Boarding the Starflae

Argon filed onto the bridge, where his search party captain and trusted First Mate, Morgo, sat astride the ship. Since taking command, Morgo'd plainly started oozing pheromones. Argon smelled a sick-sweet, dense odor like Morgo had gone a week unwashed and spent the morning wrestling in a vat of rotten eggs.

"Confirmed," affirmed Boxis, the Lechwerth's Chief Hailer. "It's the V.A.S. Starflake."

"And that means?" Argon asked, tugging the hem of his captain's blouse to make his presence known.

"Captain. The Starflake is an interplanetary women's college."

Morgo was pretty filthy too, dripping from his own crotch, a pale, truculent, verdant trail of ooze that wetted his leg.

Morgo gestured at Argon, scratching. "What's with the—"

"Argon humped himself up a nasty case of Arcturian Dug Flu," Boxis piped up, "when we nicked that drama-club summer camp on the planetoid in Rigel 3."

"Desdemona," Morgo reminded.

"Yeah, that's it," said Boxis.

"In speaking of which," added Morgo, and over came Kylie, Morgo's new young brunette, in a black workout top, shorts, and kneepads. Her hair was tied in a tight bun behind her head as she made her way on her hand and knees. She smiled. The blinking of the crystal halo on her forehead signaled Argon that her good mood wasn't necessarily a natural demeanor.

"Loved crownin' them Dezzie girls," Morgo admitted.

Trim, young, humiliated Kylie's face was turned up as if pleading, which accented her good looks. It rather suited her. Her body was tart and delicious, her tight silver space stewardess short-shorts describing the lean curves of her pimply haunches, her arch melons penduluming between her elbows as she shuffled along like a stray dog. Though her puss was scrunched she was still princess-lovely, a freckle-faced bloom in her cheek her subjugation hadn't dissipated. Morgo hadn't had Kylie for very long yet.

Morgo got his prick out.

"Get on your knees and mouth it."

His shriveled dugs were still pinker and more swollen than usual, coated in a thick, webby film, and his limp porker had tapered to a slime-encrusted slit from which dribbled steady drops of vile, green goo. "One of those college drama princesses had forged virgin certs, obviously." He squeezed himself through his uniform, played at the smelly leak in his privates. "Man, Dug Flu gives you some nasty squirts."

Kylie pressed her face in Morgo's arch and mewled.

"Mouth it."

Surrendering to the irresistible pull of the jewel, Kylie straightened her back on her knees and wrapped her frowning lips around Morgo's half-stiff, dribbling member. Her eyes clinched shut and she flinched, squeezing her jaw and tightening her cheeks around Morgo's gray meat. From five feet away Argon could hear the squelch inside Kylie as her cinching mouth contracted Morgo's germy penis and, like a tube of toothpaste, a lump of precome splatted out of Morgo's papery, withered muscle and down Kylie's piehole.

"Guh," she muffled.

"Don't squeeze so much. Relax. Let it drip."

Slowly Kylie settled down and passively held Morgo inside her.

"Good girl," he praised, as he absently leaked his genitals into Kylie's face. "I love these control halos. You don't get any mood influence, and no dulling of sensation. Kylie's motor system can't help but obey my orders, but other than that she's still very much herself. Isn't that right, Kylie?"

"I fink I go-ee oo fee fick," Kylie aerosolized, plateauing the roof of her mouth and the flat of her tongue just so she could get articulated air past the member intruding on her gullet. A trickle dripped on the corner of her sopping, full mouth.

Morgo looked down at docile, sad Kylie, musing. Then he turned to Argon, suddenly forgetting she was there at all even as she went on sullenly fellating his greenish-gray alien mound. "We got a bogey up ahead, a rich-bitch all-girl's school in transit. It's what got me started rutting again in the first place."

"Rich bitch?" Argon rubbed his hands together.

Morgo nodded. "Rich bitches. Log's mission entry says they're all headed out to a resort planet for a two-week getaway. The Obiron System, fanciest resort in this arm of the Milky Way." As he talked he palmed Kylie on the back of her head, working her back and forth on his drooling root. "That's a lot of Earth-girl trim."

Argon stroked his chin evilly. "Can't handle it the way we did the Desdemona. United Forces are too strong in this system; they're staging an offensive against the Gobs a couple of lighthours from here. Hack their com. Let's stage a ship's emergency, board her as survivors. Let Boxis limp the ship away and we'll take our chances."

"What's their com?"

