by Tristan Vick
After the satisfying scream, she gasped for air, inhaling deeply. Immediately after taking her breath she began panting as Barrion went down on her a second time.
“I can’t,” she pleaded, pulling on his hair to try and pry him off her. But he resisted and buried his face even deeper into her.
“Qui, qui, etvi-dagri zoffenqui’le!” she screamed out.
Zoffenqui’le was the Dagoni word for leaking. She remembered looking up the English translation of it so that if something between her and Jegra ever did happen, she’d know what to say. But the English version didn’t make any sense to her. It wasn’t about “leaking,” as that’d be too straight forward. It was about coming and going. But, she wondered, why would arriving at one’s destination or leaving have anything to do with experiencing an orgasm?
Finally, managing to pry Barrion’s lips off of her clitoris, she let out a deeply satisfied sigh. “That was...”
“Amazing?” Barrion asked, rubbing her residue off of his lip with his thumb and then sucking off his thumb. “I know.”
She laughed and then drew him back into her. They kissed again and then paused mid-kiss. She pulled away only to find a vacant, trance-like look had found its way onto his face.
“What is it?” she asked in a worried tone.
“There’s something I must do,” he said, turning to leave.
She caught him by his arm and yanked him back. “Not so fast, loverboy. I’m not finished with you yet.”
“But there’s something I must do,” he said in a monotone voice, glancing back at the utility closet door as if he had somewhere else he needed to be and was running late.
“And I’m saying you can’t get me this wet without leaving me absolutely satisfied. Capisce?”
He didn’t seem to hear her though, and whatever had mesmerized him, overrode his will and compelled him to turn toward the door again.
She swiftly hopped off the counter and pulled down her dress while reaching out for him. She caught him just as he was opening the door and, reeling him back in with one arm, she reached up with the other and slammed the door shut.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She flung herself into him, mashing herself against his body and then began to dirty dance grinding and rubbing all up and down his body.
“I’m...uh...you know...dancing.” Grabbing her own breasts and squeezing them as she dropped down and then slowly slid back up his thigh, asked, “Why? You don’t like it?”
He placed his hands on her shoulders and gently moved her to the side. “Brei, please, it’s been fun. But I must return to my duties now.”
She gripped him and spun him back around, more forcefully this time. “No! You can’t!” She practically shouted it at him. Realizing her reaction might have been too much, she added in an overtly sultry voice not entirely appropriate for the current situation, “You can’t go out there.” She licked her lips seductively, began biting her lower lip in an awkward fashion that seemed more like she was flicking it at him, and then laughed out loud as though he’d said something hilarious although he hadn’t so much as mumbled a word.
“You’re acting strange,” he said. He gently nudged her out of the way, again, but again she forced herself into his path.
This time he gave her a good shove and sent her staggering back. She looked up, almost startled but more shocked and disappointed than anything. Rage instantly replaced her surprise and she leapt onto his back and clung to him like a Zondonian monkey.
“Don’t you ever shove me like that again!” she screamed, pulling his hair.
“Ow! Get off of me,” he yelped.
“I’m sorry,” Brei said, “but I can’t do that.”
Fed up with her interference, Barrion reached up and flipped Brei over him and pinned her against the wall. She smashed into it, back first, upside down, and then toppled to the floor. By the time she managed to push herself back up, Barrion was walking through the utility closet door.
She chased him out into the hall and, running at a dead sprint to catch up to him, body-checked and pulled him down to the floor.
Once they’d untangled themselves and got back up to their feet, Barrion’s fist clocked her across the jaw. She staggered back a couple of steps, touching her face and looking up in alarm. But she knew this wasn’t him. The real Barrion would never strike her. This was The Voice controlling him, like her personal little puppet. She recognized as much by the fact that the same vacant gaze as before had settled over him.
“Oh, now you’re asking for it,” she said in a low voice.
“I have to go,” he repeated, as though he were on autopilot. “I have something...”
“You’ve gotta go. Yeah, so I’ve heard,” Brei quipped sarcastically.
Barrion turned and began heading up the corridor again.
“Wait, don’t you need this?” Brei asked.
Barrion slowed up in the hallway and then patting himself down, realized he was missing something. Slowly, he turned around to face her. Grinning at him, she held up the detonator to the suicide vest and waved it around as though she were daring him to try to come and get it.
“Where’d you get that?” he asked, reaching out for it.
She drew it back, not letting him snatch it from her. “Oh, this little thing? I just found it laying around.”
“Give it to me,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Sorry, I can’t do that,” Brei shot back.
He pressed forward and she took another step backward.
“Give it to me,” he insisted.
“No,” she growled, standing her ground. As he came closer, she did the unexpected: thrust her knee forward and kneed him squarely in the junk.
Barrion collapsed to the floor, his face turning an extra dark shade of blue as he clutched his nut sack and groaned in terrible, immobilizing pain. “Why in Helios did you do that?” he asked after having caught his breath.
Brei looked down at him and tried to gauge whether it was actually him or not. “Barrion?” she asked in a sympathetic voice. “Is that you?”
