Star Navigator

by Naomi Lucas

  Reina’s face stilled ever so slightly and he wondered if even she knew that the walls she carried around herself could be seen from the outside. He wanted to know her thoughts but didn’t press the matter by invading her head, instead opting to remain patient until she came up with her answer.

  Her mouth opened and closed so sweetly, Atlas pictured ravaging it with his tongue, his teeth, and even invading it with his fingers and cock. Until her answer was lost within moans he forced from her.

  He briefly wondered if she regretted taking on this mission.

  Even if she did, it was too late now. His body would awaken soon, and his hold on her would finally be complete.

  “I regret being born a woman.”

  Wasn’t expecting that. “Did you have a choice in the matter?” He laughed.

  “Obviously not.”

  “I don’t think you can regret your sex. I sure as hell don’t.”

  “I never want to have children, especially if there is a chance of them being female.”

  “Then they never will be.”

  They shared a look that might have lasted for an eternity. He watched as she slowly succumbed to sleep, lost in her own bleak thoughts.

  “I’ll be here when you need me.”

  Chapter Twelve:

  She was walking down a passageway, one she had walked down a thousand times a before. There were grates below her boots and a dark grey metallic look to the tunnels that splintered off around her.

  She was headed for the bridge because her shift was about to start. Faceless men passed by her. Some would look at her but most just moved on to continue in their duties.

  There was a hush aboard the ship that had never been there before. It made it hard for her to breathe. Not because she felt out of breath, but because she was afraid of making a noise.

  Reina looked down at the wrist-comm attached to her hand, the time flashed at her, telling her she was already late. She couldn’t remember what she was late for.

  There was nobody in the tunnels now and she immediately missed the patterned steps of boots hitting metal and the soft thunk they made with each impact. Her steps were silent and she couldn’t understand why.

  Someone was watching her.

  She turned around slowly and saw a man at the other end of the corridor, standing there, staring back at her. Reina shook her head and closed her eyes. The man didn’t belong here. But he was here and she couldn’t bring herself to care, only knowing that he was here and he didn’t belong and there was nothing for it.

  Reina continued down the passageway to pick up her post. She was late but when she looked down at the time, it hadn’t changed. She glanced back behind her, the periphery-man still there, still trailing her, and as silent as the ship.

  She absently shook out her arm and forgot about him.

  The clatter of incoming crewmates could be heard just around the corner and she smiled, heading in their direction. Maybe she would see a familiar face and the strange absent atmosphere would vanish with some pleasant conversation. The time on her hand had yet to move so she had yet to care about being in another time.

  But something wasn’t right and every long second and every step forward became something more. It started out with anxiety, and then curiosity, possibly a fleeting moment of hope, but now it was something else. Each step now brought a prickle of pain, like a tiny stab, and she realized that what had started out as something as inconsequential as a mosquito bite was now as painful as a bee sting.

  She grabbed ahold of herself and attacked her clothing and rubbed her skin. Her nails grazed her cheeks and tugged her hair, pulling it out of her tie and away from her body. She shook out her taut uniform violently, trying to dislodge the source of the pain that was being inflicted on her.

  A rattled gasp released from her throat and as quickly as the pain began, it fell away. Reina found herself on the cold floor of the ship as she caught her breath. She looked back at her wrist and noticed the time had moved forward by a minute.

  She got up on her feet and brushed off the dirt she knew wasn’t there.

  Reina continued on toward the noise of her comrades around the corner. She had lost a tick in time but she was on her way again. Her hair was back in order, her feet were moving onward, and the sound she could hear just out of sight was her only goal, and it was an easy one.

  She glanced behind her but the man was gone; a subtle feeling of loss accompanied the sight of the empty hallway. The pain of the loss of the outskirts-man was equal to all of the bug bites she had received combined, all at once, in her heart.

  When she looked forward, the pain dwindled as well.

  Her destination was just around the corner now and she smiled. Reina knew what was there, even though she couldn’t quite tell who. The lights grew brighter and brighter until she turned the corner.

  And stopped.

  Her stomach gave out and if she could have, she would melted into the floor and vanished. Two men stood before her, and she knew them. Aliens who had bargained for her furiously, the terror of losing her free will only to be abducted into an adventure she neither chose nor wanted. The life she would have led if the will of men had steered her.

  One of the aliens, the more human of the two, stood in front of the other, slightly off to the side. She noticed him only because he demanded to be noticed.

  His eyes were a pale seafoam green, his height towering and only accentuated by the lethal ropey armor he wore, plated and dark. The armor was a stark contrast to his creepy white skin, only seen from his face down to his navel where an armored ‘V’ shape created a window to his muscled chest. The very slight undertone of green, the same shade as his eyes, shimmered underneath his beautifully dominant outer layer. His pale hair was shorn close to his skull.

  He was a Trentian Spacelord: one who may have had the blood of thousands soaked within the black gauntlets that covered his hands.

  The bright white lights washed him out. She cringed away from looking at the warrior directly.

  So much blood between their species.

  But it wasn’t the lord that terrified her, it was the alien she could not see well standing slightly beyond him.

