Burning Bright: A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure (Star Justice Book 5)

by Michael-Scott Earle

  He roared back in my face, and his eyes showed no hint of fear. My claws tore into his face and yanked out half of his brain from the front of his skull. Then I tossed the bloody mass onto the floor and stood up from his twitching corpse.

  Zea, Eve, Kasta, and Paula were somewhere on this ship, and I was going to find them.

  “Eye yah,” a voice said from behind me, and I turned to see a beautiful woman standing behind me. Her hair was the color of platinum, or maybe it was gold, or maybe it was rhodium. It fell down her shoulders like waves of precious metal, and the dim lights from the bridge reflected off every strand as if they had their own light source.

  She wore a tight, black lace bodysuit that showed almost more creamy skin than actual fabric. There was a thin skirt to the outfit, but it attached to the hips of her bodysuit in only a few places and draped around her long legs like a spider web.

  Two angel wings extended from her back, but each feather was a hue of deep black, and it almost seemed as if the light of the bridge couldn’t escape the heavy shade of the color.

  “I know you,” I whispered. “How?”

  “Eye yah,” she whispered, but the words didn’t make sense to me.

  “Who are you?” I took a step toward her, and then another, and then I was standing close enough to touch her. Unlike the dark-haired woman in the chair, this angel gave off an aura of kindness and love. I didn’t know how I understood this, but I knew she loved me.

  “Eye yahhhh,” she whispered as she reached her fingers up to touch my face. The sensation was beyond pleasurable, and I reached my own hand up to feel the smoothness of her skin. My hand was human now, not a tiger’s, and her skin felt impossibly smooth and warm.

  Then I was kissing her. The strange woman’s lips shot warm electrical shocks of pleasure through my body. The animal purred with contentment, and it seemed as if I was floating in a warm pool of massaging water. This was where I belonged. Here, with this woman, and I only pulled my mouth away from her kiss so I would not lose myself completely.

  “Persephone?” I asked as I stared into her eyes. Her irises seemed to drift between the color spectrum, and I couldn’t tell if they were really blue, or red, or yellow, or green, or white, or black, or any of the shades between.

  “Eyeee yaaahh,” another voice spoke, and I turned away from the woman I had my arms wrapped around. It was another dark angel woman, but her hair was a muted red color that mixed with her blonde locks liked spun rose-gold.

  “Yaaaa,” the winged-woman who just kissed me said, and the other one fixed her eyes on me.

  Then she walked toward me, reached up with her hands, and pulled my mouth to hers.

  The kiss was as wonderful as it was with the first winged woman, and two pairs of hands slid across my bare skin while our tongues danced. I pulled my lips from the woman with the rose-colored hair, and the dark angel I thought was Persephone pushed her lips back into mine urgently.

  “Zea? Where are you?” I heard a voice say, and the two-winged women entwined with me let out a gasp.

  “I’m in the Captain’s room picking up his guns,” I heard Zea say, and then I turned my face away from my pillow.

  “Picking up his guns? Is that what they are calling it nowadays? You should say, ‘riding his big gun,’ or something more clever.” It could have been Kasta or Paula’s voice, but I guessed it was Kasta’s since Paula seemed to shy away from teasing Zea.

  “He’s asleep,” Zea hissed. “I’m trying to be quiet. I don’t want to wake him--”

  “Too late,” I groaned.

  “Ahh shit. I’m so sorry,” Zea was crouched next to my pile of weapons and clothes I’d left on the floor.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I probably need to wake up anyway.” I rolled over onto my back and then sat up in my bed.

  “Looks like part of you is already awake,” the hacker said as she stood. I followed her eyes to my groin and saw that I was pitching a major tent within my sheets.

  “I was having a dream,” I said with a chuckle.

  “A dream? Was I in it?” She smirked.

  “Probably. Look at this,” I said as I gestured at my sheets. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “A little over twenty-four earth hours. We are going to come out of hyperspace in another four, so I thought I’d get around to picking up your laundry and putting your guns back in the armory.” The hacker shrugged as her eyes strayed back to my bed sheet.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “It’s well below your pay grade.”

