It was early in the morning before many of the passengers woke. Will strolled down a corridor in one of the passenger cabin sections of the ferry ‘Dals’, just one of the many hundreds of simir hallways, walls poputed with a seemingly unending number of cabin doors on either side. His only clue that something was amiss, that uneasy feeling of being stalked, eluded him, and until he pinpointed the cause and dealt with it, he wouldn’t allow himself to rex his guard.

  He reached the end of this passenger cabin corridor, checked the time on his watch, and then went to the lift to bring him down to the ferry’s communications office on the Concourse mezzanine. After a short lift ride and a brief walk, Will arrived at the Comm Office just as they opened for the morning.

  He had sent word back to Penrose through Jeremey a couple of days ago, and Will stopped at the Comms office daily to see if he had any messages. For the st three days, there had been none.

  As Will entered the office, he was greeted by the same skinny attendant who seemed to be the only one ever manning the desk.

  “Good morning, Jasper. Any messages for me yet?” Will asked his query, which was almost a canned greeting by this point.

  “Good morning, Sir. As a matter of fact, we do. It was received about an hour and a half ago, encrypted with your public key. I’ll route it to booth four," Jasper said, punching a few keys on his console.

  Will thanked him, then entered the booth and closed the privacy door. The terminal dispyed the encrypted message addressed to him. He selected it on the screen, inserted his crypto stick into the kiosk, and entered his passcode to open the message. Commander Michaels' face appeared, and then the message began to py.

  The Commander’s tone was terse but professional. “Mr. Focault, Let me first thank you again for the tech you provided to station security. We’ve only partially rolled out the devices, and they have already had an impact. We expect to have them fully implemented throughout the station by the end of the month, again thank you. I received the message from your friend down in Station Maintenance and it took me a couple of days to confirm a few details.”

  Michaels paused, looked down at some reports, then continued. “An arrest was recently made as part of an anti-corruption crackdown. The individual in question was a station flight controller charged with taking bribes in exchange for information on vessels coming and going at Penrose. A communicator was confiscated, which had contact information for known associates of the Cortez crime organization, who have been suspected of being involved with piracy in this system, as well as many other crimes. The timing of some of this individual’s communications coincides with the departure of your vessel, suggesting that you or your ship has caught the attention of the Cortez Organization. If I were you, I would suggest that you inform Dals Security at once. I’ve already sent out a high-level alert to the Command Crew of the ferry to be on alert.”

  Michaels paused, rubbed his forehead over his eyes, then continued. “I don’t have any more specific information in…” The commander shuffled around some more reports, looking for one in particur, and then opened it when he found the one he was looking for. “In regards to the Sver incident on the station, further investigations turned up nothing, a complete dead end. They’re like ghosts," he sighed, then said, “That’s all I have for you today. Good luck, Mr. Focault. Stay vigint, protect your family. Michaels signing off.” Then, the recording ended.

  Will scowled and shook his head. It wasn’t much to go on, but at least it was enough to bring to Dals Security, who would surely increase their presence in the maintenance bay where the Nestia was berthed.

  He took a copy of the message and then exited the privacy booth. On his way out of the comms office, he thanked Jasper, the attendant. Once out on the mezzanine overlooking the Concourse, he spoke softly to Interface, who was always listening in his ear. “Hey Inta, have you guys headed out for breakfast yet?”

  “Yup," she replied cheerfully in his earpiece. “We’re on the tram now and should arrive in a few minutes.”

  Will smiled. Inta’s upbeat disposition never failed to brighten his day. “Fantastic. I’ll meet you at the restaurant.” He paused. “Love you, Silver Girl.”

  “I love you too, Will,” Interface replied, voice thick with emotion. “We’ll see you in a few.”

  Will turned from the mezzanine railing and headed to the restaurant to meet with the crew. Foot traffic steadily increased as passengers woke and headed out for the day, slowing his usually fast walking pace. Will made his way through the growing crowds and arrived at ‘The Tanaran Skillet’, the little brunch restaurant that had quickly become their favorite spot. He only needed to wait a few moments, and then others arrived. Inta and June greeted him with kisses, and Ben hugged him warmly.

  “Haven’t seen much of you in the past couple of days,” Ben observed after releasing him.

  “Yeah,” Will said, shrugging his shoulders. “Let’s go sit down; We’ve got some things to talk about.”

  They went inside, and the hostess sat them at a booth in the corner. She poured coffee for all but Inta, who got a gss of water. When the waiter came to the table, he took their order and returned to the kitchen. Will sipped his coffee and then cleared his throat.

  “So I received a message back from Commander Michaels on Penrose," Will began. “He said that they had arrested someone who was passing information to some shady people in the ‘Cortez Organization’, whoever they are, and we’re on their radar.”

  Ben straightened in his seat at the mention of Cortez. “What kind of information did Cortez receive?” He asked, brow suddenly furrowed with concern.

  “It wasn’t clear to Michaels, but he did know that it was one of the traffic controllers from the station that was arrested,” Will said, picking up on Ben’s elevated level of concern.

  “Franco, the pirate that Shanghai'd my street gang to serve on his ships, worked directly for Cortez,” Ben expined. “Cortez controls most of the illegal activity in the systems surrounding Bourdan, piracy chief among all the other nasty stuff he has his fingers in. One of the ways he targeted ships was through informants like this traffic controller. If I had to guess, he didn’t appreciate the mess we made of his ships when we escaped that system in the nebu, and he’s looking for retribution.” Ben paused, thinking. “The Nestia is a ship with unique capabilities; if he got reports from the other ships that we ran from, then I can imagine that he might be very motivated to get his hands on the ship.”

  Everyone around the table was silent while they contempted what that meant. Will spoke first. “It fits with what we know so far, and the fact that I picked up on something the other day, says that they’re on board somewhere, ying low.” Will pressed his lips into a tight line. “I especially don’t like the fact that we know that there is danger nearby, but we can’t carry weapons per Dals Security. We might need to consider limiting our time out and about.”

  June and Inta looked crestfallen at the suggestion that they limit their activities on the ferry. “Are you sure that’s necessary? There’s lots of Dals Security all around," June said defensively.

  “As the old saying goes, ‘when seconds count, Security is only minutes away.’ These people are trained and highly motivated, and if we don’t have a way to properly defend ourselves, we’re sitting ducks," Will stated bluntly, aware that he was proposing that they hole up on the Nestia for the rest of the trip, squashing Inta and everyone’s pns for fun and entertainment for the next couple of months.

  For the st several minutes, Ben had a faraway look in his eyes; then, his focus suddenly snapped back. “What if we can be armed at a moment's notice?” Ben asked cryptically.

  Will looked at Ben and then the others, unsure where he was going with that question. “Well, if we can defend ourselves, that changes the equation. What do you have cooking in that brilliant mind of yours?” Will asked.

  “Inta and I have been developing an instantly deployable pressure suit, in case of emergencies, like a rapid decompression event or the like. It ties us more directly to the Nestia and would allow us to be pulled safely back to the ship. I already have a prototype of the gauntlet ready.”

  Ben rolled up the sleeve on his right arm and showed off a silver bracer fitting tightly on his forearm. “This button here signals Inta to activate it, though you could ask her verbally as well. Inta?” As soon as Ben asked her, Inta’s glowing blue eyes brightened in concentration for a moment, and the silver bracer poured down his forearm, encasing it and his entire hand in a shiny, metallic glove.

  Ben held his hand out, flexed his wrist, and wiggled his fingers, showing off their flexibility. “Inta, can you send me a wrench from the engineering workstation?” He asked as he held out his gloved hand, palm up.

  No sooner had he asked Inta, a silver-coated object slid out of 4-D space into his hand, then the silver drew back, revealing a small, red-handled monkey wrench. “Now, picture instead of a wrench, we have Inta send a weapon from the armory,” Ben said, waiting for the other’s feedback.

  “That’s brilliant!” Will said with a wide, appreciative smile on his face.

  “Does it need to be a bracer? Can it be a little smaller, maybe like a bracelet?” June asked.

  “Maybe in the next iteration. I need to finish the design for the full suit first, that way we can have something space-rated at a moment’s notice. I’ve watched more than my share of people thrown out of airlocks; it’s not a pleasant way to go," Ben said, shuttering at the memory.

  “When can June and I get a bracer? These would be useful, and I would feel better knowing that we can be armed in a blink if need be," Will asked.

  Inta reached over the table and pced her hands on Will and June’s right forearms. Silver flowed from under her palms, encircling their limbs with the same bracer that Ben wore. “Done. Now you all have one," she said, pleased with herself.

  Will and June inspected their bracers, admiring their fit and how they felt more like second skin than a bulky piece of jewelry. They then rolled their sleeves back down their arms, covering most of the bracers.

