At faster-than-light speeds, the stars seen through the viewport looked like rainbow confetti streamers falling sideways.

  The two-person crew of the freighter Saturn's Heart sat in the small cockpit in companionable silence, watching the red-shifted starlight stream past, eating their lunchtime rations. June Harding, Navigator First Css, sat in the pilot’s seat, and Will Foucault, Mechanic First Css, in the co-pilot’s, drinking slightly burnt coffee.

  They met at the training academy and became fast friends. They were eventually assigned as crew together due to how well they got along, which was very important on long, deep space runs.

  “Anything to report from the st watch?” Will asked.

  “Not much. We passed an old wreck about three hours ago”, June replied, looking down at her logs, “ at oh nine forty-eight, ship time.”

  “How old?” asked Will, curiosity piqued.

  “Couldn’t say; the debris field was just on the edge of our scanning range as we passed and their transponder was dead. I filed a report on the FTL transmitter, but haven’t heard back from Control yet.”

  Will’s brow furrowed. “ That’s the second unmarked wreck we’ve encountered in many weeks. It’s unusual to see one in the hyperspace nes, let alone two.” He paused, thinking momentarily, “When did we receive the st reply from Control?” Will’s unease began unsettling June.

  “A week and a half.” June’s voice was darkened with apprehension. June set aside her meal and swung her chair to face the navigation terminal. “Checking our position with the Gactic Positioning System now.” She grimaced in confusion. “Says we are still on course for the Brazo system. Let me do a manual position check against the current star field.”

  “Damn it!” June exploded. “We’re about four days off course. Someone’s spoofed the local GPS beacons.” Neither of them needed to say it was a commonly used tactic that pirates used to isote vulnerable ships.

  “Give me ten minutes to calcute a new course off our manual position readings. Damn it, I hate doing it by hand. The computers are always faster!” said June, irritation fring through her typically level demeanor.

  Will had been holding his breath, staring at the sensor scopes while June worked through ying out a new course.

  “We have contacts,” Will announced grimly. “Three of them, no transponders. They must have been trailing us, waiting for us to come out of hyperspace.” Turning to June, “How long until you have our new course?”

  The easygoing banter had been repced by grim professionalism. The freighter was lightly armed and no match for a corvette, let alone three. And they both knew that pirates didn’t take male prisoners, and women who were captured ended up wishing they shared the men’s fate.

  “A few more minutes,” June said as she worked the figures furiously.

  “They’ll close the gap in two; we won’t have time to jump.” Will scanned the local star chart in hopes of sparking a pn. “There!” He excimed. “Make for that nebu. It’ll hide our signature and give us time to calcute a new jump. I’ll run down to the hold and dump the cargo. With any luck, they take the bait, and we can slip away.”

  June nodded her agreement and pulled the ship around, firing the sub-light engines to full power in hopes of making it to the nebu.

  Will ran down the short hallway to the dder to the second deck and cargo hold. In quick succession, he disengaged the mag-lock on each container. “How are we doing?” he called into his wrist comm to his partner.

  “Five minutes to the nebu, three until we’re in range of their weapons,” June responded.

  Will engaged the atmospheric force barrier and then hit the button to open the heavy exterior bay doors. He silently counted to twenty as the bay doors slowly swung to full open.

  Running up the steps and sealing the interior door separating the cargo hold from the living quarters, he called out over his comms, “Ready. Begin evasive maneuvers.”

  June began weaving the ship back and forth, no longer flying in a straight line, trying to confuse the pirates targeting computers.

  Feeling the ship maneuvering hard, Will killed the force field from the remote terminal, forcefully decompressing the cargo bay, and ejected the cargo like pellets from a shotgun. “Cargo away,” he called into the comms as he raced back to the cockpit.

  The pirates began pummeling them with their long-range sers, hoping to take out their engines, but June made a challenging target as she juked, dodging their first salvo. As the chase continued, the jettisoned cargo provided temporary cover from most of the incoming fire.

  “They’re still not within range of our rear cannons,” Will reported. “And it looks like they are ignoring the cargo. Damn!”

  The pirate ships were closing the distance fast and swiftly flew past the cargo obstacles. The ‘Saturn’s Heart’ began shaking as the pirate’s ser bsts finally started to hit their target.

  “Damage?” June barked, still focused on evasive flight. “Our ass is taking a beating.” As Will replied, they both felt an explosion from the ship's rear. “That was engine number three,” Will reported.

  “We’re not going to make the nebu!” panic rose in June’s voice for the first time. Will turned everything he knew about this ship in his mind, looking for a way out, and then had a crazy idea. He announced in desperation, “I’m going to overload engine one, and just before it blows, eject it. That’ll buy us time to run with just engine two.”

  June gnced at Will, locked eyes, and knew this was their st Hail Mary. “Do it,” she said with a fiery, defiant tone.

  Will pulled up the engine control on the engineering workstation and set engine one to overload. The ship surged forward, briefly pinning the two in their seats, then Will hit the button. “Release.”

  The ship shuddered as the engine came loose, and five seconds ter, the space behind the wounded freighter lit up with nuclear fire. Will looked into the rear-facing scope. “Bst took out the lead pirate and dazed the other two. They’re coming around again.”

  But the overloaded thrust and detonation of engine one had bought the beleaguered freighter the needed time. As the ‘Saturn’s Heart’ slipped into the nebu, the pirate ships in pursuit disappeared off the scanners.

  June immediately changed their vector, heading deeper into the nebu. As soon as the vector change was complete, the pummeling from ser fire ceased.

  They limped further into the nebu's heart in watchful silence, waiting for the pirates to reappear. When they failed to do so after an hour, Both June and Will let out a sigh of relief.

  Needing to navigate by sight due to the interference from the nebu, June stayed in the cockpit while Will checked throughout the ship to see how bad the damage was.

  An hour and a half ter, Will returned to the cockpit carrying two cups of coffee. June accepted one gratefully, and Will slumped into the seat beside her.

  “So, what are we looking at?” June looked tired, partly due to the adrenaline wearing off and partly due to the need to constantly scan the forward field of view for hazards.

  “We’re running on one engine, and we were leaking quite a bit of fuel for a while, which I found and stopped. We have about thirty percent of our reserve left.” Will paused to take a sip of coffee.

  “We had five small hull breaches in the lower deck which the force shields held, fortunately, until I had time to patch them. Our rear gun was obliterated, not that it helped any. The actuators on the left cargo door are fried. I closed it manually as best I could, but couldn’t seal it, so the cargo bay is off-limits for now.”

  When he finished speaking, he took another long sip of his coffee and looked at June. “While you were evaluating damage,” she began, “I was looking through the star charts for this region; I don't think any of the nearby GPS beacons are trustworthy. She took a sip of her coffee, gnced out the front canopy in their traveling direction, and continued. “This region of space is not well charted, probably why it’s popur with our ‘friends’ out there. I couldn't find this nebu in the records anywhere.” She pulled up the local star chart on the holographic dispy, then zoomed out to the broader star chart.

  “My st manual position reading was here,” June, indicating the position on the chart with a dot, “roughly four days from the hyperspace nes, and entered the nebu here. Since we entered, I’ve made two course changes, which should put us right about here.” The marker indicated they were still just inside the unmapped region of space.

  “Most traffic doesn’t even get close to this bnk spot on the map, so there’s no good way to tell how rge this nebu is, but at our current rate of speed, we could get to the other side of the bnk space in about three weeks. I don’t want to risk a mayday call this close to the pirates on this side of the nebu, but I think if we go straight through, once we pop out the other side, and get close enough the this other hyperspace ne, we should be safe enough to broadcast a distress call.”

  Will took a breath, then asked, “Do we have enough fuel to make it through to the other side?”

  June took a reading on the st engine's current energy efficiency, and with the fuel figures that Will provided, she answered, “Yes, I think so. We’ll have to throttle back the engine to maximize efficiency.” She did another quick calcution,” which will add about another week of travel. So four weeks before we can broadcast the SOS. How’s life support and provisions?”

  “Thankfully,” he began, “the air scrubbers and circutors weren’t damaged. We’ll need to be easy on the rations, and the water recycler is okay. I’ve been meaning to lose a little weight anyway.” Will joked, lightening the mood. “Hell of a close call, but it looks like we’re going to pull through this one.”

  They both visibly rexed, and June’s stoic facade suddenly crumbled. “Will, I was so scared,” she began weeping, face in her hands.

  Will reached over to the pilot’s seat and pulled June close to him. “Hey, as long as we have each other and watch each other’s back, we’ll get through this and anything else that comes our way.” He tenderly rubbed her back to comfort her and held her until she cried herself out. When she looked up at him, he affectionately wiped the remaining tears from her cheek.

  As she looked up into his eyes, June’s expression changed from relief of still being alive to hunger and longing. Will felt his face flush and was suddenly aware of the softness of June’s breasts as they pressed against his chest.

  They had been shipmates and close friends for over a decade, but their retionship had always been ptonic and professional. Their brush with death had crystallized what they meant to each other. “I trust this woman with my life, and I can’t imagine living without her,” Will realized. Looking down into her face, he recognized that she felt the same.

  Still holding her close, Will tilted his head and bent down so his mouth closed the distance to hers. Their hearts leaped as their lips met, both feeling the deep acknowledgment of love they had unwittingly carried for years.

  Their kiss was passionate, lips and tongues dancing together, finally unbound from quiet longing. He ran his fingers through her hair and down her back, stopping to grab each of her soft but firm ass cheeks in his big hands and lifted her to him as he stood.

  Reading his intentions, June leaned backward in his arms towards the pilot’s controls and pressed a couple of buttons, setting the autopilot. She leaned back into Will, crossed her wrists behind his head, and returned to their passionate kissing.

  Will carried her down the short hallway to the bunkroom, kissing the entire way, to the double bed they usually took turns sleeping in while the other was on watch.

  Will set her down on the edge of the bed, and they both hurriedly stripped off their flight suits. He removed his boots and bent down to remove hers as well. Their skin was oiled with the sweat of the day's stress; a line of perspiration flowed down June’s sports bra, drawing a darkened line highlighting her cleavage.

  Will’s erection tented his boxers, straining the fabric. June grabbed his hard rod through his shorts, rubbing it up and down while she purred in his ear. He groaned, and she finally relented and pulled down the estic waistband, subconsciously licking her lips, releasing his hot, sweaty cock from its confinement.

