time with me in here, then you need to accept me like this.”
She raised his hand higher and turned it so that it was his palm faced towards her. “Perhaps this will help you?” She mused, pressing her breast into his palm.
Dexter gasped and opened his eyes wide in surprise. He felt her nipple harden against the skin of his palm, poking into it and urging him to caress it.
“Does feeling my body make it easier to look upon it?” Jenna asked softly, her words and tone weaving a spell over him.
Dexter shook his head and pulled his hand away. “It’s very nice — you are very nice,” Dexter corrected. “But you’re a member of my crew and that’s that.”
Jenna shrugged, a smile on her face. She turned and stepped away from him, her hands busy in front of her so he could not see them. “Well then, Captain, I suspect a week will not be nearly long enough, and it will be a lifetime too long.”
She bent forward and slid her breeches over her hips as she did so. As soon as Dexter saw her doing this he turned and rushed out the door. He knew that as much as he yearned to watch her show, he knew what would happen should he stay. As it was he was overdue to take over on the helm for Bekka. She could use all the time with Rosh and Bailynn that she could get.
In his second attempt at the helm, Rosh found himself fascinated with the feeling of being so in tune with the Voidhawk. The ship felt like an extension of himself; because of it he was able to forget about his own body as he focused on the sails and the hull of the ship. It still took Dexter a couple of times of repeating an order to get the man to hear it.
The gravity well of an obstacle caught him entirely off guard. The Voidhawk was dragged off the course they had set, making everyone shift and nearly lose their balance. Jodyne cursed as a skillet fell from a cupboard and glanced off her arm, promising Rosh a mouthful the next time she saw him.
“What happened?” Rosh asked, looking around for Dexter, who had already rushed to the windows of the bridge.
“That… rock?” Dexter asked, trailing off as he stared into the void. “It’s a tower or something, or what’s left of one. Looks like it was based on an asteroid but it’s been blown into mostly rubble.”
“Huh?” Rosh asked, not understanding what the man meant.
“You had us under full sail and we ran into the gravity field of those rocks, it pulled you out of it,” Dexter said. He hurried to the door to the bridge and opened it up, yelling for Bekka as he did so.
Bekka was already heading towards the bridge; Dexter cut his yell short to spare the half-elf from damaged hearing. Lynn trailed behind her, obedient and quiet as ever.
“Rosh, move,” Dexter said. “Let Bekka take us in.”
Rosh got up from the chair and collapsed to the ground. Bailynn rushed forward, kneeling beside him and wrapping her arms around him to help him. Rosh looked up and shook his head, then chuckled.
“Still hard getting used to getting my own feet back,” he said. He glanced back at Bailynn and did a surprised double take. She had hardly spoken since they had calmed her down, or even done much more than follow them around and listen to them as they instructed her. Now here she was trying to help him out.
Rosh grinned at her and slowly climbed to his feet. “Um, thanks,” he said, at a loss for words. To his greater surprise he saw a hint of a smile in her eyes as she looked up at him. Then her gaze dropped and she returned to behaving as she had before.
“Rosh, on the deck, it looks abandoned but we should check it out,” Dexter said, holding the door open.
Rosh nodded and started towards it. Then he grinned, “If it’s ruins, might be some treasure to be had!” He took the stairs up to the deck two at a time.
Dexter shook his head and followed.
Dexter and a fully armed Jenna gathered on the forecastle to watch the approach. The others worked the sails and rigging as Kragor called out orders to them. The Voidhawk closed rapidly with the broken up rubble, and soon passed into the surprisingly clean bubble of atmosphere that still surrounded the tower.
“Kragor!” Dexter said as he turned and started towards the main deck. “You, Bekka, Keshira, Jodyne, and Bailynn stay with the ‘Hawk. Rosh and Jenna with me.”
Kragor scowled at him as he walked past, causing Dexter to hesitate and then grin. “Sorry old friend, you’re just so good with the ship!” Dexter found himself glad that Kragor did not possess Jodyne’s talent, and tendency towards, throwing things. The look the dwarf gave him still left him worried the dwarf might ask his wife for some lessons.
With the sails furled and Bekka concentrating on holding the ship on station, they slid down a rope to the rubble strewn surface of the asteroid that the tower used as a base. Weapons in hand, they approached the tower and studied it carefully. Only a little over twenty feet tall, it had once been much taller but the top had been knocked off of it.
The door to the tower lay in rubble at their feet, leaving an open doorway. Dexter led the way while Jenna followed close behind. Rosh brought up the rear. At first glance the inside looked much like the outside, strewn with rubble and debris. Stepping over the threshold caused each of them to stumble and gasp as the tower’s contents shifted before their eyes.
An unseen light source provided illumination without shadows, and the small circular room suddenly seemed at least twice the size it had been. It remained damaged and debris filled, with furniture broken and tipped over.
“Somebody had a powerful rage,” Rosh said, appraising the damage.
A spiral staircase stretched upwards to a second level and descended into the ground below them. “Rosh, guard that stairway,” Dexter ordered, moving towards it and motioning for Jenna to follow him.
Rosh did as he was asked, but his eyes drifted upwards as Jenna scaled the staircase above him, rather than watching into the depths as he had been bade.
Above Dexter and Jenna found it to be much the same. The room had once been a library and a dining room, but the furniture and bookcases had been broken and turned over. The ceiling and upper portions of the wall were missing as well, giving them a clear view of the hull of the Voidhawk as it floated in the void above them. Dexter waved at his ship before turning and heading back towards the staircase.
“Dex, look at this!” Jenna hissed, stopping him in his tracks.
Dexter turned and looked where her pistol was pointing. There was a stain on the floor. A red stain. He stepped closer to it and bent over, studying it. He scuffed it with his boot and saw that, while mostly dried and congealed, it was still tacky enough to have been liquid not so very long ago.
“Think anyone’s left?” Jenna asked him, reappraising the room and wondering if there were any additional blood stains to be found.
Dexter pursed his lips and straightened. “We need to leave, this could be a trap!”
Jenna’s hand caught his arm as he started to head back to the stairway. “Dex, we need to see if there are any survivors.”
Dexter frowned, then nodded after a moment. “But we move quickly,” he said, moving down the stairs rapidly and not stopping until he reached Rosh.
“What’s going on?” Rosh asked as they hurried past him.
“We found blood, only a few hours old,” Jenna explained.
Rosh looked up and then down again, a smile making its way on his face. “About time,” he said, anxious to fall in behind them.
“Jenna, get back to the ‘Hawk and make sure it’s safe and ready to move. Rosh, you come with me,” Dexter said, starting down the stairs again.
Jenna looked at him, lips parted in silent protest. Rosh brushed past her, anxious to be on the move. She clamped her mouth shut and, jaw clenched, hurried back out of the ruined tower to the ropes that would return her to the Voidhawk.
Descending what felt like another 12 feet, Dexter and Rosh exited the staircase and stepped onto a floor that had the texture of fine sand. They looked around and saw that the room extended far away and was carved from the very asteroid they were on. The wall the staircase was next to had several wooden walls that looked to be holding cells. The walls showed signs of battle, with portions of wood being scratched, missing, broken, or
