“They’ve breached!” He called out as an enormous dark shape filled the door frame. It was a blob-like creature with no face or features except for several meaty arms hanging underneath it, looking like some massive dark jellyfish hovering over the threshold.

  Will didn’t allow it to enter before firing a quick burst from his rifle. The rounds impacted it like it was hitting ballistics gel, sending rippling waves across the surface of its featureless mass. It wept dark fluid from the wounds inflicted by Will’s burst of gunfire, but they didn’t slow it at all.

  Attracted by Will and June’s bright thermal signature, the dark jellyfish squeezed in through the doorway and reached for them with its muscur tentacles. Will switched to auto and emptied an entire magazine into the monster, viscous fluid spraying everywhere, covering Will in its gore.

  It finally fell to the floor, unmoving, but there were several behind it waiting to take its pce. Will gestured to June to retreat as he repced the mag and began firing into the next one. She held her sidearm low, waiting to fire as Will unloaded his weapon again. “Bunkroom!” he yelled, and they retreated through the door and barricaded it.

  They stood side by side, facing the door as Will reloaded the rifle. “How many mags are you carrying?” Will asked.

  “Two,” June replied. Will gave her one more, and then he opened the channel on the comms. “I’ve got two mags for the rifle and three for my side. Wait until I’ve emptied the rifle, which should get the bastard at the door, then we’ll blow the canopy and rush out. Once outside, run like hell, and don’t look back. Got it?” Will’s voice was like iron, then softened. June, whatever happens, I love you. The same goes for you, too, silver girl. I’m gd I got to meet you.”

  June was about to argue when he stopped her short. “No! You will get out and run for it. Use the gun if you need to, but you are going to make it. I’ve seen how good a runner you are; you are going to clear the ship and run hard back to the Nestia!”

  “Will, I can’t leave without you!” June argued, her eyes wide as the pounding deformed the thin door.

  “Stick to the pn,” Will commanded.

  As Interface listened over the comms, she couldn’t move or speak. It was happening all over again. People she loved were in trouble, and she was powerless to do little else but watch in despair.

  The door finally buckled, and a dark getinous form squeezed into the room. With one gnce at June, Will fired on the invader, shredding it to pieces and spilling its gooey core onto the floor. His rifle was not empty, so he stepped into the hallway and fired at the next dark blob until it, too, fell, and his rifle clicked empty.

  “Now! Go!” He commanded, and June hesitated momentarily before following the order with tears in her eyes. As Will switched to his sidearm, June rushed to the cockpit, pulled the safety lock, and then the emergency canopy release.

  The explosive bolts fired with a deafening sound in the cockpit, and the canopy jumped about ten centimeters, but all of the dirt piled onto the front viewport held it in pce, only shifting it slightly, still barring her way. “Fuck!”June swore. She briefly thought about shooting her way through the viewport but realized that shooting it out wasn’t an option if it could withstand micro-meteor impacts.

  With that cold realization, she turned again to stand beside Will as he faced down their attackers. He looked at her, not understanding why she was still there at first, but a gnce into the cockpit, with dirt pouring in around the edges of the canopy, told him the story.

  They gnced at each other without words, then they held their pistols out in front of them and fired every round they had, dropping two more before their weapons were empty and useless.

  The next dark jelly squirmed over its fallen brothers, advancing on Will and June. Will drew a knife from his belt, pushed June behind him, and charged. He sshed wildly and hacked at the beast, but he was soon entangled and subdued. The beast pulled him in tight to its body, then backed around the corner and disappeared.

  “Nooo!” June screamed as Will was pulled from the ship. Another squeezed through the corridor, backing June up to the cockpit. She searched frantically for a weapon but found none.

  Backed against the mis-deployed canopy, time seemed to slow as she looked down from the cockpit of ‘Saturn’s Heart’. It was the pce that she and Will had called home for nearly a decade, traveling the space nes on shipping runs, seeing the gaxy one small spaceport at a time. It was a time full of companionable friendship and eventual love, but now, she thought mournfully, it had been turned into a dark pce where nightmares are real and monsters exist.

  June’s perception of time returned to normal as she watched her fate squeeze down the hallway, irresistibly drawn by her infrared profile. Inhumanly strong arms reached to entangle her. “Get the fuck off me!” She fought and swore but was ultimately subdued by the staggering number of limbs the beast brought to bear.

  Dozens of constrictor-like limbs drew tight across her, causing her to struggle for breath. A slightly smaller appendage wrapped around her neck, and then she felt a small, sharp prick near her carotid artery and a cool sensation radiated out from the sting, and she fell limp.

  Her head hung loosely, swinging side to side as the monstrous jellyfish squeezed back down the tight corridor of the ship. Carrying its prize, it left the ship and out into the night.

  The cool evening air hit her face as the st light of dusk palely illuminated the scene. June’s mind had calmed, probably due to the paralytic being injected into her neck, leaving her defenseless but her rational mind unaffected.

  “What is the evolutionary benefit of having your prey, paralyzed but completely cogent?” She thought, unable to voice the words. “Paralyzed prey makes sense, they won’t struggle as you devour them, but leaving them the ability to think clearly?” She coolly pondered it until her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of fabric ripping.

  As the jelly holding her moved out of the doorway and circled the abandoned cart, she saw she was surrounded by a pack of dark jellyfish, more than a dozen of the silently floating beasts milling about. She then saw the jelly that had captured Will as her head flopped back and forth limply.

  Will also had a tentacle wrapped tightly around his neck as well, presumably injected with the same paralytic. The dark jelly rolled his limp body over and over, like some kind of spider, but instead of binding him with yers of silk, it was tearing his clothes off in small patches, letting them flutter to the ground. “Just like the Muncher’s quills.” June thought. Analyzing the scene in the low light, she could make out several more piles of quills and realized they were about to share their fate.

  As June calmly came to that conclusion, the dark jelly constricting her loosened its grip, letting her body hang in its arms like a hammock, except face down. She felt its arms scrunch up, grip the back of her jacket, and tear it apart with ease. The strength of these creatures should have terrified her, but in her drugged state, she only made a mental note of it and waited patiently for the next stage.

  Much like she observed Will and the beast holding him, June was rolled over, this way and that, as she was shucked like an ear of corn. As the beast carefully tore the fabric of her sleeves from her arms, her attention fell on the communicator on her wrist. She heard Interface’s panicked voice pleading over the comms. “Will! June! Please respond! Are you okay? Say something! Anything! PLEASE respond…” Interface pleaded.

  “Interface is going to be devastated,” June thought. “The poor girl is going to be left all alone again, and after everything she’s been through, chances are she’s not going to make it either.” A tiny bit of sadness and regret managed to pierce her drug-induced indifference.

  The dark jelly continued to shred the clothing covering June’s body, removing the tattered legs of her pants, boots, jacket, and shirt sleeves. The st thing it removed was the communicator on her wrist. June watched it fall to the ground below, Interface’s pleading voice still calling out.

