Star Resistance

by D. R. Rosier

  She paused to lean forward again, and I quivered under her kiss to the back of my neck. Then she whispered in my ear.

  “I love you too Lori.”

  The surge of emotions I felt at her words took me by storm, and I felt my eyes get wet, though no tears fell. She’d gotten back to spoiling me, and slowly worked her way down to my calves, and then my feet.

  “What do we do?”

  She was silent for a while, and I wished I could see her face.

  “I don’t know,” she finally said, “Besides being lovers and loving each other that is. Not only are we different species, but I’m artificial, or at least my mind is, if not my body. Women don’t usually mate either, unless it’s part of a multiple mate thing. Do you love Tel and Vik?”

  I pondered that for a minute.

  “It’s different, but I think I do. I know the idea of losing any of you hurts, which makes me selfish I suppose. I don’t think humans are meant to date the way you all are.”

  She slapped my leg lightly, “Turn over.”

  I turned over and looked up at her. She looked incredibly sexy and beautiful to me, exotically so with her voluptuous body, firm large breasts, thin waist, and graceful neck. Her face was stunning, and of course there was the blue part. But it was her lively dark blue eyes which held my gaze as she started to massage her way back up my body.

  She said, “It’s complicated I know, but I know neither would ever mate me, and I don’t think they’d mate you either, not officially. Not because they don’t love you, I think it’s obvious they both do, but simply because we’re different species. We’ll just have to be together, and will be together, as long as we’re on this ship.”

  Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. We might be on the ship for years, decades, but I had centuries of life left, and nothing lasted forever. I would however, live the time I had with them in joy. Who knows what might happen in the future. I just hoped I didn’t lose all of them at once, just one of them would break my heart.

  “You’re right of course, and we should make the most of the time we have. But if it’s up to me, I’ll never leave this ship. You’re my home.”

  Jillintara’s eyes twinkled when she smiled.

  I sighed in pleasure as she made her way to my inner thigh, and gasped when her knuckles brushed my labia while massaging my inner thigh. I was soaked, and overwhelmed with both feelings of erotic desire and love.

  She smiled, bent down, and teasingly brushed her lips against my right nipple, while she cupped my mound lightly. My whole body shook and trembled.

  “What… what happened to finishing the massage,” I said in a shaky throbbing voice.

  She licked around my nipple, and slowly dragged her finger along my moist silken folds. The massage had made me ridiculously sensitive, far more sensitive than usual, and if felt like bolts of lightning ran through me as all my nerves exploded in pleasure, and lifted me toward the edge of bliss.

  She bit her lip and her eyes were smoldering, “Couldn’t help myself, your too sexy to resist.”

  I’d have done anything she asked me in that moment, if she’d just touch me again.

  She said, “And I’m so horny I could burst.”

  She teasingly ground herself on my thigh, as she slipped a finger inside, while her mouth found my other breast, and lightly sucked on my nipple.

  I arched my back and gasped as we maintained eye contact. Highly developed spatial awareness or not, the only thing that existed for me right then was her, and the pleasure of her touch.

  She lavished my breasts with attention, while she worked me into a fever pitch with her hand. I gasped as she started to kiss her way down my body. The mere anticipation of feeling her lips and tongue between my legs almost threw me over the edge into blissful ecstasy. Almost.

  Her lips left a moist trail of kisses down my stomach, pelvis, and then my thighs. I thought I would die if she didn’t hurry.

  She slid a second finger inside and curled them, rubbing my inner walls and finding the small rough spot just a moment before she dove forward and sucked in my folds and clit.

  The pleasure exploded in me, like lighting a bonfire with gasoline, and the ecstasy burned through my body as I gasped and my body arched and locked up. Breathy gasps filled the room, as my liquid bliss covered her face, and ran in dirty rivulets of pleasure down my thighs, and onto my ass.

  My heart thundered, and I was lost in the rapture of pure ecstasy as I gasped in a breath, and my skin glowed in perspiration as I came down from my height.

  Jillintara moaned lustily in approval, as she lapped up my silken liquid, and then crawled up my body and claimed my lips in a lingering passionate kiss. If it hadn’t been the most intense orgasm yet, it was damned close. I’d never felt so loved before, or so vulnerable after admitting the truth to her, even if on accident. I loved her, and to find out she loved me made my heart soar. It had also made my body sing. I looked forward to returning the favor, just as soon as I could move, and she giggled as I wrapped my legs around her body and rolled us so I was on top…

  Chapter Eighteen

  Another two months passed quickly and not much changed, until a bunch of things happened at once. That’s usually how life went.

  Our routines were well developed, and I usually spent one night with each of my lovers, followed by a night alone. Although, most of those alone nights I wound up spending with Solyra. Things were going well, and while there had been a few hiccups, it hadn’t taken much effort to get things back on track. The assistants took care of it for the most part.

  I still hadn’t told Telidur or Vik how I felt about them, like I had with Jillintara with a slip of the tongue, but then, they hadn’t said it to me either.

