“It’s a war, Grecca.”
“What do you mean? There’s no war.”
“The Pirates. How long has the Fleet been protecting the stations against them? As long as I’ve been alive. As long as my grandfather was alive. How many lifetimes before that? You were at the headquarters. How well is that going? There’s hardly anyone there. They’re barely holding things together.”
“That’s no excuse! I don’t care how badly you’re losing a war; you can’t use babies like that.”
“It’s not a war like they had after the Scattering. It’s not fleets and conquest; it’s raids and counter raids. Atrocities and massacres. Remember those holos we saw of the bodies floating outside Ureela Station? It doesn’t matter which side did it. That’s the kind of war this is.”
I was nearly shaking with rage and despair. Searching for something else to focus on, I pulled up a status report from the gentank. “Robert’s stable, but he’s not coming out of the tank for a little while.”
Grecca pulled up the navigation system. “We’re at the spot where we were supposed to rendezvous with the ship carrying Valka. Nothing on sensors, though.”
I tasted bile. All I had gone through, all Grecca and Robert had gone through—it would all be meaningless if Valka hadn’t made it.
“When were they supposed to show up?”
“Robert didn’t tell me the plan.” She turned back to the sensor recordings and ran it forward, zoomed out to maximum range. The arc of the station stood out, its immense form dwarfing the buzz of attacking drones. “There,” she said, pointing. “Another ship leaving the headquarters.”
“Who?” I peered at the little blip streaking away from the station.
“Shirley and Masters. It was their job to get Valka.” The recording ended. “And that’s when we jumped.”
“Were they leaving from the right place? That was coming from a different part of the station than we did.”
“Valka wasn’t in the prison.”
“Where was she?”
Grecca sighed. “Ovor maternity school.”
I cringed. “Oh, vack.”
On top of everything that had happened to her, with her father, and Masters, now this. As much time had passed, she would probably be carrying eggs, eggs fertilized by one of their professional rapists. It sickened me to think that she had been subjected to that.
I looked up. Grecca’s eyes were full of sad sympathy.
I swallowed my rage and took her hand in mine, drawing strength. “So was that their ship?”
“It looks like it. I can’t tell if they made it, though. They hadn’t jumped by the time we did.”
I looked out the front window, as if my eyes could make some kind of contribution to the sensor array.
Grecca touched my shoulder. “All we can do right now is wait. For Shirley and Masters to show up, or for Robert to wake up.” She took one of the protein cakes, took a bite, and waved it in my direction. “Eat.”
I waved her off. “I’m too worried. My stomach gets funny when I’m like this.”
She lay back in the control couch and stared out into the void. There was nothing more to say, so we said nothing. There was nothing more to do except sit and wait.
Sleep crept up on me while I stared out into the void and the blackness covered me like a shroud.
An alarm on the console woke me. While I blinked and swallowed, trying to fight my way to full consciousness, Grecca brought up a display.
“Sensor contact,” she said. “Just one. It’s Shirley.”
I reached for the communicator controls. “Glad to see you made it.”
Shirley’s face appeared. “We had a little trouble, but we made it. No one’s seriously hurt.” Her brow furrowed. “Where’s Robert?”
“He’s alive,” I said, “but you better come aboard.”
We maneuvered for docking, the belly of our ship to the belly of hers.
Shirley was first through the hatch. “Where is he?”
“In the gentank.”
Shirley pushed past me, hit the control to lift the deck plate covering the gentank, and activated the diagnostic screen.
“Severe brain insult to the right parietal lobe,” she read from it. “Multiple cerebral hematomas, autolyzed. Damage to motor cortex.” She let out a shuddering breath. “Paralysis.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Let’s get him out,” she said. “The gentank has done everything it can.”
Grecca and Shirley pulled Robert’s semi-conscious body out of the gel and maneuvered him into the fresher to wash off the gel.
“Go talk to Valka,” said Shirley. “She needs you.”
I found her in the main chamber of Shirley’s ship, sitting crosslegged in the middle of the bed-floor. She had a white robe wrapped around her body, but even so, I could tell that she still wore an Ovor body, belly swollen with eggs, four breasts piled on top.
She looked up at me with eyes full of hope and shame. Her mouth opened to speak, but I bent down, took her hand, and pulled her into an embrace.
“I was so worried about you,” I said.
“We had to stop,” she said. “I wanted to get back to my old body before the rendezvous. Challers . . .” She choked back a sob. “I can’t. If I did, I’d destroy the eggs I’m carrying.”
“It’s all right,” I said softly, holding her head to my chest. “It’s you I love. It doesn’t matter what your body looks like. Once you’ve delivered your eggs, we’ll get you back to your old body.” I felt a surge of pride in her. She had put the lives she carried ahead of her own immediate interests, and mine.
We held each other, there, for a time, until the communications panel on the side of the chamber beeped. I walked to it and pushed the button. “Go ahead.”
Shirley’s voice came through the link. “I know you need time together, Challers, but you need to come back here. We have to sort out what happens next.”
We gathered in the drive chamber of Robert’s ship. The bed geometry had been altered to make a seat for him. His left hand was stuffed into his pocket at an odd angle. His left eyelid drooped and the corners of his mouth didn’t match. Even so, his aura of authority was still there. Shirley, Masters, and Grecca had distributed themselves on the benches around the edge of the room.
