Star Assassin

by D. R. Rosier

  “So, how did you get to be captain of an experimental and highly advanced ship?” I asked playfully.

  He winked at me, “Nepotism.”

  I laughed, “really?”

  He nodded, “That, and I’m good at what I do. It’s kind of the family business in a way, what we do. Especially for an eighteenth son, may I never inherit. I have twenty-two siblings, only two of them sisters, and most of us are involved in the military in one way or another, except the heir to the family.”

  “Twenty-two?” I gasped, and then blushed.

  He chuckled, “We live a long time, as will you with our medical technology, and my mother has a new one every ten years or so. Let’s eat before it gets cold.”

  That actually didn’t sound like too much, by the time a new baby came there would only be one pre-teen kid in the house, the rest grown up and gone.

  The food was excellent, and I enjoyed it. If I never saw another one of those food bars again, it would be too soon.

  We talked after that, and I learned a few more things. They weren’t all that much different than we were, except for the sex thing, and being blue. Honestly, once married they were monogamous, I didn’t think they were that different from humans after all. Once health and pregnancy were no longer issues, I could see humans acting in exactly the same manner. After all, humans already slept around before marriage, and the main reasons that was restrained at all, was because of the possible dire consequences.

  Take away those consequences, and it would be a whole new thing.

  They were die hard capitalists, and seemed to respect ability. It seemed to work very well in their society, since food was one of the exceptions. No one starved because they were out of work or broke. He’d mentioned nepotism, but I’d hardly be where I was if ability wasn’t respected at all.

  He showed interest in me as well, and Earth. I’d already told Jillintara, so I figured why not, and told him a little bit about my life and what it had been like. We’d finished dinner almost a full hour ago, and hadn’t stopped talking yet. Perhaps he’d been waiting for our meals to digest, because he then broached the subject that sent those butterflies into a frenzy. The one I both felt anxiety and longing about.

  Vik said, “I want to get to know you, all of you. I’m not sure how it’s done on Earth, but I’d like you to stay the night in my quarters, and in my bed.”

  That was more direct than I’d expected, but I reminded myself there was no taboo involved here, like there would be at home. Plus, it worked, on my body at least.

  My mouth went dry, and I could see the desire in his eyes as he looked at me with a mixture of hope, confidence, friendliness, and lust. It was hard to think of myself that way, but my human body and color tones must have been exotic to him, and I know I was dying to feel his strong muscular arms around me. Not to mention, other parts of him. My whole body tingled, and a shiver went down my spine. I wondered if his cock was as big as the rest of him.

  It wasn’t just that either, I had no doubts he was interested in more than just fucking. Not love, but friendship and respect. In his society, that’s how things started. Surprisingly, I felt the same way, this would be the first time for me that it wasn’t just a one-night stand to scratch an itch. This was more than that.

  I nodded, cleared my throat, and said, “I’d like that, very much.”

  My heart started to pound as we stood up, and then he was suddenly kissing me. His hands roamed, squeezed, and caressed my body, as mine roamed his muscular and broad chest. His lips were rough and demanding on mine, and I gasped into his mouth when he squeezed my ass and pulled me against his erection, and then invaded my mouth with his tongue.

  It felt as big as I’d hoped, but not too big. Of course, then it grew even larger against me, and I rubbed my body up against his like a cat in heat. He was huge against my abdomen, thick and long, guaranteed to stretch me and fill me completely. I wasn’t sure if I could take it all, it was at least ten inches, and fat, but I could hardly wait to find out. My body was singing, and his every touch sent a thrill down my spine, and liquid arousal pooled in my center. I was positively dizzy with lust, and just let go and went with it.

  “Vik,” I whispered.

  He picked me up and carried me into the bedroom.

  The next hour of my life was the most incredible sexual experience of my life. He worshipped my body, and teased and pleased me to bliss several times while he explored every inch of me. It was a transcendent experience, blissfully torturous, and deliciously naughty. He was quite skilled, and I certainly wasn’t an idle recipient.

  Finally, gloriously, he filled me. I was more than ready for him, both soaked and drowning in a feeling of euphoria and need, and he filled me perfectly. Even wet and more than ready, it took him time, effort, and he was careful as he stretched me out and filled me up.

  When he was finally all the way in, and I was used to him, he took me slowly at first, but soon enough he’d built up to long hard strokes, as I arched my back and met him with a thrust of my own. Impaling myself on his hard length, as he impaled me.

  He said, “You are so beautiful Lori, and a hot little wild thing. Fuck, you’re so tight baby, I can’t hold back much longer.”

  Tight? I supposed I was, but any woman from Earth would be tight around his monstrous cock.

  I wrapped my legs around him, my feet on his ass for leverage, and bucked up into him even harder as I begged him to fill me. I wasn’t even entirely sure what I was saying, but it spurred him on to recklessly fuck into me with all he had, and I loved it. I was completely lost in the lustful pleasure of our coupling, and my torrid fantasies about him had fallen so short of the truth. He was an incredibly thorough and considerate lover, and just rough and hard enough with me to make it perfect. I’d never cum so much or so hard before, and I screamed his name soundlessly as once again the coil of pleasure in my middle broke, sending bolts of pleasure through my body and mind, and I felt my sex grip, squeeze, and convulse around his.

