Imperatrix of the Galaxy

by Tristan Vick

  The only thing the lasers couldn’t do permanently was eyelashes and brows; these were too fragile and transient. If one desired that dark, smoldering look, one still needed to use good old-fashioned mascara and eye liner. Danica opened her eyes and smiled at the glammed-up version of herself staring back at her.

  She was about to go wake Jegra and run through some strategies for when they caught up with Dakroth’s captors when, unexpectedly, the ship’s red alert echoed throughout every compartment of the vessel.

  Commander Blackstar’s voice came onto the comm. “Intruder alert,” she said. “An unknown entity has breached the bio-filters and we’re—”

  When her voice cut out, Danica knew it wasn’t good news. Her first priority was the empress; securing the ship would have to wait.

  4

  A mysterious pink glow flooded the main corridor. Danica couldn’t make out where the light energy was coming from, though it just seemed to saturate the entire ship.

  On her way to Jegra’s quarters, Danica swung by the observation deck. It was the one room where she might be able to look outside the ship and see what was going on.

  Racing into the room, she skidded to a halt. The pink light filled the room; she ran to the tinted ports and frowned at some kind of gelatinous goo that had smeared itself across the outside hull of the ship. That, however, wasn’t the strangest part.

  In the middle of the observation deck, laid strewn about on the floor, was a ring of discarded uniforms, Including the undergarments of the officers. But not a body in sight. The officers themselves appeared to have disappeared without a trace, as though they’d vanished into thin air.

  Danica rushed back out into the hallway and was halfway to Jegra’s quarters when she practically bumped into a female officer who was stuck to the wall as though she were a fly stuck to flypaper. Hanging at an awkward horizontal angel, she was writhing about with a sticky, restrained motion and moaning incoherently.

  “Lieutenant Brei’alas, are you all right?” Danica asked, approaching the science officer. When she grew nearer, she discovered the woman’s eyes were rolled back in her head so that only the whites showed. “Lieutenant Brei’alas!” she hollered in a reprimanding tone, hoping to jolt the woman out of the bizarre trance. But it was no use.

  Slowly, she extended her hand to touch the woman’s shoulder and try to pry her off from the wall when from behind her a voice rang out.

  “Is she in pain?”

  Startled, Danica withdrew her hand and quickly spun around to find the empress standing a few meters from her, gazing at the woman on the wall with the same level of concern.

  “Thank the Gilded One you’re safe,” Danica said as she and Jegra met in the middle of the corridor. Jegra had on a burnt orange satin nightgown that had a sharp v-cut down the center. Merely a gossamer veil, the garment hugged her womanly form like a silk glove and molded itself to her voluptuous form. “As for whether or not she’s in pain,” continued Danica, “I don’t know. But, if you ask me, judging by the sounds of her moaning, I’d say she’s in a state of ecstasy.”

  Jegra jutted a thumb over her shoulder and gestured at the empty corridor. “There are two more back that way. Same condition. What could be causing this?”

  “My guess is that it has something to do with that pink aura that’s saturating the ship. But we’ll know more once we get to the bridge and run some scans of the anomaly,” Danica said.

  “Agreed,” Jegra responded and, moving in unison, they marched up a branching corridor of the ship and made their way to the bridge.

  The lights flickered in the command center as though something was draining the ship’s power, and Jegra stepped into the dimly lit room and let out a shocked gasp at what she saw. Danica, having followed Jegra in, drew back away from the grotesque form almost as soon as she could process what it was. It wasn’t like anything they’d ever seen before.

  “What in Dagon is going on?” Danica asked in a hushed tone. Jegra shot her a baffled look and stood staring. Together, they cautiously took a step toward the undulating mass of flesh.

  A flood of salacious moans washed over them and they stood before a tower of writhing blue bodies made up of the crew, and stared in dumfounded awe. It was like a living sculpture, a mass of at least thirty bodies high, and certainly as dense, that ran from the floor to the ceiling. It looked like a Vorean caterpillar trying to balance upright; its worm body wriggling to find the right balance, its myriad legs probing the air to help counterbalance its unstable body.

  The pile of intertwined flesh seemed as though each person was glued to the next, but in such a way that their blue Dagon bodies held at impossible angles and inclinations and which defied natural law. Odder still, perhaps, was the vigorous and lewd exhalations that escaped their lips, even though not a single one of them seemed to be consciously aware of the erotic acts they were performing. It was as if they they’d become a hive-mind and they were all drones merely satisfying the lustful needs of their lubricious queen.

  Both Danica and Jegra simultaneously gasped when they saw who sat upon the hive. At the top of the heap of tangled bodies was Lianica. She leaned back in a reclined position, the extremities of her fellow crew, their arms and legs, forming a kind of organic throne just for her. But her eyes remained eerily vacant as she stared out at nothingness.

  As if by instinct, she slowly slid her hand down her cobalt blue body and gently reached down between her smoldering thighs with roving fingers. Her face altered slightly, an expression of shock almost, and then she bit her bottom lip and moaned out loud, the proof of the gratifying tactile engagement manifesting in the form of thick beads of sweat which added to the sheen of her already glistening chest.

