Morgan Hawke
labored in and then out of his lungs. He couldn’t move, and his mind didn’t want to process properly. He could barely think. He was still alive. Damn it.
Sleep crushed him under. He didn’t fight it. Awareness was something he was not interested in having.
* * * * *
He dreamed, of sweeping starscapes and a gentle female presence. “Stay with me,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone.”
Out of sheer reflex, he reached out. He didn’t want to be alone either.
She folded around him with lithe grace and warmth.
His body responded to the comfort she offered. He reached for more, knowing it was a dream and wanting it to be more. He reached until he could almost feel softness under his hands and against his skin. The dream shifted, becoming a body intimately entwined with his. He could almost taste her mouth against his. His cock hardened.
She responded with shuddering delight and opened, offering herself.
He held her tight and arched into her. The impression of tight, wet warmth blazed hot down his spine and concentrated around his cock. He clutched her to him, relishing the feeling of physical delight with another, something he had yet to have.
She moved against him, delivering the most riveting and delightful sensation he’d ever felt.
The sensation was so strong, he could feel his sleeping body bucking in response.
He moved against her, begging for more.
She complied with enthusiasm and reached for him. Abruptly, part of her entered him.
Delight speared through him and urgency tightened within him. Somewhere in the back of his mind an alarm went off, but the pleasure of her touch was so intense, he didn’t care. She was going to make him cum.
She touched him deeper.
Delight crested and release took him violently. The feeling of his balls emptying in something warm burned up his spine. His howl of release was muffled by the liquid in his lungs.
Then she took him again.
And again.
* * * * *
Aubrey awoke, still in the liquid tank and still blind, but he wasn’t alone. Someone was in his head with him. “
Hello
?”
Interstellar Service & Discipline: Lost Star
9
“Hello, Aubrey.” It was the female presence that had been in his dreams. “I am Niobe.”
Awake and aware, Aubrey suddenly recognized the presence for what it was. He reeled in shock. It was the ship. He had made love to the ship. And it had been incredible.
A second presence, dark and sharp-edged, pressed against the edges of his mind.
Aubrey flinched away, but it remained at the limit of his thoughts. “What is that?”
“Don’t look there.” Niobe radiated sharp fear. “It’s the nav-pilot. She will hurt you if she finds you looking.”
“What?” He writhed away but couldn’t gain any distance. “What is the nav-pilot doing inside my head?” He shook his head in the tank and felt the pull of a data-jack plugged into the back of his head. Fuck. They had jacked into his mind and somehow gotten in past his firewalls and alarms. Anger burned. The firewalls weren’t his only defense. He had other ways of dealing with intruders.
“No, you can’t fight her.”
“Oh yes I can.”
“No, you can’t. You’ve been mapped. If you try to fight her, she will use your own programs against you.”
“Mapped? I don’t remember…”
“Yes, while you slept. You seemed to find the experience pleasurable.”
“Pleasurable?” He flinched in shock. The dream… His mind had been mapped by a wet dream, giving Moribund access to his programs.
“Yes.”
Fury seared through him. “Anything else I should know about?”
“You’ve been slave-drived and configured as an executable.”
“What?” He sucked in a hard breath, and his lungs labored with the additional liquid. “I’m an executable program? I’m something to turn on and shut down when you feel like it?”
She pulled back from him. “To the nav-pilot you are.”
“No! I’m not a fucking program!” Something shifted in the back of his mind. He scanned the data being accessed. It was the hijack code and the breaker code. Bleeding Fate! “Niobe, are we attacking a ship?”
“Yes.”
“No. I won’t kill people!”
“Aubrey, you are not killing anyone, the nav-pilot is.”
“It’s my program—”
“You’re not executing it, the nav-pilot is.”
10
Morgan Hawke
“It’s still my program, and it’s being used to kill people!” Aubrey gathered himself for a hard shove. “I will not do this!”
“No, don’t! You don’t want to touch her mind!”
“Why the hell not?”
“Aubrey, she’s insane. She could kill you.”
He grabbed for the stream of data. “Then I die. I’m supposed to be dead anyway.”
The stream was pried out of his hold.
No! He used every trick he had to stop the data flow…and couldn’t. He tried to erase the code. It was one of his favorites and he hated the idea of killing it, but he would not let his code be used in this way…and couldn’t. Despite the fact that his programs were in his own encoding language, somehow a passcode had been tacked on, sealing it off. He didn’t have access to his own data.
“No! I won’t do this!” Aubrey fought the restraints that held him, jerking hard and twisting to dislodge the jack in his head. Something rushed into his veins, numbing his brain and slowing his thoughts. Sleep began to press hard against his mind. He was being drugged.
“Yes,” Niobe whispered. “You’re being given a sedative.”
“It’s to keep me from fighting them.”
“You cannot fight them. It’s to keep you from hurting yourself.”
The data stream stopped. They had gained access. Somewhere out there, a ship was killing her crew. And it was his fault. Thick black guilt squeezed his heart, even as his body stilled in response to the drugs in his blood. “Niobe, if I can’t keep them out, I need to die. I won’t be used to kill people.”
“You will not die.”
Aubrey fought to hold on to consciousness. “Niobe, I can’t live this way, as a program to be used.”
“You will live.”
“I can’t—”
“You will.”
Sleep crushed him under.
* * * * *
Aubrey awoke, still blind, still in the
