by A. C. Ellas
“What if we’re attacked first?”
“We would have to be able to prove to admiralty that our counter-detection measures failed, forcing us to act in self-defense. If you’re thinking of creating a fault that gives us away…don’t. It’s not worth it. There’s at least four heavy battle cruisers with full escorts patrolling Procyon.”
“What are your orders, Captain?” Cai asked almost formally.
“We’ll wait until the Rel jumps out of the system, then we’ll go the other way—we need to discover where he came from.” Nick paused then added, “Now exit the Chamber, Cai, before you harm yourself.”
Realizing that Nick had a valid point, Cai obeyed, relaxing and allowing the linkage to break. Back in his own body, he took in one shuddering breath and realized that he was in dire straits, for his body hadn’t finished clearing the first full dose of raw Synde before he’d taken the second. His body twisted as muscles, soaked in toxins that weren’t clearing properly, cramped. Each knot was a new focal point of hot agony. Cai tried to shove awareness of pain away from himself, a technique every Astrogator was taught, and he managed to straighten his body enough to slide out of the acceleration couch with the assistance of two of his adjuncts. His feet hit the decking and twin spikes of purest pain lanced from heel to head and he fell, his body convulsing as his consciousness fled.
The next thing Cai was aware of was a feeling of total comfort imparted by the strong, male arms cradling him. He opened his eyes and soaked in the sight of Nick.
The captain’s hazel eyes, almost black with worry, were locked onto him. A flick of an eyelid betrayed that he’d seen Cai’s eyes open. He stroked Cai’s face with the back of his hand. “Oh, Cai,” he murmured, “you gave us quite a fright there.”
“Sorry,” Cai mumbled, realizing that he didn’t feel well. His entire body ached, he was both hungry and nauseated and so thirsty he could drink a lake and not be sated.
“Not only did you overdose on raw Synde, your blood sugar was critically low. Why didn’t your adjuncts set up a dextrose drip for you? Isn’t that part of their battle routine?”
“I didn’t think of it,” Cai admitted. “I should have.”
Nick ruffled his hair and kissed his forehead. “Nobody’s perfect, but I don’t want to lose you for lack of a little forethought.” He reached downward and Cai followed the motion with his gaze.
He flushed in acute embarrassment as Nick removed the now-full bag attached to the humming cylinder on his belly. Nick set the bag aside and attached an empty one to the cylinder. The bag immediately began to fill.
Nick’s lips quirked at his flush. “You have to clear the Synde, my love. There’s nothing to be ashamed of here.” He reached down further and cupped Cai’s balls in his hand. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Make love to me?” Cai asked, craving the security and comfort of Nick’s embrace, wanting to revel in the pleasure of allowing another to control and protect him.
Nick shifted on the bed, drawing Cai into position against his chest. “If you’re sure,” he whispered into Cai’s ear.
“I’m sure. Please, Nick.” Cai wiggled his bare ass against the hard shaft pressed against his cheeks. He gasped as Nick’s head probed his puckered opening.
Thankfully, Nick didn’t tease him further but gently entered him, thrusting softly, but insistently, into his core. Nick was almost as long as he was, but thicker, with a very pleasing curve that seemed designed to hit his erogenous spots. When Nick reached full penetration, Cai knew himself well taken. He rolled his hips, pleasuring himself on the thick shaft.
Nick reached round him and stroked his cock as he pumped in time to Cai’s initial rhythm. Nick covered his neck and shoulders with kisses and little licks that shivered his spine with enjoyable sensation. Nick’s lovemaking was just that—love, without dominance, just a sharing of pleasure. Not that Nick minded submitting, Cai knew he enjoyed it, but mutual love and enjoyment had its charms as well, and this time, they indulged in the sensual side of their relationship.
Cai shot his wad into Nick’s waiting hand a few moments before Nick unloosed a torrent of his hot essence into Cai’s body without pausing his steady pumping. Cai moaned, enjoying the orgasms they shared with one another via their telepathic connection. He tasted his semen on Nick’s tongue, felt how his tunnel clenched so sweetly against Nick’s erection and knew that Nick was sensing similar things about his body.
