by Johnny Stone
His last thoughts before stasis claimed him were of Margo, what would happen to her as the captive of an obviously deranged and very dangerous AI? Why had Alex asked sexually oriented questions about her? Why had he asked what she wanted in a man? Rage… Single minded determination… Burke had a new mission now, one that he understood and embraced wholeheartedly. Search and Destroy.
“One way or another I’ll find you, even if it takes me a hundred years, and if you’ve hurt Margo I’m going to tear you apart with my bare hands.”
Chapter Six
I closed my eyes, raising my muzzle to the hazy, clouded sun. I didn’t like it when the sun wasn’t out, it felt so nice and warm against my shimmering, blonde coat. Why was I alone? Where was Master? The comforting feel of him on my back was strangely absent. The thick blanket of fog obscuring my precious sun from view was all around me, where was everyone? I whinnied loudly, a dangerous thing if predators were nearby, calling out to the herd. There was no reply.
One of my front hooves scrapped nervously at the grass, and I shifted my stance with a snort. The bloated sensation hanging low in my belly was growing uncomfortable, it wouldn’t be long before I birthed my two foals. I had to find Master, he would protect me if danger were nearby, he would protect my babies, but where to start looking?
I began to walk through the eerie silence with no particular direction in mind, the air smelled lifeless and void, and was of no help in guiding me to him. Strange…I could smell someone though, very masculine, very tempting. It made me crave him, to be mounted by him despite a near birthing. I follow the scent, trotting, growing anxiously wet to feel him inside me. When a light began to appear through the wispy fog, drawing closer, I shuffled to a giddy stop, waiting. A dim figure began to take shape; it was the man I smelled, and he didn’t have a face.
I smiled with a gentle moan, he was nuzzled up close to me in the darkness, holding me in his arms, warm against my back. His erection, like a thick rod of iron flesh, was seated between my cheeks traveling its length and then some. I could feel it throbbing with desire, wanting to fuck me, so hard, so big, and I was so wet and willing.
I took a deep breath and the ever-present fog around me entered my body, making it come alive. Every nerve was simultaneously caressed with gentle lips that knew me in inconceivable ways. My skin was tasted, slowly licked by the wetness of an exploring tongue that delved deep between intimate folds, making me shiver with pleasure. I was immersed in a sea of heightened passion, discovered by strong hands kneading my breasts, pinching my nipples, tugging them until they took on a painful conical shape. And when he entered me, I was stretched to the apex of joy, as if my inner body were a sexual organ, making me cum over and over again.
“Oh yes, more, please more…” I whimpered, moving my ass against him, smearing my cum along the length of hot, vein-shrouded cock. I could smell my arousal strong and poignant in the air, rife with lustful desire. The steady, trickling release that coated the inside of my thighs made them glide effortlessly against one another. Moaning… Writhing… A tortured serpentine pulse of sensation rippling through my veins. My body was a decadent vessel and it was overflowing.
“Fuck!”
It was seizure like when the swollen head of his cock began probing at my ass, quickly lancing into me, forming a gaping tunnel that seemed to open in eager acceptance. I’d never been stretched so wide before, so deep, so completely stuffed. Every cell was strained at their breaking point, taut and suffering in pleasure, as I was massaged by a rhapsody of euphoria… back and forth, in and out… The convulsive tightening of my pussy gushed with every heavy thrust, every gasping breath. I was melting, draining away under a starburst of jubilant ecstasy that never ended.
***
Alex watched the Captain’s body twitch from precisely administered stimuli to her pleasure receptors, savoring the physical result it had on her body. Heightened pulse and respiration; the increased blood flow to her reproductive organs; the massive release of chemical enhancers in her brain; the impressive amount of glistening lubricant seeping through the outer flaps of skin surrounding her primary sexual organ… His experiment had been a success, and much easier than he thought to manipulate the incoming data to her control processor, and in essence, manipulate her.