  “Inta, is there anything else you need to prepare to be able to send us weapons when we need it, like setting up a special rack or something?” Will asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll need to modify the design of the pistols and rifles to incorporate a bit of precursor material, inside the grip handle, but until then, I can hand it over from another one of my instantiations on board. I’m working on it as we speak," Inta said, delighted she was helpful.

  “Sometimes I take for granted just how amazing you are,” Will said, admiration shining in his eyes. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  Inta’s smile widened as she soaked in Will’s praise, and the blueish glow in her eyes fred just a little brighter.

  Just then, the waiter returned to the table. “Have you all decided what you’d like to order?”

  Will ordered an omelet and hash browns, Ben absent-mindedly ordered the same, as his mind was occupied with details of the suit design; June ordered two eggs and toast, and Inta said she would be satisfied with a refill of her water.

  After the waiter left, Inta spoke up. “If we’re done talking about heavy subjects for now, I’d like to talk about something that’s recently developed.” She had their attention. “Last night after the book club, I caught up with that Toparian from the other day, or I should say he caught up with me. His name is De’noke, and I’d like you to meet him.”

  “Sure, honey,” June said. “I’d like to figure out why he triggered your memory like that.” Will and Ben nodded in agreement.

  “That’s good because we’re chatting at the bookstore right now; do you mind if I ask him to join us here?” Inta asked.

  “Sure, the more the merrier,” Will said.

  Inta paused a moment, seeming to be waiting for a response in the conversation the Toparian was having with her turtleneck-wearing instance. “He’s on his way. He should be here in just a few minutes.”

  The waiter returned to the table, his serving tray den with their meals. Before he left, Inta asked for two cups of herbal tea, and the waiter politely smiled and went to fetch the tea. The waiter’s timing was impeccable; he brought the tea out just as the towering Toparian spotted Inta sitting in the back of the little restaurant.

  He walked over to their table in the swaying gait typical of Toparians, and Inta jumped out of her seat and greeted him with a hug, which surprised him, but he returned warmly.

  “Everyone, this is De’noke. De’noke, this is June, Will, and Ben, my Family.” They greeted De’noke warmly, taking their cue from Inta.

  “It’s truly nice to meet all of you.," De’noke said in a measured cadence.

  “Please, sit with us,” Inta said, sliding a nearby table out of the way so he would have room.

  “Thank you, Inta," he said, lowering himself to a comfortable kneeling position so that he would be only slightly taller than everyone seated.

  “I ordered you some tea,” Inta said with a smile and offered him a cup.

  “Thank you, that’s very kind.” De’noke sipped his tea and winced, the temperature a little hotter than he liked. “So you’re Inta’s family. She’s told me a lot about you," he said, his voice full of tentative curiosity.

  “Yeah, we found each other and realized that we were better together. How much detail did Inta give you?” June asked.

  “She told me much, but left out some of the more,” De’noke paused, “painful details. Enough that I understand how much of a harrowing ordeal it must have been. I am gd that you found your way through it.” His soft brown eyes were full of sympathy.

  “Thank you,” June said, pcing one of her hands on one of his rge, long-fingered ones resting on the table. “And what about you? What has brought you aboard the ‘Dals’?”

  De’noke smiled. “I am part of a group of Toparians who are traveling to establish a new Grove, a colony if you like. It is a deep part of who we are as a people, to cast our seeds far and wide, to bring life and light with us as we spread the forest of our people throughout the gaxy," he expined.

  “That must be a difficult proposition,” Will commented. “After the st great Diaspora, there mustn’t be very many new worlds left to colonize.”

  “We do not require new, uncimed worlds. Our Groves coexist symbiotically with a great many different species. Convincing them that we don’t mean to take over but just want to live among them can be a challenge.” De’noke’s expression became wistful; a hint of sadness and worry crossed his face.

  “How long have you been traveling?” Ben asked from around a bite of his omelet.

  “Far longer than we had originally hoped; almost two years now. Our original destination was Bedarius Four, but the agreement we had with the government there fell through after we were in transit, and we were forced to pivot and find a new home for the Grove. No small feat; we had been in negotiations with the Bedarians for a better part of a decade.” De’noke’s frustration was clear on his face.

  “That’s awful,” June said sympathetically.

  “Indeed. The only pce that would accept us without lengthy negotiations was much farther away on a moon in the Candara system. We are traveling to Centrailia to transfer to another ferry heading there. I expect we’ll finally arrive in another eighteen to twenty months.” De’noke sighed in resignation.

  “Wouldn’t it have been better to cancel the trip and go home?” Ben asked. “Forced to settle on a destination based solely on whether or not they’d accept you quickly seems less than ideal.”

  “That is not the Toparian way. The religious among our people would say it is our divine purpose, to grow the Grove and spread the Great Forest, but the more secur view is that it is part of our biological drive, the impulse to spread and grow our species, not dissimir from many other species. But we cast our seeds before us, never behind. Partly due to our societal mindset, but more due to biological imperative. We can only live in a very narrow band of popution density, too few, and the popution can’t sustain itself. Too many and the popution chokes itself out. We must spread," De’noke said, thoughtfully.

  “De’noke and his people are fascinating,” Inta said. “And he’s an archaeologist. He’s been sharing some of his fascinating research with me.”

  “Yes, and Inta has, um, shared,” De’noke said, blushing, “some of her memories with me. One of her recently re-emerged memories seems to be an uncanny match for a mural from an archaeological site I had been excavating on my homeworld of Topar.”

  “Show them the mural," Inta urged De’noke. He pulled his tablet out of a pocket, scrolled to the full-color image of the mural, and then handed it to June, sitting between Will and Ben. The three of them looked at the image on the tablet, paying close attention to the single pair of silver feet in the crowd of feet, and nodded appreciatively.

  “De’noke said that he’s only scratched the surface, and there’s likely much more to be uncovered,” Inta said.

  “This is the first solid lead we’ve come across into what happened to Inta’s people. I think we need to go to Topar," June said with conviction.

  “I agree,” Will said. Ben nodded his head vigorously on the other side of June in agreement. “But I think we’ll need a guide who knows the ins and outs of this and any other site like it. What do you say, De’noke? Would you be willing to go back to your homeworld and be our guide?” Will asked. Inta looked into De’noke’s eyes, pleading.

  De’noke’s brows furrowed as he pressed his lips together tight, looking conflicted. “As enticing an offer that is, I can not be parted from my mate; she needs me right now.” Looking around the table at the friendly, concerned faces, he decided he was safe to share more. “She is in her time to seed, but due to unforeseen complications she is unable, and now is bravely suffering through it. I must be with her to tend to her and see that she is as comfortable as possible.”

  June squeezed De’noke’s hand. “If there’s anything we can do to help, please don’t hesitate to let us know," she said, her voice full of compassion. The others around the table nodded in agreement.

  “I’m not sure if there’s anything more to be done, but I appreciate the sentiment,” De’noke said gratefully. “However, about your situation, I can reach out to a colleague still on the homeworld and see if she would be willing to be your guide in my pce. She is young, still only a maiden, but she is almost as familiar with the sites and my research as I am. In the meantime, I can meet with you and teach you as much as I can about my research until we reach Centrailia.”

  “You can stop by the bookstore as often as you’d like or can," Inta offered. “It’s hardly ever busy and there’s a quiet reading corner with a couple of comfy chairs, perfect for deep discussions. I think you’ll find I’m an excellent student.”

  “I’m sure you are,” De’noke said, amused. Then he rose to his feet. “It has been wonderful to meet you all. I will contact my colleague and let you know what she says as soon as I hear from her.” Then, his attitude became more serious. “Please know this, your quest for knowledge closely aligns with my own, and I will do everything in my power to aid you.” A chorus of thanks came from the group, and De’noke bid them a good day and left, presumably to attend to his mate.

  After De’noke left, they finished their breakfast, paid the waiter for the meal, and left to go about their day.

  “Alright gang, be good. I’m off for another circuit," Will said, giving Inta and June a kiss and Ben a pat on the shoulder.

  “There’s an awful lot of ground to cover. Do you have a methodology for selecting where you’re walking?” Ben asked, curious.

  “Not really. You’re right, there are way too many decks and hallways to cover effectively with one person, so I’m consciously not choosing where to go and let instinct guide me. I’m hoping that randomness pys into my favor and leads me to something," Will said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Well, good luck,” Ben said as Inta and June looped their arms around his waist and headed to the tram to take them back to the Nestia. Knowing what they’ll probably be getting up to shortly, Will sighed and wished he could partake. But because he loved them, he turned and walked in a random direction, hunting those who hunted them.

  ****

  “I’d like to know how the fuck he keeps doing that!” Campaan muttered after issuing the command to relocate yet another spotter. Without the web of discrete cameras throughout the passenger decks, this Will guy would have tripped over his spotters a dozen times in the st few days alone. The rest of them were easier to keep track of, seeming not to possess the preternatural instincts of this thorn in his side.