  That seemed to set him off, and he grunted and slammed into me hard, and I felt his cock twitch and pulse inside of me, as he filled me. That sensation sent my orgasm to new heights, then his lips were on mine, and his hands gripped my hair as we moaned into one another’s mouths. The kiss was sloppy, both of us lost in pleasure and having little motor control as he finished pulsing his essence deep into my body.

  He pulled out, and rolled to the side. I suddenly felt empty, not just my body, but only for a moment, as he gathered me into his arms and pulled me against his chest.

  I sighed in contentment, and felt beyond sated as my mind drifted in an intense post coital bliss. Usually, I’d be looking to get dressed and sneak out the door. Right then though, I never wanted to move again, I felt safe and his arms around me filled me with warmth. And that scared the crap out of me. As good as the sex was, and as warm as I felt both inside my heart, and against his body, all this could ever be was a friendship, right? It wasn’t like we could ever get married and have kids, I was and would always be just an intimate friendship, friends with benefits, because that’s what the Isythians did.

  I wasn’t complaining, not exactly, I just hoped it would be a very long time before he met the one.

  “You’re incredible.”

  I suppressed a laugh, blue alien or not, he was still a man fishing for compliments after sex.

  “You too Vik, that was…. Indescribably wonderful.”

  He held me tighter, “You up for round two?”

  “Already?”

  He chuckled heatedly, which made me tingle.

  Damn, I’d be lucky if I could walk tomorrow, but hell yes, I was ready. I wondered if I could fit him in my mouth, one way to find out, and my mouth was watering at the thought.

  I turned and nipped his lip, licked my lips, and then it was my turn to explore his body a lot more thoroughly…

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next day I was back on the bridge. Last night had been incredible, we’
d gone for hours, and I felt deliciously sore, although that was going away quickly because of the nanites. I had my dinner with Telidur later that evening, but I wasn’t sure if anything more than that would happen. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the possibility of being with multiple friends. It both resonated, and on the other hand I felt like I’d be betraying Vik, which was ridiculous of course, and came from human societal expectations.

  Still, unless I had some mental breakthrough, most likely tonight would just be dinner, maybe next time? I still wasn’t quite in the this is real mind space yet. I knew it was real, but my psyche was arguing about it. Humans were adaptable, but we also resisted change and didn’t like to change fast.

  Another part of me wondered what kind of lover he would be. Vik had been firm, confident, thorough, and seemed to love making me come undone under his attentions. What would Telidur be like. Another stray thought, what would Jillintara be like?

  Rilok? He could go fuck his hand for all I cared.

  We were still in route to Vehiri in FTL, and wouldn’t get there to unload until tomorrow. Even then, it would be another ten hours in system. If he went at half max acceleration, a hundred instead of two hundred gravities, it would take a little over thirteen. My bet was on thirteen.

  I spent the first two thirds of the day doing two simulations, and then Jillintara hit me with the download of the vessel’s capabilities, if not exactly how they all worked, or even how they were controlled. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t want me to know everything, but I also wasn’t worried about it.

  A lot of things wouldn’t make a difference to the case. For instance, it took thirty seconds to pressurize the landing bay, while it took forty-five to empty it. I did learn a few useful things. The power cores which tapped into vacuum energy used up a hard to fabricate and expensive element in the process. The more power that was generated at once, the higher the loss in element. It wasn’t a direct proportion either, more of a geometric progression. The wormhole drive cost about a thousand times the amount of energy to go four light years than the FTL drive would, but the amount of the expensive and precious element used was hundred thousand times as much.

  The less energy they needed to draw from the universe, the better. It worked for everything else too, like acceleration. The gravity fields were twice as expensive power wise between one hundred and two hundred gravities, but the cost in element to double the power draw was over thousand times higher. It was easy to understand why maximum velocity wouldn’t be used outside of battle, or the wormhole drive outside of a major emergency, like invasion.

  More than the critical element, it also effected bonds on the molecular level, so not only did they need more element, but a large part of the main power reactor core was changed out regularly.

  Long sustained use of less power, was always more efficient and cheaper than even short bursts of higher power generation. I wondered at using such a technology, it seemed like fusion, or even fission would be more efficient. Except, when I found out the power requirements for some of the systems, I learned it would take hundreds of fission or fusion reactors to come even close to the energy a zero point reactor could produce. Shields, plasma weapons, drive systems, and artificial gravity all took an insane amount of energy. Just opening a wormhole would take the power output of a sun, for a short few moments. Fission and fusion just couldn’t do it. The only way things would change, is if someone discovered a more energy efficient way of doing those things.

  I got a little off track in my head there.

  I learned that the active sensors have an effective range of about six A.U., which meant from the center of a solar system, they could see just about the whole system core. Past six A.U. some detection was possible out to twelve A.U., but not in detail. It could pick up mass and gravity readings, and unreliably at that.

  The effective range of subspace sensors was about five light years, and ships could be tracked in subspace both while in subspace, or in normal space. That was very good information to have.