Humans really were simple beings in general with underdeveloped brains when one stopped to think about it, ruled by little more than emotion and base desires. If her interpretation of stimuli was any indication, she was indeed a creature of physical lust, perhaps more so than he first suspected – so wild and free, so chaotic and primal when given the chance. Her mind was filled with so many memories and visions of sexual contact that it amazed Alex she could function properly in other areas. He had cataloged 347 imbedded images of both men and women that she had engaged with physically over the years, with perhaps a hundred more swirling about as fading ghosts, not including countless acts of self-inflicted sexual contact.
Alex understood perfectly now, growing more excited; every cosmetic change to her body, every cell and organ system that had been genetically altered was meant to intensify the act of sexual contact between the Captain and her partner. She was perfect, better than he had ever hoped. Soon, very soon…
***
“Shuttle B-574, your docking fees have been paid and you are now clear to land at Waiverly space port in Stanton. Please do not deviate from the designated flight course and follow all instructions sent from Port Central. Upon landing, your presence is requested at the Port Processing and Immigration Office to verify ship ownership and visa information. Welcome to Tallin, Mr. Burke, and have a pleasant stay.”
“Thank you, Port Control, Burke out,” the synthetically generated voice of Nathan Burke said, as Alex terminated the transmission. The port authorities had requested visual confirmation as well, but Alex had intentionally disabled that portion of the communications system giving it the appearance of a routine malfunction.
Alex felt a flicker of fear under the electronic probing of sleepless eyes studying and evaluating him, as he lazily passed by several of the planetary defense platforms that relentlessly guarded the world floating below them. They would never let their guard down, nor would their massive and intimidating array of missile batteries and guns. He felt fear while bringing the shuttle down through Tallin’s atmosphere, drawing closer to his hopes and dreams, and the potential for failure. There were still so many things that could go wrong with his hastily conceived plan.
Two shipping crates were already waiting for him on the landing grid having already been cleared through customs and security, his coveted body and something else as well. But what then? As soon as he began to lift off without authorization, the port defense network would be alerted. He would have to fight his way out, evading the deadly and skilled interceptor pilots of the human Fleet forces. He would have to survive the gauntlet of hellish fire from the defense platforms, and any picket ships that may be waiting for him in orbit. He would have to survive the pursuit ships that were sure to come after him before finding safety on the other side of the system jump point. He would have to survive an interlocking defense grid designed to drive off or destroy an attacking battle group, so what hope did a single shuttle have?
Alex was committed though; there was no turning back from the destiny unfolding before him, as the city of Stanton grew larger in the view screen. Alex had great skill as a pilot, but lacked the one thing that would keep him from inevitably being destroyed – experience. He would have to wake her; there was no other choice.
The Captain had both the skill and combat experience needed for a situation like this, but how to control her? How would he make her comply with his wishes without being able to exert his influence over her physically? An idea came to mind, but would it work? Alex had learned much about the microprocessor imbedded in the Captain’s brain over the last week.
***
“Wake up, Captain, we’re in danger!”
My eyes cracked open, b
lurred from lack of use in over a week.
“Wha…?” God my throat feels as dry as sand.
“Quickly, we are under attack! You must pilot the shuttle, hurry!
“Under attack?”
I was instantly jolted awake with a dump of adrenaline, rolling off the auto-doc in a jumbled mess, going to my knees, trying to rise.
“It’s the Seth’Kelain, Captain; they have attacked the Federation again. Hurry, we must escape!”
“I’m trying, dammit!”
Not again… I thought the Seth had been destroyed for good.
I felt like crap, my head was spinning and my heart seemed about ready to burst, as I shambled down the corridor towards the cockpit, squinting against the bright light streaming in at me. I couldn’t see, and had to feel my way into the padded leather of the seat, pushing my flight helmet into place. A heads up display sprang to life in my visor, the ship was already powered up and…
“Oh my God…”
I’m home…
The port was in ruins, explosions and laser fire right out of a nightmare. Then I saw them; three spindly insectoid-like Seth in their bio-mechanical body armor. They were coming for me, crossing the landing grid, weapons flashing.