  And now there was another contact these marks have made that he’ll need to keep tabs on, though admittedly, a four-armed, seven-and-a-half-foot tall person would be easy enough to spot. Compaan had a lot of balls in the air to juggle now, but it should be over in just a few days.

  That thought didn’t soothe him like he would have liked it to. They had already slipped his grasp once, and these small quirks of behavior made him feel uneasy, which is why he sent out Charlie Team and began pnning and preparing for a fallback pn should this next attempt not succeed. He didn’t like second-guessing himself but hated to fail more.

  On top of that, there was more than his reputation on the line for this job; Cortez was not known to be forgiving of failure. But with great risk comes great reward, and he was sure that he and his team would be rewarded greatly when he was proven successful.

  ****

  On the tram ride back to the maintenance bay, June and Inta leaned against the back wall while Ben stood just in front of them. “I completely forgot to ask,” June told Inta, “how was your book club?”

  Inta giggled. “It was less book, and a lot more club, if you know what I mean," she said in a smokey tone.

  “Ooh, tell me all about it,” June said, hungry for all the juice details.

  “Well, it started with everyone sipping wine and taking turns reading pages from a cheesy romance novel. Very meek and mild-mannered. As we read on, I could feel them all getting wound right up, then at the first juicy part; it was all ‘lesbo-a-go-go’. I loved it. And Mary, in particur, loved me," Inta said in a swoon from the memory. Then, her tone changed to one of concern. “The atmosphere was to die for; I was just gobbling them all up, but then I realized a problem. I could make a real mess of the situation. If I shot a load into them, it could unwittingly start the Bonding process. Thank goodness Mary had a condom, which I filled nearly to bursting inside of her.”

  Inta sighed, then continued. “The whole thing is supposed to be a fun, commitment-free hookup where they can py in a safe environment. I don’t think I can risk it and go back.” June hated to see the look of disappointment on Inta’s face.

  Then Ben turned around and chimed in, listening in to their conversation, his dick hardening in his pants. “What about all of the water you drink? Didn’t you say you used it to squirt when Will and I eat you out?”

  June and Inta paused and looked at each other quizzically; then wolfish grins spread across their faces.

  Ben turned with one eyebrow raised as the two women began conversing between themselves low and conspiratorially. “What are you up to?” He asked with a nervous smile on his face. Neither said anything as June mimed locking her lips with an invisible key, then tossing it over her shoulder. She and Inta giggled and continued to talk in low, hushed voices. Ben smiled and shook his head. Whatever they were pnning, it would probably end up as fun for all of them, so he let them be.

  The rest of the tram ride was full of whispers and giggles, and as soon as they got back on board the Nestia, Inta and June disappeared into the ship, to where Ben did not know. He decided to spend some time on the suit design and headed to the ‘soon to be’ kitchen, where he left his tablet and found Inta assembling the smaller of the two refrigeration units their kitchen design called for.

  “Where’s your partner in crime?” Ben asked jovially as he grabbed his tablet from the new dining room table.

  “You’ll find out, soon enough," she said cryptically.

  He ughed, then went over and gave her a light kiss. “Okay, be that way.” Then he went to the Bridge and sat in his usual seat where he knew he would have quiet so he could focus on the intricate geometries of a fold-away helmet.

  A few hours ter, as Ben was putting the finishing touches on the visor portion of the suit design, Will walked up the short flight of steps to the bridge consoles next to Ben. “How’s the design coming?” He asked, squinting at Ben’s handiwork.

  “It’s coming along nicely. The arms and chest components are complete; I’m just putting the finishing touches on the helmet," he said, panning and zooming the design on the tablet for Will.

  Will struggled to understand Ben’s design; his blueprints were 2-D ft projections of the actual 4-D objects, and the intricacies and minuteness of some details were difficult for Will to follow. Blinking his eyes, he decided he trusted Ben to whip up a top-notch design, and Inta would provide the secondary review as quality control checks. Between the two of them, the design was sure to amaze.

  “Changing the subject,” Will said, “where are the girls up to?”

  “I’m not sure, but they’re definitely up to mischief,” Ben said, chuckling. “They were all whispers and giggles on the tram back to the ship, then they disappeared somewhere.”

  “If you would like, we could use your help with our ‘mischief’. We’re in the mess hall on deck six," Inta said into Ben and Will’s earpiece, not eborating further than her location.

  Ben looked at Will and wiggled his eyebrows, and Will smiled and shook his head. “Come on, let’s go,” Will said.

  They rode the lift to deck six, and as they stepped out, the unmistakable sound of June and Inta’s pyful ughter echoed down the corridor, sounding every bit like the tinkling of music to Will.

  Will and Ben stopped at the mess hall door, and though they shouldn’t have been, given the amount of mischief the two girls usually get up to, they were surprised by what they saw. Both June and Inta were on their knees in front of the nutritional dispenser in the mess hall, Inta naked as usual and June bare to her waist, her jumpsuit partially unzipped, with the jumpsuit arms tied around her waist, pert tits bouncing as she giggled.

  Both of them were almost completely covered in what appeared to be copious amounts of jism, as if they had just participated in a marathon bukkake session. Their faces and breasts were covered, and their hair was pstered ft to their heads with the stuff. June’s smiling face had tears running down the corners of her eyes, with some of the whitish glops still dripping out of her nostrils.

  The nutritional dispenser they were kneeling in front of had been modified slightly. Instead of the innocuous nozzle that usually dispensed the paste-like foodstuff, it had been repced by an exact replica of Inta’s silver cock.

  “What we need help with,” June began expining, smiling as she swiped a dripping lock of hair out of her eyes, “is a taste test. We’re pretty sure we got the consistency correct, but we need to verify that the taste is just right.” Then she crooked her index finger and beckoned them closer.

  Ben and Will ughed out loud and walked over to the gloop-covered girls kneeling on the floor. “Ben first,” June said definitively, unzipping his jumpsuit and freeing his already hard cock. She wasted no time and swiftly stuffed his hard rod into her mouth, pumping the base hard with one hand in a fist and gently massaging his balls.

  “Oh, Fuck!” Ben groaned at June’s expert ministrations. Letting his cock pop out of her mouth for just a moment, she stuck her middle finger in her mouth, coating it with her saliva, then pulled his member back into her mouth, bobbing her head up and down the length, expertly stimuting him. The hand of the saliva-coated finger pushed between his thighs and then parted his ass cheeks, then jammed her wet finger into his puckered hole hard and fast up to the third knuckle, the way she knew he liked it.

  Between her pumping fist, bobbing head, and vigorous prostate massage, Ben blew quickly, holding the back of June’s head as he came hard into her mouth. June didn’t swallow and tried to hold all of his discharge in her mouth, but his volume of emissions was too much; it puffed out her cheeks, and a rge amount leaked past her lips and ran down her chin.

  Her eyes smiled, and the corners of her lips turned up around her rather rge mouthful; then she turned to Inta and gave her a big kiss, sharing Ben’s load. The girls then swished his seed around in their mouths as if tasting some fine wine, exploring its texture and taste. Satisfied with their evaluation, they swallowed the load and stuck their tongues out of their mouths, verifying they were ready for the next taste. “And now for Will,” Inta said in a low sultry tone.

  She leaned forward slightly, pcing the palms of her hands on Will’s thighs, then stuck her face in low under his cock, swirling her tongue around his scrotum, sucking each of his testicles into her mouth, one at a time.

  “Holy Fuck!” Will excimed as her tongue slid slowly around his left nut, then the right, back and forth, over and over until they were both dripping with saliva. Then, sticking her tongue out further than should be possible, she licked his perineum right at the edge of his puckered hole, slowly working her way forward, across his balls, moving to the base of his shaft, then licking serpentine lines up his shaft, ending with a wet circuit of the soft mushroom shaped tip.

  Inta licked one more circuit down and up his cock, making sure every glorious inch was glistening wet, then dove on it like a woman possessed, driving his cock straight down her throat, smacking her face hard against his pelvis. Words completely left Will as she held him in her throat, swallowing to provide a delirious sensation, long enough to erase any doubt that she needed oxygen to breathe. He was reduced to grunts and moans of pleasure as Inta rapidly pulled off his cock and smmed back down fully again.

  As she held him in her throat, she fondled his wet balls and coarsely stroked the area just behind his balls until something in Will snapped, and he grabbed two hand fulls of silver hair and fuck her throat hard with complete abandon. The corners of her eyes wrinkled with a smile that couldn’t occupy the rest of her face due to the cock being hammered down her throat, and just as his rhythm became ragged and was about to blow, she pulled him out just enough that she caught his impressive bst of jism in her mouth until she looked a bit like a chipmunk with too many seeds in her mouth.

  Holding Will’s impressive load in her mouth, Inta then turned June and pyfully nodded her head at her, indicating she wanted June to open wide. June did so, tilting her head back slightly and sticking her tongue out as far as she could; then Inta spit a stream of Will’s warm semen through the air into June’s open and waiting mouth. They evaluated Will’s contribution in the same fashion as Ben’s, then swallowed it down, followed by a satisfied smack of their lips.

