- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
If I had to guess, I'm betting that was an unintended oversight on DC's part.
THE HIERARCHY OF NOW AND FOREVER
- Thread starter DragonCobolt
- Start date
- Original Mature Sci-Fi
If I had to guess, I'm betting that was an unintended oversight on DC's part.
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
A possibility, but since this was also the chapter that introduced the species wearing the Space Porn Traders hat, I'm not sure.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yup! Though, like, I am pretty proud of it as a justification for planet of hats, lol
Yeah, it's a bit of a "we're not sure what we even could do with this"
also, sorry, fixed!
Oh crap, it's that orange, isn't it?
Not gonna lie, my brain had a short-lived bluescreen there. The acronym game remains on-point, however.
Also, I have a certain suspision. The snake captain mentioned that humans didn't have to adapt their culture to for SOF usage, but John mentioned in previous update that he believes SOF seems to conspire to put them in indecent situations, to put it mildly. With how many problems seem to require an intercourse as part of a solution, to the point it seems a bit contrived, I'm hazarding a hypothesis that humans are in some way adapting to SOF-conductive stereotype. That stereotype being, to use a TVTropes-borne euphemism, boldly coming. Recall that SOF was mentioned to favour young, attractive and charismatic, i.e. those most likely to bang their way across the cosmos. And maybe it's me being a bit of a prude or my distaste for covert cultural engineering, but I find it mildly ominous.
Ah, the best way to solve the issue. Por que no los dos?
CHAPTER FIVE: In-Krull-Dulous
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Author's Note: I'm back! I took a vacation and now I returned!
Captain John Tangent, Tactical Officer Lieutenant Trianna Yang, Starbase Commander Quincy Lagrange and the phantasmal alien psychic known as Pixie stood together in the observation bay of the New Interstellar Alliance's one and only 'hot lab.' Situated upon the now abandoned surface of the Earth, in the farthest reaches of the Gobi Desert, Hot Lab 1 had been constructed in a tearing hurry using every bit of flash fabricated material that the orbiting starbase could provide and was made for one purpose only: To see if the mysterious alien Voyulon traders could be trusted.
The four of them watched in mute focus as a Class-1 Railgun was mounted into place at the central laboratory, several kilometers away. The vidscreen displayed the image through grainy, cheap pickups, chosen to be easily replaced if something went catastrophically wrong. John tapped his fingers together, while Trianna crossed her arms over her chest. "Banging one snake lady," she muttered under her breath.
"I wish more people trade this kinda stuff for banging snake ladies," Pixie said, giggling. John smirked slightly – a private smile that none of the others were privy too, as Pixie was only visible or audible to him.
"Testing in five," Quincy said, brushing his fingers through his long, wavy blond hair. He looked good in the skintight outfit of a UNN commander, cut to properly fit his waifish figure and slender build. As a femboy, certain codes of military conduct were bent to allow for him to practice that most respected of Earthborn religions – this was why he got to keep the high heels, which he clicked against the ground in the only sign of nervousness that showed on his steely, feminine features. "Four. Three. Two."
The Class-1 Railgun fired directly into the shield emitters. Designed by the alien Chemdemdemdemar, field serfs of the terrible Zemturga Totality, the emitters looked nothing like what a human might make. Instead of hard steel and gleaming crystal, they were nothing but a series of interlocking flower petals that were banded in copper wire. Those wires flashed and the railgun slug stopped about a meter away from the emitter. Then the railgun fired again – the cloud of conductive metallic vapor that the railgun blasted out with each shot occluding the screen. Then it fired again, and and again, until the heat warning indicators flicked on.
"If that was one of our shields, it'd be so much scrap by now," Trianna said, watching the screen.
"The base didn't blow up at least, so there's nothing wrong with its power fields," John murmured.
The screen cleared.
The shield emitter was undamaged, and several glowing tungsten darts shimmered in the air before it before dropping to the floor with a clang that went entirely unheard by the cheap camera feed. Pixie threw her arms up.
"Woooo!"
John and Quincy shook hands, and the Starbase Commander beamed. "We'll have the new emitters in place before the day's out."
"What's your orders for after that?" Trianna asked.
"We're heading for Sigma Draconis II." John chuckled. "I think it's time we see the Totality from the inside now."
***
Delta Vee bounced on the tips of her toes as she watched, palms pressed against the glass, as her beloved Avenger got slowly and painfully dismembered. Butchered. Mutilated. "My baby girl! My sweet baby girl, they're ruining her!" She groaned, pressing her face against the glass as a few other pilots lounged around in the observation room of the starbase fabrication facility. Articulated arms – running on computer control – swung and buzzed around her fighter at incredible speeds, peeling away fuselage and taking out components so swiftly that between blinks it was like her ship was completely dismembered.
"You are aware of the concept known as a refit, right?" Kat asked, her tail twitching irritably from side to side.
"I'm aware of the concept of a refit," Delta said, pushing away from the window, scowling at the chief engineer of the Excalibur. "But these Voyurlong-bullshit shield emitters are freaking flowers!" She swung her hand back to the window, her timing utterly perfect. A sleek arm unfolded and placed a delicate bundle of flowers and copper into the hull of her ship, leaving a great deal of extra room where the old shield emitters would have gone. "I don't want to trust my life to a flower."
"You trust your life, every day, to a collection of goo and water," Kat muttered, watching with interest as the articulated arms started to...weld the flower in. Somehow.
"I do not!" Delta said.
Kat, without looking, reached out and flicked her forehead. "Dingus."
Delta rubbed her forehead, scowling. "Hey! I don't fucking risk my life...my...I...my brain isn't goo and water. It's- I...there…" She spluttered. "There's other stuff too."
"Not from what I can tell," Kat said.
Delta grumbled under her breath. "Says the girl who goes into freaking heat."
"Hey, don't knock going into heat. Going into heat's great," Kat said, her ears twitching up.
Delta grumbled even softer. "Says the girl who can hear like a bat grumble grumble."
"Did you call me a back?" Kat asked, frowning. "What does that even mean?"
The articulated arms pressed the wing fuselage in, then lasers hissed around the entire vehicle, leaving seams gleaming with cherry red metal. A sprayer hissed over as a final step, and the Avenger was left glossy and new, as if she had just come off the assembly line. There was no sign of the flower entombed within her metal hull, nor any hint that she had ever been opened again. Delta huffed slightly as she pressed her nose against the glass. "Well, at least the Zemturga can build a nice fabricator."
"No shit, the war would be way easier if they couldn't," Kat said, throwing herself down into the observation room's chair. She flung her legs up to hook over the back of the chair and laid her head back, so she was subjectively upside down to the young pilot. This view did give her a most excellent view of Delta Vee's taut, peach-shaped, spankable ass, contained as it was in the nearly skintight UNN pilot jumpsuit. She grinned, slightly. "Hey, uh, DV, do you see that spot weld they missed? Near the ground?"
"Where?" Delta hissed, cocking her head, then bending forward, craning to try and view her Avenger from the lowest angle possible. This just so happened to push her ass higher into the air and drew the jumpsuit tighter.
"Gods, I love undress blues," Kat whispered.
The door to the fabrication observation room opened and the Captain prowled in. Kat grinned at him as he saw her position, then tracked her eyeline to Delta, then back to her again. Her arched an eyebrow and pursed his lips. Kat stuck her tongue out at him, while Delta grumbled under her breath. "It's also kinda unfair to just give us a shield buff. They should give us more guns too."
"The additional firepower would kind of cut into your acceleration curve, DV," the Captain said, his voice amused.
"Captain!" She spun around, jerking upright. "You ordered this-"
"I did," he said, smirking slightly. "The shield improvements will pay for themselves. We're about to set out for Sigma Draconis II. It's one of the major trading hubs of the Totality – do you think that we can fabricate a housing for an Avenger that can make it look like, say, any of the Totality space fighters?"
Delta opened her mouth, then closed it. She put her hand to her chin while Kat rolled languidly from the air, flipping and coming to her feet in the same smooth motion. Her tail twitched as Delta tapped her thumb against her chin. "We couuuuuuuld mimic the Kruul Evil class interceptor," she said, hesitantly. "They're basically just shitty Avenger rip offs with extra spikes, no shields and no missiles and three more crew to manage their leaky ass fusion rockets." She made a face. "Do you ever think the Kruul just build their ships like that on purpose?"
"Like what?" The Captain asked.
"So when they blow up they get as many Kruul and as many enemies as they can killed or maimed as possible?" Delta asked. "Like, according to the flight logs we have, half the pilots that go up against Evils get cancer from their dirty ships blowing up in dogfights."
The Captain sighed. "I wouldn't put it past them. Still, will the Avenger be able to fly with that Kruul shit on it?"
"Eh," Delta said, waggling her hand.
"Can you put quick det charges to blow it off in a hurry?" the Captain asked, turning to face the engineer. Kat snickered.
"Pff, easy!" she said.
"Do it," the Captain said, then turned to go.
"Wait, John, we can't just fake being Kruul. They're big ugly fucking...copyright infringing uurks from that old book by the fuckin' French guy," she said, snapping her fingers. "Sartre, you know! He wrote the book with the dragons and the riddles and the ring that lets you make green telekinetic fists and stuff? Like, I am not dressing up as one! Not even if you can make a rubber forehead big enough."
The Captain pinched the bridge of his nose, looking pained. "Delta Vee, once again, I am reminded of why you sat behind me for English," he said. "And no. We're not going to pretend to be Kruul in person. That's what the computers are for. And only I need to go in person. And. Well." He turned to someone only he could see. "Pixie?"
The sensation of telepathic contact was almost unnoticeable to Delta Vee and Kat. Kat's left ear twitched and Delta scratched at the back of her neck. But between blinks, the Captain changed from a handsome, dark haired Terran with exotic, pale features to a tall, burly Kruul from their northern continent of their homeworld: Gray-brown skin, piggish snout, thick tusks, tufts of fur on chest, shoulder and more. He was dressed in a thick loincloth and loomed above them, burly and massive.
"See?" he rumbled.
"Ooooh!" Delta said.
"Yeah, that'll work," Kat said.
The Captain grinned – then between blinks, he was back to human. He turned to go. As he left, Kat nodded, then murmured. "...was he still kinda hot as a Kruul?"
"I wasn't gonna say it," Delta said, snickering.
Kat flipped her off.
"Anyway, I never did get that," Delta said. "Why did they call it English class if we were reading French books, huh?"
***
Sigma Draconis was an orange-red star, almost twenty light years from the SOL system. In the vast war between the Interstellar Alliance and the Zemturga Totality, it may have seemed strange that one of their forward posts had been so close to the homeworld of one of the Alliance's members, but the three dimensions of space and the operation of the Space Opera Field that permitted interstellar travel made borders and security a deeply complex and tricky topic. Stars weren't placed between lines drawn on maps: They were small pinpricks surrounded by potential forts that could be occupied. Some solar systems had been near perpetual battlefields, with logistic lines running into them from both sides, orbits shifting when and where people could arrive and leave safely.
So, Sigma Draconis had been left to the Totality even when the Alliance had been a growing concern, heavily secured by several direct star-lanes leading deeper into Totality territory and protected by the simple fact that the UNN had had more important things to deal with: Defending their own territory, protecting human colonies and Alliance starships from attack as the war wound closer and closer to its catastrophic end.
And now that humanity itself had been scooped off the Earth and scattered throughout Zemturga space as Pleasure Slaves, there was even less reason to ward the system from SOL.
That didn't mean Sigma Draconis was undefended.
Not in the slightest.
Trade-1, the largest trading station in Totality space, was in joint custody by the Myg'gar'gar and the Paw, one of the formerly aligned Yip-Paw-Lop species and both the Mygs and the Paw had enemies within the Totality as the Totality itself frayed apart without an external enemy. The Mygs were at war with the Urghats and the Paw were at war with the Kruul and the Vornash. It was that fact that had given John some pause as he laid in bed, considering the approach to Trade-1, listening to the faint hissing sound of the Space Opera Field as they cruised through Tier Four at superluminal speeds.
Tier Four was risky, but-
"Give you...pawwwwwws?"
He jerked his head up, blinking as he saw Pixie, who was laying her head against his belly, grinning up at him.
"What?" he asked.
"You were thinking about how it gives you pause! The Paws gives you Pause!" Pixie grinned, then focused – her lithe form shifting into a credible replica of 'what if she had been a Paws girl', her ears perking up, sleek and black and eager, her long and sinous tail twitching as she put her hands against his belly and extended her new sharp, midnight black talons. "But, no, it should be fine. Trade-1's a trade station. If you're not showing up to blast shit with lasers, they should let you in."
"I'm thinking of pretending to be a Kruul renegade," John murmured. "Not every one of them follows the Articles of Cruelty, right?"
"Mmm," Pixie nuzzled against his chest gently.
"Hmm," John said. "But the rest of the crew will have to wait. Or wear face concealing helmets – human bodyforms are close enough to the Yip-Paw-Lop." He chuckled. "Or Sensurians, but I don't think we should pretend to be them."
Pixie snickered. "I mean, I wouldn't mind."
"That's because you're the horniest girl I've ever met in my life," John said, his voice amused. "And Delta Vee takes notches out on her belt when she seduces new ones." Pixie giggled at that, then squirmed, wriggled, then threw herself across his belly. Despite her not actually existing, the weight of her pressed down on his chest and compressed him into the bed. John lifted his arms, wheezing, but Pixie had already wriggled herself around again so that now her thighs were cocked open above him, her sex pressed against the light tuft of his chest hair. Her grin grew wicked.
"I could be hornier, you know," she crooned.
"I find that slightly hard to believe," John said.
"I mean, being a symbiotic psychic construct that lives in your brain, I can basically do any kink you want." Her grin was playful. "Bondage! Shapeshifting into any alien girl you want. Oh! Oh!" She took his hand, then guided it to her throat, grinning wickedly. "Breathplay!" Her voice crooned softly. "Earfucking? Noooose fucking!"
"You made those last two up," John said, yanking his hand from her throat.
"Or did I?" she wiggled her eyebrows dramatically.
John narrowed his eyes.
"I have access, through the potent psionic ability of psychometry, to the entirety of humanity's vast array of perverse thoughts and images!" Pixie said, putting her fingers against her temples, grinning wickedly as she looked down at him. "Care to rumple a dragon? Or a goddess? Or a girl you had a crush on in high school?"
"I've already slept with every girl I had a crush on in the high school class," John said, dryly. "I'm very attractive and somewhat charismatic."
Pixie pouted. "No! ...you're extremely attractive." She snickered. "So so on the charisma, though."
John clasped his hand over his chest, rolling his head to the side and throwing out his tongue as if he had been shot dead by an arrow. Pixie burst into giggles, then leaned down, whispering softly as she bent herself almost in half. "Here, I'll kiss it better." Her hand snaked under his cheek, and John was able to draw his tongue back into his mouth just in time as she pressed her mouth to his. It was at times like this it was almost impossible to think of Pixie as anything but a living, breathing woman – eager and wanting and wet. And...from a lot of perspectives, she was. Sure, her body might have been a fine dusting of psychically active pollen threaded throughout his brain, but the scans that Doc Carothers had done had pinned down Pixie's physical self.
She drank of nutrients from his body, and she breathed out psionic energies. She could tickle his mind with her etheric hands, and touch the world around herself with psychokinetic fingertips. And she could damn well kiss like a woman. When she drew back, John was panting softly.
"This must look damn peculiar to the security cameras," he murmured.
She grinned. "Two words." She held up her hand, unfurling one finger. "Technopathy." She unfurled a second. "Exhibitionism!"
John blinked at her. Then he looked at the small feed pickup in the corner of his room. Then he looked back at her.
"You know the security team only checks if the AI alerts them, right?" he asked, his voice playful. "No one is watching us."
***
When John reached the bridge of the Excalibur, he was dressed and prepared to focus once more. He strode onto the bridge to find that the rest of his officers were all readied and at their posts. He nodded to Lt. Sheyshan. "Shey, what are we looking at here?"
"Relatively small mass shadow," she said. "They're in Tier 2, far enough above us we can't get a good resolution on sensors, but I have no reason to think they're not the trade station's picket fleet."
"How big is relatively small?" John asked, taking his seat in his command chair, strapping in as Pixie shrank to the size of...well, a pixie and settled onto his shoulder. Triana, who had her dossier of Totality ships on display and was running their mass levels through the battle computer, turned back to face him. She looked a bit pensive, but not grim.
"At most, we're looking at a single ship of the same size, or two to three smaller ships. If they're Paw, we may be looking at modified Pallas class frigates or, maybe, a Tiger class heavy cruiser." She drummed her fingers on the console. "Kat may be able to tell more, I'm sending this data down to her."
"You know what I'm wondering about?" Albert asked as he adjusted their course – when their mass and the approaching picket's mass intersected, they were going to be pulled out of the SOF near the edge of the Sigma Draconis system. Albert, like any pilot worth his salt, was picking a place with some astro-navigational dangers. In this case, he was going to try and drop them near ring system of a subjovian gas giant at the edge of Sigma Draconis.
"Hmm?" Eugene asked.
"Why'd the Totality make the Paw the battle thralls and not the Yip?" he asked, turning to face the rest of them. "I mean, we all know cats are bastards-"
"I heard that!" Kat's voice came from the console. John shot Albert a look, and Albert lifted his hands up.
"Bastards parenthesis complimentary close parenthesis," he said into the console.
"Damn straight!"
"But the Yip? They're a lot more prone to fighting as a unit rather than running off solo, right? Which you want for a navy and all." he said. "I mean, I get why the Lop, sadly, got the Pleasure Slave role." He made a face. "Considering, well…" He trailed off, while Triana snorted.
"Have you ever tried to get a day's work out of a cat?" she asked, playfully. "If Kat wasn't as into machines as she is, do you think we'd get a single shift out of here?" She paused. "Complimentary."
"Nah, that's just true," Kat said, with equanimity. "Like, c'mon, who the fuck works if you don't have too?"
"The Yip, you can get to work in a factory. The Lob...uh...well…" Triana coughed. "So, that just leaves the Paw, if you want to break up the Yip-Paw-Lob unity and make them into three distinct species."
"Grim, but it tracks," John said, rubbing his chin. "ETA on our intersection?"
"Right about…" Albert lifted his hand. "Now."
The ship shuddered as they shunted upwards, through tier after tier of the Space Opera Field, emerging with a blazing flare of Cerenkov radiation into the orbit of Sigma Draconis' largest gas giant. A glittering ring of ice asteroids swept out before them as three similar pinpricks appeared and the three Paw frigates emerged from Tier Two of the SOF. The Pallas class was well named, and well suited, to this region of space: To make them as inexpensively as possible, the Paw took asteroids, hollowed them out, and then filled them with their engines and studded them with sensor antennas and weapon arrays that made them look like asteroids that had grown a thick, downy coat of fur. From a distance, with their arrays retracted, they looked quite a lot like rocks.
These three fanned out into a triangular formation as Shey put her finger to her earpiece. "We're being hailed, Captain."
"Do you have the obfuscation programs online?" John asked.
"Yes, every image we're sending to them will be doctored. They'll be seeing this," Shey said, turning her console screen to show John an image of him as a Kruul, surrounded by other Kruul bridge crew officers – and he had to admit, all of his bridge officers re-imagined as that burly, hideous race was not exactly the most encouraging thing in the universe. Despite that, he gave a smile to Shey, then turned back to the front screen.
"Patch them through," he said.
The screen flickered and he saw his first Paw that wasn't Kat.
She was a broad shouldered, muscular woman with olive brown skin, silver gray hair, curved at ears, and whisker tattoos that marked out her cheeks with fierce, tiger-striped lines. She wore a furry bikini, thong and boots – magnetic soles built into the false pads of the fluffy, cat-like things. Her gauntlets were huge and paw shaped as well, covered with the same silvery fur as the rest of her attire. Her body, and good god she exposed much of it, was seamed with scars ranging from parallel claw marks to puckered gunshot wounds. Her breasts were larger than John's head, perky enough to stand proudly despite their heft, and her features were that of a dangerous predator: Sharp eyed, attentive and fierce. She seemed to be mature enough to be a cougar rather than a kitten – and her voice backed that up as she purred.
"Mrrwell, what do we have here...a little pack of K-rrrr-uul in our region of space!" she said, her voice full of trilling purrs as she lifted one of her paw-clad hands to brush her silvery hair back. "Normally, our fellow Battle Thralls tell us when their ugly kin are sniffing around – but here you are, sneaking in through the back door like a pack of sorry dogs. So, why don't you tell me what you're doing here before we splash your ugly little kitbash into space dust!"
"Name first," John growled. He was careful to not pitch his voice down too much or try and sound extra gravely, as that was what the computer was for. The alteration program must have worked because the Paw captain sniff.
"I am Captain Tygress Starchaser, Captain of the Paw Slave Armada Waa-7, which is why you should begin to be more polite to me, Krull, or else my glaring will decide to sharpen our claws on you…" She mimed a claw swipe with her hand – and silvery daggers the length of kitchen knives burst from her gauntlet before retracting.
"I am Domineer Trudd," John said, flatly. "We are a trade ship from the Kruul Maliceocracy. As much as it pains me to not torture a little kitten like you, I must request instead freedom to approach Trade-1 and unload our hold." He glared at her.
"Awww, does the little orcy-worky wanna get by us?" Captain Starchaesr sneered.
"Orcy-worky?" John asked, taken aback by such a Terran reference. Starchaser snorted, then flipped her paw dismissively.
"Never you mind, Kruul. Now…I will let you through without atomizing your little ship. But only if you pay us," she said, grinning fiercely. "How does that sound?"
"Shit," Eugene murmured, his voice soft enough to not be picked up.
"Will you take resources?" John growled. "We can spare some iron. Maybe copper."
"Copper!? Iron!" Captain Starchaser huffed. "Now you are trying to be insulting, orcy-worky. No! We demand Totality credits, slaves, or service. Or else…" She flicked her finger. Sheyshan, her eyes locked onto her sensors, frowned and turned to John.
"Sir, they're warming up their Cats Cradle emitters!"
John rubbed his hand along his chin – wondering how the program that converted him from Terran to a Kruul in the projection that the Paw were getting translated the gesture. His eyes narrowed as he considered, weighing the options...but that orcy-worky reference. He narrowed his eyes slowly, then growled. "You served in that pathetic Alliance, didn't you?"
"What of it?" the older feline female said, sniffing loudly. "We took the Oath, same as you. The Zemturga have said as much. In fact, I'm pretty su-rrrrrr-e…" She purred, leaning forward, her cat-green eyes flashing. "That they've repeatedly told the Maliceocracy to respect our Oath, and we've had to back that up with our own claws and teeth."
"With ships, maybe," John said, thinking quickly. "But you never wish to face us, paw to fist."
"You think I would turn down a chance to gut a Kruul?" Captain Starchaser hissed.
"I do," John said, grinning.
"Captain?" Eugene whispered. John lifted his hand to quell him.
"Gunnery Officer," Captain Starchaser said, turning in her seat. "Prepare-"
"You are a coward!" John stood from his chair as he undid his straps, thrusting his finger dramatically at the cougarish commander. "You fear to face me in combat, face to face, where I can feel your bones splinter!"
Captain Starchaser hissed, then narrowed her eyes. Then she laughed, throwing back her head. "Fine. You wish to have me peel your skin from your bones? Very well!" She stood from her seat, her bridge camera tracking her motion. "Where do we meet in the field of battle?"
"Your ship," John said, his voice full of arrogant confidence. "Unless you think you can only win by stabbing me in the back?"
Captain Starchaser snorted, tossed her head, then slashed her hand across her throat. The screen cut off.
"Captain, what are you thinking?" Eugene asked.
"She referred to me as an orc," John said, smirking slightly. "Anyone else remember their English class?"
"I remember Delta flunking it," Triana said. Then she sat up. "Wait, you're right! Orc is a Terran reference – she had to have served closely with the UNN. Maybe even on one of our ships to pick that up. We did work with the Yip-Paw-Lop a lot on the Kruul/Swiffo front – there was a lot of officer sharing. So, wait, you think you can turn her to our side?"
"Why not?" John asked. "Pixie can make me look like a Kruul."
"Actually, I'm going to make you a Kruul!" Pixie said, brightly. John looked at her, his brow furrowing in confusion. She smiled and explained. "It's easier to maintain one psychic power than two. To make you a Kruul with just mind trickery means I have to do a telepathic effect and technopathic effect, or else everyone with cameras will just see you as a human. But if I use biokinesis to give you big fat flat Kruul dick and some heavy, green Kruul balls, then boom! You'll be totally Kruul, even when you're raw dogging the kitty on her command chair."
"I'm not-" John started, then shook his head. "Right. Anyway. I can seem like a Kruul, get aboard the ship, then talk to her when we're face to face. No chances for any younger officers, who are all too used to being Battle-Thralls, to get upset about turning against their masters. For all we know, any Paw born after the surrender likes being Battle-Thralls. The Zemturga aren't above using carrots. Or genetic tinkering." He made a face, thinking of the Kruul themselves. Had they once had poetry and art and compassion, like any other race, before the Zemturga had sculpted them into their perfect janissaries? He wondered...would it be possible to reverse that damage? He hoped so – the idea of having to fight every last Kruul, from the oldest gentrocrat to the youngest child, made his stomach turn. He hadn't joined the UNN to commit genocide, he had joined it to prevent genocides.
The approaching frigates – identified by Shey as Waa-7, Waa-9 and Waa-14 – came in closer around the Exaclibur. The Waa-7 extended a paw-like appendage from the center of its bristling body, slapping magnetic pads around the airlock on the inner side of the Excalibur's central spine. This close to the ship, John could see just how much smaller the three frigates were – but he knew that they actually might have a serious edge. The Excalibur, despite the best efforts of his crew, was still mostly Luciferian hull plating and empty space, bereft of the internal components that would make it punch as hard as it could.
He stood alone in the airlock, with Pixie pressing her psychic palms against his back. He stood alone and naked, too. This change was physical, not merely illusion. He groaned as he felt it starting to hit him...and there was almost the same level of raw pleasure as he had felt in his imagination. His cock hardened as it grew thicker, longer, greener. He felt his jaw aching as it stretched and bent outwards to keep room for his protruding tusks. His hair grew and shifted along his back, becoming thicker and curlier, while his ears narrowed to fine points. His skin turned brilliant emerald green, and thick tufts of black fur grew from his chest, his shoulders, along his back. A tiny, vestigial piggy tail grew from above his ass as he completed the transformation into a Kruul. Pixie stepped back, panting heavily.
"Damn I'm good," she whispered.
Looking at himself in the reflection of the airlock door, he to admit, she had crafted him into a very attractive Kruul, with a wild, feral beauty to his features, tusks and nose. He rubbed his hand along his jaw, while Pixie hurried over with the fabricated Kruul uniform and combat knife. John strapped the knife to his hip, adjusted the loincloth, and stood with arrogant confidence as Pixie, taking advantage of the fact the Paw didn't have access to security cameras in the airlock, populated it with illusions of other Kruul officers.
The airlock chimed and John touched the activation key.
The doors opened...and he found himself facing a fierce looking Captain Starchaser, wearing her thong, bikini, and paws. However, she held in her hand an old but sturdy looking UNN issue lasarm: the barrel aimed directly at his chest. Behind her were half a dozen armored Paw, their skintight spacesuits clinging to their bodies, their helmets having their ears built into their curved shapes, their tiger stripes painted onto the armor plating protecting their arms and chests. They carried more modern looking Paw weapons – their classic Needler rifles, with claw bayonets, all aimed at John and his illusory officers.
"Do you think I can't tell an Cataphract's bridge from some Kruul shit? I served on Cataphract class assault carrier for five years!" Captain Starchaser snarled, fiercely. "No matter what you cover it with – this is a Terran ship. And that means either you have Terran slaves aboard – or you killed the crew."
She lifted her pistol and aimed it directly at John's head.
"And if you killed the crew...then you die!"
TO BE CONTINUED
Captain John Tangent, Tactical Officer Lieutenant Trianna Yang, Starbase Commander Quincy Lagrange and the phantasmal alien psychic known as Pixie stood together in the observation bay of the New Interstellar Alliance's one and only 'hot lab.' Situated upon the now abandoned surface of the Earth, in the farthest reaches of the Gobi Desert, Hot Lab 1 had been constructed in a tearing hurry using every bit of flash fabricated material that the orbiting starbase could provide and was made for one purpose only: To see if the mysterious alien Voyulon traders could be trusted.
The four of them watched in mute focus as a Class-1 Railgun was mounted into place at the central laboratory, several kilometers away. The vidscreen displayed the image through grainy, cheap pickups, chosen to be easily replaced if something went catastrophically wrong. John tapped his fingers together, while Trianna crossed her arms over her chest. "Banging one snake lady," she muttered under her breath.
"I wish more people trade this kinda stuff for banging snake ladies," Pixie said, giggling. John smirked slightly – a private smile that none of the others were privy too, as Pixie was only visible or audible to him.
"Testing in five," Quincy said, brushing his fingers through his long, wavy blond hair. He looked good in the skintight outfit of a UNN commander, cut to properly fit his waifish figure and slender build. As a femboy, certain codes of military conduct were bent to allow for him to practice that most respected of Earthborn religions – this was why he got to keep the high heels, which he clicked against the ground in the only sign of nervousness that showed on his steely, feminine features. "Four. Three. Two."
The Class-1 Railgun fired directly into the shield emitters. Designed by the alien Chemdemdemdemar, field serfs of the terrible Zemturga Totality, the emitters looked nothing like what a human might make. Instead of hard steel and gleaming crystal, they were nothing but a series of interlocking flower petals that were banded in copper wire. Those wires flashed and the railgun slug stopped about a meter away from the emitter. Then the railgun fired again – the cloud of conductive metallic vapor that the railgun blasted out with each shot occluding the screen. Then it fired again, and and again, until the heat warning indicators flicked on.
"If that was one of our shields, it'd be so much scrap by now," Trianna said, watching the screen.
"The base didn't blow up at least, so there's nothing wrong with its power fields," John murmured.
The screen cleared.
The shield emitter was undamaged, and several glowing tungsten darts shimmered in the air before it before dropping to the floor with a clang that went entirely unheard by the cheap camera feed. Pixie threw her arms up.
"Woooo!"
John and Quincy shook hands, and the Starbase Commander beamed. "We'll have the new emitters in place before the day's out."
"What's your orders for after that?" Trianna asked.
"We're heading for Sigma Draconis II." John chuckled. "I think it's time we see the Totality from the inside now."
***
Delta Vee bounced on the tips of her toes as she watched, palms pressed against the glass, as her beloved Avenger got slowly and painfully dismembered. Butchered. Mutilated. "My baby girl! My sweet baby girl, they're ruining her!" She groaned, pressing her face against the glass as a few other pilots lounged around in the observation room of the starbase fabrication facility. Articulated arms – running on computer control – swung and buzzed around her fighter at incredible speeds, peeling away fuselage and taking out components so swiftly that between blinks it was like her ship was completely dismembered.
"You are aware of the concept known as a refit, right?" Kat asked, her tail twitching irritably from side to side.
"I'm aware of the concept of a refit," Delta said, pushing away from the window, scowling at the chief engineer of the Excalibur. "But these Voyurlong-bullshit shield emitters are freaking flowers!" She swung her hand back to the window, her timing utterly perfect. A sleek arm unfolded and placed a delicate bundle of flowers and copper into the hull of her ship, leaving a great deal of extra room where the old shield emitters would have gone. "I don't want to trust my life to a flower."
"You trust your life, every day, to a collection of goo and water," Kat muttered, watching with interest as the articulated arms started to...weld the flower in. Somehow.
"I do not!" Delta said.
Kat, without looking, reached out and flicked her forehead. "Dingus."
Delta rubbed her forehead, scowling. "Hey! I don't fucking risk my life...my...I...my brain isn't goo and water. It's- I...there…" She spluttered. "There's other stuff too."
"Not from what I can tell," Kat said.
Delta grumbled under her breath. "Says the girl who goes into freaking heat."
"Hey, don't knock going into heat. Going into heat's great," Kat said, her ears twitching up.
Delta grumbled even softer. "Says the girl who can hear like a bat grumble grumble."
"Did you call me a back?" Kat asked, frowning. "What does that even mean?"
The articulated arms pressed the wing fuselage in, then lasers hissed around the entire vehicle, leaving seams gleaming with cherry red metal. A sprayer hissed over as a final step, and the Avenger was left glossy and new, as if she had just come off the assembly line. There was no sign of the flower entombed within her metal hull, nor any hint that she had ever been opened again. Delta huffed slightly as she pressed her nose against the glass. "Well, at least the Zemturga can build a nice fabricator."
"No shit, the war would be way easier if they couldn't," Kat said, throwing herself down into the observation room's chair. She flung her legs up to hook over the back of the chair and laid her head back, so she was subjectively upside down to the young pilot. This view did give her a most excellent view of Delta Vee's taut, peach-shaped, spankable ass, contained as it was in the nearly skintight UNN pilot jumpsuit. She grinned, slightly. "Hey, uh, DV, do you see that spot weld they missed? Near the ground?"
"Where?" Delta hissed, cocking her head, then bending forward, craning to try and view her Avenger from the lowest angle possible. This just so happened to push her ass higher into the air and drew the jumpsuit tighter.
"Gods, I love undress blues," Kat whispered.
The door to the fabrication observation room opened and the Captain prowled in. Kat grinned at him as he saw her position, then tracked her eyeline to Delta, then back to her again. Her arched an eyebrow and pursed his lips. Kat stuck her tongue out at him, while Delta grumbled under her breath. "It's also kinda unfair to just give us a shield buff. They should give us more guns too."
"The additional firepower would kind of cut into your acceleration curve, DV," the Captain said, his voice amused.
"Captain!" She spun around, jerking upright. "You ordered this-"
"I did," he said, smirking slightly. "The shield improvements will pay for themselves. We're about to set out for Sigma Draconis II. It's one of the major trading hubs of the Totality – do you think that we can fabricate a housing for an Avenger that can make it look like, say, any of the Totality space fighters?"
Delta opened her mouth, then closed it. She put her hand to her chin while Kat rolled languidly from the air, flipping and coming to her feet in the same smooth motion. Her tail twitched as Delta tapped her thumb against her chin. "We couuuuuuuld mimic the Kruul Evil class interceptor," she said, hesitantly. "They're basically just shitty Avenger rip offs with extra spikes, no shields and no missiles and three more crew to manage their leaky ass fusion rockets." She made a face. "Do you ever think the Kruul just build their ships like that on purpose?"
"Like what?" The Captain asked.
"So when they blow up they get as many Kruul and as many enemies as they can killed or maimed as possible?" Delta asked. "Like, according to the flight logs we have, half the pilots that go up against Evils get cancer from their dirty ships blowing up in dogfights."
The Captain sighed. "I wouldn't put it past them. Still, will the Avenger be able to fly with that Kruul shit on it?"
"Eh," Delta said, waggling her hand.
"Can you put quick det charges to blow it off in a hurry?" the Captain asked, turning to face the engineer. Kat snickered.
"Pff, easy!" she said.
"Do it," the Captain said, then turned to go.
"Wait, John, we can't just fake being Kruul. They're big ugly fucking...copyright infringing uurks from that old book by the fuckin' French guy," she said, snapping her fingers. "Sartre, you know! He wrote the book with the dragons and the riddles and the ring that lets you make green telekinetic fists and stuff? Like, I am not dressing up as one! Not even if you can make a rubber forehead big enough."
The Captain pinched the bridge of his nose, looking pained. "Delta Vee, once again, I am reminded of why you sat behind me for English," he said. "And no. We're not going to pretend to be Kruul in person. That's what the computers are for. And only I need to go in person. And. Well." He turned to someone only he could see. "Pixie?"
The sensation of telepathic contact was almost unnoticeable to Delta Vee and Kat. Kat's left ear twitched and Delta scratched at the back of her neck. But between blinks, the Captain changed from a handsome, dark haired Terran with exotic, pale features to a tall, burly Kruul from their northern continent of their homeworld: Gray-brown skin, piggish snout, thick tusks, tufts of fur on chest, shoulder and more. He was dressed in a thick loincloth and loomed above them, burly and massive.
"See?" he rumbled.
"Ooooh!" Delta said.
"Yeah, that'll work," Kat said.
The Captain grinned – then between blinks, he was back to human. He turned to go. As he left, Kat nodded, then murmured. "...was he still kinda hot as a Kruul?"
"I wasn't gonna say it," Delta said, snickering.
Kat flipped her off.
"Anyway, I never did get that," Delta said. "Why did they call it English class if we were reading French books, huh?"
***
Sigma Draconis was an orange-red star, almost twenty light years from the SOL system. In the vast war between the Interstellar Alliance and the Zemturga Totality, it may have seemed strange that one of their forward posts had been so close to the homeworld of one of the Alliance's members, but the three dimensions of space and the operation of the Space Opera Field that permitted interstellar travel made borders and security a deeply complex and tricky topic. Stars weren't placed between lines drawn on maps: They were small pinpricks surrounded by potential forts that could be occupied. Some solar systems had been near perpetual battlefields, with logistic lines running into them from both sides, orbits shifting when and where people could arrive and leave safely.
So, Sigma Draconis had been left to the Totality even when the Alliance had been a growing concern, heavily secured by several direct star-lanes leading deeper into Totality territory and protected by the simple fact that the UNN had had more important things to deal with: Defending their own territory, protecting human colonies and Alliance starships from attack as the war wound closer and closer to its catastrophic end.
And now that humanity itself had been scooped off the Earth and scattered throughout Zemturga space as Pleasure Slaves, there was even less reason to ward the system from SOL.
That didn't mean Sigma Draconis was undefended.
Not in the slightest.
Trade-1, the largest trading station in Totality space, was in joint custody by the Myg'gar'gar and the Paw, one of the formerly aligned Yip-Paw-Lop species and both the Mygs and the Paw had enemies within the Totality as the Totality itself frayed apart without an external enemy. The Mygs were at war with the Urghats and the Paw were at war with the Kruul and the Vornash. It was that fact that had given John some pause as he laid in bed, considering the approach to Trade-1, listening to the faint hissing sound of the Space Opera Field as they cruised through Tier Four at superluminal speeds.
Tier Four was risky, but-
"Give you...pawwwwwws?"
He jerked his head up, blinking as he saw Pixie, who was laying her head against his belly, grinning up at him.
"What?" he asked.
"You were thinking about how it gives you pause! The Paws gives you Pause!" Pixie grinned, then focused – her lithe form shifting into a credible replica of 'what if she had been a Paws girl', her ears perking up, sleek and black and eager, her long and sinous tail twitching as she put her hands against his belly and extended her new sharp, midnight black talons. "But, no, it should be fine. Trade-1's a trade station. If you're not showing up to blast shit with lasers, they should let you in."
"I'm thinking of pretending to be a Kruul renegade," John murmured. "Not every one of them follows the Articles of Cruelty, right?"
"Mmm," Pixie nuzzled against his chest gently.
"Hmm," John said. "But the rest of the crew will have to wait. Or wear face concealing helmets – human bodyforms are close enough to the Yip-Paw-Lop." He chuckled. "Or Sensurians, but I don't think we should pretend to be them."
Pixie snickered. "I mean, I wouldn't mind."
"That's because you're the horniest girl I've ever met in my life," John said, his voice amused. "And Delta Vee takes notches out on her belt when she seduces new ones." Pixie giggled at that, then squirmed, wriggled, then threw herself across his belly. Despite her not actually existing, the weight of her pressed down on his chest and compressed him into the bed. John lifted his arms, wheezing, but Pixie had already wriggled herself around again so that now her thighs were cocked open above him, her sex pressed against the light tuft of his chest hair. Her grin grew wicked.
"I could be hornier, you know," she crooned.
"I find that slightly hard to believe," John said.
"I mean, being a symbiotic psychic construct that lives in your brain, I can basically do any kink you want." Her grin was playful. "Bondage! Shapeshifting into any alien girl you want. Oh! Oh!" She took his hand, then guided it to her throat, grinning wickedly. "Breathplay!" Her voice crooned softly. "Earfucking? Noooose fucking!"
"You made those last two up," John said, yanking his hand from her throat.
"Or did I?" she wiggled her eyebrows dramatically.
John narrowed his eyes.
"I have access, through the potent psionic ability of psychometry, to the entirety of humanity's vast array of perverse thoughts and images!" Pixie said, putting her fingers against her temples, grinning wickedly as she looked down at him. "Care to rumple a dragon? Or a goddess? Or a girl you had a crush on in high school?"