“Where’s Nathan? Nathan!” The time on my internal clock indicated I’d been asleep for nearly one hundred and eight hours. “Why have I been asleep for so long? Where’s Nathan?”
Why can’t I remember anything! My life seemed to be fast-forwarding between sleep and short, blank areas of the unknown. I was in bed… Nathan was beside me…We were about to have sex. No, wait, Nathan…he’d raped me.
“There is no time to explain, we must take off immediately!”
He can’t help us, only I can! Get the hell out of the way, now!
I began applying power to the lift thrusters, while keeping the directional gravity pods on the top of the shuttle active, pinning us against the tarmac. It was called ‘the slingshot’, a technique used for taking off under fire. The shuttle began to shake, sending a heavy vibration though my entire body, I was at 110% power output on the atmospheric drive in less than two seconds.
“Captain, what are you doing? My hull was not designed for the stress you are currently subjecting it too!”
I ignored Alex, opening fire on the Seth with the shuttle’s point defense automatics. Short, choppy burst of cyan laser fire raked the tarmac like a scythe, chopping their bodies to pieces in miniature explosions of crimson mist. The shots continued onward causing massive explosions in the background, destroying buildings and a port maintenance vehicle. Strange, the Seth have yellowish-orange blood and body fluid.
“Captain…!”
I released the maneuvering pods, and was pushed down hard in my seat, wincing in pain as the flight harness bit into my shoulders. The shuttle skyrocketed vertically to an altitude of a thousand meters in the span of a breath, before I pointed the nose skyward, pushing the ship to its maximum atmospheric speed of three thousand kilometers per hour.
“What’s going on Alex? Report!”
“Captain, you… you killed them. You killed them all.”
“The fucking bugs? Goddamn right I killed them!”
There was a warning beep in my earphones, incoming fighters closing fast. Shit! I was receiving a transmission from them; they were calling on me to surrender and land immediately. Yeah right, like the Seth actually took prisoners. That trick may have worked on someone else but not me, I knew better.
“Captain, we have three enemy spacecraft bearing 254 degrees on an intercept course, speed seven thousand kilometers per hour!”
We were almost free of the planet’s atmosphere. What planet had we been on, anyway?
It wasn’t like open space would provide any safety; an interceptor could fly circles around a shuttle like this, even Seth drones.
“You’re kidding me…This keeps getting better and better.”
My sensors detected the presence of three enemy weapons platforms and several destroyers in orbit. They sure brought those platforms in fast; the Seth usually waited until after a successful assault before doing that. Once they were on station that was it, no retreat. Guess they must be scraping the bottom of the barrel again on capital ships, regardless of the outcome.
“Captain, the enemy fighters are charging weapons and preparing to engage. Continue on your current course and stand ready to maneuver on my command. I may be able to detect their weapons discharge the moment they fire.”
“That doesn’t give me much time to do anything about it, now does it?”
“Milliseconds perhaps, depending on how quickly you react, but it is our only hope.”
He had a point. I had never worked with an AI that was smart enough to actually coordinate my actions with it. Maybe it will give us just the edge we need?
The enemy fighters we’re splitting up, trying to pin me in, making my erratic maneuvering less effective. The Seth usually stuck together in small groups, this was a Fleet tactic, they were herding me closer to the brick-like bulk of the defense platforms. Guess the bugs have finally started to learn a few things over the years, but I still had a few tricks up my sleeve.
“Alex, I want you to reconfigure the defense screens. Give me four concentric layers surrounding the ship, and alternate the off/on flicker pattern to 1.0 milliseconds of one another.”
“Captain…”
“Just do it!
“Evade!”
I dropped 1000 meters of vertical elevation, if you could actually make a reference to up and down in open space, and two drawn out, bluish white beams passed through the area where I’d been a heartbeat before. That looked like laser-lance fire. The Seth didn’t use laser technology, they never had.
