Criminal Core

by Nick Broad

  “Highlighting,” Chirrup tittered. As it turned out, there were two. One blue dot flickered to life near the top of Beta, while a pale green one blinked towards the bottom of Gamma, nearly at the abandoned reactor core.

  “Prisoner B1770,” Chirrup informed me as the blue dot glowed a little brighter. “And Prisoner G701.”

  “Huh,” I said, rubbing my chin. “Now that is interesting...”

  “Is it, now?” There was a heavy trace of sarcasm in Shay’s voice. “Is it more interesting than the horny, half-naked woman sitting right next to you?”

  “Of course not,” I said with a chuckle. “You’re the most interesting woman I’ve ever met, Shay. I’ve just...I’ve had the greatest idea.”

  “Is it eating my pussy?” she asked sweetly.

  I grinned. “I want to meet with those prisoners.”

  Her jaw dropped open. “You want to talk,” she said, looking at me like I’d grown a second head. “With the prisoners.”

  “Yeah,” I said, barely able to contain my excitement. “I think they might help us.”

  She looked alarmed. She put the back of her hand against my forehead, checking the temperature. “You don’t seem to be overheating,” she muttered to herself. “But I’m getting very concerned about your Core integrity...”

  “Listen,” I said, brushing her hand away. “We can’t go to the Trailer Hitch.” I was already thinking of the solar sail’s installation point in those terms. “It’s out of our range - our bodies will shut down if we try. But there’s nothing stopping them.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for Shay to look any more shocked, but she did. “Your brilliant plan is to convince the people we have locked up in this prison to make the prison more secure,” she said slowly.

  I shrugged. “Why not? Both of them have been in here for at least a year - they must not be interested in escaping. If they were, they would’ve done it by now. Making the station better would make life better for them, too.”

  Shay’s eyes narrowed. Her hand slid between my thighs, feeling for the zipper of my shipsuit. With a tug she pulled it all the way down, freeing my cock. Her fingers wrapped around the base, severing the connection between my brain and my mouth.

  “You’re crazy,” Shay growled, pumping her hand up and down my dick. “I think someone’s forgotten who his boss is supposed to be. Who is supposed to be in charge of this whole operation.”

  “Oh fuck,” I groaned, staring down at Shay. “No, I haven’t forgotten...oh fuck that feels amazing...”

  My cock throbbed between her fingers as she jerked me off. Pleasure coursed through me, ripping away my thoughts as everything refocused on the gorgeous blonde beneath me. A wicked little grin spread across Shay’s face as she got into it, enjoying the way she’d taken control of me with just her hand.

  “There we go,” she purred triumphantly. “Not so mouthy now, are you, stud?”

  I’d rather have YOU be the mouthy one, I thought, resting my hand on the back of her head. To my surprise, there was no resistance. Shay let me push her face into my lap, gladly opened her mouth to convert the handjob into a blowjob. Her warm, wet heat enveloped the head of my dick and I nearly came apart right then and there.

  “Yes, boss,” I growled, pushing harder on the back of her head. She swallowed me down like it was nothing, like the words gag reflex were nowhere to be found in her code. “Fucking suck me. God damn you know exactly how to treat that cock...”

  Shay slurped me like she slurped her coffee, growing greedier and more insistent every time her lips pulled back to my pulsing crown before sliding all the way to the base of my shaft. Her eyes never left mine, boring holes into my soul as they begged me to fill her pretty little mouth with my seed.

  The pleasure crested, my balls tingling as I prepared to shoot my load. My cock throbbed, jerked - and suddenly, the hot wetness enveloping it was gone. The peak I’d been just about to reach receded, the pleasure ebbing.

  “What the fuck?” I asked, my head spinning. Shay stared up at me with a demure little pout, holding my cock gently around the base in a way that made it impossible for me to get myself off.

  “That’s all you get,” she said matter-of-factly, cocking her head to the side. Her hand dropped down to her lap. “You’ve been a very bad employee, Noah. You denied your boss when she needed you to get her off - so now I’m denying you.”