"Werner 120-bit, Zed-Alpha encryption."

"I crack those in my sleep," said Boxis.

"Think you can get a cortex beam over it?" Argon asked.

"Just a weak one, but if we go through the roster I bet we can find a filly on the Starflake dizzy enough to trip the dock even on a crackler. Doubt these chicks are any brighter than the ones on the Desdemona were."

"So you're saying hyp a confederate, get her to dock us on the sly, and sneak in the place on foot."

"Exactly," Boxis elaborated. "No need for phasors, or any of that ugliness, where we'd wind up with an hour tops before a UF cruiser climbs on us. You give 'em some shaggy-dog about how we went derelict and you were the only survivors. Meanwhile we'll go black and trail them, make like we've run aspace. If we can pull that off I think we can take all the time we need. Especially if the information I've got here is right, I'm reading the Uni's just commandeered almost all the bogey's crew for the Gob offensive."

"Excellent," Argon grinned. "Make it so," said he. "Make it so."

***

Marking time in the late shift. (What was with late and early in space anyhows, when there was no day or night?) Stephanie Sanders was on the verge of getting to Level 4, and to an extra paddle, playing Super Breakout on the backup docking computer. Just then an "incoming" blip flickered up on the cortical navigation interface. She saw the blip was low on the dial and altered her thinking accordingly, cranking the receiver down to a frequency it hadn't been set on in years.

'Is this the V.A.S. Starflake heavy?' came the voice, crackling through the cortical interface directly into her mind.

'Af—affirmative, who's transmitting please?' Steph thought back. She reached for the shelf above the monitor for the Incoming Signal Quick Reference Guide. She couldn't remember the protocol much beyond what she'd just said.

'Is this Stephanie Sanders?'

This gave her pause. She wasn't sure how a random bogey would know this.

'Yes?'

'I assume you're hooked to a nav-cort interface for docking control?'

'Yes?'

'We'll be beaming a sound through your interface momentarily. I'd like to ask you to pay attention to it, please.'

'Why? Who is . . .' Steph began, but stopped short when a squelchy tone started crackling in her ear. At once she found it fascinating, even though she couldn't hear it very well. The reception was pretty bad.

"She's responding to the hypnotone already."

A warm feeling washed through Steph, like when she wiggled her toes under the covers in the dark.

"I like it," she murmured aloud.

'Good. Do I gather you have access to the Starflake's docking control?'

'Just the secondary dock. It's my shift to watch it.'

'The secondary dock will be perfectly adequate. We will be dispatching a shuttle. When that shuttle hails you, you will open the dock and allow it to enter.'

'Why? Who are you? What do you want from us?'

'We are pirates, Miss Sanders. We plan to infiltrate your ship and take what we want from you.'

'Oh. That sounds bad.' The cotton in her head puzzled her. Suddenly she felt . . . she didn't know, vague. Vacant. She was sure she was supposed to be alarmed by what this voice on the radio was telling her. But she wasn't.

'You've been enthralled, Miss Sanders,' the voice explained. 'It happened when you listened to the hypnotone we just beamed into you. You won't reveal anything we don't want you to reveal.'

'Okay.'

Steph furrowed her brow, as, inside her mind, she felt something probe the part of her that knew whether she was a virgin. Even so, she felt herself think: 'I've kissed a couple boys. One of them felt my boobies for a second before I stopped him. That's about it.'

'Good. Wait for us at the dock. '

Steph was well and truly dizzy now, lost in an empty fog of distant recollections and a sense of wandering in Eden. Deep down she felt like what the voice was telling her was bad, but the concern couldn't find anything in her to connect to. She was remembering the shivery feeling of violation that had come from having Dexter's hands on her budding, tender breasts, how dirty it had felt even through the silk of her blouse and the cotton of her bra.

She felt the same dirty violation now, having told that voice all those private things against her will.

***

"I'm sure I don't know," said Heather as she and Julie trundled down the hall to C-block.

"We prep for planetfall in twenty hours and we're coming up on the sleep period. That doesn't leave much time for going over lines outside the rehearsals. After all, now that we've disembarked the last of the bridge personnel you, me, and Stephanie are basically the whole crew."

"Hmm. I guess. Anyway, here we are."

They whisked through a sliding door to the bridge.

"Ah," said Julie, taking the captain's chair. "Glad to have you with me, Heather. I could really use someone on the passive signal console right now."