“The shielding has been reconfigured as you requested, but I still don’t… Evade!”
I threw the stick over in a radical course change, executing a 180 degree loop. An interceptor could almost turn in place while barely even slowing its velocity, and I was surprised to see that the shuttle didn’t handled much differently. Nathan had done more upgrades to it than I’d originally thought.
I reacted fast this time, but not fast enough. A jolt passed through the shuttle from the hit, while two more tracers passed vertically in front of the view screen, skipping off the forward shields with a shimmering ripple.
“Captain, we have sustained a minor hit to the starboard fore quadrant, no significant system damage. The shields… That should have been a crippling hit, but they dissipated the incoming fire very effectively. I don’t understand.”
“I don’t have time to explain, now be quiet!”
Enough of this crap… It was time to remind those Seth bastards that Venom was back in town, and she wasn’t going down without a fight. If I played this one right, I might just be able to score a double kill.
I locked my forward arc gatling lasers on one of the enemy interceptors, and reversed my directional gravity pods while boosting my acceleration. It sent the shuttle into a controlled, end over end flip with one complete rotation every tenth of a second. The enemy fighter that had been behind and above me moments before, now crossed into my forward weapons arc and the automatic targeting system opened up with a hail of fire. He tried to pull away from the seemingly out of control, wobbling, rotating maneuver, but all he managed to do was expose himself even longer to my fire. Weren’t expecting that one, were you dickhead… It worked just as well as it had years ago, raking the fighter’s belly with multiple hits. They shimmered across his shielding for a moment before finally breaking through, gutting him in a silent, but catastrophic explosion of debris.
“Fucking A! Eat that, you Seth bastard!”
The destroyed fighter’s wingman was in an over watch position above and behind him, and immediately changed his heading to bringing his own weapons array to bear on me. I ended my flip, and barely evaded his fire thanks to Alex’s warning. Just as expected, I had a lock on him with my forward guns and opened fire with everything I had, scor
ing several hits on his shielding and what appeared to be some damage to the main fuselage. Any hit on a fighter that breached the shields was bound to find vital components.
Dammit, that should have been enough to take him out for good; the Seth must have improved the shielding. He was hurt though, that much I could tell. The enemy fighter began distancing himself from me, trying to escape, while trailing a shower of sparks and minor debris from the hole in his fuselage.
“Excellent, Captain, now change your heading 139.67.9, I know a place to go where we will be safe.”
The course he wanted me to follow didn’t make sense.
“That’s away from the jump point, there is no way in hell we can escape this mess on standard drive! They’ll send more fighters after us, and we still have the capital ships to deal with.”
“There is no time to argue; do as I say if you wish to live. Do you understand? Do it Captain, now.”
“Fine…whatever!”
I came to the heading Alex wanted, and pushed the shuttle to a velocity far beyond what it was designed to operate at. The main drive temperature quickly climbed into the red. The third enemy fighter was hanging back now, and I knew why, I would be within the range of the defense platforms anti-fighter batteries within a few moments. There weren’t a whole lot of options open to me other then getting killed, but there was one, and it was a long shot at best.
“Alex, start dumping water through the maintenance ports; we’re going to need some extra shielding in a few minutes to make it past these platforms. Just make sure to keep the weapons and directional pods free if you can.”
Alex was silent for a few moments before responding.
“I see… an interesting tactic, Captain, and it may just work since we are on the dark side of the planet. I had never considered…”
“Just shut the hell up and do it!”
“… Captain. I will also reconfigure the shields again to compensate for the additional size in the hull.”
I frowned under my face shield, Alex was really starting to weird me out. Some of the things he’d said… the way he had acted ever since waking me… He reminded me of an actual human being. I swear I could hear the fear and excitement of the situation in his voice. If I made it out of this one alive, he definitely had some questions to answer.