The First Nova I See Tonight

by Jason Kilgore

  "Do it now!" she urged, breathless.

  He opened his mouth. Teeth against skin. Bit down. There was the acid taste of sweat. But more than that, a peculiar musk. It tasted good. Smelled like sex. Made him hold her tighter.

  She moved faster. Reached back to grip him. Her claws were out. "Harder! Bite me harder!"

  He did as she said, fearing to break her skin.

  She leaned forward. Groaned in ecstasy. Bucked. She shoved and scraped against the wall in front of them. Pushed herself hard against him. Panted. Emitted an animalistic, deep-throated rumble as he pumped. Her tail wrapped around his leg and squeezed.

  He could hardly control himself. He moaned, trying not to lose the grip of his teeth against her movement. "Ohhh," he moaned, losing the bite. Thrusted harder. "Oh… fuck…!"

  She cried out in ecstasy. He finished in an explosive wave of rapture. Reared his head back with the orgasm as they finished together.

  He lowered his forehead against her back as she slowed her movement. Sweat slicked her fur. Her back rose and fell with urgent breaths.

  Dirken heard a grunt, then looked up, blinking.

  Yiorgos stood in the narrow opening to the front cockpit, his hand activated into the plasma saber.

  "I should have known," the cyborg said, deactivating the saber. "I honestly thought you were killing each other back here." He turned and walked back to the front, shaking his head. "I'm going back to my Netfolding. Try to keep it to yourselves, eh?"

  Eow laughed — light and carefree — then moved off his lap.

  Dirken's eyes widened. The upholstered wall in front of them had been slashed and ruined by her claws.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MAKE A WISH

  Still nude, they reclined together on the couch with Eow in Dirken's arms, his legs intertwined with her legs and tail, his arms lightly wrapped around her.

  The cabin light was off, allowing easy sight through the transparent canopy. Dirken leaned his head back and looked up at the vast array of stars.

  A heavy vibration thrummed through the craft as gravjump ribs surrounded the fighter, arcing over the canopy, and Yiorgos piloted the ship into a jump. The Jacobian gravwell generator spun up, shaking the ship with its strong throbbing. Then the starfield pinched in and exploded outward to a new part of space.

  The ribs retracted, and as Dirken's eyes readjusted, he saw a bright red star gleaming in the expanse.

  "Make a wish," he said, pointing at the star.

  Eow turned her head partway toward him. "A wish? Why?"

  Dirken smiled at the silliness. "Nevermind. It's stupid, really."

  "No, tell me."

  He chuckled. "Well, it's a silly old Earth custom for little kids. When night comes, and you see the first visible star, you sing, 'Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight; I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.' It's superstitious, really."

  Eow played her fingers over Dirken's forearms. "It is cute."

  "The really silly thing is that the first 'star' that the kids usually saw was a planet called Venus."

  Eow laughed. It was that light laugh that's so opposite her warrior ways — the sort a young girl might make while running with friends through a field.

  "You are no better, Dirken. The joke is on you! The 'star' you pointed at is a nebula, not a star. I think your people call it the 'Red Rectangle Nebula.'"

  "Oh. Well…." Now he really felt sheepish.

  She laughed again. "But I would rather wish upon the product of a supernova than some stagnant star or planet. It is an honorable death for a star, giving birth to something… majestic… proud."

  Yiorgos yawed the fighter away from the nebula and rotated. A red giant star rolled into sight, relatively close, filling most of the view. The canopy tinted in response as the nav chart on the wall gave the star's name as "Aldebaran."

  In response to the ship's movement, the Heart rolled out of the circle of clothes it had been situated in and came to rest against his left leg. He pushed it away and it rolled back into the corner to his left, illuminating the cushions green with its slow blinking lights. The thought flitted through his mind again that the Bloodhawk had called it the "Heart." What the hell is this thing?

  Dirken pushed the thought out of his mind. "So," he said. "What would you wish upon that nebula?"

  "Like a supernova, I also wish for an honorable death."

