Anthony Pacheco: Rehabilitated Hack Writer

Many writers post samples of their writing. Me? I’m fearless. Here is a raw, first draft. No editing. No proofreading. It is literal copy and paste from a working file.

This text came about when I had a urge to write about blowing things up in space. That is all I started with, I did no outlining. I wrote it in one sitting. It is 5,600 words.

So, if you haven’t gotten the hint, it’s pretty rough. But it is indicative of what my witting looks like before I edit it.

Enjoy. If you like things blowing up in space, that is. And aliens. Mysterious aliens.

***

The Commodore eyed the sish in front of him, looking for a hint of weakness. Sish and humans rarely played poker. Since they looked alike, as a species, it was common for both to misread the others expressions. The classic poker game became less a game of skill and more a game of chance.

How this one was cleaning house, Connery had no idea. It was as if she dabbled in surface thought reading.

Which, of course, was impossible–telepathy was the purview of humans only.

“I fold.” He tossed his cards on the table. She may not be telepathic, but he was running out of bar money.

She smiled, showing a hint of fangs, and merrily collected their credit chits.

Connery returned the smile. Actually, she was pleasant company. He should be annoyed that she showed up and requested a fast ride to the ass-end of sish territory. In actuality, his squadron, green as it was, could use some other duty besides the boring picket HQ slatted for them as their warm-up first mission.

It’s not as if the brass could say no. The sish saved their asses in the war, big time, at great cost. It was an unconditional alliance. Who knows why they helped, Connery certainly didn’t. But if this sish wanted to go somewhere fast, he was damn well going to do it, no questions asked. His frigates were the fastest in the navy. How she knew this was a good question, one Connery was hoping to get at before they arrived at the piss-ant system in question.

A small chime sounded. They were dropping out of FTL to scan an interim system, a procedure humans stuck to all the time, one not really needed in sish territory.

“Well, I guess you’re buying the drinks, Heisa, seeing how you weaseled all of our beer mon…” Connery never finished. The lights turned red and an alarm designed to wake the dead sounded through the ship.

His helmsman was on the ship-wide. “Status change! Commander to the bridge! Commodore to CIC! Combat eminent!”

Heisa followed the two naval officers to the bridge at a run. They were in the middle of sish space. Whatever was going on, it was bad.

***

“Sitrep!” Connery said as he reached CIC on the bridge of the Waterloo.

“Three Tega-class cruisers and eight converted privateers, making a turnover for a zero intercept to an H3 facility, designation Bogey 1 to 11! Two dead civilian shipping, wreckage indications Bogeys are the perps. Two point three minutes until overshoot at present course and accel!”

Connery took it in. Tega class was navarian. Old, but not a crap cruiser by any stretch. The tag-alongs were a prime indication of pirate activity. There should be no pirates here. There was no way for them to get this deep into sish space, they never would have made it through the jump-points. That was beside the point right now.

“Squadron link.”

“Done.”

“Wolfpack 359, hold accel but shift course to intercept. Acknowledge!”

“Waterloo, acknowledged.”

“Stalingrad, acknowledged.”

“Fallujah II, acknowledged.”

“Midway, acknowledged.”

“Black Sea, acknowledged.”

“Britton acknowledged.”

“Vicksburg, acknowledged.”

Connery felt proud of his captains. No hesitation. “Fall in, formation Gamma. Prepare for targeting instructions!”

One minute. Shifting course was closing their window more rapidly.

“Sir I have a red flag from the AI!”

“Go!”

“Situation consistent with new jump-point activation. Probability 75%!”

Now the stakes were higher. He quickly read the information CIC was pumping out.

“Squadron, Listen Up. CIC gives a high probability that this raider group got here through a newly activated back-door jump-point. Targeting instructions inbound. TacOps, pump the analysis to the Britton!”

“Aye aye! Done!”

“Briton, FTL, get a buoy and start screaming bloody murder.”

There was no acknowledgement from the Britton. She just went FTL, disappearing off the plot.

Twenty seconds.

“Squadron, full deceleration. Plot a least-time turnover to +5% intercept.”

“Status change, intercept now one minute, twenty-five seconds.”