  The jelly had finished its work, leaving June completely naked in its arms. The cold night air blew over her unresponsive body, chilling her, but she was unable to even shiver. The jelly's arms then pressed her tight to the underside of its rge, bulbous body and wrapped around her, providing a measure of protection from the cool air, though the jelly's body wasn’t much warmer than the air had been.

  After stripping its prize, the beast began moving through the crowd of other beasts, floating over the ground like dark clouds. The jelly carrying her left the pack, heading down the valley for some unknown destination. It was surprisingly fast, picking up speed; June soon lost track of where she was and couldn’t quite get her bearings. The valley floor sped by her face, the silence only broken by the slight wind of their passing rushing across her ears.

  June tried not to ponder their destination or what grim fate must be in store for them; instead, she counted off the seconds, marking time in her mind as they glided with speed to their yet-to-be-revealed destination. They sped on for about an hour and a half until the beast slowed and began to work its way around some rough boulders until it stopped.

  Held tightly underneath, June was in perfect position to watch several tentacles, those not holding her, start to paw at the sloped ground just in front of them. Having found what it was looking for, the beast pulled open a trapdoor disguised to look like the surroundings, much like a trapdoor spider conceals its ir.

  The opening wasn’t much rger than June’s prone body, but the jelly, apparently without bones, easily stuffed itself through the small opening, dragging June with it. Once through the small opening, the space inside opened wider, but they were enveloped in complete darkness, not allowing June even a small clue to where she was being taken. June felt the beast travel down several twists and turns of a pitch-bck byrinth and noticed them brushing past others with increasing frequency.

  “They must live together in some sort of colony, and this is their hive,” June analyzed. “This would be completely fascinating if it weren’t for the inevitable conclusion,” She thought without emotion.

  The passage they were traveling through seemed to widen, and the darkness pushed back as a soft purple glow reflected off the hard dirt floor, which was the only thing in her field of view. As she approached the purple light, odd sounds started reaching her ears. She heard bleats and bugles from nearby Munchers and other strange sounds she could not pce. The Munchers didn’t sound out long before they were silenced, the quiet filled only by a peculiar, squelching sound.

  Moving along, the hard-packed dirt beneath her turned into a dark purple resin, covering the floor in every direction she could see. As they moved deeper into this resin-covered chamber, she could see in her periphery a multitude of hairless Muncher legs covered in the same resin, fixing them to the floor and holding the prey in pce.

  The jelly carrying June slowed and seemed to be searching for some space of its own. It stopped, hovering over a section of resin cover floor that June noticed had four indents, suggesting it held another member of the Muncher herd sometime in the recent past.

  The jelly hovered in pce, and June’s captor carefully loosened its grip on her limbs without releasing her torso, letting her arms and legs dangle limply beneath her. June then felt a strange undution on her back as the jelly holding her seemed to be preparing something. The skin of the beast pressing against her back split open, spilling a cool, viscous liquid on her naked form. Muscur tentacles proceeded to spread the liquid up and down her spine, covering her from the back of her neck and shoulders to the base of her spine just above the crack of her ass.

  It painted yers of the stuff on her back, slowly stiffening into a hard shell stuck to her back. “Huh, it must be endothermic,” June thought in an almost disinterested manner as the paste cooled on her skin, hardening into more of the tough resin.

  Once the shell on her back was hard and strong, the jelly lowered itself until June’s dangling limbs rested on the resin floor, in the small depressions left by the previous occupant of this spot, as if she were kneeling on her hands and knees. A set of dark tentacles arranged her limbs so that her knees were left wide apart, exposing her sex to the strangely warm air of the chamber.

  The several tendrils painting her back began sthering the wet resin down her arms and legs in an odd pattern. As it hardened, the tendrils covered her arms and legs in a spider web-like pattern that would maximize both strength to secure her, even though the drug in her system prevented her from even lifting her head while exposing the maximum amount of skin.

  It finished the job on her limbs by completely burying her hands and knees deeply in resin, getting in between her fingers, and covering the back of her knees up to the top of her calves. The resin hardened, and June was securely anchored to the floor, her body restricted and supported by the resin.

  It seemed the jelly was not quite finished as a thick tendril wrapped around her head, covering her left eye, squishing her nose, and pulling her head back so it was no longer hanging limply. It positioned her head facing forward, horizontal to the floor. The tentacles painting the resin across her body began painting up the back of her head, thoroughly wetting her hair and smearing yers over her forehead. She closed her exposed right eye, the only control she had over her body, as the gloop ran down from her forehead.

  The tendril held her head for several more minutes until the resin had set, then released its grip, letting the newly hardened resin hold her head in pce. Not finished, the jelly pried open her mouth as far as it would go, almost to the point of discomfort.

  Another small tendril painted the wet resin over her upper and lower teeth, along the insides of her cheeks, and covered most of her tongue. The resin cured, holding her mouth open wide and locking her tongue down. Finally seeming satisfied with its work, the jelly retracted the small needle injecting the paralytic from her neck, and the tentacle wrapped around her neck loosened then withdrew.

  Having successfully delivered its quarry to the nest and prepared it, the hunter lifted off and silently glided from the chamber.

  June silently thanked her luck that one of her eyes had been covered while applying the resin. She looked around the rge chamber and was astonished by what she saw. Her one clear eye immediately found Will’s bound form, almost directly in front of her and to her left, his ass pointing ten o’clock away from her. She was simultaneously relieved to see him but a little sad that he would be sharing her fate, not able to emote too deeply as the paralytic was slow to clear her bloodstream.

  Will was coated in resin, like every other captured prey in the room, including her. However, he was unlucky that both of his eyes were covered by the cured resin frozen on his forehead, covering down over his angur cheekbones. His mouth was held open wide with resin, the same as June. With both eyes covered and likely still feeling the effects of the paralytic, he did not move or call out. June couldn’t call out either and had no way to let him know he wasn’t alone.

  Continuing to scan the room, June could see that most of the herd of Munchers that were taken were already glued to the floor as she and Will were undergoing various stages of whatever processing the jellies were subjecting them to.

  They seemed to be arranged in chronological order of arrival, which made sense; the closest to Will and June were simirly cemented, silent, and motionless, while some a little farther away were starting to show signs that they were regaining motor control, though bound and completely immobilized. These started sounding out weak bleats of protest.

  Just beyond the bleating Munchers, June couldn’t determine what was happening. These Munchers, though she couldn't see the beasts themselves, were surrounded by a dozen glowing jellies, roughly the same size as the hunters but with many thinner tendrils hanging from below them instead of the rge, muscur tentacles. They must have a different purpose, June supposed.

  The st group of Munchers she could see shocked her, even in her drugged state, and took her breath away in a gasp. The only thing she could see of the Munchers were thin, frail-looking legs, still clinging to the now oversized resin structure surrounding their limbs. The bodies of the herd animals were wholly enveloped in a rge bag-like membrane, emitting the same purple glow as the other jellies in the room. The difference was that thousands of glowing, wriggling rval jellies inside were stretching and bulging the containing membrane in a grotesque and unsettling fashion.