  Dirken ran his hand down the silky fur of her firm belly and came to rest where the line of her thigh slanted down to her groin. He felt himself getting excited again.

  "That seems like an unexpected thing to wish for."

  "Why?"

  "Well, death isn't the usual thing people wish for, honorable or not."

  "Maybe not your people. For mine, back on Ananakia, there is no greater wish — at least for a warrior. It is what I was taught from the time I first started training."

  "How young were you?"

  "We start as soon as we can run, around six years old for my world, enrolling in a training center where we live for the rest of our youth." She paused, seemingly lost in a pleasant memory, then added, "When I was fifteen years old — which I think might be around twelve in your Earth years — I blooded my first grenloc on the Plains of Yenla. The beast was three meters long and as massive as a hovcar. Its hide was tough, and it had three long horns on its forehead. If a grenloc charges you, all you can do is dodge or it will gore you to death. Death is not seen as a poor outcome, if it is a death without cowering or fleeing. Some of the trainees died. But I survived and bled him with my spear."

  "Did you kill it?"

  "No. I was too small and weak to kill such a beast. Too young. But that was the point. I showed bravery and skill against a foe I could never hope to kill. I injured it and lived to fight another day."

  Impressive! Dirken thought. He wondered if he could have done such a thing at that age. "Your parents must have been worried."

  "My mother was a great warrior, as was her mother before her, and those who came before. She understood."

  "And your father?"

  She shifted to look at him again, her whiskers sweeping across his cheek as she turned her amethyst eyes to look into his hazel ones. "You know nothing of Ananaks, do you?" She chuckled and turned back. "I do not know who my father is, for my mother had many studs in her harem. Men on Ananakia are either studs of great value and strength or they are lower-class workers who are unable to live up to those select standards." She ran her fingers through his hair as she spoke. "The women are either warriors or property owners. Warriors have many studs. But the studs are sometimes freed… after they have bred past their peak, often going on to positions of authority or out into the galaxy as warriors in their own right." She reached around him with her right hand and ran it over his thigh and buttock. "I think of you as a warrior of that sort."

  "Who says I'm past my peak!" he said with mock annoyance.

  She laughed and pushed herself against his groin. He was growing hard again.

  "And what about you?" she asked. "Did you train as a warrior?"

  He grew more somber, thinking back to his youth. An orphan and refugee. Parents killed when the mining colony was destroyed. Their asteroid, Eros, had collided with another after a gravitational anomaly. Earth wouldn't take him, since miners and their children were looked down upon and he wasn't born there, so he was shipped off to Tesla. He closed his eyes, remembering the explosions. The alarms. The panic.

  His parents were never found.

  "I guess you could say I had an informal training. I grew up alone on the streets of Muskon," he said, referring to the capital city of Tesla. "Ran with gangs. Scrambled to make ends meet beneath the glittering skyscrapers and luxury stores. Lived underground. Stole when I could. Fought when I had to — and killed." He winced as a memory flashed by of his first kill, a boy his age who had tried to murder him in his sleep. "By the time I was sixteen I ran my own hustles and smuggled goods to offworld cap
tains." He leaned into her head, felt the softness of her fur against his face, and the bad memories dissipated. He took a breath. "By the time I was nineteen, I had my own rickety ship to run those goods myself."

  She was quiet a moment, her tail wrapping and unwrapping around his right leg. "Thievery is not honorable, but to do so to survive is acceptable." She arched her back and ran her tongue over her fangs. "The thought of you killing to survive gets me so excited."

  She took his right hand in hers and moved it down between her legs. His heart fluttered. She seemed to enjoy his renewed firmness as she moved against him.

  She moaned as he used his fingers to stimulate her, his other arm wrapping tight around her chest. He lightly kissed her behind her ear, then moved down to her shoulder, kissing as he went.

  "I think we have plenty of time before the next gravjump," he said softly.

  She turned so they were chest-to-chest, smiling with bedroom eyes, and rolled him so that she was on top.

  "Yes.…" she whispered, her fangs lightly touching the skin of his neck, "My stud."