He waited for the heady pleasure to drain away, leaving them sated and together, but it didn’t. Nick was still pumping, and Cai drew in a surprised breath when he realized that Nick’s erection was still firm and insistent inside him. Nick shifted them on the bed, and without withdrawing, he positioned Cai to his liking, bringing Cai’s legs forward toward his chest, leaving Cai’s rear far more open than it had been. Nick braced Cai’s hips with a pillow, grasped him by the waist and turned on the power. He drove into Cai hard and fast and deep, withdrawing all the way to the crest of his head before plunging back in until his balls slapped against Cai.
Cai closed his eyes and lost himself to the exquisite tension of the building tsunami of orgasmic ecstasy he could sense looming over them. It built and built as Nick plowed him, conquered him and mastered him with his long, thick weapon. When the tidal wave broke over them in a single, transcendent moment of utterly shared climax, they both collapsed, arms and legs tangled in the posture of passion spent. Cai’s last coherent thought for several hours was, I wouldn’t mind being his slave.
Chapter Four: The Jump
The Rel crossed the system in good order. Their course was straightforward but lacked the subtlety and clean efficiency that was the hallmark of an Astrogator-flown vessel. Cai made due note of that. He also recorded the Rel’s outward jump with the same level of detail and disbelief as he’d studied the inward jump. There was no detectable trace of psi emanating from the alien vessel. Their jump appeared to be wholly mechanical. It was grossly inefficient, but Cai suspected the Guild would not be pleased at any hint of technology that could break their monopoly on space travel.
Once Cai was certain the Rel was gone, he began his own breakout procedures. First, he tickled the fusion reactors until they were producing more than the minimum required to maintain the ship’s systems and singularity containment and fed the excess into the ion engines and thruster system.
He eased to starboard with the briefest burst of thruster and crept forward ten meters…twenty…thirty, and he swung his stern to port, pivoting about his center of gravity —the singularity. He canceled his vectors by the precise application of opposing thrusts so that he rested motionless relative to the asteroid field but clear of the large rock he’d taken station off of. His bow was pointed directly at a narrow channel that appeared free of space rocks. A few puffs from the aft thrusters and the Laughing Owl slowly slipped through the empty gap.
Cai tried to ignore the tension on the bridge, though he was certainly aware of how nervous his crew was. He focused on the asteroids around him, rapidly calculating distances and closure rates. The corridor he was in was coming to an end thanks to a mountain-sized rock that was drifting across his vector. Cai eased his bow down with rapid bursts from the forward topside thrusters. He continued this until his new vector had him passing well clear of the belly of the beast. Downward relative to the plane of the ecliptic seemed a good move, for the asteroids thinned the further from the central band he flew.
He gradually accelerated, maneuvering around, over and under the remaining asteroids surrounding him until after an hour of white-knuckle time for the crew, he broke into relatively clear space. The bridge crew heaved a collective sigh of relief at the sight of open void ahead, but Cai was a little disappointed. That had been the most real fun he’d had in weeks.
He quickly plotted a course for the hardpoint the Rel had arrived through, and the moment he had the required momentum built up, he throttled the engines and made like a rock again. R
ocks knocked loose from asteroid belts all the time and he’d been careful to set his course on a theoretical outbound ellipse. It should be sufficient to fool any other Rel ships that entered the system while they were in transit. He thought it unlikely, given how long they’d waited to see that one Rel, but he was certain that if he didn’t plan for it, Rels would immediately jump in system from every direction.
Cai let his connection to the ship lapse once he had completed another set of checks designed to show if there were any errors in the first set of checks he’d run. He had fourteen hours to kill before they reached the hardpoint. Wondering if he could talk Nick into another sim, he walked out of the Chamber to be greeted by the delicious aroma of Nick’s lasagna.
His step quickened, leading him to the dining room where a full meal was waiting for him—along with Nick wearing nothing but his birthday suit. Cai’s step paused as he raked his lover’s body with his gaze.
“Please be seated,” Nick all but purred, pulling Cai’s chair out for him.