  “Wait, I actually get paid? How much?” Her blue eyes opened wide, and her words were filled with sarcasm.

  “Free room and board,” I replied with a laugh.

  “Deal,” she said, “but I didn’t hear anything about food in there, which is too fucking bad because I’m starving. So is Paula. Eve seems fine though, and Kasta doesn’t seem to really care.”

  “I can actually eat if I want to,” the android replied through Zea’s transponder, and the hacker’s eyes opened wide with surprise.

  “What the fuck? Are you eavesdropping?” Zea snarled.

  “Hey, you were the one who didn’t turn it off. I just wish this had a video on it. I want to know what part of the captain you said was already awake.”

  “For the love of fuck. Use your imagination,” Zea moaned.

  “I’m an android. I can’t use my imagination.” Kasta’s words were filled with pain.

  “Uhh. Shit, I uhh. Yeah.” Zea’s shoulders slumped a little. She looked at me, but I just shrugged. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”

  “I’m totally fucking with you, Zea,” Kasta said with a laugh. “I have a great imagination. Still, wish I had a video though. You and the captain should make me--”

  “I’m turning off my transponder now!” Zea shouted into the device, and I noticed that her cheeks were bright red.

  “I should take a shower, I didn’t have a chance to before I passed out.” I turned toward my bathroom and stared at the open doorway. For an instant, I thought it should have been at another part of my room, but it had always been there. I wondered if I was having some weird jamais vu moment.

  “Uhhh. Yeah. Shower. Before you do that, I wanted to update you on the Parnarta file.”

  “What did you find out?” I had my legs stretched out on the other side of the bed, so I turned to face her. Her cheeks were bright red now, and she avoided making eye contact.

  “I haven’t finished running my software to uncorrupt it, but I’ve watched about fifteen seconds of it with everyone else. Parnarta is a planet, but it isn’t in Persephone’s navigation software under that name. The video showed A Nebula Gammon mining director’s video log. They just arrived on the planet and were prepping dig sites. They were excited because the planet was almost a perfect Goldilocks. It didn’t need terraforming, and their scanners were estimating the crust had great rhodium potential.”

  “I don’t think we need to try hard to guess what they found there,” I said to her with a smirk.

  “Well, we haven’t seen all of it. But yeah, I’m gonna guess they found SAVO assholes.”

  “SAVO?” I asked.

  “Superpowered Asshole Vampire Overlord… uhh assholes. I’ll probably always say it with an additional ‘asshole,’ for good measure.” Zea grinned.

  “Works for me. How long until the video is finished.”

  “Another hour, or two. I didn’t have anything to really fix it. I had to write something to try and patch it together. The file is unbelievably old and has been copied over a bunch of times, which shouldn’t have really mattered, but its condition is bad. I think it must have been retrieved from a damaged drive, maybe even a few times. Or, it could have been deleted on purpose, and then someone tried to put it back together.”

  “Why would Nebula Gammon delete the file?” I asked.

  “I’m just throwing out ideas. When I say this file is old, I’m thinking at least a hundred years, maybe two hundred. Th
e date it was copied into this mainframe is over a hundred years ago. I don’t know how long Nebula Gammon has been in existence, but the guy in the video seemed wet behind the ears. It might have been one of their first explorations.”

  “Alright,” I said. “I guess we’ll know more about it once your program does its magic. What location did you all decide on before we left Queen’s Hat?” I got out of the bed and then walked into the bathroom before Zea could answer.

  “Uhhh. Can you ask the question again? I was staring at your ass and didn’t hear a damn thing you just said.” Zea called out from the other room.

  “Where are we going?” I asked again as I grabbed my toothbrush.