Heather scanned the two empty signal consoles, then indicated the larger. "I have to take the auxiliary station, right? The main station needs a second to man the failsafe."

"I'm not sure." Julie waved her hand. "I let the little people think about all that stuff."

Heather wiggled the squawker into her ear. She paused, decoding transmissions.

"I've got a blip already. A D-class cruiser two lightsecs out that kinda looks like it's tailing us."

"Maybe it's just got business our way."

"On Obiron? They contract all their shipping through GalEx, which means it would have filed a flight plan, and . . ." She tapped a few buttons on the ship computer screen. "Nope. Nothing."

"Maybe it's going somewhere further out? Some kind of independent operation?"

"Further out than Obiron? Not likely. We're not on any of the major lanes. That's the point of putting a resort there."

Heather started playing with the knobs on the passive signal console. "Let me see if I can get a beacon, maybe I can hack their manifest."

Just then, the com buzzed static. "Bridge, this is Sanders, Sanders to Bridge."

"I've got intralink contact."

"Sanders?" said Julie. "She's on port duty, right?"

Heather nodded, held up her hand for silence. "She says she's got a blip. It's an escape shuttle from that cruiser. Their life support's gone out."

"Escape shuttle? We didn't get a distress call." Then: "Look. The main com." Heather followed Julie's pointing finger and sure enough, a red light was blinking on the primary communications console. Those positions had gone unstaffed since the Starflake had stopped off at Rigel and the United Forces had commandeered most of her crew, including the ship captain, for a counter-offensive against the Gobs. Heather hated this war; it seemed like the Starflake was never adequately staffed.

She worked the console a second and a line of brightly urgent text teletyped across the top of the main viewscreen. "MAYDAY: VPN TROGLODYTE REGISTRY I64X TROUBLE CODE 19G."

"Sure enough," said Julie. "19G means that cruiser's running black." She squinted at the screen. "That's not a valid registry number, though. Heather, see if you can hack it."

Heather played with some knobs. "Well tie me down. They're jamming us. Hey Steph, ask 'em what's up with that." She listened intently; then, to Julie: "She says they say their jammer came on the same time their life support went out, and they weren't able to switch it off." She swiveled in her chair to face Julie. "Huh. That's the shittiest story ever. Should we go to general quarters?"

"With hardly any crew," said Julie, "it's not going to matter a whole lot. But why not."

Heather hit the order and the bridge dipped to the dark, warm gold of the tactical lighting scheme that automatically activated during GQ.

Just as the alert order went out here came Fuckface, plodding through the bridge power-doors before they'd finished whisking open, oblivious to the alarm status indicator—even though, at his height, it came to eye level—as it flashed gold. Their house Gob always dropped in at the most awkward times, brooded Heather. It took her attention off the main viewscreen for a second, which was a second too long.

"The blip's lined up for the dock," Heather said. Fuckface stopped in his tracks and gazed at the "blip"—that is, the escape shuttle that hung in the viewscreen over a sullen veil of stars. Then he shrugged and bent himself to dusting the crescent of unoccupied control terminals.

"Well, we can't turn away a stranded vessel, no matter how under-staffed we are," Julie said. "Give them access."

"With all due respect, acting captain, isn't that going to put us at some considerable risk?" Heather gestured at the screen. "Anybody could be on that thing. We can't even make contact. What if it's some sort of trap?"

"If it's a trap," Julie wanly smiled. "Steph already sprung it. The tractor beam's been activated, and without a cooling accelerator we can't be able to reset it for at least two hours."

"Oh, hell," said Heather. "That's right. The mech team never got around to fixing that before they shipped out at Rigel."

"We should get down to the dock so Steph isn't there by herself. Heather, did the Uni's leave us anyone on security?"

"Just Jim. The new guy. That's it. In fact, that's the only male on the ship." She pointed at Fuckface. "Unless you count this little fucker."

"Damn. Well, send him down. Jim, I mean, not the Gob. Phasor on stun."

Heather watched the blip draw a bead on the dock's latching grapplers. "This had to happen with a skeleton crew. Our tits'll sure get pinched if it's a trap."

"UF has a ship a few lightsecs out; they're monitoring us," assured Julie. "It'll be fine."

"Yeah, the United Forces. When seconds count, they're only minutes away."

"Don't be unpatriotic." Julie handed Stephanie the command board and shuffled to the deck elevator, buckling her utility belt as she went. "Come with me, Heather. I'll need you to set our guests up in a room or something."

"No problem," said Heather. "We've got plenty."