Star Navigator

by Naomi Lucas

  Atlas waved the screens back in front of them with a smirk she couldn’t see.

  “Now you can go back to work.”

  Reina wiggled over him in protest, he nearly came again from the effort, but stopped himself, beginning to feel the threads of his programmed control retake his body.

  “I can’t...do my job like his,” she hissed as he spread his legs wide until her booted feet were no longer on the floor. He reached around and found her clit, thumbing it slowly.

  “Of course you can,” he said.

  “I can’t.” She squirmed. Her knuckles went white on either side.

  “I’m just a projection, remember?” Atlas teased. “Do your job. Just do it on my cock.”

  It seemed like forever before anything happened. He sat back, enjoying the power that the chair brought him, and his captain impaled and flustered on his lap. She stopped trying to remove herself and began to just wiggle on him as if she was trying to find release, only being able to move the little he allowed her. Atlas continued to thrum her clit hard and slow.

  Reina thrashed and moaned, desperate and needy. He could smell the musk of their sex fill the air. Wet, hot sweat formed between their connected thighs. “You’re not doing your job, Captain,” he warned in her ear. “If you know anything, you know I outrank you, and refusing to listen to me is defying the established hierarchy.”

  She stiffened and stopped moving on his length, distressed, impassioned, and staring at the stars in front of them. Atlas pinched her clit: his last warning. Reina turned and looked at him over her shoulder. Her face, now healed, was blushing and pink, her eyes glazed and pleading. He started to pinch her harder, she jolted, turned around, and started processing and categorizing the hourly image feed.

  If she wanted to lose control, he would gladly take it from her.

  Atlas relaxed as she worked, intermittently gripping her hips and pumping into her, blissful with all his senses intact.

  The bridge was quiet except for irregular slapping of their thighs and the clicks of the console. Reina was mounted on him, taking all his teasing and tormenting, with audible indignance. He kept them both on edge until he could bear it no longer.

  And when the screen flashed red, with a sudden error, he lost his mind and pushed her to the floor. Atlas reached under her shirt and squeezed her breasts, thumbing her taut nipples before pressing her chest into the ground. His fingers clenched around her waist. Her cheek pressed to the side, eyes closed, mouth open and whimpering.

  He pounded into her. Reina cried out and came underneath him, having been at the brink for too long. Her tight flesh clutched him as he lost his barely won control, pumping his seed back into her.

  He stayed hunched over her until her breaths evened out, only slipping his still-hard cock from her.

  Reina moaned and flipped onto her back, catching him before he could lift away. “I don’t like you leaving me.”

  Atlas pushed a tendril of hair off her cheek, settling on his elbows. “And I don’t like it when you leave me alone in bed.”

  “Upset that I snuck past your defenses?” she teased. “I can be very quiet.”

  “Impressed, actually.” He leaned down to kiss her thoroughly before lifting up, helping her to her feet at the same time.

  “Good.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

  Atlas laughed and looked at her mussed state, pants at her knees, her shirt bunched up at her chest. His stony captain marked up and marred. “You look fucked up, Reina, literally.”

  “I wonder why, Cyborg.”

  He watched as she straightened, pulling her pants back up, leaving his seed between her legs, and locating her hairband to retie her hair. He grabbed his own unkempt pants and pulled them up. Atlas found the co-captain’s chair and took his seat, hating it and loving it all at once.

  I can smell my cum on her. Atlas smirked.

  Reina glanced at him before settling back into the king’s seat. She read the error and exhaled, “There’s a puncture to the outer hull under the ship from a blast. The metal is breaking away and eroding at an alarming rate.”

  Atlas pulled up the error. “It doesn’t matter. Everything is locked down. It just means we can’t land safely.” He peered down at his cock, already hard again. Am I always going to be like this? “I’m hard again, Captain, ready for round three?”

  She ignored him. “Landing safely is vital.”

  “We’ll live. Just keep the lower deck sealed.”

  “I found the doctor in medbay in an induced coma this morning.” Reina swiveled her chair toward him. “Thank you for saving him.”

  “It was the least I could do,” Atlas responded.

  “His vitals show improvement. We can wake him up tonight.”

  “If that is your wish, Captain.” He didn’t want to wake Yesne because he wanted all the time he had with Reina, alone. But he would grant her simple command. If he had learned anything in his years of being a Cyborg, it was to choose your battles wisely, especially those of the nonviolent nature. “It feels like a mercy to let the man sleep.”

  Reina laughed, turning away. “I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t agree with you.”

  Another error report appeared on the screen. Atlas watched her expand the message and read it over. He turned back to his own channels, scouting the local periphery. He checked it again, and nothing showed up. Not a nearby planet, an asteroid belt, a star, not even the signature of a passing comet. Reina closed the report next to her with an audible sigh.

  Atlas looked out the window, knowing what he was beginning to feel was a glimmer of curiosity; the heavy structure in his chest felt slightly heavier. He noticed Reina look out the window with him. They sat there quietly, lost in their own thoughts, for an indeterminate amount of time.

  He brought up the hourly active imagery being taken around the exterior of the ship. Each picture was different, that was to be expected, but he couldn’t find anything unusual, not even anything beautiful.