  I found out they didn’t use probes, probably cost too much credits. Unlike the movies, they hadn’t shrunk gravity engines appreciably. Even the missiles were almost the size of a fighter, just without wings and the need for cockpit space. I imagined if we were desperate, we could launch a shuttle or two, and with quantum entangled communications, we’d know everything it saw as if we were on the shuttle. Still, I didn’t see where that would be useful, at least not for our assigned mission.

  It was the final system, that was controlled from the ops board, that I didn’t even know existed which gave me an idea we could use. The system took a ridiculous amount of energy to run, and I could see where the captain might be reluctant to use it.

  “Captain?”

  “Lori?”

  I smirked, “I might have an idea for the mission.”

  Rilok snorted, and I told myself not to kill him. His mistrust and disregard were getting annoying.

  He said, “Let’s hear it.”

  I said, “Obviously, the old way isn’t working. Whatever they’re doing, they are doing it under tight operational security. That tells me it’s even unlikely if you come close to one of those ships, that they’ll take the bait and attack you. Searching all the star systems are out of the question, and we can’t go to their home world and find someone important to smack around.”

  Vik laughed, “Yes, that would be bad, your idea?”

  “Sorry, just making a point, and you probably won’t like it, but it has the best chance of success of anything I can think of. The only way we’ll find where they’re taking the humans, and what they’re doing, is if we wait near Sol, maybe in Alpha Centauri since it’s only four light years away.”

  He frowned, “Alpha what?”

  “Ah, I guess you’re A.I. doesn’t know the human name for the system. It’s the closest system to Sol, just over four light years away.”

  He said, “Alright, go on.”

  “We’ll watch subspace sensors, Earth will be within the five-light year limit, and we’ll wait there until a Stolavii ship shows up and drops out of subspace. At that point, we’ll be invisible to them since we’ll be in normal space a system away. We wait the day it will take them to go in system, take more humans, and head back out.”

  I paused for a moment, they all seemed to be following.

  “When we see them enter subspace, we’ll activate our stealth systems, and jump into subspace to follow them to their destination. They shouldn’t see us at all. Once we know where they end up, we’ll let the big bosses know and maybe drop out for a peek? I don’t know. The plan does require a little luck, since the ship could be just another Stolavii ship restocking their human slave ship complement.”

  He frowned, “That thing is ridiculously energy intensive, I’m not sure we can run it long enough, unless their base is close to Sol, within a day, or less than fifty light years to put it another way.”

  Telidur said, “That system she named isn’t a resource or populated system for the empire. Still, someone could see us going there.”

  I shrugged, “We can use the stealth system to get there as well?”

  Vik winced, it really would be expensive.

  Telidur said, “That might work, it’s that system and Sol are about fifty light years away from Kaprorix. We could pop in there, then activate stealth and no one would know which way we went. It would only take about twelve hours in subspace to make the trip.”

  Kaprorix was the home world of the saurian race in the Isyth Empire.

  Vik sighed, “It might work, but we’d have to do about three resource hauls after the mission to pay for it.”

  It seemed so ridiculous, that stealth would use so much energy, there had to be a more efficient way to do things, a cheaper way. But… until I learned those three science courses, and the fabricating and design course, I might as well have been wishing on rainbows.

  “I knew you wouldn’t like it, but it’s the best I could come up with. The sec
ond option, would be to wait six hours after they get there, then just go to Sol, four light years should only take a little over an hour, and they wouldn’t be able to abort or escape from the system before we got there. Then we can run them down, kick their ass, and find out what they know. At least there’s a chance they’ll be one of the crews in the know.”

  Vik pursed his lips, “That does have possibilities, but also pitfalls. If we do go in and they’re caught, they’ll have hours before the battle to talk to their masters and fellow mercenaries involved in whatever is going on with all those humans. It’s more than possible, that by the time we took them down, and then went to whatever system they’re working out of, they rest of them could clear out.

  “I hate the idea of the cost, but your first idea was much better, we can trace the system they’re working out of, and take them by surprise when we drop out of subspace. If it’s some kind of slave colony, fine, if there’s a fleet, we’ll keep an eye on them and call in for support. Either way we’ll know, and the mission will be a success.”

  Telidur said lightly, “Guess were doing a lot of hauling in our future.”

  Vik nodded, “Log the plan as you both stated. Once we unload our cargo at Vehiri, we’ll go visit our good friends at Kaprorix, stealth, and head for Alpha whatever she called it.”

  “Centauri,” Jillintara chimed in helpfully.

  Vik sighed, “We might be there a while, so let’s run an analysis on the system as long as we’re there.”

  Rilok said, “Can do, but we won’t be able to see all of it, unless you want to use stealth even more, and skip around the outer edge of the system. We can’t go in ourselves, or we won’t be in position to chase anyone.”

  I frowned, “That’s not entirely true. Even at full acceleration of two hundred gravities, it will take them nineteen point four hours for the round trip, plus whatever time it takes them to pick up the humans from the surface. As long as we’re careful, we can manage to never be in a position where it will take longer than thirteen hours or so to get out. Failing that, how are the sensors on the shuttles? Maybe it would be more cost effective to send in a shuttle, and we can always come back for it.”