Orbital Mechanics 101 was Captain Serrah Joamo's least favourite course in college. Studying the Newtonian carousel motions of rocks and gas giants had felt so boring, especially compared to the more applied, interesting lessons on the Alcubierre-Kipthornian drive and Raychundrapan wormhole initializer. She'd slept through so many lectures that in the end, there had been no other option left for her than to sleep with the professor. That was the main reason why she now had to sit down, concentrate, and make a rough sketch on paper, when Haruntos reminded her that Tasim was in fact a binary star system.
The system had two extremes. Counter-intuitively, the darkest night occurred when both stars were at perigee, closest to the planets, since Beta would be obscured behind Alpha. In the following weeks it stayed mostly dark at midnight, with increasingly bright dawns, until suddenly, the brightest midnights came around, when Alpha and Beta formed a 90 degree angle as seen from the planets. After this, Beta moved further and further away from the inner, populated rocks, and at apogee, the red dwarf was nothing but a distant star. The whole cycle took about twelve years to complete, but when Beta was at apogee, it moved fast, so they were very lucky that tonight was the Darkest Night.
Lucky, because although officially they were the king's guests, in reality they were also the king's captives. As imperial representatives, they were not allowed to leave the castle.
So darkness was a friend.
Serrah had decided it would be best to go alone. She was the only one with knowledge about the location of the object, and the only one who could hack her way into the escape pod. Also, she wasn't jacked up on hormones, so she could think straight. Unlike someone else.
Sarantos, the friendly guard, had provided access to the castle's door lock schematics. Getting out of the castle had thus been the easy part. Now, she was hesitant. Before her lay the big open tarmac, usually full of activity, but currently silent and fairly empty. However, soldiers walked on scheduled patrols, with bright headlights and heavy plasma guns.
She was unarmed. She was also visible, her personal cloaking device floating somewhere in space after Lt. Meea Jaymes had pushed the self-destruct button of the "Queen Seleza". Having squeezed into a dark one-piece recon suit Haruntos had secretly secured her, Serrah was less visible than most people, but unfortunately she still reflected many photons. Usually, she loved her tallness and curves, but tonight, she almost wished she were been a petite, five foot girl.
When the closest patrol had passed by her, she made a silent dash for the hangar. The two hundred steps took forever to cross, but she made it. Squeezing herself up against the wall, she thanked her lucky star that the Tainees hadn't invested in surveillance cameras. They seemed to almost always prefer humans to machines.
The hangar was unprotected, with only a few ships still present. In one corner, their tiny escape pod. She almost couldn't believe that they'd survived for months in that fridge. With her butt pressed up against the heat sucking wall in the darkness, she waited. Waited. The big hall was empty. She walked with feline steps, carefully clinging to the wall until she reached the pod, then went for it. Unlocking it was easy, but you'd had to know. Her fingerprint or access code would make the whole thing self-destruct, she'd made sure of that in case someone tried to force her. The pod was full of imperial technology they just couldn't let the Tainees explore, not even as their allies. So she'd booby-trapped the lock. Literally.
Unzipping the recon catsuit, she whipped out her right breast and pressed the nipple and areola against the fingerprint reader. Only the exact match of her veins and nipple wrinkles would unlock the pod. The red light scanned her tit.
*blip*
*psssh*
The door opened. Serrah couldn't help herself, and smiled wickedly as she pulled the suit back on. As a child she'd always loved playing secret agent.
Entering the pod, she quickly turned on the amber night lights to have some vision without announcing to the world that she was inside.
It took her about two minutes to find the substance. Only fifty millibhroms left, but that would be more than enough, even considering the king's size. She smiled and wrapped it in an anti-biohazard skin, tightly enough that she could slip it into the one place she knew the guards wouldn't look if she got caught, even if they desperately wanted to.
--
Laena jerked awake in her room. It was pitch black, apart from the light entering from the tiny slit under the door. She heard footsteps.
"Hello, anyone there?"
No response. The footsteps faded.
The petite redhead got out of bed. The concrete was cold to her bare feet, but she didn't care. Someone had slipped an letter under the door.
"To L." it said, not "Yalen-2".
That was odd.
She tore the envelope open, almost damaging the contents. The handwriting suggested a woman had penned the letter. The one who had visited her. The letter was short; just half a page.
As the young tribute read, a smile began to form on her dry lips.
--
A Tainee soldier walked confidently down an empty hall. Dressed in a red, black and blue uniform, he looked just like any other private in the king's guard. If someone would look closely, they might notice that the name on the jacket matched a soldier who had been killed in a training accident last year. If someone would look really closely, they'd notice that the soldier seemed to be slightly uncomfortable with the tight groin of his pants.
But the soldier walked briskly and had a soldier's physique, so nobody paid him any attention. Only when he reached his destination, the guards stopped him.
"Halt, soldier! Where do you think you're going?"
"Special orders from the king," he replied, confidently.
He showed them the wrapped gift box in his hands.
"What the fuck is that?" the main guard asked.
"His pre-wedding gift to the bride," the newly arrived soldier explained, then leaned closer, as if to share a secret, "underwear from Peglix Bifuno".
The two guards in the back nodded and grinned, but the head honcho was unconvinced.
"I would almost say I wished I was the king myself," the newcomer added with a wink, "if it wasn't a crime. I hear the new queen is gorgeous."
"Hell yeah!" one of the grunts said with a grin, but shut up after the serious one turned to him and gave him a warning look.
The lone soldier took a step forward.
"If you don't mind, I'm just going to deliver this to the bride," he said.
The main guard grasped his arm, and held him in place.
"No, you're not."
"Okay, so I'll return to His Majesty and tell him...", he read his name tag, "Sgt. Famagustos would not let me deliver his gift to the bride."
His opponent hesitated for a few seconds.
"Fine, but you're not going in there alone," the sargeant said, "this guy is going with you. No shenanigans."
He pointed to the guy who had been grinning, and who now suddenly got a much less entertained look on his face.
"Oh man, why always me?" he complained.
The leader did not reply, just opened the door for the two instead. The newcomer and the reluctant guard walked through the door, which shut and locked behind them.
Finally, Stan thought. If only the other soldier wasn't there... They walked down a small hall and into the large room at the end. The other guy nudged him in the side with his elbow, then raised his eyebrows.