  She took hold of the hot, steel hard length and pulled it close to her mouth. Pausing, she looked back into his eyes, seeing a look of rapt anticipation and hunger. Licking around the bulbous tip, she tasted and smelt his earthy scent, causing her pussy to drool and soak her panties with her desire.

  Will ran his fingers through her hair, and as she pulled the tip into her warm, wet mouth, he let out a low groan. June slid her lips halfway down his shaft, holding the base firmly in one hand, and then slowly pulled back, tongue teasing the underside of his dick.

  A half smile pulled up the corner of June’s mouth, Will’s tip still resting on her tongue, and she slid down his shaft again slowly, savoring the sensation of feeling his heartbeat on her tongue. She began bobbing in a slow, steady rhythm, slicking his cock with her saliva.

  June had one hand wrapped around the base of his cock as she bobbed her head up and down; the other snaked down into her panties and strummed her clit in time with her head bobbing.

  “God, your mouth feels fantastic!” Will decred, grabbing two fistfuls of the hair at the back of her head. Unable to contain himself, he began thrusting into June’s hot mouth, speeding up the rhythm, thrusting deeper into her mouth, pressing into the top of her throat, making a muffled sound of “gluk, gluk, gluk” with every stroke.

  The fingers of June’s hand on her clit sped up to match Will’s rhythm, and soon they both peaked. Will quickly pulled out of June’s mouth, then blew a rge load on her tits and sports bra.

  June came after receiving her pearl neckce, crying out as her orgasm hit her hard and caused her knees to tremble. Her core rattled; she sat there, one hand struck immobile in her panties, and the other with a tight grip on Will's cock, like she was afraid to fall over the edge of a cliff and his cock was the only thing keeping her from falling.

  “Been saving all that for me?” June teased after she returned to her senses, then pyfully scooped some of the white mess into her fingers and licked them clean.

  “Yeah, saving it all for someone special.” He replied with a smile.

  Still mad with desire, Will grabbed June’s sports bra and pulled it up and over her head to expose her magnificent breasts, nipples erect and rigid, begging to be teased. He bent low and gave June a passionate kiss on the lips and proceeded to wander down her chin and neck near her cvicle, kissing and licking the whole way. His mouth found its way to her right breast, and his hand grabbed her left. He licked, sucked, and nibbled the nipple in his mouth as his hand alternately squeezed her tit, then pinched and rolled her nipple between his forefinger and thumb.

  June threw her head back and moaned loudly as his assault forced a renewed gush of liquid from her pussy. Will's hand continued its rough ministrations on her left breast and nipple as he began to kiss and lick his way down her stomach to her belly button, running his tongue in and out as if an advertisement of things to come.

  Continuing his march south, his hand finally abandoned its assault on her tits and reached down to her soaked panties, pulling them down her legs and off in one smooth motion. He grabbed both her legs behind the knees, gently kissed her inner thighs, and pced them over his broad shoulders.

  He greedily grabbed the two firm globes of her ass, pulled her quim to his mouth, and took a long slow lick up her slit with a broad tongue stroke tasting all the wonderful girl cum dribbling out of it. Extending his thumbs around the globes of her ass, he opened her folds, exposing her clit and wet hole to the ministrations of his eager tongue.

  He pped and sucked her clit, eliciting an “Oh God, YES” from June. His tongue traveled up and down her inner folds, licking, nibbling, and sucking her bia and clit. Her whole body shaking, she grabbed the back of his head, pressing his face hard against her writhing cunt.

  As he sucked and licked her clit, he stuck two fingers into her opening and gestured ‘come hither,’ hitting her g-spot over and over until June’s body locked up and cmped her thighs around his head, screaming out loud, “FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!” as she came again all over his face.

  Still trembling, June fell limply back on the bed as Will climbed up the bed, her body small beneath him, and seized her mouth again for a passionate kiss. Half on the bed, her legs dangling over the edge, Will folded her nearly in half as he pressed her knees into her chest, lined up the head of his hard, throbbing cock to her drenched hole, and buried it to the hilt with a satisfied grunt.

  She gasped as he bottomed out, the mushroom head just kissing her cervix. He pulled almost out, his head just inside of her, and rammed home again, knocking the breath from her. He thrust like this a couple of more times, and then he picked up a steady rhythm of pull - thrust, pull - thrust, driving June to incoherent babble.

  Will’s rhythm became intense as he thrust into her with animalistic fury and jackhammer frequency. June moaned loudly, urging him on, practically screaming, “Yes! Fuck me, Fuck me, FUCK ME!”

  Finally, his thrusting became erratic, and he growled low and plunged his cock as deep as he could go and bsted her insides with load after load of creamy essence. Feeling him pulsing out his climax deep in her pussy, June was sent tumbling after him, her orgasm crashing over her in time with his.

  Will rolled to one side and, not wanting to be parted from her, rolled June with him. They clung to each other, panting and sweating, softly coming down from their shared orgasms. Clutched in each other’s embrace, they drifted to sleep together, still wrapped tightly around the other.

  *******

  They dozed together on the double mattress until they heard an arm from the cockpit. Dressing quickly with big smiles on their faces, Will gave her a quick kiss as they went to investigate. Their short-range sensors had detected a rapid change in density in the nebu, which struck them both as odd.

  “As wide as the nebu was when we entered it, I would have expected it to take us much longer to come out the other side,” June said with a furrowed brow, trying to puzzle the readings out.

  “Maybe it’s just a region of lower density that we’ll just pass through.” Will offered.

  “Maybe, but it’s peculiar for the density to drop off at this rate. It doesn’t feel right. We better keep a close eye on things.” June pressed her lips together tight, her brow furrowed, trying to slide the puzzle pieces together in her mind.

  “Well, while you try to figure out what it means, I’m going to go make some coffee. Want some?” Will asked.

  “Sure,” June replied distractedly. Will went to the galley to brew coffee, leaving June in the cockpit.

  In the galley, Will was grateful that the coffee supply would be sufficient enough not to need rationing. He thanked his lucky stars as he made a cup for June and himself and returned to the cockpit. Halfway back, he heard a rge cng on the hull and felt the ship shudder. Concerned, he rushed up to the cockpit.

  When Will returned to the cockpit, he was not expecting to see a dense asteroid field out of the front viewport repcing the murky nebu. “What the hell is this!” he excimed as he quickly stowed the covered coffee cups in holders, jumped into the co-pilot’s seat, and strapped in.

  “I don’t know. One minute we’re blind in the nebu, then in a blink, it clears, and now we're in this shit.” Will could see the intense concentration on June’s face as she struggled to navigate through the chaos of the rock field.

  “Can we turn around?” Will asked.

  “We’re too long to make a quick turn and everything is tumbling, blocking us from backing out. Sensors are back up enough to see this field clearly, however.” June leans left in her seat as she steers the ship hard in the same direction. “Doesn’t look too thick; we can punch through and look for a better way out from the inside.”

  “We’d better suit up,” Will said as he unbuckled his harness and stood, steadying himself by pcing a hand on the cockpit ceiling as June danced the ship left and right, shaking everything in the ship. Opening one of the lockers just behind the cockpit, Will pulled out his pressure suit, quickly put it on, and sealed the helmet onto the metal ring around the neck of the suit.

  Slipping back into the copilot’s seat, he called to June, “Your turn. Switch control on three, two, one, switch!” June set the copilot’s controls to active, and Will took control. June got up quickly and donned her suit. As soon as the helmet seal clicked, locking it in pce, she dropped back into the pilot’s seat and resumed control.

  June expertly piloted the ship as she danced it through the asteroid field with amazing precision and grace for an old freighter. Still, there were a lot of asteroids to dodge and a ton of smaller gravel-sized debris between the rger rocks that she couldn’t avoid. The gravel was unavoidable, sounding like hail as it struck, pelting the front viewport so hard that Will was afraid it might crack. The rest of the ship wasn’t faring any better, and when the internal systems monitor lit up, Will called out the arms, “ We’ve lost starboard maneuvering thrusters two, five, and nine, and port thrusters three and four!”

  “Yup, I feel it,” June confirmed, struggling harder to keep from smashing the ship to bits. Just then, a loud bang and screeching of twisting metal shrieked through the ship. “Hull breach on upper aft section!” Will called out as the cockpit and living quarters were explosively decompressed, their covered cups blowing off the lids and spraying coffee everywhere.

  June yelled, “There goes another thruster!” The fight to control the damaged freighter started to look like a losing battle, and then silence descended over the ship as they cleared the asteroid belt.

  “Thrusters down to thirty percent,” Will called out the damage report. “Engine two is still online, but we’re losing fuel fast. I’ll go see what I can do about it,” he said, unbuckling and leaping out of his seat, racing to the engine compartment.

  Once at the maintenance access hatch for the engine compartment, Will had to force the reluctant hatch because of damage to the opening mechanism. Squeezing through, he checked all the main and auxiliary equipment for their st engine and could find no significant damage to the systems inside the ship.

  “Looks like the engine took external damage. That must be where the fuel leak is. We’re going to need to shut down the engine so I can go out and inspect it,” he told June over his helmet communicator.

  “If we shut it down now, we might not be able to re-light it,” June replied. Now free of the nebu’s interference, the scanners showed June that they were in a small star system, entirely shrouded by the nebu and asteroid field. A red giant star dominated the system center, with one small pnet in an elliptical orbit conveniently pcing it retively close to their position.

  “Will, you better get up here,” June called.

  Upon his return to the cockpit, June sat studying the scanner readings. “That pnet’s orbit is bringing it close to our trajectory. I think we need to put down there.” Her finger pointed at the pnet on the holographic dispy. “I don’t think we have any other choice.”

  Will studied the holograph for a moment. “We won’t be able to climb the gravity well once we’re down,” he said solemnly. June nodded her head in agreement, knowing that meant they would be marooned. Will continued, “OK, let’s course correct, burn hard so we don’t just waste the fuel by letting it all leak out. Once we make pnetfall, we can think of a pn from there.”

  Taking a moment to catch their breaths after the harrowing passage through the asteroid field, June adjusted their trajectory, then ramped the remaining engine to full thrust, putting them on an intercept course for the lone pnet.

  They burned hard towards the pnet for about an hour, then June set the engine to minimum thrust to avoid a possible failed restart and rotated the ship for a slowing burn. Once the nose of the old freighter was pointed away from the pnet, June fired the engines full bore again.

