Nebula Nights: Love Among The Stars

by Melisse Aires

  Sabralia didn’t reply to that. Kaistril seemed very certain of what she should do, while she was not certain at all.

  “How long will it take to reach New Prague?”

  “It will take us six weeks to reach Katherine Hub. From there we will have to contact my family, so they can bring a jump ship to us. This vehicle has no jump capabilities. We would never get to New Prague in it. We could take commercial jump passage, but I would rather wait for my family.”

  “Right,” she said, feeling a little faint. “Your family has access to jump ships?”

  “Yes. But even if they didn’t, we could find a public transport to the Hub nearest New Prague. Public transports are often the target of pirates and raiders, so they are not my first choice for travel.”

  She finished eating. Kaistril showed her how to use the hygenie to clean everything, and they cleaned the dishes together. When everything was cleaned up she turned to go sit on one of the upholstered chairs, not knowing what to do next. Kaistril followed her and stood so close she could feel the heat of his legs against her knees.

  “Come, Sabralia. We need to go to bed.”

  “What?” Her heart gave a hard thud and she jumped up, shaking with tension.

  He grinned. “Not that. Not yet, anyway. I need sleep so I can take care of the tracer tomorrow. It is a complex issue. As a cyborg I did not feel fatigue, but now I do as a man. I will leave you to the stateroom, and sleep at the command center. The chairs convert for comfort.” He turned and left her alone.

  Sabralia went back to the luxurious stateroom. She wasn’t really ready to sleep and she was pleased to find a collection of readers. Sliding one into her arm com, she crawled under the covers and tried to relax. It was so odd to be sleeping by herself. She found it very hard to relax. Part of her listened beyond the telling of the story for movement, for Qy-Kaistril to come to the stateroom. She finally got up to peek at him. He was sound asleep in a reclining com chair. She returned to her book, a romance about an Etherian poet and a Star Woman Priestess. She ended up staying awake far past the time she could have slept to read the story to its satisfying end. Maybe her own life would have a love like that, someday. Maybe her future wasn’t a bleak one, under Sirn’s shadow.

  Sabralia woke and checked her com. She’d slept several hours after finally falling asleep. She used the bath and braided her hair before entering the main room. Kaistril was up, sitting in the ship’s control seat. His fingers fairly flew over the ship’s key panel and data flipped across the viewer.

  Sabralia helped herself to a cup of Kaf and a fruit cup. Once she finally fell asleep, she’d slept hard and she felt only half awake now. Kaistril looked far too robust and energetic.

  “What are you doing up? You stayed up very late.”

  “I think it is the strange room. It was hard to sleep.” She didn’t want to mention that she was used to sleeping in the arms of her cyborg, skin to skin.

  Kaistril turned toward her. “I should have looked through Alfyt’s belongings earlier.” He held up a cube of info films. Alfyt’s bags were open on the floor next to the control panel.

  “What’s in them?” Curious, she slid into the co-command chair and looked through the bags. Jewels were knotted and tangled together in the bag. Sabralia picked up a strand of iridescent beads and started to untangle the mess. A fortune. And more info film. The other, smaller bag held mundane clothing and toiletries.

  “Tons of data, along with priceless jewels from the harem.” Kaistril slid one wafer into a data slot on the ship’s com. “I don’t think it is Alfyt’s personal library. I think he was being very, very disloyal to his Emperor. It’s all encrypted. This could be very good, or very bad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was probably heading toward a Puregen world, where he could sell the information.”

  “You think it might be Sirn’s? Military information?”

  “Yes. And if anyone knows he had it, they might try hard to find it.” Kaistril tapped orders on his com. Then he ejected the films from the ship’s com and slipped them one by one into a small opening on his thigh implant.

  “The ship may not be able to read the encryption on some of these. They’ll be recorded in my appliance. Always good to have a back up. And maybe my appliances have a key for decryption.”

  When the films were put away in their little cubes, Kaistril asked, “You ready to get to work?”

  Sabralia looked at him blankly. She hadn’t worked on anything since her school years. “What should I do?”

  “I’m going to show you what to do while I’m fixing the tracer.” He tapped keys on the command panel and soon a view of the hull showed. “See this red dot? This toggle switch moves it around.” He demonstrated the device.

  “I’m going to be out there, so your job is to keep this dot trained on me. It is set to track me. If I send a distress signal”—he pressed a button and a loud whistle filled the ship—“or if you see something happen, like my cord comes loose, or a piece of equipment cracks me in the head, or if I am unresponsive, you press this red button. There’s a smart line that will grab me before I float out. My other tethers will detach and I will be drawn into the lower level hold. It’s a failsafe to keep me from drifting out into space.”

  “You have to go out in the vacuum?” The thought horrified her. Space work was so dangerous, hardly anyone did it. They used sucker ships that attached to the area of the hull needing work, for the safety of the technicians. Space suits were only used in emergencies.

  “Well, yes. The tracer is under the hull. They don’t make them easy to get rid of. Now follow me down to the hold so I can show you how to open the hatches. I have Life support running while we are working on this.”

  She followed him down to the lower level.

