, you drink with him.”

Roland emerged with a cigar case in one hand and a short bottle of brandy in the other, looking altogether too pleased with both discoveries. He dropped back onto the bench and set the bottle between them.

Tamir took a cigar but did not light it. The comm band around his wrist remained dark.

---

“Again,” she said.

“I can’t—”

Her palm remained beneath his balls, massaging, keeping the blood from leaving. Two fingers of her other hand, still wet from her mouth, slipped beneath him where he sat, between his cheeks, and found the tight ring. She did not ask. She pressed until the muscle yielded, one finger to the knuckle, then the second. Seated as he was, he had nowhere to go but back against the bulkhead and down onto her hand. She curled her fingers, found the gland, and worked it in short, exact strokes while her palm lifted and squeezed his scrotum.

His knees fell wider. She took whatever weight he gave her and did not stop. The second orgasm struck while he was still leaking from the first, a sharp clench around her fingers, his cock jerking against her silver throat and striping her muzzle again in thinner pulses. He panted her name and got no further. She increased the pressure on the gland, rolled his balls, and the third came almost dry—a full-body kick that left him shaking, his hole fluttering around her fingers, held on the cot by a clerk who did not shake.

She worked him until the flutter stopped, then withdrew slowly and wiped her hand on the discarded wrap.

Tanir slid sideways across the cot, belt open, cock softening against his thigh. His eyes were already closing.

“Sleep.”

Vanessa stood, silver chest and muzzle streaked, crossed to the wash niche, and ran a cloth over herself. She was clean in the time it took the recycler to cough.

Eight seconds at the chart table.

Her eyes moved over the stacks, the ledger, the seal.

“Accurate to the ounce. Profit holds. Tanir is sleeping. All is well.”

She flicked the side of her head.

The burst went out on the short band.

---

At Haldo Mance’s compound, the inland skiff was down and the lamps were lit. Haldo was broad, his accent pure station, his back room heavy with the smells of solvent and cigar smoke. Long cases stood in racks behind him: Jotunic-pattern slug throwers, the off-brand guild’s stamp small on each receiver. Yalus had his cup. Roland stood by the door with the brandy and did not drink.

Tamir’s wrist ticked.

He read the burst. The line of his mouth changed by a fraction.

“Boy’s down. Count’s good.”

“Good!” Roland showed a tusk.

Haldo grinned and struck a match. Tamir lit the cigar he had carried all the way from the scrub and leaned in over the prices.

“Then we talk volume.”

Back in the City of Steel, the cargo skiff sat quiet on its gear, hatches dogged, silver stacked, the Lynx asleep on the cot with his belt still open, and the silver jackal at the board with the night log writing itself beneath her hand.

https://www.primalswordandsorcery.com/nights-in-the-city-of-steel/