“Challers, Valka,” he said, speech slowed and slurred. “Sit down. You deserve an explanation.”
We sat next to each other. I took her hand in mine and held it in my lap. She smiled at me, then looked to Robert to continue.
“You’re probably wondering why I took the suicidal step of rescuing the two of you from the Scouts. After all, what possible benefit could I gain from it? It would have made more sense to just keep my head down and just . . .” He groaned and took a raspy breath. Shirley jumped to his side, but he waved her off with his right hand. “No, no. I’m fine.”
He chuckled hoarsely. “Looks like I’m going to have to make this short. I am a Pirate agent. It was my job to infiltrate the Scouts and send back information about where the Scout cruises were going, so our fleets could stay one step ahead of them.”
“So why end it to help us?” I asked.
“Cassandra’s why,” he said with a half-smile. “I knew she existed, I knew how valuable she was to the Scouts, but I didn’t have a way to investigate without risking my cover. You handled that part for me.”
I leapt to my feet and crossed the chamber. “You burner! You were playing me the whole time, weren’t you? You had me on your string, watching me, through Shirley! I wasn’t doing it for you, vacuum take you!”
He sat there and looked me in the eye, cool as space. “And where were you planning to go once you had rescued her? You need me, Challers, and I need you, and we don’t have time to play games. You help me rescue Cassandra and I’ll sponsor you for the Pirates. I’ll vouch for your actions. We have to move fast, though. When the Scouts figure out what’s happened, they’re going to act to secure her.”
I glanced at Valka. She nodded.
My guts were clenching and spasming, threatening to bring up what little I had in my stomach, but I knew there was only one way out of the situation I was in, and that was to change sides.
I gritted my teeth. “I’ll do it.”
Globular Cluster X-42 was, like any other, a tangle of gravitational pits and twisted warp-lines. Navigating there by anything but jump would be impossible. Not only that, the more time we took getting there, the more time the Scouts would have to get word to the station. If that happened, Cassandra would be beyond our grasp forever.
Valka and I stood in the chamber. The moment had finally come, though not by any circumstance we ever could have imagined. We would be powering the ship together. Masters and Grecca were in the bridge, monitoring the systems, but giving us a bit of privacy.
The other Scout ship held Robert and Shirley, also finally together and also making the best of the situation. Robert couldn’t pilot the ship—couldn’t handle a gun or help with the mission, either—but he could power it to come up behind us for another rendezvous at a random set of coordinates beyond sensor range of the research station.
I started by peeling the robe from Valka’s body, exposing four breasts and a swollen belly.
She closed her eyes, bracing herself as if about to be struck.
“You’re beautiful,” I said, caressing one full breast and leaning in for a kiss.
She smiled. “You lie so sweetly.”
“No lie,” I said, bringing my hand up to her chin. “You would be beautiful to me no matter what shape you wore. I love you, Valka. I always will. Besides, you have four breasts. What’s not to like?”
She pulled me in for another kiss, this time furiously passionate, and when we parted again, I could feel a tear wetting my cheek—hers or mine, I couldn’t tell. She pulled the hem of my shirt up over my head and threw it aside, then removed my shorts.
“I love you, too,” she said, and took my cock in one hand, stroking it lightly as it grew firm.
“How would you like to do this?” I asked, letting my hands roam over her body, as well.
“It’ll work best from behind,” she said, “but that can come later. You really don’t mind what happened to me?”
“It hurts me terribly what they did to you.” I knew her stomach wouldn’t be so distended unless someone had fertilized her eggs. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” she said, bringing my hand up to her cheek. “I want you to make love to me. I want us to go out into the stars. I want the moment we have been waiting for, for so long. I want the moment we joined the Scouts for. Talk can come later.”
I smiled, took her face between my hands, and kissed her again.
She broke off the kiss and laughed. “We need to get started, Challers!”
“I’m in no rush.”
“Well, I am.” She knelt and licked the underside of my cock, and a shudder ran up my spine.
“All right, okay, I get the point,” I said, my voice starting to get hoarse with desire.
She giggled again, gave me another lick, and then put her lips around the head. She tickled the underside with her tongue, and for a moment, the thought sprang up that this was something she had done a hundred times with Masters. Rather than push it away, I accepted it, let it join my memories of Shirley and Grecca and all the things I had done without Valka. It was history, it was fact, and it was irrelevant to that moment.
Valka moved slowly, walking her lips forward along my shaft, gradually accepting my cock into her mouth and down her throat. The movement was so slow and subtle that I could barely tell it was happening at all. Her tongue, however, darted about inside her mouth with delightful speed, and the contrast added a wonderful dimension to the sensations. When she had taken it as far as I could expect her to go, she pushed on. I was hard-pressed to keep to my feet.
When I was fully hard, she tipped back onto her elbows and spread her legs. “Your turn, now.”
I knelt over her and slid my hand down her round belly, slowly approaching her pussy. “Gladly.”
While I teased the outer lips, promising entry but not quite giving it to her, I lowered my lips to one strawberry-pink nipple and pulled it between my lips.
She let out a contented
ahh
and stroked my hair, letting her body roll back down against the bed surface. I followed, kneeling at her side and supporting my body on one elbow.