  One of the Munchers furthest from June and presumably one of the first arrivals was enveloped by a membrane almost twice as rge as any other of the jellies in the room; the rvae wriggling inside were nearly as rge as her thigh. They pushed and strained against each other beneath the surface of the purple membrane containing them so violently that it finally split, spilling the swarm of adolescent jellies onto the floor with a wet, sick-sounding spsh.

  The sight that horrified June the most was the state of the suddenly revealed Muncher. Though locked in the very same pose she was, The Muncher was desiccated and gaunt, eye sockets empty, completely sucked dry of all vitality. Dead. She knew that was to be her fate. It was going to be Will’s fate. And Interface would likely die alone in her ship, haunted by the ghosts of all those she loved and lost.

  It was all too much for June, and as the suppressed emotions finally bubbled up, tears streamed out of her one exposed eye. The paralytic had finally relented, and she was filled with fear, terror, and heartbreak all at once, and she sobbed loudly.

  Will suddenly stirred, hearing June’s crying. “-une! -une!” he called June’s name, unable to form words properly.

  “-ill! I’- -ere!” Will I’m here, June called back. “Uhh, -noo,” Will despaired, realizing June hadn’t escaped. It crushed him. More than the thought of his inevitable demise, knowing that he couldn't protect June and she was doomed to his fate broke him, and he sobbed uncontrolbly.

  The bleating of the reviving Munchers and June and Will’s despair-filled cries stirred the hive of jellies into action. A dozen new jellies entered the chamber, silently floating like some grim, glowing procession. These jellies came in single file, then fanned out amongst the bleating Munchers and hovered directly over them one by one.

  These blob-like jellies were slightly different from the others in that they only had three tendrils, two thin tendrils hanging out their end like a tail, and one somewhat thicker tendril. They settled onto the stiff resin cover backs of the terrified beasts and wrapped the thicker tendril around the neck of each animal.

  With surgeon-like precision, the thinner tendrils were inserted deep into their nostrils with one swift thrust. The Munchers began shuddering wildly in their bindings, hooting and bugling like June had heard earlier. Then, slowly, the skin of the jellies on their backs started to undute as they sank onto the Muncher, swallowing it up, silencing the beast’s wailing until it had enveloped entirely it with only their legs protruding from the bottom of the purple sack, supporting both beast and jelly.

  Groups of the thin, tendriled jellies returned and surrounded the enveloped Munchers. This time, June could make out some of what they were doing. The thin tendrils were stabbing into jelly surrounding the Muncher, the long reach of their tendrils sounding its depths.

  June's view was soon blocked by the arrival of more of the three tendrilled jellies. Most took up positions over the Munchers directly behind Will. Then, the st two hovered over the two lovers.

  June yelled out as best as she could with her mouth held open, calling repeatedly, “Will, I Love you! Will I Love you!” She knew he understood because he called back as best he could, “I love you June!”

  She watched in despair as the tendril wrapped around his neck, and then he suddenly let loose a loud guttural scream. She watched his dick rapidly swell and started ejacuting even before he was completely hard, painting the hard resin of the floor with his seed. The jelly wasted no time and inserted the thinner two tendrils deep into his nostrils, choking out his voice, but he continued to gurgle. As the surface of the jelly began to undute and surround him, June felt a slim tentacle wrap around her neck.

  Her weeping was driven from her when a small needle-like barb pierced her neck, and a new venom began pumping in. Her entire nervous system caught fire, every neuron firing, with a screaming orgasm so powerful, it seared her body with more pain than she had ever felt in her life. She squirted hard, covering her legs and the floor. The orgasm consumed her mind, then found an outlet in a scream until her voice was silenced by the tendrils shoved through her nostrils and into her lungs, stopping the air from passing her vocal cords.

  The world was burned away in the terrible fire of her unending atomic orgasm, save for two thoughts of Will and Interface. Her mind clung to the image of her lovers, the only thing that allowed her to bear the torturous fire of desire consuming her.

  As she shook with the brutal intensity force upon her, the jelly on her back swallowed her. The viscous fluid in the center of her uncaring passenger filled her unclosable mouth, but she didn’t have the senses to taste it.

  After a few short moments of agony that felt like years, she felt tendrils pierce her prison, seeking her. Dozens probed around her face until they found her mouth, then plunged down her throat, hitting the bottom of her stomach. They were followed by an overwhelming number of tendrils that jammed in and stretched her throat painfully.

  Simultaneously, she felt dozens of tendrils groping her nethers, seeking her boiling insides. When they found her asshole, they savagely pushed deep into her bowels, stretching the muscled ring of her anus with their unforgiving numbers until her flesh tore and bled. Other tendrils found her pussy and stretched it to its limits, not satisfied they were deep enough and pressed on for more. Her overstuffed pussy and vaginal walls stretched and strained as tendrils painfully battered and stretched her cervix open, finding her final depth. They entered en masse and filled her uterus, writhing and squirming until she was completely full.

  It all fueled her unrelenting orgasmic inferno. She clung desperately to sanity by chanting her lovers’ names in her mind, “Will. Interface. Will. Interface.” The sensation and pain ramped up to the intensity of a supernova when she felt each of the tendrils deep in her body pulsing into her depths. Thousands of little packets were being deposited in her core. There was no logic or cold analysis, but she instinctively knew she was their seedbed, an incubator for their young who would suck out her lifeforce, the very essence of who and what she was.

  This was why she was being forced into a nuclear-fired orgasm, so the young would have an ample source of energy from which to feed. These jellies were the antithesis of everything Interface was. She was kind and warm; they were cold and uncaring. She was soft and gentle; they were hard and brutal. She gave freely; they took without remorse. Despite the mind-obliterating mega orgasm, she thought of the sweet silver girl, and her mind called out. “Interface…”

  Having filled and bloated every space and pocket in her body until it was unnaturally swelled to grotesque proportions, the tendrils all retreated, leaving her mouth open and empty, her asshole and pussy gaping and bloody. She felt a new sensation inside, adding an extra yer of her misery. She felt thousands of tiny popping sensations in her core, almost like a carbonated drink, then the wriggling of a horde of rvae. It was soon followed by the feeling of hundreds of tiny paper cuts directly cutting her soul, moving from her center and spreading outward as each tiny jelly fixed itself to any surface it could find to begin feeding. She burned like a nuclear furnace, but with a small chunk of ice in her center, growing rger. The writhing masses in her were swelling, growing rger along with the horrible icy chill, bulging her body, stretching it until June felt like she would tear open.

  The pressure and cold in her stomach grew more than she could bear, and she wretched, expelling some of the small but growing rvae into the fluid surrounding her. With her one eye not covered by the resin, she could make out the indistinct shapes wiggling and swimming in the fluid with her. A new yer of panic hit her as the little rvae swam back to her face and tched onto her lips and cheeks. The feeling of profound cold began radiating where they tched on. She continued to vomit up the rvae, adding to the numbers surrounding her face.