  The one in the jagged mask that looked like a malformed star, his eyes the only indication of a live being underneath the façade and black sculpted robes. He stared at her as if she wasn’t there but she could see her reflection in his eyes. They devoured all of her attention and even the warrior next to him couldn’t hold onto it.

  She felt very alone looking into his eyes. She had been very alone her whole life and she didn’t think she could handle the rest of eternity that way.

  Pale, strong hands–so beautiful that they were terrible–reached for her. Before she knew it, she flung herself at the masked man and attacked him, fueled by terror. He just stood there while she tried to tear him apart.

  Silken black robes entwined her limbs as she clawed her way to the heart of the man beneath. It ripped under her hands as she grabbed fistfuls to shred and the more she tore away the more silk and cloth seemed to remain.

  The echoes of her frustrated screams poured out of her like the pools of black ribbons scattered around. It built and built until there was more fabric than floor. She rammed into his still form until she had him on the ground.

  The clash of his metalloid mask left a pulsating vibration throughout the hallway. When she realized his robes would not give under her violence, threads built under her fingernails, she grabbed at the horrible mask that hid her would-be abductor from her gaze.

  She pulled but it would not give, and the more she tried the more her palms and fingers sliced against its edges. Gashes appeared wherever her skin touched the sharp, jagged creation. As she grew wilder in her failed attempts at getting at the masked man, hands grabbed her forearms from behind and pulled her away.

  “Wake up, Reina.”

  She stopped her struggles and in a blink, the alien men were gone, the sanguinary pools of black silk
had vanished. She was in a bright, quiet spaceship corridor and the time on her watch had moved forward another minute.

  Strong arms wrapped around her torso and held her close as she calmed down. When her breath poured evenly into her lungs, she turned around and looked at the man who had been on the outskirts of her mind before. Now in the forefront.

  Hard blue eyes locked her into place and what had been normal skin a moment before transformed into serpentine code crawling across his skin.

  “Wake up.”

  She sagged into him and opened her eyes.

  SHE WAS HEFTED INTO a seat just as she opened her eyes. Dr. Yesne, incredibly out of breath, leaned over her and strapped her into the captain’s chair. Her hands clenched the armrests just as she was surrounded by electric screens.

  “Oh good, you’re awake. She’s awake.” The doctor rushed to the co-pilot’s seat and buckled in, squeezing out exasperated heaves.

  “What? What happened?” Reina looked down at herself, expecting to be covered in blood.

  “You forced us off course while you were asleep and attacked our trailer from Taggert.” Atlas’s voice rang out and bounced off the walls. “We’re preparing for warp drive.”

  “What do you mean I attacked someone? We’re not in cleared warp space.” But she knew it was too late, thrusters were activating around her and she could feel the ship weave in and out of her. Her nightmare came back to her. “Did I attack a Trentian spacecraft?” Reina looked for Atlas but his projection was not formed.

  “Reina, right now isn’t the time for a thousand questions. You’re going to need to not fight me on this, otherwise you’re going to get hurt. Now, allow the ship to warp.”

  The shudders in the ship, almost indistinct, matched the increasingly erratic beat of her heart. Reina closed her eyes and let Atlas take over.

  She was dressed in only her undergarments but the heat coursing through her kept her warm on the chilly bridge. The prickles on her arms weren’t bites or the cold, but anticipation.

  And fear.

  Right as she let Atlas take over the controls, she reached out and held onto him, feeling as he flooded the ship’s systems with an increasingly dangerous amount of energy. He threw everything to maximum.

  Reina tried to relax but her vessel crackled with forced power, her body became something akin to a capacitor–or a battery. She glanced over at the doctor, only to see him barely keep a grip on his faculties, his skin ghost-white and his glasses tucked into his shirt as his eyes remained clenched shut.

  “Emergency warp initiated.” Atlas’s voice brought her back to the present. “Brace.”

  The ship shook around her and seized her. She prayed that Atlas had found a safe route.

  There was nothing quite as terrifying as flashing at the speed of light, beyond the speed of thought, right into the path of a star. It would be an instant death. Obliteration as every atom of your life-force disintegrated into nothing. Beyond nothing as there wouldn’t even be a shipwreck left behind.

  Even the best navigators, with every precaution in check, every safety measure taken, could still hit a roaming asteroid. Reina had begun to trust Atlas, and if anyone could make an escape like this, it would be him.

  Her throat closed up. Breathing was hard during this part of intergalactic travel. Her nails bit into the armrests of her chair.

  Streaks of colors shot past her eyes, dizzying, deadly, and so beautiful it hurt. Reina had seen it all before, dozens of times, but never at the helm of a ship. Backup pilots never had that luxury; their ships were small and were never meant to go far from their docking station. The colors blinded her to the danger that something would appear in their path.

  Please, please, please.

  And then it was over.

  And they were beyond Ursa Major and in the Abyss-105 sector, now dangerously close to where the network’s reach began to falter before it stopped working entirely. This place was already considered the ‘deeper parts of traversable space.’ Port Antix was the farthest anyone had ever traveled and still lived to return and tell the tale. It was the last, and only, waystation where a communications relay had established contact before anyone who traveled beyond vanished.

