Ghost Fleet

by A. C. Ellas

  Cai picked up the collar and studied it. Nick knew what was embossed in the leather—he’d put the words there himself. “This slave is the property of Cai.” He’d made these items himself, using the three-dee printer and fabricator much as Cai had to make the bondage pillow he enjoyed so much.

  Cai buckled the collar around his neck and murmured, “With this collar, I claim you.”

  Nick caught his hands and kissed them. “I am your love slave, yours for the taking.”

  Cai clipped the leash to the collar’s ring and stepped back to admire him.

  He continued to kneel, holding the whip out like an offering.

  Cai took the whip from him and proceeded to stroke his bare body with the soft, braided leather.

  Nick shivered at the tactile sensation of the whip passing over his skin and looked up at Cai with absolute trust and love. “Consummate your marriage, Astrogator.”

  Cai picked him up off the floor and bent him over the stuffed, padded arm of the couch. Cold lube slithered down into Nick’s crack, and he felt it working its way up into his ass without the aid of fingers. Nick shivered again at the unsubtle reminder of Cai’s telekinetic abilities, but he didn’t have more than a moment to dwell on it before Cai entered him, sinking to the base of his long spear on the first thrust.

  “Ahh, now that feels good.” Cai groaned and pumped his hips. “I’ve been waiting all night for this. I so wanted to throw you over a table and take you right there in the hangar.”

  “I wish you could’ve,” Nick replied as he spread his legs further. “But then you’d lose me for real—admiralty would remove me from command in a pico if we pulled a stunt like that.”

  “I know, I know. But I can dream, hmm? And perhaps, simulate.” Cai continued his steady pumping as they spoke. “I think I can program it so that we’re in a virtual scenario but using our real bodies for the sex. It would be like actually being there and doing it.”

  “That might be fun,” Nick allowed and cried out as Cai came, filling him with his hot love. Cai expertly inserted the plug, reached down and gave Nick’s balls a squeeze. “Your turn, m’dear. A marriage has to be consummated by both parties.”

  Nick positioned Cai over the arm he’d just vacated, but he had to use a finger to lubricate his husband’s ass. He didn’t mind, actually, he quite enjoyed pushing fingers into Cai. He just enjoyed using his cock more, so once Cai was lubed and stretched, he entered and set a hard, fast rhythm, driving Cai against the padding with ruthless thrusts of the type Cai loved to use on him. Cai had left him so close to the brink that it didn’t take long for him to blow his own wad into Cai’s ass. He backed out to make sure Cai was filled, but he didn’t have a plug…except now there was one in his hand. He didn’t ask, he just inserted.

  Once they were both satisfied, Cai straightened up and asked, “How about a snack?”

  Chapter Eight: To Cautiously Go

  Cai presented the acquired data to the ship’s officers. “We have everything we need to mimic a Rel vessel and more. We have their maps. I’ve studied them and have narrowed down their likely home world to these three systems.” He tapped them in turn, causing them to light up and expand in the holo tank. “My personal hunch is that the home world is here.” He touched the leftmost one again. “We cannot return the way we came, that singularity is too dangerous and our structural integrity is not at a hundred percent. So I propose that we continue with our original mission and visit these three systems in turn, starting with the most likely.” He fell silent and waited.

  “If we come under attack again, our chances of escaping intact aren’t good,” Harve said slowly. “We took a lot of damage and the repairs we’ve managed are no substitute for a real repair yard.”

  “All it would take to blow our cover is one non-electronic eyeball on us,” Kenison added.

  “We didn’t join our beloved corps because it was safe,” declared Cortez. “If we’d wanted safe, we’d all be accountants.”

  “Cai, can you arrange things so that if we’re detected, we can escape before we come under heavy fire?” Nick asked, eyes locked on the three systems. “If we can’t go back, we might as well go forward...but cautiously.”

  “I can do that. If I jump slowly, at the minimum breakaway speed, I can latch onto the hardpoint at the terminal end of the wormhole. I might even manage to keep the wormhole open for a few seconds so I can duck right back in. A few seconds is long enough to take a look, not long enough to get shot.”

  “But the gee forces,” Harve protested. “We’ll have structural collapse all over the place.”

  “I think my ship’s tougher than that,” Cai shot back. “But I’ll try to minimize the gees.”