“Jerrod! Is their ECM up or can you tell which cruiser is getting the most comm traffic?

“Their ECM is up but it is crap. Bogey 2 is pumping out most of the traffic.”

It was not luck that Connery’s squadron stumbled upon the raiders. Standard maneuvers, while traveling through a charted system, especially one with infrastructure, was to fly-by the points most likely to see action. Thus, they dropped out of FTL on occasion to check things out. The raiders were decelerating hard to intercept the H3 mining complex on the gas-giant.

Coming out of FTL right on top of them, now that was a bit of luck. Their relative speed difference and their nearness barely could support an opening salvo.

Connery’s squadron had to decelerate hard; otherwise, he would offshoot the bogeys with just one pass. Making multiple passes with a significant lag in-between contact was ill advised against cruisers; their kinetic barriers would regenerate too fast. They needed to circle strafe and to do that they need to hold on to their acceleration advantage while at the same time not overshoot them.

It was time to see just how good his squadron was. Combat was eminent and verbal orders would be too slow. On his plot, he assigned the Waterloo and Fallujah II to Bogey 2 (disable). He assigned his remaining frigates to Bogey 1 (destroy). Bogey 3 to 11, they were going to mostly ignore (evasion). As with most frigate and fighter-based fly-bys, the combat AIs were going to take over. No human could coordinate their fire at their present speed.

Commodore Connery was a combat veteran, experienced with navarians in particular. They were bullies, slavers, pirates with a barbaric culture and if he has his way, he would bomb their cities into dust. He did admire their chutzpa, they took a chance the surrounding systems would be empty this far in. Chutzpa was not going to save them now. The Britton would complete the overriding mission regardless of the outcome here, and Connery was probably going to take causalities. He did not need to see the AI’s prediction on what they were about to do to Tega cruisers.

Connery’s happy thought was Christmas came early.

Bogey 2 was hailing the squadron. So predictable. He quickly hit an omni-directional channel in reply; his voice would come from all the ships as one.

***

“Warlord, one of their ships just went FTL.”

“Ah, so it begins! See, see how they start to cut and run!”

Warlord Hersh was cursing his bad luck. The only prize thus far was two civilian ships making pickups to the H3 facility. That was minor to the facility itself, which would be full of sish tech, slaves, and H3. They should have been able to hit two other systems before fading back the dark of space via FTL, but that was not going to happen now. His anger at that seven unknown frigates was deep. He was going to take causalities and be content with the H3 mine.

The enemy shifted course immediately but did not kill their acceleration, which meant the cowards were going to make a single pass and summon reinforcements. Typical sish woman tactics. It did nag his brain that his worthless combat computers could not identify the frigates. Their anti-radar ECM was extremely effective and the optical scans were useless, they were just fast approaching black blobs.

“Warlord, the enemy frigates are decelerating hard for an intercept!”

“All of them?”

“Yes, Warlord.”

What were they thinking? His flotilla could blow them all out of space. His ships would take damage, but three battle-ready cruisers were easily a match for the now six frigates, not to mention his screeners. The screeners were no warships by any means, but they were motivated to get in a kill and were far from helpless. Warlord Hersh decided to call her bluff. “Give me a channel.”

“Done, Warlord.”

“Listen…”

A human was on the display and when he spoke, it was like the voice of the gods, loud, deep and reverberating. Several of his bridge crew actually flinched in their seats. He would have to punish them later.

“Shut up. Let me finish for you. Break off or you will kill the hostages. Break off or you will send your crap-screeners to destroy the H3 mine. Blah blah blah. Both are small prices to pay for blowing your worthless retarded ass out of space. I’m coming for you all. Prepare to die.”

The link cut.

Hersh could not believe what he just heard. A human!

Humans were crazy, as this one just demonstrated. He was not bluffing. They would trade all of their frigates merely to kill him, personally. They bred like rats and had no sense of self-preservation. It was their barbaric custom to use hit-and-run and ambush tactics, and if cornered they chose to die “gloriously” in battle, killing as many enemies as possible on the way down instead of surrendering like a man. Their accursed Navy and Marines never submitted to defeat; they always chose to die. Most of the reason they were in sish space to start with was to avoid these freaks.

