Lady Luck

by K. C. Cross

  I prop my hands on the bed on either side of her face and lean down to kiss her mouth as I thrust forward.

  “Harder,” she begs, playfully nipping at my lips. “I want you to fuck me harder.”

  “No,” I mumble. “I want it slow today.”

  She smiles, letting out a small breath of air. “I want your cocks deep inside me, Luck. I want you to pound me until I explode with light.”

  “No,” I say again, still kissing her.

  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Nyleena over the past few months, it’s that she’s tenacious when she wants something. So she ignores my refusal and just fucks me harder instead. Her hips moving, and grinding. The muscles of her pussy clamping down as hard as they can on my dicks as her legs wrap around my waist and squeeze.

  It’s a power play, I realize.

  Which isn’t unusual. She’s always the biggest personality in a room. Always the loudest voice.

  But she was fine until I tried to take off her shirt.

  What the fuck is going on?

  “Fuck me,” she says, continuing with the dirty talk.

  And why not? This little trick of hers has worked every time so far, hasn’t it? Every time I’ve tried to take off her shirt she’s stopped me with dirty talk.

  So I play it cool. I give in. I thrust forward. Giving her exactly what she asked for. I fuck her so hard she inches up the bed with each hard push. Until her head bumps into the headboard and there’s nowhere else to go.

  I lift her knees up. Allowing myself to penetrate her fully. Deeply.

  She’s moaning. Eyes closed. Light safely hidden behind those lids.

  I lean down into her neck and kiss her. Nipping at the soft skin behind her ear.

  And she responds in kind, but with more force, when she turns her face into my shoulder and her mouth finds the hard muscle.

  I hiss air through my teeth when she bites. Not because it hurts, exactly. I can’t really feel it. But because I know it should hurt and I’ll have a bruise later.

  “More,” she says, scraping her fingernails down my back. “More.”

  But there is something so fundamentally wrong here and I’m distracted.

  I want her to take off that fucking shirt.

  I don’t know why I feel this so acutely. I just do.

  “Fuck me!” she says. Like she can tell I’m still thinking too hard. “Fuck me, Luck. Fuck me!”

  “I am fucking you,” I growl.

  She opens her eyes and stops.

  Like… everything stops. I stop, she stops. Time stops.

  And that’s when I know. It comes to me immediately. The reason she won’t let me see her bare from the waist up.

  We’re staring in each other’s eyes when this happens.

  She knows I know. And I know she’s about to get up and leave.

  And I do not care that we’re not done fucking. That neither of us has had our release yet. Nor do I care that she might never let me fuck her again if I do what I’m planning.

  She reaches for my hands before they even grip her shirt. But by the time she clamps her fingers around my wrists like a vice, it’s too late.

  I rip her shirt open.

  Buttons go flying.

  She gasps in horror.

  I gasp too. But not in horror.

  I gasp in shock.

  Because there is a thick, pale, white scar down the middle of her torso. A scar that explains more about Princess Nyleena than any words that ever came out of her mouth.

  “What the fuck is that?” I ask, first staring at the horrible gash, then her brightly glowing silver eyes.

  She throws me off her.

  I’m talking… two hands to my chest and the power of a pissed-off princess kind of push. I go reeling backwards, my cocks slipping out of her because I was so not into the sex we were having, they hadn’t started swelling up yet. And the next thing I know she’s standing on the mattress above me. Legs open, straddling my body.

  Rage in her face. Full-on fucking feral, savage, Nyleena’s-wild-side-is-showing kind of rage in her face.

  “You motherfucker!” she says between gritted teeth as she points her finger at me.

  “What the hell is that?” I say, scooting backwards towards the edge of the bed. Because I’m pretty sure this girl is going to punch me in the face.

  She lifts one foot up and I see it coming. But there’s nothing I can do. I’ve run out of retreat room. And she kicks me flat-footed right in the middle of my chest so hard, I get the breath knocked out of me as I fly backwards and crash to the floor.

  “Get the fuck out!” she screams. “You get the fuck out of my quarters right now!”

  And for a moment—a long, silent moment where the only noise is her hard breathing, and my hard breathing—I almost do this.

  I almost leave.

  But then… you know what? I remember just who the fuck I am.

  She might be the silver princess. She might be an explosive device made to take out planets. She might be wild, and mean, and beautiful all in the same breath.

  But I am motherfucking, sun-damned Luck of Harem Station.

  I have fought slithering ancient alien species that no one calls a people. Slimy, snake-like creatures that want to eat you whole and spend the next decade digesting you slowly.

  I have forced myself through more narrow cave tunnels filled with creepy poisonous insects than I can count to get what I want.

  I have clung to the outside of an abandoned space station for days trying to steal parts from an old AI that still had a working defense system inside.

  I have flown through thousands of gates, and seen hundreds of examples of evil, and still, I come home every time with the things on my list.

  I have been though a spin node and I command time. I am the motherfucking time commander.

  I am one of the seven violet-eyed, true-blooded Akeelian teenagers who tamed the evil AI, ALCOR, and made that dude love me.

  I took on two dozen warrior cyborgs at Lair Station and won.

