Starburst

by Logan Levi

  She trembled, frozen in fear as his fingers unclasped the bra, one hand firmly on her back, with her legs trapped by his body. Lacey whimpered in fear as the hard bulge between his legs pressed against the curve of her ass.

  “Good girl, you just lay there for Jack, I just need a taste of what you’ve got between your legs, then we’ll get you back with your friends.”

  Lacey managed to move her hands to the cups of her bra in an attempt to keep the material covering her.

  She felt his hands in the waistband of her sleeping shorts, cool recycled air touched against her exposed flank as he pulled the material down.

  “No, please, don’t do this…” she begged as she struggled.

  “Oh this is happening. Maybe if I like you enough, I’ll keep you, let the others take turns. I’m sure it’s been a long time for them too. I know it’s been a while since I had a nice bitch to fuck,” he said as he unzipped his pants.

  His body was wrenched away from hers, the weight of him gone in an instant as he cried out in pain and the thumps of flesh meeting flesh sounded behind her.

  Lacey reached back and pulled up her shorts before she turned with a still hand clutching her undone bra to her chest.

  Jonah Sparks was straddling her attacker, his fists raised and descending furiously as he pummelled the bastard beneath him into a bloody pulp.

  Her senses returned to her, and she ran back in to her quarters, fixing her bra and slipping her top on as she went. With hands trembling in shock she found her blaster and checked the charge while the grunts of pain continued in the common area.

  On trembling legs, she raced back and took aim. Jonah had stopped his assault on her attacker, and sat on the barely-conscious man’s legs, his chest rising and falling hard as he panted out his aggression.

  “She is not to be touched. Do you understand?” he said to the man below him.

  His bloody face nodded once.

  “Good,” Jonah said as he got to his feet. He eyed Lacey’s weapon trained on him. “Put the gun down,” he said calmly.

  “No.” Her hands trembled harder with shock and fear.

  “No one will hurt you, you have my word,” he promised, taking a step closer to her, his hands raised.

  “The word of a…a criminal? That’s not worth much.” Her voice trembled as much as her entire body was. She took a step back. Jonah came forward again as Lacey took another step backward. Each step moved her closer to the wall, until her back finally hit it with a soft thud. She watched as Jonah approached her calmly, with hands raised.

  “There are four other men out there,” he said, indicating with an upraised hand to the door that lead to the cargo bay. “And they each have a blaster. Do you think you can take them all on? I can protect you, but you have to trust me.” He lowered a hand and turned it palm up, silently asking her to hand over the weapon.

  “I… I can take you all on…” she said with false bravado.

  “And I would expect that of a soldier of the Coalition. But you’re in no condition to fight, not after what you’ve just gone through,” he said soothingly. His hands moved faster than she could track them, grabbing her weapon and turning it on her.

  She gave up, crumpling to the floor and held her face in her hands as sobs racked her body.

  Jonah knelt down beside her, a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right. I promise you won’t be hurt; you won’t be violated.” He slid a hand under her armpit and hauled her up.

  “Come, I have to get you back to the others.” He guided her to the door that led to the cargo area and airlock access, leaving the beaten man to groan in agony on the floor in a small puddle of his own blood.

  Chapter Four – The Tragedy

  The door opened, allowing Lacey and Jonah to move from the habitat quarters to the docking and cargo section. The voices stilled as the men turned to see who had come through.

  Lacey gasped as she saw where the escaped prisoners were shoving her crew mates.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she cried out as the battered Coalition men were roughly manhandled into the airlock.

  “Donovan, what’s the meaning of this? We were going to ransom them,” Jonah said behind her.

  Lacey tried to pull away, but his grip on her arm remained secure.

  “Yeah well, plans have changed,” one of the men, whom she assumed was Donovan replied. He was rough-looking with coarse stubble decorating his chin. He stank with the scent of a man who hadn’t washed for a week and his face bore a multitude of scars. Lacey’s mind ran through the small dossier of men who they were transporting.