“Warlord, we are being jammed! Our tactical links are being cut!”

“How is that possible?” His uplinks were standard directional lasers. A laser could not be jammed!

“Massive ladar painting, Warlord! The tactical net can’t filter the noise from the…”

The Federation was in his house.

***

Connery’s frigates were indeed causing all sorts of ECM havoc. The frigates’ ECM used tech modified for effective deployment against the vern. Never used in battle until now, what it did to the outdated navarian pirates’ tech was more than effective—it was horrific. All of the cruisers’ screeners, hodge-podge systems slapped onto captured civilian ships, lost their tactical net and laser receiving capabilities. In many cases, the systems overloaded and blew up or melted. Those that survived the electronic onslaught shut down.

This dropped them completely out of the cruisers’ tactical net. They could not coordinate targets or even receive combat instructions. They would have to radio to talk to each other, even more easily jammed. Relying on the cruisers for targeting, they could not target the frigates and thus rendered helpless until they dropped out of the network completely.

They would never do that unless given an order by the Warlord.

The cruisers on the other hand were far from helpless, although they fared little better for related reasons. Designed specifically to operate independently, indeed the Tega-class design precluded them for acting as dreadnaught screeners themselves. All of their systems were independent and shielded from overloads.

Such independence did little against the ECM coupled with the frigates’ speed relative to the cruisers. Their LAZ targeting dramatically fell to 30% effectiveness, and while independent, their combat ability against the faster moving frigates removed much of the cruisers’ weapon advantages over the smaller ships. Their only hope was their massive shielding against to the smaller frigates’ disruptor torpedoes and kinetic cannons.

Weapons designed for battle against the vern. Against LAZ hits, there was no defense.

Connery’s squadron held all the cards because his speed relative to the cruisers, while fast, was slow enough to launch a full broadside. Unlike his opponents tactical net, his was fully functional, his LAZ array specifically designed for the fly-by maneuver in progress.

The Waterloo and Fallujah II fired their torpedoes at the exact same time and Bogey 2 could not dodge. They slammed into the cruiser aft; delivering a massive blow that rendered the kinetic barriers useless and buckled the armor. As they flew by at knife fighting range, their LAZ systems when into full-cyclic targeting, lasers stabbing through the buckled armor with ease. Each helmsman pivoted his ship 180 degrees and as they departed, fired kinetic rounds from their main cannon, a gun that ran the entire length of the hull. The transferred heat from the LAZ hits and kinetic energy from the cannon hits blew Bogey 2’s drive core and killed everyone in and around engineering.

The torpedoes aimed at Bogey 1 arrived at her target one at a time in multiple places, a tactic designed to overload shielding and preventing rerouting of the barrier to specific locations. And that’s exactly what happened. When the Vicksburg’s torpedoes arrived the shielding was completely down, and they stripped away armor and anything attached to the hull. Stalingrad’s AI aimed her torpedoes directly where the hull was now most vulnerable. They slammed through unprotected hull and bulkheads and exploded, the gravity distortion transferring massive amounts of kinetic energy from within the hull. Bogey 1 was one moment a cruiser and in the next simply an expanding cloud of plasma and dust. The frigates never even fired a kinetic round.

The cruisers answered to the frigates’ blitz but were not as effective since their attacks were uncoordinated; their crews used to shooting at ships who did not fire back much less close and open with disruptor torpedo salvos. Had they been “real” naval warships rather than pirate vessels, Wolfpack 359 would have sustained losses.

As it was, they received damage. Some type of LAZ laser hit every ship, lasers that could cycle faster and bleed heat more efficiently due to their size. Their lack of targeting concentration made them enormously ineffective. The Fallujah II actually took a kinetic hit from Bogey 3 and sustained mild armor damage. Her armor was pot marked in several locations and she lost several sensors and a laser cluster, cutting her LAZ capabilities by 20%.

That was the extent of damage to Wolfpack 359. Connery had prepared himself for heavier losses but would not complain about his enemy’s ineptitude and inferior tech. As his ships swung around for another pass, this one to last even longer then the first, he assigned Fallujah II to Bogeys 4 through 11. The rest of frigates he assigned to Bogey 3.