If he’s going to ignore it, I will, too, Cai decided. He sat down and allowed Nick to push his chair in.
Nick served the meal with quiet aplomb, as if daring Cai to say something or to reach out and fondle him.
Enjoying the silent game, Cai did neither, but he had no qualms about feasting his eyes on the handsome nude serving him. Once the meal was plated, Nick surprised him yet again, this time by getting on the floor and crawling under the table. Cai looked down and saw Nick taking a lovely submissive posture before him, then Nick reached out and opened Cai’s pants.
Nick brought Cai’s jewels out through the flap, glanced up at him and murmured, “Please, eat your dinner while I suck this for you.” Nick then bent his head down to Cai’s crotch and the sensation of Nick’s lips and tongue playing over his sex brought him hard in a matter of moments.
Cai struggled to comply with Nick’s wishes, but it was hard to concentrate on food while Nick sucked his cock with exquisite attention to the little things that caused pleasure, like tonguing his piss slit and scraping teeth across the crest of the glans. Nick’s large, strong hands were squeezing and rolling his nuts like a pair of Baoding balls.
Gradually, Cai got the hang of it. He slowly ate, savoring the flavors of Nick’s cooking at the same time as he savored the pleasurable sensations of Nick worshiping his cock. It was close to the ultimate in gratification, oral and sexual pleasure simultaneously.
Every so often, he glanced down entranced at the sight of Nick sucking him. Nick’s cheeks were hollowed, there was drool on his chin, dripping onto his bare chest, leading the gaze to the crinkled nipples and further, to the erection bobbing forlornly between Nick’s widely spread thighs. That was enough to make him come in spite of his efforts to hold it back, and he groaned as he felt Nick’s throat working to swallow the load. Nick settled back, apparently satisfied, and Cai ate the last two bites of his meal before he hauled Nick out from under the table, marched him to the bedroom where they proceeded to make passionate love to one another.
Cai stood before the door of the Astrogation Chamber holding the deep bowl of raw Synde just below his chin. He inhaled the heady scent of the drug, knowing that everyone perceived it differently. To him, it smelled of honey and oranges. Nick claimed it tasted of cloves. No matter. He required the Synde to fly regardless of how it tasted. He lifted the bowl to his lips as an errant thought, I guess it’s a good thing that I like oranges and honey, passed through his mind. He set the empty bowl aside and entered the Chamber.
His couch was in the middle of the octagonal room. Six couches stood by the walls for his adjuncts. There was no spare seat in this class of ship, so Nick couldn’t observe even if his duties allowed him to. There was no rule against allowing someone to observe the jump; it was left to the Astrogator’s discretion. He’d allow Nick without hesitation, but others? He shuddered at the thought—the mental merging of the Chamber would force him to become far too intimate with another mind for his comfort.
He climbed into the acceleration couch and settled himself comfortably against the padding before bringing up the interface. The crystal array descended as he merged his mind into the ship, and then, Cai was seeing out of a multitude of sensors. He took only a moment to just exist in his ship-self before turning his attention to the work at hand. He called on the ion engines for thrust, accelerating along his pre-planned trajectory. This broke his cover as a mere asteroid, but the higher his relative velocity on insertion, the smoother the subspace journey would be, and Cai had no idea what to expect on the other end of this jump.
The acceleration built smoothly, inexorably, each minute of thrust adding to the cumulative momentum. Not even close to redlining, the acceleration alarms remained silent as Cai was careful enough to keep the rate of acceleration well within tolerances for his crew. Most wouldn’t even notice the Laughing Owl’s change in velocity due to the artificial gravity field Cai maintained. Reaching his target velocity of half the speed of light, Cai cut the ion engines but continued to press the fusion reactors, drawing and storing power for the upcoming jump.
As the Laughing Owl approached the heliopause, Cai pulled up the jump protocols and sent the ship-wide announcement, “Ten minutes until FTL transit.”
The bridge repeated the ship-wide warning, adding, “All hands must be in an acceleration couch in seven minutes from mark. Three, two, mark.”