  And they made love again, this time gently, caressingly, in the red radiance of the star overhead.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE WITCH'S TITS

  Yiorgos yelled back to the rear cockpit, "We're about to fold to the Baeris star system."

  Dirken and Eow had dressed, so they stepped forward to the front cockpit.

  "I see you've repaired your leg," Dirken said.

  "Only part-way. A number of synthmuscles are severed in the right thigh. I imagine I can walk with a limp, but I need a couple new parts. Maybe when we get to where we're going I can find a cybernetic engineer to help with it."

  "There are engineers at the hideout," Eow said. "I can get one for you. They can also modify the controls of this fighter so that it can be piloted without using Aquarian Centaur language."

  "Good," Dirken said. "I'm itching to take it for a flight."

  Yiorgos punched in the coordinates and the gravjump ribs extended around the vehicle. "While you bunnies were going at it back there, I was actually doing something useful by looking up this system."

  "What is a 'bunny'?" Eow asked.

  "It's a small animal on Earth that mates a lot," Yiorgos replied with sardonic dryness.

  "Well, I am lusty," Eow responded, seemingly pleased by Yiorgos's response. "Are they predators?"

  "Yes!" Dirken responded right away. "They're vicious creatures that can rip your neck out if you don't please them."

  Eow lifted her chin. "Well then. Consider me a bunny!"

  Dirken coughed and turned away from her, trying not to laugh out loud. Yiorgos turned away, too, not quite hiding his smile, and pressed a flashing button on the console.

  The gravjump generator spun up and they folded through space.

  When they passed through, they found themselves squinting at a white dwarf star resplendent in blue-white intensity. The canopy dimmed, and they turned their attention to the navchart monitor showing the orbit of several planets around the star. Yiorgos reached toward the monitor, made a hand gesture as if picking up a platter, moved his hand away, then flexed. The star and planets jumped into a hologram around them in the cockpit.

  "Anyhow, when I did my research I found that none of the planets here are habitable by most species. Yet there are UW patrol reports indicating potential mafia and smuggler activity. They suspect a base on the moon of the fifth planet." He pointed at a large sphere rotating around them. "This gas giant."

  "No," Eow said. She pointed to a tiny blob that Dirken hadn't noticed before. "Here."

  Yiorgos squinted at the blob with his one human eye, then moved both hands as if parting a curtain. The hologram expanded, and the blob enlarged to show an irregular object that looked vaguely like a peanut shell with one end slightly larger than the other end. It tumbled slowly, a trail of vapor flying behind it, and wasn't very far from their current position.

  "A comet?" Dirken asked, raising an eyebrow. "The hidden mafia base is on a… comet?"

  "Not on a comet. In it," she corrected. "It is called the 'Witch's Tits.'"

  Dirken snickered, but Yiorgos huffed in annoyance. "Oh please. That's just obscene." Turning back to the console, the cyborg said several words in Aquarian centaur and the ship turned to port. "How do we hail them?"

  "Pull up the comm monitor," Eow said. When he did, she typed in a complicated series of codes and sent it. "They will now be expecting us. You must make your approach toward the tip of the larger end of the comet."

  The cyborg looked at a schematic of the comet. "That would take us through the dust tail. We're going to have to wait another three hours or so until that end rotates out of the tail."

  "We don't have time," Dirken said. "The Bloodhawk is surely tracking us. He'll catch up to us before then."

  "We must go now," Eow said. "Not just because of the Bloodhawk, but because I have told them we are coming. You do not keep the Eridani Mafia waiting."

  "Great," Yiorgos said, making adjustments to their trajectory, sighing. "I've always wanted to fly at high speeds through a gauntlet of ice and rocks that could smash us in an instant — while trying to line up with a hangar — and navigating in a language I can't naturally speak — so I can visit the most dangerous people in the galaxy." He gave a mock smile. "So blessed."

  Dirken put his hand on his partner's shoulder. "I'll help. I can control the weapons from a console in the rear cockpit."