On the second pass, Bogey 3 blew up faster than Bogey 1.

Except for Bogey 9, Fallujah II destroyed her targets. Bogey 9 left combat before engagement by going FTL.

Bogey 2 was dead in space, eventually it would fall into the gas-giant.

Connery smiled.

***

Heisa could not believe the speed in which the human’s frigates had responded nor the sheer amount of violence they dished out in such short amount of time. They did not even blink by going up against three cruisers. Intellectually she understood humans hated pirates and slavers, which they saw as vermin rather than a general tax their society paid for using deep space. It was altogether different watching them obliterate their foes without even asking for surrender. Indeed, Connery warned them he was coming to kill them, and that is exactly what he did.

Heisa did not know what was more disturbing: that the humans’ tech had far outstripped everyone else’s to the point six frigates could smash two cruisers into dust and intentionally render another one left helpless, or the observation that their naval warriors were as blood-thirsty as their marines.

Now that she thought about it, both were equally unsettling.

Either way, she was enormously please with the results.

Her heart was singing. Soon, there would be blood.

***

Warlord Hersh picked himself off the deck. Gravity was still on but he was not sure how long the auxiliary systems could maintain it without the main reactor. The emergency lighting was on, various alarms going off on the bridge and heard elsewhere. He coughed through the haze of burnt electronics and flesh.

“Damage report,” he wheezed.

No answer. He looked over at the DCO. He was dead, lying on the deck on fire, his terminal scattered about the bridge. Hersh sat in his command chair and was able to reroute damage control functions to his main terminal.

Engineering was gone, the hull breached in a number of places aft. Main power was offline and the ship was running on auxiliary, most of the power dedicated into keeping the crew from becoming goo if the ship shifted from impact. He had no idea what was going on outside the ship; he was blind.

New items were flashing, and he noted sensors or anything else outside the hull going offline.

The humans were boiling off his sensors and weapons. They were preparing to board!

He dispatched security squads to the airlocks. Maybe they would get lucky and the frigate captain would try to board alone with his small marine detail. He still had ample enough men to do a counter push, and an Alliance frigate would make the entire fiasco worthwhile. It was unlikely but his options were almost nothing. What did he have to lose?

Briefly, he considered parading the hostages in front of the humans. But that was just it: the humans didn’t care about sish hostages. They didn’t even care about human hostages! All they cared about was victory.

Death.

His death.

He shuddered.

***

Connery was discussing boarding options with Lieutenant Polouski, the squad leader of the Waterloo’s marine detail. A navarian slave cruiser was a special nut to crack. They had extra tech security and personnel to deal with their “cargo”. Standard marine combat armor nullified most of the extra tech, but cruiser had a distinct numerical advantage. One option would be to consolidate the marine squads and assault her en masse. Another was to use a single squad, and supplement them with all of the other frigates’ assault drones. The last option, the one he was favoring but was not winning him any accolades amongst the marines, was simply to wait the 22 hours it would take for reinforcements to arrive. Bogey 2 was not going to go anywhere.

The hostages weighed in all of their minds. They thought of captured sish over there tugged at their souls.

The Commodore rejected his caution. They were going in.

“Commodore.” Huntress Heisa voice was quiet but everyone turned to her.

“Yes Huntress?”

“I greatly suspect the actual number of sish they captured alive is small. We do not capture easily. I tell you this only so you do not make a hasty decision.”

Heisa paused to let the information sink in. “What information do you want?”

“I need to know the location of the new jump-point they used, and hopefully other operational details.”

“Then I have an alternate proposal. I will board the ship, obtain the information and put an end to these evil men.”

“Alone?” Connery was incredulous.

“Yes. It will be necessary to do so. I will be using telekinesis. Most of it is omni-directional. It will be very important not to follow me into the ship at any time. I normally operate alone and am untrained to work with your marines; it would be dangerous for us both. If I do not return, simply wait for your reinforcements.”

Connery, Belton, his flag captain and Polouski just stared at her. All of the bridge was looking at her.

“What is your percentage chance of success?”

“I am confident there is nothing on that cruiser that would stand in the way of me and the navarian captain. Everything else is secondary, although I would give my secondary rescue mission a high probability of success. I am trained for these situations.”