  I looked Princess Veila in the eye on that station while she filled my head up with so much tragic bullshit and didn’t blink an eye when I pointed my plasma rifle at her center of mass and shot her.

  She didn’t die because she was wearing armor. But that’s not the point.

  The point is… I did not blink. Not once.

  I shot that bitch and never thought twice.

  So I get to my feet and I point my finger up at this one wild girl, and I say, “No.”

  “Get out,” she rages, clutching her shirt closed to hide her secret.

  Her legs are shaking and unsteady on the mattress. And for a moment I think she’s about to lose her balance and fall, so I reach for her. But she jumps off the bed and lands on her feet to my left.

  She narrows her eyes at me. And there’s so much wild light spilling through those lids, it comes out as a beam that lands on, and spotlights, me. Her new enemy.

  “What the fuck is that scar?” I ask, moving to the left and positioning myself in front of her bedroom door to cut off her escape.

  “None of your damn business,” she snaps.

  “Did they…” Fuck. I grab my hair and try to make sense of it.

  Because this is no ordinary scar. It’s what you see on dead people after an autopsy.

  Something that says so clearly that this body has been split open. That someone has put their hands inside her chest. Touched her heart, or taken it out and put it back in.

  “Nyleena,” I say.

  “No,” she says, pointing at the door behind me. “Get out.”

  “Just tell me—”

  “Get OUT!”

  And then… I don’t know what happened. Because when I come to, the only thing I remember is light, and pain, and I’m on the floor in front of her bedroom door.

  And Nyleena is gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - NYLEENA

  I am not a weapon.

  I am a person.

&n
bsp; This is my mantra. I’ve been saying it since I was a little girl back in the sister harem back in Cygnian System.

  Because every day I lived there, for as long back as I can remember, they’d tell me the opposite.

  “You are not a person, Nyleena. You are a weapon.”

  The first time they told me that I imagine I was too young to have an opinion on the matter. I didn’t talk back until I was about nine.

  I just… decided to disagree one day. Lyra and I were never close in the harem back home. She was just another sister. I had a lot of them. But I was the only silver one. I was special that way just like Lyra was special because she was our genetic father’s seventh daughter.

  So we were alike in that respect. Meaning we did things differently than our other sisters, who were all pink, like her, but weren’t born with a programmed destiny, like us.

  So one day I’m sitting in the medical facility waiting on my daily exam, and they, the nurses who were assigned to me, come in and that’s the first thing they had to tell me before we started.

  “You are not a person, Nyleena. You are a weapon. Do you understand?”

  I guess this was their way of getting my tacit permission to do what they did next.

  And every day I said, “Yup. Got it. I am not a person, I am a weapon.”

  Every day.

  Except that day.

  Luck slams into the door with such force, I panic and start reciting my mantra.

  I am not a weapon, I am a person.

  But I am a weapon. There is no way around that. And I just proved it because Luck is unconscious on the floor of my bedroom.

  “Shit,” I say. “Shit, shit, shit,” I say again, and again, and again.

  I walk over to him, hands shaking as my fingertips reach down and press against the side of his neck, checking for a pulse.

  Thank the suns, he’s alive.

  I stand back up, dress quickly in a pair of plain black tactical pants and a white t-shirt, then pull on my boots and leave.

  He’ll wake up.

  He’ll wake up and he’ll remember we had a fight. And then maybe he’ll remember that I shot him with light… but that’s it. That’s all he knows.

  But he saw my scar. I wish I could make him go back in time. What good is controlling time if you can’t use it for your own personal nefarious purposes?

  So fucking stupid.

  But Luck knows something else now too. He knows I am a weapon, not a person. Because that really is the truth. And it’s better that way. We might be genetically-engineered soulmates but that doesn’t mean we have to fall in love.

  We will not fall in love.

  I admit, I got a little distracted by him recently. But that ends now.

  I’m on a mission today. A mission to find answers and solve problems. I have a whole list of them still.

  I tick them off in my head as a way to keep focused.

  One. Crux wants to know what it means to level up. Tray has this answer and so does Real ALCOR. But…

  Two. Tray is an asshole and refuses to see me. And…

  Three. Asshole ALCOR—also, obviously, an asshole—is inside the Pleasure Prison and can’t be contacted. And…

  Four. Valor could get me into the Pleasure Prison to ask Asshole ALCOR and get what I need, but he wants more info on Veila. So…

  Five. Delphi and Jimmy know more about Veila and Valor than they’ve told me, but they want info on some place called Earth. Which leads me to…

  Six. Luck knows something about Earth and Veila, but refuses to tell me unless I find out what craptastic evil Tray and Valor are doing inside the Pleasure Prison. Which leads me back to…

  Seven. Flicka. Well, specifically, Baby ALCOR. Because he might have some hidden data on this Earth place hidden deep in his core programs. However…

  Eight. Baby ALCOR is avoiding me. So…

  Nine. Back to Flicka. Dragonbee bots are the best. They’re the equivalent of a silver Cygnian princess in bot form. Evil and dangerous. They mix up the little poisons in their bellies and fart out little puffs of death.