  “I’m going to up the imagery time rate. Fifteen-minute intervals,” he said, adjusting it.

  “Did you see something?” she asked, looking over at him.

  “No, nothing. But we both can’t be here sentinel all the time, not even if we take alternating shifts. I’m not an S.I. anymore.” His eyes jumped to Reina’s hand as she rubbed the armrest of her chair. The light of the ship glinted off her metal knuckles. “Let’s go to the medbay.” Atlas moved to her side.

  “You want to wake up the doctor now?”

  “I want to show you how to take care of the metal in your skin.”

  Reina looked away from him and back out at the window. He reached down and caressed the side of her face as she worked up the energy to finally look away from the star fields and back at him. Every part of her exhibited a bone-deep exhaustion that went beyond her body healing from her wounds or the elevated stress levels he sensed. She was healing rapidly, but not fast enough to make him comfortable.

  Even with his full metal frame, he was still adjusting to the changes in his chest. And to everything else that presented itself as a variable of sensation around him.

  She looked up at him. He leaned down and captured her mouth, with an uncontrollable urge to taste her again. Her fingers clutched his shoulders as he lifted her up. The need to drown himself in Reina’s touch was the one thing that could now destroy him.

  Chapter Twenty-Two:

  Reina heard them approach. She circled her arms around her stomach, feeling the comfort of her own hug. It had merely been a day since they awoke the doctor. He now joined them in their watch on the bridge.

  They were going nowhere fast.

  “It feels like there’s nothing out there,” she said, not bothering to look at the men behind her.

  “It only feels like that because we have no destination, no charted course but forward,” Atlas responded at her side.

  “How do we even know we’re going the right way?”

  “I don’t think it matters. We’
ll scout, we’ll look, we’ll watch, and we’ll document everything. If we find nothing and continue to find nothing, we’ll backtrack and head home.”

  Yesne joined her at her other side. “You should get some sleep, Captain. I can take over the watch for now.”

  Reina turned and looked at the man; a smile came to her lips as he adjusted his glasses and met her eyes.

  “I’m glad you’re with us, doctor. I’m glad that I was sick enough to need you.” Yesne took her human hand and squeezed it. She turned further toward him. “Thank you for bringing back Atlas.”

  Reina felt Atlas’s palm settle on her lower back.

  ANOTHER CYCLE PASSED with nothing. It seemed like time itself dragged until it altogether stopped. She found that she couldn’t sleep, unable to be away from the window of the bridge for longer than several hours. Sometimes she went to the space-loft and lay on the ground, staring upward into the dark void.

  Atlas was never far away, and he was never far from her mind. Watching him relive an experience always made her fall. When he drank coffee, he sputtered. When he looked in the mirror, he seemed to stare at himself for hours. When she gave him a massage, he lost control.

  When she’d gotten down on her knees, unbuckled his pants, and sucked his cock, his hands had torn off her clothes and touched her all over until they gripped her head and stopped her. She sputtered around his length as he forced his way slowly down her throat. He roared as he came deep in her mouth, with her cheeks hollowed out and her tongue lashing his smooth shaft. Reina drank him down, starved. Atlas had wanted to feed me from his manhood exclusively from then on.

  He tasted metallic.

  She smiled and rubbed her lips, staring out the reinforced window.

  “Want to head back now?” He snuck up on her and pulled her to him.

  “It’s only been three days.”

  “Mmm.” Atlas released the band holding her bun and nuzzled her hair. “Oatmeal,” he murmured against her scalp.

  “Same as yesterday.”

  “We’re being followed.” Atlas nipped her ear.

  It took her a moment to register his statement. She jerked and looked back at him. “How do you know?”

  “I can feel a very weak connection to another ship every so often.”

  “For how long?” Her voice rose.

  “Since last night.”

  “And you didn’t think it was important enough to tell me?” Reina could feel the first flutter of anger bloom as she rushed to her seat.

  “I wanted to make sure. They’re following us blind. The signals our ship releases don’t remain long in our wake. It’s interesting.”

  She rubbed her face, rubbed it rough and hard. Reina knew Atlas always had a rational reason for everything he did, even keeping things from her; it was the one thing about him that she found aggravating. “Interesting?”

  “That they would risk following us out here, knowing the danger.”

  Reina adjusted the propulsion of her ship, increasing its speed. She glanced up and out at the panoramic view as the vessel jolted forward, unhappy with increased stress on its battered systems.

  Something bright caught her eye just as she turned back to her screens but nothing was there.

  The next instant, she found herself right up against the glass. “Did you see that?”

  Atlas was at her side. “No, what did you see?”

  “A bright light. A flash?”

  Reina peered out into the darkness, scanning it; her eyes shifted and strained, back and forth until her fingers clutched the cold glass. Nothing presented itself to her and the harder she tried to revisit that brief second, the more her heart raced.

  “All I see are the stars.”

  “It wasn’t a star.” She turned back toward her console. “The imagery! Maybe it was captured.” Reina brought up the most recent pictures, analyzing them but found nothing. She returned to the window, glued to it.