  "Fine, fine." Yiorgos waved him away. "Just go away and let me concentrate on this. I'm calculating the trajectory now. We'll have to come into the tail at a very acute angle to minimize our time in it. Touchy."

  "One more thing," Eow added. "Just before we get to the hangar we will fly through the ionized atmosphere of the coma. You have to line up with the hangar before then, or fly by eye, since the ionization can affect navigation sensors."

  "Good to know," Yiorgos groaned.

  Dirken stepped to the rear cockpit with Eow. He gave a quick glance at the sphere then tapped the display screen to bring up the weapons console. An interactive holographic display projected around him, and he started going through the systems. The fighter had a heavy prow gun: a military-grade phase cannon with a two-second recharge. But there was also a short-range missile array strapped to either side of the fuselage, each capable of firing two intermediate-strength graviton bursts and two standard thermion explosive warheads.

  "You will not want to shoot directly toward the comet with those," Eow said. "The cannons at the gate will think you are shooting at them and will return fire."

  "Cannons?! You didn't say anything about cannons."

  She shrugged. "Of course there are cannons. Did you think the hangar would be unguarded? There are two at the gate, the biggest Grimmag could find."

  "Great." He adjusted the 3D holo settings on the display. "You just secure the Heart so it doesn't bounce around. Okay?"

  He had just figured out how to arm the missiles when Yiorgos announced, "Comet in sight. Coming up fast!"

  Dirken looked forward from the canopy and saw it. The body, or "nucleus," of the Witch's Tits was half in shadow and surrounded by a halo of gas and dust, but a two-part tail stretched out far to their right: a bright, sky-blue gas tail, and a pinkish-white dust tail. The nav chart measured the nucleus at a whopping twenty kilometers. The tails, though, went as far to the right as they could see, over seven-hundred thousand kilometers.

  "Beautiful," Dirken said. He'd never flown so close to a comet before. He was about to get closer than he ever wanted.

  Eow reached down from the couch and secured the Heart in the duffel bag, then pushed it into the compartment under the couch. "Want me to do the shooting, space jockey?"

  He shot her a look of annoyance. "I've got it covered."

  "Suit yourself. I'll just sit here and watch you perform." She winked, then she pulled out a safety harness from the couch and buckled it around her slim waist.

  A few minutes p
assed, and he took a few test shots with the prow gun. The comet expanded and expanded until it took up nearly all their forward view. Yiorgos hit the forward thrusters, slowing their approach. "Entering in about one minute. Strap in!"

  Dirken looked around, but there wasn't another safety harness. The couch is designed for a fucking Aquarian centaur, he thought. The only non-centaur harness was already around Eow.

  So he quickly slipped his feet into Eow's space suit then activated the magboots. At least this way his feet would be rooted to the spot.

  The comet, meanwhile, now utterly dwarfed the fighter. It was white and gray with visible geysers shooting out from the front and sides, giving rise to the tails. The dust tail towered over them in a pinkish glory shot through with streaks of flying boulders and concentrated lines of ejecta.

  "Look at the size of that dust tail," Dirken said. "That's one hell of a rocky comet. They're supposed to be more like snowballs!"

  Eow regarded him coolly. "Does it intimidate you to fly into it?"

  Dirken scoffed. "No! I've flown in worse." But he took another glance up at the tail and wondered about the wisdom of their plan.

  "Facing Grimmag Ruby-Eye is not a task for weaklings," she said. "Facing the dangers of a comet pales in comparison."

  He heard an Aquarian centaur automated voice calling out a warning from the front cockpit computer. Dirken was rubbing his lucky Rigellian runestone when Yiorgos called out, "Here we go!" He checked the targeting sensors one last time, tucking the runestone back in the hidden pocket of his leather jacket.

  And then they entered the tail.

  Immediately the ship resounded with a million small bits hitting the canopy and fuselage at high speed. There was nothing he could do about that. On his screen he saw a largish rock, maybe a meter across, and fired the prow gun. It was a direct hit, shattering it into dust that flew harmlessly by.

  Half a dozen alarms mixed with the automated centaur voice from the front cockpit.