I am asleep on my feet. I stumble. Alliea props me up.
She falls asleep too. We support each other, swaying, sleeping, blinking into wakefulness.
And we hug, and we cry. Rob was her husband, she loved him more than anything.
“My darling, my precious, don’t do this, don’t leave me,” Alliea weeps.
I bawl like a baby, and hold her close.
Lena
“Welcome.”
I fix him with a cold, forbidding stare. His name is Captain Flanagan. 'Captain' is a courtesy title, he has no pilot’s training or licence. He’s a fifth-generation settler from the planet Cambria, ninety-seven years of age.
He looks much older. The hair, the wrinkles… It’s his choice. His eyes and organs are new, but the hair is untreated, it does naturally go that grey colour you know.
I know! Do you think I’m stupid? I know!
“Let me introduce you to my crew,” says Captain Flanagan.
I scream. The bridge is on fire! I step back… I’m amplifying your force field.
Stop this! But there’s no need to be afraid. It’s a flame beast, from the solar system C40333. It’s sentient.
“This is Alby.”
“Pleasssed to meet you.”
A pillar of flame stands before me, shimmering, crackling, speaking. It’s alive.
“Hello Alby,” I say. I hold out my hand, imperiously. The flames whorl and a tendril of fire extends towards me. I feel the heat of the fire through my exoarmour. I am unflapped.
“Brandon.” Brandon Bisby, forty-five years of age, astrophysicist by training, his parents were killed by the Cheo’s shock troops, on suspicion of being Terrorist. They were later exonerated.
He is lean, skinny really, he is smiling at me, my God, his eyes are flickering up and down, inspecting my breasts, my thighs, he wants sex with me. I shake his hand, then grip it painfully tight, and flick my other hand on his groin, and freeze him with a look. He’s caught out in guilt and shame.
The Captain smiles. He’s amused by my powerplay.
“Alliea.” She’s an escaped slave, from penal settlement XIY. Her parents were career criminals, she was born in prison and fled after a power failure in '82.
She’s strong, her shockingly purple exoarmour sculpted around sharply defined muscles. She doesn’t have the defeated and haunted look I would have expected of a slave. She’s scowling at me, she hates me. I smile a kindly smile at her, offering her my grace and benediction, ironically of course. She is, I concede, beautiful, a fine example of femslave.
“Harry.” He’s a Loper, bioengineered at the Stanstead Laboratories on the planet Shame.
He is half man, half beast, with rich silver fur and sharp pointy teeth. He has three eyes which are bright green. He wears no clothing, I wonder idly about his genitalia. Eleven inches, retractable, here’s an image of the Loper erect.
I burst out laughing, no one knows why.
“And Jamie.”
Jamie is a child, ten at most. He baffles me. Arrested development. He’s 120 years old, a computer gamesplayer, he paid a lab to keep him in a prepubertal state a few weeks before his tenth birthday. His parents didn’t know until afterwards. The procedure is irreversible.
“Cool, baby.”
He touches my breast with his finger and thumb, feeling the warmth of the smooth but impermeable exoarmour which, in this light, shimmers with a rainbow of subliminal images.
“Jamie!” reproves the Captain.
“You will, of course, all die,” I say calmly.
“We all die, sooner or later,” says Captain Flanagan. I fix him with another condescending stare.
“What ransom do you require?” I ask him.
“Your people will be informed, in due course. In the meantime, you will be kept under house arrest. All my people are armed with paralysing sprays, any insubordination and you will be kept in semi-coma. However, provided you can live according to the ship’s rules, you will be accorded full privileges as a prisoner of war and will be treated with courtesy, respect and dignity. We are signatories of the Post Geneva Convention, you can be assured of our professionalism and good intentions.”
“You are the shit I excrete from my arsehole,” I point out to him. “Your mothers were whores who fellated animals for money. I recoil at your presence, I have no doubt that you eat your young, alive and screaming.”
“I, ah…” The Captain blinks, a little taken aback at the vehemence of my verbal assault.
“And you’re a bitch,” says the woman, Alliea. “And your father is scum. An evil bastard fucking dictator who has crushed the life out of humanity!”
“Easy, Alliea,” says the Captain mildly.
I am shaken, but do not show it.
“You are sworn enemies of the Cheo?” I say to them. “You want to defy him?”
“We want to, uh, take lots of money off him and then run off giggling,” says the child, Jamie. And then he grins. Don’t lose your temper.
“I demand to be released.” And don’t provoke them. Let the Cheo pay the ransom, it’s only money.
“The Cheo will never negotiate with terrorists.”
“Your father is a rich man. He can afford it.”
“Surrender, or you will feel his wrath,” I tell them.
They start to laugh at me. “Surrender or you will feel his wrath!” mimics the child, in a booming B-movie voice, hopping up and down. Flanagan, too, has to cover his face with one hand to hold his laughter in.
“I will not be treated like this.”
Flanagan tries to resume his previous severe look. “You’re our prisoner now,” Flanagan says, “you’ll do as we damn well…”
I strike Flanagan in the face. He has no expectation of the blow. His skull shatters and blood flies from his nose. I whirl like the wind, claws extending from my exohands, and I slash the hamstrings of the Loper, back-kick the woman and…
Lena
I blame you. You gave me poor advice. Not so, Lena. I specifically told you not to lose your temper.
But you might have guessed I’d ignore you. (Sigh.)
How was I to know they’d be so good at fighting? These people are pirates Lena. They are deadly and seasoned warriors. You cannot defeat them with your dojo training.
My pain is infinite, my predicament painful and harrowing. This is torment, this is hell, this is hopelessly humiliating. Lena, console yourself with…
Shut up! I am in semi-coma. I can move, I can talk, I can breathe, I can eat. But…
But I feel as if I’m trapped under a massive gravitational field. Every movement is slow, so slow, slo-mo with heartburn, and each breath is an achingly prolonged rasp and wheeze.
And, I, am, ob-lig-ed, to, speak, a, syll, a, ble, at, a, time.
It, is, un, en, dur, a, ble.
Jamie
Wow! She’s hot.
What a babe! A beaut.