  “I do believe that our con-COCK-tion meets requirements for taste and consistency,” Inta said to June, smiling like the cat that got the cream.

  “I wholeheartedly agree,” June said, swiping some of Will’s cum that had nded on her cheek with a finger, then sucking said finger clean.

  Ben leaned down and ran a finger through Inta’s cleavage, still holding the results of her and June’s bukkake trials. “I take it this is your solution for your book club dilemma?” He asked, and as he looked deep into her eyes, licked his finger clean.

  “Indeed it is. I believe the book club dies will be in for a pleasing surprise," Inta said with a shameless smile.

  ****

  “Inta, my dear, would you be so kind as to put this box of books on the shelves by the door?” Gary asked after trying and failing to lift the heavy box of freshly bound books.

  Inta found Gary’s formal manner of speech cute. “I would be delighted, Gary," she said, mirroring his formality. She walked behind the counter next to Gary, who shuffled to the side to allow Inta room to stoop and pick up the box. Today, instead of the turtleneck, she wore a vee-neck sweater, and as she hefted the box up, it pressed her cleavage into prominent view.

  She caught Gary’s eyes lingering, and realizing he had been caught, he smiled and patted one of her hands. “Ah, my dear, If I were forty years younger, I would have undoubtedly courted you.” Then, he turned to sip his cup of cooling tea.

  “Maybe I’m into older men," she said flirtatiously, causing him to swallow wrong and sputter into his tea.

  Once he stopped coughing, he said, “You little vixen. I am certain that you would cause my heart to stop. But I’d die with a smile on my face, to be sure. Now stop pying and be a dear and put those away," he said with a kind smile.

  She carried the box to the empty shelf, and as she arranged the books on the shelf in an orderly fashion, a tall form bent low to pass through the door frame and enter the bookstore.

  “De’noke! Good Morning!” She said excitedly as she rushed over to give him a big hug. With their rge height disparity, she could only wrap her arms around his waist. Before he was able to stoop a little to be able to give her a proper hug with his lower two arms, she felt the unmistakable form of an enormous erection hidden in his voluminous robes.

  “Good Morning, Inta. How is the day treating you?” he asked, shifting slightly so as not to press against her. His smile was a poor cover for a momentary look of discomfort.

  “I’m good," she said warmly. “How is everything with your mate? Is she getting any better?” A look of concern crossed her face.

  “Pi’natha’s condition is unchanged for now, which is a blessing,” De’noke said solemnly. Then, changing the subject to a much less painful topic, “But now is our time for Toparian history.” Inta guided De’noke to the reading corner, where two overstuffed chairs and a low table sat between them. A small, steaming teapot sat on the table fnked by two empty tea cups, which Inta filled as De’noke settled on his haunches.

  “Would you like a warm-up, Gary?” Inta offered, raising the teapot slightly in his direction.

  “That would be lovely," he said, looking up from the book on the counter. He smiled, watching Inta pour more tea into his cup from over the rim of his thick gsses. “Ah, that’s good. Thank you, my dear," Gary said, took a sip, and then returned to his reading.

  Inta pced the teapot back on the little insuted pad on the small table, then settled herself into the chair opposite De’noke.

  His tone and posture shifted to professorial, his spine straightened, and he csped one set of hands behind his back as his other set gestured, emphasizing his words.

  “Written Toparian History is quite old, in comparison to most other species, and has been verified to go back about eleven and a half thousand years. It was at that time most of the oral histories, which are much older, were recorded. A vast majority of the written history has been corroborated by archaeological evidence, but the oral histories only come to us as stories, with very little evidence from the archaeological records. These stories were recounted by the Elders of the early Groves and reyed to the young ones for generations. They held regur festivals and celebrated changing seasons, important holidays, and special events within the Grove. After the festivities died down during these events, Grove would gather and tell the stories of ancient exploits and the lives of their ancestors.”

  Inta sat enraptured as De’noke spoke, his oratory skill honed over decades of cssroom lectures. “The story from the oral histories that I usually start with is one of the oldest; an origin story.” De’noke shifted on his haunches, taking a sip of his tea.

  “It is the story of Torana and Denpar. Back in the mists of time lived a little furry four-armed creature, much like your Earth monkeys, named Denpar. He was a clever creature, living in the canopy, and fed off the fruit he found there. He spent his days pying in the tree branches, chasing butterflies and other small creatures who also inhabited the canopy. He slept in the branches when he was tired, chased the butterflies when bored, and ate the fruit from the trees when hungry.” De’noke waved his hands before him, pantomiming the story as he spoke. Inta could almost see Denpar swinging through the trees and chasing butterflies.

  “Every day was like this for Denpar, a life full of simple pleasures, but he was alone. He couldn’t talk with the butterflies or share the sweet fvor of the fruit; he grew lonely. He wandered the canopy, swinging from tree to tree, in search of what he did not know. Until one day, he came upon the most beautiful tree he had ever seen. Her leaves were beautifully multihued that shimmered in the sunlight. Her fruit was the sweetest he had ever tasted, and her boughs were the most comfortable to sleep in.

  He named her Torana, meaning beloved; from then on, he never ventured far from her. Denpar adored her and looked after her, pruning her dried leaves, sweeping the ground around her trunk clear, and keeping the underbrush back. He took care of her as she provided for him. They spent many long years together like that until Denpar grew old and weak. As he y in the bed made of woven branches she made for him, he struggled to breathe at the end of his life. Professing his love for her, he stroked her bark longingly one st time, and his breath left him.

  Torana held Denpar’s still body close to her trunk and cried out at her loss. As she wept, golden light swept down from the sky. Torana’s tears so moved the gods that they decided to intervene. Torana begged them not to take Denpar from her, and in their pity, they agreed to help. So the gods bathed both Torana and Denpar in their light and bound them together body and soul, and when their light faded, Torana and Denpar were no more. In their pce stood To’par, the beautiful melding of the two lovers into one being. Then the gods said to To’par, ‘Honor the love of Torana and Denpar; spread your seeds far and wide.’ Then, they vanished in a burst of light.

  To’par was true to their memory and spread his seed throughout the forest, bringing with it love and light, and became To’parna, mother to all Toparians.”

  De’noke finished his tale and took a sip of his tea. “In some records, it was Torana who was dying and Denpar who wept and begged the gods, but in all versions, they became one, with help from the gods.” He set his teacup on the table and leaned forward a little.

  Inta had been silent as De’noke spoke, spellbound by the story. She stared into the distance, carried away by the story, her mind picturing Torana and Denpar joining as one. Entranced, her mind raced from imagination to distant memory, to somewhere long ago in her past. She was once again surrounded by friends and family, standing in a grove of trees. She was nude this time, and someone standing close to her pulled her into a hug by her waist. She watched herself reach around this person’s neck to return the hug, and she noticed that her arms, lightly tanned, sun-kissed, with little freckles running over her skin, not silver as she was now, but of flesh and blood.

  In her memory, she was released from the embrace, then naked; she stood before the multi-hued tree, stepping closer, her feelings a mixture of excitement and dread. She took another step in her memory, and then De’noke’s voice shattered the vision and dragged her back to the present.

  “It has long been my belief that in these stories from the deep past, some kernel of truth is buried in it, but with no way to confirm it with the archaeological record, they remained stories. But I am convinced that the gods of these stories are the Andranari, the same as the carving I showed you. But, like I said, without evidence, it is only specution. Still, it has long been a cultural touchstone, and has shaped Toparian society.” De’noke stopped, suddenly realizing Inta’s attention had fled for a bit, so he stopped and watched her for a bit as she blinked rapidly, eyes darting around like she was re-evaluating her surroundings.

  “Welcome back?” He said, tentatively, waiting for her to regain her bearings. He lifted his teacup to his lips to take another sip but then stopped, turned his head slightly as if listening to something in the distance, and lowered his cup. He waited until she once again looked him in the eyes.

  “Sorry about that," Inta apologized. “I was lost in another memory.” She shrugged her shoulders and gave him a half smile.

  He smiled and nodded with understanding. “Yes, I see.” He cleared his throat. “And it seems Pi’natha saw as well. She is intrigued and wishes to meet you. Would you be willing to come meet my mate?”

  “Pi’natha, your mate? She saw?” Inta’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

  “Pi’natha and I are psychically linked; she can see and hear through my eyes and ears. This allows her to see more of the world than she would normally be able to.” Seeing the confusion in Inta’s expression, De’note continued. “Once you meet Pi’natha, you will understand what I mean.”

  He took another sip of his tea. “You have graciously introduced me to your family, it would be a privilege if you would allow me to do the same and introduce you to the Grove. You have a work break shortly, yes?” De’noke asked.

  “Let me go see," she said and walked over to the counter, where only the top of Gary’s wild, unkempt white hair could be seen over the book he was reading.