  “It’s supposed to be a terraformed world in system GUAAY - 23. Planet “c” to be exact. Juliette sent me her old pilot’s navigation data log, and that location was on our way to Epsilon Tauri - b. It also had a manifest hit from a ship that docked at Queen’s Hat fifteen Earth months ago. Said they were a livestock trading ship. Makes me think it might be a ranching or farming planet like Gliese 876 - c - ii was.”

  “It was a good call. Thanks for figuring it out so I could sleep,” I said around a mouthful of toothbrush and paste.

  “Wasn’t all me. We made a democratic decision.”

  I finished brushing my teeth and turned on the water for my shower. It was set to the temperature I liked, and I stepped in a few seconds after it started.

  “Uhhh, Adam?” Zea’s voice came in through the doorway.

  “Yeah?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about some stuff,” she said hesitantly. “I was thinking back in District H…”

  She didn’t say anything for a few moments, so I looked out of the glass of my shower. It was already foggy from the steam, but I could see her outline leaning against the doorframe of my bathroom.

  “You mentioned something about it, but we didn’t have time to talk.”

  “That’s our life, constantly on the run. Even now we are running somewhere,” she started. “I was in that dark room with Juliette, and then she left to go take out the sniper. Then I was alone in the darkness. It just got me thinking about everything again. The stuff with you, Eve, and me. You could have died. Fuck, we could all die any second. I felt incredibly lonely, and scared, and fuck… I dunno. I realized I was looking at this situation all wrong. I’ve got two people who love me, and I’m pushing them away because I just want one of them exclusively. If you died back on Queen’s Hat, I would have regretted not being with you.”

  “I get it,” I said as I leaned my head against the tile on the shower wall.

  “We don’t have a lot of time left. I never really thought much about my future on Trappist -1e. After Mom had died, and I got my revenge, I figured I’d freelance, maybe find the right guy, maybe one day have kids if I could afford it. Most of it was living job to job and trying to have fun. I never thought much of others.”

  “I’ve been there,” I said.

  “No, you haven’t. Everything you’ve done has been for other people. I don’t know exactly why you joined the Jupiter Marines, but it was probably to help your mom and sister out. Am I right?”

  “Yeah. It was,” I admitted.

  “Then you quit because they needed more help. Then you joined the Yakuza for them. Then you gave up your freedom for them. You’ve never done a selfish thing in your entire life. That’s why we all love you. We know you’ll take care of us. Even Juliette sees it, and she’s only spent a few hours with you.”

  “Maybe,” I said as I tried to keep my thoughts away from the feeling of the handcuffs on my wrist.

  The sound of the bars closing over my jail cell.

  The pain of the injections when they experimented on me.

  The sensation on the control collar around my neck.

  The look on the children's faces in Queen’s Hat when I ran past them in my tiger-man form.

  “Even this thing with Eve and I, you don’t want it because you think it will hurt us.”

  “No, that’s not it. I just--”

  “Bullshit,” she interrupted me. “You are hiding behind your honor. What if I told you that I need this? That Eve needs this? She’s been stuck in a tube for who the fuck knows how many years. I thought about her a lot when I was up alone in the office. I was starting to go crazy after only a few minutes, she’s been alone forever.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a sigh.

  “I already talked to her,” Zea said.

  “You did?”

  “Like I said, sitting alone in the dark got me thinking. She gets me, but I never got her. Now I do. She’s my best friend, so are you. I want us to be together.”

  “I still need time to--”

  “No. Stop being such an ass. I’m not very optimistic about our future. I felt the power of that SAVO asshole. These things ruled the galaxy. We’re a band of misfits who stole a ship. We don’t stand a chance, but I’m not going to back down. I want to fight them, and I don’t want to spend the brief time we have agonizing about the morality of activities that will make my friends feel good.”

  “I still--”

  “You always help others. You’ve said you love us. We need you.”

  I closed my eyes and took a long breath. What would my mom or sister think about this? They would have loved Zea and Eve, and I hoped I could see them again someday.

  They would be happy that all these wonderful women cared about me.

