Authors: Lisa Lace
"Kenna, come to the bridge, immediately," Dar's excited voice came through. "We've got the information."
"Okay," I said. "On my way."
I made my way through the halls as quickly as I could, saying hello to the crew members that I knew and smiling to those I didn't.
As I came around the corner, I saw my favorite engineer. We had breakfast together sometimes in the cafeteria. He was an older man and always cheerful, friendly, and kind.
"Hey Carson," I said as he approached me.
"Kenna, how are you?" he said, giving me a broad smile.
"Good, just heading over to the..."
My voice trailed off as I stared at the spot where Carson had been standing a moment before.
He was gone.
And not like it had been a transporter beam, either. There was a shimmery quality to a person the instant before they were transported.
Carson had suddenly and silently, with absolutely no warning whatsoever, completely vanished.
Oh shit.
It had begun.
I took off at a run.
"We need to infiltrate," Jared was saying when I arrived.
"Dar," I said, out of breath from running so fast. "Dar!"
"Kenna?" he said coming over to me, with a concerned look on his face. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. Carson. The engineer."
"Yes, I know him. What about Carson?"
"He disappeared."
"What?" he said, in alarm.
"I said hello to him, and he vanished. No transport. Nothing."
Mana got up from her console. Jared turned away from the view screen where he had been studying the alien ship. Fear was evident on their faces.
"Then it's begun," Mana said.
"Like I said," Jared repeated, his face taking on a stern expression. "Someone needs to infiltrate. We can't possibly plan an attack or even a defense if we don't know who the enemy is. Trust me. I attacked enough planets, space stations, and vessels in my time with the AEA to know. They always sent someone in to find out the strengths and weaknesses of the other side."
"It's too dangerous," Mana argued. "These aren't descendants of the Great Race. We're in completely alien territory."
"No pun intended, I assume?" I whispered, and I saw Dar smile before his face got serious again.
"Jared, she's right. There's no way we can risk you going in there alone. Who knows what you might find? And how are you going to get inside? We can't transport on to their ship. We've tried hailing them â nothing. You may be walking right into a trap."
"I've done these missions before. They're dangerous but I came back from every one of them," Jared said, his eyes intense. "Kenna, Dar. You guys saved me when I would have let myself die. Let me do this for you. I'm the only one on this ship who has the necessary experience and training to pull it off."
"You're not the only one," Mana said, her face expressionless. "There is one other person on board who has served in covert operations."
"Mana, no," Dar said, frowning.
"Who is it?" I said, not following. "Who else has the training?"
The men stared at Mana. She looked me in the eye before speaking.
"You're not going in there alone. Prepare a shuttle for us, Dar. He's right. It's our only option."
DAR
"Mana, I can't let you do this," I said, staring at my oldest friend with fear and sadness in my heart. What if I never saw her again?
"You can, and you will," she said, her face showing only a trace of sorrow as she strapped on a pack and prepared to board the ship. She was wearing black combat gear and had her blonde hair braided neatly. She always kept her emotions under tight control, but I knew she was as affected by this parting as I was. We had known each other a long time.
We had already said good-bye to Jared, who was on board and starting a systems check. She shook Kenna's hand and then turned to me. I felt like crying but held it together.
I pulled her into a tight hug, and she hugged me back.
"I love you," I whispered in her ear.
She nodded, her eyes bright with tears.
"I'll be back. Don't worry. Jared and I know what we're doing."
"And you've got the tracking devices, right?"
She held up her left arm showing the thin screen I plastered on the inside of her forearm. We had several other gadgets installed so that we could hear them and monitor their vital signs. They also had cameras strapped to their foreheads for us to see what they saw.
"May The Three keep you safe," I said and put my hands into a triangle, making the sign of The Three. She did the same and then boarded the space craft.
As the door closed, I felt my heart clench, and I wondered once more if I would ever see my best friend again.