  The orgasm she experienced rippled through the tangle of bodies like a wave. When she moaned a second time, everyone in the orgy joined her in a chorus of orgasmic professions that rang throughout the corridors of the ship.

  “What could be causing this?” Jegra wondered aloud.

  “It must have something to do with that pink substance engulfing the ship,” Danica replied.

  “What substance?” Jegra asked, turning to Danica.

  “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Some kind of buildup of slime. Algae, maybe. I won’t know until I retrieve some physical samples and run tests.”

  “In hyperspace?” Jegra asked. “Is that even possible?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Danica replied. “Which is why we have to bring the ship to a stop and get to the bottom of this before we succumb to the effects as well….” Her voice trailed off as she got swept away by her thoughts.

  “What is it?” Jegra asked, urging Danica to finish her thought.

  “Nothing, I was just…thinking.”

  Lianica screamed out as she orgasmed again atop the heap, interrupting the two women’s discussion and distracting them. They glanced up in time to watch as the orgasm trickled down among all the members stuck in the entanglement, and Jegra couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.

  Danica rushed over to a control panel that ran along the far wall and started digging through the ship’s systems.

  “That’s weird,” she said.

  “What is?” Jegra asked, gradually sauntering over to Danica and edging up beside her. She looked down at the display, which had glowing graphs and charts and all kinds of readouts she couldn’t make heads or tails of.

  “All systems are nominal,” Danica answered. “There’s no indication of anything out of the ordinary. And the slipstream anti-matter drive is functioning well within recommended parameters. The main fusion reactor seems to be running a little hot, but nothing that should raise any concerns.”

  “Scan for alien lifeforms,” Jegra said.

  “I already have,” Danica answered.

  “And?”

  “Nothing registers. So, at least, we know it’s not sentient.” Danica raised her eyes until they locked with Jegra’s, a perplexed look plastered across her face.
/>   Another orgasm rippled throughout the living sculpture of Dagon bodies.

  Jegra turned and looked at the heaving, gasping, and fluid-secreting tangle of people and thought to herself for a moment. No more than a handful of seconds had passed when the shrill wail of a warning alarm went off. As it blared noisily, Jegra looked to Danica. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  Danica checked the control panel again and then mumbled, “No, no, no.” She slammed her palm down against the glass display of the control panel, the lights flickered briefly, their colors dimming then coming back to full.

  “That really doesn’t sound good,” Jegra repeated, placing a hand on her hip and tilting her head curiously at Danica as she waited to be brought up to speed.

  “It says the hyperborean quad fusion core is now overheating.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “I know what I said,” Danica snapped, growing frustrated with this whole situation.

  Jegra left it alone. She knew Danica was freaking out as much as she was so she kept her voice calm and controlled. After all, it’s what a queen would do. “I thought there were redundancies to prevent that from ever happening.”

  “There are,” Danica replied. “The slime must be clogging up the slipstream dark energy ram scoops and causing the coolant system to feedback on itself.”

  “How do we fix it?” Jegra asked.

  As if on cue, the moment the question was aired, Lianica moaned out again, her prurient breath passing over her Prussian blue lips. “Ahhh…”

  “Oh, shut up,” Danica snapped, irritated by the lewd interruptions. Turning back to Jegra, she stroked her chin and thought for a moment. “We’re going to need to head down to engineering and shut down the hyperborean drive manually.”

  “I see,” Jegra said.

  Danica brought up a cut-away map of the ship’s internal layout. Her finger landed on a red glowing section at the mid-aft area of the ship and she frowned. “But we won’t be able do that until we syphon off the heat from the engines; the excess heat has spilled into main engineering.”

  “We could wear the EV suits,” Jegra suggested.

  Danica shook her head in a way that seemed like she was warning Jegra that was a bad idea. “The doors are sealed. The only way in is to get the coolant system back online. Until then, it’s a nuclear death trap.”

  “What if we just jettison the core then send out an SOS and wait for a pick up?”

  “I’d only recommend that as a last resort. Being stuck in hyperspace–there’s no telling what will happen to the core once it passes through the electromagnetic barrier of the shield. It could detonate the moment it makes contact with the other side.”

  Jegra snapped her fingers and looked right at Danica. “I have an idea,” she extolled optimistically. It didn’t seem to fit with the direness of their situation, which caused Danica to grow curious.

  Jegra pivoted back toward the exit, headed off the bridge, and stepped into the corridor. “Follow me,” she beckoned with the wave of her hand.

  Danica shrugged and followed after Jegra. Now she was really curious. What did Jegra know that she didn’t?

  After a few minutes of racing through the empty corridors, they arrived at Jegra’s quarters.

  “Why are we back at your quarters?”

  As the doors parted and let them in, Jegra glanced over her shoulder at Danica. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Yes.”

  In the far corner of the room, Jegra pulled the wooden box out from under the fancy antique writing desk and set it on top of the desk. She gave Danica a stern look, as if to say this stays between us, then slowly opened the lid.

  5

  Danica’s eyes lit up with terrified revelation as she peered into the antique box. Golden light streamed across her face and a tiny space squid rose out from the container and began hovering before them.