"I've already slept with every girl I had a crush on in the high school class," John said, dryly. "I'm very attractive and somewhat charismatic."
Pixie pouted. "No! ...you're extremely attractive." She snickered. "So so on the charisma, though."
John clasped his hand over his chest, rolling his head to the side and throwing out his tongue as if he had been shot dead by an arrow. Pixie burst into giggles, then leaned down, whispering softly as she bent herself almost in half. "Here, I'll kiss it better." Her hand snaked under his cheek, and John was able to draw his tongue back into his mouth just in time as she pressed her mouth to his. It was at times like this it was almost impossible to think of Pixie as anything but a living, breathing woman – eager and wanting and wet. And...from a lot of perspectives, she was. Sure, her body might have been a fine dusting of psychically active pollen threaded throughout his brain, but the scans that Doc Carothers had done had pinned down Pixie's physical self.
She drank of nutrients from his body, and she breathed out psionic energies. She could tickle his mind with her etheric hands, and touch the world around herself with psychokinetic fingertips. And she could damn well kiss like a woman. When she drew back, John was panting softly.
"This must look damn peculiar to the security cameras," he murmured.
She grinned. "Two words." She held up her hand, unfurling one finger. "Technopathy." She unfurled a second. "Exhibitionism!"
John blinked at her. Then he looked at the small feed pickup in the corner of his room. Then he looked back at her.
"You know the security team only checks if the AI alerts them, right?" he asked, his voice playful. "No one is watching us."
Pixie uses her psychic powers for transformation sexy times!
"Drat!" Pixie grumbled – then squeaked as John grabbed her hips, tossed her onto her back, and pinned her into the bed. This time, the kiss was not set to stun: He had set it firmly to kill. Her mouth and his locked together, her tongue warm and wanting and eager, snaking between his lips, finding his mouth. Her legs wriggled, then swung wide – hooking around behind his back as she put ankle over ankle, holding him in place as her fingernails dug into the back of his scalp, holding him close. When the kiss broke, she was panting heavily. "Ah, well, never the less," she whispered, dazedly.
"Heh," John said, his eyes gleaming warmly as he looked down into her eyes. "You know, if you keep…" He blinked as she wriggled, squirmed, and shimmied her way down his body, so that her face was mashed up against his pectoral muscles and her crotch pressed warm and wet and wanting to his groin – blazingly hot even through his undershorts. He chuckled. "If you keep trying to only take kinks that please me, I may think you're trying too hard to fl -nnhh…" His eyes half closed as a gyration of her hips ground against him so lewdly that his hips bucked despite himself.
"To flnnhh you?" Pixie looked confused. "Whatever could that mean, Captain?"
John laughed. You can read my mind, Pix, you little goober.
She grinned, then blushed. "...yeah. And...I get that worry too." She wriggled a bit – not lewdly this time, just squirming like she was trying to boil off her nervous energy. "Like, how much of me is me, and how much of me is me pleasing you?" She frowned. "Oh! Obviously, I should just close myself off from your mind, think of a kink, then force you to do it!"
"Or, uh, you could ask politely, as adults are known to-"
"Ooohooooo! You muuuust dooo iiiit!" Pixie oohed, wiggling her fingers at him as she slid her hands away from his head. Then she put her palms against his chest. "God, you're ripped though."
"Thanks," John said, dryly. "The injections the med-techs give us work very hard on maintaining muscle tone."
Pixie giggled. "Okay!" She grinned. "Can you be a big buff dragon stealing me from a tower and railing me so hard that I convert from being a princess to being a dragonfucker?"
John blinked down at her. He drew back, sitting on his haunches. "...huh!"
"What?" she asked, sitting up.
"I just didn't expect an alien to have such an incredibly Earthling style fantasy," John said.
"I never said it was a Terran dragon," Pixie said, grinning wickedly. "Are you aware of what the Hylano conception of a dragon looks like?" Her eyes glittered as she shimmered – and her body began to change. Her skin darkened until it was emerald green, and hardened until it was all sleek planes and sharp edges of chitin. Between the chitin was bunched, almost biomechanical muscles of a Hylano – but where the only Hylano male that John had ever seen was all long limbs and narrow body, Pixie's form retained a wasp waist, a sleek, flat belly, a chitinous exoskeleton that jacketed around a pair of hefty, lightly ribbed breasts, tipped with dark green nipples. Her upper arms bifurcated into uppers that stretched above her antenna, while her lowers spread to either side of her as she laid back, her mandibles opening and closing daintily.
"How do I look?" she buzzed in the elegant, musical Hylano version of Terran.
John reached up to tug at his collar, which felt quite tight, a fact rendered only slightly perplexing by his shirtless state. "I, ah, forgot Hylano women are so...fetching."
"Big titty mantis babes, you mean?"
"Well, yes, but I was trying to be more classy about it," John murmured, his eyes drinking in her body. He slid his hands down to his own hips, drawing back a bit so that he could lift one knee, then the other. His dick sprang free, bobbing slightly as he licked his lips slowly. He didn't need to work hard to be aroused by the gleaming elegance of a Hylano female – but the nervous excitement in the back of his mind only worked to make him more aroused. He didn't know what their conception of dragons was. What would he end up looking like when Pixie wiggled her fingers and let her powers to control and shift perceptions go.
He frowned, slightly. The fact she could so readily change how he saw the world was a little alarming, now that he thought about it. And now that he had thought about it, he wondered why it had taken him this long to even think that thought. Was that itself some trick of her powers? Or was it just that the merger felt so natural, so easy, like he had been waiting for it his whole life and hadn't known it? Pixie, who had lifted her hand, dropped it, looking at him with concern.
"Oh," she said.
"Oh what?" John asked.
"I just realized that too," she said. "Uh, I promise, I won't change your perception without your permission." She put her long, elegant fingered palms against his chest, sliding one to cover his heart. The thumping in his chest felt all the more present with her hand pressing to him. She sat up, them laid a curved cheek-mandible against his pecs, her antennas tickling his nose like dandilions being brushed against his face. John screwed up his face, trying to not giggle, squirm or sneeze. His hand reached up and he brushed her antenna back, letting them lay flat against her head as she spoke. "I really don't uhhhgnnh!"
She twitched, quivered, then gasped – and John was about to ask her if she had been hurt when her antennas bopped back up and slapped his nose and lips again. John made a face, then sniffed and almost sneezed as something tickled the back of his nose. He drew back, his hands on her shoulders as Pixie remained faintly wobbly – her compound eyes glittering, her mandibles opened in the Hylano version of a slack jawed face of orgasmic pleasure. Ahegao, he believed the term was. His hands cupped her green cheeks, pushing her mandibles back together.
"Pixie?" he asked.
"A-Antenna are erogenous zones…" she whispered.
"Oh," John said, blinking – a little nonplussed. He let himself grin. "They also tickle."
"Mmm." Her eyes glittered as she tilted her head, letting her antennas bob to the side. "A-Anyway, uh, I really don't want to mess with how you see the world. The very idea feels abhorrnt. Like...kissing your sister." She paused. "Like, my sister, not your sister. Do you have a sister?"
"Only child," John said, amused.
"Dang," Pixie said, then clicked her mandibles. "But, like, I want you to trust me. And I want me to trust me. Remember, I am only a few days old."
"I prefer not too, honestly," John admitted, grinning at her wryly. "You, for one, make a far better babe than baby."
"Aww!" She clicked her mandibles, her antenna twitching eagerly. "Anyway! You promised me a dragon! Come on! Dragon it up!" She paused. "Oh, right." She snapped her fingers. "I hope you like transformation sequences." She said, as John drew his hands back, looking down at them. They seemed completely human.
"I don't even know what-" John started, then gasped as he felt a strange heat growing inside of his body. His bones ached and throbbed – but they ached and throbbed in the same way his manhood did when he was truly, deeply aroused. It wasn't painful, it wasn't irritating. It was more...focusing. Like he couldn't bear to draw his attention away from it, even as his chest began to itch. He reached up, panting softly as his fingernails scraped at his skin – and to his shock, his skin began to peel away. Rather than bloody red sores beneath, though, there was instead a flash of brilliant emerald green. His bones ached harder and he groaned, stretching his head forward – and he felt his spine crack and begin to stretch upwards. The ache above his buttocks grew more intense and he felt a pressure against his skin, which burst as a thick, stubby tail began to grow from himself. His hands scratched more eagerly, spreading away from his chest, peeling huge dry clumps of skin away. No gore. Just more gleaming scales, bright and shining in the ship lights. His fingernails sharpened, hardened, and his shoulders bunched as he felt more pressure.
"Oh god!" John moaned, his voice nearly orgasmic as he felt wings burst from his back, his lips stretching as his face elongated with a soft click as his transformation completed. His feet stretched and grew long and arched, his knees popped to become digitigrade, and his tail burst from his back, sweeping let and right. The last bits of his skin fell away, revealing more green scales – ranging from so dark they were almost black to so light that they were nearly yellow, caressing his muscular body as close as his skin had before. His maw was full of sharp teeth and his wings were leathery, batlike. Stretching behind him and flexing as his clawed hands planted to either side of Pixie's shoulders.
She clicked her mandibles and clapped her hands together. "Ee! You're a perfect dragon!"
John tried to speak through his panting. "This is very similar to an Earth dragon, you know?"
"Yeah, the Hylano got the mythological concept from you after first contact," Pixie murmured. "From a historical image board, I believe."
John blinked down at her, his nictitating membranes flicking over eyes he was sure were slitted. Then he looked down to see that his cock had not only gotten significantly larger, but it had also become both knotted...and joined by a second, slightly smaller cock. The two dripped with eagerness, self lubricating and slippery as if they had been oiled. He lifted his head to Pixie's face. She giggled, and clicked her mandibles again.
"A very fun image board!" Pixie said. "Now, I think-"
John grinned and grabbed onto her hips, cutting her off.
"You said you wanted a dragon, Princess," he crooned, trying to get into character for her. It was remarkably easy. He felt so...strong. Energy pulsed through his veins. His tail lashed from side to side as Pixie's mandibles clacked shut. "You got a dragon."
"Eep!" Pixie squeaked.
Then he tossed her up into the air and flipped her around with the same motion. The slender, winged mantis-girl landed on her hands and knees, her rump thrust into the air. Due to a remarkable display of convergent evolution, her chitin's rump was as rounded and toothsome as a model from Earth – and between those hard, sharp thighs was soft, rubbery flesh – and there, gleaming and dripping with arousal, was a dark green-black pair of pussy lips that looked so damn inviting that it was all John could do to not croon.
"I-I'll never surrender to your dark whims!" Pixie squeaked, glancing over her shoulder. "N-nhhghh!" She groaned as his scaled hand grabbed her by the base of her antenna, his other gripping her shoulder, pinning her down. He stroked her antenna up and down as if he was massaging a cock – and as he did so, her hips bucked and twitched. Thick, juicy, glowing green girlcum slithered down her thighs, puddling onto the bed as she groaned against the mattress. "Nngh! Take me, fuck me, claim me for your dark whims, oh gods, yes! Yes! Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!"
John chuckled. "You know, in a proper roleplay, you should-"
"Fuuuuuuuuuck meeeee!" She whined.
"-really try and…" He stroked her antenna faster now. If it were possible for compound eyes to roll back into one's skull, he was pretty sure Pixie's would have at that point. "...hold out longer."
"Hghngnnnngh!" she groaned, inarticulately as her spine curved so hard and fierce that she managed to press her belly to the bed while pushing her ass insistantly up. The thin line of green girlcum spurting from her sex was strong enough to carry the distance and soak both of his dicks and his balls as she squirted in bliss. John chuckled, releasing her antenna – making her mewl in animal want. Insectoid want, actually.
"Taking note for any future Hylano diplomatic…" His dicks pressed against her ass and her cunt with the same easy motion of his hips. He thrust deep – his members spreading her as she tightened around both of him at once, the double sensation so intense that he let out a snarling groan, thin lines of smoke spurting from his nostrils. "...efforts!"
"H-Hah!" Pixie gasped, her hands reaching up to grab the headboard as she braced herself. She needed it too. John had gotten uesd to the fact that, since this was mostly in his head, sustained by nerve impulses and psychic powers...he didn't need to be gentle. Or hold back. Or. Anything, really! So, he grabbed onto both of her hips with a powerful pressure and the began to thrust into his dream girl with impacts powerful enough to fold her in half. Her hips jiggled and her chitin clicked and clacked as the whole bed swayed with every powerful thrust of his draconic hemipeen, his scaled balls clapping against her thighs. Pixie managed words, despite that.
They were...emphatic.
"Fuck! Yes! Ah! My dragon god! Yes! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fhuckkkk! Oh god, god, yes, yes, ah! I'm cum...I'm cumming, I'm cumming, I'm cumming!" She moaned desperately, her mandibles opening wide as her antennas twitched to their full extension. Her fingers gripped the headboard so hard that if her knuckles had been able too, they'd have turned white. Her sex tightened around his lower dick, while her anus gripped his upper dick like a desperate, needy hand. Her mandibles opened even wider as she pushed her hips back and her juices splashed against his thighs, dripping down his balls, puddling against his knees as John simply reveled in the heavy, hearty plap plap plap slap of balls to thighs.
"You're my princess now," John growled.
"Yes! I'm your princess now! Yes! Ah! Oh god!" Pixie moaned.
The communicator chose the worst possible moment in the universe to blip loudly. John snatched it – noticing, barely, that it actually drifted to his hand before he quite reached it, allowing him to grab it without moving or shifting from his position behind the beautiful psuedo-Hylano. He put it to his ear and growled into it. "Yeah?"
"Captain, this is Lt. Sheyshan," Shey's voice came over the line. "We're almost too Sigma Draconis and a mass bubble is approaching us. We believe they're going to attempt to pull us out of the SOF."
"Understood," John said, panting. "Be there in in a second."
"Very good. Enjoy yourself, Captain," Shey said, then the line clicked off. John, who had not paused in his thrusting, tossed the wrist com aside, grinning ferally down at Pixie, who had pressed her face into the pillow. Her hips twitched and she moaned.
"Want me to finish you off?" she asked, her voice ragged.
"Sure, I-" John started, ready to begin thrusting without even trying to hold back. Before he could move, a spark of white, hot, blazing pleasure exploded in the center of his mind. It swept through his body with the thunderous crack of a nuclear bomb going off, and with about the same raw power. His balls tightened and he threw his head back, roaring as bliss exploded through him and he came. And came. And came. And came. The pleasure crested, ebbed, then flowed back against him like a tidal wave as he roared a second time – and felt his seed gushing around the twin dicks he had buried deep inside of his woman. Pixie moaned again and again, while white light seemed to blank out everything. John slid back, then shook his head – blinking slowly.
The white haze cleared and he saw Pixie, laying on her side, her compound eyes glassy. Her buttocks and her cunt oozed with thick, thick white cum, flowing down her thighs like small rivers. Even more cum splashed her face, her breasts, her back, her belly, her sides. It was as if he had just spurted over her like a firehose. Even her tummy was slightly swelling, as if she had already become pregnant – but as he watched, she put her hand on her belly, mewling as it started to shrink, and yet more cum dripped from her ass, splashing onto the bed. Her head rolled to the side and her mandibles clacked loudly.
"I forgot," she said, sounding dazed. "Dragons cum a lot."
John nodded.
"Can you give us a shower before we head to the bridge?"
"Do you think that's cum that's actually dripping from me?" Pixie grinned.
Between blinks, John was nude, but clean, and once more looked and felt human. Pixie was already dressed and sitting up, her cheeks flushed and her hair mussed. John sniffed and she still smelled like a week of sex, condensed into one horny little antenna'd cutie. She grinned, sheepishly.
"Hey, I'm psychic, not miracle worker," Pixie muttered.
"Heh," John said, his eyes gleaming warmly as he looked down into her eyes. "You know, if you keep…" He blinked as she wriggled, squirmed, and shimmied her way down his body, so that her face was mashed up against his pectoral muscles and her crotch pressed warm and wet and wanting to his groin – blazingly hot even through his undershorts. He chuckled. "If you keep trying to only take kinks that please me, I may think you're trying too hard to fl -nnhh…" His eyes half closed as a gyration of her hips ground against him so lewdly that his hips bucked despite himself.
"To flnnhh you?" Pixie looked confused. "Whatever could that mean, Captain?"
John laughed. You can read my mind, Pix, you little goober.
She grinned, then blushed. "...yeah. And...I get that worry too." She wriggled a bit – not lewdly this time, just squirming like she was trying to boil off her nervous energy. "Like, how much of me is me, and how much of me is me pleasing you?" She frowned. "Oh! Obviously, I should just close myself off from your mind, think of a kink, then force you to do it!"
"Or, uh, you could ask politely, as adults are known to-"
"Ooohooooo! You muuuust dooo iiiit!" Pixie oohed, wiggling her fingers at him as she slid her hands away from his head. Then she put her palms against his chest. "God, you're ripped though."
"Thanks," John said, dryly. "The injections the med-techs give us work very hard on maintaining muscle tone."
Pixie giggled. "Okay!" She grinned. "Can you be a big buff dragon stealing me from a tower and railing me so hard that I convert from being a princess to being a dragonfucker?"
John blinked down at her. He drew back, sitting on his haunches. "...huh!"
"What?" she asked, sitting up.
"I just didn't expect an alien to have such an incredibly Earthling style fantasy," John said.
"I never said it was a Terran dragon," Pixie said, grinning wickedly. "Are you aware of what the Hylano conception of a dragon looks like?" Her eyes glittered as she shimmered – and her body began to change. Her skin darkened until it was emerald green, and hardened until it was all sleek planes and sharp edges of chitin. Between the chitin was bunched, almost biomechanical muscles of a Hylano – but where the only Hylano male that John had ever seen was all long limbs and narrow body, Pixie's form retained a wasp waist, a sleek, flat belly, a chitinous exoskeleton that jacketed around a pair of hefty, lightly ribbed breasts, tipped with dark green nipples. Her upper arms bifurcated into uppers that stretched above her antenna, while her lowers spread to either side of her as she laid back, her mandibles opening and closing daintily.
"How do I look?" she buzzed in the elegant, musical Hylano version of Terran.
John reached up to tug at his collar, which felt quite tight, a fact rendered only slightly perplexing by his shirtless state. "I, ah, forgot Hylano women are so...fetching."
"Big titty mantis babes, you mean?"
"Well, yes, but I was trying to be more classy about it," John murmured, his eyes drinking in her body. He slid his hands down to his own hips, drawing back a bit so that he could lift one knee, then the other. His dick sprang free, bobbing slightly as he licked his lips slowly. He didn't need to work hard to be aroused by the gleaming elegance of a Hylano female – but the nervous excitement in the back of his mind only worked to make him more aroused. He didn't know what their conception of dragons was. What would he end up looking like when Pixie wiggled her fingers and let her powers to control and shift perceptions go.
He frowned, slightly. The fact she could so readily change how he saw the world was a little alarming, now that he thought about it. And now that he had thought about it, he wondered why it had taken him this long to even think that thought. Was that itself some trick of her powers? Or was it just that the merger felt so natural, so easy, like he had been waiting for it his whole life and hadn't known it? Pixie, who had lifted her hand, dropped it, looking at him with concern.
"Oh," she said.
"Oh what?" John asked.
"I just realized that too," she said. "Uh, I promise, I won't change your perception without your permission." She put her long, elegant fingered palms against his chest, sliding one to cover his heart. The thumping in his chest felt all the more present with her hand pressing to him. She sat up, them laid a curved cheek-mandible against his pecs, her antennas tickling his nose like dandilions being brushed against his face. John screwed up his face, trying to not giggle, squirm or sneeze. His hand reached up and he brushed her antenna back, letting them lay flat against her head as she spoke. "I really don't uhhhgnnh!"
She twitched, quivered, then gasped – and John was about to ask her if she had been hurt when her antennas bopped back up and slapped his nose and lips again. John made a face, then sniffed and almost sneezed as something tickled the back of his nose. He drew back, his hands on her shoulders as Pixie remained faintly wobbly – her compound eyes glittering, her mandibles opened in the Hylano version of a slack jawed face of orgasmic pleasure. Ahegao, he believed the term was. His hands cupped her green cheeks, pushing her mandibles back together.
"Pixie?" he asked.
"A-Antenna are erogenous zones…" she whispered.
"Oh," John said, blinking – a little nonplussed. He let himself grin. "They also tickle."
"Mmm." Her eyes glittered as she tilted her head, letting her antennas bob to the side. "A-Anyway, uh, I really don't want to mess with how you see the world. The very idea feels abhorrnt. Like...kissing your sister." She paused. "Like, my sister, not your sister. Do you have a sister?"
"Only child," John said, amused.
"Dang," Pixie said, then clicked her mandibles. "But, like, I want you to trust me. And I want me to trust me. Remember, I am only a few days old."
"I prefer not too, honestly," John admitted, grinning at her wryly. "You, for one, make a far better babe than baby."
"Aww!" She clicked her mandibles, her antenna twitching eagerly. "Anyway! You promised me a dragon! Come on! Dragon it up!" She paused. "Oh, right." She snapped her fingers. "I hope you like transformation sequences." She said, as John drew his hands back, looking down at them. They seemed completely human.
"I don't even know what-" John started, then gasped as he felt a strange heat growing inside of his body. His bones ached and throbbed – but they ached and throbbed in the same way his manhood did when he was truly, deeply aroused. It wasn't painful, it wasn't irritating. It was more...focusing. Like he couldn't bear to draw his attention away from it, even as his chest began to itch. He reached up, panting softly as his fingernails scraped at his skin – and to his shock, his skin began to peel away. Rather than bloody red sores beneath, though, there was instead a flash of brilliant emerald green. His bones ached harder and he groaned, stretching his head forward – and he felt his spine crack and begin to stretch upwards. The ache above his buttocks grew more intense and he felt a pressure against his skin, which burst as a thick, stubby tail began to grow from himself. His hands scratched more eagerly, spreading away from his chest, peeling huge dry clumps of skin away. No gore. Just more gleaming scales, bright and shining in the ship lights. His fingernails sharpened, hardened, and his shoulders bunched as he felt more pressure.
"Oh god!" John moaned, his voice nearly orgasmic as he felt wings burst from his back, his lips stretching as his face elongated with a soft click as his transformation completed. His feet stretched and grew long and arched, his knees popped to become digitigrade, and his tail burst from his back, sweeping let and right. The last bits of his skin fell away, revealing more green scales – ranging from so dark they were almost black to so light that they were nearly yellow, caressing his muscular body as close as his skin had before. His maw was full of sharp teeth and his wings were leathery, batlike. Stretching behind him and flexing as his clawed hands planted to either side of Pixie's shoulders.
She clicked her mandibles and clapped her hands together. "Ee! You're a perfect dragon!"
John tried to speak through his panting. "This is very similar to an Earth dragon, you know?"
"Yeah, the Hylano got the mythological concept from you after first contact," Pixie murmured. "From a historical image board, I believe."
John blinked down at her, his nictitating membranes flicking over eyes he was sure were slitted. Then he looked down to see that his cock had not only gotten significantly larger, but it had also become both knotted...and joined by a second, slightly smaller cock. The two dripped with eagerness, self lubricating and slippery as if they had been oiled. He lifted his head to Pixie's face. She giggled, and clicked her mandibles again.
"A very fun image board!" Pixie said. "Now, I think-"
John grinned and grabbed onto her hips, cutting her off.
"You said you wanted a dragon, Princess," he crooned, trying to get into character for her. It was remarkably easy. He felt so...strong. Energy pulsed through his veins. His tail lashed from side to side as Pixie's mandibles clacked shut. "You got a dragon."
"Eep!" Pixie squeaked.
Then he tossed her up into the air and flipped her around with the same motion. The slender, winged mantis-girl landed on her hands and knees, her rump thrust into the air. Due to a remarkable display of convergent evolution, her chitin's rump was as rounded and toothsome as a model from Earth – and between those hard, sharp thighs was soft, rubbery flesh – and there, gleaming and dripping with arousal, was a dark green-black pair of pussy lips that looked so damn inviting that it was all John could do to not croon.
"I-I'll never surrender to your dark whims!" Pixie squeaked, glancing over her shoulder. "N-nhhghh!" She groaned as his scaled hand grabbed her by the base of her antenna, his other gripping her shoulder, pinning her down. He stroked her antenna up and down as if he was massaging a cock – and as he did so, her hips bucked and twitched. Thick, juicy, glowing green girlcum slithered down her thighs, puddling onto the bed as she groaned against the mattress. "Nngh! Take me, fuck me, claim me for your dark whims, oh gods, yes! Yes! Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!"
John chuckled. "You know, in a proper roleplay, you should-"
"Fuuuuuuuuuck meeeee!" She whined.
"-really try and…" He stroked her antenna faster now. If it were possible for compound eyes to roll back into one's skull, he was pretty sure Pixie's would have at that point. "...hold out longer."
"Hghngnnnngh!" she groaned, inarticulately as her spine curved so hard and fierce that she managed to press her belly to the bed while pushing her ass insistantly up. The thin line of green girlcum spurting from her sex was strong enough to carry the distance and soak both of his dicks and his balls as she squirted in bliss. John chuckled, releasing her antenna – making her mewl in animal want. Insectoid want, actually.
"Taking note for any future Hylano diplomatic…" His dicks pressed against her ass and her cunt with the same easy motion of his hips. He thrust deep – his members spreading her as she tightened around both of him at once, the double sensation so intense that he let out a snarling groan, thin lines of smoke spurting from his nostrils. "...efforts!"
"H-Hah!" Pixie gasped, her hands reaching up to grab the headboard as she braced herself. She needed it too. John had gotten uesd to the fact that, since this was mostly in his head, sustained by nerve impulses and psychic powers...he didn't need to be gentle. Or hold back. Or. Anything, really! So, he grabbed onto both of her hips with a powerful pressure and the began to thrust into his dream girl with impacts powerful enough to fold her in half. Her hips jiggled and her chitin clicked and clacked as the whole bed swayed with every powerful thrust of his draconic hemipeen, his scaled balls clapping against her thighs. Pixie managed words, despite that.
They were...emphatic.
"Fuck! Yes! Ah! My dragon god! Yes! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fhuckkkk! Oh god, god, yes, yes, ah! I'm cum...I'm cumming, I'm cumming, I'm cumming!" She moaned desperately, her mandibles opening wide as her antennas twitched to their full extension. Her fingers gripped the headboard so hard that if her knuckles had been able too, they'd have turned white. Her sex tightened around his lower dick, while her anus gripped his upper dick like a desperate, needy hand. Her mandibles opened even wider as she pushed her hips back and her juices splashed against his thighs, dripping down his balls, puddling against his knees as John simply reveled in the heavy, hearty plap plap plap slap of balls to thighs.
"You're my princess now," John growled.
"Yes! I'm your princess now! Yes! Ah! Oh god!" Pixie moaned.
The communicator chose the worst possible moment in the universe to blip loudly. John snatched it – noticing, barely, that it actually drifted to his hand before he quite reached it, allowing him to grab it without moving or shifting from his position behind the beautiful psuedo-Hylano. He put it to his ear and growled into it. "Yeah?"
"Captain, this is Lt. Sheyshan," Shey's voice came over the line. "We're almost too Sigma Draconis and a mass bubble is approaching us. We believe they're going to attempt to pull us out of the SOF."
"Understood," John said, panting. "Be there in in a second."
"Very good. Enjoy yourself, Captain," Shey said, then the line clicked off. John, who had not paused in his thrusting, tossed the wrist com aside, grinning ferally down at Pixie, who had pressed her face into the pillow. Her hips twitched and she moaned.
"Want me to finish you off?" she asked, her voice ragged.
"Sure, I-" John started, ready to begin thrusting without even trying to hold back. Before he could move, a spark of white, hot, blazing pleasure exploded in the center of his mind. It swept through his body with the thunderous crack of a nuclear bomb going off, and with about the same raw power. His balls tightened and he threw his head back, roaring as bliss exploded through him and he came. And came. And came. And came. The pleasure crested, ebbed, then flowed back against him like a tidal wave as he roared a second time – and felt his seed gushing around the twin dicks he had buried deep inside of his woman. Pixie moaned again and again, while white light seemed to blank out everything. John slid back, then shook his head – blinking slowly.
The white haze cleared and he saw Pixie, laying on her side, her compound eyes glassy. Her buttocks and her cunt oozed with thick, thick white cum, flowing down her thighs like small rivers. Even more cum splashed her face, her breasts, her back, her belly, her sides. It was as if he had just spurted over her like a firehose. Even her tummy was slightly swelling, as if she had already become pregnant – but as he watched, she put her hand on her belly, mewling as it started to shrink, and yet more cum dripped from her ass, splashing onto the bed. Her head rolled to the side and her mandibles clacked loudly.
"I forgot," she said, sounding dazed. "Dragons cum a lot."
John nodded.
"Can you give us a shower before we head to the bridge?"
"Do you think that's cum that's actually dripping from me?" Pixie grinned.
Between blinks, John was nude, but clean, and once more looked and felt human. Pixie was already dressed and sitting up, her cheeks flushed and her hair mussed. John sniffed and she still smelled like a week of sex, condensed into one horny little antenna'd cutie. She grinned, sheepishly.
"Hey, I'm psychic, not miracle worker," Pixie muttered.
***
When John reached the bridge of the Excalibur, he was dressed and prepared to focus once more. He strode onto the bridge to find that the rest of his officers were all readied and at their posts. He nodded to Lt. Sheyshan. "Shey, what are we looking at here?"
"Relatively small mass shadow," she said. "They're in Tier 2, far enough above us we can't get a good resolution on sensors, but I have no reason to think they're not the trade station's picket fleet."
"How big is relatively small?" John asked, taking his seat in his command chair, strapping in as Pixie shrank to the size of...well, a pixie and settled onto his shoulder. Triana, who had her dossier of Totality ships on display and was running their mass levels through the battle computer, turned back to face him. She looked a bit pensive, but not grim.
"At most, we're looking at a single ship of the same size, or two to three smaller ships. If they're Paw, we may be looking at modified Pallas class frigates or, maybe, a Tiger class heavy cruiser." She drummed her fingers on the console. "Kat may be able to tell more, I'm sending this data down to her."
"You know what I'm wondering about?" Albert asked as he adjusted their course – when their mass and the approaching picket's mass intersected, they were going to be pulled out of the SOF near the edge of the Sigma Draconis system. Albert, like any pilot worth his salt, was picking a place with some astro-navigational dangers. In this case, he was going to try and drop them near ring system of a subjovian gas giant at the edge of Sigma Draconis.
"Hmm?" Eugene asked.
"Why'd the Totality make the Paw the battle thralls and not the Yip?" he asked, turning to face the rest of them. "I mean, we all know cats are bastards-"
"I heard that!" Kat's voice came from the console. John shot Albert a look, and Albert lifted his hands up.
"Bastards parenthesis complimentary close parenthesis," he said into the console.
"Damn straight!"
"But the Yip? They're a lot more prone to fighting as a unit rather than running off solo, right? Which you want for a navy and all." he said. "I mean, I get why the Lop, sadly, got the Pleasure Slave role." He made a face. "Considering, well…" He trailed off, while Triana snorted.
"Have you ever tried to get a day's work out of a cat?" she asked, playfully. "If Kat wasn't as into machines as she is, do you think we'd get a single shift out of here?" She paused. "Complimentary."
"Nah, that's just true," Kat said, with equanimity. "Like, c'mon, who the fuck works if you don't have too?"
"The Yip, you can get to work in a factory. The Lob...uh...well…" Triana coughed. "So, that just leaves the Paw, if you want to break up the Yip-Paw-Lob unity and make them into three distinct species."
"Grim, but it tracks," John said, rubbing his chin. "ETA on our intersection?"
"Right about…" Albert lifted his hand. "Now."
The ship shuddered as they shunted upwards, through tier after tier of the Space Opera Field, emerging with a blazing flare of Cerenkov radiation into the orbit of Sigma Draconis' largest gas giant. A glittering ring of ice asteroids swept out before them as three similar pinpricks appeared and the three Paw frigates emerged from Tier Two of the SOF. The Pallas class was well named, and well suited, to this region of space: To make them as inexpensively as possible, the Paw took asteroids, hollowed them out, and then filled them with their engines and studded them with sensor antennas and weapon arrays that made them look like asteroids that had grown a thick, downy coat of fur. From a distance, with their arrays retracted, they looked quite a lot like rocks.
These three fanned out into a triangular formation as Shey put her finger to her earpiece. "We're being hailed, Captain."
"Do you have the obfuscation programs online?" John asked.
"Yes, every image we're sending to them will be doctored. They'll be seeing this," Shey said, turning her console screen to show John an image of him as a Kruul, surrounded by other Kruul bridge crew officers – and he had to admit, all of his bridge officers re-imagined as that burly, hideous race was not exactly the most encouraging thing in the universe. Despite that, he gave a smile to Shey, then turned back to the front screen.
"Patch them through," he said.
The screen flickered and he saw his first Paw that wasn't Kat.
She was a broad shouldered, muscular woman with olive brown skin, silver gray hair, curved at ears, and whisker tattoos that marked out her cheeks with fierce, tiger-striped lines. She wore a furry bikini, thong and boots – magnetic soles built into the false pads of the fluffy, cat-like things. Her gauntlets were huge and paw shaped as well, covered with the same silvery fur as the rest of her attire. Her body, and good god she exposed much of it, was seamed with scars ranging from parallel claw marks to puckered gunshot wounds. Her breasts were larger than John's head, perky enough to stand proudly despite their heft, and her features were that of a dangerous predator: Sharp eyed, attentive and fierce. She seemed to be mature enough to be a cougar rather than a kitten – and her voice backed that up as she purred.
"Mrrwell, what do we have here...a little pack of K-rrrr-uul in our region of space!" she said, her voice full of trilling purrs as she lifted one of her paw-clad hands to brush her silvery hair back. "Normally, our fellow Battle Thralls tell us when their ugly kin are sniffing around – but here you are, sneaking in through the back door like a pack of sorry dogs. So, why don't you tell me what you're doing here before we splash your ugly little kitbash into space dust!"
"Name first," John growled. He was careful to not pitch his voice down too much or try and sound extra gravely, as that was what the computer was for. The alteration program must have worked because the Paw captain sniff.
"I am Captain Tygress Starchaser, Captain of the Paw Slave Armada Waa-7, which is why you should begin to be more polite to me, Krull, or else my glaring will decide to sharpen our claws on you…" She mimed a claw swipe with her hand – and silvery daggers the length of kitchen knives burst from her gauntlet before retracting.
"I am Domineer Trudd," John said, flatly. "We are a trade ship from the Kruul Maliceocracy. As much as it pains me to not torture a little kitten like you, I must request instead freedom to approach Trade-1 and unload our hold." He glared at her.
"Awww, does the little orcy-worky wanna get by us?" Captain Starchaesr sneered.
"Orcy-worky?" John asked, taken aback by such a Terran reference. Starchaser snorted, then flipped her paw dismissively.
"Never you mind, Kruul. Now…I will let you through without atomizing your little ship. But only if you pay us," she said, grinning fiercely. "How does that sound?"
"Shit," Eugene murmured, his voice soft enough to not be picked up.
"Will you take resources?" John growled. "We can spare some iron. Maybe copper."
"Copper!? Iron!" Captain Starchaser huffed. "Now you are trying to be insulting, orcy-worky. No! We demand Totality credits, slaves, or service. Or else…" She flicked her finger. Sheyshan, her eyes locked onto her sensors, frowned and turned to John.
"Sir, they're warming up their Cats Cradle emitters!"
John rubbed his hand along his chin – wondering how the program that converted him from Terran to a Kruul in the projection that the Paw were getting translated the gesture. His eyes narrowed as he considered, weighing the options...but that orcy-worky reference. He narrowed his eyes slowly, then growled. "You served in that pathetic Alliance, didn't you?"
"What of it?" the older feline female said, sniffing loudly. "We took the Oath, same as you. The Zemturga have said as much. In fact, I'm pretty su-rrrrrr-e…" She purred, leaning forward, her cat-green eyes flashing. "That they've repeatedly told the Maliceocracy to respect our Oath, and we've had to back that up with our own claws and teeth."
"With ships, maybe," John said, thinking quickly. "But you never wish to face us, paw to fist."
"You think I would turn down a chance to gut a Kruul?" Captain Starchaser hissed.
"I do," John said, grinning.
"Captain?" Eugene whispered. John lifted his hand to quell him.
"Gunnery Officer," Captain Starchaser said, turning in her seat. "Prepare-"
"You are a coward!" John stood from his chair as he undid his straps, thrusting his finger dramatically at the cougarish commander. "You fear to face me in combat, face to face, where I can feel your bones splinter!"
Captain Starchaser hissed, then narrowed her eyes. Then she laughed, throwing back her head. "Fine. You wish to have me peel your skin from your bones? Very well!" She stood from her seat, her bridge camera tracking her motion. "Where do we meet in the field of battle?"
"Your ship," John said, his voice full of arrogant confidence. "Unless you think you can only win by stabbing me in the back?"
Captain Starchaser snorted, tossed her head, then slashed her hand across her throat. The screen cut off.
"Captain, what are you thinking?" Eugene asked.
"She referred to me as an orc," John said, smirking slightly. "Anyone else remember their English class?"
"I remember Delta flunking it," Triana said. Then she sat up. "Wait, you're right! Orc is a Terran reference – she had to have served closely with the UNN. Maybe even on one of our ships to pick that up. We did work with the Yip-Paw-Lop a lot on the Kruul/Swiffo front – there was a lot of officer sharing. So, wait, you think you can turn her to our side?"
"Why not?" John asked. "Pixie can make me look like a Kruul."
"Actually, I'm going to make you a Kruul!" Pixie said, brightly. John looked at her, his brow furrowing in confusion. She smiled and explained. "It's easier to maintain one psychic power than two. To make you a Kruul with just mind trickery means I have to do a telepathic effect and technopathic effect, or else everyone with cameras will just see you as a human. But if I use biokinesis to give you big fat flat Kruul dick and some heavy, green Kruul balls, then boom! You'll be totally Kruul, even when you're raw dogging the kitty on her command chair."
"I'm not-" John started, then shook his head. "Right. Anyway. I can seem like a Kruul, get aboard the ship, then talk to her when we're face to face. No chances for any younger officers, who are all too used to being Battle-Thralls, to get upset about turning against their masters. For all we know, any Paw born after the surrender likes being Battle-Thralls. The Zemturga aren't above using carrots. Or genetic tinkering." He made a face, thinking of the Kruul themselves. Had they once had poetry and art and compassion, like any other race, before the Zemturga had sculpted them into their perfect janissaries? He wondered...would it be possible to reverse that damage? He hoped so – the idea of having to fight every last Kruul, from the oldest gentrocrat to the youngest child, made his stomach turn. He hadn't joined the UNN to commit genocide, he had joined it to prevent genocides.
The approaching frigates – identified by Shey as Waa-7, Waa-9 and Waa-14 – came in closer around the Exaclibur. The Waa-7 extended a paw-like appendage from the center of its bristling body, slapping magnetic pads around the airlock on the inner side of the Excalibur's central spine. This close to the ship, John could see just how much smaller the three frigates were – but he knew that they actually might have a serious edge. The Excalibur, despite the best efforts of his crew, was still mostly Luciferian hull plating and empty space, bereft of the internal components that would make it punch as hard as it could.
He stood alone in the airlock, with Pixie pressing her psychic palms against his back. He stood alone and naked, too. This change was physical, not merely illusion. He groaned as he felt it starting to hit him...and there was almost the same level of raw pleasure as he had felt in his imagination. His cock hardened as it grew thicker, longer, greener. He felt his jaw aching as it stretched and bent outwards to keep room for his protruding tusks. His hair grew and shifted along his back, becoming thicker and curlier, while his ears narrowed to fine points. His skin turned brilliant emerald green, and thick tufts of black fur grew from his chest, his shoulders, along his back. A tiny, vestigial piggy tail grew from above his ass as he completed the transformation into a Kruul. Pixie stepped back, panting heavily.
"Damn I'm good," she whispered.
Looking at himself in the reflection of the airlock door, he to admit, she had crafted him into a very attractive Kruul, with a wild, feral beauty to his features, tusks and nose. He rubbed his hand along his jaw, while Pixie hurried over with the fabricated Kruul uniform and combat knife. John strapped the knife to his hip, adjusted the loincloth, and stood with arrogant confidence as Pixie, taking advantage of the fact the Paw didn't have access to security cameras in the airlock, populated it with illusions of other Kruul officers.
The airlock chimed and John touched the activation key.