"Come on, Kenna. We've got work to do," I said, taking her hand.
"I'm surprised you didn't insist on going yourself this time," she said as we walked down the corridor.
"That would have truly been foolish. I cannot risk my life like that. It would not be responsible as the king of Susohn," I said.
I might have sounded a tiny bit pompous.
"Oh," she said. And the word spoke volumes.
I supposed that she was right. It had been careless and irresponsible of me to come on this mission in the first place. Three more crew members had already disappeared, and it was entirely possible I could be next.
But boarding the alien vessel would be way past what could be considered a reasonable course of action.
I'm not quite sure why I had insisted on coming at all. I guess I was getting a bit tired of my straight-laced life. Going to that party with the commoners and meeting Kenna had been the start of it all.
The adventure Kenna and I had when we escaped the terrorists made me feel alive.
I didn't want that feeling to stop. Coming on this mission was a way of prolonging that sense of freedom.
I strode onto the bridge and nodded to the officers on duty. On the view screen, Jared and Mana's shuttle was moving away from our ship. A moment later, they cloaked and vanished. We continued to track them by computer, a blinking dot showing their location as they approached the vessel.
I felt a lump in my throat as we watched them link with the enemy ship. Kenna took my hand and leaned her head on my arm. Jared and Mana were no doubt breaking into the alien vessel as we watched. I turned my eyes away, unable to look any longer in case they were vaporized, blasted, or boarded.
Instead, I looked at a screen on the side wall that was monitoring their vital signs. It showed their head cameras in small squares in the bottom corners of the main screen. I spoke to an ensign, and the audio feed began playing.
There was a muffled bang. I imagined an explosive going off, blasting a hole in the hull for entry. The cams showed the hole as Jared and Mana crawled through.
I held my breath as they stood up inside the enemy spacecraft. We had no idea what was on the other side of the wall.
"Ensign, please show the two cameras split screen on the main view screen."
"Yes, your majesty," she said.
We watched as they turned and looked around at their surroundings.
"What the hell is this place, Mana?" Jared's voice came over the audio feed.
"If I had to guess, I'd say it was a jail," she said.
She was probably right. It looked like a big holding cell. There were four walls, but no furniture. A toilet sat in one corner. The door was thick reinforced metal with only a small window near the top. There were manacles hanging from the walls.
"Forty-eight, forty-nine...fifty," Jared said. "Fifty sets of handcuffs, Manadwell."
They tried the door and found it open.
"We're on the move," Jared said into his comm device.
They walked down a metal corridor with grate flooring. Mana peered into each room, and we saw that every single one was exactly the same. I could hear Jared counting the doors as they walked down the hall.
"Wait, stop, Mana," he said after about half an hour of this. She turned to look at him, and we had a clear view of both of them in the other's head cam. "Fifty manacles in each cell. So far two hundred cells in this corridor alone. That's..."
"Ten thousand," came her answer without a moment's hesitation.
"Ten thousand and we didn't even finish this corridor. Did you do that scan?"
"It's done," she said interrupting him. "Whatever was blocking our scanning devices before, isn't in effect here. I'm transferring the data now."
Another screen began to scroll through information from Mana. A floor plan flashed past.
"Ensign, pull up that floor plan on another screen, please."
I stared at it in horror.
"Oh no," Kenna said, putting her hand over her mouth.
There were thousands upon thousands of the cell blocks like the one containing Mana and Jared.
"Your majesty, those blinking dots are Carson and the other crew members that disappeared," the ensign said.
"Jared and Mana," I said, speaking to them directly for the first time. "It looks like they're planning on collecting a hell of a lot of bodies."
"Roger that, your majesty," came Mana's voice.
"You are to return to the ship immediately. We know enough to guess that you are in grave danger. I repeat, return immediately."
"But Dar!" Jared said, about to protest.
"That's an order," I said.
"Yes, sir," Mana said. Jared wasn't happy but followed her at a jog back down the endless corridor of cells.