  As for Sylara and Dessia, I continued to ignore them as much as possible, and lumped them in with Rilok. Although they weren’t nearly as blunt or sarcastic as the latter, they found little ways to make it known what they thought of the human among them. Or more specifically, a human sleeping with their son and brother.

  The first thing that reared its head, was annoying to me personally, but not to anyone else. It was early in the morning when I was on shift, when I was contacted through my implant.

  “Lori, do you have a moment?”

  It took me a second to figure out who it was, the voice wasn’t familiar at all, but the name was. Myra was the artificial assistant that was in charge of overseeing and maintaining the power plant under the moon’s surface. I wondered what she wanted, only one way to find out.

  “Myra, what can I do for you?”

  Myra said, “We started the reactors yesterday, and we’re getting some strange readings. Since you designed them, I thought you might have an answer.”

  My stomach dropped, and I probably jumped to conclusions.

  “What strange readings, is there a problem?”

  Myra replied, “Not exactly a problem. The efficiency ratings at minimum load aren’t the expected fifty percent like on the ships, but I haven’t been able to detect any difference in the setup.”

  I frowned, “What is the reading?”

  In my mind I’d been thinking a lower number, which is why her answer floored me.

  “Sixty-three percent.”

  Sixty-three? Well, it still wasn’t the eighty-two it should in theory be, or the seventy something we should expect, but that was still a whole lot better than fifty.

  Still, how the hell was that possible?

  “All of them?” I asked, perhaps stupidly.

  Myra said, “All twenty-five hundred of them.”

  I frowned, “I don’t think it’s the reactors, it has to be a system on the ships that’s degenerating the efficiency another thirteen percent. A system you don’t have on the moon.”

  Myra said dubiously, “I suppose. How will you find out?”

  I shook my head, “I need to get out of the lab and into a real ship, then shut everything off but the lights, and see if the efficiencies match.”

  Myra
replied, “Why not just have one of the assistants do it, so no one is put at risk?”

  “That’s a good idea, can you bring one in?”

  There was a short pause.

  Myra said, “Lyra is on with us, and consents to helping us.”

  I took a deep breath, “Lyra, can you turn off everything, except for you, the lights, and the reactor.”

  Lyra said, “One moment, let me get away from the moon and where I won’t drift into anything.”

  We waited about five minutes.

  Lyra said, “Alright, I turned everything off that I could, stand by.”

  We waited another five minutes, I assumed so she could get efficiency readings.

  Lyra said, “Efficiency is still at fifty percent.”

  I frowned, “And everything is off?”

  Lyra replied, “Almost. My system is online, as well as the lights, inertial dampeners, and the gravity.”

  I shook my head, “Can you turn the gravity off?”

  Lyra said, “No, it’s against safety regulations to run the reactor without inertial dampeners or gravity.”

  My eyes narrowed, no fucking way. There was no relationship between gravity and dark energy in the equations or the course I’d learned, but based on that stupid regulation, and the greed of industrialists, my mind jumped to a conclusion. What if there wasn’t something at the top of the reactor pulling in the radiation to cause more damage on top, what if it was the opposite. What if dark energy and gravity, both forces, pushed away from each other. That could cause instabilities.

  “Myra, what’s the gravity on the moon?”

  Myra replied, “Point one eight gravities.”

  Shit, no freaking way. Those bastards.

  “Lyra, can you lower your gravity to point zero one gravities please?”

  Lyra said, “Stand by.”

  Well, that was an easy regulation to get around, on a technicality. Not off, but at that percentage of a gravity, it might as well be.

  Lyra came back a few minutes later, “Seventy six percent efficiency.”

  Son of a bitch.

  “Lyra, please power up all systems, and engage stealth. Do not change the gravity back.”

  As I expected, she came back several minutes later, and said, “Efficiency is still at seventy-six percent.”

  “You can restore normal gravity settings and remove your stealth. Thank you Lyra, Myra. Please keep this to yourselves until I find out what we should do about it. Lyra, we’re finished if you want to power up, and return gravity to normal.”

  I frowned, as I thought through the possibilities for over an hour, and the unintended consequences of such a discovery.

  “Vik, can I talk to you alone?”

  He nodded, and we left the bridge. He took us to his quarters, and we took a seat in the outer room at the table.

  He asked, “What’s up?”

  I frowned, “I figured out the reactor problem, and it will blow up your economy. Worse, I’m positive the discovery has been made before, and suppressed.”

  Vik shook his head, “Why?”

  “Vacuum energy reacts to gravity, the opposite way it does to mass. They repel each other. I’m curious, there’s a regulation that artificial gravity has to be on if the reactor is on, the only reason I can think of for such a regulation is to prevent anyone from taking notice that efficiency went through the roof if gravity was ever turned off. An argument for safety could be made, but it’s spurious.”

  Vik nodded, “So we what? Turn off gravity in engineering, or at least around the reactors?”

  I sighed, “If that was all, it would probably work out. Everyone would be getting seventy six percent efficiency across the board at any power, which would stimulate even more ships in space, and trips, which would in turn make people even more money consuming the element.”

  Vik said, “I gather that’s not what would happen?”