The doors opened...and he found himself facing a fierce looking Captain Starchaser, wearing her thong, bikini, and paws. However, she held in her hand an old but sturdy looking UNN issue lasarm: the barrel aimed directly at his chest. Behind her were half a dozen armored Paw, their skintight spacesuits clinging to their bodies, their helmets having their ears built into their curved shapes, their tiger stripes painted onto the armor plating protecting their arms and chests. They carried more modern looking Paw weapons – their classic Needler rifles, with claw bayonets, all aimed at John and his illusory officers.
"Do you think I can't tell an Cataphract's bridge from some Kruul shit? I served on Cataphract class assault carrier for five years!" Captain Starchaser snarled, fiercely. "No matter what you cover it with – this is a Terran ship. And that means either you have Terran slaves aboard – or you killed the crew."
She lifted her pistol and aimed it directly at John's head.
"And if you killed the crew...then you die!"
TO BE CONTINUED
JRR Tolkien, Martin Nodell, and Gene Roddenberry are all spinning in their graves right now.
Also, the Kruul are my new favorite species. I love the "Extremely card-carrying villain" trope.
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
And it wasn't for his lecture notes
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I love that their government is a "Maliceocracy"
So... hidden UNN loyalist among the ranks?
CHAPTER SIX: Krull-ty
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Captain John Tangent had but a single moment to react before the Paw boarding party fricasseed his body with kinetic projectiles. While his current (and, in retrospect, poorly chosen) disguise was that of a mighty Krull warrior...it didn't matter how tough someone was when you were facing down half a dozen needler rifles carried by twitchy, snarling Paw Star Mewrines – the dreaded cadre of feline warriors who had protected Paw ships in their anarchic pre-spaceflight days and had continued their bold tradition onto the spacelanes and the battles against the Zemturga Totality.
Now, broken and yoked to the Totality as battle thralls, the Mewrines were just as dangerous as they had ever been.
And so…
John started to tap dance as fast as he could, pumping his arms as the only showtune he could remember from his Academy days – a little ditty about tightening airlock bolts – burst from his mouth. The Mewrines faceplates were polarized and their expression were unreadable, but a few did lower their weapons and glance at their companions, their spacesuit helmet ears twitching with soft whirrs and clicks as they responded to the biological ears they augmented. John finished his dance by spread his hands wide and exclaiming. "The Aristocrats!"
Pixie, who hovered invisibly next to him, whispered: "If we both die, I'm blaming you."
Captain Tygress Starchaser, she of the fearsome bared belly and tiger striped features, blinked slowly at him. Then she burst out laughing, twirling her needler pistol and holstering it on one leather skirted hip. She grinned. "Okay," she said. "Explain. Space anomaly? Time warp? Some kind of cloning experiment or something?"
"Captain?" one of the mewrines – a Pawvite, if the rank tabs were of any indication – asked, his voice muffled by his space armor.
"This is no Krull!" Captain Starchaser said, her tail lashing. "That's My Leaky Airlock from Centrifuge by Strondgrass and Xeng, there's no way that a Krull would ever demean themselves to sing a song from a romantic comedy about guardian angels on a battleship. Doubly so when it's a Terran battleship."
John breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank god," he said, chuckling. "I, uh, didn't think that even my new friend could protect me from that many needlers."
"I could try!" Pixie said, wiggling her eyebrows. "Let me see." She shimmered – and several Mewrines aimed their needlers at her. She waved her hand. "Hiya! I'm Pixie! I'm a mysterious semi-fungal psychic lifeform that lives in Captain John Tangnet's head! Once I rest my psychic muscles, I can turn him from a Krull into a Terran again. WE were trying to do a sneaky trick thing. Cause, ya know, loyalties and all."
"Captain?" the highest ranked of the Mewrines spoke up – she had the rank chevrons of a Manul Snugeant and was as tough as that rank implied.
Captain Starchaser sighed, then stepped over to stand beside John. She turned to face her men and women. "Men. Women," she said. "I know that we have all sworn ourselves to the Totality. We have families that are at risk, if the Totality ever were to discover that we turned our back on our oaths...and the Queen herself has commanded that we do so. But you can feel in your warrior cat hearts that our Terran comrades are not all gone or enslaved. This is a free Terran, and this is a free Terran starship – the Alliance we all remember with reverence has returned. So, I say an oath given under duress is no oath at all, and that the we shall aide our former allies! Does any seek to gainsay me?" She narrowed her eyes at the Mewrines. They exchanged nervous glances – and Pixie narrowed her eyes suspiciously, then thrust her finger.
"You!" she pointed at one of the Pawvites, who tensed in surprise. "He's totally going to betray us."
Starchaser snarled, then sprang forward. Her paw-clad hand lashed out and, with a concussive crack, sent the helmet flying off the Pawvite, revealing a short, dark haired male with pale skin and bright golden and purple eyes. He lifted his arm and hissed, his ears flattening against his head...but before he could do anything more, Starchaser had grabbed onto his chest armor and lifted him bodily off the ground. She glared at him. "Pawvite B'ackstebb Klaw, is what that...fungus saying true?"
"We serve powerful masters now, not the pathetic Alliance!" Klaw whined. "We must tell the Zemturga that free Terrans are about! They're worth- urk!" He choked as Starchaser grabbed onto his throat, squeezing fiercely, glaring at him with a mad fury.
"Captain Starchaser!" John said, stepping forward, holding out a hand – it was so easy to forget that he was in the shape of a bestial Krull until reaching out caused half the Mewrines to flinch and reach for weapons. John froze. Pixie tensed. But Captain Starchaser hissed in fury and tossed down Klaw. The pawvite hit the ground and skidded, catching up against three other marines.
"To the brig with the wet cur!" Starchaser snarled. "And to your conference room, Captain Tangent. We have much to discuss."
"Ladies," Pixie said, wiggling her eyebrows and flicking her antennas.
Starchaesr shot her a look. "I can hear you, remember?" she asked.
"Oh. Right." Pixie coughed. "...okay, now that I'm invisible again: Laaaaaaaaaadies!"
"I can still hear you," Starchaser said, grinning.
"Ack!" Pixie vanished from even John's perceptions.
"But as a note," Starchaser said, brushing her hair behind her head and starting to saunter towards the airlock's inner entrance. "I prefer humans. And women. Human women."
"For some reason, I guessed," John said, casually, following after as the doors hissed open, then shut behind them.
***
The conference room was full of murmuring excitement as every superior officer on the Excalibur came to their seats, each of them buzzing with their own barely concealed excitement at the idea of speaking to an actual member of the Totality with seniority and, more importantly, access to current goings on. John had even requested that Quip Wip the Swiffo captain, be brought into attendance – her ship had been quietly following on with the Excalibur in flotilla fashion and...well, the damn Swiffo were so good at hiding that sometimes John felt like half the crew had forgotten that it existed at all. The only problem with getting her there had been, well…
I don't wish my presence to be known to too many people! That includes Zemturga Totality battle thralls!
She had dug in her shapely, shapely heels and John had finally settled on using Pixie to disguise her as a Terran. Of course, a Swiffo that looked like a Terran was still a startlingly beautiful figure, and Quip Wip was quite happy with the look and the disguise, even if she had to be sat next to Dr. Darling to ensure that the Omnidrone scientist could keep her from bouncing in her seat to watch her own bust jiggle.
John nodded to everyone as the last member of the crew required arrived with a slouch and a grumble: Kat, her tail drooping and her ears flat against her head. Captain Starchaser eyed her with a sneering contempt that surprised John. He shot a confused look at Starchaser, but before he could, Kat hissed, her hair floofing out, her ears popping up. She leaped up onto the table, crouching low and growling at the other Paw. Starchaser hissed right back, hunching forward. They both yowled, then Kat batted at the air before Starchaser's face. Starchaser slapped her hand away, sprang backwards, and hissed again.
"...well, this is fun," Delta Vee said from her seat, grinning brightly.
"What is going on?" John asked. "I've never seen Paw act like this before."
The two Paw hissed once more, then Kat shook herself, then huffed. "Hurmph!"
"Fine," Starchaser said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'll let it drop this time."
"What is happening?" John asked, frowning as he turned to glower at Starchaser.
She huffed. "We don't like to talk about it."
"This is why it's the Yip-Paw-Lop, not the Paw-Paw-Paw," Kat said, her tail slapping Triana in the face as it swayed from side to side. Triana slapped at the tail, but before she could bat at it more than once, Kat had backflipped and landed into her seat. Starchaser adjusted her leather halter top, then stepped up to stand beside John.
"Now," she said. "That that's out of the way – you all want to hear about the Totality and Trade-1, huh?"
"Yeah," Albert said, cheerfully, clearly happy to move past the interspecies oddness. Well, John supposed it'd be in-tra-species oddness. "What's the deal? We've heard rumors but like...okay, how the hell are you and the Krull fighting? Why aren't the Zemturga slapping that down?"
"Because the Zemturga are at war with themselves," Starchaser said, her voice grim. "A civil war."
Everyone went very quiet and very still at that.
The very idea was almost impossible to imagine. For decades during the war with the Interstellar Alliance, and according to the Sensurians, centuries beforehand, the Zemturga Totality had been completely ironclad in its dedication to absolute and complete unity. There was a reason why the governance was referred to as the Hierarchy of Now and Forever: Lasting from this moment and on until the last star had guttered out was the plan and that plan was wrought in steel and blood, with the elephantine Zemturga sitting on their immense thrones and brooding over a vast pyramid of slaves, thralls and serfs. The workers would labor, the warriors would fight, and those chosen to give pleasure would…
Well.
"How?" Albert asked at the same time Eugene asked. "Why?"
Both questions seemed equally as important.
"How? That's the easier question to answer, but it's a lot more complicated. Why? Why's harder. We only have theories – maybe they have conquered the whole galaxy, and now they can't decide on how to run things. Maybe...though…" Starchaser frowned, slightly. "Maybe this was always their plan. It's not like the Zemturga were super open about their plans."
John frowned. "That's why their empire is falling to infighting?"
"Exactly," Starchaser said. "Now for the how...that's where things get worrying."
She turned to the main screen in the conference room, then slotted in her data-crystal, plucked from one of her...actually, John took a second glance at her sheer uniform and realized he had no idea where on Earth she had stored the damn thing. The screen hummed and whined to life, then displayed the all too familiar shape of a Zemturga Warsphere, bristling with its weapon emplacements and fighter launch pods. There were two other Warspheres in formation around it – a blue-green world of methane clouds and ice drifted beneath them. The screen shook slightly, buzzed, then focused again as Starchaser explained.
"This image was taken from a Singapura class far range scout, patrolling near the center of Zemturga territory. The scout saw these Warspheres and started to record, as we hadn't actually interacted with any Zemturga, not for a long, long time." She shook her head. "Then this happened."
The three Zemturga ships flared their forward thrusters, then shunted themselves down into the first tier of the SOF – their forms becoming faintly hazy from the realspace perspective of the Paw scoutship. Then the camera swung back, zoomed in, and showed something brand new arriving. It was roughly the same scale as the Warspheres, but the shape was all wrong. The launch bays were gone. In their place were additional shield emitters and armor plating – a kind of suicidal defensive feature as far as John understood interstellar warfare.
Yes, you could toughen ships by removing fighters. And there was a role for 'brawler' ships. But those ships had to travel with other carriers. If they ran into fighters, even a relatively paltry number, then there was no chance at all. A sentient piloted fighter could dart into and out of the SOF, taking advantage of its special properties to avoid point defense and dropping torpedo after torpedo into a capital ship. The extra armor would merely prolong the ending. It was possible for the enemy to run out of ammo, but considering how few torpedoes it took to chew a ship to pieces…
John shook his head as he saw the Zemturga Warspheres launching their fighters. The new ship – painted black, he noticed – swung itself to bear and started to launch its projectiles. What came out was no weapon he'd ever seen before.
It looked, for all the world, like a spinning buzz saw blade, freed from its mooring any any safety shroud, whirling wildly. But rather than being made of metal, it was made of crackling red energy, malevolent and bloody. It threw off sparks that hissed around it – like wood chips being sprayed as it cut into lumber. The fighters that tried to bank around the energy saw were struck by the sparks, unerringly. John saw their trajectory change, to bring them into contact with the fighters. As they blew apart, the Warspheres tried to evade. They were bulky ships, and one was a little too slow: The saw bit into the hull, cleaving through shields and armor like…
Well.
Exactly like a saw like this would.
The black ship continued to fire saws – and while several fighters evaded, and the Zemturga began to return fire with their main guns, the fight was so clearly over with that first strike. The Zemturga lost one crippled Warsphere to a direct strike, the saw cleaving the immense, three hundred meter long ship from stem to stern. It tumbled into two halves, spilling battle thrall crew and, somewhere in the profusion of wreckage, a single Zemturga. As the two halves drifted apart, the other two tried to flank the black ship. One was struck a glancing blow, and this time, it didn't survive to be bisected. Instead, the buzz saw cut in deep...and then the screen whited out. The other warsphere glowed cherry red from the proximity, and the black ship's nose blazed brilliantly with radiant energy.
The last warsphere fired shot after shot into the approaching ship's shields, blasting through to blister and burn away the armor. But here, the brawler design showed its mettle: It cruised through plasma and beam fire and fired a shot point blank through the spine of the warsphere.
The footage wrapped with a growled voice – picked up by the Paw's microphone, saying: "Get us the hell out here before that monster ship spots us!"
"Holy shit," Delta whispered.
"That saw blade weapon, can anyone tell me how that might be working?" John asked.
"From my analysis and the data we have available…" Dr. Darling said, her voice as breathy and soft as ever. Her breasts heaved as she reached up to adjust her glasses with gleaming silver fingers. "I believe that it is a weapon that has only been theorized before...it's an Downspin weapon." She tapped her fingers together. "It's putting realspace physics into the space opera field – something that we thought was possible, but…"
"How would that make it so effective?" Eugene asked.
"And how would it take out those fighters?" Delta Vee asked. "Realspace physics are stupid, they can't do tricks like that. Right?"
"That's just it," Dr. Darling said, her voice grim. "The Space Opera Field is convenience incarnate. It makes possible many things that should be implausible or impractical – from faster than light travel to force fields to artificial gravity to interstellar space fighters. A downspin weapon brings reality to those concepts. The sparks seek out fighters because the fighters attract them by their very construction. It relates to the metaphysical shape of the engineering!"
"Isn't that too convenient too exist?" Kat asked, her read resting on one of her palms as she slouched against the table.
"That's exactly it!" Dr. Darling exclaimed, springing to her feet. "Since the concept was hypothesized, it has always failed under that inherent contradiction – the science supporting it was so complex it drove mathematicians trying to understand it insane, and every attempt to build it has caused reality implosions, wormholes, madness plagues. We've always thought it was impossible. And yet here...the Zemturga have it! One of their factions, I should say."
"The Zemturga haven't told anyone what their enemies are called," Starchaser said, her voice grim. "But as they are using warspheres that have only been modified, we assume that they have to be Zemturga rebels, yes? And...well, there are Zemturga warspheres that fight other Zemturga warspheres more traditionally – civil war is the only answer. Isn't it?"
John rubbed his chin. "Possibly. Shey...what kind of defense could we have against...that?" he gestured to the paused screen – the frame stilled on the black Zemturga ship. The...well, it wasn't a warsphere anymore, was it?
Shey watched the image, her finger playing along the table – bringing up the interface to control the playback. She ran the image back, then forward again, then back, then forward again. Her eyes were shadowed as she looked back into his.
"Don't get hit," she said.
***
Captain Starchaser growled as she slammed down her communicator. John, who had listened to the hissing, yowling tirade in Pawish that she had snarled into it, arched an eyebrow. "I take it the other frigates are beginning to ask uncomfortable questions."
"They think that you're still a Krull ship and are asking what's taking so long. I've given them the story that I'm checking your slave pens," she said, grumbling quietly under her breath. "Taking extra time to fuck with you. But this means all of them will expect a Krull captain to get off."
John nodded slightly. "It's not a terrible disguise. But I'm going to guess that the captains of the rest of Waa squad are more loyal to the Totality?"
"Yeah," Starchaser said. "They're all people born after the war ended." Her eyes looked a little distant. "You have no idea what that was like, do you."
"Only stories. And so far, only stories from Earth," he said. "Terrans being whisked up en mass, scooped away and made into Pleasure Serfs across the Totality. What…" He paused.
"What happened to the Yip-Paw-Lop?" Starchaser asked, her tail drooping as she looked down at the communicator that hung from her belt. She sighed, quietly. "After the Alliance fell, it was chaos. Confusion. Every fleet was so intermixed, and everybody wanted to get back to their homeworlds. For me? I arrived after the Zemturga arrived in orbit, and their damn warspheres crowded the skies above our homeworld. There, they broke us apart." She closed her eyes. "The Lop were taken. The Yip were put onto the planetary surface. And we Paw were left in the ships, alone. Do you know what it's like to be alone like that?"
John thought of Kat. He bit his lip, slightly. "Is it harder if you're used to it?"
"Oh yeah," Starchaser said, breathing in slowly, then letting it out as a sigh. "Part of me hopes that young Paw engineer you have never meets a Yip or a Lop. Never realizes what she's missing."
John put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently.
Pixie slowly floated into view. She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
John arched an eyebrow right back.
"Okay, wait, actually, I have an idea," Pixie said, then drifted back down out of view. John, feeling faintly concerned about that, had no chance to respond before Starchaser rolled her shoulders, shaking his hand off her.
"It's fine," she said. "We just need to kill the Zemturga – both factions – and get the galaxy back under our command, huh?"
"Just so," John said. "Now, do you have an excuse to let us go once you head back to your ship?"
Pixie appeared in a spray of sparkles between them, her hands spreading wide as she sang out: "Rooooooomance!"
Starchaser sprang backwards, landing on a wall console that jutted maybe an inch from the curved corridor, and hissed. John, meanwhile, kept his cool significantly better by sliding his hands into his pockets and keeping his face still while his heart raced. "Romance?"
"Romance!" Pixie said. "That's your cover story."
Starchaser cocked her head and hissed. "What are you talking about, you psychic fungus?"
"Obviously, a whirlwind romance between you and the hunky Krull captain is why you decide to let him go," Pixie said, patting John's chest. "Torrid! Passionate! Opposites attract! Enemies to lovers. These are all vital cultural touchstones of any civilization that uses the SOF for any length of time. Your crews have regulations on it, I checked!" She held out her hand, focusing as she did so, and text began to scroll out of her palm like a glowing hologram. Starchaser and John both leaned in – but then Starchaser hissed.
"The Davidge Article is an old UNN-IAN regulation, it's only in our books because the Zemturga folded old Paw fleet into their new slave armada!" Starchaser said. "That can't possibly still apply." She paused. "Can it?"
John, who was still reading, murmured. "Romantic entanglement with enemy combatants are permissable so long as the two are trapped for a sufficient length of time in neutral and dangerous situations, see fig B…" He lifted his gaze from the text. "This is to cover combat pilots fucking on deserted planets, not falling in love with an enemy captain."
"Slave revolt," Pixie said. "Trapped you in the aft cargo section until the crew masticated them. During that time, torrid, wild passion over took the Krull captain and his Paw guest. Love, blooming in the squalid holes of darkness!" She clutched her hands to her chest.
"That is so crazy it just might work," Starchaser said, rubbing her chin slowly.
John had to admit, based on his readings of Interstellar Alliance regulations and the various case studies that he had had to take in the Academy – famous examples of romance flaring to life in the long and desperate war against the Zemturga – there was a legal precedent. Save for one problem: "The Davidge Article and similar regs were only ever enforced by our side. I'm pretty sure the Zemturga executed their pilots when they got them back."
"That depends on what part of the Totality it is," Starchaser admitted. "We Paw remember...at least...some of our origins." She looked ashamed. "Not nearly enough."
Pixie clapped her hands together. "I'll get the bed ready!"
John grabbed her arm as she started to scoot off. "Hold on," he said. "This little plan of yours doesn't actually require a bed. It's called acting, Pixie."
"...actually," Starchaser said, then reached up, tapping her nose.
"Really?" John asked.
"The Paw sense of smell is incredible. Even our space armor suits are built to support it," she said, shrugging one shoulder as her tail flicked from side to side.
"Can't I just rub up against you?" he asked as Pixie buzzed with excitement in his grip.
"No, the scent has to get deep in there," Starchaser said, her voice sounding nowhere close to resentful or regretful. "Like. Really. Deep. In there."
Pixie was literally vibrating so fast that her psychically manifested body was a blur. John sighed, softly.
"The things I do for the New Interstellar Alliance," he said, his eyes darting down to admire the very, very, very short leather skirts of the Paw Captain. Starchaser smirked at him, then mimed a pawing gesture with her hand as Pixie's blur expanded with a widening eeeeeeeeeeeee noise. John released her and she shot off so fast that the wall rippled with the psychic shockwave.
Starchaser sauntered after her.
Rolling her hips.
***
"So, think the Captain is railing the catgirl?" Eugene asked as he watched the Pallas class frigates circling around the ship. Shey, who was busy tapping away at her console, glanced up and shrugged one blue shoulder.
Albert grumbled. "This is bullshit," he said. "Why don't we get any alien poon?"
"You fucked me last shift," Shey said, turning to face him.
"And you fucked Kat two shifts ago," Eugene pointed out, amiably.
"Yeah, but...Kat and Shey don't count!" Albert said. Shey, Triana and Eugene all looked at him. Albert lifted his hands. "They're buddies, not aliens."
"Did I turn pink since I last checked?" Shey asked, grinning.
"Buddy!" Albert said. "I'm just saying, why don't we ever get any strange? I'm a daring space pilot dude. I should be attracting just as much hot alien pussy, right?"
"Nope," Triana said. "Captain's get most of the weirdness. Then it filteres down through the crew on proximity." She started to waggle her hands, moving down. "The space opera field induction curve follows the same inverse square law effect of a laser in realspace, save with metapsychic relations rather than in physical space. So, every rank below captain you get, you're actually getting the metapsyche difference, squared. Sharp enough dropoff that most of the crew outside of the bridge crew barely even notice anything weird save for the gossip chains." She grinned. "You should thank your lucky stars. Imagine running a fusion powered starship with most of the crew being-"
A brilliant flash of white light surrounded Eugene. When it faded, his uniform sloughed to the ground, completely empty.
"-abducted," Triana finished.
"Shit," Shey whispered.
"Oh come on!" Albert groaned. "He can't even have fun! He has a girlfriend!"
***
Lt. Eugene Xao frowned as he looked left, then right, then up, then down. Right: His arm was restrained by gleaming silver chains. Left: His arm was restrained by even more chains. Up: A gleaming yellow lamp, filled with crawling insects that cast jagged shadows across his body. The bugs writhed around one another, driven about in mindless agony by the brilliant light that was shining directly onto themselves. Down: A grating of steel and murky water, dripping and moist. He sighed, softly.
His own body?
Completely buck ass naked.
"Great," he said. "This is a Krull dungeonship, isn't it?"
"Clever, Terran…" A soft, purring voice came from the shadows. Glittering compound eyes glinted back at Eugene as the light shifted with the motion of the bugs.
Eugene lifted his chin. "I'm Eugene Xao, bedslave of the Zemturga Totality."
"The first lie. How fascinating…" the Krull said, his voice slightly higher pitched than the rumbly bass that Eugene had heard in the training vids. "You are aboard the ship that the catbitches have been waiting for."
"Waiting for?" Eugene asked.
Those gleaming compound eyes – the only thing he could truly see in the shadows – shifted in the darkness. "We've been keeping an eye on the Paw, as they have been keeping an eye on us in Trade-1. Everyone knew that they were waiting for something. For someone. And then a mysterious ship arrives at the edge of the system and is met by three rockfucker frigates – and lo, the cargo inspection went on and on. Reports from our snooper spies are that the Captain of one of those frigates has fallen for your Captain. And so, we snatch you – easy enough…" The silhouette of the Krull interrogator spread one hand to the side, and it caught the light – greenish fingers curling up into a fist. "...and now you will tell us more than you could possibly imagine."
Eugene arched an eyebrow. He had not done as much studying on psychic phenomenon as the Captain, but he knew that whoever had snatched him couldn't be a multitalent. If they were strong enough to pull him off a bridge and to wherever this ship was, even if it was within an AU of the Excalibur, then they'd have been strong enough to bust through his mental walls with telepathy no matter how much it was a secondary or tertiary mode. That meant this psychic had to be a monotalent: A single powerful esper, with the ability purely focused on teleportation.
But he knew, also, that merely being here would blow the Excalibur's cover if they could prove he was an officer.
Fortunately, the teleport hadn't brought his clothes. He shifted a bit and half closed his eyes, regarding the shadowy Krull as if he was the Captain. What had his interrogation class been?
Determine who is interrogating you, and tailor your response to their cultural eccentricities…
Sadly, the Krull tailoring had been a rather upsettingly frank series of suicide methods. Not even painless ones. You take an out you can get with the Maliceocracy, sadly, the instructor had said. Eugene frowned and shelved that idea. He had a girl back home that was waiting for him, damn it.
The Krull took a step forward. The light shining from overhead cascaded along his…
No…
Along her shoulders. The Krull was no male interrogator at all! Her compound eyes were set to either side of her surprisingly dainty nose, her lips relatively thin and her tusks small and easily missed. Her skin was somewhere between lime green and sea green, with tufts of fur along the backs of her arms and the sides of her thighs. She, like most Krull, went nude thanks to her thick skin and her slabs of heavy muscle, which rippled along her curvacious form. Her breasts were full, perky, and her nipples were pierced with gleaming skull-headed studs, connected by a barbed chain that hung down to her belly. She had a small loop of leather around her curvy hips, and dangling from it was a particularly natsy looking Krull pain-wand. She caressed it with her fingers, grinning slowly.
"Now, firstly, you are no pleasure slave," she purred.
Eugene gulped, slightly. "No, I'm not," he said, his heart thumping in his chest. There had to be some method out of this that wasn't suicide. Think. He thought about what Captain Tangent would do. He had been best friends with John for his whole life and…
Could that work?
He frowned, slightly, while the Krull woman chuckled softly. "What are you? An escaped Terran battler? One of those United Nations Navy officers we've heard sooooo much about?" Her blunt fingers slid along his muscular chest. The touch reminded him of Angela, who waited for him back on Zeta Colony. Angela had stroked his chest just so on their going away coupling, when he had carried her to the bed and-
The Krull interogatrix jerked her hand back, hissing. "What was that?"
"So, you have some mind reading, huh?" Eugene asked. "I guess even a monotalent can pick up something from skin to skin contact like that."
"If you think you can drive me off by thinking of such repellent thoughts…" The Krull sniffed. "You have another think coming, Terran."
Eugene lifted his chin, his voice serious. "And yet, you can't stop those thoughts from entering your head – not without stopping up your ears!" He leaned forward against his chains. "I met my love Angela when I was twelve years old and the frisbee I was playing with landed on her lap – I didn't know why she was in a float chair and asked her if she wanted to run around with me. But she said that she couldn't walk, so I offered to push her around if she wanted. And she said that she didn't need my help and flew off!" He grinned. "And that's when I first knew I wanted to spend more time with her. She was so beautiful and she didn't even realize it."
The Krull hissed, drawing back into the shadows. "You...you can't believe that would work on me!"
Eugene licked his lips. "Our first date was when were in high school – I asked her out and she agreed to come with me to the cinema! We sat side by side and watched a romantic comedy together – and she thought that it was the funniest movie in the universe, but all I cared was that she was happy and holding my hand."
"Nnh...silence!" The Krull interogatrix growled. She surged forward, her pain-wand in her hand. She lifted it and jabbed it into his belly. Eugene clenched his jaw as agony exploded along his nerves like white hot fire. He gasped, then threw his head back. The Krull interogatrix's eyes flashed with fury as she sneered, showing off her tusks and her sharpened teeth. "Not so funny now, huh? Your perverse little stories have had no effect on me. But my pain-wand? Yes! Not so easy to-"
"We...made love!" Eugene gasped out. "I had to carry her to the bed! Ah! Like a prince! In the old...books!" He screamed the words out through the agony as the Krull's face twist. She trembled and pushed harder – but he forced the words out. "She said...ah...that she'd love me until the end of time!"
"Auuuuuuuuuugh!" The Krull's hands leaped to her temples as her pain-wand crashed into the metal grating of the floor, sparking and hissing. Eugene went limp, the relief from the agony so intense that he almost passed out. He gasped in, then forced out the words, bringing to mind every memory he had of his girlfiend back on Zeta Colony.
"I spread her thighs with my hands and kissed my way down her belly, s-saying every inch of the way how much I loved her!" he said, raggedly as sweat beaded and dripped along his muscular frame. "She moaned my own name as if it was the name of the Gods!"
"No! No!" The Krull clutched at her head, falling onto her back, writhing. "The sweetness...the agonizing saccharine!" She rolled onto her belly, then started to crawl desperately towards the door. Her hand reached out – for some call button, he was sure. So Eugene played his trump card. He leaned forward against his restraints.
"Push that button and every Krull on the ship will know you've been defeated by a measly human," he said, panting softly.
The Krull froze, her fingers mere centimeters from the shadowed button.
"...she asked me to marry her a year before, but I knew we would be sailing. So, instead, I said we'd marry when we returned. I kept a lock of her hair by my bed, in a stasis field, and I think of her every night. My beloved Angela, waiting for me to return home and complete our lives together, in love and matrimony!" Eugene continued. The Krull's shriek was loud and futile – rebounding off the sound proofed walls of the dungeon. She writhed upon her back, her hands clutching at her ears, trying to stop out the words. "She says my eyes are more beautiful than the stars themselves!"
"Nooooooooo!" The Krull's back arched, and she let out one more shriek, then went limp, collapsing to the ground. A thin line of black blood dribbled from one of her ears as she breathed shallowly. Eugene sagged with relief, his head hanging forward.
"Now for th...the hard part." He wriggled and squirmed against his restraints. He felt the faint give of flesh, and breathed a sigh of relief. A lot of Terran strengths were not as well known by the Totality as they should have been – but considering the UNN had joined the war relatively late...he wrenched hard and bit back a scream as he dislocated his thumb and got his wrist out of the restraints. He panted, hanging his head forward, then leaned and stretched his good fingers out. The pain-wand came into his palm and he touched the sparking tip to the other silvery chain, turning it to maximum. It started to slowly but surely melt through the metal.
The chain came free. Then the other. He dropped, hissing as he held his hand to his chest. He started towards the door-
And a thick hand closed around his ankle. The Krull interrogator snarled. "No you don't!" she hissed, furiously. Power began to flow through her body, feeling to Eugene like a crackling buzz of static electricity. He frantically drew his foot back.
His heel and her nose met at the same moment the power discharged.
Eugene dropped, fell, hit some soft dirt, and tumbled forward. He rolled, grunting and yelping as soft dirt slapped against back, front, side. He came to a stop on his back, panting, and saw that he was on a bright pink hillside. The pinkish dirt he had rolled down plumed into the air as a chalky cloud that obscured the heavens – teal and green, with a sharp edge of obsidian black cutting through it. The ring system of a nearby gas giant. His lungs didn't burn, and his skin didn't boil, so he supposed it had oxygen and pressure.
Then, roaring, the Krull interrogator leaped atop him.
"You made me misjump!" She snarled, grabbing onto his throat, squeezing fiercely. "You Terran worm!"
Eugene clutched at her wrists, then brought his knee up into her muscular belly. It was no use – it was like kneeing against a tree-trunk. He grunted, then closed his eyes. He focused, and brought to mind the adorable, giggly little snort that Angela let out when he surprised her with a really dry pun. The hands squeezing the life from his throat sprang free as if he was red hot and the Krull yelped. Eugene rolled away, coughed, drew in some breath, then swept his gaze around to take stock of the terrain: The hill led up to a brackish pool of black liquid, surrounded by dark blue and teal plants with broad leaves. There was also a rock. He grabbed the rock and swung it against the Krull's head as she shook herself.
She reacted faster than he thought possible. Her arm lifted up, blocking the blow, and sending the rock tumbling away. Then she smashed her head into his forehead – the blow weakened only by her off balanced stance and by Eugene flinging himself backwards to try and avoid. It still left him seeing stars. He shook his head, trying to clear his image – then felt the air driving out of his lungs as the Krull tackled him. They sprawled, rolled, came to a stop beside the pool with the Krull woman on her back.
She reached up, but Eugene shoved her wrist with with one arm, dodging the other grasp, leaning forward. She grabbed onto his hair, squeezing him tightly as their eyes met, their bodies pressing together. Softly, Eugene panted – and the Krull's compound eyes softened as she looked up at him. He realized, then, just how beautiful compound eyes could be – like glittering gemstones, catching and refracting the curious pinkish light of this moon.
Their mouths met, frantically, warmth flooding his body. Her tongue was broad and eager, her tusks pressing against his lower lip like tiny exclamation points.
"Ah...ah…" Eugene panted, softly. The Krull girl panted back, her breasts heaving.
"Do we go back to trying to kill each other now?" she whispered, sounding half unsure.
"Usually this, uh, I think the regs say at least three more rounds," Eugene said.
Before she could respond, her leather belt chirruped. She had kept that, as it seemed she was better at being attuned to her own teleportation than to teleporting others. Eugene groaned as her hips twitched around him – her hand snatching and drawing out a communicator.
"Princess!" A growling voice came from the communicator. "Where is the prisoner? Where are you?"
"I'm in my...bed chambers. I've killed the prisoner in Snuffu," she said, firmly. "They were useless. Just a...a Paw malebitch."
"I see," the gruff voice said.
"I shall return to the bridge, we can discuss what to do there," she said, then jerked her hips – and with a crack, vanished from the end of Eugene's dick. His cock, softening, felt suddenly quite cool as it was instantly exposed to the air of the moon.
He frowned, slightly. "Well that's a fine how do you do," he said, sighing quietly as he leaned back, regarding his Krull-slick dick. "Now, how to get back to the Excalibur…" He rubbed his chin, then stood. He started to poke around the area…
***
"Then, I just mixed the dio-lithinates with the local water and bam, instant transductive current," Eugene said as he laid in Dr. Carothers' bed, medical analyzers attached to his arms and chest. "How was Tygress?"
"Fine," John said, casually, while Dr. Carothers applied bandages to his lacerated back – Krull skin or no, he was bleeding enough thick black blood that the doctor had laid out a tarp. "We're on route to Trade-1 as we speak, with the Waa squadron returning to their patrols."
Eugene nodded.
"Sooooooooo, do I have to keep this secret from Angela?" Albert asked from the other side of the bed.
"Nah," Eugene said. "She told me that we weren't mono when I was shipped out. She read an entire textbook on it."
Albert scowled. "So, why have you been turning down party night?"
"Just because I can sleep with strangers doesn't mean I will," he said.
"And there!" Dr. Carothers said, slapping down the last bandage. "So, is it always like this with a Paw? Should I be issuing Kevlar for when our engineer goes into heat again?" He made a face as John shook his head, turning to face him.
"Kat prefers doggy style," he said. "I now see why."
"Ironic," Albert said, cheerfully.
"So," Eugene said, sitting up. "Am I ready to go back to my con-" Dr. Carothers put his hand on his chest and gently but firmly pushed Eugene back into the bed.
"You have a dislocated thumb, a pain-wand wound, and more importantly, a cock covered in Krull feminine mucus," Dr. Carothers said, his voice full of gruff 'I told you so, damn it!' "We don't have any medical records on male Terran slash female Krull relationships. All that we know about Krull mating habits are that it involves a pain condom. And if they have to wear a rubber, you may have to too."
"I don't think the, ahem, pain condom is for any safe sex reasons," John said, coughing.
"Laddddddddies!" Pixie said, leaning into existence over the Captain's shoulder. She started to wiggle her eyebrows excitedly.
"All right that's enough interview," Dr. Carothers said, gesturing with his hands. "Go on, get out, your flight officer needs a chance to rest." He pushed John back – a rather comical sight, considering John was still in his Krull form and, thus, towered above the doctor. Albert walked out with his hands on his pockets, grinning back at Eugene.
"Take it easy, man! And next time, I'll be the one who gets abducted! Promise!"
"I'm sure you'll have just as much fun," Eugene said, then sighed as the door shut. The doctor turned back, looking annoyed.
"Now!" he said. "Time for to get more samples. Roll onto your side." He pulled on a bright blue glove.
Eugene sighed and, for a moment, wished he was back on the Krull dungeonship.
***
TO BE CONTINUED
Now, broken and yoked to the Totality as battle thralls, the Mewrines were just as dangerous as they had ever been.
And so…
John started to tap dance as fast as he could, pumping his arms as the only showtune he could remember from his Academy days – a little ditty about tightening airlock bolts – burst from his mouth. The Mewrines faceplates were polarized and their expression were unreadable, but a few did lower their weapons and glance at their companions, their spacesuit helmet ears twitching with soft whirrs and clicks as they responded to the biological ears they augmented. John finished his dance by spread his hands wide and exclaiming. "The Aristocrats!"
Pixie, who hovered invisibly next to him, whispered: "If we both die, I'm blaming you."
Captain Tygress Starchaser, she of the fearsome bared belly and tiger striped features, blinked slowly at him. Then she burst out laughing, twirling her needler pistol and holstering it on one leather skirted hip. She grinned. "Okay," she said. "Explain. Space anomaly? Time warp? Some kind of cloning experiment or something?"
"Captain?" one of the mewrines – a Pawvite, if the rank tabs were of any indication – asked, his voice muffled by his space armor.
"This is no Krull!" Captain Starchaser said, her tail lashing. "That's My Leaky Airlock from Centrifuge by Strondgrass and Xeng, there's no way that a Krull would ever demean themselves to sing a song from a romantic comedy about guardian angels on a battleship. Doubly so when it's a Terran battleship."
John breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank god," he said, chuckling. "I, uh, didn't think that even my new friend could protect me from that many needlers."
"I could try!" Pixie said, wiggling her eyebrows. "Let me see." She shimmered – and several Mewrines aimed their needlers at her. She waved her hand. "Hiya! I'm Pixie! I'm a mysterious semi-fungal psychic lifeform that lives in Captain John Tangnet's head! Once I rest my psychic muscles, I can turn him from a Krull into a Terran again. WE were trying to do a sneaky trick thing. Cause, ya know, loyalties and all."
"Captain?" the highest ranked of the Mewrines spoke up – she had the rank chevrons of a Manul Snugeant and was as tough as that rank implied.
Captain Starchaser sighed, then stepped over to stand beside John. She turned to face her men and women. "Men. Women," she said. "I know that we have all sworn ourselves to the Totality. We have families that are at risk, if the Totality ever were to discover that we turned our back on our oaths...and the Queen herself has commanded that we do so. But you can feel in your warrior cat hearts that our Terran comrades are not all gone or enslaved. This is a free Terran, and this is a free Terran starship – the Alliance we all remember with reverence has returned. So, I say an oath given under duress is no oath at all, and that the we shall aide our former allies! Does any seek to gainsay me?" She narrowed her eyes at the Mewrines. They exchanged nervous glances – and Pixie narrowed her eyes suspiciously, then thrust her finger.
"You!" she pointed at one of the Pawvites, who tensed in surprise. "He's totally going to betray us."
Starchaser snarled, then sprang forward. Her paw-clad hand lashed out and, with a concussive crack, sent the helmet flying off the Pawvite, revealing a short, dark haired male with pale skin and bright golden and purple eyes. He lifted his arm and hissed, his ears flattening against his head...but before he could do anything more, Starchaser had grabbed onto his chest armor and lifted him bodily off the ground. She glared at him. "Pawvite B'ackstebb Klaw, is what that...fungus saying true?"
"We serve powerful masters now, not the pathetic Alliance!" Klaw whined. "We must tell the Zemturga that free Terrans are about! They're worth- urk!" He choked as Starchaser grabbed onto his throat, squeezing fiercely, glaring at him with a mad fury.
"Captain Starchaser!" John said, stepping forward, holding out a hand – it was so easy to forget that he was in the shape of a bestial Krull until reaching out caused half the Mewrines to flinch and reach for weapons. John froze. Pixie tensed. But Captain Starchaser hissed in fury and tossed down Klaw. The pawvite hit the ground and skidded, catching up against three other marines.
"To the brig with the wet cur!" Starchaser snarled. "And to your conference room, Captain Tangent. We have much to discuss."
"Ladies," Pixie said, wiggling her eyebrows and flicking her antennas.
Starchaesr shot her a look. "I can hear you, remember?" she asked.
"Oh. Right." Pixie coughed. "...okay, now that I'm invisible again: Laaaaaaaaaadies!"
