by C. F. Harris
I blinked in a surprise. I wasn’t sure what this “supermarket” was she spoke of, but that other bit…
"You have royalty on earth? I thought your society wasn't…"
Again her finger came to rest on my lips. Again I went quiet. Again I was surprised that this Terran woman was able to silence me with such a simple gesture.
"I really don't have the time to explain all the various royal families kicking around earth with zero power because they managed to make it through the industrial revolution without getting their backs against the wall,” she said.
Disgust rose in my gut. For all that I knew the Terrans were aliens, dangerous aliens at that, and for all that I had no love for those currently in power within the Vosk Imperial family, it was still disquieting to hear her discuss the murder of royals so casually.
“And I really really don't have time to go into the long and sordid history of supermarket tabloids that moved to screens,” she continued.
20
Rachel
Vrath’s face screwed up in confusion. As well it might. It was an alien concept that I was trying to explain to him, after all. At least it was alien to me for all that it was familiar to anyone in human society.
They only had the one royal family in the Vosk Imperium as far as I knew. Sure there were rumors of pretenders to the throne and members of the royal family who'd been cast out for one reason or another and spent their time skimming around the edges of Vosk space making a living however they could, but that wasn't quite the same as back on earth where humanity stripped any and all royalty of all their power long ago.
Sometimes legislatively, and sometimes with their backs against the wall. Though that seemed like something he didn’t care for.
Sure there were some systems where people had tried to set themselves up as royalty, but that hadn’t lasted long after the discovery of warp space and the creation of the Terran Confederation.
I was about to tell him that we needed to get down to business what with the ship about to explode all around us, or at least it was going to explode in a little less than eighteen hours or so considering the brief but incredible time we'd just shared, when a banging on the other side of the door had me jumping.
Also? It totally had me realizing that I was standing here in this makeshift armory wearing nothing. If there were more Vosk on the other side of that door, all of them mutineers most likely, then I was going to get the same treatment from them that I got from those assholes who were doing their best to break into my cell.
Though I was armed now. I fully planned on taking a couple of them with me if they did try to break in.
"Motherfucker,” I growled.
"Isn't that the idea?" Vrath asked, looking even more confused.
"I'll explain it to you some other time," I said. "Right now we need to figure out a way to get the hell away from whoever is on the other side of that door!"
I glanced up at the entrance to the repair tunnel. We could probably crawl a little ways away from this room in the time it would take whoever was on the other side of that door to override it from the outside or blast their way through, but even then we’d be left with the unenviable situation of having a bunch of aliens quickly figuring out how the hell we got in and out of this room and following behind us with plasma blasters at the ready to shoot a hole in our asses.
A new hole, that is.
Vrath looked to me like I'd gone insane. Then he looked at the door where there was more loud banging and the distinct sound of shouting.
I blushed as I realized exactly what it was that drew their attention in the first place. I'd been making a hell of a lot of noise.
Hey, can you blame a girl? I'd been in deep space for a long time, and the only guy who was even remotely good-looking on the Linda was Dirk who I wasn't touching with a twenty foot plasma lance thank you very much.
“We’re not going to be able to get out of here,” I said.
“No, we are not,” he said. “Stand aside.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I told you to stand aside,” he said, reaching out to push me aside.
Oh hell no. I snatched up the plasma pistol I’d dropped while we were otherwise occupied and pointed it at a very sensitive bit of his anatomy he’d been using quite effectively very recently, thank you very much.
“I had a lot of fun with that thing, and I really don’t like the idea of doing anything to hurt it,” I said. “But if you keep doing this strong and stoic alien thing then I’m going to be forced to do something we’re both going to regret.”
The banging on the other side of the door was getting more and more intense. I turned just in time to see the door buckle in just a little.
Either they were using something out there to batter the thing down, or they’d gotten tired of knocking and now they were doing their best to fuck shit up by firing on the door. Either way we didn’t have long.
“What is your plan?” Vrath asked, seeming more amused than anything. Though he did lick his lips and look down ever so slightly, so I’m sure thoughts of what I could do to his favorite piece of anatomy weren’t all that far from his mind.
“Actually I didn’t really have a plan,” I said. “I was kind of trying to get you to drop the strong silent alien thing, and then I was going to go from there.”
He glanced down again. Oh yes. He thought I was fully capable of removing his favorite bit of anatomy. I wasn’t going to let on that I had no intention of removing something that’d just given me so much pleasure, but I figured if this got him to be a little more careful around yours truly I wasn’t going to knock it.
“Well if you’re not going to come up with a plan in the next few moments then would you please put your clothes on and move to the side so I can take care of the problem?” he asked.
I chewed on my lip. There was something to what he’d just said. Something that was tickling at the back of my mind. Something about me standing here still naked as the day I was born, though looking a hell of a lot better than the day I was born if I did say so myself and…
Holy shit. That was it!
