Fall of Icarus

“Sounds complicated.”

“Not really. Take right now for instance,” Yen said, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes as though in deep conversation. “I’m getting the impression that you long to have sex with me.”

Keryn laughed. “I guess that power of yours really is spotty, superhero.”

Yen shrugged. “I didn’t have to use powers to figure that one out.”

Keryn’s blushed. She grasped for a change of subject. “What else can you do, aside from embarrass innocent women?”

Yen leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He obviously wanted to find something to do that would definitively impress Keryn. Finally finding his answer, he leaned forward, placing his right hand on the table, palm skyward. “This is something that I’ve been working on for over a year now and only recently perfected. Prepare to be amazed.”

The air around Yen began to shimmer, wavering as though heat was rolling from his skin. The wavering air flickered angrily as he concentrated. In the palm of his hand, a single blue tendril began to extend toward the ceiling. It shook unsteadily for a moment before settling. The top of the tendril tipped forward like a serpent’s head, glancing side to side as though examining its new surroundings. The head of the tendril turned around and looked at Yen before tilting to the side inquisitively, awaiting its next orders.

“That’s amazing,” Keryn said, laughing at the amount of personality present in such an inanimate object. “It’s almost like it’s alive.”

Yen’s smile was weak as he strained to maintain his psychic projection. “Sometimes it feels alive,” Yen explained. “I may be the one manifesting it, but it comes with its own personality, like it’s less an extension of me and more a self-aware servant of mine.”

Keryn’s eyes narrowed. “So you don’t control it? What if it gets out of control and starts doing real damage?”

Yen shook his head, his eyes never leaving the tendril. His voice seemed to come from far away as he spoke through the shimmering air around him. “Think of it like your Voice. It’s a part of you, but clearly doesn’t control you. I can dismiss it with a thought if it gets out of control, but that’s never happened. It may seem to have its own mind, but it still shares mine as well, which means that it knows my intent and ambitions.”

“I think it’s cute, but what can you use it for?” Keryn asked, watching the tendril twist around itself in Yen’s palm like a young animal searching for something to do out of boredom.

“It’s a physical manifestation of my power, but it’s still incorporeal. I can pass it through any armor, clothing, or skin. And, because it’s made of psychic energy, I can use it to lash out at an opponent and disrupt his nervous system. Send one of these against a Terran in a full battle suit and it will disable him without ever firing a shot.”

“Useful,” Keryn said as a statement more than a question. “I like it.”

“That’s not all it can do, you know,” Yen said cryptically as a smile crept across his face. “These little tendrils can have quite a few other uses.”

“Like what…” Keryn began before stopping in mid sentence, her breath frozen in her throat.

Beneath the table, from Yen’s other palm, a second tendril extended toward Keryn. The tendril passed insubstantially through the thin uniform pants Keryn wore. As it brushed across the skin beneath, the tendril activated nerve clusters and pleasure receptors. The pleasurable signal was carried to Keryn’s brain, instantaneously driving her hormones wild and causing her entire body to flush.

Gasping for air, she finally managed to speak. “Stop,” she said, her lips quivering.

Though obviously strained from the effort of maintaining two tendrils, Yen still managed a strong laugh as he withdrew both tendrils. The air around him stopped moving and the room settled back into its former self.

“I told you,” Yen said as he continued laughing, “it has many, many other uses.”

“Don’t…” Keryn managed, her eyes closed as she tried to settle her wayward emotions. “Don’t ever do that without warning me first!” Her breath was still ragged as she tried to control her pounding heartbeat.

They sat in silence for quite some time as Keryn regained control of herself. She fought against the obvious desire to act on her spiked lust knowing that her acting on it was exactly what Yen had intended when he sent the tendril her way. Finally, her body calmed though she still felt a stirring of desire burning in her belly. She also didn’t dare stand, knowing that her legs were probably unstable.

“You’re an ass,” Keryn said, opening her eyes slowly and staring at the still smiling Yen.

“I have my moments,” Yen joked.

“It makes me wonder how many women have been exposed to your little tendrils.” In one swift moment, she had shifted the balance of power out of Yen’s hands and into her own.

Yen was caught with his mouth open, unsure of how to reply. She had deftly turned the tables on him, leaving him wondering if he could talk his way out of the situation. Of course Keryn had not been the first woman exposed to his powers like that, though he wouldn’t have expected her sharp mind to connect those dots quite that quickly. He stammered, hoping that he could find the right thing to say, but was finally saved when the transponders they both wore crackled to life, broadcasting a message to everyone on board the Revolution.

“All hands to battle stations,” Captain Hodge’s voice called over the ship-wide intercom channel. “This is not a drill. We are approaching the Terran Fleet. I say again, all hands to their battle stations.”

Keryn and Yen looked at one another in surprise as the message began to replay, their previous encounter already forgotten. They both leapt to their feet, knocking over their respective chairs in their hurry. Reaching the door, Keryn glanced over her shoulder.

“I’ll see you at the Cair Ilmun,” she said, before disappearing into the hall.

The rush through the ship was difficult, with everyone running one way or the other as they tried to get into uniform and man their respective battle stations. Keryn shoved her way past the slower movers, intent on reaching her quarters, slipping into her flight suit, and getting to her ship before the rest of her team. The message had been unclear about how long they had until the Terran Fleet came into range, but Keryn wasn’t willing to take the chance of being late. Reaching her quarters, she inputted her code and moved quickly into the cool darkness beyond. Before the overhead lights had fully flickered to life, she was in the bedroom pulling her flight suit free from its hangar. She dropped her clothes to the ground, not worrying about putting them away as she slipped into her one-piece suit. Clipping her belt around her waist, she drew both her pistol and long knife from the cabinet and attached them to her belt. Feeling ready, she turned and hurried toward the hangar bay.

Within the bay, pilots and crews ran madly from one end to the other, conducting pre-flight checks and arming the multitude of weapons tubes hanging heavily under the wings of their respective ships. At the far end of the bay, Keryn saw a large group of pilots prepping a ship she hadn’t truly been exposed to before: the Weapons Platform. Consisting of little more than a dozen large bore plasma missile tubes surrounding a single cockpit and engine, the Weapons Platform was capable of maneuvering closer to the enemy Destroyers before launching a dozen Cruiser-grade plasma rockets toward its target. Though slow and bulky, the Weapons Platform offered yet another resource for surprising and ultimately destroying the Terran Fleet.

No surprise to Keryn, by the time she arrived at the Cair Ilmun Yen was already examining the outer hull. He offered her only the briefest of acknowledgements before going back to his examination. Adam placed a comforting hand on her shoulder as he passed, carrying a large arsenal of weapons before dropping them in the crew compartment. Keryn felt nervous; not only because they were going to war but because this time, as she recalled from Yen telling her repeatedly, there would be no room for mistakes. If she screwed up this time as she had before, she would not only lose her own life but that of Yen and Adam as well. While she would mourn her own death, she refused to be responsible for the deaths of those she cared so much about.

The rest of her insertion team rushed over to the ship, decked in full battle armor and carrying their own collection of weapons. Each carried a pistol and rifle and had a knife and a series of grenades strapped to their hip. To her surprise, as they passed, they all offered words of encouragement and confident smiles. Keryn smiled in return, feeling bolstered by their confidence in her.

Before she was even able to slip into the Cair Ilmun, she saw some of the Duun fighters rolling forward, pre-positioning for launch. Though the message had been cryptic, Keryn quickly realized that someone knew the timeline and, judging from everyone else’s actions, they would soon be launching against the Terrans. She hurried inside the Cair Ilmun, letting