  Other intergalactic sectors continued to expand outward, Earthian and Trentian alike, explored and extended their reaches continuously, colonized and explored new frontiers... but there were some frontiers that were dark. Cursed areas that should have been easily explored, but for some reason remained elusive and black with death.

  Places like where she and Atlas were going, to finally bring back viable intel and solve the mystery of a million missing persons.

  The horrible thought made Reina shiver. What could possibly be out there?

  She unstrapped her buckles and slowly found her footing. Bare feet hit the cold floor of the bridge. Her body could feel her personal nanocells travel away until they either died or found themselves swimming away in an electrical current.

  The need for socks suddenly eclipsed all previous thought. She looked down at her exposed feet and arched her toes before walking over to the doctor, who was still bracing for an impact that they had already survived.

  “We’re okay. We made it.” She placed her hand over his in comfort.

  “I know. My body hasn’t quite caught up to the idea, though,” Yesne said between clenched teeth. “I believe my nerves will be shot for life. There’s no going back to a normal life after a ride like that.”

  Atlas’s hologram appeared before them, looking perfect and unfazed as ever. “You’re exaggerating. Your system is undergoing nothing but acute anxiety. You’ll be fine after a rest cycle or a tranquilizer.”

  Reina eyed the hard man for whom she had been writhing naked just hours prior with a modicum of unease. Needing to turn away, she walked over to the central projection table and gripped the sides for support, her head bending forward as Atlas’s blue light followed her.

  “Are we enemies of the Council now?”

  “No. Our stalker from Taggert wasn’t flying an Earthian ship–”

  “–An alien’s? A Trentian’s?” Please don’t let it be an alien vessel. My rapport with them is bad enough.

  “No, at least not a Trentian military one.” Atlas paused. The thought of Trentians that close made her want to vomit. “It was a scavenger vessel from what I was able to read of it before you attacked it with–fuck–just enough firepower to destroy a Battle Cruiser. Reina, you tried to liquefy it.”

  Yesne joined them at the center, his glasses fogged with stress-sweat. “Go big or go home?” Reina and Atlas ignored him equally.

  “Then it’s destroyed? Whatever, whoever it was is gone?”

  “No. They got away which is why we had to leave.”

  “Because they could call for back-up? Because they were scoping us out?”

  “We did pick them up at Taggert...” Atlas’s pause said enough.

  Reina ran her fingers through her loose hair. “Fuck.”

  “Exactly.”

  “If the ship was not from the fleet and you’re sure it was not an alien craft, who do you think it could be? A splinter group? Scavengers? Marauders? Please don’t tell me we picked up the notice of Larik’s syndicate.” Reina squeezed the edge of the table while she nervously bounced on her toes, still unnerved about the strange current that zapped at her skin. “What are the odds of us picking up one of his ships?”

  “Well, we were passing by the prison planet.”

  The silence that fell between them was riddled with tension and complication. Pirate Captain Larik was the leader of the strongest underground force in the universe; he answered to no one. His influence and strength were on par with the Intergalactic Council and the leaders of the Earthian and Trentian species. Reina couldn’t fathom how one man could become so powerful, enough that he had nearly created a third faction.

  Was it money? Resources?

  “But you said he wasn’t there, his capture took place several years ago. Su
rely his intel would know by now that he is not being kept there.” Reina continued to bounce on her feet, unable to force her biological body to calm down.

  “Or they don’t know for sure. No one leaves Taggert’s surface once they have been dropped off. No one has ever escaped. The satellites around the planet are monitored and maintained by another Cyborg, one with complete control of the planet’s defenses. I guarantee that even if Larik’s men suspect that he is not being kept there, they won’t know for sure.”

  “We will have to prepare for every possibility then. I recommend we stay on course and send an update to the Council about what has transgressed here and continue to carry out the current mission,” Yesne intervened. “We’re at the end of the road out here. Any updates that are to be sent back to the command center, or routed through another station, port, or ship may not even reach our superiors before you leave Port Antix. Let’s hope this mission can remain on course until the military has been informed.” The doctor turned to Atlas’s hologram. “Very good navigating, Atlas. I didn’t think we were going to survive.”

  Reina closed her eyes and grumbled, “Yes. Thank you for getting us out of there.”

  “You mean, reeling you in?”

  “I didn’t know my subconscious was going to be acted out by the ship.”

  Atlas held her gaze in a steely stare that made her shiver. “Whoever was following us was probing our security and defense systems, essentially penetrating you and trying to find a way in. You perceived it as an attack and defended yourself. It’s natural. Reina, you just have to come to terms with the fact that the ship is an extension of your body now and can be controlled by your consciousness.” Atlas laughed the last part, chilly and sarcastic, “Welcome to being a cybernetic being.”

  “True, true.” Yesne agreed. “Your arm is absolutely perfect now, Captain.” He unthreaded her fingers from the table and held them out between them. It reminded her of her rather inappropriate state of undress. “One wouldn’t even be able to tell you have an implant. Absolute perfection. The incision has completely vanished.”