The Corrupted Star

by Martin HC

  “Stay out of trouble Captain and your stay here will be... uneventful, which I believe is all you will want, I will send for you if I must.”

  Damon simply nodded, figuring the situation was as good as it could be and relieved that it wasn't as bad as it should be.

  He was led off the command deck and to his suite, and true to the commander's word, the large boarding marine who so aggressively took the Ophelia, now saluted him before leaving. Damon found it incredible that despite him being non fleet and their prisoner, the marine had no bitterness in his demeanour, or negative expression at all as he performed the customary honour to a higher rank. True discipline he thought.

  The room itself was larger than anything he'd ever stayed in before and decorated with ornate beauty, it was a world apart from the standard surroundings of the flagship. Relief along with other varied emotions began flooding through him again as the adrenaline fell away. He sat down with his head in his hands as a rather less pleasant emotion, guilt, threw itself into the mix. It was his decisions and his leadership that pulled his crew into this mess, and here he sat in splendour.

  The Early Bird Gets the Worm

  In the silence of the semi-darkened room, a crackling of energy filled the air, taking its time to form into something more solid. A window opened in the centre, carefully expanding to become a doorway, its energy remaining within its own borders, controlled and contained.

  A figure stepped through, head sweeping from right to left before the doorway of energy closed again in on itself.

  The solidness of the heavy wooden table in the centre of the room, which now only had two legs, crashed against the floor behind the figure, causing it to hunch down. The figure then cringed as objects made of delicate glass which previously sat on the table, now smashed against one another on the floor, each individual smashing noise causing the figure to jerk, cringing a little more each time.

  “Ah, crap.” Haydn spoke.

  He looked around a little more, taking longer to sweep his head this time, eyes now adjusting to the very dull lighting of the room, he was where he wanted to be, it must have been Feissa's suite. It was elegant with soft seats and large pillows, decorative lamps, small ornaments, pictures on the walls and a now half table lying on the floor with a pile of broken glass below it.

  “Well now, quite the entrance my love.”

  Haydn spun round like a child caught with the cookie jar. She'd been at the wall behind him as he entered, stood beside a sideboard pouring herself a drink. The sideboard had many bottles sat on top of different shapes and sizes, and a single lamp cast its dull light across her body.

  Her long shining silver blouse stopped a third of the way down her thighs, and the buttons were done up just high enough, barely covering her chest. Through its figure hugging shape, he could see no traces of underwear.

  It took a few seconds to process what his eyes were registering, and a long second more to rip his vision off of her seductive figure, so his attention now sat fixed on a very uninteresting picture of a yellow and green flower, about one metre to her right.

  She was enjoying his stunned silence but ultimately filled it, “is this how you usually make an entrance into a girl's room, by breaking the glassware and staring at her half nakedness?”

  “I'm really sorry about that, we know the shape and size of the rooms before we open the doorway, but not what's in it or where,” his agitation was clear and she smiled all the more for it.

  “Relax sweety, I have no interest in tables and glass,” she told him, with his still averted gaze looking at the wall. “You're early?”

  “The Ferrens are here, they're doing something on the Ophelia, we don't know what... and I got really bored with waiting.”

  “You're breaking my heart here, you sneak into my suite and find me here like this, only to talk about the Ferrens.”

  He looked back at her again now, uncertain of what to say next, the glint in her eye along with her mischievous smile threw his concentration off, so he said nothing and waited for a more sensible reply.

  “Very well,” she said, sounding a little deflated. “Babaidou has changed the plan, again, presumably to throw any counter plans you have off course. I can't see them taking much longer on the Ophelia, they're expecting you to arrive only a few hours from now.”

  “Do you know what they're doing over there?”

  “I have no idea, they destroyed her external sensors and radar, then ordered us to surround the ship. I'm guessing it's to ensure we are destroyed first should you come in all guns blazing.”

  Feissa lifted her drink to her lips and sipped at it, never breaking eye contact.

  “Have you found where they're holding Brenn?”

  “Yes, and your very beguiling lover is aware of which ship to find him on, that was all I could find out before the Ferrens placed us on a communications lock-down.”

  “Where is Jill?”

  “In my bedroom love, reading as I left.”

  “In your bedroom,” the next question was uncertain and slow to come out. “Why?”

  “With the lamplight silhouetting her body through the thin clothing, she began walking around the broken table and moved slowly towards him.

  “Does it bother you?” she answered, stopping directly in front of him, staring up into his eyes with her hand still holding the glass.

  “No,” he answered. “I'm just, not sure what's happening right now.”

  Her face moved towards his, her lips barely an inch away, and her entrancing gaze captured all of Haydn's attention.