  She felt the same cold traveling out of her backside as she started to expel more of the growing rvae from her ass and pussy. The cold sensation of a thousand little paper cuts spread across her body, finally covering every square centimeter of her, inside and out. She called out in her mind for the st time, “Interface…” before she gave up and submitted completely to despair and anguish.

  ********

  Interface stood transfixed on the bridge of the Nestia, with the binocurs pressed tight against her eyes as she watched Events unfold at the ‘Saturn’s Heart’.

  “Interface, what do you see?” Will asked over the comm.

  “They caught them all, but they haven’t moved anywhere, yet. The ship is still completely surrounded.” She answered him.

  Interface tensely watched through the binocurs. “They’re beginning to carry them away.” Interface reported.

  After a few minutes, she reported again. “All of the Muncher signatures are gone, but there are still a dozen of the dark signatures all around the ship.”

  A few tense minutes passed.

  “They found our new door,” Will reported over the comms. Interface’s anxiety was through the roof at this point, but there was nothing she could do.

  “They’ve breached!” Will called on the comm as Interface saw the tiny fshes through the binocurs. Will left the channel open, and she heard the gunfire over the comms.

  “Bunkroom!” Will yelled, followed by more gunfire.

  “How many mags are you carrying?” Will asked as Interface listened intently.

  “Two.” she heard June reply.

  Will again clicked the comm button, thinking the channel wasn’t open.

  “I’ve got two mags for the rifle and three for my side. Wait until I’ve emptied the rifle,

  which should get the bastard at the door, then we’ll blow the canopy and rush out. Once outside,

  run like hell, and don’t look back. Got it?” Will ordered June. Interface realized Will was preparing to sacrifice himself for June. “No!” She cried over the comms, but Will was still transmitting and couldn’t hear her.

  “June, whatever happens, I love you. The same goes for you too, silver girl. I’m gd I got to meet you.”

  Interface lost all composure and started weeping; she had lost everything and been alone for so long, and now that she had someone again, she was going to lose one of them, maybe even both. It was more than she could bear.

  She hadn’t been listening for a second until the sound of gunfire over the comms grabbed her attention.

  “Now! Go!” Interface heard Will give the order. She quickly raised the binocurs to her eyes and zeroed in on the ship at the opposite end of the valley.

  She watched, waiting to see June’s IR signature run from the front of the ship, but she never emerged.

  She heard more gunfire and the distinctive sound of empty guns clicking. Will roared a battle cry, and Interface listened to a struggle over the comms, followed by June screaming, “Noo!” She heard more sounds of struggle then silence.

  “Will! June! Please respond! Are you okay!” Interface pleaded. No response over the comm except for silence. She called out again. “Will, June, talk to me, what’s happening? Are you okay?”

  Interface watched the scene ten kilometers away intently through the binocurs, hoping beyond hope that they were okay. That was when she spotted a dark shadow emerge from the side of the ship, a bright heat signature in tow. Interface gasped and held her hand over her mouth when, moments ter, a second bright signature was brought out.

  She called out over the comms again, desperate for a response, “Will, June, Please respond! Say something! Anything! PLEASE respond…”

  No response came. They were being taken from her. “Again! Not again. Don’t take them from me, don’t take them…” She broke down sobbing when she saw their heat signatures starting to move off in the same direction as all the others.

  She fell to her knees and sobbed. “Nooo!” she wailed pintively, sobbing softly in a near fetal position.

  Something in her shifted. She rose to her feet. “No!” she said again, her voice growing firmer. “NO!” she screamed defiantly. “This will not happen again. You will not take them from me.” Angry determination steeled her voice. Then, her glowing blue eyes fshed and beamed incandescent as she drew as much power from her matrix as she could spare.

  “NOOOO!” she screamed like a battle cry as she ran off the bridge, down to the airlock, and out through the door, running like one possessed. The darkness didn’t bother her; her eyes shone like twin beacons lighting her way.

  She sprinted full bore down the valley to save her lovers, her newfound family. “Faster, run faster,” she chastised herself. She altered her form, lengthening her legs to increase her stride. “Faster!” she pushed herself and extended her arms to match the length of her legs. Bending forward, she galloped down the valley on all fours, fast as a wild stallion, as fast as she could drive herself forward to save her loved ones.

  The Dark jellies milling about the shipwreck checked the area to ensure they hadn’t missed any prey. A couple had squeezed back into the ship, checking every faint point of infrared light in every nook and cranny in case it could be returned to the hive. Jellies pawed over the active rad battery Will had started up, seeing if the warm glow it was giving off could be useful.

  One of the hunters on the perimeter spotted a target burning brighter than any prey they had caught that evening. The warmth it gave off had the feel of Lifeforce, so it signaled to its companions to form up and fnk it from both sides, as was their usual tactic.

  The incandescent prey charged straight into the center of their trap and stopped. The pack saw their opportunity, sprung it shut, cutting off all avenues of escape, and began closing in on their quarry. As the jellies closed the distance, something didn’t feel right. The pack leader tasted the air for the energy their prey was putting off and suddenly was frightened. The Old Ones told stories of ancient demons that would destroy entire hives. These events were so traumatic they lived on in the jelly's genetic memory. Before the pack leader could signal a retreat, the demon exploded into action.

  Interface sensed them for what they were: a lower species that had developed psychic sense and, somewhere back in the mists of time, chose the dark route: Take. Take everything. A deep disgust for an ancient, long-forgotten enemy surged up in Interface. Her face twisted with rage.

  They took her family. She would not allow them to take anymore. Her anger fred as her form shifted again, retaining the long back legs, but her forearms grew longer and sharper. Her whole body glowed with a pale blue light, her eyes incandescently bright. She flew into these Takers, cutting them down before they could flee, spttering their collective gore over a wide area. A few scattered and fled in several directions, trying to escape the onsught. Interface let none survive.

  Covered in her enemy’s gore, purple ichor dripping off her bded hands, Interface shifted once again into a quadrupedal form and galloped hard down the valley in the same direction that her lovers had been taken.

  She ran for a long time, following the psychic echo of her lover’s captors. Leaving the valley, Interface came to a long, dry river bed. Stopping at the edge, she closed her eyes to feel the direction the dark psychic echos were leading her. They were more numerous now, faint trails leading off in all directions, but the strongest echo of well-worn travel led down into the river bed.

  Interface leaped down, running slower, trying to maintain her lock on the strongest echo. The psychic trail she followed grew cold and indistinct as she continued down the river bed. Frustrated, she circled back, heading up the dry river bed only to have the trail fade off again.

  Interface’s concern grew. She knew what these creatures would do to any living being they captured. They would be tortured until they had extracted every ounce of life force from their prey.

  The thought was repugnant to her and her kind. Such a cruel waste of life in an expansive and mostly empty gaxy. Every life was precious, like a star in the sky, making the cruel dark sparkle with wonder and beauty. Her people had worked hard to eliminate this malevolent behavior from themselves and would not suffer it when they encountered it in others.