  “Oh, come on,” I grunted in frustration. “Please! I’ll get you off as much as you want, just please let me cum!”

  A wicked little grin spread across her face. “You get the rest of that blowjob when you get back,” she said in a haughty little voice. “Since meeting with prisoners is sooo much more important than having fun with me.”

  I met her gaze with a wicked look of my own. My hand gripped the base of my cock tight.

  “What’s stopping me from stroking myself off all over your face and tits?” I growled.

  Her eyebrows shot up. “The fact that I would put you in one of my punishment cells,” she said after a moment. “Then I’d torture you for a few months just for fun, for the impertience of it.”

  “You don’t have a torture chamber,” I said. The look on her face made me less sure.

  “Try me,” she said with a grin. Her eyes returned to my cock. “Oh hell,” she whimpered. “Fuck it.”

  She slapped my hand away and wrapped her fingers around my dick. Glorious pulses of pure bliss soared through my veins as she stroked me faster and faster, gripping me tight. With her other hand she tugged down her robe until her breasts popped out. I grunted like an animal as I stared at them, going right to the edge.

  “Cum for me,” Shay commanded, sounding more like my boss than she ever had before. “Fucking coat my tits in that load, stud...!”

  I did. A moment later I came apart at the seams, my legs shaking beneath me as my cock erupted. Jet after hot, sticky jet of seed sprayed from the tip like bullets, splashing all over Shay’s tits while she moaned triumphantly. She aimed my cock at her face and let me paint her, thick streaks of my white seed coating her pale skin. By the time I was done shooting my load, I felt like a dam that had burst. The relief was almost better than the orgasm had been.

  Shay gave a dismissive little sniff and scooped a gob of my load off her breasts. She brought it to her lips and swirled it around her tongue, savoring it.

  “Ah,” she purred, leaning back. “A little treat to go with my coffee.”

  “You’re so fucking sexy,” I growled down at her. “Especially covered in my cum.”

  “Yes, well - I couldn’t resist,” Shay admitted, her cheeks reddening as she sampled more of my load. “Damn you.”

  My hands slid down to her hips. “I wanna fuck you,” I panted, hiking up her robe...

  She slapped my hands away.

  “Hey, what gives?” I said.

  “No, that’s really all you’re getting,” she protested, sucking her fingers dry. “I’m cutting you off until you come back. I’ll meet you in my crew quarters when you get back to Alpha Spire. Then I’ll let you fuck me. But you’d better get me off first...”

  “No worries there,” I said, grinning broadly. “I love making you come, Shay.”

  Her eyes lit up with a pleased little twinkle. “You’ll probably need the pick-me-up when you get back, anyway,” she mused, sampling more of my cream. “Those prisoners are going to laugh in your face, Noah. You won’t convince them of anything.”

  “We’ll see,” I said, zipping up my shipsuit. “I think I just proved I can be a little more persuasive than you might expect.”

  Shay had nothing to say to that. So I planted a kiss on her forehead - on one of the spots where I hadn’t put my cum. “See you later?”

  “I’ll be waiting,” she purred, showing me the load in her mouth. God, what a good girl. It was a shame she was half-crazy, but then again, so was I.

  Two prisoners, I thought, heading towards the tethers. Hopefully at least one of them will cooperate w
ith me. I’ll head over to Beta first, see what’s going on over there.

  All I had to do was talk a couple people into helping me out, and this place could get its glory days back. How hard could it be?

  Seven: The Prisoner’s Dilemma

  “Hello?” I asked, cupping my hands around my mouth as I walked through the cell block. “Is anybody home?”

  Thanks to Chirrup’s research, I knew how many prisoners were housed on the Beta Spire. But I wasn’t prepared for just how empty the place was. It had obviously been designed to hold thousands of prisoners, maybe tens of thousands. A couple dozen meant the place was so empty it felt like you were the only one there.