I watched them nervously, feeling like I was watching a movie where the heroes are almost home free, and you're rooting for them to make it out of danger.
We DO have movies on Susohn, by the way.
When they got back inside their entry cell, I breathed a sigh of relief. They would make a clean getaway.
Time to release this tension.
As soon as I could see they would be safe, I whispered in Kenna's ear. "I need you."
She looked at me, puzzled. But the urge to make love to her was becoming too pressing to ignore. I had to take her desperately.
"I need you." I repeated.
She still stared at me, not getting it.
"It's my mating cycle," I whispered. "Please. It will only take a minute."
"Sounds romantic," she said. "Where?"
"There's only one place that's close where no one will be able to reach us," I said. "Follow me in a second."
I walked purposefully towards the exit that led into the captain's office.
"Ensign Moray, you have the bridge. I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Yes, sir," she said. She didn't even looking up.
I could feel Kenna following me. As soon as we were through the doors, I locked them. There was a spot on the wall that required both a retina scan and a saliva sample for entry. A door slid open, and we stepped through.
I stepped through. Kenna paused at the entrance.
"What the hell is this place?" Kenna said, looking around at the small room. The sparse furnishings consisted of a bed and a tiny kitchen in one corner. The other corner was a bathroom big enough for exactly one person.
"It's a safe place for the captain when assailants attack us. We call it a strategy room, but I think you might be more familiar with the term 'panic room'. It will do for our purposes. There are no communications in here, and transporter beams don't work."
I grabbed her and threw her on the bed.
She let out a squeak, and I had her pants around her ankles in a matter of seconds.
"Do you want me, Kenna?" I said, not forgetting.
"Strangely enough, I do," she said, her breathing coming faster. I leaned over and planted a kiss on the triangle shaped scar the graced her upper left thigh.
I remembered how much she had risked for that scar, and I thanked The Three that she was still with me.
She hissed when my lips touched it and when I slid my finger between her thighs a moment later, I could feel the gush of her arousal. She was slippery. I wanted to slide deep inside her immediately.
But Susohnnan males are trained from adolescence for two things about relations with a woman: to get verbal permission to make love to a female and to make sure she always comes first.
And the fastest way to get a woman coming that I knew of was...
I bent my head and flicked her clit with my tongue.
"Oh, holy Mary, mother of God," she said, and I spread her legs wider. I tasted her again. Fuck, she was sweet.
Soon she was moaning and thrashing. She pulled on my hair, making me get up.
"I want you inside me, now," she said, her eyes hazy with lust.
I flipped her over, pulling her butt to the edge of the bed, and knelt behind her, sheathing myself deeply in one hard thrust.
She groaned in pleasure.
I began thrusting as hard and fast as I could.
"Yes," I heard her say. "Yes."
I reached around and gently circled her clit as lightly as I could. With the other hand, I palmed her breast, tweaking a nipple.
"Oh, God, yes," she said, and I knew by the sound of her voice that she was close.
When I felt her sex spasm around me and her butt press back against my groin, I sped up the pace and pounded into her. Sinking into her tight wetness again and again, I fucked her until I couldn't hold back anymore, and I let go in a shattering release. I stiffened and pressed my hips hard against her soft ass as I shot my seed deep inside her.
It occurred to me that I hadn't checked to see if it was her mating cycle. Our cycles had never coincided before, and I didn't expect them to anytime soon.
After a moment, I got up and did up my pants. She reassembled her outfit.
"Ready to go?" she said. "You can think straight again?"
"Yes, thank you, my love," I said, kissing her deeply.
She gave me a sweet smile. We walked out of the little room and back into the captain's office. After I sealed the hideout, I checked my watch. We left for about six and a half minutes.
We walked out onto the bridge.
"Oh shit," Kenna said.
There was no one there.
I ran to the nearest console and tapped quickly, pulling up the location of all the crew members on our ship.