Deet. Deet. Deet.
"Okay...I can almost see the numerals!"
I craned my head, trying to get a good look at Ali. She was trying to crane and twist her body around, using every bit of gymnastic funtimes that she had in bed (I swear, she was able to lick my balls while riding my cock cowgirl style. Not reverse. Regular cowgirl. Note to self: If we survive, try that.)
"Do you recognize them?" I asked, jerking my head slightly to try and see if I could knock my psychic suppressing hat off. No such luck. And worse still, the stomach acid in this big old sandworm motherfucker was up to my ankles. It didn't start to really burn until you forgot that you had set your feet down. I jerked them up again, hissing as I saw that my beautiful, caramel brown skin had gotten a bunch of pinkish splotches on them. I shuddered against my restraints.
"They're Doyen pictograms, the kind we give to the smarter mind...to the smarter slaves," she said, correcting herself. Mindless was the Doyen term for the non-psychic and Ali had plenty of evidence that they damn well
had
minds. She frowned. "We have an hour."
"An
hour
? Who the fuck dropkicks someone into a sandworm's mouth strapped to a fifty megaton nuke and gives them an hour to escape?" I asked, scoffing. "A Bond villain?"
We both sat there for a moment longer. My arms started to ache, complaining that I was putting all my weight on them and the bomb to keep my feet out of the muck. The only sound that came was the gurgle of stomach acid and the faint sussurations of silt sand sand passing along the sandworm's skin.
Deet. Deet. Deet.
"So, what's your idea?" she asked.
"I, uh...I'm thinking."
Psychic powers were no go. Ali couldn't get out of her restraints. We were in a stomach. The stomach acid was getting higher. Slowly, a memory echoed into my mind. Ages ago, I had watched a Lets Play by a certain famous fast talking internet British funnyman and his australian friend. They had been making fun of Bond villains, but the Aussie had said: "You know, I bet if you put a regular person in that trap, they'd go, 'fuck, I can't escape', and then die."
Or something like that.
"Fuck," I whispered, then wriggled. "Uh, Ali, can you...splash stomach acid onto your chains?"
"If the stomach acid can't eat through our
skin,
I doubt it will have much impact on metal chains, Abby." Ali paused. "Abby, I just wanted to tell you-"
"Wait," I whispered.
"What?" she asked.
"I love you," I said.
"I was going to say that!" Ali said, sounding faintly aggrieved.
I grinned. "I know."
A long silence.
"Was that another reference to a film I haven't seen?" Ali asked, her voice prim.
"You know it! Also," I said, a bright light flaring in my head. "I just had a really insane idea."
"What is it?" Ali asked.
"Pfft, like I should tell you in case it goes wrong. Don't you know
anything
about - ow!" I winced as she managed to kick me, despite the fact that she was chained to the other side of an atomic bomb. And not one of those tiny atomic bombs. This was a big one. I shook my head. "Okay. Fine. Remember the astral form water?"
"Yes," Ali said, sounding chagrined. "I led you to a beach paradise planet and ended up getting most of the team almost eaten by the local vegetation."
"In your defense," I said, casually, closing my eyes as I tried to focus on what little psychic power I had. The helmet was preventing me from pushing my mind outside of my head, and it was preventing me on drawing power into myself. But it wasn't stopping me from the thinking
inside
of my head, or tapping what psionic powers were there. That was not actually that much. But if I was lucky, I wouldn't need much. "The local vegetation doesn't nibble on Doyen. All part of the fun of interstellar travel and adventure."
Deep doot.
"We have fifty minutes left," Ali said. "So, what about the astral form water?"
"I'm going to make a tiny amount of it in my mouth. My astral form gets ejected, then I fly out and bring help."
"Bring
help
?" Ali squeaked. "We're on a different planet, in a different solar system."
"No...we're...not!" I hissed. "That was the last thing that hit me. I saw the dorsal ridge of this sandworm fucker before we got kicked in. Something about it was familiar. It was the
same
ridge I saw near Gateway. That fucker just wanted us to think we weren't still on the same planet so we wouldn't try something insane...like...
this
."