  “What would you like to happen right now?” her question was slow, he could feel the warmth of her breath as she spoke and smell something sweet.

  It took everything he had in him to overcome his urges, but successfully he fought them down, his head moved backwards fractionally as he answered her.

  “You're probably one of the most beautiful women I've ever met, but I'm thinking Jill would kill me in my sleep if I answer that, so you should probably take me to her.”

  She only smiled at him, the rejection seemingly doing nothing to break her morale.

  “Oh how sweet, good looking and loyal,” she responded, then stepped off past him towards a door. “She is a lucky lady, follow me.”

  The view from the rear as she led him through the door was just as entrancing as the front, so follow he did.

  Stepping to the side once through and letting him enter the room, it was dim like the living room, but his now adjusted eyes could see the plush surroundings clearly. Furniture, ornaments and pictures decorated the large room while dresses, shoes and underwear had been thrown haphazardly onto the floor and chairs. Feissa clearly loved an organised mess, but most eye catching was the bed, the bed itself was standard, if a little larger than necessary but not empty, in the middle of the bed lying on her stomach and leafing through a magazine was Jill.

  The magazine was of a rare paper style, showing various types of dress and clothing, Jill herself was more naked than Feissa, unlike the blouse worn by the cartel bombshell she wore nothing but black underpants, his lover looked up as he approached and smiled widely.

  “Jill, are you alright?” he asked.

  “I'm fine,” she answered, looking past him to Feissa, he didn't follow her look.

  “Where are your clothes?”

  “In the corner.”

  “Is that a fashion magazine?”

  “Yes, is that a problem?”

  “What, no, I'm just a little off centre. I mean you're lying naked on the bed, she's wearing next to nothing too and you're reading a fashion magazine, I never even knew you had an interest in fashion.”

  Jill shifted onto her side now, putting her toned and lean body on display as Feissa spoke from behind.

  “Well, you didn't think the hair thing was for some other reason surely?”

  He turned at her question and froze, she was now more naked than Jill, the blouse she wore sat in a pile at her feet, her golden hair fel
l over one shoulder and as Haydn thought, she wore no underwear.

  “I... it's...”

  “You did, it's funny how men can really be so clueless at times,” she answered for him before moving directly towards the dumbstruck man, her every step captivating him more and more. “You're a lucky woman, he turned me down in the other room.”

  “He must have more willpower than me then, because I didn't,” Jill answered from directly behind, he hadn't even heard her get off the bed, let alone her silent approach.

  “You see my love, unlike you, we've been anything but bored.” Feissa purred up at him.

  Her eyes shone as she reached up with a hand, pulling his face down onto hers and kissing him, he enjoyed the long and soft kiss while Jill slid her hands around his chest and began removing his clothes.

  When it's Worse Than You Thought

  “Wait, I see something,” Serena told the group. “It's Kaell, she's OK.”

  “What's she doing, where is she?” Arlan asked her, having recovered from his bash to the mouth.

  “She's wired a spare camera into my network, it looks like she's in a duct somewhere but I'm not sure which one,” she answered. “Hold on, she's not finished yet, she's got a comms piece that she's still rigging together.”

  Serena threw the image of the kid up on the main display, she was in a cramped maintenance passage, lit up by torchlight and surrounded by wires and electronics. In her hand she held a wireless communications headset which had been stripped apart, with her other hand she was rigging it into the network with a cable.

  “Is that... a child? Why is she using wires? She knows it's wireless, right?” Kas asked them.

  “Yes, I'm sure she's more than aware it's wireless sonny,” Arlan answered him. “If she's wiring it in then she must have her reasons, been around here much longer than you have, she's smart, smarter than you, knows what she's doing.”

  “You can't wire a wireless headset directly into a network, it's not possible, or at least it shouldn't be.”

  “You have a lot to learn, sonny.”

  “It looks like she's isolated the headsets wireless components from the matrix and bridged it onto a hot jack, likely made from those ripped apart components behind her,” Serena told them.

  “Yes, seems so, although I'm not sure how,” Arlan answered her.

  Kas just remained quiet, he had no idea what she'd done, or what a hot jack even was, let alone how to construct one out of other butchered electronic parts.

  “She's saying something to the camera now,” Arlan said.

  “I still can't hear her, I don't think it worked,” Kas told them.

  “She's asking me to locate and calibrate the headset,” Serena told them. “Give me a second.”

  Her voice came through over the bridge room's speakers, it was young, almost a whisper, full of rebellion and she spoke in perfect common.

  “..eleive there's so many adults on this boat and I'm the one stuck in a filthy hatch...”