“You open that door and they’re going to open fire on your and kill your ass,” I said.
“And what makes you think the situation is going to be any different if you open that door?” he asked.
“Simple,” I said. “It’s going to be different for me for the same reason you’ve been staring at me this entire time despite the fact that we’re in mortal danger,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“The male gaze,” I said. “It’s about time it was good for something other than making me feel uncomfortable when I’m on a layover at a station bar.”
“But you…”
He didn’t have time to yell at me or anything. No, I reached out and hit the button to open the door. And it didn’t work.
I turned to Vrath. Made a motion towards the door. I was pretty sure it was locked because he wanted it to be locked, and not because it was under attack.
Vrath sighed. Tapped out a sequence. The door slid open revealing the Vosk on the other side. It also made a hellacious screeching noise as the bit that’d been punched in by what they were doing on the other side of that door reached the wall.
Sure enough there were mutineers on the other side, and they were armed to the teeth. They also had that similar flecked gold skin and they immediately dropped their weapons as stupid grins flitted across their faces when they got a good look at me.
I grinned right back at them. Pressed my breasts out and really tried to accentuate the sexy. From the way they turned into a bunch of drooling knuckle draggers at the sight of the goodies it would seem that the scheme was working.
“What the hell are you…”
I didn’t give Vrath a chance to say anything else. No, I was more interested in taking care of this problem before it became an issue that threatened our lives, thank you very much.
“Hello t
here boys,” I said, raising my plasma pistol. “Hope the view was worth it!”
I fired off three shots. In short order the three Vosk pirates were three Vosk corpses. So much for them trying to kill us or shoot us in the asses as we were trying to escape through the repair tunnels.
I turned to Vrath and winked. He stared in astonishment, and then his eyes returned to me. More specifically his eyes returned to the view I’d just used to kill some of his former crew.
“So are you ready to get going?” I asked. “Because we need to get down to the cargo bay before some of your friends realize we’ve pulled a John McClane and decide to do something about our little jailbreak here.”
“Amazing,” he said.
He surprised me by pulling me against him and pressing his lips to mine. Sure it wasn’t exactly the most romantic thing having a bunch of dead Vosk bodies nearby while he was making out with me, but then the hotness of him pressing against me took over and I didn’t care about whatever the hell was going on out in the hallway.
I pressed the button to close the door, and thankfully it’d remained unlocked. Though Vrath was smart enough to tap out a sequence to lock it behind us.
Hey, if what I’d done here was enough to get him all worked up then I was going to enjoy the moment. Not to mention I figured if I was a little quieter this time around we wouldn’t have nearly as much trouble.
A girl could hope. I melted against him and tried not to think about how this wasn’t the most productive use of our time.
For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to care.
21
Rachel
I held up the plasma rifle and got used to the weight. It felt about the same as a plasma lance when you really got down to it, and it’s not like the thing was all that different from a plasma lance.
It definitely felt a lot better than that puny plasma pistol Vrath had tried to get me to use. This felt more like my plasma lance, and that felt better.
“You ready to do this?” I asked.
Vrath looked amused as I took point. I realized it was a touch ridiculous that I was the one giving the orders considering he was the one who’d been in command of this vessel up until he was stupid enough to have it stolen out from under him, but what the fuck ever.
“Ready if you are,” he said. “Let’s make this fast so they don’t have a chance to fuck us over, as you’re so fond of saying in Terran.”
“Good idea,” I said.
I stepped towards the cargo bay door, trying not to snicker as I thought about the joke about opening the bay door that was older than manned spaceflight, and it obligingly opened. The mutineers guarding the Linda’s crew didn’t even look up.
Why the hell would they look up? The only people we’d killed so far hadn’t exactly had a chance to report in that they’d been killed since they were a little too dead to do that sort of thing. Which meant these assholes had no idea that there was a crazy alien and a pissed off Vosk moving through the ship killing anyone they came in contact with.
It was really stupid for them not to have any sort of personal commlink. Vrath mentioned something about them being used to only using ship communications or something, and oops. Turns out ship communications weren’t all that useful when some idiot had locked the crew out of those systems by downloading a hijacker virus.
I raised my rifle and fired at the first Vosk to come into my sightlines. I didn’t even feel all that bad about shooting the bastard in the back considering all the things I knew he’d do to me if he managed to get his hands on me.
I had the example of all those assholes trying to open the bars to my cage like I was some sexy canned spam or something to keep in mind, after all. I shivered as I thought of how badly that could’ve ended if Vrath hadn’t come along to save my ass.
“What the fuck?” the second one shouted in Vosk.
Not that it mattered. No, no sooner had he managed to whirl around than I’d fired a couple of shots at him. He fell to the ground, dead as a doornail, as they say even though standardized automatic door tech hadn’t required nails in centuries.