Silence. The sish clarified the mission for them. Information was the goal. Everything else on the ship, including the hostages, was secondary. Polouski nodded grimly in agreement.

Commodore Connery spoke. “Okay, Huntress Heisa. Thank you for your forthright sharing of information. If you feel confident that you can do to what seems to us is the impossible, I encourage you to do so. Just…” He wanted to tell her to be careful. But he realized that would sound stupid.

“Aye.”

“Any particular way you want to get in the cruiser?” Belton asked.

“The aft airlock still looks functional. Just make a seal. Leave the door closed until I am back.”

Connery thought that was an incredibly bad idea, but he was man enough to realize the Huntress was in her element, just as earlier he was in his.

***

They extended a flex tube as far as it could reach with the tube making contact with the curser’s aft airlock. It was a flimsy affair but airtight, Connery was under no circumstances going to hard dock and it was also a silent affair. There were no functional external cameras at the cruiser’s airlock but he suspected there was going to be a welcoming committee waiting for her. Assuming she could get the outer door open.

Connery was watching Heisa through the cameras Belton had at Waterloo’s airlock. The inner door closed and the outer one opened. Heisa simply drew a wicked looking knife and then… disappeared, literally, right off the scanners and optics.

Suddenly the outer door to the cruiser’s airlock opened. After it opened fully, it closed.

Connery had a flash of insight; it ran famously in his family. He queried the AI in personal mode.

In the sish native tongue what is the translation of heisa?

Heisa is an ancient sish word for moonlight, never used in a singular fashion it is always used in the modern form as part of a larger word. Heisatalan-onae in sish means “moonlight assassin” or “assassination by moonlight” depending on how it is used in a sentence.

Connery stared at his terminal for a long time, a chill running down his spine. Heisa was not simply her name… it was her title.

***

The bridge was silent except for the various soft beeps of the multiband radar indicating the frequency of the scanning. The Huntress was gone for ten minutes, when the sensor tech called out “Status change: All ECM and sensor shielding down on Bogey 2.”

Connery did not hesitate. “Paint them up, Chief and pipe in a tactical plot.” The Commander raised an eyebrow at him. “If their ECM is fully off-line it’s not like they are going to object to deep scanning.” Off in the corner, Polouski nodded.

On the main plot a hologram representation of the cruiser appeared, and the tactical scan gave the wireframe great resolution. Accurate depictions of people appeared, those moving showing more detail then those who were stationary. Soon these people had targeting icons, turning red with accompanied icons displaying valuable data.

All of which they had no way of downloading to Huntress Heisa.

Suddenly one of the red figures flashed and went down prone on the deck. It was a navarian, according to the icon data, wearing armor. It was standing in front of a room that had six other armored navarians, the plot listing them as a combat squad, heavily armored.

The figure of the navarian on the deck flashed from red to grey. Its icon was now a skull and cross-bones.

A kill.

There was no corresponding icon on the scan for the killer, presumably Heisa.

Suddenly the six red navarians figures where swirling around the room as if they were in some giant water-flushing toilet. One by one, the figures went from red to grey, in the space of thirty seconds, death icons sprouting on the plot as if some video game in play.

‘Holy Mother of God,” Lieutenant Polouski said.

An entire armored squad, dead in thirty seconds.

The trail of destruction continued until it got to the bridge. In ones, twos and groups of red figures flashed and went grey. The trail ended at the bridge, and there seemed to be a pause. As if someone was… thinking. There were eight figures on the bridge, including the two sish. Labeled as non-combatants, the sish’s violet icons were testament to the Waterloo’s AI ability to parse threat data on a squad tactical level.

Only Connery now had a different opinion on what really was the threat aboard that cruiser.

Suddenly the plot when fuzzy and the icons disappeared briefly, and then reappeared.

“What the heck was that?” asked the Commodore.

“Some type of tech ECM sir,” said Polouski, “Very large. Like a big sabotage bomb or dampening field. The multi-band fuzzes out when ECM hits all of its scanning frequencies.”

Suddenly the plot bleeped and one of the former violet icons turned yellow as the red figure standing next to her fell to the deck and turned grey. That meant she was armed. If Polouski were running an op, she would tag the figure as green, but since it was obvious what was going on, she left it alone.