  I really need to get me a dragonbee bot. Delphi is so damn lucky.

  I’m kinda of embarrassed that I’ve now spent four whole days on this little quest and have gotten absolutely nowhere.

  That ends now. I will solve these mysteries and it all starts with Baby ALCOR.

  Well, with Flicka, actually.

  I have decided that Delphi doesn’t deserve such a kick-ass sidekick. If I could steal her away for real, I would. But… that’s never gonna happen. So I’m just gonna borrow her today and we’re going to combine our super-silver, poison-farting powers and get shit done.

  When I get out into the main concourse I open up my air screen, find Flicka’s contact, and send her a message.

  The message says:

  Hey, did you know there’s another dragonbee bot here on the station? I met him last night and told him all about you. Wanna meet up?

  It’s a lie. But who cares? Lying is just another weapon in my silver princess arsenal.

  Flicka messages back a text that barely makes sense. She’s not the best speller. But I get the gist.

  She’s having breakfast now but she can meet in ten, and where would I like that to be?

  So I text back my current location near a Centurian clothing store and then log out of my air screen, delete my account, and essentially disappear.

  Take that, Luck. Put a tracker on me? Fuck you.

  Plus, I don’t want Baby ALCOR to know we’re coming.

  Flicka shows up a little bit late, and I immediately regret deleting my air screen account before she gets here because I have no translator program and I don’t speak dragonbee bot.

  But she understands me, so I just go off on my spiel and make her a deal. I will hook her up with the new beebot if she helps me hack into Baby ALCOR’s data core.

  There’s a lot of buzzing, and she farts out a puff of something that makes me start coughing, but a security bot shows up right quick and threatens her with lockup if she does it again, so thirty minutes later she’s still fuming at me, but each time she buzzes, I just put up a hand and say, “I just need to get some info and he’s avoiding me, OK? Please, just hack me in. I promise to put in a good word with my new beebot friend.”

  A few more minutes of fussing and I’m assuming she’s in on the plan, because she flits around doing loop-the-loops in front of my face, then takes off towards a fast-track escalator that leads down to the bottom levels.

  Baby’s office is up here near the top, but apparently the databanks are down below.

  So I just follow, because I have no clue.

  Now listen. No one thinks that breaking into Baby’s core databanks is going to be easy and not many people are as ballsy as I am, so most don’t even bother trying. He is locked up tight. I’m talking full-on cyborg security detail standing guard outside the unmarked main entrance to this secret hiding place where he keeps his servers.

  And there’s little Baby ALCOR eyeballs everywhere, just in case someone, like me and my new BFF here, get any crazy ideas about infiltrating his artificial memory.

  But dragonbee bots are a very special species of evil. Their puffs can do anything from kill any species alive to disable whole stations, depending on what their little internal kitchen pantry has inside it when the need arises.

  Kinda makes you wonder why more people don’t own them or at least conscript them as part of their teams or armies.

  Two reasons, really. One. They don’t take direction well. And two. They’re not very loyal. How Delphi got this one to behave and stick with her is beyond me.

  There’s a third reason too. They have limited powers unless you have a whole swarm of them.

  Flicka can’t take down Harem Station by herself no matter what deadly recipe she cooks up. She’d need thousands of partner beebots to do that.

  But the point is, even one dragonbee bot is super-helpful on pretty much any stealth mission imagi
nable.

  And two of them is double the power she has now. So this promise of mine to hook her up is kind of a big deal.

  She pretty much handles shit once we get to the bottom level. She’s already flying ahead once I get off the escalator. And I can see the cyborg security force off in the distance, diligently standing guard in front of the massive steel door.

  As I follow her I notice that all the little Baby ALCOR eyeballs are blinking red, meaning they are offline. And by the time I reach the steel door, the cyborgs have all fallen to the floor like they’re dead.

  I don’t think they’re dead. I really hope they’re not dead. Because killing the Baby’s cyborgs will probably get both of us locked up in a cryopod out on some security beacon in space like Corla.

  There’s not much time to think about it though, because Flicka is clinging to the security panel on the door and a moment later, it opens.

  Probably should not be this easy to break into the Baby’s memory servers and something tells me from this day forward Flicka will be on the Baby’s shit list.

  But that’s a problem for another time.

  Because we go inside, then Flicka clings to the security panel on this side of the door, and they close up after us. Essentially sealing us in.

  Wow. I have to hand it to this little mechanical insect. When she goes in on a job, she goes all in. No bet-hedging or second thoughts for her.

  Flicka flies off down a long, dark hallway. No lights come on until I walk forward, then they are tripped by motion sensors and light up as I reach them, then go dark again when I pass. Which is not super-stealthy at all. But fuck it. We’re inside.

  We end up at a dark screen connected to a console, but it doesn’t stay dark for long. Flicka buzzes busily at the access port and in just a few seconds the screen lights up with code.

  “Shit,” I say. “I don’t speak code, Flicka. And I can’t even fake it because I deleted my air screen account.”

  She buzzes, then settles down on the screen built into the tabletop of the console and begins hopping around, the tiny pads of her feet triggering commands.