I turned to Vrath who was holding his own plasma rifle. He grinned at me.
“You looked like you could use some help there.”
“Wait one damn minute!” a voice shouted from somewhere in the back of the cargo bay.
It was a voice that chilled me to the bone. Mostly because it was a voice I didn’t recognize. A voice I didn’t recognize meant it was probably attached to another Vosk asshole who’d been hiding in the back instead of being out in the open where we could shoot his ass out from under him fair and square.
“Motherfucker,” I growled. “What the fuck is happening now?”
“Is that you out there Doran?” Vrath shouted.
“Friend of yours?” I asked.
“Harldy,” Vrath said, his grip tightening on his plasma rifle as he looked at the crew of humans who were still staring at us in disbelief.
It was nice to know they were going to be helpful as we tried to break them out of this place.
“If you come out now I promise I’ll kill you fast Doran!” Vrath said.
“Fuck you Vrath!” Doran shouted. “You were going to kill me by slowly disintegrating me! Why the fuck should I believe you when you say you’re going to make it quick now?”
I stared at Vrath in an entirely new light. I suppose it was a good idea to remember that for all that we’d shared one hell of a moment, he was still a pirate. Or a privateer. I guess what he was depended entirely on your point of view.
“Well that was earlier when I had the time to torture you,” Vrath said, shrugging as he looked at me. He didn’t even blush. Not that I was sure if the Vosk could blush, come to think of it. “Now I’m in sort of a hurry to take care of things. Your idiot mutineer commander was stupid enough to activate the self-destruct on the ship!”
“Fuck you and your lies,” Doran spat.
“Well y’know you’ve already covered that,” Vrath said. “And I’m not interested. I’m also pretty sure my new companion here isn’t interested, so you’re going to have to come up with something better than that.”
The crowd of humans in the cargo bay parted revealing the Vosk moving through that crowd. He had a plasma pistol out, but of course it wasn’t pointed at us. That wouldn’t make much sense. There was no way one Vosk all on his own could cover the both of us.
He could, on the other hand, walk with that plasma pistol pressed to Dirk’s head as he used my least favorite person on the Linda as a literal human shield.
“You’re going to let me get the fuck out of here, or the human gets it!” Doran shouted, spittle flying from his lips as he said it.
This guy seemed like a real winner, I’ll tell you what.
“Why would I care about one of the humans?” Vrath asked.
That was good for a gasp from the rest of the gathered crew. Maybe they thought me being with Vrath meant they were going to get their asses rescued. Vrath’s indifference would seem to indicate they were wrong about that, though.
“Because you’re with a human and she’s going to care about what happens to her crew!” the Vosk shouted again.
Vrath turned to me and cocked an eyebrow in a clear question. “Friend of yours?”
“Hardly,” I said. “I can’t stand the guy.”
Dirk’s face screwed up in what I can only describe as a baby on the verge of throwing a tantrum. We’re talking there were tears streaming down his cheeks. We’re talking his lips were quivering and it was clear he was about to lose it.
Not to mention there was a wet noise. I looked down and barked out a laugh as I realized that not only was he on the verge of very real tears, but on top of that he was also letting out a very different sort of liquid down below from a bit of anatomy he’d tried his best to use on me on several occasions.
“Seriously?” I asked, raising my plasma rifle and firing a single shot.
It was just like shooting the te
ntacled varmints that came onto the farm back home growing up. Only in this case I was aiming for the spot between the mutineer’s eyes rather than aiming for one of those tentacles before it could get at some of the Corvasa Bulbs that gathered moisture in an otherwise arid environment.
The Vosk had a moment to look surprised. Only a moment though. The plasma bolt had been set to a low yield and was moving fast enough that it went through the front of his skull, but didn’t make it out the back end where it could hurt anyone else.
His eyes glowed for a moment, but luckily he didn’t twitch in a way that would cause the plasma pistol in his hand to go off and really ruin Dirk’s day.
Not that I would’ve been all that put out if something like that did happen. I wasn’t kidding when I said Dirk was hardly a friend of mine.
“Right,” I said. “Looks like that’s taken care of. Can we see if we can’t fix the whole self-destruct thing now?”
Vrath was staring at me open mouthed. It was different from the usual kind of stare he’d been hitting me with this entire fucking time, and it was just a touch unnerving.
“What?” I asked.
I realized he wasn’t the only one in the room staring. All the humans were staring too. Not the least of them being Dirk who was in the process of losing whatever else had been in his bladder as he stood there shaking and looking between me and my raised plasma rifle and the alien at his feet whose skull glowed from that plasma bolt.
“Amazing,” Vrath said, stepping in close and sweeping me into his arms.
And once more I found myself not worrying about the potentially life threatening situation. Just long enough for Vrath to pull me into one hell of a kiss that I’m sure was scandalizing more than a few of the people in my crew, but I didn’t give a fuck.