“Who else would it be?” He rolled over and looked up at her. Then, realizing they were no longer in the utility closet but in the open hallway, he asked, “Wait, how’d we get out here?”
“It’s a long story,” Brei said, slipping the detonator back into her dress, tucking it under the left side of her breast just between her under-boob and armpit. The tightness of her dress held it in place and she went over to help her bewildered boyfriend up.
As she helped him up, he noticed the welt on her cheek. “Who did that?” he asked in an angry voice when he realized that someone had assaulted his girl.
“You did,” she replied unenthusiastically.
“I did?” he asked in an astonished voice. “I’m so sorry, Brei,” he said reaching up to touch it. When she grew tense, still not entirely certain he had regained full autonomy over himself, he stayed his hand. But then, seeing how hurt he looked, she took it in hers and pressed her face into its warmth.
“What could have compelled me to do such a thing?”
“Apparently The Voice has inserted sleeper agents all throughout the crew. I was able to snap you out of it before you did anything you’d regret, but there could still be others waiting to activate when you fail your task. I don’t know how many more sleeper agents there are or how I’m going to find them, but the empress is counting on me to stop them. I can’t fail her.”
Barrion rubbed his chin contemplatively and then said, “Wait a moment. Before the Shard left orbit there was a cargo ship that brought supplies aboard. I was returning with the resupply crew from Dagon Prime and we were boarded for a routine inspection. That must have been when it happened.”
“So,” Brei said, a smile spreading across her beautiful mouth, “all we need to do is find the cargo ship’s crew manifest and detain everyone who happened to be aboard that vessel.”
“Precisely,” Barrion said, snapping his fin
gers.
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get going.” Brei turned and started up the hall but stopped when she heard Barrion let out a painful groan. She spun back around to find him limping toward her with a bow-legged waddle.
“Oh, you poor thing,” she said. She glided back toward him and gave him an apologetic peck on the lips. Gently running her hand down to his crotch, she began to massage him. He groaned again from the pain but didn’t try to stop her. “Do you need me to kiss it and make it all better.”
Barrion raised an eyebrow.
“Maybe another time. I feel we should really get going,” he said glancing down at her hand which rested on his crotch.
“Right,” she said, drawing her hand away. She turned her back to him and then squatted down. Slapping her own ass, she said, “Saddle up, buddy.”
He shrugged and hopped onto her back, graciously accepting the piggy-back ride down the lengthy corridor.
15
A visual distortion, like the wavering of a heat mirage dancing along the horizon of the Thessalonica desert at sunset, slipped onto the palace grounds without so much as being detected.
The barely perceptible shimmer moved along the posterior edge of the palace wall until it came to a rear service entrance and stopped. From out of a narrow slit in the invisibility cloak, a hand with a lockpick manifested out of thin air. After a few clicks, the phantom shimmer picked the lock and slipped inside the palace.
Once inside, Gaewen Feradorn pulled down her hood so that only her head was visible. She looked up and down the long corridor, checking all choke points and watching for possible security patrols. When she was satisfied the coast was clear, she turned and went over to the security system wall panel. She placed an electrofoil key-card on the security box, and, after a few seconds, the silent alarm countdown shut off and the system reset as though nothing was out of the ordinary.
With a flick of her wrist, Gaewen double checked the palace blueprints on her holovid display and then determined that the East wing stairwell of the palace would be the most direct course to her destination.
While her body remained shrouded beneath the invisibility cloak, her head bobbed around the corridor like a decapitated ghost-head floating in mid-air. She darted from one column to another until coming to a large archway that led out into the great hall with its impossibly high ceilings.
A clatter of boots marching down the hall caused her to dart to one of the large columns and flatten against it. Keeping the column between herself and the guards at all times, she slowly edged around it to the dark side, the security patrol drawing near as they made their rounds.
As the security patrol passed by her location, Gaewen slowly pulled up her hood as she further receded into the shadow cast by the enormous column so that it appeared as though the darkness had absorbed her into itself.
After the two guards had gone on their way, Gaewen’s face re-emerged from her cowl, her turquoise eyes watching them as they rounded the corner at the end of the banquet hall. She scanned the room for cameras or pressure sensors, but didn’t detect any and so cautiously stepped back into the light. That’s when she heard the clatter of dishes and a breaking of earthenware.
She froze, swiveled her head only to find a servant girl standing no more than a couple of meters away from her, slack-jawed and doe-eyed as she beheld the floating head. In that moment, Gaewen mentally berated herself for leaving her hood down. Anything that can go wrong inevitably always goes wrong, she mused unenthusiastically. Such entropic moments always had a way of sneaking up on you when you least expected them.
Gaewen’s hand came up from the cloak, and the floating hand pressed itself upon floating lips and hushed the girl, warning her to keep quiet. When it appeared as though the servant girl may scream, Gaewen swiftly reached into her cloak and pulled out a paralyzing dart and flung it with lightening quick speed.
The mini-dart sank into the girl’s shoulder and she looked down at it with a startled expression. Almost instantly she grew drowsy, her eyelids fluttering. When she began to totter on her feet, Gaewen rushed over and caught the girl under her arms, saving her from a rather precarious fall.