  “How much time until we come out of hyperdrive?” I asked her over the sound of my shower.

  “Four-ish hours. The video will be done in two.” Her voice sounded hopeful.

  “Can you get Eve?” I asked.

  “I am already here, Adam.” Eve’s voice drifted over the sound of the water, and I saw her outline join Zea’s in the doorway of my bathroom.

  “That’s convenient,” I said with a chuckle. “Seems like you two had this planned.”

  “Not quite. I felt both of your emotions from the bridge and decided to come. I apologize for eavesdropping.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, but then the three of us stood in silence for a few moments.

  “Sooo, ughh, now I’m all nervous,” Zea said with a laugh. “How does this work?”

  “I still need to take a shower,” I said. “Haven’t even touched the soap yet.”

  “It is a large shower,” Eve commented.

  “And I know how to wash backs.” Zea let out another nervous laugh. “It’s a bit below my pay grade, but I’ll make an exception today.”

  “Then you both should get in here,” I said as I opened the door of the shower.

  Chapter 6

  “The video should be ready soon,” Zea whispered in my right ear. The sound of her voice pulled me from my foggy state, and I forced my heavy eyelids open.

  “Feels like it’s only been a few minutes,” I whispered.

  “Uhh. No. that was way better than a few minutes. Way, way, way, better than a few minutes.” Zea sighed with content and then bit my earlobe gently.

  “I think Eve is asleep.” I glanced down to see the black-haired beauty’s head. She lay with her head on the left side of my chest, and her bare leg was wrapped around my left leg.

  “I don’t want to get out of bed.” Zea sighed again, but she slowly slid her leg off my right as if she was going to leave.

  “We still have a couple of hours until we are out of hyperdrive,” I whispered to her, and then I pulled her mouth to mine so I could kiss her for the hundredth time.

  “Pretty sure you are going to break me if we go again.” She let out a soft giggle. “So, I’ll let you two have some alone time while I make sure the video is fixed.”

  “Okay,” I replied, but then we kissed again. Our passion flared until I thought she was close to pushing Eve’s leg away so she could straddle me again.

  “Ohh, damn. You are addicting.” Zea sighed when our kiss broke, and she bit my lip once more before she pushed away from me.

  “We’ll be out
soon,” I said as I watched her tiptoe away on long legs. She bent over to pick up her suit, and I got a great view of the body I’d just enjoyed for the last few hours. Then she turned to me while she put her foot into the garment.

  Zea gave me a smirk when she saw I was watching her put on the skin-tight suit. Then she blew me a kiss before she snuck out of the room. The kiss was a charming motion, and I let my eyes drift closed while I recalled every detail of the last few hours.

  I was worried our lovemaking would have been awkward, or clumsy, or that there would have been some jealousy, but the three of us had melded together as if we’d been lovers for years, and I guessed Eve’s ability to read minds helped with the experience. I had been able to give each of the women plenty of attention, and they both returned the kindness to me.

  “I am happy you enjoyed yourself,” Eve whispered.

  “I thought you were sleeping,” I said.

  “I did for a while, but I felt Zea leave.”

  “She didn’t want to wake you,” I replied.

  “I know,” the beautiful woman purred and then shifted her body so she could look up into my face. “I am so grateful for this. Thank you for changing your mind.”

  “Zea made some good points. I don’t want you, or her, to be alone anymore,” I said as I wrapped my arms around her.

  “But it is okay for you to be alone?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me and Zea. It also matters to Paula and Kasta.”

  “Let’s not involve the twins in this,” I said with a laugh, and Eve grinned.

  “You are a prime man. That is what attracts us to you. Serving us before yourself and sacrificing so we can have more.”

  “I wouldn’t call the last few hours a sacrifice,” I said with a laugh.

  “Most men feel women should serve them,” Eve said. “I’ve looked into enough of their souls to know their desires. You are a good man.”

  “Thanks,” I said, but I thought again about the jail, the control collar, and the children who screamed when they saw me running through Queen’s Hat.