  Another hour passed in silence as the pair refused to contempte what being marooned on an isoted, uncharted pnet meant. “Shutting down the engine,” June called out, “in three, two, one, cut off.” June flipped a series of switches and entered some data into the navigational computer. Shutdown complete, she rexed into her chair slightly and sighed.

  “Textbook orbital insertion,” Will praised June's navigational skills. “Well done. Now, the tough part, descent and entry.”

  June beamed at the compliment. “We're plenty stable enough for a few orbits. I'll start scanners searching the pnet for a suitable nding spot. We can review the data and then decide where we want to put down.”

  “Sounds like a pn,” Will agreed. “Why don't you go rest in the bunk and try to catch a nap? We will need you sharp to put us down in one piece. I'll keep the watch and wake you if necessary.”

  Exhausted, June agreed and went back to the bunk to try to get some sleep, though she knew it would be uncomfortable in her pressure suit.

  Will took the controls, and as June unbuckled her crash restraints and stood, Will pced a gloved hand on the arm of her suit. Their eyes met, exchanging an unspoken message of caring and endearment before she shuffled off to get some rest.

  As June disappeared into the bunk room, Will idly watched the pnet spin beneath them and occasionally gnced at the surface map the scanners were building. Whiling away the time, he thought about the years June and he had spent together: working, ughing, suffering. He then thought about what y ahead, and the picture looked grim.

  Being stranded on an uncharted pnet during Earth’s diaspora century of the first waves of explorers and settlers heading into the unknowns of space was a common trope of romance novels these days, but the harsh realities of what those early explorers went through were brutal: no artificial gravity, death-dealing cosmic radiation and the unforgiving vacuum of deep space.

  Landing on a new pnet, you might or might not have a breathable atmosphere, wild temperature variations, or hostile native wildlife. Some were no more than barren rocks that forced settlers to burrow into them like worms just for a small measure of safety and comfort.

  But despite all this, people came. In the billions, they came and built worlds and lives worth living out amongst the stars.

  Will knew that their situation would be much different. No one knew where they were. Due to the nebu, no one would hear their distress calls. No one would follow behind them to help them if they ran into trouble. They would be utterly alone.

  He stopped momentarily and pictured a primitive but idyllic life with June on the pnet below them. Once they reached the surface, they could build a simple home, farm basic pnts for sustenance, and maybe raise a family. He would teach the children everything he knew about survival on the pnet; it would be the only life they would know. A simple life. A peaceful life. There could be worse ways to spend the rest of your life, Will decided, with a slight smile.

  Will announced that they had completed five orbits. Without much dey, June returned to the cockpit and took her seat, indicating she had only been able to sleep lightly, if at all.

  “Let's see our options,” she said, pulling up the new surface map on the dispy. The pnet's terrain rolled across the holograph, showing a primarily rough mountainous ndscape of tall, sharp peaks and narrow, perilous-looking ravines.

  “That's it, right there,” June announced, stopping the scroll of the dispy. “a wide ft valley, probably. Twenty klicks by a hundred, our best chance at a good nding. How many thrusters are still functioning?”

  “We’re at thirty percent for maneuvering thrusters, the retros seem to be in working order. The main engine is shut down, with two percent of the fuel load remaining, which will help, only if we can get it lit again. The emergency inertial inhibitors took a beating, but indicators are all green.” Will’s expression of exasperation spoke volumes of his frustration at the damage the ship had taken. “The ole’ girl doesn’t have much left, but she’ll get us down.”

  Thinking momentarily, June spoke, “Alright then, we’ll try to restart the engine first for an entry burn, then enable the inertial inhibitors once we’ve lost a bit of altitude. If the engine doesn’t light, we’ll need to rely solely on the inhibitors to reduce orbital velocity, which will tax them quite a bit, making it iffy that they’ll hold up all the way through atmo. Between the remaining maneuvering and retro thrusters, even if we can’t re-light the engine, we should be able to guide her in, nice and easy.”

  They sat in silence while they mentally evaluated the pn. Will spoke first. “It’s a solid pn. When do we need to initiate the deorbit burn to hit the target?”

  June read their current velocity and position from the holo-dispy and made a quick calcution. “We need to de-orbit burn in sixty-three minutes if we want to hit it this orbit. Is everything ready?”

  “As ready as can be.”, replied Will with a smirk, hoping to lighten the mood. “I’ll go do one st check to make sure everything that can be secured, has been secured.”

  “And I’ll run simutions of our descent to make sure we haven’t missed anything.”

  They both went about their st-minute tasks and finished with ten minutes to spare. Regrouping in the cockpit, They took their seats and strapped in tight.

  “Okay, let’s run it down,” June said, initiating their audible checklist. “Engine.”

  “Offline and ready, fuel at one point eight percent.”

  “Thrusters.”

  “Warm and on standby.”

  “Inertial inhibitors.”

  “Indications green, on standby.”

  “Co-pilot?” June looked over to Will, trying not to look apprehensive.

  “A- Okay. Pilot?” Will returned the query.

  “Five by Five.” June felt butterflies stir in her stomach but pushed them down. “Ok, hang on to your butt, here we go!”

  June deftly spun the ship with the maneuvering thrusters, facing backward on their trajectory.

  “Burn in three, two, one, go.” June ended the countdown with a button press to restart the remaining engine. An ignition failure warning light came on. “Go.” She called again and hit the button for the second time, holding her breath. They felt the kick of the engine firing, pushing them back in their seats, and relief crossed both their faces as the ship began to slow its orbital velocity.

  “Speed decreasing; altitude 75,000 meters and falling,” Will called out.

  “Ten seconds remaining for burn,” June called. “Five, four,...”June didn’t make it to three as the engine exploded, violently shook the freighter, and vaporized the small amount of fuel they had left.

  The explosion was off-axis, throwing the ship into a wild spiral as they fell out of orbit. June began to rapidly jerk the control stick around, attempting to cancel their spin before fully entering the atmosphere. “Come on, come on!” June yelled at the controls as she tried to pull the ship out of the wild spin.

  “Engaging inertial inhibitors,” Will said, reacting to their uncontrolled descent.

  “No, not yet!” June yelled, continuing to wrestle the ship out of the spin. “We’ll never correct with them on. Give me 10 seconds!” Will stopped, hovering over the inhibitor controls, and watched June closely.

  She jerked and jived the control stick, and the uncontrolled gyrations slowed to a leisurely spin. She righted the ship with a few more soft corrections with the controls, and they returned to the glide path. “Inhibitors!” June commanded.

  Will punched the inertial inhibitor control as the nose of the ship began to glow with the fiery psma of re-entry. A rumbling shudder ran through the ship's superstructure as the inhibitors started to bleed off their building speed.

  “Ten thousand meters,” Will called out.

  “Firing retros.” June saw the target valley coming into view as they passed through the thick cloud cover.

  “Five thousand. Four thousand. We’re coming in hot!” Will shouted. “Two thousand. Fifteen hundred. Thousand!” The light brown ground of the valley floor rushed up to meet them.

  “Five hundred!” Will continued to count.

  “Brace, Brace, Brace!” June began to chant.

  The ‘Saturn’s Heart’ smmed into the valley floor with a sickening crunch and squeal of twisting metal. The ship plowed a deep, long furrow into the ground, spraying dirt and debris. Rocks and stones hammered the forward viewport, cracking it in multiple spots. After 20 long seconds of chaos, the ship ground to a stop. Silence hung over them for a moment. Neither of them took a breath for a full five seconds, waiting for the next unexpected catastrophe, but none came, so they took a deep breath and smiled at one another.

  “Woo! Hell of a ride!” Will whooped. “You good?” he asked, turning to June.

  “Yeah, all good,” she replied as she started going through shutdown procedures, flipping various switches in a predetermined pattern. “Now that we're down, we need a full systems check, inventory of our stores, and an environmental survey.”

  “Agreed. Survey first though, we need to see if the atmosphere is okay so we can save the suit's resources, then we'll see what's left of the ship.”

  June completed the shutdown sequence, and then Will said, “Come on, let's go outside and see what we can see.”

  On their way to the airlock, Will stopped briefly to retrieve the portable scanning kit from one of the storage lockers at the rear of the cockpit. “The primary airlock got buried so we’ll need to use the upper port.”

  The ship had settled slightly to one side, making the walk to mid-ship awkward. The artificial gravity deck pting must have failed, allowing them to feel the slight pitch of the floor.

  Reaching the mid-ship access dder, Will said, “I’ll go up first, in case the doors are jammed.”

  Climbing the dder to the top, Will operated the manual release and slid the airlock doors to one side, opening the way to the top of the ship. “No issues.” He called down and cmbered out onto the hull.

  Will turned and, once she reached the top, helped June climb out and onto her feet. While Will opened the case for the portable scanner and began taking readings, June surveyed their surroundings.

  The thick cloud cover shrouded the entire valley in a hazy gloom, tinted red from the star's light at the center of this system. The valley floor was barren and dusty, with small boulders scattered throughout. The valley was surrounded by mountains that transitioned slowly from a smooth incline that met the valley floor unbroken to unclimbable faces stretching up to the mountain peaks.

  In some spots, there was evidence of ndslides where the shear faces gave way and tumbled to the valley below—a rather inhospitable-looking pce. Something caught June’s eye on the top edge of a rock slide deposit a few kilometers down the valley. She thought she saw something momentarily gleaming in the distance but was distracted when Will announced his findings.

  “The air is breathable, with no signs of toxicity, though the oxygen content is a little low. We should be okay to remove our helmets. Still, let me go first, as a precaution.” June nodded.

  Will held his breath, released the lock on the colr of his helmet, and then twisted it off. Holding it in front of him, he forced himself to breathe normally. After a moment, he looked at June and said, “All good.” She removed her helmet and smelled the air. It was dry and dusty, with a slight metallic hint, but clean enough not to cause discomfort.

  They shut down the power on their suits' life support systems and then climbed down off the top of the hull. Dirt had been plowed up on either side of the ship, making a nice ramp for an easy descent.

  They walked to the aft section of the ship and got the first glimpse of how bad the engine explosion had been. Before they got close, Will checked the portable scanner for residual radioactivity from the engine explosion, but there was none. Circling to the rear, it was evident that when the st engine exploded, it took most of the engine compartment and cargo bay.

  “Holy Hell! Boy did we get lucky,” June excimed.

  “Wasn’t luck; you did a hell of a job getting us down with that mess,” Will said, jerking his thumb at the burnt and twisted remains of the ship’s aft section. “Come on, let's check the rest of the exterior.”