  “Gary, do you mind if I take the rest of the afternoon off?” Inta asked sweetly.

  Not even bothering to look up from his book, “That won’t be a problem at all, my dear. My next lunch date with Martha won’t be until tomorrow. It’s not busy today, I’ll be fine. Go have fun," he said, then turned the page and continued reading.

  “Okay, let’s go meet your Grove!” Inta said with enthusiasm. Inta put away the tea set, then followed De’noke out of the bookstore and through the Concourse. The length of his stride offset the long, slow cadence of his steps, and Inta had to walk quickly to keep up. He led her through the Concourse, and she was surprised when he passed the lifts to the passenger cabins and continued instead to the service trams the Dals hospitality crew used to bring carts full of supplies to the stores and restaurants in the Concourse. The tram's ceiling was just tall enough that De’noke didn’t need to stoop, even though the tips of the bristly hair on the top of his head brushed it slightly.

  No one else was on the tram as De’noke pressed the button to send the tram aft to the cargo holds. While the tram accelerated smoothly to speed, Inta looked up at De’noke, who was lost in thought at the moment. Today, he wore a light tan, short-sleeve undershirt beneath his usual pin off-white robe. His rounded, well-muscled shoulders stretched the fabric of the short sleeve, which had Inta imagining running her fingers over those delightful muscles.

  Either De’noke felt her eyes on him, or she was broadcasting thoughts again because he started blushing, coughed into his fist, and fidgeted with his robe, which Inta found adorable.

  The tram slowed as it approached their destination, and when the doors opened, De’noke quickly stepped out, grateful for a reprieve from proximity to the much shorter silver girl.

  “Our lodging is just down this corridor," he said as they headed off. The corridor was much wider than that of the passenger cabins, fork trucks, and other carts busy zipping back and forth staging loads for transfer when the Dals made its next port of call in two days. They stepped aside to let a loaded truck pass and continued for a short distance to a set of rge double doors.

  “Dals Guest Accommodations graciously re-fitted this hold to suit our purposes,” De’noke said as he typed the entry code into the door’s console. The doors swooshed open, and they entered to find a rge sitting area with several comfortable-looking chairs and couches arranged so that someone could easily converse with anyone sitting on any piece of furniture. Some of the furniture was rge, evidently with De’noke’s Toparian dimensions in mind, but just as many pieces of furniture were of a size that Inta would feel comfortable in.

  Another Toparian was lounging on one of the smaller couches, reading a book. All four legs stretched out on the cushions, two of which were perched up on the arm on the far end.

  “Inta, this is Brother Ti’me. Ti’me, this is my new friend, Interface," De’noke said, introducing the two.

  You can call me Inta. It’s nice to meet you," she said warmly.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, Inta," he said, wearily attempting to sit up and greet her properly.

  “No, no, it’s alright, Ti’me. You’re fine, please rest," De’noke said, rushing over to settle Ti’me back onto the couch, fetching an additional pillow. Ti’me smiled and acquiesced, allowing himself to be coddled.

  Ti’me was much shorter than De’noke, barely taller than Inta herself. Where De’noke had a muscur, masculine build and wide facial features, Ti’me was slender, his face narrower, almost feminine. He appeared tired and seemed grateful for De’noke’s pampering.

  “Where are the others?” De’noke asked Ti’me.

  “They’re tending to the seeds at the moment, I believe," he responded, shifting on the couch, looking for a more comfortable position.

  De’noke nodded knowingly. Then, turning to Inta, “Let’s go meet the rest of the Grove.” He walked to a set of doors on the far side of the room, and Inta followed.

  “It was nice to meet you, Ti’me,” Inta said with a genuine smile.

  “You too,” Ti’me replied, then returned to his book.

  The next set of doors opened into a surprisingly rge, well-lit space, much rger than the sitting room. The ceiling was about twenty feet tall, with a couple of rows of work surfaces lined up in the middle. Along the wall behind them was sturdy shelving containing two dozen or more containers, each with a transparent dome on top of a high-tech-looking pnt pot. The dull gray metal of the pot sported dials, indicator lights, and a small screen, seemingly to control the environment inside each container independently. Inta could see soil just above the rim of the metallic portion of the containers, and half buried in the soil was an enormous nut about the size of a rge grapefruit.

  The rge room was divided by a floor-to-ceiling heavy curtain at the other end of the benches and shelving, separating this space from the rest of the converted storage area.

  Seven tall Toparians were attending these containers, some with their attention on the containers in the shelving units; a couple of the Toparian men had a container on a workbench, fiddling with meters connected to the high-tech pnt pots by wired leads, taking readings of some sort, and making notes on tablets. They all looked up and turned their attention to De’noke and Inta as they entered the room.

  “Brothers, if you have a moment, come and meet my new friend,” De’noke said in a warm, inviting tone. The Brothers attending the containers on the shelves came over immediately, while the two at the bench held up an index finger, signaling that they were busy and would be with them shortly.

  The five tall Toparian men strolled over to De’noke and Inta with the same gentle swaying as De’noke did when he walked. They all wore long aprons in addition to their robes, and each broad face had a kind and warm smile as they approached.

  “Inta, these are Brothers Be’tule, Ab’same, Qu’albe, Sa’lixe, and Mo’naqe. Still attending Seeds are Ba’rece and De’pife.” Then, looking around for more Brothers, “ Os’tryve and Ru’brume?”

  “They were exhausted from watching over the Seeds st night and are napping with the Mothers,” Be’tule said with a pyful sparkle in his eyes.

  De’noke smiled, nodded at Be’tule, and said, “Brothers, this is Interface.” He beamed as he introduced them to Inta. She could see his love and admiration for each of them, much like how she felt for June, Will, and Ben.

  One by one, each of the Brothers hugged Inta briefly and greeted her with words of welcome. Then Be’tule asked Denoke, “Brother, what is the occasion for this visitor?”

  “Pi’natha has asked to meet her. I have already had the pleasure of meeting Inta’s family, so I thought it would be nice for her to meet the Grove," De’noke said, pcing a friendly hand on Inta’s shoulder.

  “Well, a friend of De’noke’s is our friend as well,” Sa’lixe said with a devilish smile, winking at De’noke.

  De’noke blushed and stammered, “No, it’s not like that.”

  “Um, hmm. Whatever you say," Sa’lixe replied, smiling. “Alway the curious one, De’noke.”

  With the blush on his face deepening to a dark crimson, “Don’t listen to him, Inta. He’s the one always entertaining the Maidens," De’noke said with a pyful jab. “Let’s leave these scoundrels to their work.”

  Inta followed close behind De’noke as they made their way past the rows of Seeds. De’noke lovingly touched the shelves as they passed, his fingers lightly brushing along the surface. She paused momentarily and stared into one of the terrariums holding a Seed. She saw the tiniest spark of light residing in the center, but it seemed not to be active, not growing like when Sarah conceived.

  “Is it sleeping?” Inta asked De’noke, nodding her head to Seed in front of her.

  “Not sleeping, hibernating. Sprouts need to be nurtured in a properly established Grove, not in the artificial setup we have here. We are all resilient enough to make do with this temporary situation, but Sprouts need," he paused dramatically, then parted the curtain to the space on the other side, “more.”

  Inta couldn’t believe her eyes. Before her, the hard floor turned to a carpet of grass, and the overhead lights in the ceiling had been specifically tuned to produce the same wavelengths as natural sunlight. Across the short span of green grass stood ten tall trees arranged in an evenly spaced circle, the branches winding together overhead in the spaces between them.

  She gazed upon the trees themselves, dumbfounded. The smallest was easily four feet in diameter, while the rgest was close to eight feet across. But the detail that astonished her the most was that the skin of the trees was of the same shimmering iridescent multi-hue colors from her recently reemerged memories. She gaped in wonder, struggling to understand what was in front of her.

  De’noke stopped and watched her for a moment, then said, “I think now you understand, at least in part, my fascination with you.” His voice shook her out of her reverie. “That memory you ‘shouted’ at me must have been of Toparians.” Then he pced a hand on her shoulder. “Come, let’s go say hello.”

  He led her on, and as they passed between the massive trunks of the two nearest trees, he reached out and touched the closest one, paused, closed his eyes, and smiled. Then, he continued to the center of the circle.

  As she passed, she did the same and reached out to touch the shimmering skin of the tree. As she did, she was immediately aware of two things. The first was that the tree's skin felt like skin, not the rough exterior of bark she had expected. But the second caught her by surprise and caused her to jerk her hand back like she had been burnt. Not because it was painful but because of the intense fire of orgasmic climax she felt from the tree.

  Shocked, she stood back, then circled it, inspecting it more closely. The tree’s shimmering surface was lightly textured, a little lumpy but mostly smooth. But as she rounded to the front of the tree facing into the circle, she saw a vaguely feminine shape enveloped by the surface, completely under the skin of the multi-hued tree. Not only that, the feminine figure embedded in the trunk looked to be massively pregnant, her midsection as rge as if she were nine months pregnant with sextuplets.