  “It’s…it’s…” Her voice faltered as she stumbled over the myriad of frantic thoughts that rushed through her mind. And she had questions. Questions like: why in the seven systems would Jegra have one of these monstrosities? and: how in the galaxy did she acquire it?

  The DSC, or Dagon Science Council, had been trying to capture one of these things for decades with no luck. They were as elusive as they were destructive. Yet, here was one, riding along as Jegra’s pet.

  “Where in the bleedin’ galaxy did you get that monstrosity?”

  Jegra shot Danica a harsh look. “This little monstrosity is going to save our lives,” she confidently informed Danica. “And his name is La’Garren.”

  “La’Garren?” Danica inquired. “You named it after the most famous gladiator to have ever lived?”

  “Seemed fitting. A most powerful name for a most powerful being.”

  Danica rolled her eyes and spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “All right, then.”

  Jegra held up her hand and made a fist, leaving only her pinky finger stretched out. The glowing squid hovered close and wrapped a radiant tendril around her finger.

  “What are you doing?” Danica asked in a worried voice. She stepped forward and took a grappling posture just in case she needed to wrangle Jegra away from the creature. Jegra merely raised her hand and gestured for her to hold back.

  “It’s how he communicates. Although he’s just an infant, he already understands basic mental commands; they speak using images–a kind of telepathy.”

  The baby space squid let go of Jegra’s finger and wafted about in the air for a moment, as though it were processing some kind of command code.

  “What did you tell it?” Danica asked.

  “I told him he could have a nice meal by heading down to the engine room.”

  They were about to turn to leave when the emergency alarm for a core meltdown began to blare.

  “In that case, I sure hope he’s hungry,” Danica said, leading the way out of the room and to main engineering, “because things just got serious.”

  The baby space squid trailed after both women as if he were a helium balloon tethered to them by a string, pulling up the rear. By the time they’d made it through the winding corridors to engineering, steam was coming out from under the doors, and both women looked down.

  “I sure hope nobody was trapped in there,” Jegra said.

  Danica tried to open the doors by hitting the panel, but it was no use. She manually opened the access panel to the wiring to see if she could hotwire a door release, but that was no use either. The wiring was melted into a nonfunctioning mess that smelled of copper and burnt plastic.

  “I guess we’ll just have to do it the old-fashioned way,” Jegra said. She reached out and jammed her fingers into the space where the sliding doors met and gripped down. The metal door crumbled beneath her grip and her hands began to smoke and sizzle. Jegra screamed out in pain as she pried the doors apart with burning hands.

  Intense energy pierced the opening and Danica had to shield her eyes and look away. Jegra stepped aside once the opening was big enough for the baby space squid to slip through, and as he flew by she whispered, “Bon appetite.”

  The space squid flew through the opening and into the glowing hot room.

  Danica rushed over to Jegra, gripped her by the wrists, and flipped her hands over so they faced palm up. Her flesh looked like seared hamburger. “Are you insane?”

  “Got singed pretty good,” Jegra grunted, trying to suppress the pain. “But I’ll live.”

  “You’re bleeding,” Danica said.

  “I don’t have time to bleed,” Jegra quipped, drawing her wrists back.

  Danica let her go, but not before giving her a concerned look.

  “I’m fine. Really. I am. Now, all we need to do is get back to the bridge and make sure that when La’Garren cools down the engines, we don’t drop out of hyperspace and crash into a moon or get sucked into a black hole.”

  Without warning, Jegra charged up in the middle of the corridor, collapsed to her knees, and groaned. Danica rushe
d to her side and knelt down, placing a gentle hand on Jegra’s shoulder. “Because,” she relayed through a clinched jaw, “Ever since you touched me I’ve been going out of my mind with the desire to rip your clothes off and take you here and now.”

  Jegra’s right hand reached out to grab Danica, but she caught it with her left. “It seems that you’re the only one that’s immune,” Jegra managed to say with some effort.

  “Because I’m a mod,” Danica said, only half certain.

  “There’s not time to discuss the details. We’ve…got…ngh...to…” Jegra grunted even louder and collapsed to her side, then, after straining against her own body–which was acting as though it were possessed by some kind of demon–fell onto her side and curled up into a fetal position.

  Her face turned beet red, as she fought off the pure sensation of lust and the urge to force herself on Danica. That’s when the intensity of it hit her. It was so powerful, she had to fight just to stay conscious.

  “I can hear them,” Jegra muttered.

  “Who? Who can you hear?” Danica asked.

  “My mind…it’s…ngh…somehow linked with the others. It’s…ngh…overwhelming.”

  “How is this even possible?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered with great effort, fighting off the flood of voices that penetrated her consciousness. “But it feels like I’m losing my mind. Go!” she shouted. “Hurry.”

  Danica, reluctant to leave the empress’s side, did as ordered and slowly turned away. As difficult as it was leaving her like that, she had her orders: Save the ship.

  Back on the bridge, Danica’s fingers danced across the controls of the navigation station as she frantically charted a clean exit point. Once she got the coordinates inputted, all she had to do was watch the fusion core temperature levels. Once they dropped back down to optimal range, she’d hit the button and bring the ship full stop.