At that moment, I altered the roof of my mouth to produce the same water that we had run into on the planet. Or, more accurately, the same microbial psionic parasites. Normally, you don't want microbial psionic parasites, but this was a special occasion. What I hadn't quite counted on was the fact that an astral form would feel the helmet differently than a physical one. As I emerged from my own skull, I smashed into the helmet as if it was an incredibly solid wall. I jerked backwards, smashing my head into the
other
side of the helmet, then collapsed downward. I sprawled in the air, with my head nestled against my own junk, and groaned quietly. Getting teabagged by yourself did seem to fit my mood.
"Did it work?" Ali asked.
Yeah,
I said. Silently. Since I was in my astral form.
"...Abby?" Ali asked.
Right!
I forced myself to float upwards, twisting left at the last moment to avoid braining myself again. I looked at Ali, wishing I could do more than just heroically rescue her. It just felt like such a dick move to fly off and leave her here alone. But if I didn't get my ass in gear, we were
both
fucked. I didn't even bother trying to look around the area we had been dumped. The terrain was too different from the terrain near the city - yeah, I know, planets could have multiple kinds of terrain, weird, right? Instead, I flew up. And up. And up. And up. And up.
An old joke that I had heard once:
Anyone can go into space. You just need to drive your car up long enough.
Well, this was true of astral bodies. And thanks to being unbound by petty things like air resistance, my continual inertia-free acceleration built up speed so fast that I actually had to stop going up and start going back down well before the sky turned black. Even with that counter-acceleration, I was still pretty high over the planet before I felt myself coming to a stop. I rubbed my chin, looking down at the world that slowly spun beneath me. I say slowly, but I was in orbit now. I just had to remember where Gate was, then fly so that I was over it, then fly down to them, then find my friends, all before my girlfriend-
Something fast and bright shot past me so fast that I leaped to the side and screamed like a little tiny baby girl. But you'd be scared too if a massive hunk of steel and plastic shot past you at orbital speeds. Okay. That was the
Angel Grove.
It was...in a geostationary orbit over the city! I turned, then started to take advantage of the fact that continual acceleration builds up in a goddamn hurry. I shot after the
Angel Grove,
gaining, gaining, gaining. I saw it growing larger and larger by the moment, my hands stretched before me in classic superhero style. I started to bleed off speed until I was approaching it at a stately walk.
I started to hum the
Blue Danube
as I got closer and closer to the skin of the reaction mass tank. Then I was through and ended up remembering too late that a massive tank full of liquid water was
not
actually filled with nice lights. I tumbled blindly through that, then past cables and wires and pipes, then at last, into the living section of the ship. I orientated myself, then flew to the cameras. There was the city. I aligned myself with the telescopic nose of the ship...and then flung myself forward.
I shot down through atmosphere and clouds and felt a real sense of vertigo. It was easy to ignore while going up - especially when you were focused on getting places and not letting your girlfriend fucking explode.
Harder when going down. The ground was shooting towards me. Faster. Faster.
Too fast! I started to decelerate as the ground swept up towards me as I kicked my legs out before me, as if I could fire deceleration flames out of my feet like Azula. My arms spread and I tensed for the impact. Instead, my legs plunged into the ground as I slowed to an almost stop, then started to bob upwards. I shook my head, chagrined. Right! Astral body! Duh! I shook my head.
There was the city.
I mentally recreated what I had seen of the city, did my best guess, and then flew at the wall like a great big blue cannonball. I flew through stone and wall, emerged into a room that held a Doyen noble watching two gorgeous cheetah girls dance and wriggle for his amusement. Their hips twitched from side to sides and they lifted their arms above their heads as the Doyen tapped his chin, looking thoughtful. I tore my eyes from their silk swathed breasts and flew left. The next room held a pair of glowing fog banks whose differently colored edges were starting to intermix and flow together, while the room filled with echoing, disembodied moans.
Come on, was everyone-
"Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Magnum!
Yes!
" Tycho's voice filled my astral ears as I flowed into the room. There was Tycho, her fingers worked through the glowing blue sheets of the bed that I had fucked Beli on. Her lithe, ebony black body quivered, quaked really, with every mighty thrust of Magnum's immense cock as he
plowed
her. I'd done some plowing in my time, but seeing it from outside of the act, I had to admit...the term
plow
had a definite sense of accuracy to it. It wasn't just that Magnum was fucking Tycho doggy style. It was that every
thrust
he planted into her made her whole body rock. Her knees lifted, her shoulders quivered, her head threw back, and her frizzy hair jangled about in secondary shockwaves of pure, erotic pleasure.