  Tentatively, Inta approached the tree again and slowly extended both her hands until she id her palms on the stomach of the extremely pregnant form. She was buffeted again by the intensity of the orgasmic energy. She could feel the unrelenting raw power of that sustained climax, shared between the two beings, currently joined as one, beneath her hands. It overwhelmed her, and she could not see nor hear anything around her but that unending thrum of ecstasy.

  Then she felt four hands pull her away and hold her momentarily while she regained her bearings. De’noke held her in his arms for a moment while she returned to her senses, and she looked up at him wide-eyed.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” He said, nodding to the tree. She gulped and nodded, not quite having enough words yet to speak. Now that she was aware, she could feel the faint echoes of ecstasy reverberating from the other trees as well, each holding the pregnant form of a woman within. All except one, she realized. The rgest and presumably oldest tree was silent and did not seem to hold anyone within its trunk.

  Coming to her senses, Inta finally noticed that there were two other people sleeping on the soft ground in the circle, each in front of separate trees. She realized these must be the st two Brothers, napping naked in the circle, their robes folded neatly beside their sleeping heads.

  One was lying on his side, two of his four legs curled up, almost in a fetal position, while the other Brother was lying ft on his back, arms and legs spread wide like some giant starfish. What captured Inta's attention was the massive erection he sported in his sleep. The behemoth between his legs was as wide as her forearm and at least fourteen inches long. It was hard to tell exactly because the other curious thing about his anatomy was that most of his ridiculously rge member was swallowed up by a thick, fleshy tube protruding from his waist just above the tip of his cock and engulfed it to its base.

  De’noke caught her staring at the sleeping Toparian’s genitalia and chuckled. “We are very free with our bodies amongst ourselves, but Ru’brume has no couth even when asleep.

  Unable to tear her eyes away, she asked, “What is that covering him?”

  “I had only intended to teach you Toparian history, not anatomy," he said as the blush returned to his face. “That is his hood. All Toparians have them, even the Maidens, who don’t have anything to cover yet.” Inta’s brows furrowed, unsatisfied with the answer. “It doesn’t serve a biological purpose, some quirk of our evolution, I suppose. But it does have an effect. When aroused, Toparians are unable to masturbate to completion.” His blush became more pronounced. “Though Maidens can… alleviate a Brother's… discomfort,” De’noke said, suffering through the expnation.

  Inta suddenly realized that he must be suffering through his own ck of release and decided to let the matter drop. Changing the subject, she asked, “Okay, enough of the biology lesson then, let’s go meet Pi’natha. Can we also meet the others? You mentioned you were traveling with several ‘Mothers’ and ‘Maidens’. Where are they? When can I say hi?”

  De’noke smiled. “These are the Mothers, standing around us. This is Pi’natha over here.” He gestured towards the rgest tree, “and the Maidens are currently Seeding with the other Mothers.” Gesturing at the rest of the trees bulging with the feminine figures. “Let’s go and greet Pi’natha.” He tilted his head slightly as if listening to something Inta couldn’t hear. “She just promised to rescue me from my discomfort and expin it to you.”

  They walked over to the enormous tree, and De’noke pced his hands on the shimmering skin of her trunk and rubbed it gently. “How are you feeling, my Love?” He pressed his lips together tight and furrowed his brows in response to a reply Inta did not hear. “I don’t think I believe you, but I will let it go for now," he said to Pi’natha.

  “Come, say hi," De’noke encouraged Inta, one hand still caressing Pi’natha’s skin. Inta walked tentatively up to Pi’natha’s imposing form and pced a hand on her next to De’noke’s. She felt a sense of welcome and curiosity from Pi’natha, but Inta felt extreme discomfort, longing, and worry projecting from her in the background. Pity welled up in Inta at the thought of De’noke’s mate feeling this miserable, but she didn’t know how to help.

  With his hand still on Pi’natha’s skin and his eyes closed, De’noke spoke to Inta, but it wasn’t his voice that came out. It was a low feminine voice, sounding smooth and smoky. “Hello Interface. It’s so good to finally meet you. De’noke has agreed to lend me his voice so that I may talk with you more comfortably.” Then he spoke again in his own voice. “With our link, Pi’natha can use my voice to speak to those who cannot hear her inner voice.” He smiled and slowly stroked Pi’natha’s skin.

  “You are an intriguing bundle of contradiction, Interface,” Pi’natha stated. “You are at once kind and gentle, but hard as diamond. Your love and compassion overflow, yet a terrible loneliness haunts you. You seem to be impossibly ancient, yet walk the gaxy as a wide-eyed innocent.”

  Pi’natha paused, considering Inta. “Perhaps the most intriguing thing about you is that you seem to have deep ties to us Toporians. I can not say what it is, but something draws me to you. You are a candle to my moth, and I can not look away.”

  “I feel drawn to you, too. All of you," Inta said, throwing her arm wide, gesturing to the encircled Grove. Then she looked down at her feet, troubled. “I have these fragments of memories, of a pce I don’t remember, with people whose faces are familiar but I do not know their names. In the memory, I feel their love but they seem like strangers. And in the background, are the trees; your trees.”

  They stood in the silent comfort of the Grove for a moment, looking into each other’s faces, searching for answers that did not seem to want to reveal themselves. After a moment, De’noke’s face reflected Pi’natha’s shift of focus and smiled. “While I don’t think I can help answer some of your deeper questions at this moment, I did promise De’noke that I would spare him the further embarrassment of satisfying your curiosity of us ‘current day’ Toparians.” Pi’natha’s voice chuckled from De’noke’s lips.

  “De’noke is special and somewhat of an oddity in his manner when it comes to matters of the flesh and pleasure,” Pi’natha expined. “He has always been drawn fearlessly to answering the deep mysteries of the universe through academic probing and investigation. He is much more shy when it comes to pleasures of the flesh, though in matters of the heart, he is fierce. Just one of the reasons I find him so intoxicating.” Inta watched, fascinated, as two separate personalities expressed emotions on De’noke’s face.

  She could see Pi’natha’s doting, loving mirth and De’noke’s deep love and devotion. It struck her how close they were and how simir their bond was to Inta’s bonds with her family.

  “So, the biology lesson," Pi’natha began with humor in her voice. “We Toparians have a somewhat unique life cycle, as represented by members of this grove. We all start as Seeds, a tiny spark of light nurtured by the Grove until they grow and unfurl into Sprouts. Sprouts are not unlike the children of other species, innocent and pure; they are loved and cared for by the entire Grove. Every Mother, Maiden, and Brother, protects, nurtures, and teaches the sprouts as if they had Seeded each one themselves.”

  Pi’natha’s voice became tender and sad in equal measure, but then she pressed on. “When they find their first words, Sprouts are given their name; I remember the day of De’noke’s first words. The Grove then called him Oke. He was a rambunctious little one.” Pi’natha’s smile pyed on De’noke’s face.

  “Sprouts are androgynous through their childhood, and after a few decades, they mature into Maidens. As Toparians grow, so do their names. At little Oke’s transition to Maiden, she was given the name Noke. She was a shy charmer and had the eye of many a feisty Brother. A Maiden will bear Seed for anywhere between four and seven decades until they transition into Brothers, their names once again growing as they do. You were fifty-five years a Maiden before being named De’noke, right?” Pi’natha asked him.

  “Fifty-four.” De’noke corrected. Inta found it fascinating watching Pi’natha and De’noke converse with each other from the same mouth but with different voices.

  “Ah, that’s right, fifty-four," Pi’natha concurred, then continued. “A Brother may mate with several Mothers during this time of their lives, for a hundred years or more. At which time they will finally put down their roots and transition to become Mothers; De’noke will eventually be named De’noka when he becomes a Mother. Then she will Seed for a few hundred years.”

  A dozen questions rose in Inta’s mind. “I don’t think I follow. De’noke was once a Maiden?” She asked.

  Pi’natha gently ughed. “Yes, as I was once. A Brother, Maiden, and Sprout, called Pi’nathe, Nathe, and Athe, respectively," she expined.

  Inta’s face scrunched as she sorted it all out in her mind. “So if the Brothers mate with the Mothers, how do the Maidens fit in?” She asked, still missing pieces of the puzzle.

  “A Brothers does indeed mate with a Mother, but the Maidens serve a special role during a Mother’s Seeding. A mother’s body produces a nut that will become a Seed when fertilized by the Brother. Then the Mother will saturate the Seed with her energy, fanning the spark of light within it. However, the Seed’s spark of light is vulnerable, like a small fme, and a Mother’s energy is like a raging wind storm. Directly, a Mother’s energy is too potent and would extinguish the tiny fme. I believe you briefly felt that hurricane of energy when you touched the mind of Bi’candra when you entered the Grove.” Inta gnced in the direction of the pair she touched and remembered their orgasmic fugue. The Maiden shelters the Seed from the full onsught of the Mother’s energy and filters it to a gentle trickle to the Seed. After a couple of months, the Seed’s fme is strong enough to survive on its own until it Sprouts.”