Averting such a close call, she gently set the unconscious girl down in one of the chairs at the banquet table. If anyone came upon her, they’d assume she’d had a spell and was resting herself. Upon reviving, if she mentioned anything about floating heads, they’d likely just think it was a stress induced dream. Either way, it bought Gaewen the time she needed to complete her mission.
Careful not to make a sound, she left the girl sleeping peacefully and scurried over to the flight of stairs that greeted her across the hall and slipped into the stairwell.
Once inside, she turned off her invisibility cloak to conserve battery power and the fabric, which was like a high definition televid screen projecting the surroundings back at you, flickered and then turned into a dark gray matte cloak.
Rendered fully visible, Gaewen had to be extra vigilant. After all, she didn’t want another repeat of earlier. If people started finding multiple unconscious bodies strewn about the palace, she’d soon be found out.
Still, she had a job to do and she wasn’t about to pass up such a rich bounty. Taking a deep breath, she cautiously edged up to the railing of the spiral staircase and glanced up and down the shaft. The coast was clear. She drew back, reached into her cloak, and pulled out two metallic silver balls the size of six-centimeter wooden dowel caps; or about the size of a large, menacing eyeball.
In one fluid motion, she tossed them into the air and as they reached the zenith of their arc, they sprouted four pairs of tiny wings like those of a dragonfly.
The balls hovered in place momentarily, their wings buzzing softly. Then, with the speed of a wasp, they darted away, following the spiral staircase downward to the secondary basement, where Zallek was being held captive.
In case the drones were spotted or detected any signs of trouble, they would release a smokescreen and then self-destruct. Since they were also flash grenades, their destruction would sow confusion to help her escape. Such a fun little toy, she mused, that made her job all the easier.
Her mark, Gerard Van Zallek was being held on the second level basement, two levels down from her present location. The blueprints had shown her that his floor consisted mainly of the palace prison and several storage rooms. The first level basement, just above that, was a garage that held ATVs, hover bikes, shuttle transports, a medium class drop ship, and a couple of class nine Imperial fighters. Luckily, the stairwell bypassed this level completely, since it had higher security and different external access points.
This, of course, was why she’d chosen the Eastern stairwell as her access point. Security would be that much less prevalent while simultaneously giving her a direct path to Zallek’s current location.
The third level basement consisted of a fitness center with a full-sized indoor pool, a sauna, and a massage nook—and probably had even less security than the two levels above it. She didn’t think it would be a problem, but had sent the drones all the way down just to scan the room for signs of hostiles.
She followed the spiral staircase downward, the drones scouting ahead for any possible signs of trouble, until she reached sub-basement two. Cracking the door into the hallway, she slowly crouched down and peered out at the two blue-skin guards sitting at a card table near the end of the long corridor, playing a round of Follow the Queen.
The bad news was that beyond those two, she didn’t know how many more security personnel would be lurking around the bend and throughout the halls. The good news was that the guards sitting a short distance from her seemed to be engrossed in their game, which gave her a small opening.
As her buzzing balls returned from their short trip, she reached out with an open palm and their wings instantly folded up and they dropped into her hand. She tucked them back inside her cloak and then, pulling on her hood, re-activated the invisibility device and slipped out into the
hallway.
“Did you hear that?” one of the guards asked, poking his head up and looking over at the stairwell doors.
“Hear what?”
“It sounded like a door shutting.”
“You probably imagined it, cuz I didn’t hear nothin’.”
The first guard shrugged and went back to studying his hand. As he looked back at the door down at the end of the corridor again, just to be sure, his friend leaned over and stole a peek at his cards.
“See. I told you it was nothin’,” the second guard relayed. When his friend turned around again, he was already casually leaning back in his chair, pretending to ruminate on how to play his hand even though he already knew he’d won this round.
As the two men bet with small polished pebbles of various colors and sizes, tossing them into a pile on the middle of the table, they missed the shimmer that swiftly moved passed them.
Gaewen rounded the bend to find a scorpion class battle Centurion standing in front of a heavily armored set of doors that were obviously the Sally port of the palace prison.
She stood frozen in her tracks; Centurions were particularly good at catching anomalous sounds and had the ability to scan the room in infrared to detect any heat signatures. If she so much as made a noise louder than a mouse squeak, the thing would activate and run security scans and she’d be entirely visible to it.
Instead of taking the machine head-on in a fight, however, she tiptoed right up to it and crouched down under its large pincer-arm canon. Reaching into a side-pocket on her cloak, she drew out what looked like a credit card with delicate circuitry printed on the surface. More accurately, it was a sticker of pre-printed techno-phage adhesive. The techno-phage adhesive, when applied to an electronic device, would meld with it and automatically upload a virus.
She slowly peeled off the adhesive and then slapped it onto a side-panel on the Centurion.
The Centurion’s eyes lit up as it detected her presence then reared up to change its position and try to get a lock on her. As it scanned the room, unable to find her, it scuttled back on its stick-like legs and then switched into heat vision mode.