  She continued to run up and down the river bed, looking and feeling for any sign of which way they may have gone. These jellies floated and didn’t leave tracks; their echoes were all she had to go on.

  After traversing the length of the river bed several more times, Interface’s despair crept back into the corner of her mind. She was going to lose them! NO! She wouldn’t allow it.

  Pushing the dark thoughts of loss temporarily out of her mind, she climbed onto one of the banks of the dry river and searched up and down the small ravine the river used to run through. The echoes were fainter up on this bank, so she crossed to the other and searched there.

  Interface raced up and down the other bank with no better results. The dark despair she had been fighting off reared up and took a firm hold of her. She fell to her knees on the side of the dry river and sobbed into her hands at her loss. They were beautiful, wonderful, and hers. Will’s st words to her were, ‘I love you’. And they were gone.

  She sat there in the dirt for a long time, mourning her profound loss. The universe felt rge and cold, and she was small and alone. Then she felt a soft voice, not far away, calling out her name, full of pain. “Interface…” It was June’s voice. She wasn’t sure how it was possible, but she heard her call out her name.

  Interface stood up, at first shocked, then resolute. She mustered her energy and reached out wide in every direction. “Where are you, my love?” she asked out loud, waiting for a response. “Interface..” she heard again, the voice falling into despair and pain. But this time, she felt where it was coming from, and she could lock into the direction of June’s voice, pinpointing its exact location. “Hang on Loves, I’m coming!”

  Interface sprinted back into the dry bed and raced along it until she came to a bunch of loose boulders. She felt around for a second and found a cleverly disguised entrance with a camoufge cover. Tearing it open, she rushed inside. The tunnels were dark and low as she ran deeper underground, shifting into a shorter quadrupedal form to speed her along.

  She came across several dark jellies and quickly dispatched them with prejudice. The tunnels wound this way and that, with dozens of side tunnels designed to disorient invaders, but she knew exactly where her target was and selected the correct paths, making a beeline right to where she knew they would be.

  Interface burst into a dimly lit chamber and was horrified. She found rows and rows of drained and dead Munchers, still standing like some macabre honor guard while further into the chamber, grotesque, glowing sacks of rvae were still feeding.

  The thing about Takers is that they can never develop a connection strong enough to handle rge amounts of energy, so they had to nibble and nibble until they got their fill, like these rvae were feeding. However, as the dead Munchers evidenced, enough small connections could be devastating.

  Enraged, Interface mustered a considerable amount of psychic energy and released it all at once, smming into mature jelly and rvae alike. The bst of energy exploded and overwhelmed them all, rupturing their membranes and liquifying them, whether they were inside a victim or out. The room exploded with purple ichor, covering everything. As purple goo dripped off the ceiling, she finally saw them at the room's far end.

  Interface rushed to them, and fear dispced her anger as she took in their state. They were both gaunt and emaciated. Will’s face was skeletal, with his lips so thin and tight against his skull that it looked like he hadn’t eaten in a year. June's face was simirly skeletal, but the real horror was that her left eye had not been protected by the resin covering most of the top of her head and was now completely missing. Interface could count every rib through their thin and sickly skin, with hardly any flesh on their frames.

  They were both weakly struggling to breathe as liquified rvae poured out of their bodies; sickly purple fluid ran from noses, mouths, assholes, and pussy. Interface bent over, rubbing their chests and bellies to help clear away the purple goo so they could breathe, but there was too much. They were drowning, and by the time Interface could carry them to the ship, they would be gone.

  Her determination to save them steeled her resolve, and she knew what to do. She fttened her hands into hard, stout shovels, driving them straight through the resin around June’s hands and into the rock below, tearing it up and freeing everything all at once. Then she drove her hands through the resin and bedrock around June’s knees, freeing each in turn. She gently id June on her side, still posed in resin, to allow her to continue to cough up the purple goo, then released Will in the same fashion.

  She could not carry Will and June back to Nestia in time. So poor was their condition that she only had one option avaible that would save their lives.

  “Okay, my Loves,” she said to her unconscious companions, “hang on tight; this is going to feel weird.” Interface pulled her resin-locked lovers close to her body and closed her eyes for a moment. She gathered a massive amount of energy from her dwindled reserve, and when she opened her eyes again, they were bzing bright blue.

  Interface’s body then began melting down over her lovers, covering them completely like a second-second skin, right down to the resin and rocks that she had pulled up to free them. Her face was gone, but the glow remained as Will and June were encapsuted entirely by Interface’s now liquid form.

  More jellies rushed into the chamber to defend it against the attacker, but as they rushed towards Interface’s glowing form, she shrank slowly in size and disappeared altogether, stepping out of 3-D space to take a short walk in the fourth spatial dimension.

  Back on the Nestia, the darkened room of the med bay suddenly lit up with a blue glow as Interface stepped back into normal 3-D space, carrying her precious cargo, nding on the floor between two examination beds. She quickly formed herself back into a humanoid shape, then stumbled, grabbing one of the beds, weakened by her exertion. A rough homunculus was all she could manage for a body, ft and androgynous. Her face had no features save two small eyes and a thin slit for a mouth. She didn’t need anything more than that right now. Just enough to do what she needed to save her Loves.

  They were both in bad shape and needed immediate attention, but there were two of them and only one of her. To attend both simultaneously, she divided her attention and split her form, becoming two slightly smaller homunculi. Each Interface lifted their respective patient onto a bed and got to work.

  The duel Interfaces retrieved silver wands from under the beds Will and June were lying on and activated them, using the tool to draw the rest of the goo from their lungs. Breathing a little easier but dangerously weak, the twin Interfaces produced masks and pced them over their faces, providing extra oxygen, even though the resin held their mouths cruelly open.

  Seeing some of the color return to their Will and June’s faces, Interface rexed slightly, knowing they were out of immediate danger, but they were still so weak their hearts could fail at any moment.

  She produced another tool that ultrasonically pulverized the resin without hurting the shriveled flesh beneath. Interface first carefully cleared the resin from their mouths, going slowly, working a little, repcing the oxygen mask, working a little more, until she cleared it all and could leave the mask on their gaunt face. She then worked to clear the resin off their joints so they could lie ft more comfortably and then rid them entirely of the resin on their face, head, and necks.

  Interface then expended more energy powering the bed diagnostics, even though they usually ran off the currently inert power core. As the beds were busy scanning the vital statistics of their occupants, Interface tried joining her twinned forms back together to form one but couldn’t manage it. Deep exhaustion hounded her, so she let one body go, letting it fall to a pile on the floor like so much silver snow.

  The scans were finished, and Interface looked over the results. Physically, they had been dramatically weakened, muscle strength and vitality stolen away. Their heart and lung muscles barely had the strength to keep pumping blood and drawing air. Even more dire, their Lifeforce had been drained to a point where, even if she were able to keep their bodies alive, their remaining Lifeforce wouldn’t sustain them. They were dying.