  Inta suddenly put two and two together and blurted out, “You mean that they orgasm like that,” gesturing to Bi’candra’s tree-like form, which she touched briefly, “for two months straight?” She said, her eyes wide in astonishment.

  Pi’natha softly chuckled. “Yes, they will. And I can tell you from personal experience from both perspectives, it is quite the experience. Isn’t that right, De’noke?”

  A deep blush crept across De’noke’s face at Pi’natha’s good-natured teasing. “Yes, it is quite, ah, something," he said.

  Something that had been scratching the back of Inta’s mind about the Grove’s arrangement for their new colony finally found solid form. “Your pns for a new colony, I count ten Mothers, you included, but eleven Brothers and Nine Maidens. The math seems off to me," she said.

  “Ah, you are an astute one, Inta. You have hit on the heart of my current predicament," Pi’natha said. “We left Topar with ten Mothers, Brothers, and Maidens, but due to the rejection of our first intended colony site, we’ve spent much more time traveling than we had first intended. Poor Ti’me feels guilty for having his transition start before I was ready to Seed, and now I must wait until one of the other Maidens has finished with her current Seeding and recovered enough to go again.”

  “Oh, my,” Inta said, her voice full of sympathy. “How long will you need to wait?”

  “Bi’candra and Larce are the furthest along; their Seeding should be complete in a couple of week’s time. Then Larce will need two to three weeks to recover," Pi’natha said, the extreme discomfort she felt crept into the edges of her voice.

  “But such is the way of things. I will endure as I must," she said with forced stoicism, sadness pin in her expression. Then she gathered herself, put her pains aside, and said, “But a biology lesson isn’t why I had hoped to meet you. My dear De’noke has become utterly fascinated with you and your story and has expined some of your situation. What has caused your memory loss?” Pi’natha asked, her voice full of sympathy.

  Inta wrung her hands and looked at her feet. “I had lost everyone I loved and was alone for a very long time. As time passed, what and who I was shrank, and as I did, those memories drifted out of reach. All the bits and pieces of who I was have been locked away, but now I’m growing stronger and as I do, those parts are coming back, like the partial memories De’noke told you about.”

  Pi’natha considered Inta’s words for a moment. Then came to a decision. “You are a sweet girl, and I would like to help you if I can. You called them ‘partial’ memories. Those that are returning to you are not complete?”

  “Not really,” Inta said. “They’re fragmented and faint. When I recall them, I get general impressions, broad brush strokes of events and people, like they are distant and I’m watching it through a distorting film. I have near-perfect recall with my active memory; I could repeat verbatim the books De’noke wrote that I have read. I seem to be struggling to reconnect to the parts of my mind.”

  Pi’natha pced De’noke’s hand on Inta’s cheek in sympathy. “You poor thing. Will you let me help you reconnect to these memories?”

  “You think you can do that?” Inta said with hope in her voice. “I would be grateful if you could help me remember.”

  De’noke took Inta’s hands in his, then Pi’natha spoke. “I will do what I can. Come, embrace me so that I may establish a connection between us.”

  De’noke took Inta’s hands and guided her to Pi’natha’s trunk, pcing her silver hands on Pi’natha’s shimmering, multi-hued skin. And stepped back. Inta felt Pi’natha’s warmth and slid her hands as wide, embracing Pi’natha’s wide form in a hug as much as she could. She turned her head and pced her cheek in contact with Pi’natha’s skin, soaking in her warmth. She could feel the slow rhythm of Pi’natha’s heartbeat, thumping once every couple of seconds.

  Four thick, arm-like tendrils slid from hidden folds in Pi’natha’s skin and curved around Inta’s back, holding her close like a mother’s tender embrace. Pi’natha stroked Inta’s silver hair, tucking a loose strand back over her ear, both enjoying the simple pleasure of a comforting hug.

  As she was held in Pi’natha’s embrace, Inta felt pressure on her mind. Pi’natha reached out and touched her mind psychically. *“I’ve never felt a mind like yours, Inta. The texture, complexity; you’re so beautiful.”* Pi’natha thought directly into Inta’s mind. *"Try to bring forward those resurfacing memories, and I will try to help you capture them fully.”

  Inta tried to pull the old memories out of the depths of her mind. At first, there were only small fshes: the sound of a murmuring crowd, someone holding her hands, and the blurry form of someone standing close to her. As she struggled with them, she felt a surge of heat from Pi’natha, and the memories bubbled to the surface but were still distant as if she were standing on a frozen ke, and she could see her memories through the ice on the surface.

  Heat and pressure poured into Inta, and she winced at their intensity. They washed over her, poured through her, and down into the cold barrier separating her from the memories. Pi’natha gave one final surge, and then the barrier cracked and shattered, sending Inta into the pool of memories at her feet.

  ~~

  Inta was in a small white room, sitting in front of a vanity mirror, and one of her younger sisters was brushing her blonde, shoulder-length hair. “I don’t know how you always manage to get so many knots in your hair; it’s almost more knots than hair," Energetic Mischief said, slowly pulling the brush through the tangled strands.

  “That’s because she’s always rolling with the Brothers in the Grove," her other sister, Bountiful Desire, teased. The younger sisters broke into a fit of giggles as Inta pyfully scowled at them.

  **Inta and Pi’natha watched the scene from the present as disembodied specters. “Unusual names,” Pi’natha said to Inta.

  “That’s an artifact of transtion; our bels were more emotional impressions others felt from us than actual names,” Inta expined.**

  “Alright you two, stop pying. It’s almost time for the ceremony and you need to finish Caring Compassion’s hair," Loving Kindness said, entering the room and checking on the sister’s progress.

  “Mother!” Inta excimed, jumped up from her bench in front of the mirror, and ran over to hug her. Loving Kindness embraced her daughter. Another woman stepped through the door, and when Inta saw her, she hugged her, too. “Mom! You both made it!”

  “What kind of mothers would we be if we didn’t?” Steadfast Support asked, sliding an arm around them in their three-way embrace.

  Loving Kindness released the hug first and held Inta out at arm's length as if inspecting her, and a tear formed in her eye. “You look so beautiful. Are you ready, Sweety?”

  Inta nodded, looking a little scared. She tried to put on a brave face but failed. “What if I can’t do it? What if I don’t make it through? I’ll be letting down so many people," she said timidly.

  Loving Kindness brushed away the tears threatening to spill down Inta’s pale, freckled cheek. “You will make it through, and you will be incredible. I’m so proud of you," she said, kissing her on a patch of freckles.

  “But, you do need one more thing," Steadfast Support said as she produced a rge jewelry box. She opened it, revealing a silver diadem engraved with small silver leaves matching the trees of the Grove. Steadfast Support put the box aside, pced the wreath on Inta’s head, and then arranged her hair around it. “Now you are ready. It is time, Honey.”

  Her mothers stood to either side and held her hands as she walked out into the hallway, her sisters following close behind. They walked a short way down the corridor and stepped out into a courtyard full of smiling faces, all standing silently as Inta was led through the crowd. All her friends and extended family were there, on one side of the path, and on the other were the people she would soon be Bonded with, the ones who had been selected to be her crew.

  They had lined up, three deep, all along the path on one side, and as she passed, each one of them gave her a quick kiss, a token of acceptance of the transformation she was about to undertake and the role she would soon fulfill. The slow procession added an air of solemnity to the ceremony, but soon, she made her way down the path and now stood directly in front of the rgest tree in the Grove.

  Her mothers removed the diadem, helped her out of her robe, and turned her to face those gathered in the courtyard, bathed in the warm sunlight. She stood in front of them naked, unashamed, and ready. One of her mothers spoke. “Caring Compassion comes before the Grove to be transformed. You, the gathered, have come to witness and support her in her journey to her next phase of existence.” Then, in a voice that was as much an incantation as a statement, “She is yours.”

  The gathered responded with one voice. “We are hers.”

  Inta’s mothers gave her one st kiss on the cheek and then stepped back to join the crowd. Inta’s heart was full of a potent mix of feelings of love to and from the gathered crowd, anxiety for what was about to take pce, and growing arousal when several thick tendrils reached from behind her and gently embraced her. They circled her waist, spiraled around her arms and thighs, and lightly encircled her neck, caressing her cheek.

  She was lifted off her feet, pulled towards the tree, and nestled in a slight depression in her trunk, shaped as if it were meant only for her. As the soft skin of the tree folded back over, enveloping her, Inta heard her whispering voice in her mind. “You are so brave and full of love; you are blessed.”

  The st sight she saw before she was completely encased in the tree’s warm flesh was the love and adoration of the people gathered together for her. Then orgasmic rapture flooded her, and the memory ended.