  Lachlan Donovan was one of the more violent criminals to be captured by the Coalition. He had warrants for his arrest on almost all of the Coalition colonies with crimes spanning from simple petty theft to murder.

  Donovan was considered to be so dangerous that security forces had posted warnings about approaching him. He was definitely in the top ten most wanted, with Jonah Sparks beating him by a slim margin as the leader of the rebellion.

  Jonah’s own rap sheet was significantly less violent, primarily treason and incitement of rebellion against the Coalition. There were a few murder charges as well as incitement to violence, but he’d never been seen to raise his fist in anger on the few news vids that had captured his image during attacks by the rebels.

  “You putting her in there too?” Donovan asked, nodding to Lacey. She shrunk back as far as she could in Jonah’s grip, her body trembling with fear. No longer did she have the bearing of a highly trained Coalition soldier. Now she just felt like the terrified woman she was underneath the uniform she should be wearing.

  She felt Jonah’s body tense.

  “No, and you’re going to get the others out as well. Lock them back up in the cells.” Jonah’s voice carried a tone of authority.

  Donovan smiled darkly. “Sure, sure,” He gripped the collar of one of the guards and made to pull the hapless man out of the small and already crowded airlock. A palpable sense of calm and relief came from the men he’d shoved in there. The guard staggered back two steps in the grip of his captor, and then his trajectory changed.

  Donovan shoved him back into the cramped confines of the airlock and slapped his hand on the control, shutting the internal door.

  On the small screen a countdown timer began as the air slowly cycled out.

  “Warning, airlock cycle activated, please ensure all extra vehicular activity protection is in place in thirty seconds.” The computer’s female-toned voice droned.

  The trapped men cried out for help, their bare hands banging on the thick glass of the airlock’s viewport, mashing against the glass. Their screams of desperation were muffled by the thick steel and rubber seals of the airlock.

  “No! Please, let them go!” Lacey shrieked, her body tensed in a fight-or-flight response to the situation.

  “No, they’ll get what they deserve, as will you.” Donovan leered.

  “No one touches her, she’s under my protection. Now let them out, Donovan. Cancel the cycle, now,” Jonah said, his hands firmly holding Lacey.

  “I don’t take orders from you, pup. I was raping, murdering, and fighting when you were still suckling on your mother’s tit. You need to show me some respect.”

  “I’ll respect you some if you show mercy to the men in that airlock and let them out,” Jonah said, raising his stolen blaster and aiming it at Donovan. His own men looked confused. They no doubt wanted to see the Coalition men dead as much as Donovan, and didn’t know why Jonah was so against the deaths.

  “Ha, sure you will. Boy, put down that damned gun, you know these scumbags don’t deserve to live. Look what they did to your home colony, what was it Delta Four?” he said with a shake of his head. “Poor, poor bastards.”

  The countdown continued—twenty seconds and counting…

  “The old saying goes: ‘An Eye for an Eye.’” Donovan grinned as he glared at Jonah. Behind him, one of Jonah’s men raised his own blaster.


  “Oh, so you do have a backbone, Samuel?” Donovan said with a cruel sneer. “You think that having two blasters aimed at my hairy ass is going to entice me to let these bastards go? How hard did they lay into you, boy?”

  “An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind,” Jonah said, trying to calm the situation down. “We can’t always seek the retribution we want.”

  “Airlock cycle in ten seconds, final warning.” The computer droned.

  The screams of the trapped men had thinned out as the atmosphere in the airlock had been taken down to levels where human life was nearly impossible. Their desperate thumping against the internal door had slowed as well, an occasional hearty thud could be heard, and a bloodied hand had stayed up against the cold thick glass of the viewport. A final, silent plea for mercy.

  “No, but I’ll take what I can get,” Donovan said. He moved so fast that his hand was blurred as it struck against the panel, hitting the emergency release on the outer door.