"I can still hear you," Starchaser said, grinning.
"Ack!" Pixie vanished from even John's perceptions.
"But as a note," Starchaser said, brushing her hair behind her head and starting to saunter towards the airlock's inner entrance. "I prefer humans. And women. Human women."
"For some reason, I guessed," John said, casually, following after as the doors hissed open, then shut behind them.
***
The conference room was full of murmuring excitement as every superior officer on the Excalibur came to their seats, each of them buzzing with their own barely concealed excitement at the idea of speaking to an actual member of the Totality with seniority and, more importantly, access to current goings on. John had even requested that Quip Wip the Swiffo captain, be brought into attendance – her ship had been quietly following on with the Excalibur in flotilla fashion and...well, the damn Swiffo were so good at hiding that sometimes John felt like half the crew had forgotten that it existed at all. The only problem with getting her there had been, well…
I don't wish my presence to be known to too many people! That includes Zemturga Totality battle thralls!
She had dug in her shapely, shapely heels and John had finally settled on using Pixie to disguise her as a Terran. Of course, a Swiffo that looked like a Terran was still a startlingly beautiful figure, and Quip Wip was quite happy with the look and the disguise, even if she had to be sat next to Dr. Darling to ensure that the Omnidrone scientist could keep her from bouncing in her seat to watch her own bust jiggle.
John nodded to everyone as the last member of the crew required arrived with a slouch and a grumble: Kat, her tail drooping and her ears flat against her head. Captain Starchaser eyed her with a sneering contempt that surprised John. He shot a confused look at Starchaser, but before he could, Kat hissed, her hair floofing out, her ears popping up. She leaped up onto the table, crouching low and growling at the other Paw. Starchaser hissed right back, hunching forward. They both yowled, then Kat batted at the air before Starchaser's face. Starchaser slapped her hand away, sprang backwards, and hissed again.
"...well, this is fun," Delta Vee said from her seat, grinning brightly.
"What is going on?" John asked. "I've never seen Paw act like this before."
The two Paw hissed once more, then Kat shook herself, then huffed. "Hurmph!"
"Fine," Starchaser said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'll let it drop this time."
"What is happening?" John asked, frowning as he turned to glower at Starchaser.
She huffed. "We don't like to talk about it."
"This is why it's the Yip-Paw-Lop, not the Paw-Paw-Paw," Kat said, her tail slapping Triana in the face as it swayed from side to side. Triana slapped at the tail, but before she could bat at it more than once, Kat had backflipped and landed into her seat. Starchaser adjusted her leather halter top, then stepped up to stand beside John.
"Now," she said. "That that's out of the way – you all want to hear about the Totality and Trade-1, huh?"
"Yeah," Albert said, cheerfully, clearly happy to move past the interspecies oddness. Well, John supposed it'd be in-tra-species oddness. "What's the deal? We've heard rumors but like...okay, how the hell are you and the Krull fighting? Why aren't the Zemturga slapping that down?"
"Because the Zemturga are at war with themselves," Starchaser said, her voice grim. "A civil war."
Everyone went very quiet and very still at that.
The very idea was almost impossible to imagine. For decades during the war with the Interstellar Alliance, and according to the Sensurians, centuries beforehand, the Zemturga Totality had been completely ironclad in its dedication to absolute and complete unity. There was a reason why the governance was referred to as the Hierarchy of Now and Forever: Lasting from this moment and on until the last star had guttered out was the plan and that plan was wrought in steel and blood, with the elephantine Zemturga sitting on their immense thrones and brooding over a vast pyramid of slaves, thralls and serfs. The workers would labor, the warriors would fight, and those chosen to give pleasure would…
Well.
"How?" Albert asked at the same time Eugene asked. "Why?"
Both questions seemed equally as important.
"How? That's the easier question to answer, but it's a lot more complicated. Why? Why's harder. We only have theories – maybe they have conquered the whole galaxy, and now they can't decide on how to run things. Maybe...though…" Starchaser frowned, slightly. "Maybe this was always their plan. It's not like the Zemturga were super open about their plans."
John frowned. "That's why their empire is falling to infighting?"
"Exactly," Starchaser said. "Now for the how...that's where things get worrying."
She turned to the main screen in the conference room, then slotted in her data-crystal, plucked from one of her...actually, John took a second glance at her sheer uniform and realized he had no idea where on Earth she had stored the damn thing. The screen hummed and whined to life, then displayed the all too familiar shape of a Zemturga Warsphere, bristling with its weapon emplacements and fighter launch pods. There were two other Warspheres in formation around it – a blue-green world of methane clouds and ice drifted beneath them. The screen shook slightly, buzzed, then focused again as Starchaser explained.
"This image was taken from a Singapura class far range scout, patrolling near the center of Zemturga territory. The scout saw these Warspheres and started to record, as we hadn't actually interacted with any Zemturga, not for a long, long time." She shook her head. "Then this happened."
The three Zemturga ships flared their forward thrusters, then shunted themselves down into the first tier of the SOF – their forms becoming faintly hazy from the realspace perspective of the Paw scoutship. Then the camera swung back, zoomed in, and showed something brand new arriving. It was roughly the same scale as the Warspheres, but the shape was all wrong. The launch bays were gone. In their place were additional shield emitters and armor plating – a kind of suicidal defensive feature as far as John understood interstellar warfare.
Yes, you could toughen ships by removing fighters. And there was a role for 'brawler' ships. But those ships had to travel with other carriers. If they ran into fighters, even a relatively paltry number, then there was no chance at all. A sentient piloted fighter could dart into and out of the SOF, taking advantage of its special properties to avoid point defense and dropping torpedo after torpedo into a capital ship. The extra armor would merely prolong the ending. It was possible for the enemy to run out of ammo, but considering how few torpedoes it took to chew a ship to pieces…
John shook his head as he saw the Zemturga Warspheres launching their fighters. The new ship – painted black, he noticed – swung itself to bear and started to launch its projectiles. What came out was no weapon he'd ever seen before.
It looked, for all the world, like a spinning buzz saw blade, freed from its mooring any any safety shroud, whirling wildly. But rather than being made of metal, it was made of crackling red energy, malevolent and bloody. It threw off sparks that hissed around it – like wood chips being sprayed as it cut into lumber. The fighters that tried to bank around the energy saw were struck by the sparks, unerringly. John saw their trajectory change, to bring them into contact with the fighters. As they blew apart, the Warspheres tried to evade. They were bulky ships, and one was a little too slow: The saw bit into the hull, cleaving through shields and armor like…
Well.
Exactly like a saw like this would.
The black ship continued to fire saws – and while several fighters evaded, and the Zemturga began to return fire with their main guns, the fight was so clearly over with that first strike. The Zemturga lost one crippled Warsphere to a direct strike, the saw cleaving the immense, three hundred meter long ship from stem to stern. It tumbled into two halves, spilling battle thrall crew and, somewhere in the profusion of wreckage, a single Zemturga. As the two halves drifted apart, the other two tried to flank the black ship. One was struck a glancing blow, and this time, it didn't survive to be bisected. Instead, the buzz saw cut in deep...and then the screen whited out. The other warsphere glowed cherry red from the proximity, and the black ship's nose blazed brilliantly with radiant energy.
The last warsphere fired shot after shot into the approaching ship's shields, blasting through to blister and burn away the armor. But here, the brawler design showed its mettle: It cruised through plasma and beam fire and fired a shot point blank through the spine of the warsphere.
The footage wrapped with a growled voice – picked up by the Paw's microphone, saying: "Get us the hell out here before that monster ship spots us!"
"Holy shit," Delta whispered.
"That saw blade weapon, can anyone tell me how that might be working?" John asked.
"From my analysis and the data we have available…" Dr. Darling said, her voice as breathy and soft as ever. Her breasts heaved as she reached up to adjust her glasses with gleaming silver fingers. "I believe that it is a weapon that has only been theorized before...it's an Downspin weapon." She tapped her fingers together. "It's putting realspace physics into the space opera field – something that we thought was possible, but…"
"How would that make it so effective?" Eugene asked.
"And how would it take out those fighters?" Delta Vee asked. "Realspace physics are stupid, they can't do tricks like that. Right?"
"That's just it," Dr. Darling said, her voice grim. "The Space Opera Field is convenience incarnate. It makes possible many things that should be implausible or impractical – from faster than light travel to force fields to artificial gravity to interstellar space fighters. A downspin weapon brings reality to those concepts. The sparks seek out fighters because the fighters attract them by their very construction. It relates to the metaphysical shape of the engineering!"
"Isn't that too convenient too exist?" Kat asked, her read resting on one of her palms as she slouched against the table.
"That's exactly it!" Dr. Darling exclaimed, springing to her feet. "Since the concept was hypothesized, it has always failed under that inherent contradiction – the science supporting it was so complex it drove mathematicians trying to understand it insane, and every attempt to build it has caused reality implosions, wormholes, madness plagues. We've always thought it was impossible. And yet here...the Zemturga have it! One of their factions, I should say."
"The Zemturga haven't told anyone what their enemies are called," Starchaser said, her voice grim. "But as they are using warspheres that have only been modified, we assume that they have to be Zemturga rebels, yes? And...well, there are Zemturga warspheres that fight other Zemturga warspheres more traditionally – civil war is the only answer. Isn't it?"
John rubbed his chin. "Possibly. Shey...what kind of defense could we have against...that?" he gestured to the paused screen – the frame stilled on the black Zemturga ship. The...well, it wasn't a warsphere anymore, was it?
Shey watched the image, her finger playing along the table – bringing up the interface to control the playback. She ran the image back, then forward again, then back, then forward again. Her eyes were shadowed as she looked back into his.
"Don't get hit," she said.
***
Captain Starchaser growled as she slammed down her communicator. John, who had listened to the hissing, yowling tirade in Pawish that she had snarled into it, arched an eyebrow. "I take it the other frigates are beginning to ask uncomfortable questions."
"They think that you're still a Krull ship and are asking what's taking so long. I've given them the story that I'm checking your slave pens," she said, grumbling quietly under her breath. "Taking extra time to fuck with you. But this means all of them will expect a Krull captain to get off."
John nodded slightly. "It's not a terrible disguise. But I'm going to guess that the captains of the rest of Waa squad are more loyal to the Totality?"
"Yeah," Starchaser said. "They're all people born after the war ended." Her eyes looked a little distant. "You have no idea what that was like, do you."
"Only stories. And so far, only stories from Earth," he said. "Terrans being whisked up en mass, scooped away and made into Pleasure Serfs across the Totality. What…" He paused.
"What happened to the Yip-Paw-Lop?" Starchaser asked, her tail drooping as she looked down at the communicator that hung from her belt. She sighed, quietly. "After the Alliance fell, it was chaos. Confusion. Every fleet was so intermixed, and everybody wanted to get back to their homeworlds. For me? I arrived after the Zemturga arrived in orbit, and their damn warspheres crowded the skies above our homeworld. There, they broke us apart." She closed her eyes. "The Lop were taken. The Yip were put onto the planetary surface. And we Paw were left in the ships, alone. Do you know what it's like to be alone like that?"
John thought of Kat. He bit his lip, slightly. "Is it harder if you're used to it?"
"Oh yeah," Starchaser said, breathing in slowly, then letting it out as a sigh. "Part of me hopes that young Paw engineer you have never meets a Yip or a Lop. Never realizes what she's missing."
John put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently.
Pixie slowly floated into view. She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
John arched an eyebrow right back.
"Okay, wait, actually, I have an idea," Pixie said, then drifted back down out of view. John, feeling faintly concerned about that, had no chance to respond before Starchaser rolled her shoulders, shaking his hand off her.
"It's fine," she said. "We just need to kill the Zemturga – both factions – and get the galaxy back under our command, huh?"
"Just so," John said. "Now, do you have an excuse to let us go once you head back to your ship?"
Pixie appeared in a spray of sparkles between them, her hands spreading wide as she sang out: "Rooooooomance!"
Starchaser sprang backwards, landing on a wall console that jutted maybe an inch from the curved corridor, and hissed. John, meanwhile, kept his cool significantly better by sliding his hands into his pockets and keeping his face still while his heart raced. "Romance?"
"Romance!" Pixie said. "That's your cover story."
Starchaser cocked her head and hissed. "What are you talking about, you psychic fungus?"
"Obviously, a whirlwind romance between you and the hunky Krull captain is why you decide to let him go," Pixie said, patting John's chest. "Torrid! Passionate! Opposites attract! Enemies to lovers. These are all vital cultural touchstones of any civilization that uses the SOF for any length of time. Your crews have regulations on it, I checked!" She held out her hand, focusing as she did so, and text began to scroll out of her palm like a glowing hologram. Starchaser and John both leaned in – but then Starchaser hissed.
"The Davidge Article is an old UNN-IAN regulation, it's only in our books because the Zemturga folded old Paw fleet into their new slave armada!" Starchaser said. "That can't possibly still apply." She paused. "Can it?"
John, who was still reading, murmured. "Romantic entanglement with enemy combatants are permissable so long as the two are trapped for a sufficient length of time in neutral and dangerous situations, see fig B…" He lifted his gaze from the text. "This is to cover combat pilots fucking on deserted planets, not falling in love with an enemy captain."
"Slave revolt," Pixie said. "Trapped you in the aft cargo section until the crew masticated them. During that time, torrid, wild passion over took the Krull captain and his Paw guest. Love, blooming in the squalid holes of darkness!" She clutched her hands to her chest.
"That is so crazy it just might work," Starchaser said, rubbing her chin slowly.
John had to admit, based on his readings of Interstellar Alliance regulations and the various case studies that he had had to take in the Academy – famous examples of romance flaring to life in the long and desperate war against the Zemturga – there was a legal precedent. Save for one problem: "The Davidge Article and similar regs were only ever enforced by our side. I'm pretty sure the Zemturga executed their pilots when they got them back."
"That depends on what part of the Totality it is," Starchaser admitted. "We Paw remember...at least...some of our origins." She looked ashamed. "Not nearly enough."
Pixie clapped her hands together. "I'll get the bed ready!"
John grabbed her arm as she started to scoot off. "Hold on," he said. "This little plan of yours doesn't actually require a bed. It's called acting, Pixie."
"...actually," Starchaser said, then reached up, tapping her nose.
"Really?" John asked.
"The Paw sense of smell is incredible. Even our space armor suits are built to support it," she said, shrugging one shoulder as her tail flicked from side to side.
"Can't I just rub up against you?" he asked as Pixie buzzed with excitement in his grip.
"No, the scent has to get deep in there," Starchaser said, her voice sounding nowhere close to resentful or regretful. "Like. Really. Deep. In there."
Pixie was literally vibrating so fast that her psychically manifested body was a blur. John sighed, softly.
"The things I do for the New Interstellar Alliance," he said, his eyes darting down to admire the very, very, very short leather skirts of the Paw Captain. Starchaser smirked at him, then mimed a pawing gesture with her hand as Pixie's blur expanded with a widening eeeeeeeeeeeee noise. John released her and she shot off so fast that the wall rippled with the psychic shockwave.
Starchaser sauntered after her.
Rolling her hips.
***
"So, think the Captain is railing the catgirl?" Eugene asked as he watched the Pallas class frigates circling around the ship. Shey, who was busy tapping away at her console, glanced up and shrugged one blue shoulder.
Albert grumbled. "This is bullshit," he said. "Why don't we get any alien poon?"
"You fucked me last shift," Shey said, turning to face him.
"And you fucked Kat two shifts ago," Eugene pointed out, amiably.
"Yeah, but...Kat and Shey don't count!" Albert said. Shey, Triana and Eugene all looked at him. Albert lifted his hands. "They're buddies, not aliens."
"Did I turn pink since I last checked?" Shey asked, grinning.
"Buddy!" Albert said. "I'm just saying, why don't we ever get any strange? I'm a daring space pilot dude. I should be attracting just as much hot alien pussy, right?"
"Nope," Triana said. "Captain's get most of the weirdness. Then it filteres down through the crew on proximity." She started to waggle her hands, moving down. "The space opera field induction curve follows the same inverse square law effect of a laser in realspace, save with metapsychic relations rather than in physical space. So, every rank below captain you get, you're actually getting the metapsyche difference, squared. Sharp enough dropoff that most of the crew outside of the bridge crew barely even notice anything weird save for the gossip chains." She grinned. "You should thank your lucky stars. Imagine running a fusion powered starship with most of the crew being-"
A brilliant flash of white light surrounded Eugene. When it faded, his uniform sloughed to the ground, completely empty.
"-abducted," Triana finished.
"Shit," Shey whispered.
"Oh come on!" Albert groaned. "He can't even have fun! He has a girlfriend!"
***
Lt. Eugene Xao frowned as he looked left, then right, then up, then down. Right: His arm was restrained by gleaming silver chains. Left: His arm was restrained by even more chains. Up: A gleaming yellow lamp, filled with crawling insects that cast jagged shadows across his body. The bugs writhed around one another, driven about in mindless agony by the brilliant light that was shining directly onto themselves. Down: A grating of steel and murky water, dripping and moist. He sighed, softly.
His own body?
Completely buck ass naked.
"Great," he said. "This is a Krull dungeonship, isn't it?"
"Clever, Terran…" A soft, purring voice came from the shadows. Glittering compound eyes glinted back at Eugene as the light shifted with the motion of the bugs.
Eugene lifted his chin. "I'm Eugene Xao, bedslave of the Zemturga Totality."
"The first lie. How fascinating…" the Krull said, his voice slightly higher pitched than the rumbly bass that Eugene had heard in the training vids. "You are aboard the ship that the catbitches have been waiting for."
"Waiting for?" Eugene asked.
Those gleaming compound eyes – the only thing he could truly see in the shadows – shifted in the darkness. "We've been keeping an eye on the Paw, as they have been keeping an eye on us in Trade-1. Everyone knew that they were waiting for something. For someone. And then a mysterious ship arrives at the edge of the system and is met by three rockfucker frigates – and lo, the cargo inspection went on and on. Reports from our snooper spies are that the Captain of one of those frigates has fallen for your Captain. And so, we snatch you – easy enough…" The silhouette of the Krull interrogator spread one hand to the side, and it caught the light – greenish fingers curling up into a fist. "...and now you will tell us more than you could possibly imagine."
Eugene arched an eyebrow. He had not done as much studying on psychic phenomenon as the Captain, but he knew that whoever had snatched him couldn't be a multitalent. If they were strong enough to pull him off a bridge and to wherever this ship was, even if it was within an AU of the Excalibur, then they'd have been strong enough to bust through his mental walls with telepathy no matter how much it was a secondary or tertiary mode. That meant this psychic had to be a monotalent: A single powerful esper, with the ability purely focused on teleportation.
But he knew, also, that merely being here would blow the Excalibur's cover if they could prove he was an officer.
Fortunately, the teleport hadn't brought his clothes. He shifted a bit and half closed his eyes, regarding the shadowy Krull as if he was the Captain. What had his interrogation class been?
Determine who is interrogating you, and tailor your response to their cultural eccentricities…
Sadly, the Krull tailoring had been a rather upsettingly frank series of suicide methods. Not even painless ones. You take an out you can get with the Maliceocracy, sadly, the instructor had said. Eugene frowned and shelved that idea. He had a girl back home that was waiting for him, damn it.
The Krull took a step forward. The light shining from overhead cascaded along his…
No…
Along her shoulders. The Krull was no male interrogator at all! Her compound eyes were set to either side of her surprisingly dainty nose, her lips relatively thin and her tusks small and easily missed. Her skin was somewhere between lime green and sea green, with tufts of fur along the backs of her arms and the sides of her thighs. She, like most Krull, went nude thanks to her thick skin and her slabs of heavy muscle, which rippled along her curvacious form. Her breasts were full, perky, and her nipples were pierced with gleaming skull-headed studs, connected by a barbed chain that hung down to her belly. She had a small loop of leather around her curvy hips, and dangling from it was a particularly natsy looking Krull pain-wand. She caressed it with her fingers, grinning slowly.
"Now, firstly, you are no pleasure slave," she purred.
Eugene gulped, slightly. "No, I'm not," he said, his heart thumping in his chest. There had to be some method out of this that wasn't suicide. Think. He thought about what Captain Tangent would do. He had been best friends with John for his whole life and…
Could that work?
He frowned, slightly, while the Krull woman chuckled softly. "What are you? An escaped Terran battler? One of those United Nations Navy officers we've heard sooooo much about?" Her blunt fingers slid along his muscular chest. The touch reminded him of Angela, who waited for him back on Zeta Colony. Angela had stroked his chest just so on their going away coupling, when he had carried her to the bed and-
The Krull interogatrix jerked her hand back, hissing. "What was that?"
"So, you have some mind reading, huh?" Eugene asked. "I guess even a monotalent can pick up something from skin to skin contact like that."
"If you think you can drive me off by thinking of such repellent thoughts…" The Krull sniffed. "You have another think coming, Terran."
Eugene lifted his chin, his voice serious. "And yet, you can't stop those thoughts from entering your head – not without stopping up your ears!" He leaned forward against his chains. "I met my love Angela when I was twelve years old and the frisbee I was playing with landed on her lap – I didn't know why she was in a float chair and asked her if she wanted to run around with me. But she said that she couldn't walk, so I offered to push her around if she wanted. And she said that she didn't need my help and flew off!" He grinned. "And that's when I first knew I wanted to spend more time with her. She was so beautiful and she didn't even realize it."
The Krull hissed, drawing back into the shadows. "You...you can't believe that would work on me!"
Eugene licked his lips. "Our first date was when were in high school – I asked her out and she agreed to come with me to the cinema! We sat side by side and watched a romantic comedy together – and she thought that it was the funniest movie in the universe, but all I cared was that she was happy and holding my hand."
"Nnh...silence!" The Krull interogatrix growled. She surged forward, her pain-wand in her hand. She lifted it and jabbed it into his belly. Eugene clenched his jaw as agony exploded along his nerves like white hot fire. He gasped, then threw his head back. The Krull interogatrix's eyes flashed with fury as she sneered, showing off her tusks and her sharpened teeth. "Not so funny now, huh? Your perverse little stories have had no effect on me. But my pain-wand? Yes! Not so easy to-"
"We...made love!" Eugene gasped out. "I had to carry her to the bed! Ah! Like a prince! In the old...books!" He screamed the words out through the agony as the Krull's face twist. She trembled and pushed harder – but he forced the words out. "She said...ah...that she'd love me until the end of time!"
"Auuuuuuuuuugh!" The Krull's hands leaped to her temples as her pain-wand crashed into the metal grating of the floor, sparking and hissing. Eugene went limp, the relief from the agony so intense that he almost passed out. He gasped in, then forced out the words, bringing to mind every memory he had of his girlfiend back on Zeta Colony.
"I spread her thighs with my hands and kissed my way down her belly, s-saying every inch of the way how much I loved her!" he said, raggedly as sweat beaded and dripped along his muscular frame. "She moaned my own name as if it was the name of the Gods!"
"No! No!" The Krull clutched at her head, falling onto her back, writhing. "The sweetness...the agonizing saccharine!" She rolled onto her belly, then started to crawl desperately towards the door. Her hand reached out – for some call button, he was sure. So Eugene played his trump card. He leaned forward against his restraints.
"Push that button and every Krull on the ship will know you've been defeated by a measly human," he said, panting softly.
The Krull froze, her fingers mere centimeters from the shadowed button.
"...she asked me to marry her a year before, but I knew we would be sailing. So, instead, I said we'd marry when we returned. I kept a lock of her hair by my bed, in a stasis field, and I think of her every night. My beloved Angela, waiting for me to return home and complete our lives together, in love and matrimony!" Eugene continued. The Krull's shriek was loud and futile – rebounding off the sound proofed walls of the dungeon. She writhed upon her back, her hands clutching at her ears, trying to stop out the words. "She says my eyes are more beautiful than the stars themselves!"
"Nooooooooo!" The Krull's back arched, and she let out one more shriek, then went limp, collapsing to the ground. A thin line of black blood dribbled from one of her ears as she breathed shallowly. Eugene sagged with relief, his head hanging forward.
"Now for th...the hard part." He wriggled and squirmed against his restraints. He felt the faint give of flesh, and breathed a sigh of relief. A lot of Terran strengths were not as well known by the Totality as they should have been – but considering the UNN had joined the war relatively late...he wrenched hard and bit back a scream as he dislocated his thumb and got his wrist out of the restraints. He panted, hanging his head forward, then leaned and stretched his good fingers out. The pain-wand came into his palm and he touched the sparking tip to the other silvery chain, turning it to maximum. It started to slowly but surely melt through the metal.
The chain came free. Then the other. He dropped, hissing as he held his hand to his chest. He started towards the door-
And a thick hand closed around his ankle. The Krull interrogator snarled. "No you don't!" she hissed, furiously. Power began to flow through her body, feeling to Eugene like a crackling buzz of static electricity. He frantically drew his foot back.
His heel and her nose met at the same moment the power discharged.
Eugene dropped, fell, hit some soft dirt, and tumbled forward. He rolled, grunting and yelping as soft dirt slapped against back, front, side. He came to a stop on his back, panting, and saw that he was on a bright pink hillside. The pinkish dirt he had rolled down plumed into the air as a chalky cloud that obscured the heavens – teal and green, with a sharp edge of obsidian black cutting through it. The ring system of a nearby gas giant. His lungs didn't burn, and his skin didn't boil, so he supposed it had oxygen and pressure.
Then, roaring, the Krull interrogator leaped atop him.
"You made me misjump!" She snarled, grabbing onto his throat, squeezing fiercely. "You Terran worm!"
Eugene clutched at her wrists, then brought his knee up into her muscular belly. It was no use – it was like kneeing against a tree-trunk. He grunted, then closed his eyes. He focused, and brought to mind the adorable, giggly little snort that Angela let out when he surprised her with a really dry pun. The hands squeezing the life from his throat sprang free as if he was red hot and the Krull yelped. Eugene rolled away, coughed, drew in some breath, then swept his gaze around to take stock of the terrain: The hill led up to a brackish pool of black liquid, surrounded by dark blue and teal plants with broad leaves. There was also a rock. He grabbed the rock and swung it against the Krull's head as she shook herself.
She reacted faster than he thought possible. Her arm lifted up, blocking the blow, and sending the rock tumbling away. Then she smashed her head into his forehead – the blow weakened only by her off balanced stance and by Eugene flinging himself backwards to try and avoid. It still left him seeing stars. He shook his head, trying to clear his image – then felt the air driving out of his lungs as the Krull tackled him. They sprawled, rolled, came to a stop beside the pool with the Krull woman on her back.
She reached up, but Eugene shoved her wrist with with one arm, dodging the other grasp, leaning forward. She grabbed onto his hair, squeezing him tightly as their eyes met, their bodies pressing together. Softly, Eugene panted – and the Krull's compound eyes softened as she looked up at him. He realized, then, just how beautiful compound eyes could be – like glittering gemstones, catching and refracting the curious pinkish light of this moon.
Their mouths met, frantically, warmth flooding his body. Her tongue was broad and eager, her tusks pressing against his lower lip like tiny exclamation points.
They do a kissin' and a sexing~
His hand went limp against her wrist, his other hand sliding along her muscular side as she moaned into his mouth. When Eugene broke the kiss, it was for air, not for hesitation. Her thigh lifted up, her knee sliding against his side, baring herself – her hairless sex gleaming with eagerness as she rocked her hips up. Her excitement filled the air, a thick musk that made Eugene's head spin and his own arousal flare even brighter as the deadly adrenaline of combat transmuted into the heady aphrodisiac of lust.
He leaned forward, kissing her neck, biting her greenish skin as his hips bucked. His cocktip ground against her sex, feeling the blazing heat of her. She groaned, then whispered. "No, we can't...I...I'm a Krull warrioress, not a...oh by the Cruel Ones!" She moaned as his hips bucked and his member drove into her hot, needy alien cunt. His balls clapped against her meaty, muscular buttocks and she clutched the back of his head as Eugene kissed down to her nipple, sucking her hard, dark green nub greedily as her leg locked around his back.
Eugene drew half out of her, feeling her sex tightening around him as if she didn't want him to leave her. His mouth released her nipple and he kissed he neck, nibbling – and she melted against him, moaning softly. "Oh it does feel better without the pain condoms…"
Eugene barked a laugh. "That's why they're called- nevermind." He shook his head, his hips starting to drive themselves now. He needed no thought, nothing but the raw, fierce instinct of the moment as he bucked his hips, fucking his alien enemy into the pinkish dust of the distant moon. His balls made meaty thock noises as they slapped against her green ass as the Krull maiden lifted her arms above her head, gripping a nearby stump to anchor herself as her hefty green breasts bounced in time with his fucking. She moaned softly.
"W-What about your girlfriend?" she gasped.
"Don't worry…" Eugene moaned softly. He focused – and brought to him, so that she could feel it through their skin to skin contact, the memory of his last night on Zeta Colony. Angela had playfully teased him about all the strange aliens he'd meet. It's okay, Gene, I've read the physics textbooks. I know what it's like. Just promise to tell me about them… She had crooned, tweaking his nipple gently as she sprawled against him.
"Oh," the Krull girl whispered back, her compound facets glittering with unshed tears. "Oh I n-never knew such...feelings! Oh gods! Oh cruel ones! Gene!" She arched her back, her sex tightening around him as her first climax – her first real climax, as far as Eugene could tell, sparked through her muscular, green body.
Fortunately, Eugene had been trained for his. It was part of physical training for any UNN officer. For situations very similar to this one, now that he thought about it. He kept himself from climaxing with a focused effort, thrusting faster, harder. His balls bounced against her ass as his hands slid to her hips, holding the green Krull in place as he grunted quietly. "Yes...yes!" She moaned, then swung her other leg around – hooking ankle over ankle to keep him in place.
That was signal enough.
Eugene groaned, low and hungry in his throat as he bucked once more, thrusting deep inside of her, panting softly. His seed gushed into her pussy, spurting and spurting and spurting. Thick spunk dripped around her sex as she panted heavily, her compound eyes shifting and shimmering as she rocked her head from side to side.
He leaned forward, kissing her neck, biting her greenish skin as his hips bucked. His cocktip ground against her sex, feeling the blazing heat of her. She groaned, then whispered. "No, we can't...I...I'm a Krull warrioress, not a...oh by the Cruel Ones!" She moaned as his hips bucked and his member drove into her hot, needy alien cunt. His balls clapped against her meaty, muscular buttocks and she clutched the back of his head as Eugene kissed down to her nipple, sucking her hard, dark green nub greedily as her leg locked around his back.
Eugene drew half out of her, feeling her sex tightening around him as if she didn't want him to leave her. His mouth released her nipple and he kissed he neck, nibbling – and she melted against him, moaning softly. "Oh it does feel better without the pain condoms…"
Eugene barked a laugh. "That's why they're called- nevermind." He shook his head, his hips starting to drive themselves now. He needed no thought, nothing but the raw, fierce instinct of the moment as he bucked his hips, fucking his alien enemy into the pinkish dust of the distant moon. His balls made meaty thock noises as they slapped against her green ass as the Krull maiden lifted her arms above her head, gripping a nearby stump to anchor herself as her hefty green breasts bounced in time with his fucking. She moaned softly.
"W-What about your girlfriend?" she gasped.
"Don't worry…" Eugene moaned softly. He focused – and brought to him, so that she could feel it through their skin to skin contact, the memory of his last night on Zeta Colony. Angela had playfully teased him about all the strange aliens he'd meet. It's okay, Gene, I've read the physics textbooks. I know what it's like. Just promise to tell me about them… She had crooned, tweaking his nipple gently as she sprawled against him.
"Oh," the Krull girl whispered back, her compound facets glittering with unshed tears. "Oh I n-never knew such...feelings! Oh gods! Oh cruel ones! Gene!" She arched her back, her sex tightening around him as her first climax – her first real climax, as far as Eugene could tell, sparked through her muscular, green body.
Fortunately, Eugene had been trained for his. It was part of physical training for any UNN officer. For situations very similar to this one, now that he thought about it. He kept himself from climaxing with a focused effort, thrusting faster, harder. His balls bounced against her ass as his hands slid to her hips, holding the green Krull in place as he grunted quietly. "Yes...yes!" She moaned, then swung her other leg around – hooking ankle over ankle to keep him in place.
That was signal enough.
Eugene groaned, low and hungry in his throat as he bucked once more, thrusting deep inside of her, panting softly. His seed gushed into her pussy, spurting and spurting and spurting. Thick spunk dripped around her sex as she panted heavily, her compound eyes shifting and shimmering as she rocked her head from side to side.
"Ah...ah…" Eugene panted, softly. The Krull girl panted back, her breasts heaving.
"Do we go back to trying to kill each other now?" she whispered, sounding half unsure.
"Usually this, uh, I think the regs say at least three more rounds," Eugene said.
Before she could respond, her leather belt chirruped. She had kept that, as it seemed she was better at being attuned to her own teleportation than to teleporting others. Eugene groaned as her hips twitched around him – her hand snatching and drawing out a communicator.
"Princess!" A growling voice came from the communicator. "Where is the prisoner? Where are you?"
"I'm in my...bed chambers. I've killed the prisoner in Snuffu," she said, firmly. "They were useless. Just a...a Paw malebitch."
"I see," the gruff voice said.
"I shall return to the bridge, we can discuss what to do there," she said, then jerked her hips – and with a crack, vanished from the end of Eugene's dick. His cock, softening, felt suddenly quite cool as it was instantly exposed to the air of the moon.
He frowned, slightly. "Well that's a fine how do you do," he said, sighing quietly as he leaned back, regarding his Krull-slick dick. "Now, how to get back to the Excalibur…" He rubbed his chin, then stood. He started to poke around the area…
***
"Then, I just mixed the dio-lithinates with the local water and bam, instant transductive current," Eugene said as he laid in Dr. Carothers' bed, medical analyzers attached to his arms and chest. "How was Tygress?"
"Fine," John said, casually, while Dr. Carothers applied bandages to his lacerated back – Krull skin or no, he was bleeding enough thick black blood that the doctor had laid out a tarp. "We're on route to Trade-1 as we speak, with the Waa squadron returning to their patrols."
Eugene nodded.
"Sooooooooo, do I have to keep this secret from Angela?" Albert asked from the other side of the bed.
"Nah," Eugene said. "She told me that we weren't mono when I was shipped out. She read an entire textbook on it."
Albert scowled. "So, why have you been turning down party night?"
"Just because I can sleep with strangers doesn't mean I will," he said.
"And there!" Dr. Carothers said, slapping down the last bandage. "So, is it always like this with a Paw? Should I be issuing Kevlar for when our engineer goes into heat again?" He made a face as John shook his head, turning to face him.
"Kat prefers doggy style," he said. "I now see why."
"Ironic," Albert said, cheerfully.
"So," Eugene said, sitting up. "Am I ready to go back to my con-" Dr. Carothers put his hand on his chest and gently but firmly pushed Eugene back into the bed.
"You have a dislocated thumb, a pain-wand wound, and more importantly, a cock covered in Krull feminine mucus," Dr. Carothers said, his voice full of gruff 'I told you so, damn it!' "We don't have any medical records on male Terran slash female Krull relationships. All that we know about Krull mating habits are that it involves a pain condom. And if they have to wear a rubber, you may have to too."
"I don't think the, ahem, pain condom is for any safe sex reasons," John said, coughing.
"Laddddddddies!" Pixie said, leaning into existence over the Captain's shoulder. She started to wiggle her eyebrows excitedly.
"All right that's enough interview," Dr. Carothers said, gesturing with his hands. "Go on, get out, your flight officer needs a chance to rest." He pushed John back – a rather comical sight, considering John was still in his Krull form and, thus, towered above the doctor. Albert walked out with his hands on his pockets, grinning back at Eugene.
"Take it easy, man! And next time, I'll be the one who gets abducted! Promise!"
"I'm sure you'll have just as much fun," Eugene said, then sighed as the door shut. The doctor turned back, looking annoyed.
"Now!" he said. "Time for to get more samples. Roll onto your side." He pulled on a bright blue glove.
Eugene sighed and, for a moment, wished he was back on the Krull dungeonship.
***
The Krull Princess finds herself unable to stop thinking of Eugene, pleasuring herself instead of torturing herself as her culture demands
In the darkness of her tormentarium, Princess Evilla Slayvine regarded her various implements of communion with the Cruel Ones. Her matrification gauntlet waited, with the auto-teeth implanted in the palm and fingers. But no. Her flagellation field belt waited, ready to scar her back and shoulders with focused force-screens. But...no. Her hand rested for a moment over the most traditional tool – the knife of a thousand agonies. But as she hefted it up and prepared herself...she threw it aside with a groan and stood.
She started to pace in the tormentarium, her eyes flashing as they caught the flickering torchlight. "Stupid Terran…" She grumbled. "Not even a proper...his...his dick wasn't even that...big!" She huffed, then flung herself into the bed – which was, of course, properly hard and unyielding. She laid on her back, her hand sliding along her face, down her neck as she muttered softly. "A-And it's not as if I...wanted…" Her fingers found the hard nub of her nipple. She lazily took it, and...considered trying manual tormenting. Instead, her fingers were gentle, coaxing from her a soft, forbidden sigh. "I don't want…"
Her other hand slithered along her muscular green belly. Delved between her thighs. Her thick, blunt fingers began to rub along her sex, feeling her eager arousal, splashing along her fingers. Her thumb rubbed against her clit as she bit her lower lip, her tusks throbbing slightly as she tried to repress her groan of pleasure. She couldn't. Her fingers pushed into her sex as her mind was filled with hazy, forbidden images…
Laying on a bed of roses. Being kissed, gently, by a dashing prince in-
"Nnno!" She groaned, bucking her hips. Despite her words, she thrust two fingers into her needy Krull cunt, moaning softly as her hips twitched up to meet her thrusting fingers. Her thumb rubbed herself in slow, eager circles as she tossed her head from side to side. "I don't want a prince in- ah! Oh Cruel Ones!" She moaned, her voice growing higher and more desperate as her spine arched. She worked her fingers faster and faster, her palm slapping against her own sex as she gasped and moaned.
Despite being in her tormentarium, despite her holy orders, Princess Evie found herself moaning in bliss as her thighs spread and she thrust her fingers deep into her needy sex. Her girlcum frothed around her fingers, puddling onto her hard bed as she gasped and panted and mewled softly. "G-Gene!" She panted, softly, her fingers feeling the eager pulse of her sex around them – tightening, releasing, tightening, releasing.
She drew her hand from her sex, looking at the thick, gleaming juices that dripped along her palm.
"Oh I'm in so much trouble, aren't I?" she whispered, softly.
A soft chime came from her door. She snapped her thighs together, rolled forward, and ducked her arm behind her back, laying on her bed, her sweating body on full display. "Enter," She said, her voice gruff. The door opened and Captain Kreag entered.
"Princess, I hope I did not interrupt your agonies," the Captain said, nodding curtly. "But the strange ship has arrived at Trade-1. Do you have a new plan to learn who, precisely, it belongs too? The crew have-" he paused. "Are you sure you feel agonized enough, you seem...odd?"
"Manual stimulation with my fingers. I feel traditional," Evie lied, casually. "And yes. I have a plan. I...will infiltrate the strange ship. In disguise."
"Princess-"
"Do you speak back to me, Captain?" she growled. "Or will the Lord of Pain have to call you to account at Homeworld?"
"I...no, Princess," Captain Kreag said, then bowed to her. "I shall leave you to your preparations. Hail evil!"
"Hail evil," Evie murmured, softly. The door hissed shut as the other Krull left. Evie rolled onto her back, breathing a slow sigh of relief. She looked at her hand, blushing. She tried to think of how she would turn this to her advantage in a way that wouldn't get her found out for her utter perversion – but her mind simply vomited up such disgusting, horrible images as...as her walking hand and hand with Eugene through a flower grove. Or him...making love to her! Without even needing to hold her down or force her to do anything! Ugh! She shook her head, trying to cast out the un-Krullish thoughts as she growled.
"Damn you!"
Then she remembered what her father, the Lord of Pain, had told her when she was young.
If you ever feel bad for someone, my little Evilla, do you know what you must do? He had clenched his hand into a fist, and snarled. Kill that someone immediately, and dedicated yourself to our Zemturga masters once more!
Evie nodded. She looked at the discarded knife of a thousand agonies. She tried to imagine plunging it into Eugene's chest.
Instead, her traitor mind just imagined...taking his cock into her mouth.
To bite?
No! She simply...wanted to bring him pleasure!? It was so perverse! So...foul...to just...to just bring another being pleasure, for the joy of shared delight? Ugh! She hated the idea. She hated it!