  They continued walking around the downed craft, closely inspecting the hull as they went. Almost every centimeter of the hull was scorched, battered, and buckled. Still, the structure had no significant tears or fissures that would allow entry, making securing the ship easier.

  After completing the external inspection, they climbed back up to the top hatch to reenter the ship and conduct a thorough internal systems inspection to see what they had to work with.

  Just before they descended back into the ship, a glint on the far side of the valley caught June's eye again.

  “There,” June pointed, “do you see that in the distance?”

  “What am I looking for?” Will asked, fishing a pair of multi-spectral binocurs out of his kit.

  “There's something reflective out there.” She replied.

  Bringing the binocurs up to his eyes, he scanned the valley's far side. Swinging the field of view along the opposite wall of the valley, Will found the glinting object in the distance June had spotted. Adjusting the focus, details emerged.

  “There seemed to be a structure jutting out of that rock slide, about three-quarters of the way up the valley wall,” Will said, reying what he saw. Though he couldn’t make out all the details, it appeared rounded and about ten to fifteen meters tall. While the surrounding dirt and rocks were shades of dark brown, the object looked ft white.

  “Yeah, there’s something definitely out there, about nine or ten clicks out. Once we have ourselves sorted here, it’s worth checking out.” Will put away the binocurs. “Let’s get back inside and finish our inspections, and then we’ll know exactly where we stand and can come up with a solid pn of action.”

  The reddish sun was setting through the thick clouds, and dusk was settling over the valley. Will suddenly felt exposed and slightly on edge. A tickle in the back of his mind, that same part of a human’s brain that was hardwired to look out for tigers in the tall grass in humanity's ancient past, was saying that there was danger. Rechecking their surroundings, Will didn’t see anything, but the feeling didn’t go away. As soon as June climbed down the dder of the airlock, Will followed, taking one st suspicious look around before sealing the hatch behind him.

  He pushed the unsettled feeling out of his mind and prepared a small snack out of their rations for the two of them before getting to work. They sat in the little kitchenette in silence as they ate.

  “What’s bothering you?” June asked. Will had been holding his protein bar up to his mouth, lost in thought for a solid minute without taking a bite, long enough for June to notice.

  “I’m not sure,” Will replied. “Would the collision detection system be able to monitor movement around the ship, say at a twenty-meter radius?”

  “It’d take a little while to reconfigure, but sure, it could do that. Did you see something?” June asked.

  “Not really. I can’t put my finger on it, but something doesn’t feel right and I want to be ready for it.” Will said, unsure if he knew how to expin the feeling he was experiencing. June nodded, and they finished eating and got to work.

  They took another three hours to complete their survey, which found that most of the life support systems survived intact. The water recycler had several burst pipes, so Will shut it down until he could repair them.

  The main computer systems and radioisotope battery bank were fully functional, meaning they would not need to worry about power or controls for the automated subsystems. However, food would soon become a serious issue if they couldn't find a solution.

  A check on their weapons locker revealed that their meager armory survived, but limited ammo that was standard pack-out for freighters meant they would have to be careful about how much they used.

  June was quick to reconfigure the proximity sensors, so she went down to the systems compartment to help Will finish the plumbing repairs on the water recyclers.

  Neither Will nor June had slept much since they had first entered the nebu; once the necessary repairs were finished and they were confident that the recalibrated sensors would warn them of activity around the ship, they retired to the bunk room. They undressed and climbed into bed, snuggling together for comfort, Will as the big spoon. Completely exhausted, they were soon fast asleep.

  **********

  A new day dawned as red sunlight streamed in the cockpit through the portion of the front viewport that wasn’t covered by dirt plowed up by the nose of the crashing freighter.

  Always a light sleeper, Will woke first and slipped out of bed, careful not to wake June. Looking down on June's slumbering form, he dressed quietly and thanked the universe for bringing her into his life.

  He brewed some coffee in the kitchenette, poured himself a cup, and brought it to the cockpit. He had only been sitting in the copilot's seat reviewing the sensor logs from the previous night for a short time when June joined him, carrying her cup of coffee. She gave him a peck on the cheek as she sat beside him in the pilot’s seat.

  “Anything trip the sensors during the night?” June asked, sipping her hot beverage.

  “No contacts during the night. Are you up for a hike this morning? The weather looks good,” he said, gesturing towards the half-buried window. We'll have no trouble making it to that structure and back. I want to have a quick look around and be back before nightfall,” he said.

  “Sounds good. I'll pack some provisions for the day and you can gather any gear we might need. We can get started as soon as you’re ready.” June confirmed.

  June and Will spent the next 30 minutes gathering everything they thought they'd need for their short expedition and were soon standing at the base of the dder to the top hatch.

  Will stopped at the weapons locker and removed the two side arms, one for each of them, and the bullpup automatic rifle, which he carried.

  Will climbed first, opened the hatch, and then climbed onto the upper hull's decking, gesturing to June to wait a moment.

  Fishing out the binocurs, he scanned the surroundings, and when he was satisfied, he said to June, “All clear.”

  “What has you spooked?” June asked with an air of concern.

  “I still don't know yet. Keep your eyes peeled. We have a whole lot of unknowns to deal with and we need to stay alert.”

  June nodded. Once they were both standing in the reddish sunlight of early morning, Will closed and tched the hatch.

  “It should take us about two hours to reach the target. We shouldn’t stay more than an hour or so checking things out, then we head back. Add in time for rest breaks, that’s about eight hours, round trip. Anything longer than that we risk fatigue and more opportunities for blind, bad luck.” Will said, ying out their itinerary.

  “Sounds good. Let’s go!” June replied with enthusiasm. She was deeply curious about the structure and was practically giddy with anticipation.

  They climbed off the ‘Saturn’s Heart’ and began their march at an easy pace across the valley floor. Though they had a clear line of sight straight across the valley in all directions, they were surprised, due to their low vantage point, that the valley floor rolled up and down, like small dunes in a desert, except it was rock and hard-packed earth.

  They couldn’t see into these depressions unless standing on the rise to either side, so they didn’t expect to find low brush with reddish-tinted leaves that started to appear in depressions at about a third of the way across the valley. The brush was no taller than their shins and only slowed their pace slightly.

  “This is an excellent sign,” June commented. “Vegetation means water. It also means a possibility of growing some of the heartier food crops, like potatoes and the like.”

  Looking down at one of the nearby pnts, Will noticed some bare branches on one bush and a few torn leaves on another. “Something’s been grazing these. There must be herbivores of some kind here, maybe nocturnal. That might expin why I’ve been on edge.” He offered.

  June frowned. “Herbivores also raise the possibility of rge predators. You’re right; we’ll need to monitor our surroundings closely.” As she said that, she was startled as a small herd of short quadrupeds slowly lumbered over the rise before them, heading into the brush.

  “Looks like you found the herbivores!” Will said with a chuckle. The animals of this herd had small, beady eyes on the sides of their heads for maximum visual coverage. Their snouts were wide and short, ideal for taking rge bites of leaves from the low pnts they stood in. Most interesting was the long, quill-like hair covering their entire bodies. Curious about why he didn’t spot these creatures earlier, he pulled out the binocurs, turned up the thermal imaging resolution to ‘high,’ and pointed it at the herd they found themselves among.

  “These guys’ coloring lets them blend into the surroundings almost perfectly. And their heat signature is almost non-existent!” Will said excitedly, then pointed the binocurs at June. “Not like you. You’re so hot, you light up like a fireball on thermals.” June’s profile was luminescent compared to that of these herd animals. She swiped the binocurs from Will, then pointed it at him. “Seems like you’re the hot one, to me!” she joked. His profile was as bright as hers.

  “We need a name for these guys,” June pointed out, “we discovered them, so we get to name them. Those are the rules.”

  “Okay, how about chill-da-beasts, because their coats make them look cool. You know, on an infrared camera.” Will said, popping the colr of his jacket up and with an exaggerated ‘cool-guy’ attitude.

  “No way, Mr. Slick,” June said, throwing him a faux exasperated smile. Pausing a moment, then she countered, “How about Munchers, because that's all they seem to do.”

  Using the IR scope to examine the closest animal in the herd, June saw that while it had a very low overall heat signature, a subtle pattern of heat could be seen through the coat. She then looked at another animal, and its pattern was slightly different. The animal’s face had an almost imperceptible heat signature, but the eyes were dark bck, reflecting no heat.

  “This is interesting,” June began,” each animal has a unique pattern in IR, like a fingerprint. And the eyes don’t reflect any IR at all. I bet they don’t pick up the usual visual spectrum, only infra-red.”

  “That IS interesting. And the name is as good as any; Munchers it is.” Will gesturing for the return of the binocurs. “Alright, time to get moving,” Will said, taking the binocurs back from June and putting them away.

  The herd barely acknowledged Will and June’s presence and lumbered into the vegetation to begin grazing. Moving slowly, the herd paid the two hikers no mind and blocked their path as they wandered back and forth. Will led June single file, picked their way through the herd, and continued their hike.

  As they continued, a short ways away from the herd but still in the brush, they passed what looked to be a complete set of quills from a Muncher in a disorganized pile, then a few more piles a couple of steps away.

  “Looks like they're prone to shedding,” June remarked.

  Will looked at the piles dubiously and said, “Yeah, maybe. Or it's something else.” He didn't finish the thought. June looked at him as if guessing what he was thinking but said nothing; then they continued.

  As they neared the far side of the valley wall, the ground's incline grade grew steeper, and the rocks and rge obstacles became more numerous as they traveled deeper into the rockslide's tumbledown.

  When they were farther away from the mysterious structure, it was tough to make out details due to the uniform ft white color washing it all out, but up close, they could make it out more clearly.

  The exposed front of the structure rose out of the ground, indicating it continued below grade. Following the fnk towards the back, it disappeared into the side of the valley, which rose for another few hundred meters above. The front face was about twenty meters wide, and all surfaces were made of the same ft white material with an unbroken surface.

  Will and June climbed up to the structure, and standing next to it, Will removed his glove and tentatively pced his hand on it. “It feels metallic, though what kind, I couldn’t tell you.” Will commented. “ and it’s slightly cooler than the rocks. Come here and see what I mean.” June removed her glove and pced her hand on the strange metal. Will bent down and picked up a fist-size rock off the ground. “Compare that to this.” June put her bare hand on the rock and could feel the difference Will talked about.

  Will dropped the rock, and they continued to explore around the structure. They carefully walked around the front of the ft white wall and to the side farthest from the direction of their approach. Turning the corner, they were surprised when they saw an opening about halfway back to where the structure was buried.