  Lacey screamed, “No!” as she struggled and broke free of Jonah’s shocked grip. Her breath came in stuttering gasps as her mind refused to believe what her eyes saw. The bodies of the guards and her co-pilot spun quickly as they flew through space. Blinking like little lights as they caught and reflected the light of distant suns as their bodies spun away, killed in seconds by the cold, harsh vacuum of space.

  Lacey’s legs collapsed beneath her. She hardly noticed the men shouting around her, the whine and heat of a blaster striking Donovan, the quick spurt of blood that then turned into a stench of hot and cooking flesh.

  She sat numbly as a pair of arms surrounded her, sliding under her legs and lifting her up to carry her out of the cargo section. She lay her head against the muscular chest, and let her tears fall as the door shut behind them.

  Chapter Five – The Game of Intergalactic Chicken

  Lacey’s face contorted in the rictus of tortured pain as hot, acrid tears rolled down her cheeks. Her eyes stung and her nose ran as she tried to comprehend what had just happened to her co-pilot and the guards.

  She breathed in hard, gasping pangs—air rushing through her mouth, down her trachea and into her lungs. She tried to breath but could only suck in lungful’s of vacuum. Not a good prospect for continuous survival.

  The reality of it was, her crew were dead, and her ship had been taken over by hostile criminals, who had turned on two of their fellows already. She had no ace up her sleeve, and no plan of action in which to take back her ship and have them all returned into the care of the Coalition.

  She sat at the table where she was almost violated by one of the criminals, droplets of blood trailed into one of the crew quarters, where he was cleaning himself up. The sound of running water in the small sink was the only indication he’d hauled his sorry ass up off the cold metal floor, other than his noticeable absence. Noticing her clothes were nearby, she reached for them and quickly dressed.

  Lacey then sat back down and put her face in her hands, letting the tears be absorbed a little into the skin of her palms. What remained, trickled down her bare arms and made tiny puddles on the stainless steel tabletop.

  Booted footsteps approached her and she tensed, not sure what to expect.

  A clink of glass on metal roused her curiosity and she looked up through her fingers to see Jonah had placed a glass of water before her, and held another in his hands.

  He sat down beside her, tilting the glass against his lips, swallowing the cool liquid. Lacey watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed with the motion.

  “What… What are you going to do with me?” she asked, her voice raspy from crying.

  Jonah straddled the bench seat. He faced her, open frankness on his face.

  “I honestly don’t know. But I’m keeping my promise that you won’t be hurt. As I said, you’re under my protection. I know there’s a trader’s post just on the edge of Coalition space. I could take you there, and we can get a message to your people. Let them know you’re there and they can pick you up.”

  “By that time you’ll be long gone?” Lacey said, raising an eyebrow in question, but knowing the answer.

  “Yes. We have much work to do to free the people from the Coalition’s grasp.”

  Lacey pondered this for a moment. She knew she had to get back to the Coalition. Her place was with her people, not the ruggedly handsome rebel leader who was probably more dangerous than a black hole. Perhaps if she could get back to the flight controls, she could send out a distress signal, and the Coalition might find them before they had the chance to offload her.

  She bit her bottom lip, as she thought about the situation and her chances of sabotaging their escape from the trader’s post.

  “All right,” she said, looking up at him.

  She held out her hand for him to shake, sealing the deal. His fingers brushed gently across her own fingertips. He pulled back quickly when a klaxon alarm sounded.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “We’re too close to something. That’s a proximity alarm, and by the sounds of it, that’s a lot of something out there!” She got to her feet, rushing toward the door to the cargo hold and the cockpit beyond. “Who’s flying the ship?”

  “One of my pilots, but he’s young and not the best,” he admitted. “But he’s the only pilot I had.” Jonah ran beside her toward the cockpit. The door slid open to reveal the oncoming debris of a large asteroid field.

  “Jesus…” Jonah murmured as he saw a large rock coming toward them at high speed.

  “Shift your ass, I have control!” Lacey screamed, sliding into the right hand seat and immediately taking over control from the young pilot.

