Authors note:
This story is going to focus on the plot, with sexual elements used appropriately. What fun is there in raunchy depictions if the interactions hold no weight? I hope you all enjoy this first installment of The Kineticist!
*****
The endless humming was driving Kyle insane. He could see nothing but darkness courtesy of the steel faceplate cinched over his head. The slow steady drip of the intravenous tubes speared into his flesh sending soft numbness throughout his body. More steel encased his limbs, anchoring him in place as the Imperial warship sucked the very life from his body to sate its hunger for power. The chemical cocktail kept him sedated, or at least it was supposed to. While the drugs kept his body essentially lifeless, with his heart beating sluggishly in his chest, his mind was still his own.
When he was first installed inside the new Kinetic Driver, a sort of human-machine hybrid engine that fed off of the latent power his body generated in the form of resonance waves. It's brutal design was meant to keep him body alive, whilst the drugs trapped him inside his own mind, ever the obedient slave to the imperium.
Despite the sedation, Kyle was still aware of the sensations his body told him. Whilst there was no pain, he could still feel the cool air wash over his skin, smell the metallic scent of the steel alloy that imprisoned him in the heart of his mobile prison. His hearing picking up the ever-present humming and steady dripping that caused no end of irritation, like mental chaffing.
With the dripping happening every second, he could still tell time. A clock that would never stop ticking. The only solace to his condition was that he could still dream. Imagine all of the things he could do when he got free. The darkness offered him no visual identification of his captors, but he knew the cheap cologne, cigar smoke, and perspiration from the captain of this vessel, and right on queue it appeared once more.
With a groaning of pressurized metallic hydraulics, the door to his prison opened and the infuriatingly pungent odor violated his nose. Heavy foot falls clodding along. A second lighter set of step following at a more staccato pace. They stopped feet away from him, maddeningly close. He wished his body would move. He wanted to rip these people apart one inch of flesh at a time. His power surged around his mind, roaring to be released before it was sucked out of him into the insatiable circuitry.
"As the head of engineering said, the power fluctuations are not due to any technical malfunctions. He believes that the power spikes are directly related to the engine's core being in an active state of flux," The brusque tone of Doctor Hiemshal made his irritation return to a simmering boil. This woman didn't care that he was human, just like the rest. He was just a power source, a tool for them to use until it breaks.
"How do we keep it steady, Hiemsal?" Captain Grant asked. His breath was almost toxic to Kyle. The mixture of those foul smells making his already empty stomach was curl in on itself.
"We suggest increasing the dosage of the sedative, while adding in a mixture of hormones and stimulants. I hypothesize that latent emotional reactions of the subconscious mind of 'Kyle' is what are the cause of the fluctuations. The new cocktail should render him essentially inert for all intents of purposes. It is as close to a medically induced coma without actually shutting down the functions of his brain." Her tone was almost smug. Almost.
At the mention of rendering him brain dead, his fury latched onto those words like a vice. The engine sucking greedily at the surge of power that now radiated out from him in a frenzied deluge. They wanted power. He would give them power. Kyle mentally ran through the past four years of his imprisonment, starting with his capture, then with the flashing through the second by second monotony of his living hell.
While Kyle couldn't see, he could sense the atmosphere change. The engine was working overtime as it tried to consume the power that now erupted out of Kyle like a volcano. The air turned into a shimmering haze as the blistering heat turned the room into furnace. The startled cries of his captors feeding his hunger for payback, the incoherent shouting made little sense over the overwhelming roar of the machinery that held him prisoner.
A series of shudders rippled through the ship. Alarms screamed out around the ships. Kyle Smiled under the steel visor as one more surge of power from him overloaded the capacitors and destroyed the resonance relays that channeled his power through the arteries of the ship. It would seem the ship needed a doctor for this heart attack, and in the middle of deep space, there was no one around to save it.
Kara sat on the edge of the raised balcony overlooking the command bridge. The crew of her ship bustled along on the floor below, attending to their duties as their ship cruised along through the empty void of deep space. They had been tracking a new Imperium warship as it forged ahead outside the protective boarders of its territory.
Dessarosa has ordered her and her crew to depart from their bastion at Elysium once the warship had passed their sensor nets along the border between their territories. There had been an uneasy cease-fire agreement between the Imperium and the Coalition. A century of war had taken a blood toll on both sides. A billion lives had been lost over that time, which lead to the cease-fire, purely because the fighting had become so bad that preservation of life became an urgent topic.
With the Imperial ship now in Coalition space, the cease-fire now seemed tenuous at best. A single ship wouldn't be enough to resume the war, but why was it here now? That question had bugged Kara for the better part of three weeks as they trailed the ship at extreme distance. Her ship, The Cerberus, was on the smaller side of cruisers at just over four hundred feet in length. Her vessel was built for speed rather than power, but as the name suggests, plenty of bite to go with the bark.
The central spire the dominated the bridge with its three dimensional holographic display showing the space around the ship, long ranged scanners picking up the imperial ship on the extreme range, but it seemed to have stopped.
"Mercy, has the Imperial ship tagged us?" Kara shouted down to the meadow colored Komodous.
Mercy's fleshy tail jerked up as the girl jumped at the sudden noise. She looked up at Kara, then down at her console, tapping out a few commands. "No, from the power readings I'm getting, and the erratic changes in trajectory and speeds over the past few weeks it looks like something finally broke. Maybe they are testing a new warp drive?"