  This place is creepy, I thought, walking past empty cell after empty cell. This was block seven, near the top of Beta, which Chirrup had informed me with admirable enthusiasm was the dwelling place of one of the two inmates who had remained in the Black Oubliette for the past year. I’d thought it was weird for anyone to want to stay in this place when leaving was simply a matter of walking to the exit. Now, seeing how unsettling the place looked when it was this empty, I decided it was twice as weird.

  “Chirrup,” I whispered, not entirely sure why I was keeping my voice down. “This is the right floor, yeah?”

  “Indubitably, Warden!” Unlike me, Chirrup spoke at max volume all the time. It was enough to set my teeth on edge in this kind of environment. “You are nearing the destination!”

  “Great,” I muttered. Up ahead, the floor was covered in blaster burns. One of the cell doors had been torn right off its hinges, hanging at an unappealing angle from the wall. Just another thing I was going to have to clean up eventually.

  Finally I reached what had to be it. Right at the end of the cell block, one of the doors was shut tight. Someone had spray-painted a symbol I didn’t recognize over the bland beige front of the slab: an intricate character that reminded me of Japanese calligraphy. Whoever had made it had concentrated on the two straight, strong lines in the middle, then filled in the rest with a bunch of spirals and flourishes.

  I knew the door wasn’t locked. I could have torn it open easily. But I was trying to be diplomatic, so diplomatic I was.

  “Hello?” I asked, knocking on the door with the backs of my knuckles. “Is this Prisoner B1770’s cell?”

  There was no response. I’d just started to notice something strangely familiar about the symbol on the door when it slid open with a hiss. There was a flash, and suddenly there was a blade against my throat.

  “Who wants to know?” a cool female voice asked.

  I leaned back, desperate to get space between the steel and my skin. On an intellectual level, I knew there was nothing this person could really do to hurt me - if they slit my throat, I’d just retreat back to my Core. But I was in no hurry to experience a thing like that.

  “I’m Noah,” I gasped, the blade cutting a shallow nick in my skin. “I’m the new Warden!”

  The blade retreated, but was not sheathed. A pair of eyes stared at me from the darkness.

  “Oh,” the voice said flatly. “You must be Shay’s new playmate. Why would you come here?”

  New playmate? I thought, feeling a stab of jealousy. Did she have playmates before me?

  “I wanted to talk to you,” I said, holding up my hands. “Really, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  There was a scoff from the darkness. “You couldn’t if you tried,” the woman said.

  “I believe you,” I said with a little laugh. “You’ve been in here for a whole year, after all. You must be tough!”

  There was a subtle change in the stance behind the sword. “Ah,” the woman said, sounding like she’d just solved something that had been bothering her. “So that’s why you’ve come.”

  She stepped out of the darkness, her sword held low but ready at a moment’s notice. I knew it wasn’t polite to stare, but I couldn’t help it. Not with a woman like her.

  She was tall - nearly as tall as I was, and I’d gained a couple inches in the transition to android. And slender. There was a supple sense of musculature on her frame, as if to say I might be skinny but I could still kick your ass. Earlier I’d been certain I could have taken three of the Red Tigers by myself without much of a fight - I felt nowhere near as certain about a one-on-one against her. If you could have turned an assassin’s dagger into a flesh-and-blood person with a spell, it would’ve looked like her. Lithe, quick, and deadly.

  Long dark hair trailed down her back, almost the same color as the shadows behind her. At first I thought she was bringing the darkness with her, then I realized it was her clothing. She was the first person I’d seen since awakening on the Oubliette to be wearing something other than the shiny, skintight shipsuits. Her robes were black silk, so rich that you’d almost expect light to bend around them, unable to escape their surface. They looked comfortable as hell.

  My gaze reached her eyes - and froze. There was something powerfully intense about her eyes. I’d felt the power of Shay’s gaze before, the way it always seemed like it was scanning your innermost thoughts and memories to come up with the best way to either use you or get you into bed with her. This was totally different, but no less strong.

  I was afraid of her - yet more than a little attracted, at the same time. This woman would definitely be a challenge. Even if you could love her, you could never understand what was going on behind those eyes. Some pools are just too deep to reach the bottom of, no matter how hard you try.