Three of the red figures in the plot shifted and moved to the door and quickly went down to the deck, the AI logging the threats down but with no kills. The remaining moving red figures were on the deck, crawling away from the door.

“Sir we are being hailed again, audio only.”

“Pipe it in.”

A sound, horrible sounds were in the background, male voices screaming in terror and the loud, steady pops of gunfire, punctuated by more screams, gurgles, as the figures on the ground by the door stopped moving, and went grey. “…frigate! Enemy frigate! We surrender! We surrender! Call it off, call it…”

Suddenly a sound filled the channel. It was like the voice of an angry demon and it just didn’t come from the speakers, it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, like a screeching voice of the damned carried on a frozen wind. When it spoke the main plot fuzzed again, but the image that came back was blurry. Everything living had a yellow icon, indicating unknown status.

“Where is the location of the jump-point?”

On the Waterloo, everybody standing on the bridge fell to the floor as a wave of vertigo hit him or her. Connery yelled through his nausea, “Cease channel! Cease channel!” yet on the comm, new shrieks came through the link accompanied by meaty thunks and what sounded like paint splashing against a wall. Dimly the Commodore was aware Belton’s helmsman had flopped over in her seat and was clutching her head, blood coming out her nose.

“Waterloo, cut comm channels!”

The sounds mercifully stopped. “Acknowledged. Channels cut,” said the AI.

Connery slowly got to his feet and made his way over to the helm.

“Sorry about that sir. My brain seemed to stop working,” said the helmsman. She was pinching her nose. “I’m okay now,” she said with a nasal twang.

“Need a medic?”

“No sir. I’ve piloted the H-course with worse. We’re good. Let me start adding links to the rest of the flotilla before they get uppity.”

“Do it.”

“Aye, aye sir, adding squadron links now.”

Belton was back at her terminal. “Waterloo, ship personnel status.”

“All crewmembers are accounted for. No injuries reported, however bridge personnel have elevated pulse rates inconsistent with ship combat status. The medical database suggests drinking water.”

I bet it does, thought Connery.

“So,” asked Polouski, “what the hell was that?” She looked visibly shaken.

Everyone turned to Lieutenant Vicky Lace, the helmsman, punching virtual buttons with one hand, pinching her nose with the other.

“Don’t look at me. I fly ships for a living. I’m just a lowly L8 Telepath. Parlor tricks and what not. Commodore, network reestablished.”

“Good work Vickers.”

Belton stood at Vickers’ chair. “Actually, go take a break Vickers, go to the head and clean yourself up. I’ll take the helm.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.” She gave the Commander a look. “No touchie my boards. Use your own configuration.”

The Commander, an ex-pilot herself, grinned. “Aye, aye, Lieutenant. Now scoot. You’re a bloody mess.”

The Commander gladly sat at the helm, making herself busy, doing anything, anything, to keep from thinking about that awful voice.

***

Commodore Connery and Lieutenant Jennifer Polouski were at the airlock, with a guard detail just out of sight. A group of six blips where headed this way, one of which was Heisa. Soon they were in the airlock and it spent a long time in decontamination. The cycle completed, the door opened.

Standing before them were the two sish, naked, one with a head wound holding up the other, a pistol clutched in her hand. In her other, she had an data stick, which she gave to Polouski. Behind them were three human women, looking blank, dressed like slave girls.

“Medical?”

“Let these two marines escort you there.”

She nodded. The human women followed them as if leashed.

In a shadow, they could see a form that they hoped was Heisa.

“Huntress Heisa?” Polouski asked gently.

Suddenly the form moved into the light and it was all Connery could do to keep from taking a step backwards.

Heisa stood before them, dripping blood. It was if she submerged herself in it, wallowed in it. From head to foot, literally, only her eyes were not black-red. She held a knife that still dripped blood. Connery could smell the metallic tang of it, and the sight and smell of it all assaulted what was left of his sensibilities.

Heisa just stood there. She needs help, thought Connery. He stepped forward.

An armored hand shot out and hit his chest, stopping him in his tracks.