He entered the number storm, the complex mathematics of the jump, in league with his adjuncts and the ship’s computers. Subjective time dilated as Cai worked through the equations that formed the basis of what he did. Mathematics had a beauty to it even at the basic levels, and here, it reached a sublime art form of symbolic logic and numeric data cascades. Cai loved the number storm, reveled in the smooth, orderly flow of angles and vectors and gravity wells and outside forces all working together to prove the path between point A and point B all so that Cai could reach outward and inward through the vehicle of his singularity and psi and twist something untwistable.
The Laughing Owl breached the barrier between normal space and subspace, and Cai held the bow up as they surfed down the long wave of inversion. The ship’s computers took the seemingly nonsensical data from the sensors and rendered it into sensory equivalencies because not even the expanded, trained mind of the Astrogator could directly perceive the chaos of the universe’s underpinnings. Each Astrogator built his own model of subspace together with his computer. Cai used a combination of sensory inputs to classify the various landscapes, obstructions and dangers he might encounter.
Gravity wells rumbled like drums, vibrating his skin, purple fading to black. Crystal slivers of photons pinged off his body. Rolling balls of blue and green brass instruments marked obstacles to avoid, woodwind cascades of red and violet petals were showers he could safely fly through. The void yawned beneath his feet, empty and vast, waiting to swallow him should he take but a single misstep.
Cai leapt the gulf and soared up the incline, but the flavor of the gravity source was dead wrong—this wasn’t a system he could safely emerge in. He was forced to whirl about the verge of the lurking singularity’s menacing event horizon, avoiding contact with the voracious trap. He could feel the forces of the high-gee maneuvers straining and stressing his body, a bone-deep ache that he grit his teeth against as he prepared to leap a chasm longer than any he’d heard of. Gathering himself, he sprang forward and upward with a sudden burst of acceleration, redlining his tolerances to ensure he could actually make the nigh-impossible jump.
Muscles screamed, adding their sharper protests to the bone aches he already had, but he landed on the stable incline that marked the outer reaches of the system he sought. He wobbled, the slippery slope trying to throw him off, back into the void, and with an effort of sheer will, Cai heaved upward, clawing his way to safety until, finally, he was able to break into normal space with an untwisting of reality.
The resumption of real space did not bring with it
a relief from pain. Far too many areas indicated damage to him, the crew areas had flooded with stabilizing foam, and at least two crewmen had died even with the cushioning of the acceleration couches while several more showed signs of distress. He kept the clamshells locked, there was no point in opening them until the foam was dissolved and each acceleration couch had an independent airline as well as full computer hookups.
Shunting aside the damage reports for the moment, Cai quickly took readings to determine his location. The system was uncharted, not that Cai was terribly surprised, not when it took a double jump past a massive, previously uncharted, black hole to get there. Fortunately, there was a routine for determining location even in uncharted systems. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to work on it.
Fire seared his side as the closest Rel attacked him and Cai bit back a scream. He wrested power from the fusion reactors and hurled the energy through the ion engines with no regard for protocol or safety. All sorts of alarms and klaxons were going off. He heard Nick call general quarters, which seemed pointless since everyone was still strapped into their acceleration couches. The second Rel attacked, adding new lines of agony to his other side.
Desperately attempting to fly free of the incoming Rels before they could pin him in their crossfire, Cai directed all his thrust downward relative to himself. There was no up and down in space, it was an arbitrary designation, but the Laughing Owl had an artificial gravity field for the comfort of the crew, and Cai chose to take his up-down orientation from that. For now. He began to rise relative to the system’s plane, but he could see that the Rels were rising with him, their unique thruster-rings around a sphere design giving them a great deal of maneuverability.
Frustrated, he turned the thrust of his mighty ion engines directly on the Rel closest to him. That had an effect—the Rel was pushed back as he shot forward, but the other attacker was still too close and more were coming. New lines of pain seared him, followed by the sharp, lancing agony of a hull breach. The breach was an annoyance more than a real threat, since all hatches automatically sealed for a jump anyhow and Cai had yet to release them. Only the one small compartment vented to space and Cai cut power to that area for additional safety. Escaping oxygen couldn’t explode if there was no power to any wires that became exposed by the venting.