  Her gaze raked up and down my body at the same time I was checking her out. The look in her eyes gave me no indication as to what she thought of me.

  “I’m here to make you a proposition,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry. “Give you something to do besides sitting in the darkness.”

  She cocked her head to the side. I had to stop myself from flinching backward. My eyes traveled to her sword, wariness filling me.

  “I like the darkness,” she said, a faint smile curling one corner of her mouth. “Annoying men tend to be afraid of it. It’s the little boy inside of all of them. They want to fill it with light, heat - motion. They should learn to leave well enough alone.”

  I had no doubt those words were meant precisely for me. “Uh huh,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. Talk about a hard sell... “I’m Noah,” I said, holding out a hand. “What’s your name?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Meiko,” she answered, after just enough of a pause that I was sure she’d made it up on the spot. “What’s your proposition?”

  I felt an awkward smile plastering itself on my face. This was not going as well as I’d hoped. I hadn’t realized this woman would be so dangerous - or so clearly eager for me to go away. The first I should have figured, seeing as how this was a prison, but the second was surprising for someone who’d been in the Oubliette for so long...

  Ah.

  “I was looking at the station’s records,” I explained, gesturing into the darkness. “Look, is there somewhere we can maybe sit down and have a chat?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said flatly. “We stand.”

  “Fine,” I said with a little sigh. “Anyway, according to Chirrup, you’ve been occupying this cell for over a year.”

  She watched me, her face impassive.

  Okay, if she wasn’t going to take the initiative, I would. “I found that interesting. That you wouldn’t leave the prison.”

  “Isn’t this what I’m supposed to be doing?” she asked, a bitter overtone to her words. “Sitting quietly in my cell, waiting for my sentence to be completed? Making no noise, causing no trouble, starting no fights?” Her eyes grew big as she spoke and batted her eyelashes. “I’m a model prisoner, Warden. If everyone were like me, you wouldn’t have a single problem with the Oubliette. I am the last person you should be needing to interrogate!”

  She was retreating into the darkness, only her eyes visible. I could hear the whirr of servos as she prepared to slam the cell door closed.

  “Wait,” I said, steppin
g forward. I knew that door wouldn’t stay closed, but I had no intention of discovering how hard it could hit. “There isn’t anybody else!”

  She paused. “Of course not,” she said, an unsettling smile spreading across her face. “They’ve all left, haven’t they? Everybody leaves. Everybody leaves!”

  Suddenly it hit me. What had me so on edge about her eyes. It was like there was more than one person looking out at me from behind them.

  Something is wrong with this woman, I realized. She’s not...not normal.

  “Why don’t you?” I asked, stepping closer. “You could walk out that door and be in an escape pod within an hour. Both of us know I couldn’t stop you.”

  For a long, long moment, her gaze met mine. The intensity I’d seen in her eyes had gone totally crazed. That big smile of hers got bigger, like some sort of monster from a Japanese horror film, and I wasn’t sure if she was about to cut me down, scream at me, or give me a kiss. All three felt equally likely.

  Then something inside of her finally relaxed. Her gaze cleared, the unsettling smile faded, and she nearly slumped over. I rushed forward and caught her, steadying her against my shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, all the heat gone from her voice. “I’m...I’m sorry. I don’t get visitors anymore. Turns out I’ve forgotten how to behave...”

  “It’s okay,” I assured her. This close to her, I could detect a faint herbal scent coming from her clothes. It was kind of nice - a little soothing, actually. “Is there a light in here? You need to be sitting down, and I don’t know where to put you.”

  She wiggled her fingers, and a lamp I hadn’t seen flickered to light. It cast the cell in a dim glow, filling the space with shadows. Other than a small desk and a small bed clearly salvaged from pieces of other beds around the station, the cell was free of ornamentation. If the lights worked, it could have been any room in the Oubliette.

  I helped her onto the bed and took the desk chair for myself. I took another look around the stark, spartan chamber, giving Meiko time to get back in control of herself. Waiting for her to restart the conversation when she was ready for it.