  I nodded, “Right now, the higher energy draw requires more element, for the simple reason that the higher the concentration of dark energy, the more of it that reaches the element on top of the reactor, breaking it down into energy once it’s bonds are overcome, which also degrades the casing and interferes with the energy conversion process. Which is a big hint actually, to what I’m talking about.

  “The reason dark energy reactors yield so much energy is because of energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Big numbers, even when the mass is just one. But the element has an atomic mass of over four hundred, so molecule by molecule it releases a whole lot more energy when the bonds holding that atom together are weakened by dark energy. We could make a fission reactor as strong, but it would be four hundred times larger to release the same maximum amount of energy in any one moment.”

  Vik nodded, “I’m following so far.”

  “The second reason for the element, is for some reason it makes a decently half ass containment, which is the second reason it’s used. Now suppose I build a core, with small gravity emitters all around the globe, say twice as many as is needed for safety’s sake. Then I create an inch thick field of four gravities on the inside of the ball, all pulling toward the inside surface of the core. That would be containment, the dark energy field would stay inside the center of the core, and none of it would escape. The gravity would be forcing it into the center.

  “Now, say we concentrated that dark energy at a constant high level, high enough to almost instantly overcome the bonds of matter instead of the current way. The dark energy level would no longer be responsible for how much energy is created, and it would be held stably inside the gravity globe field, following?”

  He frowned, “Sort of, is the point coming up.”

  I snorted, “Yes, next step in fact. The point is, I just made the precious element worthless. It is no longer needed for containment, and that dark energy field can rip apart any matter to create energy. Suppose we feed that dark energy field xenon instead, via injectors which simply shoot the xenon out into the center of the core, instant energy. Xenon is plentiful and easily extracted from gas giants. It has an atomic mass over two hundred twenty, so it will take just two atoms to equal the energy created from one of the mass element atoms, but it would be dirt cheap doing it, and close enough that the reactor wouldn’t have to be that much bigger. As a matter of fact, since the reactor would be running at over seventy percent efficiency, it wouldn’t be any bigger than the ones we’re using now.

  “I wouldn’t even need to redesign the reactor, just the core and containment, and the system that stores and injects the element. That’s why it would destroy your economy, like on Earth, energy production and cost is the bedrock of your economy. It’s where your companies make most of their money, and they need that money to pay inventors and fabricator designers, not to mention to trade the fleet with, for all those resources they use to make the stuff the people demand.

  “Everything would go up in price, since the companies would have to start mining and hauling their own resources, or paying credits to haulers instead of trading for the synthesized element, because ship captains will simply dip their ship in a gas giant to refuel, no delivery required, no purchase required. That’s why I think this discovery was suppressed, that and I can’t believe no one ever tested the reaction between gravity and dark matter before.”

  “You said any element?”

  I nodded, “But for obvious reasons gas is best. It would be hard to separate a solid into small enough amounts. It takes just a tiny bit, a few atoms at a time, to create incredible amounts of energy. Xenon is the heaviest gas that’s relatively plentiful. Radon exists and is heavier, but is far less plentiful and available.”

  Vik asked, “And we’re talking about this because?”

  I shrugged, “I thought that was obvious. Even if we don’t suppress it, you and the rest of your family should figure out the impact, how to adjust for it, and introduce it slowly, so the base can shift without causing too much damage.”

  I smirked, “Or I c
ould design a new reactor core, and we’ll only put two reactors on the rest of the ships, and we’ll stick with the old element for now, we could even use the same injector systems, at least until there are enough merchant ships out there hauling resources.”

  Vik asked, “What would be the impact of that?”

  I said, “The new gravity containment reactors would use between twenty-five and fifty percent less of the element depending on the loads. It would stay right around seventy five percent efficiency under all loads, instead of fluctuating between fifty at idle, and around twenty-five at high energy usage, and less than one percent at the highest energy peaks. Of course, we could go with your idea for the older ships, just turn off the gravity in the emitters nearby the reactors. The new core should be slightly better than that, but not by much, it’s just a cleaner design. Damn, Myra’s not going to be happy, I think we just made the need for a power plant obsolete. Well, at least for its original purpose, you’ll have to find a use for all that energy elsewhere.”

  Maybe, it could still supplement energy if a ship lost its main reactor, and using dimensional ports we could actually sell the power, like a power company. To merchant ships, or simply to power people’s homes on another planet. Or even just to power every shuttle, fighter, missile, and probe in the empire. Palm implants, ship suits, or anything. In short, I or someone else would find a use for it even if the ships no longer needed it. I wasn’t going to worry about it, I’d told Vik and he could decide. He was the prince, and in charge of the military.

  Vik said, “Do it. I’ll talk to my sister, but we’ll submit the new reactor type along with all your other discoveries and fabrication patterns, once we put down my brother and take control back, and we’ll back pay you on them as well. There’s no reason to mention the element part, perhaps we should put off the xenon idea for now, and when the empire is ready for it you can submit it.”

  I smirked, “But then someone else might think of the xenon reactor idea and get it on there before me. Even before you’re ready for that to happen.”