  The hold level had a low ceiling, so Kaistril had to duck his head through all the hatches. It was one long hallway, with small cramped workstations along the sides, some with shallow com stations and utilitarian stools. Nothing luxurious about the crew quarters. One area held four narrow bunks. She followed him through a small door outlined in red.

  “This is the med station. Emergency sleep tubes are in here. I’m going to show you that, too. If anything happens to me, you’ll be stranded. You’ll have to get into a tube. If I’m alive, but gravely injured, you’ll want to get me into one, too.”

  “O-Of course.” Horror gripped her at the thought.

  “I’ve set a beacon on these that is an emergency frequency for the New Prague military. It has a special signature that identifies me. I believe we would be picked up in less than a year. These particular tubes only have energy for two years, so I made the beacon urgent.”

  Sabralia couldn’t help the involuntary shiver. “After that, they are coffins! It’s dangerous—this ship, the tracer. This is all very dangerous.”

  She’d known safety as a girl, before Sirn. And even as a wife in the harem, she had felt safe. The war was fought far away, or so she’d thought.

  Kaistril turned and looked at her. “Here, do you need to sit down? Your face is a little white.”

  She sat on a small examination chair. “I’m sorry. You probably think I’m very weak. Useless. You are very brave about all this.”

  “No! That’s not what I think at all. It’s different for me.” He paused for a moment, then knelt down in front of her and took her hand. “I’ve been on small spacecrafts half my life. In the military, in battles. I’ve been in a sleep tube, for training. Drills were routine, part of ship life. I’ve been trained in hull repair, in a vacuum, too.” He wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Take a few deep breaths, Sabra. I truly believe we will be fine.”

  She breathed and tried to calm herself. “You learned this in the military?”

  “I went into a military academy at age twelve, as did all my brothers. My parents wanted us prepared for the life we would have to live on New Prague, with Sirn’s Forces so near. So none of this is new to me, like i
t is to you. Now come look at these tubes so you’ll know what to do.”

  The tube access panels were on the floor. Automated audio explained how to undress and pull on the cover and face mask that would mold to the body. It really wasn’t complicated. She climbed inside and performed the drill so she could do it if necessary.

  “Sabra, if something does happen to me, and you have to put me in a tube, don’t wait to get in one yourself. Not even a moment. Don’t go get anything, just get into the tube and launch.”

  “All right.”

  “Here’s a float.” He indicated a padded board attached to the wall. “You just press these pads, then pull it by hand, easy. You pull me into the hold, pressurize it, float me to the tubes, get me out of my suit, and stuff me in a tube. Don’t try to do anything medical. I’ll be all right in the tube until we’re found. Then get into one yourself and tell the com to launch us.”

  “And later we’ll be rescued by New Prague forces?” She wanted the reassurance.

  “Yes, we’ll be rescued.”

  Kaistril showed her how to pressurize the small hold he would enter and exit from, and how to close everything up properly. He had her repeat the lesson, then showed her a key on the panel that would walk her through if she forgot.

  “I won’t forget,” Sabralia said, somewhat indignantly.

  “I know. But if something bad happened, you might forget for a moment.”

  “You think something bad might happen?” Her voice was high-pitched.

  “No. But it is best to know what to do in a worst case scenario.”

  As nice as the chameleon hull was to use, it was hell getting through the circuitry. The only thing keeping Kaistril from sweating hard was the sophisticated temperature system of his space suit. He appreciated well-made equipment, and the small cruiser had the best of the best for a ship of its size.

  But even with this great equipment, the removal of the tracer was taking far too long. He’d have to recalculate fuel, since getting through this hull was so time consuming and ate up an amazing amount of energy.

  His sensors hadn’t alerted him even once to space debris, which was good. He didn’t need that kind of distraction.

  “Are you all right?” Sabralia checked on him every few minutes, even though she could see him moving, and knew he was definitely not unconscious. She still sounded nervous.

  He grinned. “Yes, I’m well. This is just taking much longer than I thought.”

  “Do you think you should quit?”

  “Can’t quit. This is vital.” They needed to be lost to Sirn’s equipment.

  There was a pause. “I’ll check on you in five.”

  Sabralia was a good woman. The kind who should settle down on some calm world far from Sirn and raise a family. Bake sweet buns for her children.

  Not his type at all. The women he chose were hard military women, athletic, ready for robust sex, and then to go off to their next command duty. No ties, just good sex, jokes, stimulating conversation, a few drinks in a cantina. They would hook up while on leave, consume food, intoxicants, and each other, then return to the responsibilities of their command after a relaxing, pleasant interlude.

  A vision of Sabralia, naked in her bath at the palace, came to him. Big, round, pink-tipped breasts, silky skin, those dimples above the round globes of ass he’d like to squeeze…He wanted her. The years spent as her cyborg were part of him now, and when he looked back on that time it was with a man’s passion. All those months in the bath teased him, ratcheting up his desire. He had the memories of the times she had asked for his touch…of kissing, cupping those heavy breasts while washing her.

  What he needed was a good pounding fuck, but he wouldn’t get that here. More than likely he would say or do something crude and terrify her. She was already half afraid of him, and he couldn’t blame her since she so narrowly avoided being raped by Sirn’s Best. Plus, she’d been married to Sirn, who was known to be a real pig.