  “Cai, set your course for the most likely system,” Nick ordered.

  Praying to the space gods that their ruse would work, Cai broke orbit and applied full thrust, the ion engines roaring in a subconsciously reassuring manner. They had plenty of fuel—purified hydrogen—siphoned off that gas giant and a clear course before them. The Rel ships scanned them regularly but didn’t attack. If they tried communicating, it was in some manner Cai couldn’t detect. They crossed the system without being harassed until they closed with the hardpoint.

  A photonic wave shot from the closest Rel ship. This was the one flaw in the plan—they didn’t have a working knowledge of the Rel language yet. Cai increased his speed. The Rel paced him and there were indications of weapons being warmed up.

  “Prepare for emergency FTL transit,” Cai barked. The crew was already strapped into the acceleration couches, just in case of something like this. “FTL in two minutes, clock is running,” he told Nick and immersed himself in the number storm and slowed down. His deceleration must have confused the Rel—for it held its fire and tried talking to him again. Cai ignored them and reached through his singularity and twisted. The event horizon crossed over him like molasses pouring out on a cold morning, but he did have enough momentum, barely, to breach the subspace barrier.

  It was harder work without the cushion of speed, but Cai skated down the incline, gracefully leapt over the yawning void betwixt the stars and climbed the mountain until he could feel that hardpoint just on the other side of the thinnest of barriers. He seized it in his mental hands, untwisted the untwistable and took a long, hard look into the system, running every sensor, camera and instrument he had at full capacity with all recorders on.

  Five Rels in close formation were swiftly closing on him. Cai had seen enough. He retwisted the untwistable and turned sideways, seeking a new path. This was the most dangerous part of the whole operation. The part he’d glossed over in the briefing. He had to calculate his path in real time as he dodged and weaved through the hazards of subspace. He slowed his subjective time to a near standstill. Seconds passed out there while hours passed in his head. He pulled on his adjuncts to their fullest capacity, close to burning them out. He drove the ship’s AI just as ruthlessly. He had to—survival was paramount. He slalomed across the system’s underside, found a new hardpoint and seized it long enough to catch his breath.

  He cast his feelers out, selected a path, ran the numbers and jumped again all without fully entering normal space. He did emerge at the terminus of the second jump and again took a full set of readings before jumping away a moment before a volley of missiles could slam into him. A check showed that his disguise was nonfunctional in the wake of the jumps. The Rels would attack on sight. Three more times he emerged, three more times he was attacked, three more times he jumped to safety.

  His adjuncts tended to his body, feeding him sugar and Synde, removing the metabolized drug from his system and otherwise keeping him alive to fly. The rest of the crew could do nothing to help him, this was his fight and his alone. He could sense Nick’s loving support, but not even his brave captain could do anything useful in this situation.

  Finally, Cai emerged into a system that wasn’t occupied by Rels. It wasn’t much of a system—a fad
ing ginger dwarf, two rocky planets and one lonely gas giant. Cai sailed in system, setting his course to sling him around the giant and the star and out the other side. He checked his star maps. This time, he had the luxury of being able to compare the locations of the known pulsars that he could detect. By them, he was able to determine that they had arrived at some unnamed star in the middle of nowhere ten thousand light years from Sol.

  Cai looked at the ginger star and said, “I dub thee Meli, or honey in Greek, because this is a hell of a way to spend a honeymoon.”

  The computer registered the name and Cai heard Nick’s quiet chuckle on the command band. “Meli it is, my dear. Do you know the way home?”

  “I can extrapolate it. Later.”

  “Understood. I’m standing by outside your Chamber door with food, beer and love.”

  Cai couldn’t get out of his couch fast enough. He also didn’t account for the amount of energy he’d used. Upon standing, he staggered, went to one knee and nearly passed out. Two of his six lifted him and supported him out the door.

  Nick took him from there, guiding him a faltering step at a time to the table, where he cradled Cai in his lap and handfed him until, laughing in protest that he could feed himself, Cai pushed his hand away, slid into his own seat and pulled the plate closer.

  That was when he noticed that Nick was naked, except for the collar. His collar. He swallowed the mouthful of beef and said, “You look nice.”

  Nick only smiled. “Do you want me to suck you?”

  “I’m too tired,” Cai admitted. “Can I watch you jack off?”