“No sir,” said Polouski, giving him a stern look. “She hasn’t come down off her combat high.”

“Sorry, Jennifer.”

“That’s what I’m here for Sir. Sir, I request you vacate the entry. I will handle this.”

Connery was glad to leave.

***

“Come, Heisa. Let’s go back into the airlock. There’s a hose there I can clean you up with.”

Heisa made no indication she heard but she followed Polouski back into the airlock. Polouski grabbed a hose and dialed in the “warm water/steam” setting used to clean very dirty armor.

“Close your eyes honey; I am going to work from the top down.”

Heisa closed her eyes and Polouski got to work. When she got to Heisa’s waist, she said, “I’ve cleaned your knife, if your sheath removes moisture from the blade you may sheathe it now.”

Heisa did so with a smooth motion, standing there woodenly.

“Okay honey, I’m going to lead you to the shower now and we’ll blast the whole thing with a clean cycle just to be sure.”

Heisa followed the Lieutenant to the crew deck and to one of the showers, crewmembers doing their best not to stare. At the shower, she stopped and looked at the enclosed space dully. Polouski wracked her brain for a moment, and then thought of something. She stepped into the shower and pulled Heisa in, armor and all. It was big enough for two for a reason, and Polouski was thankful for the thoughtful design.

“This will be quick; I just want to make sure your armor doesn’t have anything in the creases.”

Heisa actually nodded and the door closed. Polouski hit the quick clean button and the showerheads went to work. She slowly spun Heisa around in a circle and then a blast of air blew the water off.

“Let’s take off your armor, Hon, you need to take a shower and your armor needs to recharge, I can help you with cleaning the internals later.” Heisa nodded and ran a finger down the armor in places, and it split open as if it was memory pinned. She seemed to have some trouble moving, so Polouski gently helped her disconnect the plumbing and hang it on a waiting rack. Heisa paused at the shower again, looking at it with some sort of strange expression.

Polouski started to take off her armor and Heisa actually helped, this time some emotion showing on her face. She looked pensive, somewhat upset, as if she was desperately trying to keep it together. Soon a naked Polouski led her back in the shower but this time hit the deep clean cycle twice for two occupants. The moment the door closed the water stared, this time hot, Heisa grabbed at her and held her tight, wet violet skin desperately holding onto Polouski’s pale, scared figure.

Heisa put her face in Jennifer’s shoulder and cried.

All too soon, the cycle ended but the shower did its work, Heisa’s form was limp and Polouski had to pick her up.

Heisa was trying to speak.

“C-c-cold.”

“Okay honey let’s get you to bed.”

Heisa’s eyes went wide, looking frightened.

“No sweetie, a real bed. I will not put you in a pod. It’s a design for humans anyway; they are wonderful if you are used to them and you need sleep but I know all the other races think they are the spawn of the devil.”

Polouski carried Heisa out of the shower and across the deck saw the Commander. She nodded in the direction of Belton’s quarters and the Commander nodded in reply. She crossed the room and put Heisa’s rag-doll form on the bed. The sish was shivering, cold.

Jennifer did not hesitate. She lay down next to the sish and covered them both up with the sheet and blanket, pressing the warm button. She held Heisa, who still trembled.

It was then Jennifer knew. She looked the sish in her amber eyes. “Go ahead, take what you need.”

The sish shook her head.

“It’s okay.”

“You’ll be my symbiant. Forever,” Heisa whispered, sounding fearful.

“You over-extended yourself. I understand.”

“I can hold out until…”

“It would be my honor,” Jennifer said, sounding more confident than she felt.

“You humans! There is more to the galaxy than your damn honor!”

“Not for the sish, my Love, not for the sish.” Jennifer stuck the back of her wrist next to the sish’s mouth, put her other hand at the back of the shish’s head, and gave her a little push.

Heisa moaned, and bit.

Jennifer hissed in pain, but then could feel the blood leaving her body, making her light headed. Feelings of euphoria washed over to her, and she moaned and writhed in return. Soon she cried out in pure bliss, arching her back and thrusting her hips.

As the remnants of the orgasm pulsed through her body, Jennifer had a fleeting thought: Not quite what I pictured my wedding night to be–and then passed out, smiling.