  Interface had never felt more weary than she did then, but rescuing her pair of lovers was all that mattered. She would give everything she had for them and regretted nothing she had done for them. She had had a wonderful, beautiful few weeks with them. That would have to be enough.

  Interface stood between her two lovers, her form a small, dull gray, barely humanoid shape. She stroked both their emaciated cheeks lovingly, then made up her mind. Her next course of action was not a difficult choice for her to make.

  Interface had some things to prepare for them when they finally woke. She caressed their arms gently and left them for a few minutes, knowing they would be stable enough until she returned.

  Leaving the med bay, she walked past the open door of the lounge they had spent so many wonderful hours together, lightly brushing the doorframe with her fingers, remembering, and walked down the ramps to the Engineering compartment where Will had already set up their ship’s computer to act as the control system for the power core.

  The core systems of the computer were up and running but just needed to be fully connected along with the batteries they left at the ‘Saturn’s Heart’ for the final integration. She sat at the computer terminal and plugged in directly rather than using the keypad Will used. Then, she wrote the control algorithm for starting up and running the core. The little computer didn’t have enough horsepower to control the instabilities in the core at higher power levels, but all they needed was minimal power to run the ship.

  It only took her a few moments to write the control algorithm. Then, she left detailed notes on all the ship's systems so that they could fly the ship and see them safely off this pnet and on their way home.

  Finally, she wrote a personal letter they would find the first time they sat back down at this terminal. She told them of the joy they brought her during their time together, how much they meant to her, and how deeply she came to love them. Most importantly, the two of them should not be too sad, and if she had to do it all again, she would choose the same thing.

  Getting up from the terminal, she had just one more thing to do. Wearily, she walked back up to the med bay and stood between her lovers again. She caressed both of their heads, then bent down to gently kiss Will’s forehead, then June’s.

  As Interface kissed June softly, her one good eye flitted open, and she weakly reached up to hold Interface’s arm, looking as if she sensed what she was about to do.

  “Inta…” June said weakly, holding onto Interface’s arm. There was a tear in her eye, and her expression pleaded with her not to do what she was about to do.

  “I’m too weak to go on, my love.” She said, stroking June’s face. I’ve got about a year’s worth of energy left if I turned everything off and slept. But with that much, you and Will should have about another forty, give or take.” Interface paused. “We are Givers, Love. It is who we are.”

  With tears in her eyes, Interface stood and pced one hand on each of their chests. She sighed, gathering her remaining strength, glowing light blue, and channeled her remaining Lifeforce into her lovers on the pair of beds. June reached up to Interface, and as she touched her silver cheek, she felt an immense rush of energy surge into her body and soul. Her heart beat stronger, her breath came easier, and her skeletal form filled out once more. Will experienced the same reversal, and his eyes flew open. He looked up at Interface with awe and concern.

  Interface looked down at them one st time and said, “I love you both. Goodbye my Loves.” Her blue glow faded, and then this body, too, disintegrated and fell to the floor like silvery snow.

  Sitting bolt upright on the bed, June cried out, “Nooo!” as the st silvery snowfke nded on the floor. She slipped off the exam bed and fell to her knees on the floor in front of the silvery pile that was once Interface’s body. Sobbing, June reached for Will as he slipped off his bed, tears streaming down his face as well. He moved to sit next to June, holding her close and trying to console her.

  They sat on the floor like that for a long time, mourning their loss. Will and June hugged each other tight and desperately wished Interface was there to join in their embrace. They had been through so much and came to care deeply for that wonderful silver girl. A part of their soul had been torn from them.

  The lit-up ceiling, having lost its power, dimmed, and it was hard to see anything in the med bay. Still holding each other close, sitting on the floor, Will squeezed June’s shoulders and got up off the floor. In the near dark, he felt his way down to their lounge and found two fshlights from supplies they had carried from the ‘Saturn’s Heart’. Clicking one on, he shined it before him as he returned to June.

  She hadn’t moved from the spot on the floor in front of what was left of Interface’s body. Come on, June.” Will called to her softly, a hand on her shoulder. “We need to go down to Engineering; she would have left us instructions for how to power up the systems.”

  June sat there, looking up at him, face wet with spent tears but now completely wrung out. She showed no emotion; the emptiness she felt was painted on her face. Will offered her a hand; she took it and stood beside him.

  They walked out of the med bay in silence and stopped in their lounge to put some clothes on after their long ordeal. They dressed, too wrung out to care about pulling clothes over the chunks of resin still stuck to their skin.

  June looked around at the darkened room lit only by their fshlights, and a small, sad smile curled the corner of June’s lips. “She was magnificent.” She said out loud.

  “That she was.” Will agreed.

  Somberly, they left the lounge and headed down the ramps to level six and toward the mezzanine in Engineering. Walking off the ramp, June suddenly stopped. Will looked at her with concern. “What is it, Hon?”

  June’s one eye darted around like she was listening to something. “I don’t know. There’s something… Can you feel it?” She asked.

  “Feel? Feel what?” He asked, clearly not knowing what she was talking about.

  Her single eye widened. “It’s her. I know it. It’s her. She’s still here!” Will grew worried as June became frantic, looking all around, searching. She looked down the corridor to the room that housed the crystalline matrix and suddenly ran towards it. “Come on, Will!” she yelled, already halfway down the corridor before he reacted.

  When Will caught up to her, she was pressed against the door to the room containing the matrix, hands sliding all over its surface. “We have to get inside.” Will stood behind her, slightly dumbfounded, and she said again more forcefully, “Will, we need to get inside. Go get your tools.” He shook off his stupor and ran to engineering to get his tool, trusting that June knew what she was talking about.

  He returned with his heavy drills, torches, and hydraulic maniputors. He gestured softly for June to move, and she did so. Will set about to work. He took out the rgest drill bit he had, tightened it into the drill's chuck, and started boring a hole through the door.

  The ft white metal was extremely tough stuff. The rge bit squealed loudly in protest as Will ground into the door, but it was finding purchase. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he continued to apply pressure to the drill. The bit overheated, snapped in half, and shot across the hallway. Will cursed loudly, repced the bit, and continued.

  June paced back and forth behind Will as he worked, unable to tear her gaze from the spinning drill bit. After a half hour, the drill punched through, and Will backed the drill out of the fist-sized hole. June nudged Will to one side as she peered through the opening. Looking across the room, through the transparent barrier, was the rge crystalline matrix. Her heart sank as she saw its darkened state until she spotted a tiny glowing spark in a far corner of the crystal; for the first time since their rescue, hope rekindled in her heart. “Look, Will! Do you see it?”

  He looked through the small opening, and his face lit up, too. With renewed urgency, he turned to his tool bag, grabbed his hydraulic maniputors, and maneuvered them to the small opening. The motors whined as it engaged, pressing outward on the edges of the hole he had cut, and the door's metal began to shriek in protest as the opening was widened.