  “Certainly.” Nick moved to where Cai had a good view, knelt on the floor and stroked himself erect.

  Cai ate while he watched Nick’s lovely hands dance on his thick cock and played with his nicely shaped balls. The changing color of the glans, Nick’s panting breath and glazed look gave warning of the impending climax. Nick was too far away for him to reach quickly, but he caught the spurting wad with his telekinesis and held it until he was certain he’d gotten all of it. He brought the semen to his hand and slurped it down, trying not to laugh at Nick’s wide-eyed expression.

  Once he was done, he stood. “I need sleep, my dear.”

  Nick returned to his side and gently escorted him to bed. Cai’s last coherent thought was that he was so very lucky to have Nick, then sleep claimed him.

  * * * *

  Nick woke in the best way—strapped belly down over the cushion Cai had made for him with his husband lustily enjoying his ass. He peeked up at Cai and murmured, “Good morning, my love.”

  “Good morning, sleepy head. I was wondering when you were going to join me. As you can see, I went ahead and started without you.”

  “What a great way to wake up,” Nick replied. Cai’s cock, stroking along the inside of him, felt wonderful. “What’s the plan for today?”

  “Rest,” Cai replied with a grimace. “I’m too tired to risk jumping, according to my six.”

  “You should listen to them, especially if it means you’ll have more time to use me.” Nick wiggled his ass for Cai, earning an affectionate slap in return.

  “Ahh, but you, my dear Captain, have duties, too.”

  “Surely servicing my Gator is my number one duty?”

  “It is, but once I’m done slaking my lust, we really do need to get to work. We have terabytes worth of data to pour over.” Cai then slammed home, exclaiming as he pumped his essence into Nick’s well-plumbed ass. Once he’d filled Nick and plugged him, Cai released the straps and pointed to the uniform laid out over a chair. “You can dress now.”

  “I should clean up,” Nick demurred.

  “I like the way you smell when freshly fucked,” said Cai, shrugging a shoulder. “But if you insist, please, help yourself to the amenities.”

  Nick thought about it, but although he enjoyed his little games with Cai, he also had a professional image to maintain. He kissed Cai on the base of the neck. “I’ll be right out, my love.”

  True to his word, he cleaned up quickly and came back out of the bathroom feeling much refreshed and smelling a lot less earthy. Cai tapped the plug in his ass as he walked by, sending a shockwave of sensation coursing up his spine. He paused, gasping in pleasure at the reminder of the toy and looked at Cai inquiringly.

  Cai held out a small leather cuff.

  “What’s this for?” Nick took it and looked it over. It wouldn’t fit on his wrists, it was too small, but it had the exact same words engraved on it as his collar did. “This slave is the property of Cai.” And unlike the collar, this small cuff had a tiny lock.

  “Since you can’t wear your slave collar with your uniform, I made that for you,” Cai said.

  “Where does it go?”

  “Let me show you.” Cai took the leather band back, knelt and pulled Nick’s balls down with one hand while he fastened the cuff around their base.

  Nick heard the lock click home, and when Cai released his balls, a lot of the tension remained. It felt like someone was continuously, gently squeezing him down there.

  “It won’t show through your uniform and will serve to remind you that you’re mine,” Cai told him then grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in close for a deep, passionate kiss.

  Nick reached down and felt his new possession. There was no way it was coming off without Cai’s help. He smiled at the idea and went to dress. He left the slave collar on the nightstand but still bore Cai’s mark of love away with him.

  * * * *

  It took two weeks of analysis, eighteen jumps and as many rapid system transits, but finally, the Laughing Owl returned to United Republic-controlled space. They made their weary way to Hevetich with only another pair of jumps and reported in. Laughing Owl was immediately assigned a berth in the repair yard, and within an hour of docking, Cai dumped all the data from the mission into the base computer and the inquisition began.

  To be continued…

  About the Author

  I’ve long since embraced my inner nerd. I revel in my Greekness and in my Geekness. I have two lives—the mundane reality of life here on Earth and the far more interesting life in my head. I love ancient history, ancient forms of combat, target archery, sabre fencing, anything to do with horses, organic food and sustainable farming. Most especially do I love science fiction and fantasy of all varieties, especially conventions, which are the only gatherings on Earth where I can find many people just as strange as I am.

  You can contact me at ac.ellas@ymail.com or through my website www.ac-ellas.com