  “Kaell, we hear you.”

  “Oh... good, well it's about time, I never told you my name, who told you my name?”

  “Tira.”

  “Which Tira?”

  “There's only one Tira.”

  “Yes, I know, I meant was it the one that knows who she is? Or the one that's a little less capable.”

  “The second one.”

  “I knew telling her was a bad idea, she can't keep secrets.”

  “Kid, what are you doing in there?” Kas asked her before turning to the other two, “why is she even on this ship?”

  “I've been here much longer than you, tell him not to speak again,” she ordered the crew. “He annoys me.”

  Kas looked at the others

  “You heard the lady,” Arlan told him.

  Serena shrugged.

  “Kaell, where are you, and what are you doing?”

  “I'm above the core room, they have nukes, look.”

  She pointed the camera down through a duct in the floor, it showed them the engineering deck, the antimatter core sat in the centre and around it Ferren technicians worked hurriedly on eight devices, the unmistakable markings of nuclear goods scrawled across the top of them.

  “They don't look like nukes,” Arlan told her.

  “I know, I think they're covered in a special shielding, to stop people from picking up their signature, they're running ECM, hence me having to wire in the headset.”

  “Why would they set up nukes around the core?” Kas asked them.

  “Because they're going to blow it up, us along with it all,” Kaell hissed at him.

  “They've wrecked our comms, externally, and the device beside the bridge has been destroyed, we can't warn the heathens. Is there anything you can think of?” Arlan asked.

  She sat quietly, thinking for several seconds, “no, I can't get the comms up again, not if they've trashed everything, but I can disable the nukes when they leave.”

  “No, you have no idea how they're wired, or set up, they could have anti tamper switches which would blow them early,” Arlan insisted.

  “Oh please, you make it sound hard, it's only nuclear bombs, I could...”

  “No, it's too dangerous, just try to make it back to us here in the bridge and use the shafts, they've welded the doors shut, Tira and Haydn are coming for us, they have a plan,” Serena commanded, backing up Arlan.

  “Fine... but you'll need to dismantle the duct from your side so I can get in... and new guy better not speak to me.”

  The sound and video feed cut out and the bridge fell into silence, Serena smiled again.

  “She spoke to us, not just you Arlan but all of us, she even speaks like a typical little girl, I'm so happy.”

  “Getting her to talk was never my problem, she wouldn't stop, always going on about learning nuclear fusion, nuclear fusion this, nuclear fusion that, how did we get to the nuclear plasma core... it's getting her to listen that's the issue.”

  “Don't care old man, I'm happy.”

  “Haydn & Tira, who are these people really? How can you even trust them to come help?” Kas interrupted the pair. “Did you see what was in that room? They're going to kill us, even if your friends get here, how could they possibly help?”

  “I expect they'll just walk through the wall,” Arlan answered.

  “What does that even mean?”

  “Kas, you trust me don't you?” Serena asked him.

  “Yes, but I don't see how we can get out of this.”

  “Trust me now, they'll come through for us, they can do things no one else can't.”

  “OK, but no one told me there was a child on this ship. I've heard you talking about a kid, but I thought it was like, the Kid. A nickname or something. Isn't it a little dangerous right now?”

  “Yes, but she's often never actually seen, she hides mostly. Hates people in general, especially hates it when they try to talk to her.”

  Serena spent the next while detailing Kaell's background to Kas, he was astounded to hear of her resilience, surviving alone with no parents for years on a conflict torn fringe colony, this was not something any child could accomplish.

  A Woman Can Dream

  Jill leaned over and kissed her lover's cheek, Feissa lay half covered by a quilt on the other side of him with her eyes closed, all three of them lay naked together on the oversized bed.

  “Your scars are gone.”

  “Tira took care of them for me before I left, turns out she could remove them and leave the tattoos.”

  “Cool, I'm guessing she also sorted you out for the transporter, you weren't doing the usual shaking on the floor thing the last time you went through it.”

  “Yes, and speaking of, I have to get moving, it's about that time.”

  “Shame, I was getting really used to this,” he smiled, nodding his head at the other woman. “Do you know where to find Brenn?”

  “Yes I know which ship he's on, these cartel ships are all frigates, same design and they're sma
ll, he'll be easy to find and Feissa gave me a master unlock on all the security systems,” she answered him, climbing slowly out the bed as she did so. Her lean figure drew his unwavering attention as she began fitting herself back into her custom made outfit.

  He watched her yank every strap tight, pull up each zip, and finally begin sliding blades expertly into positions concealing them completely from view. Fully dressed now, she approached him and kissed his face once more, then slid a hand down behind the bed above his head, and drew out a final dagger.