  The opening was circur, roughly two and a half meters in diameter. The interior was dark, and they couldn’t see anything inside due to the contrast of light levels between the outside and the inside.

  Will Checked his rifle and brought it up to a ready position. Then he lifted a finger to his lips, asking June for silence, gesturing for her to draw her sidearm and fall in behind him. Will crept up to the side edge of the opening and slowly peered inside. It was a small room, big enough for six people, with another open door at the other end, the same size as the door on the exterior.

  After scanning the room, Will stepped just inside and paused. Looking down, he saw that his boots were tracking in dirt and dust from the outside, but the floor was clean.

  He whispered, “This door hasn’t been open for very long. No dirt has had a chance to blow in and cover the floor. Stay sharp,” he commanded. He silently gestured for her to wait outside, slowly covered the distance to the other door, and peered through.

  A long hallway traveled the length of the structure, heading to the front that jutted out of the hill and deep back to the buried portions. Turning, he came back to the exterior door and

  spoke quietly to June. “This room has a simir feel as an airlock, though I don’t see doors or any mechanisms for control. Looks clear, though. Ready to explore?” He asked with a grin.

  June smiled and nodded back. They both re-entered the airlock, Will first with his rifle at the ready.

  They crossed the small room as quietly as possible and considered the hallway beyond. Down the passage on their left, which was dark and led deeper into the buried structure, soft red sunlight came down the passage on the right. “Let's check to the right before heading into the dark,” Will said softly.

  Checking that both directions were clear, they cautiously entered the hallway and then walked down it in slow silence. At regur intervals, they noted what looked to be several doors on either side of the hallway, but all were sealed shut.

  They stopped to examine the first door. It was made of the same ft white metal as everything else in the structure. The simple door frame stood out from the wall a couple of centimeters, indicating the presence of a door, but there were no nobs, handles, or controls of any kind. The frame blended seamlessly into what should have been the door, so much so that the door looked like just another part of the wall.

  Not knowing what to make of it, they continued down the corridor. At the end of the hallway, a short flight of stairs ascended to where the light was coming from. June thought the stairs had an odd feel when she realized that their rise and run were intended for someone of a slightly shorter stature.

  They climbed the stairs and found a tall window running the length of the front wall, which, by Will's reckoning, should be the unburied front of the structure looking out over the valley.

  “I didn't see this window from the outside, did you?” Will asked June.

  “Nope,” June replied. “Maybe some sort of one-way gss?”

  “Maybe”, Will said, stumped. Standing at the window and looking out, he could see the valley and the direction of their approach. Now that they were at a higher vantage point, he could just make out the rise and fall of the valley floor, hints of the scrub brush nestled in the little hollows, and the glint of their ship off in the distance.

  Will turned to survey the room, and the pieces clicked together in his mind. “It's a ship!” he excimed softly.

  Standing in what must be the bridge of the seemingly abandoned vessel, Will and June could see the thick, constant cloud cover break up momentarily through the forward viewport. As sunlight from the red giant the pnet orbited streamed through the rge window, random panels at control stations scattered around the room begin to blink and slowly come to life.

  Will raised the bullpup machine gun in his hands slightly, alert now for extra danger. “ We need to be extra cautious now that the systems are starting to energize. There might be anti-boarding active security measures, seeing that it has some power.”

  June approached the closest lit control panel. Buttons along the bottom were all marked in some script that didn’t match any nguage she knew. The same script began to scroll across the screen above the buttons as she examined the control panel.

  The other panels on the Bridge went dark, but the panel in front of June remained on.

  Another unintelligible line of script crawled across the screen and paused. Then another line appeared and paused. This continued for several lines and then stopped.

  June blinked as the screen cleared, and another line of script began scrolling across the screen, which was as indecipherable as the st. Like the previous dispy of what seemed to be lines of text, there was a pause. “This panel seems to be querying for some response,” June expined to Will, who was busy investigating the other side of the room. “Do you think you can figure any of these systems out?” he asked.

  “Seems like there is only enough power for this panel," June replied.

  The panel screen cleared again, but pictographs appeared instead of text this time. First, it showed the pnetary system they were in, surrounded by an asteroid field, the red giant at the center, with one pnet in its orbit, the one they were currently marooned on. The dispy then zoomed in on the unnamed pnet and dispyed the pnet rotating, showing the continents June and Will had briefly seen during their emergency nding.

  “Will, come see this,” June called. As Will came over and stood by June to see what she was drawing his attention to, the pnet on the dispy stopped rotating, and a blue dot appeared, indicating the position of something, and began zooming in.

  “This is the valley we nded in,” June noted as the dispy slowly zoomed in closer. “We left the ‘Saturn's Heart’ over there,” she said, pointing to an unmarked spot on the map, “so the dot must indicate this ship.”

  The dispy continued to zoom in until the dot became the outline of the craft they were now standing in. The ship's outline on the screen seemed to indicate that most of the ship was buried in the hillside, with only the nose of the ship poking out.

  “My guess is that when this ship crashed, it came in hot and plowed through the hillside, which buried it when the remains of the hill colpsed. Then a bunch of time ter, a little ndslide towards the front exposed the nose, which is how we found it.”, Will theorized.

  The dispy zoomed closer as the ship’s outlined form filled the entire screen and began detailing the internal yout of the craft. The dispy panned toward the front of the craft and dispyed the Bridge with its banks of terminals, including the one they were standing before. As they studied the diagram, two white dots appeared on the dispy, indicating their positions retive to the terminal they were at.

  “I think this is an intelligent system,” June said after a moment, “and it is trying to communicate to us. At first, it was dispying messages and pausing for a response, but now it seems to realize that we don’t understand the nguage, and is showing us information that we have context for, like this star system, the ship, and our positions in it. I’m going to try to respond,” June said as she reached toward the dispy.

  “Careful. Do you suppose it’s safe?” Will asked defensively. “I don’t want to set the security system off accidentally.”

  “I think so. It already knows where we are, and if it was going to activate defensive measures, it probably wouldn’t tell us it knew where we were first.”

  June’s gloved finger touched the dot that represented her, and it changed color from white to green. “Now I’ve told it that I am this particur dot, and it acknowledged what I’ve told it by turning the dot green. Go ahead and touch the other dot to tell it that you understand that you are the other dot.” June instructed.

  Will reached down and touched the dot that represented him, and it turned blue. “Do you think the different colors mean that it knows that we are different, male and female?” Will asked.

  “Maybe, but it might just be that we are Thing 1 and Thing 2 to it, and has identified us as such. Do me a favor and walk to the other side of the room and back. I want to see if it is tracking us in real-time.”

  Will did as requested, and as he crossed the room, the blue dot moved along the screen in sync with Will’s movement across the room. “The system is definitely watching us. Will, this is incredible! This alien system is trying to talk to us and figured out a simplified way to communicate through the nguage barrier. That suggests an extremely intelligent system, maybe some form of advanced AI.”

  “This ship is old, June. I mean really old. There is sedimentary rock covering most of this ship. It must have crashed thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years ago for a sedimentary yer to have formed above it. It might have been an ocean when it crashed, then dirt and silt accumuted, then pressed into rock. That takes a hell of a long time.”

  “That’s even more exciting! This ship could have been here before humans had discovered fire!”

  June’s excitement was contagious, and Will smiled. “If this ship’s system is half as sophisticated as this console interface, then we just might be able to salvage something that will get us off this pnet.”

  As he said that, the image on the screen began to change. The screen shifted to a split view showing their retive position from a top-down perspective and a side perspective showing the decks below the bridge. Then, the green and blue dots representing the two showed a ghostly double, so now there were four dots on the screen.

  The ghost dots began to move across the bridge to a station near the back wall. Dashed lines connected the solid green dot to the ghost green dot, and the same for the blue.

  The transparent set of dots then passed through the back wall a foot or two and descended three levels. The two dots seemed to move back into a main corridor and traveled about six meters until they came to a door on the left, and then the pair of ghost dots moved through it. After pausing, the dispy looped through the dots traveling through the ship and continued to loop.

  “I think it wants to show us something,” June said excitedly. “It's showing us a way to get down on the lower decks through a maintenance tunnel.”

  “Seems dangerous.” Will cautioned. “None of the doors we passed on our way to the Bridge were functioning, any one of them could have been a door for a lift. This could be the only way in and out of that level. If it got blocked somehow, we could be trapped.”

  “Then we take our time, examine everything on our way down and if anything seems too hazardous, then we pull back and decide how to proceed.” June countered. “All of the important components we could salvage are going to be on the lower decks and at the back of the ship, so we're going to need to try anyway.”

  Not able to refute her logic, Will relented, given their circumstance. “OK, but I'm going first, and you'll hang back until I give the all-clear.” His tone was firm.

  “Understood”, June affirmed.

  They walked over to the spot on the wall indicated on the map on the right, at the back of the room next to a workstation. Will spotted the entry point they were looking for, a small hatch door with hand grips contoured into the surface. Grabbing the hatch door, Will pulled hard, and with an audible click, it released, giving them a view into the access shaft.

  The shaft was narrow, just rge enough for a person to climb, with a dder off to the side of the open hatch. Turning on his fshlight and looking down the shaft, he could barely make out the bottom. “There must be at least a dozen levels to this ship,” Will said to June.

  Will squeezed into the maintenance shaft and started the descent three levels as depicted on the terminal. As he climbed down the dder, he noted convenient access hatches at every level. That would make exploring easier ter, though they would need to figure out another way to remove any rge equipment they salvaged.

  “I’m three levels down. Opening the next hatch.” Will called back up to June. He applied pressure, and the hatch popped off and fell onto the floor inside the room. “Going in.” He reported out loud.

  Climbing out of the maintenance shaft, he shined his light around the room and found that it was some kind of systems control room full of heavy equipment. Cleanly routed pipes and conduits snaked from one machine to another, then disappeared through smaller tunnels to either side of the room. A couple of control panels faced the equipment but were dark. Will called up to June through the vertical shaft. “Okay, your turn.”

  June followed him down and quickly joined him on the lower level. The room had one door behind the dark control panels, evidently where the crew of this ship would normally enter. It was the same kind of seamless door they saw as they entered the ship, but was partially opened with enough space for Will and June to pass through easily.