  Will retracted the maniputor and turned it ninety degrees, and the metal door shrieked again until the opening was wide enough for his shoulders to fit through. Will stuffed himself through the narrow opening and gestured for his tools, which June passed to him hurriedly.

  After they had crawled into the crystal’s room with all of Will’s tools, June rushed to the barrier for a closer look. The little spark of light sat in the far corner of the crystal, barely shedding light, flickering slightly. “Will, we need to hurry and get through the barrier.”

  As she stood with her face pressed up against the transparent barrier, staring at the st little spark that was Interface, a thought fshed through her mind. She was sure she knew what needed to be done. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she ran to the door and quickly squeezed out the hole.

  Will got to work right away. As June ran from the room, he brought the drill up to the barrier and urgently attacked it.

  Slipping through the door, June ran up the ramps to their lounge, searching for a backpack they had left behind. She found it and upended it, dumping the contents on the floor. She then ran to the med bay, where the powdered silver pile still y. Kneeling, she hurriedly scooped handful after handful into the backpack until it was full, then she ran back down to the crystal’s room.

  Will was swearing as he removed the second shattered bit from the drill’s chuck.

  “This four-dimensional material is tough stuff.” He compined to June. “ I haven't made a scratch.”

  “Keep trying; we’ve got to get to the crystal itself,” June urged him.

  Will tightened the chuck on his st bit and continued to drill. He put all of his body weight into the drill, trying to force it to bite into the material. After a short moment, Sparks flew from the point of contact, and the bit suddenly grew red hot and exploded, showering Will with shrapnel and cutting his face and hands.

  Will looked at the barrier, and his shoulders slumped in defeat.

  “I can't get through it.” He said, his tone hushed.

  “No, keep trying, we've gotta get through it!” The look in her eye was feral.

  “June!” he said more forcefully, “We don't have any tools that can deal with this stuff. We can't get through.”

  “We can't quit now, she's right there!” June shouted, pointing through the barrier with tears streaming down her face.

  “She's dying, and she's right there!” June screamed again, pounding her fists on the barrier with impotent fury. “LET ME IN!” She shouted with every ounce of anger at being denied her lover, every desire to save her, every fiber of her being; she repeated, “LET ME IN!” She was startled when the barrier beneath her hands caved slightly, reacting to her outburst.

  June paused momentarily, taking in this new development, before looking at Will. “Come here. Put your hands on it with me.” He did so. “It reacted to me like how Interface controls the ship. Think about what you want, how much you want it, how much you need the barrier to open. Push with all your feelings.” June pced her hands on the concave spot on the barrier and Will put his hands over hers.

  “Now feel how much you need it to open!” June said with the conviction of the desperate. “OPEN!” She screamed as they both focused on the need for the barrier to open.

  A moment passed, and the concave depression in the barrier deepened and split open, melting away and leaving a small hole.

  June turned to Will and ughed, still with tears streaming down her face, then ran over to grab the backpack she brought down from the lounge.

  Will didn't understand what June was doing, but instinct guided her actions; she knew this was right.

  June showed Will the backpack's contents, “We're going to Bond with Interface and give her all the energy she needs. We had so much more to give her, but she couldn't receive it all because we weren't Bonded to her. We can save her Will. We can save her!” She then stuck her hand into the backpack, grabbed a fist full of silver sand, and then offered the bag to Will to do the same. He smiled at June, took a handful out of the bag, and set it on the floor.

  She took his empty hand in hers, then stuck her fist, full of silver, into the barrier's opening and touched the crystal beyond it.

  She projected her thoughts as loudly as possible: “Bond with us, be ours!”

  Nothing happened for a moment; the little point of blue light in the crystal slid and jerked its way over to where June was making contact.

  She said it out loud this time, firmly, with conviction. “Bond with us Interface, We Love You!”

  The little light danced through the crystal until it rested in the branch of the crystalline structure that June was touching, and then a spark leaped from the crystal to the silver dust in June’s clenched fist.

  Electric discharge, like when they first watched Interface’s body form in the med bay, jumped and arced between June’s fingers, lighting up the room with blue fshes. She withdrew her fist from the hole in the barrier and held the sparking material in both hands.

  Opening her hands, they watched it sparkle and fsh as the powder melted into a silvery liquid that flowed back and forth from one palm to the other.

  June held her hands over to Will, who opened his fingers and exposed his palm, which was full of silver. Sparks leaped from the quicksilver in June’s hands to the powder in Will’s, growing the sparking frenzy to the small bit of Interface in his hands. It, too, melted into liquid; they held their divine gifts in both hands in front of them as if they were supplicants.

  To their surprise, the liquid silver, of its own accord, poured up their arms in defiance of gravity, leaving intricately patterned trails of silver over their skins as it rushed up their arms under their clothes. They felt it spread across their shoulders, carrying a warming blue glow with it. It flowed down the backs and their fronts; warm tingling sensations traveled across pectorals and breasts, down their bellies, asses, legs, right down to their toes. It flowed up their necks like a warm embrace across their scalp and faces.

  June looked at Will and he at her, marveling at the intricate silver ttice woven across the skin of the other’s face. The silver ttice glowed faintly blue, a clear sign of to whom they were being Bound.

  As their new patterning completed the silver masterpiece on their skin, they felt the warmth sink into the core of their bodies, into the very essence of their beings. The feeling of love and warmth wrapped around them penetrated them and became one with them. The overwhelming sense of connectedness nudged them together into an embrace. They stood there for an unaccounted amount of time until they felt the warmth lessen slightly, but unlike the blue glow, it did not fade away.

  Still feeling the warmth and belonging in her core, June smiled and said, “The Bond was successful.” They looked over to the crystalline matrix, and what was moments before a tiny mote about to extinguish, a lively, but still uncomfortably small, bundle of sparks danced through the dark crystal.

  A panel, like those on the bridge several decks above them, lit up next to the door. Hand in hand, June and Will walked over to it and read Interface’s message.

  “Oh my Loves, I am so happy! You have given me back everything that I had lost; hope, companionship, love. I am truly blessed to have you now... As family. You don’t need to worry about me any longer. Our connection is strong, I will be able to be with you physically before you know it. WINK ;) One more thing, You two should stay out of this room until I am strong enough to seal that hole you somehow managed to punch in the barrier. Four-D space does funny things to Three-D minds. I love you!”

  “Even now, she’s such a flirt,” Will said with a chuckle.

  Now Bonded, and with Interface’s energy levels on the rebound, the joy they shared soared. The ship recognized their presence and opened the door for them as they left the room. Wanting to celebrate, they returned to their lounge, and even though Interface was only present in spirit, for the moment, they ‘vigorously’ celebrated, making passionate love to each other, over and over, long into the night.

  **********

  “Captain Franco, Commander Cortez has requested to speak with you.” Harold Franco slumped in his command chair on the bridge of the Anatolia, rubbing his forehead.

  “I’ll take it in my ready room,” Franco told Jones, his comms officer, as he rose from his seat.