Her fingers delved between her thighs again. She bit her wrist to muffle her moans. Her fingers slipped into her sex once more with a wet, lewd noise.
She hated it…
She started to pace in the tormentarium, her eyes flashing as they caught the flickering torchlight. "Stupid Terran…" She grumbled. "Not even a proper...his...his dick wasn't even that...big!" She huffed, then flung herself into the bed – which was, of course, properly hard and unyielding. She laid on her back, her hand sliding along her face, down her neck as she muttered softly. "A-And it's not as if I...wanted…" Her fingers found the hard nub of her nipple. She lazily took it, and...considered trying manual tormenting. Instead, her fingers were gentle, coaxing from her a soft, forbidden sigh. "I don't want…"
Her other hand slithered along her muscular green belly. Delved between her thighs. Her thick, blunt fingers began to rub along her sex, feeling her eager arousal, splashing along her fingers. Her thumb rubbed against her clit as she bit her lower lip, her tusks throbbing slightly as she tried to repress her groan of pleasure. She couldn't. Her fingers pushed into her sex as her mind was filled with hazy, forbidden images…
Laying on a bed of roses. Being kissed, gently, by a dashing prince in-
"Nnno!" She groaned, bucking her hips. Despite her words, she thrust two fingers into her needy Krull cunt, moaning softly as her hips twitched up to meet her thrusting fingers. Her thumb rubbed herself in slow, eager circles as she tossed her head from side to side. "I don't want a prince in- ah! Oh Cruel Ones!" She moaned, her voice growing higher and more desperate as her spine arched. She worked her fingers faster and faster, her palm slapping against her own sex as she gasped and moaned.
Despite being in her tormentarium, despite her holy orders, Princess Evie found herself moaning in bliss as her thighs spread and she thrust her fingers deep into her needy sex. Her girlcum frothed around her fingers, puddling onto her hard bed as she gasped and panted and mewled softly. "G-Gene!" She panted, softly, her fingers feeling the eager pulse of her sex around them – tightening, releasing, tightening, releasing.
She drew her hand from her sex, looking at the thick, gleaming juices that dripped along her palm.
"Oh I'm in so much trouble, aren't I?" she whispered, softly.
A soft chime came from her door. She snapped her thighs together, rolled forward, and ducked her arm behind her back, laying on her bed, her sweating body on full display. "Enter," She said, her voice gruff. The door opened and Captain Kreag entered.
"Princess, I hope I did not interrupt your agonies," the Captain said, nodding curtly. "But the strange ship has arrived at Trade-1. Do you have a new plan to learn who, precisely, it belongs too? The crew have-" he paused. "Are you sure you feel agonized enough, you seem...odd?"
"Manual stimulation with my fingers. I feel traditional," Evie lied, casually. "And yes. I have a plan. I...will infiltrate the strange ship. In disguise."
"Princess-"
"Do you speak back to me, Captain?" she growled. "Or will the Lord of Pain have to call you to account at Homeworld?"
"I...no, Princess," Captain Kreag said, then bowed to her. "I shall leave you to your preparations. Hail evil!"
"Hail evil," Evie murmured, softly. The door hissed shut as the other Krull left. Evie rolled onto her back, breathing a slow sigh of relief. She looked at her hand, blushing. She tried to think of how she would turn this to her advantage in a way that wouldn't get her found out for her utter perversion – but her mind simply vomited up such disgusting, horrible images as...as her walking hand and hand with Eugene through a flower grove. Or him...making love to her! Without even needing to hold her down or force her to do anything! Ugh! She shook her head, trying to cast out the un-Krullish thoughts as she growled.
"Damn you!"
Then she remembered what her father, the Lord of Pain, had told her when she was young.
If you ever feel bad for someone, my little Evilla, do you know what you must do? He had clenched his hand into a fist, and snarled. Kill that someone immediately, and dedicated yourself to our Zemturga masters once more!
Evie nodded. She looked at the discarded knife of a thousand agonies. She tried to imagine plunging it into Eugene's chest.
Instead, her traitor mind just imagined...taking his cock into her mouth.
To bite?
No! She simply...wanted to bring him pleasure!? It was so perverse! So...foul...to just...to just bring another being pleasure, for the joy of shared delight? Ugh! She hated the idea. She hated it!
Her fingers delved between her thighs again. She bit her wrist to muffle her moans. Her fingers slipped into her sex once more with a wet, lewd noise.
She hated it…
TO BE CONTINUED
Fun fact: The Alliance keeps a crew of trained linguists on staff to check alien names for stupid puns.
I would imagine it's one of the few commonalities across species. I wouldn't be surprised if pleasure serfs are selected on how closely their names resemble various Zemturga languages' innuendo.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
has anyone else noticed this story is a little silly?
The Star Control porn parody work is silly? I never would have guessed.
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Gravity Samba
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Author's Note: Hey, you may be wondering why there was a THREE MONTH break between updates! What happened? Well, it turns out my slowly worsening mood and energy, ability to focus and cognitive functions were, in fact, NOT because I hit 30 and this is just what your 30s are like! No, it turns out that I had a condition called 'sleep apena'
Sleep Apnea is when your throat relaxes too much during sleep and closes. This causes you to suffocate! Then you wake up a little bit after choking and gasping for a bit, then fall back to sleep. This all happens so fast that your brain doesn't actually remember waking up, but it plays absolute hell with your sleep cycle.
So, functionally, I was going to bed at 10 PM and waking up at 6:40 AM and functionally getting maybe a half hour of real sleep. It was not pleasant. But fortunately, I got this diagnosed and was able to get a CPAP (Continual Positive Air Pressure) machine. Now, I sleep with a mask over my face that blows warm, humid aid down my throat to keep it open. It's not comfortable, but you know what it means? It means when I sleep, I actually get sleep.
The change has been remarkable and I can actually write again. So, uh, if any of these symptoms seem familiar to you, if your loved ones or significant others are reporting that you snore a lot? Get a sleep apnea test, and get a CPAP machine if you need it! This shit's seriously bad for you – not only does it ruin your ability to think, it can really fuck up your heart and put you at risk for heart attacks, strokes and more!
Now!
On with the show.
Captain John Tangent stood in the airlock of the Waa-1 and adjusted the collar of his civilian clothing. That was Kruul civilian clothing – not Terran. He remained in the guise of the Kruul, thanks to Pixie's psychic abilities, and that was why the clothing was bearable at all. Kruul skin was thick and tough enough to turn small knives, it could handle the fishhooks worked into the inner lining of the jacket, or the chain brace that swept across his barrel chest with...mild discomfort. The whole idea was to embrace the pain and evil that was at the root of the Kruul Malicocracy's culture and civic code.
"It also happens to look weirdly hot…" Pixie said, rubbing her chin as she flitted around him, taking advantage of the fact she was just a psychic projection living inside of his brain due to a persistent and still unidentified alien fungus growing in his gray matter. "Black jacket, tight leather pants, all on that big hunky Kruul body. Man. And I gave you so many piercings with my biomorphic disguise, mmmmm I do good work!" She kissed her bunched fingers.
"Quite," John said, dryly.
"Now, with you and the Paw captain, Tygress Starchaser, faking a romantic entanglement to explain why she has you in her companionship despite the Paw and the Kruul being at war, you two are going to infiltrate Trade-1, the biggest of all Zemturga trade stations in this part of the galaxy – with one goal! To find any hint of what the Zemturga have done with humanity and wring it out no matter how dark the cervas, how deep the pit! With this information, you, Captain John Tangent of the UNN Excalibur – the last and only surviving battleship of the United Nations Navy and the final hope of the interstellar alliance of free worlds that once stood against the now victorious Zemturga Totality – will set forth in a rolicking adventure across the galaxy with one goal! Freedom!" Pixie clenched her fist, dramatically, against her chest.
John arched an eyebrow. "...why did you summarize that, Pixie?"
"This frigging airlock has been cycling so dang long I feel like I've been stuck here for two frigging months!" She threw her arms up. "I'm going crazy in here."
"Trade-1 isn't exactly a new station," Starchaser said from where she was lounging against the wall. She was still dressed in the Paw navy uniform of thong, bikini and large cat-paws that covered the more humanoid shape of a Paw's actual hands. Those paws were built with magnetic seals, additional claws, and other in-built weapons that made them far more dangerous than they looked. "Give it time."
The airlock door chimed and the beige light above it turned a bright chartreuse.
"Gah!" Pixie covered her eyes. "So garish."
"Your hair is pink," Starchaser said, snickering as the door started to grind and squeak open.
"Pink on pinkish-brown is a very respectable human tradition, I'm told. There was once a land known as Japan, where-"
"Shhhh," John said, gently, and used his mental connection to Pixie to gently tug at her shoulders. She seemed to slip to the left, out of his line of sight. She was gone – but not gone. She was in his mind, peering out through his eyes, waiting for her chance to manifest again. And those eyes...they saw the interior of Trade-1 as the door, finally, clunked open.
While John wouldn't have said it was two months of waiting, it had still been a long wait…
For what a reward.
Trade-1 had been built solidity at Tier-1 of the Space Opera Field. Hence the name. It was far from the first trade station built across the sprawling interstellar empire of the Totality – and it took advantage of the inherent convenience of being in the shallows of the dimension that allowed interstellar travel to exist: It looked like someone had taken a groundsider city and folded it in on itself, spires and towers looming past one another like jagged teeth. Winding bands of glittering white sparks flitted here and there – but they weren't sparks. They were hover cars and auto traffic, threading between structures. Huge barges covered with Zemturga propaganda floated by, their hanging billboards projecting glowing holograms, and distant voices seemed to murmur from every direction. The airlock that John and Starchaser stood in opened out into a broad thoroughfare that looped around the edges of the rectangular station, and countless thousands walked past, streaming too and from work.
"By the cruel whips of my dark gods," John whispered, remembering to play the part of romantically captured Kruul Captain. "This place is huge. It has to have...millions of people inside."
"It was built for that many, yeah," Starchaser said, snaking her muscular, striped arm around his back, drawing herself close against his bulk. It was a passable display of intimacy, helped by their shared time back on the Excalibur, but despite knowing he was no real Kruul, there was still a tension in her arms and her posture. As if some part of her body was reacting to his muscles, his tusks, his grayish skin, his tufted fur. John wondered, then...if it was displeasure or pleasure that she was trying to conceal.
As Pixie had so helpfully said: Opposites attract.
"What do you mean?" he asked as he started away from the airlock, his own arm around her shoulder.
"The station's big, but mostly empty. A bunch of that auto-traffic is just background detail, running with nothing in it. The whole station has maybe has five, six thousand people in it at any one time. But the place sure looks impressive, doesn't it?"
"Quite," John rumbled.
"A Kruul and a Paw, walking arm in arm! Now that's a new sight!"
John and Starchaser turned, Starchaser already scowling.
And John...realized there was a damn good reason why people might avoid visiting Trade-1. Yes, the tier it was sunk to let it have fantastical artificial gravity, made rent always cost roughly as much as you had in your cred-stick (unless you were about to meet a long lost lover, enemy, friend, or war buddy), and meant you would age slower, healthier, and look sexier over time. But there were downsides. One of those downsides was that in a galaxy spanning, decades long war that involved almost twenty species and fifty billion sentients, John Tangent – who had never once set foot off the colony world of Zeta in his entire life – could find himself face to face with a woman who he recognized.
Jadestone Fireheart grinned at him, looking for all the world exactly like the holo that his parents had kept on their mantle-place for his entire childhood.
The famous Unbroken Blade herself, the Qorr sword-mistress who had once boarded an entire Totality warsphere by herself and lived to tell it. His godmother-in-absentia who his parents had always promised would one day see him, once the war was over and they returned to Alliance space. She looked a bit older, in the way that Qorr did – with her head feathers slightly longer and droopier – and she had earned a new scar that furrowed her scaled muzzle. But other than that...she was exactly how John had always imagined she'd look from the photographs and the stories.
She was about three meters tall, towering even over his disguised self, with a broad muscular pair of shoulders and scales the color of a forest's green leaves. Her belly – exposed by the halter top she wore and the low slung jeans that clung to her curvaceous hips – was bright crimson and that crimson edging was added to the sides of her head feathers, which frilled around her head like an elaborate headdress. Her horns swept backwards and to the sides, like handlebars, and four eyes were bright, slitted and gleaming. Her long, muscular tail dragged along the ground, and her hands went to her hips as she grinned toothily down at him and Starchaser.
John noticed, also, that she had a two handed sword strapped to her back, two knives on her hips, a Qorrian bladepistol on her ankle holster, and two bandoleers of throwing knives crisscrossing her chest – shelving and presenting her...impressively large tits for the whole world to see, straining as they were against her tight gray top. She wore a new insignia on her shoulder, and John was fairly sure it was whatever the Qorrian Matriarchy had chosen for their standard once they had been made Battle Thralls. She also sported a familiar looking badge, right above one of her tits.
"Oh steppy me," Pixie whispered in his mind.
"What business is it of yours, lizard?" Starchaser asked, her voice aggressive. "What's a Qorr even doing here?"
"I'm here on the orders of my mistress," Jade said, her voice amused, like she thought Starchaser was nothing but a yappy little...kitty. John shook his head to banish the mental image. Instead, he gave Jade his warmest smile – but being shapeshifted into a Kruul at the moment, John was fairly sure that his smile was not exactly having the best impression. Jade cocked her head ever so slightly to the side, narrowing her eyes. "A smiling Kruul. I should be alarmed, no?"
"He's an apostate," Starchaser said, her hair floofing up slightly as she snaked her arm even tighter around his, drawing herself in close.
"Dangerous, that," Jade said, lifting her head a little. Her large, muscular tail twitched slowly from side to side. "I've heard apostates don't live long in the Maliceocracy. But I suppose...that's why you're on Trade-1 and not out and about." She narrowed her eyes ever so slightly, regarding John with a slow, measured look. John shifted his posture slightly – not sure what it was that she was looking at. But whatever it was that Jade saw, the Qorr made no mention of it. Instead, she simply chuckled quietly. "Good luck. Apostate."
She turned to go. Starchaser frowned. "I had no idea that Jadestone Fireheart had bent the knee," she whispered to John. "Do you know her?"
"My parents and her were good enough friends that I could recognize her despite never seeing her in person," John said, quietly, his hand sliding down to pat her hands. "Did you notice that badge she wore?"
"A battle thrall insignia, sure," Starchaser said.
"No, the one above her breast," John said.
Starchaser coughed. "It was a bit hard to notice anything but...I mean, she's a lizard, why would-"
"That badge had the symbol of the Zemturga on it – not a battle thrall, but of the Totality itself. I bet that mistress of hers is a Zemturga!" John whispered. He bit his lip, then glanced at Pixie, who was bouncing from her toes to her heels to her toes again. She brightened at his attention.
"Oh sure!" she said. "I can astrally project-"
"Absolutely not," John whispered. He started to walk again, to avoid drawing any attention in the thronging sidewalks of Trade-1 – while the rest of the station might have been near abandoned, this area was still full of Totality merchants. They moved into an area where stalls had been set up – working serfs and pleasure slaves alike of every species were there. The pleasure slaves were easy to tell apart – they were not just naked, but oiled and wearing the traditional collar of submission that the Totality mass produced for their pleasure slaves, projecting an invisible life support field, so that even in vacuum, pleasure slaves couldn't get the dignity of clothing.
John took advantage of the increased commotion to mutter in Starchaser's ear – and knew that Pixie would be able to hear him quite clearly. "The Totality has psychics – quite a few of them – the last thing I want is someone to notice a silvery tether and trace it back to me. Can you do a biosculpt on me and Starchaser?"
Starchaser huffed – but Pixie beamed brightly. "Of course! Though, for my powers to really properly influence Starchaser, she will need to have a sympathetic link between…"
John saw his moment. He tugged Starchaser behind some boxes and crates stacked up near a narrow alley. There, in that close confine, it could almost be imagined that they were on some terrestrial bazaar – the scents of spices and unwashed travelers tingled along his slitted nostrils, and the shadows of the buildings cast him and Starchaser into a murky gloom that made her a vague, feminine shape and a wild mane of poofy hair. The only thing that stood out was Pixie, who looked as brightly lit as if she was a projected hologram, until she let out a soft 'oops, sorry!' and dimmed herself to the appropriate gloom.
"So, Pixie says we need a sympathetic link," John said.
"Ah, right. Of course." Starchaser's paws slid along his muscular body, down to his broad, cushy belly. She hooked her fingers onto the hem of his Kruul style pants. "How absurd of me to think it'd require anything else." She slid to her knees.
"...actually, some saliva would...work just as…" Pixie started, then trailed off, shrugging. "Ah, well, nevertheless."
"I mean, I can make that possible, or do you want me to do the shifto shapo?" Pixie asked, giggling as Starchaser shook her head – her cheeks darkening with a blush.
"N-No, we have to hurry," she said, thrusting herself to her feet. She wobbled and almost collapsed against John's chest before he slipped his arm around her back, holding her close. Pixie giggled.
"What form?" she whispered.
John nodded, slowly. "I think...we want to fit in. Make us both Paw. Male for me, female for Starchaser. But make us...bland."
"Got it!" Pixie made a pair of fingerguns – and psionic energy crackled and sparked in the alleyway – almost loud enough to cover the sound of cartilage moving and bone creaking…
***
Jade strode confidently from the populated area of Trade-1 to the unpopulated part, her clawed feet rasping on the ground. She didn't look back behind herself – she instead kept cutting forward past monolithic apartment blocks that hung above and stretched from below. The slidewalk, designed to make passage through the cyclopean space swifter than mere walking, had long since been left to decay in the emptiness of the unused part of the station – so rather than whirring briskly along to bring her faster than her feet could carry her, it instead merely let out a series of soft whumps with every footstep, rubbery-surface deforming under her weight. She didn't spare a glance for the vastness around her. Instead, she simply kept walking.
About fifty meters back, John and Starchaser followed after, their brown furred tails twitching.
"I kind of hoped we'd have more cover," John whispered.
"Don'tcha worry!" Pixie said, giving him a pair of finger guns. "I've got a no-see-um psionic field on you. She won't think to look behind herself until-"
"She's noticed us," Starchaser said.
"Ah dang it," Pixie said as Jade snapped her head over her shoulder. A Qorr could stand quite still when need be – her feathered crest was the only thing that moved, frilling and spreading outwards in an instinctive threat posture. Then Jade leaped off the slidewalk. She fell straight down into the vast empty space between slidewalk and buildings – her arms spreading wide to catch at the air. John sprinted forward, hissing between his teeth, only to see her shooting back up again, her feet skittering towards the ceiling. He blinked, then watched as her course jarringly shifted at a right angle as she hit the midpoint between two of the huge apartment blocks.
"...she's using the gravity fields!" he exclaimed.
"They're invisible! If she hits the wrong one, it'll splat her into the wall!" Starchaser said, her tail floofing up as she scowled.
Jade whistled by, then shunted another ninety degrees – and just as Starchaser had predicted, this one sent her hurtling towards a wall. She twisted around, brought her legs up, then smashed into the wall feet first, rolling and springing aside. This sent her away at a crazy, arcing parabola – falling through real gravity for a few seconds before she intersected another invisible gravity lane and was brought whistling straight down to land on a roof. She rolled, came to her feet, sprinted to a nearby doorway and hooked the top of the door with one of her massive, raptor toe-claws, then tore down with a squeal of metal.
"Well," John said, glancing at Starchaser.
"Oh hell no!" she said.
"I think I know where you need to jump," Pixie said, her eyes narrowing.
"Hell no!" Starchaser said, again.
"Find a grav-car and trace my com," John said.
"John, don't-"
John jumped. He shot out – lurch – shot down. But for him, dizzyingly, down was at a completely different angle and direction than it had been until a few seconds ago. He was flung upwards, falling straight towards the ceiling. Then he hit another gravity tunnel and was falling left. He got his feet under himself and-
"Oh dear!" Pixie said.
"I don't want to hear oh dear right now!" John shouted over the wind, his arms crossed over his chest as he tried to fall straight and true.
"Uh, uh, uh, it's okay!" Pixie said. "In a few seconds, you just need to shove yourself over a meter. Just one measly meter!"
John scowled, drawing his only sidearm – a Kruul mastication pistol. The weapon used multidimensional monsters to eat people alive, not bullets. It wouldn't even serve as a makeshift reaction mass engine. As he held it, Pixie yelped.
"Okay, now it has to be a dozen meters! And in the next sixty seconds!"
John grabbed the barrel of his weapon and wrenched it forward. The firing mechanism crunched, glass shattered, and then he brought it smashing down against his knee. Even if he now lacked Kruul muscles, it was still enough force into the weakest part of the firearm to break the dimensional chamber and vomit a writhing mass of muscle and teeth directly into his chest. The teeth snapped wildly while a tentactular tail writhed and wriggled – but John was ready. He grabbed the tail, spun, twirled, and flung it as hard as he could to his left.
The resulting impact of Newton's first law sent him flinging straight out of the gravity tunnel.
Real gravity caught him again and his straight line became a rapid parabola – arcing downwards to Trade-1's bowels.
He slammed into another invisible gravity tunnel, was flung upwards, dropped out, snagged, dropped, snagged, dropped. Up and down changed angles so many times that it was all he could to do not throw up. Then he saw something flat shooting straight at his head. He twisted on himself, rolled, and finally, his feet hit solid ground and he tumbled head over heels before crashing directly into a steel wall. John groaned as he sprawled onto his back – his entire body aching like someone had beaten him with baseball bats. Pixel leaned over him, her face full of nerves.
"...are you okay?"
"Pixie...you live in my head. You know I'm fine," John said, grinning at her weakly. He sat up, and found that he had hit the wall right next to the door that Jade had slipped through. "Well, damn. Your precognitive skills were right on the money."
Pixie blinked. Then she coughed. "S-Sure. Yeah. That's why we landed here. Yeah. We'll just put that in the log."
John shook his head, then sprang up to his feet. His Paw body was a lot more limber than a human one – his feet landed right under him and he went through the opened door. The narrow corridor that the door led into went straight to a set of stairs. He started down them – came around the corner and flung himself forward and down seconds before a sword swept through where his neck had been. He slid past the burly form of Jadestone Fireheart, tumbled down the stairs, and landed on his feet on the flat, broad corridor that the stairs led towards. He panted as she casually wrenched the sword from the metal wall with a spray of sparks and metal shavings.
"You're no Paw," she said, grinning as she let her long, deadly blade rest on her shoulder. "You're no Kruul either."
"You could tell earlier, huh?" John asked, shifting slightly in his stance.
"Your posture was all wrong. I am a blade-mistress of the Qorr. We're trained to know our enemies in war and love – and you? You remind me of someone." She smirked, showing her very sharp teeth. "There's two ways for me to determine who, exactly, you are…"
"Is there a bed somewhere nearby?" John asked, dryly.
She dropped her hand down to her belt, drawing one of the knives she had sheathed there. She tossed it down the stairs – and John caught it, hilt first. Her grin grew broader.
"No," she said.
"I thought these were apartments," John said, shifting his posture. He was beginning to wish he had brought a shield belt – but they were rare enough.
Pixie gulped. "John, um, I know you're a dashing starship captain, but, um, isn't she the deadliest woman to ever be given a blade?"
"Sure is," John whispered.
"I was hoping you'd say no, Pixie, don't be absurd, Pixie, she's just a big blow-"
The muscular Qorr woman leaped up – sailing down the flight of stairs, her curved toe-claws leading the way. John would have said the memory was atavistic memory of the last time humanity had been hunted by raptors, but he was pretty sure velociraptors had been extinct long before humanity arrived. Still, something in his brain screamed pure terror at him as he flung himself aside and came to his feet seconds before those claws disemboweled him. Maybe it was the ancient human instinct to avoid getting your stomach ripped out by a muscular raptor woman? Who knew.
He came up and brought his blade around, parring a casual sweep of Jade's sword. The heavier weapon, swung by a stronger woman, cracked into his knife and sent it skittering from his hand. He jerked backwards, just barely avoiding the tip of her blade as he backed down the corridor. Every door he passed was a blank black rectangle, and every door was closed. The only light came from dull yellow lamps set in small recessed circles in the ceiling. John backed away as Jade advanced, her grin glinting in the yellow light, her red and gold scales flickering. Her tail slapped against the walls as she let her toe-claws dig into the floor with a squeal of metal.
"You at least have some skill. Good parry, but the blade-weight wasn't in your favor. Too small too."
She thrust at him with a sudden flourish. John jerked his shoulder left, then tried to step into her guard. He drove his elbow against her wrist, then brought his knee up. It slammed into her golden scaled belly – and slammed into hardened muscle like hitting a brick wall.
"...huh!" Jade grunted. "Almost felt that."
She swung around and her tail swept his legs out from under him. She lifted her foot, drove it down. John rolled aside, hit a door – and blinked as the door opened for himself. He rolled into it, somersaulting onto his feet as the door slammed shut behind him. He blinked and then saw Pixie withdrawing her hand from the wall. She flashed him a nervous smile.
Then the tip of the Qorr blade plunged through the door, right where the seam had been.
"Can't keep away from me that easy!"
John looked around – and saw that he was not in a completely unmarked, unfilled room. Under the heavy layer of dust, the chamber looked like it had once been part of a manufactory – there were boxy machines, connective tubes, wires and connective tissue that would let each machine feed one into the other. He looked around wildly, then spotted a heavy pipe that looked like it was once used as part of the machinery, removed and set aside. He took it up and felt it – but couldn't identify the metal. He hoped it was closer to duranium than it was to polyaluminum.
John spun to face the door as, groaning and squealing, it was forced open by the sheer brutal strength of the muscular lizardwoman. Jade grinned fiercely, then sprang in. "Improvisation!" she exclaimed. Her sword, gripped in both hands, thrust at his chest. John parried with both hands and a spray of sparks flew up. The pole buzzed in his hand...but it didn't bend, break or scuff. "Duranium – excellent choice, excellent choice!"
She swung at his head, then pirouetted – and used her tail to seep for the legs. John ducked. He sprang up, landed on one of the boxy machines. He saw a tube shaped container attached to the machine – full of liquid. His grin flashed for a moment and he thrust the tube between container and machine, then leavered it hard. The container sloshed free and Jade sprang backwards as the black fluid splattered onto the floor.
They both stood, panting, with the black puddle between them. John didn't tear his gaze from Jade – but Pixie whispered.
"The grav-shaft out the window will get us outta here," she breathed.
John didn't nod. He kept watching Jade. She sniffed. Sniffed.
Then she chuckled.
"That's printer fluid," she said, stepping into the puddle with slow, casual maliciousness. "Nice try, stranger." Her blade gleamed.
John slammed his pipe into the window. It crackled, but did not shatter. Jade lifted her blade – and brought it whistling down. John started to move – but the hilt of her blade cracked into his temple. Pixie cried out as a flare of white sparks flashed before John's eyes. The sparkles faded...faded...faded. And with them came darkness.
***
When John roused, with a pounding headache, he could hear conversation. Voices. His brow furrowed – and he heard the first words that made sense…
"He doesn't fight like a Kruul either, Mistress. But whatever biomorphic shaping he took, it's harder and better than anything I've ever seen." Jade grunted. "I swear I've seen the way he fights before, though…"
"It's quite all right, our Blade-Mistress," a soft, feminine voice whispered from the darkness.
John did not lift his head – instead, he opened his eyes to slits and glanced left and right. What little he could see was hard, dark metal, with thin seams separating it into regular hexagons. The light that shone down overhead was brilliant white, shining through his bangs with a harshness that gave his hair a kind of glowing haze to go with his throbbing headache. Ahead of him was Jade, her tail curved and coiled along the ground like a powerful red snake, and beyond her was the feminine voice. John risked lifting his head ever so slightly.
The view of Jade's muscular, scaled ass was…
Not what he had expected.
Gone was the leather pants. Gone were the bandoliers and the blades.
In their place was gauzy silks, tight enough to show every seam between every scale and gauzy enough to show crimson and where crimson shifted to gold. And good-goddamn if Jade did not have one of the most toothsome rumps that John had seen in quote some, he would have to eat his boots. It was curvy and round and perky and athletic and scaled, topped with a long and thick tail that was just as delicious looking. The fact she was now wearing a gauzy skirt that left acres of muscular thigh exposed, complete with golden bangles around ankles and wrists and golden rings around her fingers and toes only added to the allure.
Also she had nearly brained him with the pommel of her sword. That was just a universal attractor, at least in the cultures that humanity had thus far made contact with.
Looking past her as subtly as he could, John could see that the Mistress was a shroud of golden fabric and curtains, disguising a space large enough to hold a Zemturga – which was a lot of golden fabric, as the average Zemturga was roughly the size of an elephant. Lounging within that golden space was a huge, burly form and the slow, heavy sound of breathing...and standing before it was the most devastatingly beautiful Terran that John had seen in quite some time. She was also the first Terran that John had ever seen that wasn't someone from his hometown of Zeta Colony.
She was fine boned and delicate, with ebony black skin, a tightly curled set of dreadlocks, and dressed in a flowing and dignified gown of white fabrics that were patterned with complex, interlocking patterns of geometric perfection. She wore gold bands around her throat and her wrists, and had gold paint daubed on her cheeks and her nose. Her eyes were warm, liquid brown. In short...she was...not dressed as a pleasure slave.
Except she was. John lifted his head and narrowed his eyes – and saw she did wear the collar of a pleasure slave.
A rumbling came from the gauzy cage.
"Ah, it seems that your captive rouses earlier than expected," the Terran said, her voice amused. "We ask that you bring him forward."
Jade bowed, then stepped over. John, who found that his wrists were tied to straps and lashed to a floating metal cage, struggled a little – but he couldn't get his wrists to move. He was dragged towards the Terran and the Zemturaga. He could feel pitiless, cold eyes peering at him from behind the guazy curtain. What alien thoughts cracked through the vast skull of that hideous thing? His lip curled and he lifted his head slightly, glaring.
"A Paw…" the Terran woman said. "One who is not clearly marked as being a member of the Blade faction. Fascinating. We ask your name."
John remained silent.
"You shall not be harmed," the Terran said. "Our Blade-Mistress shall free you."
John frowned – and remained silent as a knife slashed and he fell forward to his knees. He stood, hazily, and winced as Jade pressed a hypo-spray to his throat. The rush of energy and the fading of pain made it clear it was some kind of medicine. He rubbed at his neck, then thought. Pixie, are you here?
He heard no response. Had the blow to his head been enough to…
No.
There was a psychic somewhere in this chamber. That had to be the answer – Pixie wasn't silent because she was dead or unconscious. She was silent because she was hiding. John clung to that thought, for what hope it provided.
"What is your true race?" the Terran asked. "My Mistress wishes to know who you may serve. We can reveal it by force, but…" She trailed off.
John shook his head.
The Terran sighed. "We regret that we are forced to do this."
Oh of course you are, John thought. He hadn't thought the Zemturga could be capable of hypoc-
Another hissing hypo-spray pressed to his throat. He grunted and then gasped as he felt his body creak and groan, his face shrinking, his ears withdrawing, his tail slumping away. He stumbled and almost fell – but Jade caught him...and then cried out in shock. "As I live and breathe! Junior!" She exclaimed, grabbing his shoulders, hefting him up. "No! No! You're not Junior...but his face! His…" Her nose flared, sniffing. "By my Egg! You're Junior's son."
John made a note to tease his father about this, assuming he survived to get back to Zeta Colony. He grinned, weakly. "My parents said that you were to be my godmother," he said.
"What did they name you? I- we have so much to share, so many stories! Why I-" Jade started.
"Ahem."
Jade coughed, releasing him and turning to bow to the Terran. John tried to not oggle her heaving scaled breasts and the way they jiggled under her silken wraps as she bowed. Instead, he shot a glower at the Zemturga sitting behind the Terran. "John Tangent. Captain. Serial number-"
"Captain Tangent, please," the Terran said. "You misunderstand the situation you find yourself in."
"Misunderstand!?" John exploded. "You enslaved my people! You took my planet! You've conquered the entire galaxy! What is there to misunderstand?" He started to walk forward, but the Terran woman stepped between him. Her palm pressed to his chest...and their eyes met. John felt a tingling awareness of her silky skin, and felt a strange rushing sensation of familiarly – as if something about her was intimately known to him. Her face turned aside and her voice grew soft.
"You ask after dark secrets, Captain Tangent. Secrets that are not our place to share," she said, softly. John took her hand. His voice was soft.
"You say we. But you're not Zemturga. You're a Terran! A free woman-"
"You don't understand," she said, flaring. "But...my name is Dhakiya – and we…" She frowned, then spoke with more emphasis. "I am not a slave. Nor is this Zemturga what you think."
John frowned. "Prove it."
"Very well," she said, simply. "We will provide your ship the location of the Sensurian genetic vaults and the means to reach them before our enemies in the Blade Faction discover them. And then we shall provide for you the place to bring the Sensurian race once more into bloom." Her lips quirked up slightly. "How is that for proof."
John looked into her eyes. He released her hand. "...it's a start."
His smile was just as slight.
But when his gaze flicked past the Terran to the Zemturga, he saw no sign of movement within. The alien in there watched him with the implacable, enduring focus of a gas giant's liquid core – endless and unknowable. John didn't know what lurked behind the dull, gray eyes peering out at him...but he didn't like it.
"We shall continue this discussion aboard your ship?" Dhakiya asked.
John slowly nodded.
Which was when Tygress Starchaser drove the skycar through the wall with a resounding roar of splintering metal and squealing plastics.
TO BE CONTINUED
Sleep Apnea is when your throat relaxes too much during sleep and closes. This causes you to suffocate! Then you wake up a little bit after choking and gasping for a bit, then fall back to sleep. This all happens so fast that your brain doesn't actually remember waking up, but it plays absolute hell with your sleep cycle.
So, functionally, I was going to bed at 10 PM and waking up at 6:40 AM and functionally getting maybe a half hour of real sleep. It was not pleasant. But fortunately, I got this diagnosed and was able to get a CPAP (Continual Positive Air Pressure) machine. Now, I sleep with a mask over my face that blows warm, humid aid down my throat to keep it open. It's not comfortable, but you know what it means? It means when I sleep, I actually get sleep.
The change has been remarkable and I can actually write again. So, uh, if any of these symptoms seem familiar to you, if your loved ones or significant others are reporting that you snore a lot? Get a sleep apnea test, and get a CPAP machine if you need it! This shit's seriously bad for you – not only does it ruin your ability to think, it can really fuck up your heart and put you at risk for heart attacks, strokes and more!
Now!
On with the show.
Captain John Tangent stood in the airlock of the Waa-1 and adjusted the collar of his civilian clothing. That was Kruul civilian clothing – not Terran. He remained in the guise of the Kruul, thanks to Pixie's psychic abilities, and that was why the clothing was bearable at all. Kruul skin was thick and tough enough to turn small knives, it could handle the fishhooks worked into the inner lining of the jacket, or the chain brace that swept across his barrel chest with...mild discomfort. The whole idea was to embrace the pain and evil that was at the root of the Kruul Malicocracy's culture and civic code.
"It also happens to look weirdly hot…" Pixie said, rubbing her chin as she flitted around him, taking advantage of the fact she was just a psychic projection living inside of his brain due to a persistent and still unidentified alien fungus growing in his gray matter. "Black jacket, tight leather pants, all on that big hunky Kruul body. Man. And I gave you so many piercings with my biomorphic disguise, mmmmm I do good work!" She kissed her bunched fingers.
"Quite," John said, dryly.
"Now, with you and the Paw captain, Tygress Starchaser, faking a romantic entanglement to explain why she has you in her companionship despite the Paw and the Kruul being at war, you two are going to infiltrate Trade-1, the biggest of all Zemturga trade stations in this part of the galaxy – with one goal! To find any hint of what the Zemturga have done with humanity and wring it out no matter how dark the cervas, how deep the pit! With this information, you, Captain John Tangent of the UNN Excalibur – the last and only surviving battleship of the United Nations Navy and the final hope of the interstellar alliance of free worlds that once stood against the now victorious Zemturga Totality – will set forth in a rolicking adventure across the galaxy with one goal! Freedom!" Pixie clenched her fist, dramatically, against her chest.
John arched an eyebrow. "...why did you summarize that, Pixie?"
"This frigging airlock has been cycling so dang long I feel like I've been stuck here for two frigging months!" She threw her arms up. "I'm going crazy in here."
"Trade-1 isn't exactly a new station," Starchaser said from where she was lounging against the wall. She was still dressed in the Paw navy uniform of thong, bikini and large cat-paws that covered the more humanoid shape of a Paw's actual hands. Those paws were built with magnetic seals, additional claws, and other in-built weapons that made them far more dangerous than they looked. "Give it time."
The airlock door chimed and the beige light above it turned a bright chartreuse.
"Gah!" Pixie covered her eyes. "So garish."
"Your hair is pink," Starchaser said, snickering as the door started to grind and squeak open.
"Pink on pinkish-brown is a very respectable human tradition, I'm told. There was once a land known as Japan, where-"
"Shhhh," John said, gently, and used his mental connection to Pixie to gently tug at her shoulders. She seemed to slip to the left, out of his line of sight. She was gone – but not gone. She was in his mind, peering out through his eyes, waiting for her chance to manifest again. And those eyes...they saw the interior of Trade-1 as the door, finally, clunked open.
While John wouldn't have said it was two months of waiting, it had still been a long wait…
For what a reward.
Trade-1 had been built solidity at Tier-1 of the Space Opera Field. Hence the name. It was far from the first trade station built across the sprawling interstellar empire of the Totality – and it took advantage of the inherent convenience of being in the shallows of the dimension that allowed interstellar travel to exist: It looked like someone had taken a groundsider city and folded it in on itself, spires and towers looming past one another like jagged teeth. Winding bands of glittering white sparks flitted here and there – but they weren't sparks. They were hover cars and auto traffic, threading between structures. Huge barges covered with Zemturga propaganda floated by, their hanging billboards projecting glowing holograms, and distant voices seemed to murmur from every direction. The airlock that John and Starchaser stood in opened out into a broad thoroughfare that looped around the edges of the rectangular station, and countless thousands walked past, streaming too and from work.
"By the cruel whips of my dark gods," John whispered, remembering to play the part of romantically captured Kruul Captain. "This place is huge. It has to have...millions of people inside."
"It was built for that many, yeah," Starchaser said, snaking her muscular, striped arm around his back, drawing herself close against his bulk. It was a passable display of intimacy, helped by their shared time back on the Excalibur, but despite knowing he was no real Kruul, there was still a tension in her arms and her posture. As if some part of her body was reacting to his muscles, his tusks, his grayish skin, his tufted fur. John wondered, then...if it was displeasure or pleasure that she was trying to conceal.
As Pixie had so helpfully said: Opposites attract.
"What do you mean?" he asked as he started away from the airlock, his own arm around her shoulder.
"The station's big, but mostly empty. A bunch of that auto-traffic is just background detail, running with nothing in it. The whole station has maybe has five, six thousand people in it at any one time. But the place sure looks impressive, doesn't it?"
"Quite," John rumbled.
"A Kruul and a Paw, walking arm in arm! Now that's a new sight!"
John and Starchaser turned, Starchaser already scowling.
And John...realized there was a damn good reason why people might avoid visiting Trade-1. Yes, the tier it was sunk to let it have fantastical artificial gravity, made rent always cost roughly as much as you had in your cred-stick (unless you were about to meet a long lost lover, enemy, friend, or war buddy), and meant you would age slower, healthier, and look sexier over time. But there were downsides. One of those downsides was that in a galaxy spanning, decades long war that involved almost twenty species and fifty billion sentients, John Tangent – who had never once set foot off the colony world of Zeta in his entire life – could find himself face to face with a woman who he recognized.
Jadestone Fireheart grinned at him, looking for all the world exactly like the holo that his parents had kept on their mantle-place for his entire childhood.
The famous Unbroken Blade herself, the Qorr sword-mistress who had once boarded an entire Totality warsphere by herself and lived to tell it. His godmother-in-absentia who his parents had always promised would one day see him, once the war was over and they returned to Alliance space. She looked a bit older, in the way that Qorr did – with her head feathers slightly longer and droopier – and she had earned a new scar that furrowed her scaled muzzle. But other than that...she was exactly how John had always imagined she'd look from the photographs and the stories.
She was about three meters tall, towering even over his disguised self, with a broad muscular pair of shoulders and scales the color of a forest's green leaves. Her belly – exposed by the halter top she wore and the low slung jeans that clung to her curvaceous hips – was bright crimson and that crimson edging was added to the sides of her head feathers, which frilled around her head like an elaborate headdress. Her horns swept backwards and to the sides, like handlebars, and four eyes were bright, slitted and gleaming. Her long, muscular tail dragged along the ground, and her hands went to her hips as she grinned toothily down at him and Starchaser.