  Will checked with June to make sure she was set, then raised his rifle to the ready position, approached the open door, and carefully peeked out. He saw a hallway simir to the one leading to the ship's bridge and noted that it was dark and empty, save for a dimly lit panel some ways down the corridor.

  June peeked out the doorway, too, and said, “That light is about where the pictograph dispy was indicating to go.” Will nodded in agreement and stepped out into the hallway.

  They made their way down the corridor, Will covering their front with his rifle and June covering their back with her sidearm. They passed several sets of sealed doors until they reached the glowing terminal. The dispy showed the same schematic rendering that the bridge dispy had shown, but it now showed their progress along the route, changing a dotted line to a solid line to where they currently were.

  “Well, we know that whatever is communicating through this terminal, it’s still watching,” Will said apprehensively. The dotted line continuing from their solid progress line indicated that they should go through the door in front of them. “Can you think of how to open the door?” Will asked.

  June approached the door and examined it, looking for controls. Seeing none, she pced her gloved hand on the door to feel for anything that might indicate an opening mechanism, but as she did, a circle of light appeared on the door at its center point. The terminal in the hallway went dark, and a seam appeared on the previously smooth surface that split the door down its center, directly through the circle of light and spread like the door was melting away, revealing the room behind it.

  The room was full of empty beds, contoured to hold a body comfortably at about waist height. Workbenches built into the walls surrounded the entire room, covered with unrecognizable equipment. Everything was made of the same ft white metal, and as they entered, they saw another lit-up terminal in a corner of the room.

  They cautiously approached the terminal and saw an odd, sarcophagus-looking case next to it, about the same size as the beds, with a heavy-looking lid made of a transparent material on rge hinges, fully opened.

  Will looked inside the sarcophagus while June went to the glowing dispy. The inside walls of the sarcophagus were covered with odd ports and cables snaked all along the bottom surface. There was a small pile of silvery dust in the middle. Curious, Will pinched a small amount of the dust and let it fall back into the pile. It fell, almost in slow motion, like soft snow falling on a cold winter’s day.

  June looked at the softly glowing dispy, which indicated that they had reached the intended destination. The terminal changed suddenly, first showing the pictographs that had led them here, then bnking out, then showing a small circle, then bnking again, and finally showing the undecipherable script from the control panel on the bridge. The terminal fshed the sequence again, then dispyed all three side by side: pictograph, circle, and script.

  “It’s trying to tell us something,” June told Will. The pictograph glowed bright while the circle and the text dimmed slightly, and after a moment, the pictographs dimmed, and the circle grew bright. Then, the circle dimmed, and the script grew bright. The terminal continued this new sequence for a minute or two as June, and Will puzzled over it.

  “We’re being shown a progression,” June said after a moment, thinking out loud to Will. “Instructions we understood, then this symbol, then the strange text.” They looked at each other silently for a moment, then June had an epiphany. “It’s telling us that there is a way for us to get from what we can understand to what we can’t understand yet!” She said excitedly. “Whatever this circle is, it is the key.”

  June reached out and touched the circle on the terminal, then the dispy changed. The pictographs and text disappeared, but the circle remained, and a new figure appeared. It was the outline shape of a humanoid with two arms, two legs, and a head. The circle descended on the diagram to sit on the forehead of the humanoid diagram, and then next to it, the yout of this room appeared. The yout zoomed into the corner of the room they were standing in, dispying the terminal and sarcophagus, and then a dot appeared on the second drawer of a set of drawers on the bottom of the sarcophagus. The dispy froze there as if waiting.

  June and Will looked at each other and then at the sarcophagus. They saw that it did indeed have a series of drawers. Will shrugged his shoulders and then touched the second shelf. It slid open silently, revealing several sets of silvery metal bands that reminded June of a tiara or diadem.

  Everything else on the terminal faded away except for the depiction of the circle on the head of the human-looking figure.

  “It wants us to put one of those on,” June said ftly. “I think it’s trying to tell us that if we put one on, we’ll be able to communicate with it.”

  “I think you’re right,” Will agreed, unsettled. “But is it safe? What if these things fry our brains? It’s pretty risky. We are wildly out of our depth here, on this ship, and marooned on this pnet, and one misstep could be the end. This is a huge leap of faith that, whatever this is, isn’t going to get us killed, intentionally or accidentally.”

  June didn’t respond immediately and considered Will’s well-founded point. Then she responded. “I think the potential upside is huge. This works out, the intelligence in this system could help us get off this pnet and home. Not to mention what discovering alien tech like this could mean.” She paused. “I think it’s worth it.”

  It was Will’s turn to deliberate. He knew that their situation was dire, that even though they had managed to survive the crash, the resources on this pnet were sparse, and their rations would only st a few more weeks, even if they were cautious with them. He made up his mind.

  “Okay, I agree. We do this. But I’m not going to let you get hurt, so I’ll do it.” Will decred.

  Immediately, June objected. “No, that’s not the smart py here. If something goes wrong, and you get hurt, there’s no way I could drag you out of this ship and back to the ‘Saturn’s Heart’. You're much stronger, and if I’m hurt or incapacitated, you could still protect me until I recover. It’s got to be me.” June said definitively.

  Will didn’t like the idea of June taking the risk; a strong urge to protect her stirred in him, but he couldn’t argue with the logic. After a few moments of internal debate and hesitation, “Okay, you do it, but at the first sign of trouble, we stop.”

  With the point decided, they both swallowed hard. Will reached over and pulled June close. “I just got you, and I’m never going to let you go, you understand?” Emotion washed over his face. “I can’t lose you. You’re all I have now.” Tears welled up in June’s eyes as her face echoed his sentiment.

  “You won’t, I promise.” She reached up to his cheek, pulled his face close, and kissed him deeply, letting him feel all her care and longing for him. They embraced for a moment longer and released.

  June reached into the open drawer, retrieved a circlet, and paused momentarily. She looked deep into Will’s eyes before pcing it over her head and letting it settle on her brow.

  The terminal readout changed as soon as the circlet was in pce on June’s head, showing a graphical dispy of measurements and systems diagnostics in the strange alien script. June began to feel a soft ringing of tinnitus in her ears, which intensified until her whole head felt like it was buzzing. The ringing increased slowly until it almost became painful.

  “Are you alright?” Will asked with concern, “Stop if it hurts.” June waved him away with a ‘thumbs up’, too distracted to speak.

  The buzzing abruptly stopped, and June let out a sigh of relief. “Woah, that was intense.” She said, “Not painful, but I wouldn’t want to do that every day. Like pulling nine - G’s in a simutor, a rush, but a little overwhelming.”

  Just then, she heard a soft, feminine voice from an indistinct direction. “Hello? I speak, you hear?”

  “What is it, what’s going on?” Will asked, seeing the look of confusion on June’s face.

  June realized the voice was being transmitted by vibrations from the circlet through the bones of her skull directly to her ear. “The headband is transmitting sound; or speech, more accurately.” She said excitedly. “Yes, I can hear you. Were you the one communicating through the terminals?”

  “I, yes. Ask, you come.” The voice said in her ear. June gnced at the terminal and realized their conversation was dispyed in English on the terminal screen. The voice’s transcription was precisely as June heard it, but June’s transcribed responses were half gibberish.

  The voice continued, “Sync good, but bad too. Need more data. Give more data?” the voice asked.

  Will read the exchange between June and the system and asked, “How do you feel? Is it safe? I can get scanned too and give it ‘more data’ if you think it would help.”

  “Yeah, I’m okay and it only felt weird for a little bit. I think we’ll be okay.” June replied to Will.

  “We’re going to give you more data now, do you understand?” June asked the faceless voice.

  “Yes. More data. Then talk good.” The voice replied.

  June took the silver circlet off her head and handed it to Will, who said, “Okay, here we go”, as he pced it on his head. Will began hearing the same tinnitus-like buzzing, and after a few moments, it stopped.

  “How do I sound now? Can you understand me, alright?” the low feminine voice said to Will.

  “I can hear and understand you very well. Do you understand what I am saying to you?” Will asked. Almost as proof, the transcription on the terminal was a perfect match.

  “I can,” the voice responded, “but this is a sub-optimal way to communicate. Patience, please, as I create a physical interface. Please step back from the programmable matter generator; I will be closing the lid in thirty seconds.” When the voice stopped talking, the sarcophagus began to hum at a low frequency.

  June and Will stepped back from the strange device as the lid closed slowly. Will put the circlet back in the drawer and said, “This should be interesting.” The transparent lid closed the rest of the way, sealing the sarcophagus with a hiss. Curiosity won out over caution, and they stepped up to peer through the lid to watch.

  As the machinery hum continued, a fresh influx of silvery sand poured into the sarcophagus, accumuting until the space's internal volume was half full. As the flow of silver sand from the ports tapered off, the wires that had carpeted the chamber's floor began to shift and slither, arraying themselves in a regur pattern that provided maximum coverage throughout the sand-filled box.

  Once the wires were maximally arranged, the sound of high-voltage static filled the chamber, and through the transparent lid, Will and June could see waves of sparks travel across the piles of silver sand. It all started to vibrate and then began to flow into a humanoid shape. Electricity coursed over the form until the silvery sand had been incorporated into a rough homunculus taking shape in the sealed chamber.

  At that point, the sand began melting into the solid shape of a person. Details began to form: a nose and lips rose from the ft face, eyes and brows took shape, and two ears grew out from the sides of the head like blooming flowers. Silvery metallic hair flowed from the bald scalp until it flowed over soft feminine shoulders. Part C cup tits rose out of the ft chest as the waist narrowed and the hips fred.

  Fingers split from the stumps of the arms until they were well-formed articuted digits. The same went for the legs and feet, shapely and dainty, toes splitting, losing their webbing until they were smooth and graceful. Twin globes of a firm ass took shape, the cleft traveling forward until it reached the forming a mons pubis, creating a hairless slit.

  June and Will stood and watched this feminine body being created before their eyes, a little shocked by the newly formed flesh, albeit entirely silver, on dispy. To their even greater surprise was the fccid penis growing out of the location usually occupied by the clitoris, an enormous specimen at that, blooming from the silvery flesh encased before them.

  The figure's eyes finished forming, with long silvery shes, then opened and blinked a couple of times. The sound of static electricity faded, and the supine figure turned its head, found the faces of the two people staring, dumbfounded through the gss, and smiled at them, twinkling eyes, light pewter instead of whites and soft blue, glowing irises.

  The machine's hum dwindled to silence, and the hundreds of prehensile wires pulled free of the body lying within. Once the machine was silent, it hissed one final time as the lid raised and moved to the fully open position.