  She pushed the yoke and thrusters forward, giving them a jolt of power and thrust. The ship began to respond, though, it seemed sluggish. She twisted the yoke to the right, the ship responding as she kept her eyes open for more asteroids. The hard twists and turns she took to avoid the deadly rocks threw the men around the ship.

  “Fuck. Hold on, this is going to be tight!” Lacey said, her voice cracking with the pressure she was under. A massive asteroid loomed, spinning lazily in the void it filled with its presence. Lacey gunned the thrusters and pulled back on the yoke. The control and directional thrusters flaring out against the hull of the Starburst as she piloted the craft up and over the spinning rock, avoiding certain death.

  She felt the back of her seat move a little as Jonah gripped the headrest.

  “THAT’S SOME goddamn fine piloting,” he said, his heart rate finally returning to normal as she piloted the craft out of the debris field and immediate danger. He reached down and put his hand on her shoulder, giving her a comforting squeeze.

  He knew that somehow, he’d have to get this woman to defect from the Coalition and join the rebellion. Her piloting skills were second to none. Even that preening idiot whom she’d called Maelstrom was no real match for her. Maelstroms skills were legendary, in that he’d taken down so many rebellion Starfighters. Now he was truly a legend, but not a living one.

  He looked down at the top of her head and thought hard for a moment while she returned to a heading on her original course. He nodded to Kelsey, the young pilot, and grabbed Lacey by the arm, hauling her up.

  “Kelsey can take it from here,” he said, as Lacey began to protest. She must have realized who she was protesting against and how far it would actually get her because she huffed out a sigh, and ran a hand through her hair.

  Jonah nodded toward the door. “Come on, let’s have a chat, shall we?”

  Chapter Six – The Truth

  A STEAMING cup of what passed for coffee sat before her, Lacey stared at the blackness as it swirled in a small vortex from the contents that had recently been stirred.

  “So…” Jonah said, sitting down with his own steaming mug in hand opposite her. “I’d like to know how such a great pilot like you isn’t out fighting the rebellion in a Spartacus-class fighter, instead of playing space-bus driver to a bunch of criminals and rebels.”
/>   “Great pilot?” she replied, looking up at him with surprise. “I’m not that good.”

  “Don’t count yourself short, what you did back there was nothing short of spectacular. You could have easily flown us all into an asteroid for what we did to your crew, and I wouldn’t blame you one bit.” Jonah took a sip of the coffee and grimaced.

  “Why did they do it?” Lacey asked, her hands picking up the cup. She took a sip of the still hot brew. It scalded her tongue a little, but she relished the pain. It grounded her mind, made her remember she was still alive—that there was a hope to escape and get back to the Coalition.

  Jonah leaned back in the chair and sighed, looking in his coffee cup as if it held all the answers.

  “My men are desperate. They want to go back to their homes, their families. A lot of them don’t want to fight but unless they do, they won’t have anything to go back to,” he said, a little cryptically.

  “What do you mean?” Lacey asked, looking up at him. His face betrayed his true sadness, eyes tired, body slightly hunched, and the corners of his lips were downturned.

  “What do they tell you about the rebellion, about us?”

  “That you all want to destroy the Coalition, you hate us for no reason other than we’re the governing body of the mines and colonies. I can’t understand why, though. You have plenty of food, you’re supplied regularly, and machines do a majority of the harder and more dangerous work. Your habitats are top grade. You haven’t been given worlds unable to be terraformed. So why are you fighting?”

  “Oh what a pretty but deluded picture you paint, Lacey,” he said with a chuckle. “The reality is this: Food is scarce, a lot of times we have to eat rats that come on board the colony shuttles, and have bred faster than we could manage. What little food we do get from the Coalition is heavily rationed by the greedy overseers, or stolen before we even get to see it. Guards are known to horde it and use it to barter for ‘services’ by young women they favor.” He stopped and looked at her. “You would be quite popular among them I think, pretty as you are.”