John noticed, also, that she had a two handed sword strapped to her back, two knives on her hips, a Qorrian bladepistol on her ankle holster, and two bandoleers of throwing knives crisscrossing her chest – shelving and presenting her...impressively large tits for the whole world to see, straining as they were against her tight gray top. She wore a new insignia on her shoulder, and John was fairly sure it was whatever the Qorrian Matriarchy had chosen for their standard once they had been made Battle Thralls. She also sported a familiar looking badge, right above one of her tits.
"Oh steppy me," Pixie whispered in his mind.
"What business is it of yours, lizard?" Starchaser asked, her voice aggressive. "What's a Qorr even doing here?"
"I'm here on the orders of my mistress," Jade said, her voice amused, like she thought Starchaser was nothing but a yappy little...kitty. John shook his head to banish the mental image. Instead, he gave Jade his warmest smile – but being shapeshifted into a Kruul at the moment, John was fairly sure that his smile was not exactly having the best impression. Jade cocked her head ever so slightly to the side, narrowing her eyes. "A smiling Kruul. I should be alarmed, no?"
"He's an apostate," Starchaser said, her hair floofing up slightly as she snaked her arm even tighter around his, drawing herself in close.
"Dangerous, that," Jade said, lifting her head a little. Her large, muscular tail twitched slowly from side to side. "I've heard apostates don't live long in the Maliceocracy. But I suppose...that's why you're on Trade-1 and not out and about." She narrowed her eyes ever so slightly, regarding John with a slow, measured look. John shifted his posture slightly – not sure what it was that she was looking at. But whatever it was that Jade saw, the Qorr made no mention of it. Instead, she simply chuckled quietly. "Good luck. Apostate."
She turned to go. Starchaser frowned. "I had no idea that Jadestone Fireheart had bent the knee," she whispered to John. "Do you know her?"
"My parents and her were good enough friends that I could recognize her despite never seeing her in person," John said, quietly, his hand sliding down to pat her hands. "Did you notice that badge she wore?"
"A battle thrall insignia, sure," Starchaser said.
"No, the one above her breast," John said.
Starchaser coughed. "It was a bit hard to notice anything but...I mean, she's a lizard, why would-"
"That badge had the symbol of the Zemturga on it – not a battle thrall, but of the Totality itself. I bet that mistress of hers is a Zemturga!" John whispered. He bit his lip, then glanced at Pixie, who was bouncing from her toes to her heels to her toes again. She brightened at his attention.
"Oh sure!" she said. "I can astrally project-"
"Absolutely not," John whispered. He started to walk again, to avoid drawing any attention in the thronging sidewalks of Trade-1 – while the rest of the station might have been near abandoned, this area was still full of Totality merchants. They moved into an area where stalls had been set up – working serfs and pleasure slaves alike of every species were there. The pleasure slaves were easy to tell apart – they were not just naked, but oiled and wearing the traditional collar of submission that the Totality mass produced for their pleasure slaves, projecting an invisible life support field, so that even in vacuum, pleasure slaves couldn't get the dignity of clothing.
John took advantage of the increased commotion to mutter in Starchaser's ear – and knew that Pixie would be able to hear him quite clearly. "The Totality has psychics – quite a few of them – the last thing I want is someone to notice a silvery tether and trace it back to me. Can you do a biosculpt on me and Starchaser?"
Starchaser huffed – but Pixie beamed brightly. "Of course! Though, for my powers to really properly influence Starchaser, she will need to have a sympathetic link between…"
John saw his moment. He tugged Starchaser behind some boxes and crates stacked up near a narrow alley. There, in that close confine, it could almost be imagined that they were on some terrestrial bazaar – the scents of spices and unwashed travelers tingled along his slitted nostrils, and the shadows of the buildings cast him and Starchaser into a murky gloom that made her a vague, feminine shape and a wild mane of poofy hair. The only thing that stood out was Pixie, who looked as brightly lit as if she was a projected hologram, until she let out a soft 'oops, sorry!' and dimmed herself to the appropriate gloom.
"So, Pixie says we need a sympathetic link," John said.
"Ah, right. Of course." Starchaser's paws slid along his muscular body, down to his broad, cushy belly. She hooked her fingers onto the hem of his Kruul style pants. "How absurd of me to think it'd require anything else." She slid to her knees.
"...actually, some saliva would...work just as…" Pixie started, then trailed off, shrugging. "Ah, well, nevertheless."
Starchaser gets her sympathetic link the only way I'd write it!
John opened his mouth, about to interject – but Starchaser's gentle, nimble fingers had closed around the heavy knot of his Kruulish dick. She squeezed him as, in the darkness, her tongue feathered out and teased along the narrow, tapered tip of his cock. She licked around and around and around his cock, letting out little kittenish mews with each soft lick. Lick. Lick. Her tongue had just enough texture to feel absolutely divine. John placed one palm against the wall, above his head, and leaned his forehead against the cool steel as Starchaser's palm cupped his balls. She squeezed gently as her mouth opened and, in the darkness, her warm moistness began to envelop him. She pushed forward, then pushed forward another few inches – stopping only when she made a soft gluck noise as her throat convulsed around his shaft. She paused there, and looking down at her, John could see her eyes glinting with a fierce, attentive eagerness.
"Y-You know, I-" John started.
Starchaser pushed forward harder. Her throat stretched and her eyes watered as she pushed forward more and more until her lips pressed against the knot at the base of his cock. She groaned around him, then drew back, and back, and back until his cock sprang free from her lips. She panted and gasped while John groaned, low in his throat.
"Y-You may be larger in this form, but…" her hand closed around his shaft. "I'm a captain in my people's star navy, goddamn it. If I can't suck a cock this big, what good was my training?" She opened her mouth and slid his cock down her throat again, her free hand squeezing his balls even more forcefully – startling a grunt from John as his hips bucked and a thick droplet of pre-cum soaked along her throat. Starchaser began to bob her head eagerly – almost roughly – her moans adding vibrational bliss to John's cock.
John had no choice but to add to the movement – his hips began to work, his big hand cupping the back of the catgirl's head, his fingers lacing through her wild mane of hair. His cock drove down her throat and his heavy Kruul balls clapped against her chin with a rhythmic, lewd plap plap plap sound while Pixie watched with eager, glittering light in her eyes. She licked her lips as Starchaser bounced her head against John's lap more and more eagerly, her eyes growing hazy and slitted with pleasure. John felt his orgasm ratcheting up inside of him, inch by inch by inch until he had no choice. His hips bucked and he groaned low in his throat...and Starchaser started to drink. Her throat bobbed and bobbed again as she swallowed blast after blast of thick, Kruulish cum, until John started to draw his cock out of her mouth. She gasped wetly and moaned as thick spurts of seed gushed against her face, splattering cheek, hair, forehead, ear.
"Ah...fuck…" John whispered.
"God, breed me already…" Starchaser whispered.
"Y-You know, I-" John started.
Starchaser pushed forward harder. Her throat stretched and her eyes watered as she pushed forward more and more until her lips pressed against the knot at the base of his cock. She groaned around him, then drew back, and back, and back until his cock sprang free from her lips. She panted and gasped while John groaned, low in his throat.
"Y-You may be larger in this form, but…" her hand closed around his shaft. "I'm a captain in my people's star navy, goddamn it. If I can't suck a cock this big, what good was my training?" She opened her mouth and slid his cock down her throat again, her free hand squeezing his balls even more forcefully – startling a grunt from John as his hips bucked and a thick droplet of pre-cum soaked along her throat. Starchaser began to bob her head eagerly – almost roughly – her moans adding vibrational bliss to John's cock.
John had no choice but to add to the movement – his hips began to work, his big hand cupping the back of the catgirl's head, his fingers lacing through her wild mane of hair. His cock drove down her throat and his heavy Kruul balls clapped against her chin with a rhythmic, lewd plap plap plap sound while Pixie watched with eager, glittering light in her eyes. She licked her lips as Starchaser bounced her head against John's lap more and more eagerly, her eyes growing hazy and slitted with pleasure. John felt his orgasm ratcheting up inside of him, inch by inch by inch until he had no choice. His hips bucked and he groaned low in his throat...and Starchaser started to drink. Her throat bobbed and bobbed again as she swallowed blast after blast of thick, Kruulish cum, until John started to draw his cock out of her mouth. She gasped wetly and moaned as thick spurts of seed gushed against her face, splattering cheek, hair, forehead, ear.
"Ah...fuck…" John whispered.
"God, breed me already…" Starchaser whispered.
"I mean, I can make that possible, or do you want me to do the shifto shapo?" Pixie asked, giggling as Starchaser shook her head – her cheeks darkening with a blush.
"N-No, we have to hurry," she said, thrusting herself to her feet. She wobbled and almost collapsed against John's chest before he slipped his arm around her back, holding her close. Pixie giggled.
"What form?" she whispered.
John nodded, slowly. "I think...we want to fit in. Make us both Paw. Male for me, female for Starchaser. But make us...bland."
"Got it!" Pixie made a pair of fingerguns – and psionic energy crackled and sparked in the alleyway – almost loud enough to cover the sound of cartilage moving and bone creaking…
***
Jade strode confidently from the populated area of Trade-1 to the unpopulated part, her clawed feet rasping on the ground. She didn't look back behind herself – she instead kept cutting forward past monolithic apartment blocks that hung above and stretched from below. The slidewalk, designed to make passage through the cyclopean space swifter than mere walking, had long since been left to decay in the emptiness of the unused part of the station – so rather than whirring briskly along to bring her faster than her feet could carry her, it instead merely let out a series of soft whumps with every footstep, rubbery-surface deforming under her weight. She didn't spare a glance for the vastness around her. Instead, she simply kept walking.
About fifty meters back, John and Starchaser followed after, their brown furred tails twitching.
"I kind of hoped we'd have more cover," John whispered.
"Don'tcha worry!" Pixie said, giving him a pair of finger guns. "I've got a no-see-um psionic field on you. She won't think to look behind herself until-"
"She's noticed us," Starchaser said.
"Ah dang it," Pixie said as Jade snapped her head over her shoulder. A Qorr could stand quite still when need be – her feathered crest was the only thing that moved, frilling and spreading outwards in an instinctive threat posture. Then Jade leaped off the slidewalk. She fell straight down into the vast empty space between slidewalk and buildings – her arms spreading wide to catch at the air. John sprinted forward, hissing between his teeth, only to see her shooting back up again, her feet skittering towards the ceiling. He blinked, then watched as her course jarringly shifted at a right angle as she hit the midpoint between two of the huge apartment blocks.
"...she's using the gravity fields!" he exclaimed.
"They're invisible! If she hits the wrong one, it'll splat her into the wall!" Starchaser said, her tail floofing up as she scowled.
Jade whistled by, then shunted another ninety degrees – and just as Starchaser had predicted, this one sent her hurtling towards a wall. She twisted around, brought her legs up, then smashed into the wall feet first, rolling and springing aside. This sent her away at a crazy, arcing parabola – falling through real gravity for a few seconds before she intersected another invisible gravity lane and was brought whistling straight down to land on a roof. She rolled, came to her feet, sprinted to a nearby doorway and hooked the top of the door with one of her massive, raptor toe-claws, then tore down with a squeal of metal.
"Well," John said, glancing at Starchaser.
"Oh hell no!" she said.
"I think I know where you need to jump," Pixie said, her eyes narrowing.
"Hell no!" Starchaser said, again.
"Find a grav-car and trace my com," John said.
"John, don't-"
John jumped. He shot out – lurch – shot down. But for him, dizzyingly, down was at a completely different angle and direction than it had been until a few seconds ago. He was flung upwards, falling straight towards the ceiling. Then he hit another gravity tunnel and was falling left. He got his feet under himself and-
"Oh dear!" Pixie said.
"I don't want to hear oh dear right now!" John shouted over the wind, his arms crossed over his chest as he tried to fall straight and true.
"Uh, uh, uh, it's okay!" Pixie said. "In a few seconds, you just need to shove yourself over a meter. Just one measly meter!"
John scowled, drawing his only sidearm – a Kruul mastication pistol. The weapon used multidimensional monsters to eat people alive, not bullets. It wouldn't even serve as a makeshift reaction mass engine. As he held it, Pixie yelped.
"Okay, now it has to be a dozen meters! And in the next sixty seconds!"
John grabbed the barrel of his weapon and wrenched it forward. The firing mechanism crunched, glass shattered, and then he brought it smashing down against his knee. Even if he now lacked Kruul muscles, it was still enough force into the weakest part of the firearm to break the dimensional chamber and vomit a writhing mass of muscle and teeth directly into his chest. The teeth snapped wildly while a tentactular tail writhed and wriggled – but John was ready. He grabbed the tail, spun, twirled, and flung it as hard as he could to his left.
The resulting impact of Newton's first law sent him flinging straight out of the gravity tunnel.
Real gravity caught him again and his straight line became a rapid parabola – arcing downwards to Trade-1's bowels.
He slammed into another invisible gravity tunnel, was flung upwards, dropped out, snagged, dropped, snagged, dropped. Up and down changed angles so many times that it was all he could to do not throw up. Then he saw something flat shooting straight at his head. He twisted on himself, rolled, and finally, his feet hit solid ground and he tumbled head over heels before crashing directly into a steel wall. John groaned as he sprawled onto his back – his entire body aching like someone had beaten him with baseball bats. Pixel leaned over him, her face full of nerves.
"...are you okay?"
"Pixie...you live in my head. You know I'm fine," John said, grinning at her weakly. He sat up, and found that he had hit the wall right next to the door that Jade had slipped through. "Well, damn. Your precognitive skills were right on the money."
Pixie blinked. Then she coughed. "S-Sure. Yeah. That's why we landed here. Yeah. We'll just put that in the log."
John shook his head, then sprang up to his feet. His Paw body was a lot more limber than a human one – his feet landed right under him and he went through the opened door. The narrow corridor that the door led into went straight to a set of stairs. He started down them – came around the corner and flung himself forward and down seconds before a sword swept through where his neck had been. He slid past the burly form of Jadestone Fireheart, tumbled down the stairs, and landed on his feet on the flat, broad corridor that the stairs led towards. He panted as she casually wrenched the sword from the metal wall with a spray of sparks and metal shavings.
"You're no Paw," she said, grinning as she let her long, deadly blade rest on her shoulder. "You're no Kruul either."
"You could tell earlier, huh?" John asked, shifting slightly in his stance.
"Your posture was all wrong. I am a blade-mistress of the Qorr. We're trained to know our enemies in war and love – and you? You remind me of someone." She smirked, showing her very sharp teeth. "There's two ways for me to determine who, exactly, you are…"
"Is there a bed somewhere nearby?" John asked, dryly.
She dropped her hand down to her belt, drawing one of the knives she had sheathed there. She tossed it down the stairs – and John caught it, hilt first. Her grin grew broader.
"No," she said.
"I thought these were apartments," John said, shifting his posture. He was beginning to wish he had brought a shield belt – but they were rare enough.
Pixie gulped. "John, um, I know you're a dashing starship captain, but, um, isn't she the deadliest woman to ever be given a blade?"
"Sure is," John whispered.
"I was hoping you'd say no, Pixie, don't be absurd, Pixie, she's just a big blow-"
The muscular Qorr woman leaped up – sailing down the flight of stairs, her curved toe-claws leading the way. John would have said the memory was atavistic memory of the last time humanity had been hunted by raptors, but he was pretty sure velociraptors had been extinct long before humanity arrived. Still, something in his brain screamed pure terror at him as he flung himself aside and came to his feet seconds before those claws disemboweled him. Maybe it was the ancient human instinct to avoid getting your stomach ripped out by a muscular raptor woman? Who knew.
He came up and brought his blade around, parring a casual sweep of Jade's sword. The heavier weapon, swung by a stronger woman, cracked into his knife and sent it skittering from his hand. He jerked backwards, just barely avoiding the tip of her blade as he backed down the corridor. Every door he passed was a blank black rectangle, and every door was closed. The only light came from dull yellow lamps set in small recessed circles in the ceiling. John backed away as Jade advanced, her grin glinting in the yellow light, her red and gold scales flickering. Her tail slapped against the walls as she let her toe-claws dig into the floor with a squeal of metal.
"You at least have some skill. Good parry, but the blade-weight wasn't in your favor. Too small too."
She thrust at him with a sudden flourish. John jerked his shoulder left, then tried to step into her guard. He drove his elbow against her wrist, then brought his knee up. It slammed into her golden scaled belly – and slammed into hardened muscle like hitting a brick wall.
"...huh!" Jade grunted. "Almost felt that."
She swung around and her tail swept his legs out from under him. She lifted her foot, drove it down. John rolled aside, hit a door – and blinked as the door opened for himself. He rolled into it, somersaulting onto his feet as the door slammed shut behind him. He blinked and then saw Pixie withdrawing her hand from the wall. She flashed him a nervous smile.
Then the tip of the Qorr blade plunged through the door, right where the seam had been.
"Can't keep away from me that easy!"
John looked around – and saw that he was not in a completely unmarked, unfilled room. Under the heavy layer of dust, the chamber looked like it had once been part of a manufactory – there were boxy machines, connective tubes, wires and connective tissue that would let each machine feed one into the other. He looked around wildly, then spotted a heavy pipe that looked like it was once used as part of the machinery, removed and set aside. He took it up and felt it – but couldn't identify the metal. He hoped it was closer to duranium than it was to polyaluminum.
John spun to face the door as, groaning and squealing, it was forced open by the sheer brutal strength of the muscular lizardwoman. Jade grinned fiercely, then sprang in. "Improvisation!" she exclaimed. Her sword, gripped in both hands, thrust at his chest. John parried with both hands and a spray of sparks flew up. The pole buzzed in his hand...but it didn't bend, break or scuff. "Duranium – excellent choice, excellent choice!"
She swung at his head, then pirouetted – and used her tail to seep for the legs. John ducked. He sprang up, landed on one of the boxy machines. He saw a tube shaped container attached to the machine – full of liquid. His grin flashed for a moment and he thrust the tube between container and machine, then leavered it hard. The container sloshed free and Jade sprang backwards as the black fluid splattered onto the floor.
They both stood, panting, with the black puddle between them. John didn't tear his gaze from Jade – but Pixie whispered.
"The grav-shaft out the window will get us outta here," she breathed.
John didn't nod. He kept watching Jade. She sniffed. Sniffed.
Then she chuckled.
"That's printer fluid," she said, stepping into the puddle with slow, casual maliciousness. "Nice try, stranger." Her blade gleamed.
John slammed his pipe into the window. It crackled, but did not shatter. Jade lifted her blade – and brought it whistling down. John started to move – but the hilt of her blade cracked into his temple. Pixie cried out as a flare of white sparks flashed before John's eyes. The sparkles faded...faded...faded. And with them came darkness.
***
When John roused, with a pounding headache, he could hear conversation. Voices. His brow furrowed – and he heard the first words that made sense…
"He doesn't fight like a Kruul either, Mistress. But whatever biomorphic shaping he took, it's harder and better than anything I've ever seen." Jade grunted. "I swear I've seen the way he fights before, though…"
"It's quite all right, our Blade-Mistress," a soft, feminine voice whispered from the darkness.
John did not lift his head – instead, he opened his eyes to slits and glanced left and right. What little he could see was hard, dark metal, with thin seams separating it into regular hexagons. The light that shone down overhead was brilliant white, shining through his bangs with a harshness that gave his hair a kind of glowing haze to go with his throbbing headache. Ahead of him was Jade, her tail curved and coiled along the ground like a powerful red snake, and beyond her was the feminine voice. John risked lifting his head ever so slightly.
The view of Jade's muscular, scaled ass was…
Not what he had expected.
Gone was the leather pants. Gone were the bandoliers and the blades.
In their place was gauzy silks, tight enough to show every seam between every scale and gauzy enough to show crimson and where crimson shifted to gold. And good-goddamn if Jade did not have one of the most toothsome rumps that John had seen in quote some, he would have to eat his boots. It was curvy and round and perky and athletic and scaled, topped with a long and thick tail that was just as delicious looking. The fact she was now wearing a gauzy skirt that left acres of muscular thigh exposed, complete with golden bangles around ankles and wrists and golden rings around her fingers and toes only added to the allure.
Also she had nearly brained him with the pommel of her sword. That was just a universal attractor, at least in the cultures that humanity had thus far made contact with.
Looking past her as subtly as he could, John could see that the Mistress was a shroud of golden fabric and curtains, disguising a space large enough to hold a Zemturga – which was a lot of golden fabric, as the average Zemturga was roughly the size of an elephant. Lounging within that golden space was a huge, burly form and the slow, heavy sound of breathing...and standing before it was the most devastatingly beautiful Terran that John had seen in quite some time. She was also the first Terran that John had ever seen that wasn't someone from his hometown of Zeta Colony.
She was fine boned and delicate, with ebony black skin, a tightly curled set of dreadlocks, and dressed in a flowing and dignified gown of white fabrics that were patterned with complex, interlocking patterns of geometric perfection. She wore gold bands around her throat and her wrists, and had gold paint daubed on her cheeks and her nose. Her eyes were warm, liquid brown. In short...she was...not dressed as a pleasure slave.
Except she was. John lifted his head and narrowed his eyes – and saw she did wear the collar of a pleasure slave.
A rumbling came from the gauzy cage.
"Ah, it seems that your captive rouses earlier than expected," the Terran said, her voice amused. "We ask that you bring him forward."
Jade bowed, then stepped over. John, who found that his wrists were tied to straps and lashed to a floating metal cage, struggled a little – but he couldn't get his wrists to move. He was dragged towards the Terran and the Zemturaga. He could feel pitiless, cold eyes peering at him from behind the guazy curtain. What alien thoughts cracked through the vast skull of that hideous thing? His lip curled and he lifted his head slightly, glaring.
"A Paw…" the Terran woman said. "One who is not clearly marked as being a member of the Blade faction. Fascinating. We ask your name."
John remained silent.
"You shall not be harmed," the Terran said. "Our Blade-Mistress shall free you."
John frowned – and remained silent as a knife slashed and he fell forward to his knees. He stood, hazily, and winced as Jade pressed a hypo-spray to his throat. The rush of energy and the fading of pain made it clear it was some kind of medicine. He rubbed at his neck, then thought. Pixie, are you here?
He heard no response. Had the blow to his head been enough to…
No.
There was a psychic somewhere in this chamber. That had to be the answer – Pixie wasn't silent because she was dead or unconscious. She was silent because she was hiding. John clung to that thought, for what hope it provided.
"What is your true race?" the Terran asked. "My Mistress wishes to know who you may serve. We can reveal it by force, but…" She trailed off.
John shook his head.
The Terran sighed. "We regret that we are forced to do this."
Oh of course you are, John thought. He hadn't thought the Zemturga could be capable of hypoc-
Another hissing hypo-spray pressed to his throat. He grunted and then gasped as he felt his body creak and groan, his face shrinking, his ears withdrawing, his tail slumping away. He stumbled and almost fell – but Jade caught him...and then cried out in shock. "As I live and breathe! Junior!" She exclaimed, grabbing his shoulders, hefting him up. "No! No! You're not Junior...but his face! His…" Her nose flared, sniffing. "By my Egg! You're Junior's son."
John made a note to tease his father about this, assuming he survived to get back to Zeta Colony. He grinned, weakly. "My parents said that you were to be my godmother," he said.
"What did they name you? I- we have so much to share, so many stories! Why I-" Jade started.
"Ahem."
Jade coughed, releasing him and turning to bow to the Terran. John tried to not oggle her heaving scaled breasts and the way they jiggled under her silken wraps as she bowed. Instead, he shot a glower at the Zemturga sitting behind the Terran. "John Tangent. Captain. Serial number-"
"Captain Tangent, please," the Terran said. "You misunderstand the situation you find yourself in."
"Misunderstand!?" John exploded. "You enslaved my people! You took my planet! You've conquered the entire galaxy! What is there to misunderstand?" He started to walk forward, but the Terran woman stepped between him. Her palm pressed to his chest...and their eyes met. John felt a tingling awareness of her silky skin, and felt a strange rushing sensation of familiarly – as if something about her was intimately known to him. Her face turned aside and her voice grew soft.
"You ask after dark secrets, Captain Tangent. Secrets that are not our place to share," she said, softly. John took her hand. His voice was soft.
"You say we. But you're not Zemturga. You're a Terran! A free woman-"
"You don't understand," she said, flaring. "But...my name is Dhakiya – and we…" She frowned, then spoke with more emphasis. "I am not a slave. Nor is this Zemturga what you think."
John frowned. "Prove it."
"Very well," she said, simply. "We will provide your ship the location of the Sensurian genetic vaults and the means to reach them before our enemies in the Blade Faction discover them. And then we shall provide for you the place to bring the Sensurian race once more into bloom." Her lips quirked up slightly. "How is that for proof."
John looked into her eyes. He released her hand. "...it's a start."
His smile was just as slight.
But when his gaze flicked past the Terran to the Zemturga, he saw no sign of movement within. The alien in there watched him with the implacable, enduring focus of a gas giant's liquid core – endless and unknowable. John didn't know what lurked behind the dull, gray eyes peering out at him...but he didn't like it.
"We shall continue this discussion aboard your ship?" Dhakiya asked.
John slowly nodded.
Which was when Tygress Starchaser drove the skycar through the wall with a resounding roar of splintering metal and squealing plastics.
TO BE CONTINUED
Um, and the space station above Earth doesn't count?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
As entertaining as it always is, neat update. Maybe I'll actually try the Star Control series (although 4x games aren't really something I enjoy).
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Star Control II isn't actually a 4x game!
You only have one spaceship and you explore the galaxy - it's really more of an RPG (with the ship being your character.)
CHAPTER EIGHT: Out of the Frying Pan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The meeting room of the Excalibur thrummed with excitement. Delta slapped her palms onto the table and sprang to her feet. "This is it! This is what we've been waiting for, a break!" She beamed. "The Sensurians-"
"We can't just bring the Sensurians back by snapping our fingers," Albert said, frowning as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Yes, they were our best spies, agents, propagandists...half the morale corps…" He coughed, then glanced at Lt. Sheyshen. She chuckled quietly.
"We're not exactly embarrassed about it, Albert," she said, her hand brushing her pale white hair behind one blue, pointed ear. "Human/Sensurian relationships being...so…" She paused. "Intimate has been a point of pride for our people since you joined the Alliance." She clasped her hands together. "And well, the Sensurians, from what I've been able to determine, knew that if they were to be brought back using the genetic records, that there might not be enough time for a normal gestation and training period. And according to the data provided by this mysterious informant of yours…" She flicked her gaze to Captain Tangent, who was regarding a map of the galaxy on a flimsy. "They found a solution."
"Oh?" Kat asked, lifting her head from her own documents. Despite the importance of the meeting, the chief engineer was still half absorbed in her own particular tasks.
"Yes," Shey said, seriously. "Sensurians tend to rank higher on the various modes of tracking esper talents – and the best of them recorded memories in a memory stone with the genetic records. This won't be a generation of children. It'll be a generation of replacement bodies for those who were soon to die…" She looked grim.
"Would that even work?" Triana asked, frowning as she leaned in on her elbows. "I've read up on esper talents, that kind of thing sounds risky as hell."
"Extremely," Shey said. "It'll require an amazing talent to organize and direct it. And...well, I'm not exactly the galaxy's most powerful Sensurian."
"Sure you are!" Kat said, nodding as her ears flicked and her tail wagged. "Since, like, you're the last one."
Silence fell across the table as people considered that.
Kat's ears flicked down as she realized, a bit too late, how that sounded. "Er. Uh. Sorry, Shey."
Shey breathed in, then breathed out. "It's all right Kat. You're right, as much as we don't want to admit it. I may have to be the one to guide this moment." She squared her shoulders. "Captain, permission to take my regular duties off to focus on training?"
"Granted," Captain Tangent said, lifting his gaze from the flimsy. "I've been checking the routes to the destination provided by Dhakiya…" He set the flimsy down. "Our two main routes are both dangerous in their own ways. We can swing through Vornash territory, or we can head through the Zone of Terror."
Delta leaned over to peer at the plastic printout. She scowled. "Oh, Zone of Terror, fuck off, look, it's not even the worst thing in that area of space! See, it's right next to the Unthinking Depths, the Cthonic Nebula, and the Galaxy of T...Terror, how can you call something a galaxy when it's in the milky way, that's bullshit." She leaned forward, her butt almost bumping against Triana's face. Triana grabbed the back of the lead pilot and jerked her back into her seat with a tug of her arm.
"Because it was named by Lithanoids, and they like being poetic sometimes," Triana said. "It's a spiral shape of stars and spatial anomalies, see?"
"Should have called it the Swirly of…" Delta looked like she was reaching mentally. "Sorcery."
"I vote for the Vornash run," Triana said, ignoring her fellow officer. "The Excalibur is a well armed, heavily armored ship with an unknown configuration. They won't know what to make of us, so we can fast talk anything we can't fight, and the crews need training on their guns and their new fighters."
"True," Delta said.
"I also vote for the Vornash run," Albert said. "I don't want to have to chart my way through half a dozen anomalies so bad that they got named the Zone of Terror."
Eugene, who had been silent so far, said: "I vote Vornash too."
"The Zone of Terror is my vote," Shey said, her voice quiet. "It's hard to focus on psychic training when your ship is being shot with lasers." She made a face. "But I won't say boo if we go Vornash too – since, well, being smashed about by anomalies is also pretty distracting."
Kat didn't look up from her documents. "Captain, we need more lithium," she said as everyone looked at her. "And duranium. Send the mining skiff down for-"
"Ahem," Triana coughed.
"Huh?" Kat lifted her head. "Oh, what were we voting on? Routes? Fuck if I care, I spend my entire time in the engineering bay." She looked back down. Triana rolled her eyes, while everyone's gaze settled on the Captain. While UNN ships could offer votes like this, the final decision still came down to the Captain. He nodded slowly, then looked down at the flimsy.
"Lets see how the Vornash are doing then," he said, quietly.
***
The Excalibur soared through tier three of the SOF, and the crew were quite happy to take advantage of the peculiar nature of that realm of reality – not just to slip the bounds of light speed travel, but also in...more ephemeral, exotic ways…
The door to the mess opened and Triana and Eugene walked in, laughing and shaking their heads. "The ghost of Napoleon, really?" Triana asked.
"It sure sounded like that through the door," Eugene said, frowning as he saw that the table nearest the window, which looked out on the simulated landscape of downtown Paris rather than the mentally corrosive swirl of impossible colors that existed at this level of the SOF, had been occupied by Kat. The young Paw had laid out all her engineering documents and was currently trying to read them around the largest sandwich that either Eugene and Triana had seen. She actually looked like she was trying to dislocate her jaw to take a bite into it. Her teeth sank in and a spurt of thick, red juices came out of the far end. Kat reacted with Pawish reflexes, kicking the table with one leg and sending it skidding along its mounted track. It moved a few inches away from her, so that the spurt finished its parabola by landing on the plate, rather than her documents. Then she hooked her ankle around the table and drew it back again as she continued to chew.
"...enjoying yourself?" Triana asked, nodding as Eugene murmured a question in her ear.
"Mmmh," Kat said around the sandwich, not looking up.
Triana took a seat and spun one of the documents around. "Ah, working on upscaling those force screen amplifiers?"
"Mmhmm!" Kat swallowed, setting her sandwich aside. "Who the fuck is Napoleon?"
Triana blinked, then remembered the Paw's sense of hearing. As if she could hear her thoughts, Kat grinned and pointed at her cat's ears, wiggling them. Triana sighed. "The Captain is being haunted by the ghost of a Corsican general – Corsica is an island off the coast of France."
"...a ghost?" Kat asked. "And we're not concerned because…?"
"Metanarrative field disassociation effects, Chief," Eugene said, returning with the coffee he had fabricated up for Triana. He handed on cup to her, keeping his. "The SOF is so preposterously impossible that each tier down you get, impossible events get more likely to occur. We're already breaking the light speed limit and causality, why not a few more laws? The Captain gets to fuck every hot alien we meet and have sword fights and run around on shore leave because it increases his narrative weight in the SOF – it means the weird stuff hits him and, sometimes, us."
"Like when you got kidnapped by the Kruul Princess," Kat said, nodding.
"Yeah. Like when I got kidnapped by the Kruul Princess," Eugene said.
"More than kidnapped…" Triana muttered into her cup.
"Ahem," Eugene said, coughing. "What matters is the Captain deals with this stuff so we can get real work done. Have the repairs been finished?"
Kat nodded.
"And the plans for expanding out our components into the empty hull space? Ar those ready?"
Kat grinned. "Not just ready – done. My boys and girls have made a gridwork inside the Luciferian metal full of universal connector ports and pre-placed power lines and guide pipes. Basically, the instant we have the resources and call for it, we can slot a component in there in less than a day."
"Fantastic," Eugene said, while Triana nodded and drank her coffee.
"...so, we really shouldn't be worried about Napoleon's ghost?" Kat asked.
"No," Triana said. "If you get involved, then you become a part of the SOF intrusion – it'll just spread the damage around. Just...stay away from the captain's room."
"What if I need to talk to him?" Kat asked, scowling.
"Just don't," Triana said. Then she frowned. "You know, that's a good point." She drew up her wrist com. "Regs are split on this matter – no one's sure if it helps or hurts to warn people. Since, well, warning them might be what gets them involved." She tapped a few buttons. "But this one seems fairly self contained." She frowned as her com chirruped. She sighed, then turned it on. "Yes, Albert?"
"Uh, just checking, that warning you mentioned, was it about-" Albert started before a hiss crack and a loud ping sounded over the com.
"Goddamn it," Triana muttered.
***
Shery frowned as she tried to meditate in her chambers. The thumping of hooves from upstairs was just a bit much – but when a musket went off, she jerked her head up and scowled as her...her…
Oh hell. She sighed and deflated as, faintly, the sound of swords crashing against swords came through the ceiling panels. "Have at you, you Corsican rat!"
"How appropriate! Hon hon hon! You fight like a ratcatcher from the swill sodden streets of London! Hon hon hon!"
Crash! Clang.
Shey shook her head, her ears drooping slightly. Her meditation hadn't been knocked off kilter. There hadn't been any meditation at all. She had been sitting there thinking. Thinking about the genetic future of her people., Thinking about the possible battles ahead. Thinking about the mystery. Who was this...Terran that the captain had met. How could she be so important in a Zemturga court, while still being a mere pleasure slave? She had given actual orders and information. No Zemturga would do that. It was all so impossible.
Ting! ZZZAP!
"What!?"
"Ah, Napoleon, it seems you've fallen afoul of the positronic circuits – they sometimes turn ectroplasmic slime like you into women." There was a clattering sound like a dropped sword. "Now…lets take this duel to the next level."
"Y-You...swine…" The french accent was more easy to appreciate as a breathy woman. But Shey was not able to stay here one moment longer. She stood up and walked out of her room – so distracted that she nearly plowed into the Captain. She started upon running into him, then looked up, then down, then up again – and on the third circuit of her eyes traveling, she saw that he was actually holding a medibandage to his shoulder. His smile was wan.
"Albert so, uh, politely decided to take up the slack for me," he said, chuckling. "Hows he doing, the soundproofing in your room is on the fritz isn't it?"
"I thought that was you…" Shey shook her head. "Stars, I must be more distracted than I thought."
"Trouble focusing?" John asked, gently.
Shey nodded.
"Well, when I have a hard time managing to focus, I do something I enjoy," John said, smiling at her.
"Sex won't help," Shey said, quietly, rubbing her backside. "Sixteen men and fifteen women from the crew have already offered and...well, none of them were quite as good as you, but-"
"Then something else!" John said, laughing. "I'm going to the medbay first. That mad dictator's a dab hand at the saber."
"Right…" Shey said.
But the only other thing she enjoyed was sitting at her console, running sensor scans. It felt so very nerdy to admit it, but she just enjoyed learning more about the world around her. Seeing the cosmos, seeing its mysteries, they delighted her. Then she cocked her head to the side and laughed quietly. And this was a problem? Since when? She started down the corridor, feeling a bit happier and more focused.
The bridge was on a tertiary shift and the crewwoman at her sensors post was looking a bit listless as she watched the shimmering flow of the SOF slide past. Shey smiled. "May I have this post, Ensign?" she asked.
"Lt. Sheyshan?" The ensign asked. "Of course!" She sprang to her feet and Shey slid into her seat and almost immediately felt more at peace. She looked down at the scanning systems and started to subtly adjust the mass detector and the radio arrays. She frowned slightly as she peered at the eddies and flows of the SOF. Tier Four was looking closer than normal to Tier Three. They might have been in an updraft situation – that would explain Napoleon. She cocked her head slightly, then considered sending a radar ping behind her. That bulge in space/time was definitely odd.
She tapped the request to the officer on the watch. She got the permission back after a short pause. Shey pressed the ping button and saw the tiny wave of radio signals sweep out behind the ship, represented as a thin white wave that swept out. It went through the space/time bulge with a fairly normal refraction pattern.
...so, why did Shey frown at the bulge. Something in her brain was tickling. Something was wrong here. It was the placement of the distortion, the speed it was traveling. It was just slightly off their course, but it was nearly the same speed – and if it had been anything else, she would have thought it was following them. But it was positioned almost exactly at the right spot to be an SOF eddy kicked up by the Excalibur's fusion torch drives. She rubbed her chin slowly, then turned in her seat. The officer of the watch was a dweeby Ensign who looked about as heroic and dashing as a bowl of soup. That would keep any strangeness away from the bridge – and if something serious did pop up from non-SOF reasons, the captain could be called in a hurry.
Shey stood. "Ensign…"
"Uh, Dwight, Lt!" the Ensign said, sitting up. "What's the matter?" he asked.
She smiled, wryly. "I've noticed something odd. I was wondering if we could slew course slightly. I want to check something."
Ensign Dwight glanced away from her to the Ensign who was on the helm. The Ensign in question had immediately perked up and was looking as busy as she possibly could. Dwight gulped and considered – but Shey gave him his time. Slowly, he nodded. "Do it," he said. Then, realizing that he had said this to his science officer, he hurriedly said. "H-Helm, adjust course by 4.5 microns."
"...to port or…"
"Either direction!" Dwight said, sounding nervous.
"Got it. Er, I mean, aye aye, sir."
Shey covered her mouth to hide her smile and hurried back to the console. She watched…
And saw that the blip did not move in the slightest.
"Gotcha!" she said, grinning.
For some reason, she felt a lot more confident about the future of her species right about now.
***
Princess Evilla Slayvine sat in her throne of agony and watched the forward screen as her ship cruised quietly through the lower levels of the SOF, shrouded in an oblique field. She watched as the strangely shaped ship – the human ship – shifted subtly in the SOF. Her lips quirked slightly as she considered what she would do once she was able to ambush and board them. Her thoughts drifted to the lithe human she had...entertained…
This was all for, of course, evil reasons. She wanted to do wickedness and cruelty to the universe, as was the way of the Maliceocracy. Of course. Of course.
"My princess," her ship's commanding officer, Slayne Von Mur'durr, stepped to the side of her throne. "The crew have been wondering exactly what our mission is here."
"I need not explain myself to you, Von Mur'durr," Evilla muttered, lifting her gaze from the screen to glower at him. "My parents granted this ship to me. It is my birthright." She huffed slightly. "I didn't realize that they had picked a crew that was so...flighty."
"I worry that they may have noticed us, my princess," Von Mur'durr said, stepping before her, his hands clasped behind his back. He frowned, his tusks glinting in the pale red light that suffused the bridge. He kicked one foot at the ground, disturbing the mist that was pumped into the gloomy, gothic chamber. "That course change, it might have been sweeping for a ship just like us."
"What would you suggest, then?" Evilla asked, frowning.
"Sir!" One of the officers at the sensors. "Something is happening ahead of us."
The Kruul all frowned, looking at the screen, at the digital representation of the human ship. There was a momentary flash that their forward camera screens picked up – but then nothing. Evilla frowned harder, leaning forward, her brow drawing in. Von Mur'durr stepped forward. Then his eyes widened as some subtle clue inculcated by years of experience flashed through his mind. He turned to the helm's officer.
"Turn! Turn now!"
The ship lurched-
And then, for a single instant, Evilla saw that there was a large, spiky metal ball tumbling through the SOF and towards her ship.
Her eyes widened.