  “The message said, ‘In person’.” Jones finished, not looking the Captain in the eyes. Franco growled, and his eyes grew wide. “Damn it!” he cursed and threw the half-finished bottle of whiskey he’d been nursing at the lieutenant.

  The bottle hit the man hard on the head, cutting his brow, which promptly started to bleed. “If you fucking bleed all over my console, I will personally space you through an airlock, got it?!” The Captain yelled at Jones, who grabbed his forehead and headed down to the medical bay, cowering. He was swiftly repced by another crew member at the comms station, who fastidiously kept his head down.

  “Make for the current rendezvous point for the ‘Victoria Gloriosa’. Top Speed.” He commanded the helmsman. “Aye, Captain,” he confirmed. “Course id in.”

  “Notify me when we’re fifteen minutes out. I’ll be in my ready room.” the Captain demanded as he stormed off the bridge.

  “Fuck me.” Franco thought as he colpsed into the high back chair behind his ostentatious desk. “If I only had a little more time, I would have found that fucking freighter that nuked his nephew.” It had only been three months since Juan Cortez had assigned him the five ships in his raiding group: three corvettes, a small cruiser, and a frigate. Cortez ran this corner of the Magan Empire’s underworld, controlling most of the piracy in the region, with some smuggling and sve trading mixed in.

  Franco’s assignment was to catch and strip the freighters Cortez sent his way from the major hyperspace nes. He had been tailing a freighter for four days and had been just about to capture it when the fuckers nuked one of his corvettes with an overloaded engine before slipping away in a nebu.

  The loss of the ship and crew didn’t bother him much; that’s what they were for: the disposable tools of his trade. Unfortunately for Franco, one of the young lieutenants on that corvette had been Cortez’s nephew. The jettisoned cargo from the freighter wouldn’t make up for it; there had to be blood. He had hoped for more time to find those fuckers so it wouldn’t be his.

  “Fifteen minutes, Captain,” one of his crew called from the bridge. “Okay,” he thought. “Let’s get this shit show on the road.”

  The Anatolia extended its docking ring to the airlock of the battlecruiser, ‘Victoria Gloriosa’, Cortez’s command ship. Franco felt the intended intimidation of the size mismatch of the two vessels as he crossed the docking tube to the ‘Gloriosa’.

  As he entered the airlock, Franco was fnked by two goril-sized men, who escorted Franco to Cortez’s ready room. As the door opened, Cortez was studying a holographic map of the sector, several shipping nes highlighted as apparent targets.

  Without a word or looking up, he gestured to the chair in front of his rge desk, and the two enormous men put a hand on each shoulder, roughly sitting Franco down. Cortez said nothing for a moment, eyes on the map, as Franco squirmed in his seat. Then he spoke.

  “I give you five of my finest ships to command, and give you a retively simple task of gathering up the freighters I send to you.” He paused and quickly rose to his feet, yelling. “And you can’t even perform this simple task I give to you.” Sweat began pouring down Franco’s face as he stammered, trying to find an excuse that wouldn’t get him killed right here.

  “You don’t understand!” Franco defended himself. Not noticing that Cortez hadn’t mentioned his nephew, he continued. “My corvette was taking the lead,” he lied, “ when they turned hard and jettisoned their engine, setting it to overload right in front of your nephew.” Franco kept ying it on thick. “He was a good man and a decent sailor; if only my corvette was faster I could have shielded him with my ship, sparing his beautiful life.” Piling it higher, with the cherry on top, “I’ve had my ships patrolling all through that god-forsaken nebu, and when I find them, I will avenge your nephew’s life.”

  Franco waited to see Cortez’s reaction and learn his fate. Cortez spoke coolly. “My brother’s boy was a scoundrel, like his father. I only took him in as a favor to my Dear Mama.” Franco realized too te he had miscalcuted. Cortez continued. “But such is the way of the life we have chosen, no?” He settled back into his chair, pouring more of the golden liquor from a crystal decanter on his desk into a gss and taking a sip.

  “No, my friend, your sin is much rger than one lost pup.” Franco’s eyes darted around the room, looking for a means to escape.

  “Let me ask you a question. How well do you know our ‘business’?” Cortez’s manner had become frighteningly friendly. “Where are we deriving our income? Please, speak up, don’t be shy.” Cortez encouraged.

  Not sure where his line of reasoning was going, Franco answered. “Gambling establishments and bookies, protection agreements, sving, and piracy.” He was utterly unnerved by Cortez’s even tone.

  “And what percentage of our business is each?”

  “I’m not sure off hand..” Franco tried to deflect.

  “Take your best guess.” Cortez pressed.

  “Ten percent from gambling, five from protection, twenty from sving, and the rest from pirating?” Franco ball parked.

  “Not bad, you're pretty close. Maybe I need to watch my numbers with you.” Cortez chuckled to himself. “By your figuring, sixty-five percent of our income is from pirating. Do you know how much of that is tied up with our little hyperspace cut out?”

  Franco sensed the thrust of his point approaching and hoped the point of a knife wouldn’t accompany it. “Twenty percent?” he guessed.

  “Eighty. Fucking. Percent!” Cortez exploded. “That cut-out is the lifeblood of this enterprise. I spent ten years and half my fortune setting this up, paying off half of the Fucking Gactic Turnpike Authority to pull this off. But it only works if no one knows about it, right?” His eyes shone with fury.

  “The job was simple. Collect the freighters we misdirect and send your way. Take the goods, destroy the evidence, eliminate any witnesses.” He paused to take an angry swig of his drink. “If one, just one, person survives to tell the authorities, freighters will stop taking this shipping ne, and the whole area will be infested with Naval ships.” Franco couldn’t stop the shaking of his hands.

  “You let one get away. That one ship could be the end of everything I have built.” Cortez paused, taking a breath. “I have strung men’s entrails up in the mess hall as a warning to those who fail me,” he paused, “but you pose a unique opportunity for me. Turns out you're the best man for this job.” His voice got low and venomous. “You, my friend, are now uniquely motivated to find and tie up this loose end. I know about the woman you’ve been hiding, trying to protect her from me, as well as your little boy and little girl.” A chill ran down Franco’s spine. He had been so careful; how did he find out about them? Now, they were in danger, too.

  “If you fail me again, I will personally slit your throat, but not before I make you watch all three go to ‘Market’.” A cold dread settled on Franco. Horrible fates awaited women sold at the market. The boy would end up in a mine somewhere, worked to death, and his little girl… It was too much to contempte.

  “I won’t fail you again.” Franco decred.

  Cortez rose from his seat and gestured to his boys to bring Franco to his feet. “You had better not,” he said quietly, patting Franco’s face with an open palm. “I’ll give you five more ships. Get it done.” Without another word, Cortez waved him away and returned to his maps.

  The giant thugs fnked Franco once more and escorted him off the ship.

  Back on the Anitolia, and underway with eight ships at his back, he poured himself a scotch. He watched out the viewport as they passed into the nebu and thought about how he was going to enjoy killing these fucks that just made his life complicated.