  “It was probably nothing, Reina, I see noth–” He stopped mid-sentence. Another bright spark flickered and fluttered. It looked so close but it had to be far away. Reina knew he saw it as well this time as they both grew quiet, afraid that any movement, any noise would scare off the light.

  It disappeared again, but the two of them continued to watch. When it reappeared, it reappeared with others, they appeared closer.

  “I don’t understand, it just looks like twinkling stars,” she said. “Do you think this is what we were sent to find?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re headed straight for them, and fast,” Atlas answered before swiveling on his feet, jumping back into his seat. His urgency fed her fear. The ship came to a grinding halt soon after and the imagery scans increased to every minute.

  Yesne came in just as the white lights expanded into a field before them, still at a distance, but slowly increasing in size and frequency.

  “What is that?”

  “We don’t know,” Atlas answered.

  Reina’s heart jumped as some of the lights began to streak and move around.

  “They’re above us,” Yesne said, and her eyes went up, seeing the orbs, the strange stars dance ever closer to their ship.

  She clenched her hands, mesmerized, frightened, and stuck to the spot until her fingers slipped across her sweaty palms. Reina glanced down at her hands, especially the robotic one with the fresh layer of skin and tissue. The weak nerve structure rebuilding beneath. It looks like it did when I was first sick.

  The memory brought her back to the present. “I think we should move.”

  Atlas was already in his seat, reading something on the screen. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” His eyes didn’t lift to meet hers. “They’re surrounding us on the visuals.”

  “How did they get behind us!?” She rushed to his seat and looked at his screen. The lights were creeping ever closer to them, and from the picture, they were behind them as well. “Surrounded, but we can still fly through them. Can we warp?”

  “I won’t be able to warp safely, and we don’t know what these flashes will do to the ship, or if they’re controlled by something else: a trap per se. Crashing through them could be seen as an attack.”

  Yesne sighed. “So you suggest that we do nothing.”

  “I suggest we wait.”

  “They’re moving closer.” Yesne turned back to the window. “I think we should retreat before they get any closer. I agree with Reina.”

  Reina reached down and touched Atlas’s hand, her fingers sliding over his knuckles. “Can you get any sort of reading on them? Anything at all?” She tried to hide the tremor that ran up her spine.

  Yesne piped up. “They’re changing colors, guys.” Everyone looked out to see the sheen of shimmering, illuminated colors, almost like a gauzy veil except for the shifting iridescence. Whole orbs would vanish then reappear in pieces, and now in different swirls of muted colors. Almost like orbs.

  Atlas responded with an unease that she had never heard from him before. “I sense nothing. Not a single thing. It’s like whatever this is doesn’t exist, at least not yet–an anomaly even our technology can’t detect. There’s nothing showing up on the images as well, it’s all but invisible.”

  “The lights are attracted to us.”

  A tentacle hit the window with a thump, startling them into action.

  “What the hell!?” Yesne jerked back, losing his footing and hitting the floor. Atlas jumped to his feet, the gun on his belt now in his hand. Another tentacle followed, slithering across slowly, like a tongue, licking the one barrier separating them enticingly.

  Reina shot to her seat, connecting her hand and feeding herself into the systems. The moment she did, she felt the silky, dry feelers all over herself, tasting her as if exploring a new treat. She dropped out with a squeak, shaking her body all over.

  “You okay?”

  Reina shook her head and gulped. She reconnected.

  Atlas helped Yesne to his feet and they both buckled in just as the ship shot fo
rward into the mass of approaching lights.

  “It’s not possible,” Yesne said. “Not possible.”

  The ship picked up speed, now with Atlas plugged in as well, and she made to turn around, wading through the semi-visible creatures violently. The thunder of hundreds of things banging into the ship filled their ears, drowning out everything else. Everything but Yesne chanting, not possible.

  She forced the ship through, finding that she had to continuously push the systems harder, needing more power to move it. The creatures’ tentacles smoothed over the window, her view of space vanishing little by little every second.

  Reina clenched her jaw, aiming the ship for every small opening that appeared. A route appeared on her screen and she headed for the charted path Atlas scouted out for her.

  They were completely blind now to everything but the streaks of light flooding their view. She had to squint through each flash as her vision began to blur.

  Atlas pulled out, and the battery of his body went with him.

  “No! We’re losing speed.” Reina yelled, putting everything she had into it, even though she felt the disgust of sticky jelly wiggle all over the exterior of her ship. “We can push through.”

  “It’s too late.” Atlas’s hand grasped her shoulder. Sirens went off just as she saw him check his clip. “They’re in the thrusters.”

  The error that appeared said the same thing.

  “It’s not too late. It can’t be too late! We can still make it.”

  The ship sputtered to a halt.

  Please. She begged as she continued to push through. Atlas was before her now staring out the window all while strapping on gear, double checking the gun she didn’t know he had stashed, pulling out weapons throughout the bridge and setting them on the projection table.

  She buried her face in her hands and breathed, still feeling the wormy hairs of the things outside all over. Everything came to a stop around her as she looked up at the window. An entire slithering mass was pressed up against it and Yesne was standing before it, staring. The thing looked like a jellyfish when fully visible, and it looked like it was staring back.