The mine smashed directly into the ship and detonated with a flare of brilliant white light. With their shields down and their hull only moderately armored against kinetic weaponry, the ship almost immediately began to break apart as the concussive shockwave blew through it and fragments dispersed throughout the hull. There was only a few short seconds before the bridge would be sheered apart. Von Mur'durr had that time to spin to the princess, and to see her suddenly vanish from the ship's room with a crack of displacing air.
He had no time to be annoyed at being left behind.
***
The crack of displaced air jerked Captain Ssivik from her restive slumber within her prison cell. Her snakish body writhed and shoved the Myg'gar'gar to an upright position. She had to admit that while she did not appreciate being imprisoned by the Terr-ans, she was relatively pleased with their accommodations. She had asked for the room to be made warmer, and warmer they had made it. They were happy with providing live food she could eat. They had even provided her with plenty of books and vid-disks she could entertain herself with, even if Terr-an comedy was often deeply tragic, and their tragedies were hilarious. She was currently working through various 'situational comedy' shows, and each was more agonizing than the last.
She loved them.
Ssivik pressed her face against the glass, peering out into the corridor beyond her prison cell. She saw the other empty brigs doors, and then-
Crash!
A burly, feminine figure stumbled into one of the doors. A Kruul? Ssivik's eyes widened as she watched steam rise slowly off the Kruul's shoulders and back. She looked like she was completely buck-ass-naked as well, her body entirely on display as she looked around frantically, then sprinted for a nearby airvent. Despite being relatively large, as women went, she still was able to wriggle into the vent. It took a lot of squirming and kicking – and the whole time, Ssivik slammed her palms against the door.
"Hey! Wait! Wait! We're on the sssssssame sssssssssside! Let me out! Let me out you ssssssssstupid-" she hissed the last spluttering sound of frustration as the Kruul's foot vanished into the recesses of the air vent. A moment later, the Kruul's hand swung out of the vent and grabbed the grille, closing it behind her.
Ssivik crossed her arms under her scaled breasts and grumbled.
"Well, that'ssssssss just rude!"
Then she slid back into bed, leaned against the wall, and used her tail to turn on a new season of All My Anatomy.
***
The Excalibur popped out of the SOF with a crackle and spray of exotic particles – and with her commanding officer at the helm. John leaned back in his seat as Pixie bounced excitedly from foot to foot. Arrayed before them were three Vornash Obsidian class fire-tenders. Each one was about a quarter of the size of the Excalibur and had only a single Vornash aboard – but the enigmatic Vornash didn't really need more. The documents that the UNN had been provided on the Vornash by the Omnidrones and the Qorr had been relatively sparse, if only because neither of them had managed to get a Vornash to talk to them beyond a terse refusal to surrender or an equally terse refusal to accept surrender.
"So, what do you think they're like?" Albert asked, grinning from his console to Eugene, who was frowning slightly.
"Assholes," Eugene said.
"Well, duh," Triana said, grinning slightly as Albert snickered.
"Shey, do you have the recording of the ship that was following us?" John asked, turning in his seat to face her. "They might have picked up the energy emission and are curious." He smiled. "I think they'll be happy to know there's one less Kruul. They're fighting just about everyone according to our intelligence."
"I do, captain!" Shey said, still looking quite smug. The fabrication of the mine had been her and Kat's idea, and it had quietly put paid to the Kruul sneak following after them. Though...part of John wondered if it had maybe been too easy. According to Dr. Darling, the Napoleon incident should have been enough 'narrative texture' to allow for an undramatic conclusion to the Kruul's plot. But...but if it was...John shook his head. He had to focus on the here and now for the moment.
"We're being hailed," Shey said.
"Voice or visual?" John asked.
"...one way visual," Shey said, sounding faintly shocked.
"Put it on," John said.
The screen flickered and a blazing wave of bright light screamed out of the screen and into their eyes. Albert cried out, while Triana covered her eyes with her hands. Eugene, though, was fast enough on the draw to find and slap the right button. The light levels dimmed to a mere dull gray, and John lowered his hand. "Goddamn, what was that?" he asked as a screaming roar came through the cameras – it sounded like a howling screech.
"I don't know, the universal translators are struggling with it," Shey said. "Adjusting. I think-"
The light flashed off.
"We're getting audio this time. Piping it through my earpiece…" Shey said, then frowned. "It's in the Zemturga trade tongue – Captain, they are demanding to know what we're doing in their space."
"Tell them that we're a trade ship from Trade-1, heading to-"
John was cut off by Shey lifting her hand. "Sir, they're demanding that we provide tithes. They want...biomatter? Hydrocarbons?" She lifted her head. "Gasoline?"
"Who uses gasoline?" Triana asked.
"Tell them we're preparing our tithes," John said. "And ask how long we have to fabricate the materials?"
"Thirty minuets," Shey said after a few moments of frowning.
"Pushy bunch," Eugene muttered, his arms crossed over his chest. John stood and walked over to Shey's console, Triana hurrying over to join him. All three peered down at the initial burst of energy that had been sent to them.
"Do you think it was a mistake?" John asked.
"No…" Shey said. "It was deliberate, I'm sure of it."
Triana scratched her jaw. "Well, remember when the first contact of Lithanoids? They sent a message that took four weeks to decode, because they're...rocks. Maybe this is another one of those translation mishaps."
"We dimmed the image and it was just gray," Shey murmured.
"Maybe filter out frequencies of light? Pitch it up and down the spectrum?" John asked.
Shey nodded, then started to adjust buttons and dials. As she did so, John's wrist com chirruped. He tapped it on. "This is Tangent-"
"John you asshole, what the fuck kind of work order is this? Fifty tons of gasoline? We don't have that much fucking hydrocarbons on the ship!" Kat's furious voice came up the line. "And even if we did, do you know how many byproducts that shit would put into the fabricators? We'd need those magic fabricators that the Zemturga had back in the starbase, and even then it'd smell like rotten eggs for weeks. What kind of lunatics are you meeting out there-"
"Hold please," John said, then tapped off the line.
"She's fun," Triana said, grinning at him.
"Only when she goes into heat," John muttered.
"I can...induce that you know…" Pixie whispered in his ear.
"Shush," John said.
The image projected on Shey's screen shifted, altered and-
"Oh my," Shey whispered.
"Fhew," Triana whispered.
"Huh," John said.
"...guess she's pretty h-" Pixie started, but then squeaked as John managed to clap a hand over her mouth – it might have looked a bit odd to the rest of the crew, but they were getting fairly used to their captain taking hold of someone that wasn't actually there.
The screen showed a ruby red boudoir – flame red curtains, flowing lava-bright carpet, and an obsidian bed with silky red sheets on it. Sprawled across it, two legs crooked up beneath her curvaceous hips and wasp thin waist, was a woman made entirely out of glowing flames, her body sculpted far beyond what any normal biological form could support, creating an exaggerated proportion that fitted screen or holovid better than reality. Her eyes were ruby bright pits of flames, and her hair were cascading, shimmering walls of ash-gray curls that glowed with an inner like – like burnt through logs, peeling and tumbling apart with the poker still brushing through them. Her nipples were dark black and jutted out from tits the size of John's head, and she had a dainty little slit between her thighs, with a snarl of obsidian black crystal where her pubic hair would be. The screaming roaring sound that the speakers had emitted was, instead, a language that the translator could process.
"If you can see and understand this, then please...speak to me of the secrets of fire, strange aliens." She crooned, her voice sultry and soft.
"It was a test," Shey whispered.
"Think we can get out of the tithes by sending the message?" John asked.
"it's worth a shot, sir," Triana said.
John nodded. "Put me on, Shey," he said, holding his hand out. She lifted the communication wand after detaching it from the console. John held it, then took a step away.
"Just in case," he said.
"In case of what?" Shey asked.
"Oh no, good point," Triana said. "Pixie, I know you can hear me. Get ready with some kind of thermokinesis."
"Got it!" Pixie said. "Tell her I said got it."
"She said got it," John said, then spoke into the communication wand. "I know the secret of fire, Vornash captain."
There was a short pause.
Then an explosion of flames swept from John's feet to his brow. When it was done, the communication wand hit the ground, smoking faintly.
"Knew it," Triana said. "Now, it's all in the Captain's hands. And tongue. And dick."
Shey and she turned to the main screen, watching the three alien ships hover ominously.
"Lucky bastard," Albert muttered.
***
Captain John Tangent appeared in the Vornash ship and, for a moment, heat so intense that it left him staggering blasted his body. But Pixie was on the ball. A pale blue field surrounded him, flashing to life for a few seconds – and it did a great job protecting his skin. His uniform burst into flames and peeled off his body, leaving him completely nude within the lava drenched, flame wreathed bedroom. The Vornash captain smiled at him with teeth made of dark obsidian.
For about as long as it took for his clothing to burn off.
"Terran!?" She exclaimed.
"Well, I would have explained that if-"
The woman's body shifted, twisted, and grew. Flames swelled outwards as she exploded into a near total inverse of her curvaceous, feminine body: Her shoulders grew huge and muscular, her head twisted into a snarling death's head mask, her hands grew thick, long claws. John tensed and then sprang backwards as the claws slashed through the air, moving fast enough that he was pretty sure they would have cut, even with Pixie's defensive thermokinesis. He started to speak as he did so. "Do you want to remain battle thralls of the Zemturga forever?" He asked.
"Yes!" The woman snarled.
John ducked forward, rolled, came to his feet and backed against the bed as she slammed into the wall near where he had stood. Her body inverted on itself with a roar and crackle. John thought even faster. "Just to be a mindless fire? Burning up the universe for distant masters that don't care about you?"
She surged forward, shrinking down to move faster. John caught her wrist, hissing. The contact was hot, but not scalding. John swung her around, and with a tumble, the two of them fell into the bed. Her body shrank and shifted and John found himself pinning the curvaceous woman down, panting softly as he looked into her obsidian dark eyes. They flared with hatred as she lifted her knee, pressing it against his chest. Her voice was venomous and soft. "Your kind are my kind's hated foe...the Zemturga told me all about you. You're...water."
"Mostly water," John said, his voice soft. "But my people have long had a...close relationship with fire."
"W-What!?" She asked, her eyes wide.
"We cook our food with fire – we even use it to boil water into steam." He grinned. "For most of our history, even now, we use fire to boil water into steam – it seems to me that we have more in common than we have in enmity."
"I...d-didn't realize…" she whispered.
John leaned forward, his voice growing soft. Crooning. "What's your name? Mine's John. John Tangent."
"I'm Cinder," she whispered.
"What a lovely name for a lovely flame," John said. His hand cupped her cheek and she quivered.
Satiated and exhausted, a Vornash looked like a coal that still flickered from the inside out. Her skin was almost slate gray, and were it not for the seams in her body, she almost would have looked humanoid. She smiled, wryly, as she laid beside John.
"So," John whispered. "Want to discuss some diplomacy?"
She giggled.
***
At the edge of Vornash space, a Kruul fleet drifted.
A signal came, winking from the darkness.
The Kruul fleet vanished into the space opera field – post haste.
TO BE CONTINUED
"We can't just bring the Sensurians back by snapping our fingers," Albert said, frowning as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Yes, they were our best spies, agents, propagandists...half the morale corps…" He coughed, then glanced at Lt. Sheyshen. She chuckled quietly.
"We're not exactly embarrassed about it, Albert," she said, her hand brushing her pale white hair behind one blue, pointed ear. "Human/Sensurian relationships being...so…" She paused. "Intimate has been a point of pride for our people since you joined the Alliance." She clasped her hands together. "And well, the Sensurians, from what I've been able to determine, knew that if they were to be brought back using the genetic records, that there might not be enough time for a normal gestation and training period. And according to the data provided by this mysterious informant of yours…" She flicked her gaze to Captain Tangent, who was regarding a map of the galaxy on a flimsy. "They found a solution."
"Oh?" Kat asked, lifting her head from her own documents. Despite the importance of the meeting, the chief engineer was still half absorbed in her own particular tasks.
"Yes," Shey said, seriously. "Sensurians tend to rank higher on the various modes of tracking esper talents – and the best of them recorded memories in a memory stone with the genetic records. This won't be a generation of children. It'll be a generation of replacement bodies for those who were soon to die…" She looked grim.
"Would that even work?" Triana asked, frowning as she leaned in on her elbows. "I've read up on esper talents, that kind of thing sounds risky as hell."
"Extremely," Shey said. "It'll require an amazing talent to organize and direct it. And...well, I'm not exactly the galaxy's most powerful Sensurian."
"Sure you are!" Kat said, nodding as her ears flicked and her tail wagged. "Since, like, you're the last one."
Silence fell across the table as people considered that.
Kat's ears flicked down as she realized, a bit too late, how that sounded. "Er. Uh. Sorry, Shey."
Shey breathed in, then breathed out. "It's all right Kat. You're right, as much as we don't want to admit it. I may have to be the one to guide this moment." She squared her shoulders. "Captain, permission to take my regular duties off to focus on training?"
"Granted," Captain Tangent said, lifting his gaze from the flimsy. "I've been checking the routes to the destination provided by Dhakiya…" He set the flimsy down. "Our two main routes are both dangerous in their own ways. We can swing through Vornash territory, or we can head through the Zone of Terror."
Delta leaned over to peer at the plastic printout. She scowled. "Oh, Zone of Terror, fuck off, look, it's not even the worst thing in that area of space! See, it's right next to the Unthinking Depths, the Cthonic Nebula, and the Galaxy of T...Terror, how can you call something a galaxy when it's in the milky way, that's bullshit." She leaned forward, her butt almost bumping against Triana's face. Triana grabbed the back of the lead pilot and jerked her back into her seat with a tug of her arm.
"Because it was named by Lithanoids, and they like being poetic sometimes," Triana said. "It's a spiral shape of stars and spatial anomalies, see?"
"Should have called it the Swirly of…" Delta looked like she was reaching mentally. "Sorcery."
"I vote for the Vornash run," Triana said, ignoring her fellow officer. "The Excalibur is a well armed, heavily armored ship with an unknown configuration. They won't know what to make of us, so we can fast talk anything we can't fight, and the crews need training on their guns and their new fighters."
"True," Delta said.
"I also vote for the Vornash run," Albert said. "I don't want to have to chart my way through half a dozen anomalies so bad that they got named the Zone of Terror."
Eugene, who had been silent so far, said: "I vote Vornash too."
"The Zone of Terror is my vote," Shey said, her voice quiet. "It's hard to focus on psychic training when your ship is being shot with lasers." She made a face. "But I won't say boo if we go Vornash too – since, well, being smashed about by anomalies is also pretty distracting."
Kat didn't look up from her documents. "Captain, we need more lithium," she said as everyone looked at her. "And duranium. Send the mining skiff down for-"
"Ahem," Triana coughed.
"Huh?" Kat lifted her head. "Oh, what were we voting on? Routes? Fuck if I care, I spend my entire time in the engineering bay." She looked back down. Triana rolled her eyes, while everyone's gaze settled on the Captain. While UNN ships could offer votes like this, the final decision still came down to the Captain. He nodded slowly, then looked down at the flimsy.
"Lets see how the Vornash are doing then," he said, quietly.
***
The Excalibur soared through tier three of the SOF, and the crew were quite happy to take advantage of the peculiar nature of that realm of reality – not just to slip the bounds of light speed travel, but also in...more ephemeral, exotic ways…
The door to the mess opened and Triana and Eugene walked in, laughing and shaking their heads. "The ghost of Napoleon, really?" Triana asked.
"It sure sounded like that through the door," Eugene said, frowning as he saw that the table nearest the window, which looked out on the simulated landscape of downtown Paris rather than the mentally corrosive swirl of impossible colors that existed at this level of the SOF, had been occupied by Kat. The young Paw had laid out all her engineering documents and was currently trying to read them around the largest sandwich that either Eugene and Triana had seen. She actually looked like she was trying to dislocate her jaw to take a bite into it. Her teeth sank in and a spurt of thick, red juices came out of the far end. Kat reacted with Pawish reflexes, kicking the table with one leg and sending it skidding along its mounted track. It moved a few inches away from her, so that the spurt finished its parabola by landing on the plate, rather than her documents. Then she hooked her ankle around the table and drew it back again as she continued to chew.
"...enjoying yourself?" Triana asked, nodding as Eugene murmured a question in her ear.
"Mmmh," Kat said around the sandwich, not looking up.
Triana took a seat and spun one of the documents around. "Ah, working on upscaling those force screen amplifiers?"
"Mmhmm!" Kat swallowed, setting her sandwich aside. "Who the fuck is Napoleon?"
Triana blinked, then remembered the Paw's sense of hearing. As if she could hear her thoughts, Kat grinned and pointed at her cat's ears, wiggling them. Triana sighed. "The Captain is being haunted by the ghost of a Corsican general – Corsica is an island off the coast of France."
"...a ghost?" Kat asked. "And we're not concerned because…?"
"Metanarrative field disassociation effects, Chief," Eugene said, returning with the coffee he had fabricated up for Triana. He handed on cup to her, keeping his. "The SOF is so preposterously impossible that each tier down you get, impossible events get more likely to occur. We're already breaking the light speed limit and causality, why not a few more laws? The Captain gets to fuck every hot alien we meet and have sword fights and run around on shore leave because it increases his narrative weight in the SOF – it means the weird stuff hits him and, sometimes, us."
"Like when you got kidnapped by the Kruul Princess," Kat said, nodding.
"Yeah. Like when I got kidnapped by the Kruul Princess," Eugene said.
"More than kidnapped…" Triana muttered into her cup.
"Ahem," Eugene said, coughing. "What matters is the Captain deals with this stuff so we can get real work done. Have the repairs been finished?"
Kat nodded.
"And the plans for expanding out our components into the empty hull space? Ar those ready?"
Kat grinned. "Not just ready – done. My boys and girls have made a gridwork inside the Luciferian metal full of universal connector ports and pre-placed power lines and guide pipes. Basically, the instant we have the resources and call for it, we can slot a component in there in less than a day."
"Fantastic," Eugene said, while Triana nodded and drank her coffee.
"...so, we really shouldn't be worried about Napoleon's ghost?" Kat asked.
"No," Triana said. "If you get involved, then you become a part of the SOF intrusion – it'll just spread the damage around. Just...stay away from the captain's room."
"What if I need to talk to him?" Kat asked, scowling.
"Just don't," Triana said. Then she frowned. "You know, that's a good point." She drew up her wrist com. "Regs are split on this matter – no one's sure if it helps or hurts to warn people. Since, well, warning them might be what gets them involved." She tapped a few buttons. "But this one seems fairly self contained." She frowned as her com chirruped. She sighed, then turned it on. "Yes, Albert?"
"Uh, just checking, that warning you mentioned, was it about-" Albert started before a hiss crack and a loud ping sounded over the com.
"Goddamn it," Triana muttered.
***
Shery frowned as she tried to meditate in her chambers. The thumping of hooves from upstairs was just a bit much – but when a musket went off, she jerked her head up and scowled as her...her…
Oh hell. She sighed and deflated as, faintly, the sound of swords crashing against swords came through the ceiling panels. "Have at you, you Corsican rat!"
"How appropriate! Hon hon hon! You fight like a ratcatcher from the swill sodden streets of London! Hon hon hon!"
Crash! Clang.
Shey shook her head, her ears drooping slightly. Her meditation hadn't been knocked off kilter. There hadn't been any meditation at all. She had been sitting there thinking. Thinking about the genetic future of her people., Thinking about the possible battles ahead. Thinking about the mystery. Who was this...Terran that the captain had met. How could she be so important in a Zemturga court, while still being a mere pleasure slave? She had given actual orders and information. No Zemturga would do that. It was all so impossible.
Ting! ZZZAP!
"What!?"
"Ah, Napoleon, it seems you've fallen afoul of the positronic circuits – they sometimes turn ectroplasmic slime like you into women." There was a clattering sound like a dropped sword. "Now…lets take this duel to the next level."
"Y-You...swine…" The french accent was more easy to appreciate as a breathy woman. But Shey was not able to stay here one moment longer. She stood up and walked out of her room – so distracted that she nearly plowed into the Captain. She started upon running into him, then looked up, then down, then up again – and on the third circuit of her eyes traveling, she saw that he was actually holding a medibandage to his shoulder. His smile was wan.
"Albert so, uh, politely decided to take up the slack for me," he said, chuckling. "Hows he doing, the soundproofing in your room is on the fritz isn't it?"
"I thought that was you…" Shey shook her head. "Stars, I must be more distracted than I thought."
"Trouble focusing?" John asked, gently.
Shey nodded.
"Well, when I have a hard time managing to focus, I do something I enjoy," John said, smiling at her.
"Sex won't help," Shey said, quietly, rubbing her backside. "Sixteen men and fifteen women from the crew have already offered and...well, none of them were quite as good as you, but-"
"Then something else!" John said, laughing. "I'm going to the medbay first. That mad dictator's a dab hand at the saber."
"Right…" Shey said.
But the only other thing she enjoyed was sitting at her console, running sensor scans. It felt so very nerdy to admit it, but she just enjoyed learning more about the world around her. Seeing the cosmos, seeing its mysteries, they delighted her. Then she cocked her head to the side and laughed quietly. And this was a problem? Since when? She started down the corridor, feeling a bit happier and more focused.
The bridge was on a tertiary shift and the crewwoman at her sensors post was looking a bit listless as she watched the shimmering flow of the SOF slide past. Shey smiled. "May I have this post, Ensign?" she asked.
"Lt. Sheyshan?" The ensign asked. "Of course!" She sprang to her feet and Shey slid into her seat and almost immediately felt more at peace. She looked down at the scanning systems and started to subtly adjust the mass detector and the radio arrays. She frowned slightly as she peered at the eddies and flows of the SOF. Tier Four was looking closer than normal to Tier Three. They might have been in an updraft situation – that would explain Napoleon. She cocked her head slightly, then considered sending a radar ping behind her. That bulge in space/time was definitely odd.
She tapped the request to the officer on the watch. She got the permission back after a short pause. Shey pressed the ping button and saw the tiny wave of radio signals sweep out behind the ship, represented as a thin white wave that swept out. It went through the space/time bulge with a fairly normal refraction pattern.
...so, why did Shey frown at the bulge. Something in her brain was tickling. Something was wrong here. It was the placement of the distortion, the speed it was traveling. It was just slightly off their course, but it was nearly the same speed – and if it had been anything else, she would have thought it was following them. But it was positioned almost exactly at the right spot to be an SOF eddy kicked up by the Excalibur's fusion torch drives. She rubbed her chin slowly, then turned in her seat. The officer of the watch was a dweeby Ensign who looked about as heroic and dashing as a bowl of soup. That would keep any strangeness away from the bridge – and if something serious did pop up from non-SOF reasons, the captain could be called in a hurry.
Shey stood. "Ensign…"
"Uh, Dwight, Lt!" the Ensign said, sitting up. "What's the matter?" he asked.
She smiled, wryly. "I've noticed something odd. I was wondering if we could slew course slightly. I want to check something."
Ensign Dwight glanced away from her to the Ensign who was on the helm. The Ensign in question had immediately perked up and was looking as busy as she possibly could. Dwight gulped and considered – but Shey gave him his time. Slowly, he nodded. "Do it," he said. Then, realizing that he had said this to his science officer, he hurriedly said. "H-Helm, adjust course by 4.5 microns."
"...to port or…"
"Either direction!" Dwight said, sounding nervous.
"Got it. Er, I mean, aye aye, sir."
Shey covered her mouth to hide her smile and hurried back to the console. She watched…
And saw that the blip did not move in the slightest.
"Gotcha!" she said, grinning.
For some reason, she felt a lot more confident about the future of her species right about now.
***
Princess Evilla Slayvine sat in her throne of agony and watched the forward screen as her ship cruised quietly through the lower levels of the SOF, shrouded in an oblique field. She watched as the strangely shaped ship – the human ship – shifted subtly in the SOF. Her lips quirked slightly as she considered what she would do once she was able to ambush and board them. Her thoughts drifted to the lithe human she had...entertained…
This was all for, of course, evil reasons. She wanted to do wickedness and cruelty to the universe, as was the way of the Maliceocracy. Of course. Of course.
"My princess," her ship's commanding officer, Slayne Von Mur'durr, stepped to the side of her throne. "The crew have been wondering exactly what our mission is here."
"I need not explain myself to you, Von Mur'durr," Evilla muttered, lifting her gaze from the screen to glower at him. "My parents granted this ship to me. It is my birthright." She huffed slightly. "I didn't realize that they had picked a crew that was so...flighty."
"I worry that they may have noticed us, my princess," Von Mur'durr said, stepping before her, his hands clasped behind his back. He frowned, his tusks glinting in the pale red light that suffused the bridge. He kicked one foot at the ground, disturbing the mist that was pumped into the gloomy, gothic chamber. "That course change, it might have been sweeping for a ship just like us."
"What would you suggest, then?" Evilla asked, frowning.
"Sir!" One of the officers at the sensors. "Something is happening ahead of us."
The Kruul all frowned, looking at the screen, at the digital representation of the human ship. There was a momentary flash that their forward camera screens picked up – but then nothing. Evilla frowned harder, leaning forward, her brow drawing in. Von Mur'durr stepped forward. Then his eyes widened as some subtle clue inculcated by years of experience flashed through his mind. He turned to the helm's officer.
"Turn! Turn now!"
The ship lurched-
And then, for a single instant, Evilla saw that there was a large, spiky metal ball tumbling through the SOF and towards her ship.
Her eyes widened.
The mine smashed directly into the ship and detonated with a flare of brilliant white light. With their shields down and their hull only moderately armored against kinetic weaponry, the ship almost immediately began to break apart as the concussive shockwave blew through it and fragments dispersed throughout the hull. There was only a few short seconds before the bridge would be sheered apart. Von Mur'durr had that time to spin to the princess, and to see her suddenly vanish from the ship's room with a crack of displacing air.
He had no time to be annoyed at being left behind.
***
The crack of displaced air jerked Captain Ssivik from her restive slumber within her prison cell. Her snakish body writhed and shoved the Myg'gar'gar to an upright position. She had to admit that while she did not appreciate being imprisoned by the Terr-ans, she was relatively pleased with their accommodations. She had asked for the room to be made warmer, and warmer they had made it. They were happy with providing live food she could eat. They had even provided her with plenty of books and vid-disks she could entertain herself with, even if Terr-an comedy was often deeply tragic, and their tragedies were hilarious. She was currently working through various 'situational comedy' shows, and each was more agonizing than the last.
She loved them.
Ssivik pressed her face against the glass, peering out into the corridor beyond her prison cell. She saw the other empty brigs doors, and then-
Crash!
A burly, feminine figure stumbled into one of the doors. A Kruul? Ssivik's eyes widened as she watched steam rise slowly off the Kruul's shoulders and back. She looked like she was completely buck-ass-naked as well, her body entirely on display as she looked around frantically, then sprinted for a nearby airvent. Despite being relatively large, as women went, she still was able to wriggle into the vent. It took a lot of squirming and kicking – and the whole time, Ssivik slammed her palms against the door.
"Hey! Wait! Wait! We're on the sssssssame sssssssssside! Let me out! Let me out you ssssssssstupid-" she hissed the last spluttering sound of frustration as the Kruul's foot vanished into the recesses of the air vent. A moment later, the Kruul's hand swung out of the vent and grabbed the grille, closing it behind her.
Ssivik crossed her arms under her scaled breasts and grumbled.
"Well, that'ssssssss just rude!"
Then she slid back into bed, leaned against the wall, and used her tail to turn on a new season of All My Anatomy.
***
The Excalibur popped out of the SOF with a crackle and spray of exotic particles – and with her commanding officer at the helm. John leaned back in his seat as Pixie bounced excitedly from foot to foot. Arrayed before them were three Vornash Obsidian class fire-tenders. Each one was about a quarter of the size of the Excalibur and had only a single Vornash aboard – but the enigmatic Vornash didn't really need more. The documents that the UNN had been provided on the Vornash by the Omnidrones and the Qorr had been relatively sparse, if only because neither of them had managed to get a Vornash to talk to them beyond a terse refusal to surrender or an equally terse refusal to accept surrender.
"So, what do you think they're like?" Albert asked, grinning from his console to Eugene, who was frowning slightly.
"Assholes," Eugene said.
"Well, duh," Triana said, grinning slightly as Albert snickered.
"Shey, do you have the recording of the ship that was following us?" John asked, turning in his seat to face her. "They might have picked up the energy emission and are curious." He smiled. "I think they'll be happy to know there's one less Kruul. They're fighting just about everyone according to our intelligence."
"I do, captain!" Shey said, still looking quite smug. The fabrication of the mine had been her and Kat's idea, and it had quietly put paid to the Kruul sneak following after them. Though...part of John wondered if it had maybe been too easy. According to Dr. Darling, the Napoleon incident should have been enough 'narrative texture' to allow for an undramatic conclusion to the Kruul's plot. But...but if it was...John shook his head. He had to focus on the here and now for the moment.
"We're being hailed," Shey said.
"Voice or visual?" John asked.
"...one way visual," Shey said, sounding faintly shocked.
"Put it on," John said.
The screen flickered and a blazing wave of bright light screamed out of the screen and into their eyes. Albert cried out, while Triana covered her eyes with her hands. Eugene, though, was fast enough on the draw to find and slap the right button. The light levels dimmed to a mere dull gray, and John lowered his hand. "Goddamn, what was that?" he asked as a screaming roar came through the cameras – it sounded like a howling screech.
"I don't know, the universal translators are struggling with it," Shey said. "Adjusting. I think-"
The light flashed off.
"We're getting audio this time. Piping it through my earpiece…" Shey said, then frowned. "It's in the Zemturga trade tongue – Captain, they are demanding to know what we're doing in their space."
"Tell them that we're a trade ship from Trade-1, heading to-"
John was cut off by Shey lifting her hand. "Sir, they're demanding that we provide tithes. They want...biomatter? Hydrocarbons?" She lifted her head. "Gasoline?"
"Who uses gasoline?" Triana asked.
"Tell them we're preparing our tithes," John said. "And ask how long we have to fabricate the materials?"
"Thirty minuets," Shey said after a few moments of frowning.
"Pushy bunch," Eugene muttered, his arms crossed over his chest. John stood and walked over to Shey's console, Triana hurrying over to join him. All three peered down at the initial burst of energy that had been sent to them.
"Do you think it was a mistake?" John asked.
"No…" Shey said. "It was deliberate, I'm sure of it."
Triana scratched her jaw. "Well, remember when the first contact of Lithanoids? They sent a message that took four weeks to decode, because they're...rocks. Maybe this is another one of those translation mishaps."
"We dimmed the image and it was just gray," Shey murmured.
"Maybe filter out frequencies of light? Pitch it up and down the spectrum?" John asked.
Shey nodded, then started to adjust buttons and dials. As she did so, John's wrist com chirruped. He tapped it on. "This is Tangent-"
"John you asshole, what the fuck kind of work order is this? Fifty tons of gasoline? We don't have that much fucking hydrocarbons on the ship!" Kat's furious voice came up the line. "And even if we did, do you know how many byproducts that shit would put into the fabricators? We'd need those magic fabricators that the Zemturga had back in the starbase, and even then it'd smell like rotten eggs for weeks. What kind of lunatics are you meeting out there-"
"Hold please," John said, then tapped off the line.
"She's fun," Triana said, grinning at him.
"Only when she goes into heat," John muttered.
"I can...induce that you know…" Pixie whispered in his ear.
"Shush," John said.
The image projected on Shey's screen shifted, altered and-
"Oh my," Shey whispered.
"Fhew," Triana whispered.
"Huh," John said.
"...guess she's pretty h-" Pixie started, but then squeaked as John managed to clap a hand over her mouth – it might have looked a bit odd to the rest of the crew, but they were getting fairly used to their captain taking hold of someone that wasn't actually there.
The screen showed a ruby red boudoir – flame red curtains, flowing lava-bright carpet, and an obsidian bed with silky red sheets on it. Sprawled across it, two legs crooked up beneath her curvaceous hips and wasp thin waist, was a woman made entirely out of glowing flames, her body sculpted far beyond what any normal biological form could support, creating an exaggerated proportion that fitted screen or holovid better than reality. Her eyes were ruby bright pits of flames, and her hair were cascading, shimmering walls of ash-gray curls that glowed with an inner like – like burnt through logs, peeling and tumbling apart with the poker still brushing through them. Her nipples were dark black and jutted out from tits the size of John's head, and she had a dainty little slit between her thighs, with a snarl of obsidian black crystal where her pubic hair would be. The screaming roaring sound that the speakers had emitted was, instead, a language that the translator could process.
"If you can see and understand this, then please...speak to me of the secrets of fire, strange aliens." She crooned, her voice sultry and soft.
"It was a test," Shey whispered.
"Think we can get out of the tithes by sending the message?" John asked.
"it's worth a shot, sir," Triana said.
John nodded. "Put me on, Shey," he said, holding his hand out. She lifted the communication wand after detaching it from the console. John held it, then took a step away.
"Just in case," he said.
"In case of what?" Shey asked.
"Oh no, good point," Triana said. "Pixie, I know you can hear me. Get ready with some kind of thermokinesis."
"Got it!" Pixie said. "Tell her I said got it."
"She said got it," John said, then spoke into the communication wand. "I know the secret of fire, Vornash captain."
There was a short pause.
Then an explosion of flames swept from John's feet to his brow. When it was done, the communication wand hit the ground, smoking faintly.
"Knew it," Triana said. "Now, it's all in the Captain's hands. And tongue. And dick."
Shey and she turned to the main screen, watching the three alien ships hover ominously.
"Lucky bastard," Albert muttered.
***
Captain John Tangent appeared in the Vornash ship and, for a moment, heat so intense that it left him staggering blasted his body. But Pixie was on the ball. A pale blue field surrounded him, flashing to life for a few seconds – and it did a great job protecting his skin. His uniform burst into flames and peeled off his body, leaving him completely nude within the lava drenched, flame wreathed bedroom. The Vornash captain smiled at him with teeth made of dark obsidian.
For about as long as it took for his clothing to burn off.
"Terran!?" She exclaimed.
"Well, I would have explained that if-"
The woman's body shifted, twisted, and grew. Flames swelled outwards as she exploded into a near total inverse of her curvaceous, feminine body: Her shoulders grew huge and muscular, her head twisted into a snarling death's head mask, her hands grew thick, long claws. John tensed and then sprang backwards as the claws slashed through the air, moving fast enough that he was pretty sure they would have cut, even with Pixie's defensive thermokinesis. He started to speak as he did so. "Do you want to remain battle thralls of the Zemturga forever?" He asked.
"Yes!" The woman snarled.
John ducked forward, rolled, came to his feet and backed against the bed as she slammed into the wall near where he had stood. Her body inverted on itself with a roar and crackle. John thought even faster. "Just to be a mindless fire? Burning up the universe for distant masters that don't care about you?"
She surged forward, shrinking down to move faster. John caught her wrist, hissing. The contact was hot, but not scalding. John swung her around, and with a tumble, the two of them fell into the bed. Her body shrank and shifted and John found himself pinning the curvaceous woman down, panting softly as he looked into her obsidian dark eyes. They flared with hatred as she lifted her knee, pressing it against his chest. Her voice was venomous and soft. "Your kind are my kind's hated foe...the Zemturga told me all about you. You're...water."
"Mostly water," John said, his voice soft. "But my people have long had a...close relationship with fire."
"W-What!?" She asked, her eyes wide.
"We cook our food with fire – we even use it to boil water into steam." He grinned. "For most of our history, even now, we use fire to boil water into steam – it seems to me that we have more in common than we have in enmity."
"I...d-didn't realize…" she whispered.
John leaned forward, his voice growing soft. Crooning. "What's your name? Mine's John. John Tangent."
"I'm Cinder," she whispered.
"What a lovely name for a lovely flame," John said. His hand cupped her cheek and she quivered.
First contact with the Vornash goes extremely well!
"S-So cool!" She whispered. "I've never felt cool like this before." Her hand gently pressed to his chest. Some of his chest hair sizzled before Pixie grunted and thrust out her palms, her brow furrowing as she focused her energies. Crackling power popped and hissed through John's skin, and he felt the coolness growing more...solid. John's fingers touseled through Cinder's hair, squeezing her gently as he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to her dainty lips. Her mouth opened and her tongue, a coal-bright tongue of flame, pressed into his mouth. The tingling, bubbling feeling of saliva boiling contrasted oddly against the utter lack of pain.
Her mouth opened and she moaned as he drew away from her.
"I didn't know...water could feel so intense…" Cinder panted.
"Just you wait." John grinned, his cock achingly hard. The danger of her was almost as exciting, almost as enticing, as the form of her. His hands slid from her cheeks to her shoulders, feeling the texture of fire as his palms cupped her breasts. He squeezed her and her tits deformed around his fingers as she grabbed onto the obsidian headrest of her bed, her back arching to press her tits into his palms. She moaned lustfully as John leaned forward. He took one nipple into his mouth, tasting the faint tingle of charcoal – like when you bit into a steak cooked just right over a BBQ. His mouth then kissed along between the valley of her tits, leaving hissing, steaming marks with every plunging kiss.
"This feeling!" Cinder moaned. "I never knew...ah...it's like normal mingling, but we're still two separate beings. Captain Tangent, it's quite remarkable…" She laughed softly, her hands sliding along his chest. One slipped up to cup his neck, to draw his head down to her breasts. The other plunged down, stretching slightly to caress his cock. "Ah, but this I am aware of from the Zemturga broadcasts...this is your stamen?"
"Close, actually," John said, amused as he kissed to her other nipple. He sucked and her fingers tightened around him eagerly. She moaned and bucked, her thighs beginning to spread – instinctively, it seemed. John drew himself away from her, purely to shift his stance, his knees sliding along the outer edges of her thighs. His hands planted to either side of the beautiful alien's head and he crooned quietly. "Ready?"
"F-For the mingling?" she chuckled, nervously. "I'm not nervous, I'm not a virgin. Just…" She paused. "Be gentle. I've never mingled with water before."
"Again. Mostly water." John grinned, then leaned forward. His mouth and hers met and he started to press his cock against the folds of her sex. The flickering sensation of her pussy around his member, growing warmer and warmer, was more intense than he had expected. He started to push into her harder as Pixie bit her lip, leaning in and watching. Heat flared and grew brighter still as he eased another few inches in, then bucked his hips and pressed in, in, in, filling her to the brim. The curvy fire woman's body arched as she bucked her hips back up against him – her ankles hooking one over the other above his buttocks as his balls gently clapped against her ass.
"Oh John!"
The moan that filled his ear was enough of an enticement to draw out – then thrust back in. He grunted as his balls slapped against her ass more roughly now. Flames grew hotter and brighter around the room – the whole ship seeming to react to the heat of their joining as John thrust and thrust and thrust again – one arm snaking behind her back, the other cradling her head. He kissed her neck, groaning as he leaned forward, whispering into her ear. "You're so perfect and hot, Cinder. Ah. How does that feel?"
"Amazing!" She gasped. "Ah! It's so exotic and strange and...and so perfect!" She cried out, her body quivering from her head to her toes, her legs tightening around him.
John felt his own pleasure starting to crest. He forced it back, focusing as he reared back, watching her huge breasts bounce with every thrust. His free hand slid down, pressing to her clit – finding it in the snarl of obsidian curls she had. A tiny ruby, gleaming with its own inner fire. He started to rub her, stoking her flames hotter and hotter with his hand as he jackhammered his cock into her faster and faster. Her cries blurred together as her tits bounced and slapped up and down, up and down, up and down.
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES!" she gasped. "Fuck me silly you bag of...ah...mostly water!" She moaned. "Cum in me! Cum inside me! I want to feel your cum boiling in my furnace! Yes!"
John groaned low in his throat. His finger pressed even harder against her clit and hot, blazing red girlcum splashed against his belly, smoking and hissing against his thermokinetic shield while his balls twitched and he spurted into her. Her body dimmed for a moment, then flared even brighter as she cried out in a raw, feral passion. John gasped, then leaned forward and kissed her hungrily. Their tongues played together as the flames of her body dimmed, then dimmed, then dimmed some more. Her legs slowly opened and John rolled off her, panting.
He didn't want to squish someone on first contact, after all.
Her mouth opened and she moaned as he drew away from her.
"I didn't know...water could feel so intense…" Cinder panted.
"Just you wait." John grinned, his cock achingly hard. The danger of her was almost as exciting, almost as enticing, as the form of her. His hands slid from her cheeks to her shoulders, feeling the texture of fire as his palms cupped her breasts. He squeezed her and her tits deformed around his fingers as she grabbed onto the obsidian headrest of her bed, her back arching to press her tits into his palms. She moaned lustfully as John leaned forward. He took one nipple into his mouth, tasting the faint tingle of charcoal – like when you bit into a steak cooked just right over a BBQ. His mouth then kissed along between the valley of her tits, leaving hissing, steaming marks with every plunging kiss.
