Author's Note - This story is the result of several ideas that have been fermenting for many years in the back of my fevered imagination. It is my first submission so CONSTRUCTIVE comments are welcome, but please be kind. Special thanks are due to cockslave, without whom this tale would not have seen the light of day. I hope you enjoy it and please take the time to vote.
It was a machine, a brooding mechanical presence, inhuman, unalive, but not quite dead. Drifting through the eternal midnight, it's faceted lenses staring with sightless vision across the timeless void. An alien intelligence, on a collision course with a human destiny.
********
Kismet Harcourt slipped quietly from the anonymous man's bed, another unfulfilling conquest. She collected her clothes and dressed in the bathroom. It was cramped and harshly lit after the mellow glow of his quarters but she wanted to get out without disturbing him now, and speed was of the essence. Rejecting underwear she slipped into the light grey jumpsuit and pulled the zip all the way from her waist in the back right between her legs and up the front, pausing with the zip at the top, she reconsidered and undid it a little; leaving a generous amount of cleavage on show. She thrust her underwear into her pocket and left.
Hands in pockets Kismet strutted through the station corridor, head up, her long hair flying in the sterile atmosphere and reduced gravity. The space faring men and a few of the women too, turned to watch her pass with hunger in their eyes. She had no time for any of them now; she just wanted to be out, away from the station, away from the eyes, away from people in general. She turned to the docking node and pressed her pass to the panel, punched the access code and waited for the airlock to cycle. The mechanism hummed, clicked and whirred before eventually the door hissed open and she stepped through.
Back aboard her ship she started to feel the tension ebb, this was the closest thing to home she'd ever known, not like a House on the surface, but a home, the place she belonged. The Keyed in the control codes and watched the Docking node drop flaccidly away from the side of her ship. She was reminded briefly of the man she'd left and wondered if he'd woken and realised that she was gone yet.
The computers and mechanics did their thing there was nothing for Kismet to do as the small, sleek, ship, "Halcyon Blue" moved away from the space station and began the long acceleration towards the outer colonies. Kismet picked a direction at random, and set the computer to maintain control. She still had an itch that needed scratching.
Unzipping the front of her Jumpsuit she reached inside to caress her breast, feeling the fullness of it in her hand as the nipple hardened. Her other hand strayed downward over the fabric of the suit it stroked gently at the fork of her body. The Zipper hard and sharp on her labia, her fingers soft and warm on her nipple. She pinched her nipple and caught her breath; twisting hard she relished the exquisite pain. Her other hand pressed harder now as she stroked her crotch, her hips rocking, she paused to unzip the jumpsuit further. Her fingers found the hot, moist, centre of her femininity and her breathing began coming in shallow pants. The dark snake of her orgasm awoke in the pit of her belly, uncoiling through her flesh. Her fingers slipped inside her, pushing into her body, her thumb flicking over her clit, massaging her flesh into a frenzy. Her orgasm rose through her body, her back arching as the fingernails of her other hand bite into her own breast.
Suddenly sirens wailed, warnings sounded, lights flashed. Kismet swore loudly as she returned to the reality of the cockpit. Her hands flew over the controls by instinct, her sexual energy translated to action of another sort as she wrestled the ship back from the massive gravity well. Drives shrieking as the structure shook and huge forces wrenched at Halcyon Blue. Gradually the sleek little ship lost the battle and slipped further towards the huge centre of mass that had suddenly appeared, too close and too large for the small ship to avoid. She gave up the unequal fight and instead turned towards the great black hulk looming before her, controlling the headlong plunge into the improbably large gravity well.
As she drew closer details became visible, clearly it was some kind of deep space ship but it conformed to no design she'd ever seen. It seemed dead, but the gravity well suggested monumental power, which was just not engaged; she wondered why. Kismet pulled the Halcyon Blue into a tight orbit around the hulk, and engaged all the instruments to record the object. Stroking its surface with electronic signals, caressing its contours, investigating, evaluating, measuring everything...
...and the machine measured and evaluated her.
Eventually she found what looked like a docking bay, a slot in the belly of the craft, nestling between the drive nacelles, the doors were closed, but she couldn't help making the obvious anatomical connection. Giggling inwardly she turned her ship and approached the doors. She slowed the ship to a bare crawl and the computer tried to trigger the mechanism, it failed and a warning began to sound. Kismet slowed the Halcyon Blue even further, and the warning continued. The proximity alarm went off as she fell towards the ship, too close now to pull away before smashing ignominiously into the belly of the huge vessel. The gamble paid off, the doors began to slide open, slowly, almost too slowly. The Halcyon Blue slid slowly inside.
********
The Machine had been aware of the small craft approaching it. It felt the sensors probing. It had no way of recognising the signals but it was aware of the craft falling towards the docking bay. It attempted to warn the small craft away but it didn't respond, so in a final attempt to preserve hull integrity it opened itself up to the invading craft. As the small ship entered its belly the machine scanned it and analysed the atmosphere inside.
********
By the time Halcyon Blue had settled onto the floor of the docking bay the machine had begun to manufacture a close approximation of the air inside the small ship, so that when Kismet did her checks she found the atmosphere breathable. The gravity here was not as high as the space station, barely adequate to hold things down, and to be on the safe side Kismet donned the protective space suit she used for forays into less hospitable places. She also grabbed a portable "sniffer" to analyse the atmosphere outside the craft. Not quite trusting the readings she was getting from the instruments on her own ship. She stepped outside her ship encased in her suit and took readings from the sniffer. Puzzled she cleared the readout and took another set of readings. This too indicated that the air was breathable.