  The silver figure sat up, grabbing the edge of the sarcophagus with one hand for support, and turned to face the two onlookers. “Hello again!” she chirped. “Proper introductions are in order, don’t you think? I am Interface for this ship. And you are?”

  Momentarily taken aback by the silver person’s directness, they stood dumbfounded for a moment, then came to themselves again. “My name is June Harding, and this is Will Foucault,” June said, introducing themselves. “I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

  “You may call me Interface. I can’t tell you how gd I am to be able to speak with someone again!” With that, Interface jumped out of the programmable matter generator she was lying in and rushed over to hug first June, then Will.

  Interface was completely naked as she hugged June, who was embarrassed that she couldn’t avoid thinking about Interface’s impressive member, though fccid, pressing against June’s thigh. Simirly, Will couldn’t help but ‘react positively’ when Interface squashed her tits against his chest while giving him a big hug. He was further mortified when Interface noticed.

  “Well, it appears you are happy to see me too!” Will’s red face turned a deeper shade as Interface appreciated the growing bulge in his pants. “We can take care of that ter if you’re still in the mood,” Interface said, giving him a peck on the check.

  June’s eyes were wide as saucers. Interface winked at her and said, “Don’t worry, you're invited, too. After all, it is my job to make sure that the guests of the crew are well taken care of.” At the mention of the ship’s crew, a storm cloud briefly darkened her sunny disposition but quickly passed.

  “Let’s go find somepce more comfortable to talk,” Interface said, looking back at them as she walked to the hallway door. “I have so many questions, and I’m sure you do, too. There is a lounge further down on this deck. We can go and rex for a moment and get to know one another.” She said, flirtatiously winking at them again. With that, Interface turned and practically sashayed to the hallway. Neither Will nor June could take their eyes off her naked form, Will staring at her heart-shaped ass and June, the monster swinging between her legs.

  Shaking off their trance, they quickly followed their silvery host through the door and down the hallway. As Interface walked down the hallway, the ceiling began glowing with a diffused light just ahead of where she was walking and stopped glowing as soon as Will and June passed beneath it, creating a light bubble that traveled with them as they walked.

  Interface stopped partway down the long corridor at a nondescript door, decring, “This is it, the lounge!” She bounced on the balls of her toes, causing her ass and tits to jiggle and dick to swing slightly, which seemed odd to the pair knowing she was made of silvery metal. Will and June were mesmerized. When they caught up with her, the door melted open, and Interface walked through it and into the room.

  When June and Will followed, they were greeted with a familiar sight. The lounge was a wide room with several couches, cushioned chairs, and low tables, all the same ft white color, arranged in several sitting areas. This lounge seemed capable of comfortably accommodating a couple dozen people.

  Interface plopped down in the nearest comfy chair opposite a couch and gestured for them to sit. Will and June did as bade and found that even though it looked simir to the hard, ft white metal everything on this ship was made of, it was quite soft and comfortable.

  “Okay, storytime,” Interface began. How did you end up here, in this forgotten little corner of space?” she said as she put her elbows on her thighs and chin in her hands, oblivious to how her nonchant nudity was affecting her guests.

  Blushing, June stammered for a moment before beginning her story. Something about this silver being, an aura that she projected, stirred something in her. “Well, I guess the best pce to start is how pirates diverted us from the commercial space nes to try to hijack us.” Interface’s eyes went wide as June began regaling their host of their travails, with Will pitching in details here and there, trying not to stare at Interface’s enticing silver body, feeling that same sensual aura radiating off Interface, with limited success. June told of the desperate flight into the nebu running from the pirates, of battering their ship coming through the asteroid belt, and finally of the crash nding and trek to Interface’s ship.

  “And the rest, I guess you know,” June concluded her story. “That was very clever, by the way, using the pictographs to start talking to us. If you don’t mind me asking, are you an artificial intelligence? Our computer programmers are clever, but they couldn’t whip up something as smart as you.”

  “Well, not the way you mean it, I think,” Interface began. “When my people build ships or any complicated system, there is no automation; it’s all crewed and controlled manually. My people use a technology that is based on a type of crystal ttice that reacts to the psychic energy of the mind. When we went through our industrial revolution, we built solely with this material, which gave us great control over it and whatever process we connected to it. But instead of writing software instructions as you do for your systems, a member of the crew is selected to be transferred into the system to serve as the interface, in my case, for the ship and crew.”

  “Is this what you looked like before you were ‘transferred’?” June asked, eyes darting involuntarily to Interface’s impressive member.

  She gave June a knowing smile, then responded. “Yes, this is what I looked like before I became the Interface for this ship, sausage and all.” She said, winking at June as she blushed bright red. “My people are hermaphrodites, which turns out to be an excellent evolutionary adaptation. Any member of our species can impregnate and become pregnant, effectively doubling the breeding stock. With that many combinatorial mating permutations avaible, the possible extinction of the species is quite difficult. That and the fact that we like to fuck. A lot. Really a lot.” The smile on her face grew almost predatory as she could see that her candid talk was beginning to wind Will and June up.

  Will coughed into his fist and, after a moment, asked, “You mean, at one time, there was a physical you, and you’re a copy living in this ship’s system? “Was it painful? How does that even work?”

  “No, I’m not a copy. What made me ‘me’ was transferred from my ‘meat’ body into the crystalline control matrix. My people found it was the best way for a crew to really be part of the ship, individuals bound together with a single purpose.” Interface’s face darkened again. “We were bound together, body and soul, in love and spirit, as a crew and with the ship. I am…” she paused,” I was that connection between the individuals of the crew and between the crew and the ship.” She paused as a single silver tear ran down her face. “We were more than a crew.” She paused again. “A family. And now I’m alone.”

  With an outburst of long pent-up emotion, Interface began weeping, her silver shoulders shaking as her face fell into her hands. She cried for the loss of dear loved ones and for the oceans of time lost to heartbreaking loneliness.

  Tears welled up in June’s eyes. “Oh, Honey, come sit next to us.” Interface rose from her chair, tears flowing freely as she sat between June and Will. June embraced her tight, comfortingly, and asked, “Do you want to talk about it? It might help.”

  Held in June’s arms, Will rubbed her back to comfort her, and she began her story. “I am unable to recall much of the things I’ve recorded in my crystalline matrix. I have been alone on this pnet for a very long time. I may have been flesh and bone at one time, but I am now very much a part of this machine, the beating heart of this ship we all called home, but now only I call home. Over time, I’ve had to shut down more and more of the ship to conserve power, until only a small portion of what I am is active in the matrix anymore. My memories are still encoded, but I don’t have the means to access them.”

  “Are you running out of fuel?” Will asked.

  “So to speak,” Interface expined, “The bond the crew and the interface share is not only of camaraderie but also a powerful psychic link. The link binds the crew, Interface, and ship, but also feeds us. I’m not sure if you felt it, but when I kissed you both, I gave you a small sip of my energy and you gave me some back. I could taste, for ck of a better word, that you were good people, and I could trust you.”

  “Now that you mention it, I could feel something,” June said. “A little give and take of some elementary charge.”

  “You are perceptive, aren’t you!” Interface said, smiling. “The best and most important part of this exchange is that when you give and receive this life force energy, you end up generating more. Let me demonstrate.” Interface leaned over and nibbled on June’s ear lobe, then let her tongue trail up along the edge of her ear, causing June to shudder with arousal.

  “Now give me a kiss.” Interface instructed. June leaned in and gave her a warm, soft kiss on the lips that lingered for just a moment.

  “Did you feel it? I gave you a small trickle of erogenous energy, then you gave it back. But you feel like something lingered, yes? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I gave to you, you gave to me, and we both got something more out of it. It’s just like what happens when two people are in love.” Interface said, gncing between Will and June warmly.“It just so happens that my people found a way to harness that energy.”

  “So basically you and the ship are powered by sex energy?” Will asked incredulously.

  “Yes and no. All of the ship’s systems and various devices run on energy from the dark matter power core, but to be able to harness that energy and use the ship’s systems, you need a control system, an Interface; in a word, me. My crystalline matrix requires a lot of energy to charge and maintain, and I haven’t had a crew to ‘top me off’ in a long time.”

  “That’s why the ship is mostly powered down,” Will said, putting the pieces together.

  “Exactly. I’ve been in ‘low power mode’ for a very long time, with all of the main systems offline, with only minimal external sensors watching for trouble. At first, I thought your fiery nding was another meteor shower, but my heart leaped at the prospect of seeing other people when you made that nding. When it was clear that you had seen my ship and were coming to me, I opened the airlock doors and hoped for the best. And you guys are the best!” Interface said, squeezing them both in one-armed hugs from in between them.

  “Another meteor shower… Does that happen a lot on this pnet?” June asked.

  “Well, not really.” The look on Interface's face darkened. “Time for the sad story, I guess.”, she began. “My people traveled the stars for longer than we had a history recording such things. My crew and I were charting this charming,” she said sarcastically, " corner of space when we scanned the nebu and found the star system hidden inside.”

  “Hold on, you were able to scan through the nebu?” Will asked excitedly.

  “Yes, we were able to survey it in about ten days. Once our initial scans were complete, we entered for a detailed survey of the pnet.

  When we reached the shell of asteroids surrounding this system, we pushed our way through. We nded next to a wide river at the base of a mountain range and began our survey.

  Half the crew at a time would depart the ship in shuttles, flying out in every direction all over the pnet.” Interface paused, mentally steeling herself for the next part of the story.

  “When we came through the asteroid barrier, we only nudged the asteroids out of our way. But our passage sent a wave of dispcement through the asteroid field like a pebble dropped into a pond. It took some time, but those waves traveling in opposite directions met again on the far side of the system, colliding into each other and sending a rain of debris on a collision course with the pnet.”

  Interface began to look pained, “We were on the pnet for months and hadn't noticed the disturbance we had caused. When the meteors were ejected from the field, it was on the far side of the star, so we had very little warning that they were inbound.”

  She was crying freely again but continued. “As soon as I noticed they were on a pnetary collision course, I sent out a warning. The timing couldn't have been worse. We had teams all over the pnet doing detailed surveys, and at that time, the second half of the crew was heading out to relieve the first as it was time for a shift change. Everyone was at least an hour out from the ship when the impacts began.” June held her as she sobbed between sentences.