"This feeling!" Cinder moaned. "I never knew...ah...it's like normal mingling, but we're still two separate beings. Captain Tangent, it's quite remarkable…" She laughed softly, her hands sliding along his chest. One slipped up to cup his neck, to draw his head down to her breasts. The other plunged down, stretching slightly to caress his cock. "Ah, but this I am aware of from the Zemturga broadcasts...this is your stamen?"
"Close, actually," John said, amused as he kissed to her other nipple. He sucked and her fingers tightened around him eagerly. She moaned and bucked, her thighs beginning to spread – instinctively, it seemed. John drew himself away from her, purely to shift his stance, his knees sliding along the outer edges of her thighs. His hands planted to either side of the beautiful alien's head and he crooned quietly. "Ready?"
"F-For the mingling?" she chuckled, nervously. "I'm not nervous, I'm not a virgin. Just…" She paused. "Be gentle. I've never mingled with water before."
"Again. Mostly water." John grinned, then leaned forward. His mouth and hers met and he started to press his cock against the folds of her sex. The flickering sensation of her pussy around his member, growing warmer and warmer, was more intense than he had expected. He started to push into her harder as Pixie bit her lip, leaning in and watching. Heat flared and grew brighter still as he eased another few inches in, then bucked his hips and pressed in, in, in, filling her to the brim. The curvy fire woman's body arched as she bucked her hips back up against him – her ankles hooking one over the other above his buttocks as his balls gently clapped against her ass.
"Oh John!"
The moan that filled his ear was enough of an enticement to draw out – then thrust back in. He grunted as his balls slapped against her ass more roughly now. Flames grew hotter and brighter around the room – the whole ship seeming to react to the heat of their joining as John thrust and thrust and thrust again – one arm snaking behind her back, the other cradling her head. He kissed her neck, groaning as he leaned forward, whispering into her ear. "You're so perfect and hot, Cinder. Ah. How does that feel?"
"Amazing!" She gasped. "Ah! It's so exotic and strange and...and so perfect!" She cried out, her body quivering from her head to her toes, her legs tightening around him.
John felt his own pleasure starting to crest. He forced it back, focusing as he reared back, watching her huge breasts bounce with every thrust. His free hand slid down, pressing to her clit – finding it in the snarl of obsidian curls she had. A tiny ruby, gleaming with its own inner fire. He started to rub her, stoking her flames hotter and hotter with his hand as he jackhammered his cock into her faster and faster. Her cries blurred together as her tits bounced and slapped up and down, up and down, up and down.
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES!" she gasped. "Fuck me silly you bag of...ah...mostly water!" She moaned. "Cum in me! Cum inside me! I want to feel your cum boiling in my furnace! Yes!"
John groaned low in his throat. His finger pressed even harder against her clit and hot, blazing red girlcum splashed against his belly, smoking and hissing against his thermokinetic shield while his balls twitched and he spurted into her. Her body dimmed for a moment, then flared even brighter as she cried out in a raw, feral passion. John gasped, then leaned forward and kissed her hungrily. Their tongues played together as the flames of her body dimmed, then dimmed, then dimmed some more. Her legs slowly opened and John rolled off her, panting.
He didn't want to squish someone on first contact, after all.
Satiated and exhausted, a Vornash looked like a coal that still flickered from the inside out. Her skin was almost slate gray, and were it not for the seams in her body, she almost would have looked humanoid. She smiled, wryly, as she laid beside John.
"So," John whispered. "Want to discuss some diplomacy?"
She giggled.
***
At the edge of Vornash space, a Kruul fleet drifted.
A signal came, winking from the darkness.
The Kruul fleet vanished into the space opera field – post haste.
TO BE CONTINUED
CHAPTER NINE: Into the Fire
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm not kidding, most of this chapter is a mixture of sex scene and exposition as Captain Tangent and Cinder make love and talk. You learn about the long history of the Vornash people and John talks her around into mayyyybe supporting the rebellion - if he can discover the true reason behind the Xemturga's villainous plan
Laying in a bed of literal fire, arms hooked behind his head, while a woman of magma and ash stroked his chest, was...honestly, not even in the top ten weirdest things that had happened to Captain John Tangent in his career – and he was only relatively new to his role. He grinned, wryly, at Cinder as she breathed out a sigh rich with the scent of charcoal and brimstone. Floating beside him, her elbows resting on nothing and her chin upon her knuckles, Pixie kicked her legs up and sighed.
"Ah, young love," she said. "Anyway, you have approximately an hour and a half before I run out of psychic energy and you stop being thermokinetically shielded from this room. Which is, like…" She looked around herself. "Approximately thirteen...hundred to twenty two hundred degrees."
John snapped his gaze around to her, eyes widening.
"Oh, sorry, I was using your archaic form of units, pulled on the wrong part of the brain," Pixie said, flitting around and waving her palms in apology. "Closer to eight hundred to twelve hundred."
"Ah," John said.
"Mmmm?" Cinder murmured, hooking one ashy thigh along his, nuzzling against his neck with her cute little button nose. John slid his arm around the small of her back and tried to not think of his skin baking and peeling. Instead, he focused on what truly mattered in times like this: Cementing a successful first contact.
"Ladies," Pixie said, wiggling her eyebrows.
John did his best to ignore his invisible, intangible psychic assistant.
"So, Cinder…" John said. "I think usually at this part of a first date, we do get to talk about ourselves."
"I thought first dates came before…" She giggled. "...before trying to quench me, my gorgeous water-based life form." Her finger traced his faintly glowing chest – hissing faintly where his sweat beaded through the thermokinetic shield and flash-fried into puffs of steam. John let out a quiet chuckle, then shifted in bed, rolling onto his side as he looked into those brilliant ruby prisms that the Vornash apparently used for eyes.
"First contact between starship captains is never so conventional," he said, grinning at her.
"True…" She sighed, a bit sadly. "Sometimes, I wish life could be a little less interesting – though, as a patrol captain, I do tend to avoid most of the weirdness."
John nodded. It was a well understood facet of interstellar travel that people who had dull jobs tended to keep away from the most esoteric forms of anomaly produced by the Space Opera Field. Right up until they didn't.
"How did your people become Battle Thralls?" He asked, his hand caressing her thigh.
"The same as many, I'm afraid," she said, sighing and rolling away from him to sprawl upon her back. Her chest rose and fell – coals flickering beneath ash-plating as her inner fires were stoked by her breath. The effect it had on her physiology was...quite arresting. The kind of thing that made John wish Pixie's psychic powers could last just a bit longer. "Our people were merely innocent coredwellers in our homeworld. We didn't even know that there was life beyond the great coldness that surrounded our home. The pressures were so intense, the heat so warm...an entire ecosystem had evolved there, you know?" She smiled. "We believe it was because our world was stricken by so many repeated mass extinction events that we ended up with extremophiles, going further and further into the world – seeking after warmth and heat to feed themselves…" She shook her head. "I'm sure our one celled ancestors would wish that we had stayed down there, in the warm core."
"What happened?" John asked, sitting up. This view was even more arresting, something that Cinder noticed, her lips quirking up.
"Are you sure it is a geohistory lesson you want?" Her hand cupped one of her hefty breasts, playing with the ruby gemstone of her nipple.
"Mmmmm, maybe we can multitask?" John said at the same time Pixie said. "I think the Captain can multitask."
John shot her a glance.
"Jinx!" Pixie said.
John ignored her.
"Who it is that you keep glancing too?" Cinder asked, grinning wryly.
"Oh a useful psychic fungus," John said.
"Mew!" Pixie squeaked.
"Her name is Pixie, she is quite sweet," he added seamlessly, sliding around so that he was settled between the thick, deliciously curved thighs of his hostess. His palm caressed along said thighs, brushing aside ash to reveal flickering, glowing flames that spilled through his fingers, tickling against them with the delicious eagerness of a cat's fur.
"Awww!" Pixie crooned.
John delved down. His mouth found the pert lips of Cinder's eager cunt and his tongue thrust into her, slowly sliding up, then down – leaving a tingling, hissing spread of steam that misted around his eyes and caused her hips to buck. She bit her knuckle, gasping. "Oh my Captain! Ah! It feels so...exotic!" She laughed. "A-Anyway, as...as I was saying...our civilization grew in...in technological capability and...interest and-" she squeaked and bucked her hips as he found a place deep inside of her that was clearly as sensitive as a human woman's G-spot. His fingers rubbed within, two pressing together as her hips jerked in time with his finger-fucking. "And we theorized t-that there was life beyond the cold barrier, mmmm, Captain!"
John nodded, his tongue adding to his finger's work.
"Then came the...Shattering…" She whispered, biting her knuckles. Despite the warmth in her words, a coldness crept into her tone, forcing John to work even harder to continue to wring pleasure from Cinder's curvacious form. His tongue delved into her, his fingers thrust, and his ears perked up as he took detailed note of every word she said. "It was a kinetic weapon. An imapactor. Thrusting deep into our world by a-an alliance of powers fighting against the Zemturga, five thousand of your, ah, oh by the core!" She quivered and bucked as her glowing, lava-bright juices dripped along John's tongue. "It shattered our world apart."
John drew away, licking his lips. "Five thousand years...there were other alliances than the one we humans joined?"
Cinder, panting heavily, the ash sliding off her body as her flames flickered and flared to normal brightness, nodded slowly. "Yes. My ancestors would have died – but the Zemturga came. They conquered us, easy as it was, and forced us to choose our form of service. Our technology to control fire and heat made us clear Battle Thralls – and so, we were pressed into their service. In exchange, we were given worlds of molten heat and intense pressures…"
"Such as Venus?" John asked, licking his fingers clean.
"What is Venus?" she asked, cocking her head.
"A world from the home system of Earth," John said. "Heavy acid rainfall-"
"Ooh!"
"Pressure intense enough to crumple steel like it was held in God's fist," John said.
Cinder sat up, her breasts swaying, her eyes shining.
"And, did I mention it's hot enough to boil led?" He grinned.
"...a mite chilly…" Cinder said, frowning.
"Ah, well, nothing's perfect," John said. "What has life been like for your people, after five thousand years of Zemturga domination?" He frowned. "I can't even imagine a length of time – a civilization lasting that long."
Cinder chuckled. "And what makes you think it was one continuous civilization?" She asked, grinning wryly as she drew one flaming thigh up, squishing her breast into it, laying her arm along her knee and simply lounging there. She cocked her head and smirked at him. "Did your world have such an impossibly long lived civilization?"
"The Romans tried their best," John said, amused. "But the Zemturga-"
"The Zemturga are…" She frowned. "They're distant masters. They live for centuries, they travel between the stars – some of us think that they go into cryosleep and relativistic speeds in Tier 0, in the real universe, all to stretch their time out while we dwell our flickerlives." She sighed, quietly. "The first Vornash civilization that served them was the Kingdom of the Cinder. They lasted six centuries – a long time, born through fire and flame over the long war against the alliance of powers that they fought then, which included the Urghats and the Ilgath, who would become the Kruul."
John nodded.
"But when the alliance was destroyed – turned into thralls, slaves, serfs and mass graves…" She made a face. "Well, then the Zemturga put us into the Hierarchy and drew away. The Kingdom of Cinder fell, and the Vornash split apart into a dozen powers, all claiming to be the true battle thralls and inheritors of the Zemturga's mandate. One came to power, the Fetax Heresy. They were crushed when the Zemturga returned, and the Second Kingdom of Cinder was founded as the Hierarchy had found a new alliance to quell – this one included the Myg'gar'gar and their client races."
John slid next to her, his hands caressing her shoulders. "That's not how our allies described the Hierarchy…nor how the Hierarchy describes itself."
Cinder snorted loudly, smoke roiling from her shoulders as her flames grew brighter. "Oh please!" She laid her head gently upon his shoulder, sprawling against his chest. "Solids! Cellulars! Mollusks! They all cling to immortality in the form of states – we Vornash know that our sparks go to the stars and live forever. We're immune to their hubris."
John repressed a smile and managed to not sound ironic: "I see. How doleful for them."
Despite his efforts, Cinder's cheeks heated. "W-Well, that's what my teachers said at least."
John chuckled, then pushed her forward. She squeaked as she fell onto her hands and knees, and the view – even from the side, occluded by the elegant arch of her back, the sweep of her shoulder muscles – of her breasts swaying from side to side was more than enough to reignite-
"No pun intended!" Pixie chimed in.
-his passions. His cock slapped against her meaty buttocks, flames flickering around him as his precum dripped onto her ass and let out a tiny puff of steam. That contact made her back arch, her fingers digging into flame red sheets as she rolled her head back. Cinder's low, hungry voice groaned into the chamber. "Should I show more hubris, then, if it-" She gasped, her voice cutting off as John thrust into her, sliding his cock down to the hilt into her tight flaming snatch. Her fingers clenched harder, sparks shooting from her knuckles as her spine arched even harder and she moaned aloud. "Oh Johnathan!"
John gripped his lover's hips, holding her firmly in place as his balls clapped against her flaming ashes, her jiggling motion sending the last few scraps of ashes drifting down onto the bedspread. Cinder's tits swayed in time with his thrusting, her fingers tightening more and more as her deliciously warm moans echoed off the walls. "Ah! Ah! Yes! Yes! Yes! Fuck me! Fuck my pussy, ah, oh by the core, I'm losing my mind, you gorgeous hunk of mostly water, yes! Yes!"
John leaned over her back, whispering hungrily in her ear. "So, Cinder…" His hand slid around, cupping her slightly cushy, flaming belly, finding her breast, squeezing. "Have you ever seen a Zemturga civil war before?"
Her breath hitched and she glanced over her shoulder, her eyes wide.
"Never…" she whispered.
John nodded, his finger teasing her nipple. He nuzzled against her neck, and started to fuck her even harder, even faster now. The passionate slapping sound of thigh against thigh, the lewd squelching of her soaked pussy, the sizzling hiss of her lava-bright juices puddling between her thighs, all of it was so intense, so erotic that it was all that John could do to not immediately cum inside of her. But as he thrust, he started to hear her gasp out. "Wait! Wait!"
John slowed – then blinked as she bucked back and slapped with one palm. He slid from her, his cock gleaming with her ruby red juices, the lava dripping from his foreskin. Before he could say anything, Cinder had swung herself around, pushed him onto his back, then impaled herself again. But this time, she was atop him. Her flaming hands caressed his chest and her hips drove down onto his cock again and again and again, her face a mask of pure bliss as she rolled her head back.
Needless to say, John couldn't stop himself. His palms cupped those full, heavy tits and he started to buck up into her, fucking her back with just as much ferocious eagerness as she rode him. His mouth found one nipple, then the other, sucking greedily, his free hand sliding around to squeeze her ass, fingers sinking into flames up to his knuckles. She groaned and clenched him, her cunt squeezing him even more fiercely, even more tightly than she had the first time around.
John couldn't help it.
He groaned low in his throat, bucked again, and came. His balls tightened and his spunk spurted up into her waiting snatch, and once again, steam hiss from inside her body as her flames dimmed and chilled, her eyes rolling to the sky, her head tilting back, her mouth opening in an O of perfect, intense orgasm. She quivered, then dropped down. Cinder sprawled atop him, squishing John into the bed. Her breasts mashed against his chest and her mouth found his, kissing ferociously, hungrily. Her tongue and his met and steam hazed the air around their contact as John caressed her…
Afterwards, she sprawled half on, half on him, panting softly. "I think I can get used to that," she said, a little smugly.
"As can I…" John said, then chuckled. "So, ah...um...mmm…" He smiled at her. "I hope you don't think it...caddish to ask about current politics and how they stand between our peoples?"
Cinder sighed, her finger tracing his chest slowly – once more finding lines between his chest hair. "The Fifth Republic currently remain Battle Thralls. Nothing you can do to me can change that. But…" She frowned. "What did you mean by a Zemturga civil war?"
John told her – of the two variation of Zemturga warsphere, of their battle.
"We have not hear of such things – but it sounds as if the battles are far from our territory." Her pensive expression grew grave. "It explains what we've seen in the movement of other races though – they've been so eager to go to war, so ready to fight."
John nodded – but he didn't even need to mention what he had heard about the Vornash, because Cinder looked aside. "A-And our senate is not exactly shy from sending our fleets raiding too, I know." She nuzzle her head against his chest. "Mmm…"
"My people...we hope to overthrow the Hierarchy – to free the galaxy from the Zemturga," John said, taking her hand in his. He squeezed and she looked at him with a mixture of pity and shock. Cinder shook her head.
"You can't stop the Zemturga. They're too mighty. They have too much of the galaxy under their thrall…" Cinder said, quietly.
John rolled around to face her. His grin was wild. "And yet…"
"Hmm?"
"The Space Opera Field. It makes the impossible and the implausible happen every day – is overthrowing the Zemturga any less possible than breaking the speed of light barrier? Or meeting the ghosts of ancient kings?" He grinned, thinking to the Napoleon incident aboard his ship. Cinder chuckled, then flicked her finger against his chest.
"Flights of fancy are nothing to a warsphere, you silly bag of mostly water…" She paused. "But even if we could drive off the Zemturga, would it truly be better than what we have?
John found himself taken aback. Cinder continued. "Under them, civilizations rise and fall. We build cities, we have lives, we get married, we spark off. Is it truly so much worse than the alternative?" She shrugged. "Without them, do you think the Kruul or the Myg'gar'gar would avoid wars of conquest? We'd replace one large war that ends with endless smaller wars, that never would." She sighed. 'It's simply the way of things out of the core – cold and entropy steal away everything, leaving all against all…"
John surged upright. He gripped her hand, and spoke from his heart, heated and fast. "I don't believe that…" He looked into her eyes. "I don't believe life survived every extinction event thrown at it – on your world and mine – and clawed its way into space, and found a way to breach lightspeed itself, to give relativity a jaunty wave and a smirk, to just continue making the same mistakes endlessly. I don't think the Zemturga impose order – they steal futures! They steal entire histories. What do you think the Kingdom of Cinder might have been, had you been free to leave your world at your own pace, with your own time, rather than having it shattered apart?"
Cinder blinked up at him. "I...I don't know…"
"Wouldn't you like to find out?" John asked.
Cinder looked aside. "Maybe…"
"And…" John caressed her hand. "There is still a secret. A mystery. Something the Zemturga have kept to themselves for time out of mind. Something that I think can not just break this cycle of war and conquest, but can break their entire damn rotting empire."
Cinder arched an eyebrow. Even Pixie seemed curious, perking up as she leaned in from where she had been voyeuristically observing everything.
"W-What is that?" She asked.
"Why," John said.
"...why?" Cinder asked, cocking her head.
"It may seem a simple question," John said. "But it's the one that's never been answered. Why. Why do the Zemturga conquer? Enslave? Why do they have pleasure slaves at all, for god's sake?" He laughed. "They're the size of elephants and they find humans pleasurable from a sexual perspective? I mean, the SOF does a lot, but elephants remain elephants."
Cinder blinked. "Resources! Slaves! What empire has ever needed more than that?"
"No, we live in space, Cinder," John said, shaking his head. "There are infinite resources. And why take slaves when you build starships. Slavery went out of style on Earth in the 21st century – you can't enslave technological civilizations without hampering that very civilization in a million different ways. That kind of brain drain and distension nearly destroyed our whole world."
"And it does seem to be destroying the Hierarchy," Cinder said, rubbing her chin.
"I am seeking the answer to that question. I have a contact that may reveal it, and...well…" John grinned. "If that answer points to freedom, do you think the Fifth Republic may answer the call?"
"...we may…" Cinder said, slowly. "I will take your words to my senator. He will take it to the Republic. Though, I suggest you be several dozen lightyears away before I get the message to him – whether we agree to listen or not, our military will be sent to destroy the Excalibur."
John nodded. "Without a doubt."
Cinder's cheeks flared. "T-Though our records of what the Excalibur exactly...looks like may be a bit distorted." Her thighs rubbed together and she squirmed. "You know. Computer errors."
John's grin was cocky. "Of course."
She flushed even more. "Don't let it go to your head, Captain Tangent."
"He will!" Pixie said.
"I won't," John said.
"Liiiiiiiar!" Pixie started. "Oh shazbot, we need to get you back to the ship!"
Cinder pointed. "Your thermokinesis is flickering," she said.
John chuckled. "Let me steal at least one more kiss then."
He leaned forward and their mouths met.
It burned – like biting into bread too swiftly pulled from the oven.
It was worth it.
"Ah, young love," she said. "Anyway, you have approximately an hour and a half before I run out of psychic energy and you stop being thermokinetically shielded from this room. Which is, like…" She looked around herself. "Approximately thirteen...hundred to twenty two hundred degrees."
John snapped his gaze around to her, eyes widening.
"Oh, sorry, I was using your archaic form of units, pulled on the wrong part of the brain," Pixie said, flitting around and waving her palms in apology. "Closer to eight hundred to twelve hundred."
"Ah," John said.
"Mmmm?" Cinder murmured, hooking one ashy thigh along his, nuzzling against his neck with her cute little button nose. John slid his arm around the small of her back and tried to not think of his skin baking and peeling. Instead, he focused on what truly mattered in times like this: Cementing a successful first contact.
"Ladies," Pixie said, wiggling her eyebrows.
John did his best to ignore his invisible, intangible psychic assistant.
"So, Cinder…" John said. "I think usually at this part of a first date, we do get to talk about ourselves."
"I thought first dates came before…" She giggled. "...before trying to quench me, my gorgeous water-based life form." Her finger traced his faintly glowing chest – hissing faintly where his sweat beaded through the thermokinetic shield and flash-fried into puffs of steam. John let out a quiet chuckle, then shifted in bed, rolling onto his side as he looked into those brilliant ruby prisms that the Vornash apparently used for eyes.
"First contact between starship captains is never so conventional," he said, grinning at her.
"True…" She sighed, a bit sadly. "Sometimes, I wish life could be a little less interesting – though, as a patrol captain, I do tend to avoid most of the weirdness."
John nodded. It was a well understood facet of interstellar travel that people who had dull jobs tended to keep away from the most esoteric forms of anomaly produced by the Space Opera Field. Right up until they didn't.
"How did your people become Battle Thralls?" He asked, his hand caressing her thigh.
"The same as many, I'm afraid," she said, sighing and rolling away from him to sprawl upon her back. Her chest rose and fell – coals flickering beneath ash-plating as her inner fires were stoked by her breath. The effect it had on her physiology was...quite arresting. The kind of thing that made John wish Pixie's psychic powers could last just a bit longer. "Our people were merely innocent coredwellers in our homeworld. We didn't even know that there was life beyond the great coldness that surrounded our home. The pressures were so intense, the heat so warm...an entire ecosystem had evolved there, you know?" She smiled. "We believe it was because our world was stricken by so many repeated mass extinction events that we ended up with extremophiles, going further and further into the world – seeking after warmth and heat to feed themselves…" She shook her head. "I'm sure our one celled ancestors would wish that we had stayed down there, in the warm core."
"What happened?" John asked, sitting up. This view was even more arresting, something that Cinder noticed, her lips quirking up.
"Are you sure it is a geohistory lesson you want?" Her hand cupped one of her hefty breasts, playing with the ruby gemstone of her nipple.
"Mmmmm, maybe we can multitask?" John said at the same time Pixie said. "I think the Captain can multitask."
John shot her a glance.
"Jinx!" Pixie said.
John ignored her.
"Who it is that you keep glancing too?" Cinder asked, grinning wryly.
"Oh a useful psychic fungus," John said.
"Mew!" Pixie squeaked.
"Her name is Pixie, she is quite sweet," he added seamlessly, sliding around so that he was settled between the thick, deliciously curved thighs of his hostess. His palm caressed along said thighs, brushing aside ash to reveal flickering, glowing flames that spilled through his fingers, tickling against them with the delicious eagerness of a cat's fur.
"Awww!" Pixie crooned.
John delved down. His mouth found the pert lips of Cinder's eager cunt and his tongue thrust into her, slowly sliding up, then down – leaving a tingling, hissing spread of steam that misted around his eyes and caused her hips to buck. She bit her knuckle, gasping. "Oh my Captain! Ah! It feels so...exotic!" She laughed. "A-Anyway, as...as I was saying...our civilization grew in...in technological capability and...interest and-" she squeaked and bucked her hips as he found a place deep inside of her that was clearly as sensitive as a human woman's G-spot. His fingers rubbed within, two pressing together as her hips jerked in time with his finger-fucking. "And we theorized t-that there was life beyond the cold barrier, mmmm, Captain!"
John nodded, his tongue adding to his finger's work.
"Then came the...Shattering…" She whispered, biting her knuckles. Despite the warmth in her words, a coldness crept into her tone, forcing John to work even harder to continue to wring pleasure from Cinder's curvacious form. His tongue delved into her, his fingers thrust, and his ears perked up as he took detailed note of every word she said. "It was a kinetic weapon. An imapactor. Thrusting deep into our world by a-an alliance of powers fighting against the Zemturga, five thousand of your, ah, oh by the core!" She quivered and bucked as her glowing, lava-bright juices dripped along John's tongue. "It shattered our world apart."
John drew away, licking his lips. "Five thousand years...there were other alliances than the one we humans joined?"
Cinder, panting heavily, the ash sliding off her body as her flames flickered and flared to normal brightness, nodded slowly. "Yes. My ancestors would have died – but the Zemturga came. They conquered us, easy as it was, and forced us to choose our form of service. Our technology to control fire and heat made us clear Battle Thralls – and so, we were pressed into their service. In exchange, we were given worlds of molten heat and intense pressures…"
"Such as Venus?" John asked, licking his fingers clean.
"What is Venus?" she asked, cocking her head.
"A world from the home system of Earth," John said. "Heavy acid rainfall-"
"Ooh!"
"Pressure intense enough to crumple steel like it was held in God's fist," John said.
Cinder sat up, her breasts swaying, her eyes shining.
"And, did I mention it's hot enough to boil led?" He grinned.
"...a mite chilly…" Cinder said, frowning.
"Ah, well, nothing's perfect," John said. "What has life been like for your people, after five thousand years of Zemturga domination?" He frowned. "I can't even imagine a length of time – a civilization lasting that long."
Cinder chuckled. "And what makes you think it was one continuous civilization?" She asked, grinning wryly as she drew one flaming thigh up, squishing her breast into it, laying her arm along her knee and simply lounging there. She cocked her head and smirked at him. "Did your world have such an impossibly long lived civilization?"
"The Romans tried their best," John said, amused. "But the Zemturga-"
"The Zemturga are…" She frowned. "They're distant masters. They live for centuries, they travel between the stars – some of us think that they go into cryosleep and relativistic speeds in Tier 0, in the real universe, all to stretch their time out while we dwell our flickerlives." She sighed, quietly. "The first Vornash civilization that served them was the Kingdom of the Cinder. They lasted six centuries – a long time, born through fire and flame over the long war against the alliance of powers that they fought then, which included the Urghats and the Ilgath, who would become the Kruul."
John nodded.
"But when the alliance was destroyed – turned into thralls, slaves, serfs and mass graves…" She made a face. "Well, then the Zemturga put us into the Hierarchy and drew away. The Kingdom of Cinder fell, and the Vornash split apart into a dozen powers, all claiming to be the true battle thralls and inheritors of the Zemturga's mandate. One came to power, the Fetax Heresy. They were crushed when the Zemturga returned, and the Second Kingdom of Cinder was founded as the Hierarchy had found a new alliance to quell – this one included the Myg'gar'gar and their client races."
John slid next to her, his hands caressing her shoulders. "That's not how our allies described the Hierarchy…nor how the Hierarchy describes itself."
Cinder snorted loudly, smoke roiling from her shoulders as her flames grew brighter. "Oh please!" She laid her head gently upon his shoulder, sprawling against his chest. "Solids! Cellulars! Mollusks! They all cling to immortality in the form of states – we Vornash know that our sparks go to the stars and live forever. We're immune to their hubris."
John repressed a smile and managed to not sound ironic: "I see. How doleful for them."
Despite his efforts, Cinder's cheeks heated. "W-Well, that's what my teachers said at least."
John chuckled, then pushed her forward. She squeaked as she fell onto her hands and knees, and the view – even from the side, occluded by the elegant arch of her back, the sweep of her shoulder muscles – of her breasts swaying from side to side was more than enough to reignite-
"No pun intended!" Pixie chimed in.
-his passions. His cock slapped against her meaty buttocks, flames flickering around him as his precum dripped onto her ass and let out a tiny puff of steam. That contact made her back arch, her fingers digging into flame red sheets as she rolled her head back. Cinder's low, hungry voice groaned into the chamber. "Should I show more hubris, then, if it-" She gasped, her voice cutting off as John thrust into her, sliding his cock down to the hilt into her tight flaming snatch. Her fingers clenched harder, sparks shooting from her knuckles as her spine arched even harder and she moaned aloud. "Oh Johnathan!"
John gripped his lover's hips, holding her firmly in place as his balls clapped against her flaming ashes, her jiggling motion sending the last few scraps of ashes drifting down onto the bedspread. Cinder's tits swayed in time with his thrusting, her fingers tightening more and more as her deliciously warm moans echoed off the walls. "Ah! Ah! Yes! Yes! Yes! Fuck me! Fuck my pussy, ah, oh by the core, I'm losing my mind, you gorgeous hunk of mostly water, yes! Yes!"
John leaned over her back, whispering hungrily in her ear. "So, Cinder…" His hand slid around, cupping her slightly cushy, flaming belly, finding her breast, squeezing. "Have you ever seen a Zemturga civil war before?"
Her breath hitched and she glanced over her shoulder, her eyes wide.
"Never…" she whispered.
John nodded, his finger teasing her nipple. He nuzzled against her neck, and started to fuck her even harder, even faster now. The passionate slapping sound of thigh against thigh, the lewd squelching of her soaked pussy, the sizzling hiss of her lava-bright juices puddling between her thighs, all of it was so intense, so erotic that it was all that John could do to not immediately cum inside of her. But as he thrust, he started to hear her gasp out. "Wait! Wait!"
John slowed – then blinked as she bucked back and slapped with one palm. He slid from her, his cock gleaming with her ruby red juices, the lava dripping from his foreskin. Before he could say anything, Cinder had swung herself around, pushed him onto his back, then impaled herself again. But this time, she was atop him. Her flaming hands caressed his chest and her hips drove down onto his cock again and again and again, her face a mask of pure bliss as she rolled her head back.
Needless to say, John couldn't stop himself. His palms cupped those full, heavy tits and he started to buck up into her, fucking her back with just as much ferocious eagerness as she rode him. His mouth found one nipple, then the other, sucking greedily, his free hand sliding around to squeeze her ass, fingers sinking into flames up to his knuckles. She groaned and clenched him, her cunt squeezing him even more fiercely, even more tightly than she had the first time around.
John couldn't help it.
He groaned low in his throat, bucked again, and came. His balls tightened and his spunk spurted up into her waiting snatch, and once again, steam hiss from inside her body as her flames dimmed and chilled, her eyes rolling to the sky, her head tilting back, her mouth opening in an O of perfect, intense orgasm. She quivered, then dropped down. Cinder sprawled atop him, squishing John into the bed. Her breasts mashed against his chest and her mouth found his, kissing ferociously, hungrily. Her tongue and his met and steam hazed the air around their contact as John caressed her…
Afterwards, she sprawled half on, half on him, panting softly. "I think I can get used to that," she said, a little smugly.
"As can I…" John said, then chuckled. "So, ah...um...mmm…" He smiled at her. "I hope you don't think it...caddish to ask about current politics and how they stand between our peoples?"
Cinder sighed, her finger tracing his chest slowly – once more finding lines between his chest hair. "The Fifth Republic currently remain Battle Thralls. Nothing you can do to me can change that. But…" She frowned. "What did you mean by a Zemturga civil war?"
John told her – of the two variation of Zemturga warsphere, of their battle.
"We have not hear of such things – but it sounds as if the battles are far from our territory." Her pensive expression grew grave. "It explains what we've seen in the movement of other races though – they've been so eager to go to war, so ready to fight."
John nodded – but he didn't even need to mention what he had heard about the Vornash, because Cinder looked aside. "A-And our senate is not exactly shy from sending our fleets raiding too, I know." She nuzzle her head against his chest. "Mmm…"
"My people...we hope to overthrow the Hierarchy – to free the galaxy from the Zemturga," John said, taking her hand in his. He squeezed and she looked at him with a mixture of pity and shock. Cinder shook her head.
"You can't stop the Zemturga. They're too mighty. They have too much of the galaxy under their thrall…" Cinder said, quietly.
John rolled around to face her. His grin was wild. "And yet…"
"Hmm?"
"The Space Opera Field. It makes the impossible and the implausible happen every day – is overthrowing the Zemturga any less possible than breaking the speed of light barrier? Or meeting the ghosts of ancient kings?" He grinned, thinking to the Napoleon incident aboard his ship. Cinder chuckled, then flicked her finger against his chest.
"Flights of fancy are nothing to a warsphere, you silly bag of mostly water…" She paused. "But even if we could drive off the Zemturga, would it truly be better than what we have?
John found himself taken aback. Cinder continued. "Under them, civilizations rise and fall. We build cities, we have lives, we get married, we spark off. Is it truly so much worse than the alternative?" She shrugged. "Without them, do you think the Kruul or the Myg'gar'gar would avoid wars of conquest? We'd replace one large war that ends with endless smaller wars, that never would." She sighed. 'It's simply the way of things out of the core – cold and entropy steal away everything, leaving all against all…"
John surged upright. He gripped her hand, and spoke from his heart, heated and fast. "I don't believe that…" He looked into her eyes. "I don't believe life survived every extinction event thrown at it – on your world and mine – and clawed its way into space, and found a way to breach lightspeed itself, to give relativity a jaunty wave and a smirk, to just continue making the same mistakes endlessly. I don't think the Zemturga impose order – they steal futures! They steal entire histories. What do you think the Kingdom of Cinder might have been, had you been free to leave your world at your own pace, with your own time, rather than having it shattered apart?"
Cinder blinked up at him. "I...I don't know…"
"Wouldn't you like to find out?" John asked.
Cinder looked aside. "Maybe…"
"And…" John caressed her hand. "There is still a secret. A mystery. Something the Zemturga have kept to themselves for time out of mind. Something that I think can not just break this cycle of war and conquest, but can break their entire damn rotting empire."
Cinder arched an eyebrow. Even Pixie seemed curious, perking up as she leaned in from where she had been voyeuristically observing everything.
"W-What is that?" She asked.
"Why," John said.
"...why?" Cinder asked, cocking her head.
"It may seem a simple question," John said. "But it's the one that's never been answered. Why. Why do the Zemturga conquer? Enslave? Why do they have pleasure slaves at all, for god's sake?" He laughed. "They're the size of elephants and they find humans pleasurable from a sexual perspective? I mean, the SOF does a lot, but elephants remain elephants."
Cinder blinked. "Resources! Slaves! What empire has ever needed more than that?"
"No, we live in space, Cinder," John said, shaking his head. "There are infinite resources. And why take slaves when you build starships. Slavery went out of style on Earth in the 21st century – you can't enslave technological civilizations without hampering that very civilization in a million different ways. That kind of brain drain and distension nearly destroyed our whole world."
"And it does seem to be destroying the Hierarchy," Cinder said, rubbing her chin.
"I am seeking the answer to that question. I have a contact that may reveal it, and...well…" John grinned. "If that answer points to freedom, do you think the Fifth Republic may answer the call?"
"...we may…" Cinder said, slowly. "I will take your words to my senator. He will take it to the Republic. Though, I suggest you be several dozen lightyears away before I get the message to him – whether we agree to listen or not, our military will be sent to destroy the Excalibur."
John nodded. "Without a doubt."
Cinder's cheeks flared. "T-Though our records of what the Excalibur exactly...looks like may be a bit distorted." Her thighs rubbed together and she squirmed. "You know. Computer errors."
John's grin was cocky. "Of course."
She flushed even more. "Don't let it go to your head, Captain Tangent."
"He will!" Pixie said.
"I won't," John said.
"Liiiiiiiar!" Pixie started. "Oh shazbot, we need to get you back to the ship!"
Cinder pointed. "Your thermokinesis is flickering," she said.
John chuckled. "Let me steal at least one more kiss then."
He leaned forward and their mouths met.
It burned – like biting into bread too swiftly pulled from the oven.
It was worth it.
***
"Excellent work, Captain," Triana said as she and John strode onto the bridge. John, having showered off ash, sweat and bits of dead skin left from the cells that had drifted through the thermokinesis shield and flashfried. He was in a new, fresh uniform, and was feeling more settled and put together. "Think that they'll actually listen to her?"
"We can only hope," John said, frowning as he saw that, on the main screen of the bridge, the Vornash ships were turning to go.
"Once they warp away, should we resume course to the-" Shey started.
But before she could finish the sentence, Albert jerked his head up from the helm console. "Captain!" He shouted. "My mass detector is going crazy. Shey, can you get a look on this?"
Shey swung herself around in her seat, her blue fingers flying across the sensor's board. Her eyes widened and her jaw slowly dropped as she looked down at her screens. "No. No. No!" She whispered, her voice full of horror, her eyes widening. She turned to Captain Tangent, but John was already shouting the order.
"Shield's up! Red alert! Scramble fighters, all wings!"
He didn't need to know precisely what it was.
Anything producing that response was enough.
The Excalibur swung around and the fighters started to jet from their launch bays, sweeping out and darting around into a defensive formation. On the screen, John could see that there was Delta-V's fighter, twisting and zooming around the nose of the ship. John frowned – and saw that the Vornash ships were reacting fairly predictably. Their shields were coming up and they were coming around. Energy spikes showed on their HUD displays, indicating that their main weapons were coming online. Shey, her hand on her earpiece, turned to him.
"Captain, ahem, your new diplomatic contact is asking, politely, what is going on. "
"Send then our mass scan," John said. "And-"
The need for information was rapidly rendered obsolete.
Space rippled and a Kruul destroyer emerged – about a quarter of the size of the Excalibur. It was joined by another, the two dagger shaped vessels drifting about five hundred kilometers apart. Then three more emerged, all within the same few seconds. They formed a claw shaped formation and their shield were up, their weapons spitting rads. John leaned forward in his seat, beginning to plan out what it was he was going to do...and then two Kruul cruisers appeared, to either side of their destroyer formation. Each one was the size of the Excalibur and looked as if they had been made entirely out of blades, forming into an X-shape around a spear-tipped center. Their weapons glowed as brilliant green specs of light, and their fighters began to fill space, chips of green light that fanned out and around them.
A fleet of Kruul ships.
"Prepare to bring us into the SOF!" John snapped.
The destroyer's claw shaped formation expanded outwards on plumes of toxic green plasma thrust. The ships swung wide enough to remain out of the range of the Excalibur's guns, but as they came to several points around them, glowing green beams of light connected each of their blade-tipped wings, forming a vast net of shimmering energy around the ship. The whole Excalibur shuddered and sparks exploded from Albert's console. He threw up his hands to protect his face, hissing and turning his head aside. "Shit!"
"Shey, what are we looking at here?" John asked.
"Scanning – trying to determine what it is, exactly. I- wait a second, a hail's coming in!" Shey flicked a single switch.
The screen flickered as the hail came in. The Kruul Admiral that glowered down at John was massive and scarred, his tusks fierce, his nose blunt. His hair was graying – and John recognized him immediately from his history books. Not only had the Kruul sent a fleet, they had managed to drag Admiral Slaughter out of retirement after he had crushed the rebellions of 2152. "Captain Tangent," he rumbled, slowly. "Surrender immediately or we will open fire. The slave pens are ready to accept your crew – and we shall show you the mercy of our death arenas…you have five minutes to contemplate your doom."
He clicked off.
"The death arenas are mercy?" Eugene muttered.
"It's better than the Tormentariums," John said, then turned to Shey.
Shey looked grim. "Those beams are a mass net, Captain...they're keeping us pinned, no deeper than tier one. Unless we take those beams down…" She turned to him, her eyes meeting his. "...we're dead."
TO BE CONTINUED
- Location
- Patriarchova
SC2 porn parody. Not something I ever expected to see, but I'm digging it.
I'm still waiting for John/Mrrnhrmmilf.~
I'm still waiting for John/Mrrnhrmmilf.~
Since you figured out how to change the thread title in your BG3 Quest IN SPACE, maybe you can edit the title here so it's Hierarchy instead of Heirarchy