  He wondered when she’d notice his frequent hard-ons. And if they did fall into bed together…it would feel great, but she was not the type who would move on to her next lover with no regrets. She might get hurt, thinking he was the man who would give her those babies.

  He sighed. They would be alone on the small ship for a long time. A healthy man and a woman alone…things could happen. But would it be a good idea to have sex with her?

  Not that he would have the will power to resist if the opportunity came.

  And were they fertile? Hell, he should try and find that out.

  The sooner they got to New Prague and he deposited her into safe hands, the better. His mother would know what to do with her. Sabralia deserved a chance at having a good life.

  Finally, he reached the tracer and severed it from the power supply. Yes!

  Sabralia pressurized the loading dock and opened the hatch when it was ready. “Are you all right? You were out there seven hours.” Her dark blue eyes were huge. He grinned. It was kind of nice to have someone worry about him.

  “I’m fine. Tired. Help me out of this, all right?” In the light grav of the ship, the suit had a crushing weight.

  She helped him out of the gear, and helped him stash it in its diagnostic chamber. No flashing lights, the suit was undamaged.

  “I cooked a meal.”

  He followed her up the stairs. Sabralia wasn’t wearing Alfyt’s jacket and her round bottom was only a hand’s breath from his face. He wanted to sink his teeth into a round globe, run a finger down that sweet crack…

  “Food sounds good.” His voice sounded funny, so he cleared his throat.

  She turned around, eyes round with concern. “Are you all right? You sound like you’re getting sick.”

  Her breasts, covered in the thin knit, were right in his face, nipples clearly outlined. He knew he was staring and it was crude, but he couldn’t stop. It was all he could do to keep his hands from cupping those lush breasts.

  “I don’t get sick,” he croaked out. “Puregen immune system.”

  “Oh. You probably need something to drink.” She turned and went onto the main deck.

  He didn’t tell her the suit had a hydration and glucose system. Kaistril took a steadying breath and followed her. He sat down quickly at the table so she wouldn’t see his erection.

  This was going to be one long journey.

  Chapter Five

  “So we have a hundred and twenty days of this? Nothing?” Sabralia said the morning of their fourth day in transit. Kaistril checked ship’s systems while Sabralia followed him around, bored.

  He glanced at her, amused. “You have traveled in space before.”

  She shrugged. “I was on a sleep transport.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “And how did that work out?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I was sick for a week when I woke up. That was on Sirn’s jump ship that I met at Katherine Hub. And then I got to have my wedding night. But at least by then I was over the nausea.”

  “Hardly anyone uses those sleep transports anymore. They must be almost a century old.”

  “Coloun isn’t a tech world. Mostly we shipped grains and farm produce.”

  “So Sirn made a treaty with your world for produce?”

  “Yes. All of our crops, minus what we needed, went to his supply chain. I think there was more to it, though.”

  Kaistril raised an eyebrow.

  “I think he planned to bring farmers from Coloun to his Jewel. It has a climate that would work well for agriculture. There are even a few farms on the outskirts of the Palace complex. I think having me there as a token queen would make the farmers come more willingly.”

  Kaistril nodded. “It is easier to have a workforce that is willing to work. And a military force requires huge amounts of food.” He walked to a display panel and tapped on his com. Sabralia followed him like a puppy.

  “What are you doing now?”

  He sighed, then grinned at her. “Would you like me to teach you how to do a systems
check?”

  “Really? You think I could learn that?” Her eyes widened and she fairly glowed.

  He couldn’t help smiling at her. “Without a doubt.”

  Sabra was delighted to learn the system’s checks. Some involved mathematics that she had no background in, but Kaistril patiently taught her on printouts from the com. She spent several days learning the formulas, and how to double check and triple check the input on the com.

  “You always triple check. One mistake could leave a ship off-mark, stranded. This ship gets lost, and we’re in the tubes when the fuel burns up.”

  Kaistril was thorough and exacting. She worked hard. A few days later, she did a complete systems check by herself, correctly.

  “Now I want to learn how to pilot!”

  Kaistril laughed. “Why not? We’ll start tomorrow.”

  Flying actually came easier to her than system’s checks. The checks involved formulas and calculations, flying involved reflexes and vision.

  Since they were in deep space with nothing around them, Kaistril set probes out, which she maneuvered through. It was fun, like a game, and there was no danger she’d crash into anything.

  She learned how to use the focal device, which told her the amounts of clearance she had, fuel burn ratios, all types of things.

  “How come you don’t use the focal?” she asked Kaistril.

  “My com.” He tapped the silver device on his thigh. “It is connected to the ship’s system, and tells me all that info.”

  “Do you see it? Like I do—burn ratios in red, clearance distance in blue?”

  He shook his head. “No. I would if I still had the temple appliance. Now it is more like a knowing, a thought.”

  “Why did you take that off? Not that I mind.”

  He gave her an arch look. “I did it for you, baby. To dazzle you with my manly good looks.”

  She giggled. “No, really.”

  He shrugged. “I figured it might have a kill function. Why take the chance?”