  “Everyone was racing back when the shuttle transponders began winking out, one by one. All but a few of the shuttles had survived the bombardment and were still making for the ship, when a rge meteor impacted the mountain behind us, fttening it. The entire mountain came down on me and I was convinced the ship would be pulverized, but she's a lot tougher than she looks.” Interface smiled a small tear-streaked smile, which faded quickly. “Communications went silent after that. I spent a few months trying to dig a tunnel out to the surface, but everything was so unstable it kept colpsing. When I finally broke through to the surface, it was a hellscape; everything green had burned in a fire, the river bed was dry and full of dead and dying things, and there was no sign of the crew. I had lost everyone I cared about in the blink of an eye. I spent decades wandering on foot through that barren, burnt-out ndscape, looking for my family, but I never found any trace of them. Eventually, I went out looking for them less and less as my power reserves dwindled, until eventually I was forced to retreat into the ship, close the doors, and simply wait for someone to find me.”

  A sigh of resignation passed her lips. “I tried to keep busy while in the ship, but it was cold and empty without them. Where there were once hundreds of voices and the hum of lively activity, there was a silence like a tomb. I spent hundreds of years like that, wandering the corridors of the ship, like a ghost, unwilling and unable to leave my family behind. Eventually, I had to shut down sections of the ship, then ultimately abandon my physical presence and retreat into my matrix to conserve power. Thousands of years passed like that as I withdrew further and further, becoming smaller and smaller, without the constant flow of life-sustaining energy, I slept, keeping only a tiny portion of myself awake to watch the outside world.”

  Interface had stopped crying and spoke in an unfeeling tone. “I stayed in that state for millennia. Just barely existing; waiting. It was only a thousand years ago or so that the ndslide exposed the nose of the ship, and I roused to watch the reformed world through the ship’s sensor array. It had been so long, and this pnet had changed so drastically, I didn’t recognize it as the same pce where I had lost my family. So I slept again, for a long time.”

  Her face lit up again, though with a hint of sadness, “And then you came, I put out the welcome mat, and here you are!”

  Tears streamed down June’s face. “Oh, Honey. I’m so sorry.” She hugged the silver girl tightly, consoling her. Will, also choked up by Interface’s story, said, “If there’s anything we can do to help you, we will. We’ll all find a way off this pnet together and help you return to your people.”

  “You really mean it?” asked Interface through her tears, crying again, but now from hope renewed.

  “Of course,” Will replied softly as he moved to hug her, too. “You seem like a kind, sweet person in need of help. Space is full of awful people, so we must help those shining bright.”

  Interface’s face beamed with Will’s words, and hugged both of them tightly. “Thank you both. I feel better than I have in a long time.” She said brightly.

  “Are you going to be okay, energy-wise, keeping your physical form running?” Will asked, concerned.

  “As long as I stay in the ship, I hardly use any energy at all. It would be a real strain if I tried to leave the ship for any duration, but I’m good.” Interface replied.

  Tears gone now, she said, “You two have made me feel better than I had ever hoped to feel again. I want to make you feel as good as you’ve made me feel, and as my duty to be a good host,” Interface said, and with a flirtatious look, “I think I know just the thing.”

  In a fsh, that pyful look was back on her face as she embraced her new friends. Without warning, Interface locked onto June’s lips and gave her a big, passionate kiss, then turned and gave Will the same.

  Something about the silvery girl drew June and Will to her. Maybe it was due in part to the psychic energy she said she was broadcasting, but she had a raw sensuality that rolled off her in waves in her beguiling charm and very nude form. It was intoxicating, and both spacers were drunk on it.

  June turned Interface's face with one hand and pnted a long, passionate kiss on her lips. Will rubbed her silvery shoulders and back, working his way down to the soft but firm globes of Interface’s silvery ass, finding it remarkable that her flesh felt as warm and alive as one made of blood and bone.

  Lips locked with June, Interface pulled down the zipper on June’s jacket and undid the buttons on her shirt to expose the hidden bra. Interface let go of June’s lips and kissed across her chin and down the side of her neck to her cvicle as she reached behind and untched her bra.

  “Oooh, these are very nice,” Interface said as she removed June’s brassiere and began massaging her breasts.

  Will pressed his hardening length into the cleft of Interface’s ass, then reached around to fondle her silver-gray breasts. He squeezed and pinched her nipples as he pressed his body into hers, pinning her between himself and June. Interface reached back with one hand, gripping and stroking his stiff length through his pants as he licked and nibbled her ear lobes.

  “Come, Lovers,” Interface said, temporarily disentangling herself from them. “This couch is too small; I haven't had any fun in a long time, and we need some space to py.” She looked to the space between the couch and comfy chair, and with a mental command, the floor flowed and raised itself, filling the space stretching out to a king-sized bed.

  Interface bounced down on the middle of the bed and lounged on her side, elbow extended with her head resting on her hand, the image of bold sensuality.

  “All right you two, strip.” She said pyfully, “Give me a good show. I want to drink you in.”

  Even though June was already half undressed, Will managed to throw his clothes off first and unch himself onto the mattress next to Interface. June wasn’t far behind, and soon, they fnked the silver girl, kissing her all over. Will massaged her breasts while licking her nipples while June French kissed her, their tongues dueling.

  June reached down Interface’s silver front until her hand found the impressive tool sprouting from the metal girl’s crotch, already growing hard.

  June took Interface’s hardening cock in one hand and Will's already firm rod in the other and began nguidly stroking both shafts up and down in unison. That elicited a deep and grateful groan from Will, and Interface looked into June’s eyes and said, “Oh Honey, you don’t know how much I need the two of you right now.”

  With one hand, Will held the back of Interface’s head and pulled her lips to his, giving her a deep and passionate kiss. She moaned softly into his mouth as he resumed to squeeze her right tit with his free hand.

  June turned her full attention to Interface’s girthy rod, stroking the length with both hands as she sucked the silver mushroom-shaped head into her mouth, causing Interface to moan louder into Will's mouth as his tongue wrestled with hers.

  June was thoroughly enjoying the taste of the silver cock in her mouth, so she decided to explore the body beneath her more fully. Her left hand continued to rhythmically pump the silver shaft while she slurped on the soft head, and her right hand slid down between Interface’s pewter thighs until she found the hermaphrodite’s sopping wet slit.

  June stroked her finger up and down Interface’s wet and swollen pussy, in time with her head bobby on the ridged, silver member.

  Interface squealed as June pushed two fingers into her well-lubricated tunnel and gave the ‘come hither’ gesture, finding and stroking her G-spot. Interface purred and rocked her hips onto the fingers in her pussy, grinding on June's hand, covering it with wet evidence of her arousal.

  Interface’s back arched, and the walls of her pussy clenched down on June’s finger, threatening to crush them as she came hard. A psychic wave of lust bsted off of the silver robot; both June and Will crashed over the edge of their climaxes in response.

  As June’s pussy clenched and pulsed in orgasmic overload, she stuffed as much of the metallic gray cock into her mouth, trying to reinforce the sensation.

  Will reared back and grunted loudly, almost a growl, as he spurted ropes of cum all over Interface’s breasts, making a glorious mess.

  Interface's face radiated her bliss. “Oh, my Loves, thank you, thank you!” Interface shouted in gratitude.

  Will, having reared up in his climax, was now in prime position for Interface to grab his ass cheeks with both hands and pull his pelvis to her hungry mouth. With the need of a millennium of pent-up lust, she forced the entire length of Will’s cock into her mouth and down her throat, forcing him to straddle her torso.

  They writhed like that for a few minutes, June simultaneously stroking and sucking Interface’s cock while vigorously finger bsting her silver pussy, Interface bobbing back and forth, ramming her nose into Will’s pelvis as she repeatedly slurped down his entire length, all the while fondling his balls and stroking his perineum.

  Will couldn’t st against that onsught and grunted loudly once more as he shot another load straight down Interface’s throat.

  The psychic silver girl seemed to feel her partner’s orgasm as well as they did; her orgasm was set off by Will’s, which in turn set off June’s titanic orgasm. June spasmed with the force of it, jerking her off Interface’s hot, meaty rod, leaning back, moaning and panting.

  Taking advantage of the moment, Interface rolled over to cover June’s body with her own. “I have been so looking forward to this,” she said as she kissed June on the lips and sunk her titanium-colored love rod into June’s slick, warm depths.

  “Oh, Gawd!” June moaned as she took every bit of Interface’s dick right to the root. “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck!” June cried as she orgasmed hard again, this time alone.

  Interface slowly slid out of June’s clutching pussy until only the tip was still in, paused for a heartbeat, then drove hard into June again. June grunted as the silver shaft impaled her, then Interface withdrew her penis and smmed it in again, extracting a cry of “MORE!” from June.

  Interface began hammering into June with a steady rhythm as June slowly lost her mind to the pleasure. She paused for a moment, causing June to whine a little, as she felt Will kneel between her silvery thighs behind her.

  He held the head of his cock in his hand to better line his cock up to Interface’s pussy, then grabbed her hips and plunged into her pewter-colored depths. The force of Will’s thrust drove Interface’s cock into June, and all three of them called out in a pleasure-fueled fervor.

  They y there a moment, basking in the intimate contact, June on her back, thighs spyed wide with Interface's cock buried deep in her pussy; Will clinging tight to Interface's back, crouched between bent knees, cock buried deep, his balls brushing against the base of Interface's cock and June's tight asshole.

  Will began thrusting and set the tempo; as he withdrew, he pulled Interface with him, the silver cock sliding almost entirely out of June; then he’d sm into Interface’s warm, pewter pussy, driving the silver cock back deep into June’s quivering depths. They ground together like that in a steady rhythm of thrust, bump, bump, thrust, bump, bump over and over, sweat glistening on their nude forms, moving together as three parts of a single beast.

  Their pace became frantic and lost rhythm as June’s orgasm bsted her body and mind, pussy clenching hard around Interface’s silver cock, setting her off. In a chain reaction, Interface’s pussy clenched, setting off Will’s orgasm, and he pumped rope after rope of cum into Interface’s depths. They pressed into each other tight, riding out the waves of orgasmic energy that pulsed between the three, panting and sweaty, locked in their three-way embrace.

  The crashing waves of orgasms crested and receded like the tide. Exhausted and well-sated, each rolled off the person beneath them and id there, June and Will cuddling Interface between them. They basked in the collective post-orgasmic glow, Interface expressing deep contentment.

  In the most hopeless circumstances, they had found each other and renewed hope, the feeling of profound optimism irrepressible.

  They would find a way because they knew they had each other.