  When her mind came back to the present, Inta found that she had fallen to her knees, still hugging Pi’natha’s trunk tight. She was likewise held in her tight embrace, sobbing with tears streaming down her silver cheeks. De’noke silently rubbed her shoulders and back, trying to comfort her through her surprising outburst of emotions.

  Gasping through her sobs, “I remember my mothers.” Feelings of joy and deep sadness wracked her frame as she was simultaneously grateful for regaining the memory of her cherished loved ones but simultaneously grieved their loss to the deep oceans of time.

  She stayed like that for a long while, as the emotions poured out of her in a torrent, then slowed to a trickle before finally stopping when she had cried herself out. De’noke helped her to her feet when she was ready; then, she hugged him, too.

  “I can’t thank you both enough. You don’t know what this means to me," Inta said, still sniffling.

  “Sharing that beautiful memory with us is thanks enough," Pi’natha said, a whisper in Inta’s mind. Inta was mildly surprised that she could still hear her without being in direct contact with Pi’natha. “This is surprising to me as well,” Pi’natha replied. “It seems we have made a connection.” She paused for a moment. “Your memory strongly suggests that our people were once symbiotic and that it remains so.”

  Still holding her tight, De'noke said, “You have been through a lot just now. Please let me escort you back to your ship," with a comforting and protective tone of voice. Inta smiled weakly and nodded.

  “Thank you, Pi’natha,” Inta said, then allowed De’noke to lead her from the circled Grove and back towards the Nestia.

  ****

  Two days ter, they were eating breakfast at ‘The Tanaran Skillet’. The four of them were sitting at their usual booth. Ben and Will were munching on some of the crispy bacon from their ptes while June interrogated Inta, a cut and momentarily forgotten piece of pancake stuck on the end of her fork.

  “Spill. How did everything go at the book club st night?” June asked, more hungry for details than pancakes at that moment.

  “Well, once we got to the final scene in the book where the star-crossed lovers finally consummate their marriage, the girls let loose. It was glorious. Tits were out in a fsh, everyone was all over each other, and this time the sisters, Denise and Lena, were all over me. I was fucking Denise hard while Lena and I kissed and she finger-bsted me. Then I came hard in Denise, then pulled out so I could blow the rest of my load on her tits. It was so hot.”

  June leaned forward like she was afraid to miss even one detail. “Everyone in the room came when I blew, and Lena, that clever girl, put two and two together. She figured out that every time I came, they came. Once they all knew that, they were all over me, and by the end of the night, I had filled every one of their holes with creamy goodness, as well as covering them head to toe. They loved it.”

  June smiled wide and pounded the table with a fist. “That’s it. I’m definitely coming to the next one.”

  “And coming ‘at’ the next one,” Inta said with a wolfish grin.

  “It’s a good thing you keep us all well satisfied, or I’d be jealous of the fun you’ve been getting up to. I’d still like to go, though. It would be hot as fuck to watch," Ben said with a mouthful of bacon.

  “Na ah, dies only," Inta chided, pyfully wagging her index finger at him.

  Just then, the ferry-wide comms chimed across the ship, indicating that the Captain was about to address the ship. The little terminals on all the tables dispyed the Logo for the Inter-Pnetary Ferry Services as the chime pyed, then faded and was repced by the face of a man in his te fifties, the dark hair of his beard streaked with bands of white. He had a round, jovial face and started his address with a wide smile.

  “Good morning, all. This is Captain Tamon Ugaki, and I would like to remind all passengers and crew that the Dals will be making a port of call to the Grennen system in eight hours. The hangar crews will be busy with their preparations for loading and unloading, and we ask passengers to limit their time in the hangars to allow the crew space to do their work. Launch Services to and from Brenden will begin in twelve hours; Hangars C1 and C2 are designated for inbound and outbound traffic, respectively.

  If you are debarking at Grennen, many attractions may be worth your time; the mountains of the North regions are well known for their excellent skiing and hiking in the forests of the Lownds. The equatorial belt boasts many wonderful resorts with thousands of kilometers of beautiful beaches. And don’t forget about the Capital City Opera District, which boasts fabulous shows every hour, on the hour. If this is your final destination, Grennen welcomes you. Captain Ugaki, out.”

  The Captain pressed the button to end the ship-wide transmission, then slumped in his seat, rubbed his temples, and sighed. “Ugh, I just hate those commercials they make me read.” He straightened himself again and smoothed his uniform over his rounded belly. “Maybe I should have you read them from now on, Commander," he smirked.

  “Thanks, but no. Tea, Captain?” his Second, Commander Thea Cirillo asked without emotion, holding a steaming mug out to him. She was tall with an athletic build, her dark hair up in a simple tight bun, her uniform crisp and wrinkle-free.

  “Thank you, Thea," he said, accepting the beverage. “Anything to report from the night watch?”

  She pulled a small tablet out of a holster on her belt and scrolled through it for a moment. “The chandeliers report that we are through fifty-three percent of our supplies and will need to resupply at Centrailia. The Logistics teams have finished staging the Cargo Transfer areas and are ready for arrival at Grennen. Security reports a downtick in passenger misconduct, and that now twenty-two of the ‘Defender’ crafts are currently out of service, undergoing maintenance.” She delivered her report in a ft, matter-of-fact tone.

  “Very good, Commander,” Ugaki said in a perfunctory fashion. He tilted his head and squinted as he looked at her. “When was the st time you took any leave?”

  She raised one eyebrow. “Ten months ago, Sir. I took a week during the minor refit at Kilbani," she answered stiffly.

  Captain Ugaki shook his head. “You’re an excellent officer, one of the best who’ve served under me, but you’re human like everyone else here. You need downtime. I can’t afford you burning yourself out, so when we reach Centrailia, take some shore leave," he said with a gentle admonition.

  Cirillo scowled slightly. “Yes, Captain," she said, then turned to address one of the bridge crew to check the status of the engines.

  The Captain allowed himself a small smile, then sipped his tea.

  ****

  The waiter pulled Will’s crypto stick from his handheld payment terminal and returned it to Will. Then, the waiter began clearing the table of their finished breakfast. After the waiter carried the empty ptes to the kitchen, Will cleared his throat. “So, what are everyone’s pns for today?”

  “I’ll be working on the suits, specifically the boots today. Ankles are surprisingly difficult to account for. That and helping Inta finish up the new kitchen, not that I’m doing much else besides providing ‘moral support’ at this point," Ben said, wiggling his eyebrows in Inta’s direction.

  “So the suit is almost done?” June asked.

  “Yeah, almost. With any luck, the prototype will be ready to test while the Dals is

  at the port of call so I can do some actual testing in space," Ben replied optimistically.

  “Do you need any help so you're ready for the port of call?” Will asked.

  “Not really. I am almost done with the prototype; I just need to go over some of the st details and have Inta verify my work," Ben said.

  “And what about you, Will?” June asked. “Still on your ‘Drunken Sailor Walk’ through the ferry?”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere. I don’t get that heightened feeling of danger, but I have this nagging sense of something always around the corner, but when I get around the corner, it’s gone. It’s completely maddening," Will huffed, frustration painted on his face.

  “You know, it sounds like you need a spotter, someone seeing what you’re chasing from another angle. And with my eye, I see more than most.” June offered. “There’s only so much of flying pods in the hangar that I can do; until I can take one out and put it through its paces, I’ll be happy to help.”

  “You know, I think you’re right, June. I should have had you spotting from the get-go. So you up for a day of hunting?” Will’s eyes narrowed, and a small, tight-lipped smile turned up the corners of his mouth.

  “You bet. They don’t know who they’re messing with.” She said, returning Will’s predatory smile. They all stood up from the booth, and as they parted outside the restaurant, June gave Ben and Inta a peck on the cheek and sent them on their way.

  “Alright, where to first?” June asked, crossing her arms, ready for action. Will started walking through the crowd towards the public lifts, so June fell in step beside him.

  “I usually stop by the Security Office to see if I can tease an update out of them, but they’re a tight-lipped bunch and don’t usually share. It doesn’t hurt to pester them a little, to show that I still think it’s an issue, and to keep it somewhat top of mind for them.”

  They took the lift up to the Concourse mezzanine level and walked through the early morning crowd towards the Security Office. “I think it’d be best if you stay up on the mezzanine and overwatch while I move about. From the railing, you’ll have a clear view of almost everything on the Concourse, and you’ll be able to see the comings and goings from the lifts to the passenger cabins.” Will scratched his chin as he thought. “If someone is managing to avoid me, I’ll end up driving them like deer, and you should be able to spot them. We’ll keep in contact over Inta’s comms.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Inta chimed in over their earpieces at the mention of her name.

  “Not at the moment. We’ll let you know if we need anything, Honey.” Will said appreciatively.

  The front of the Office of the Dals Security team was an entire wall made of one-way gss, so they could observe without directly being observed, though Will was sure that most of their watching was done through countless video feeds coming in from all over the Dals.

  “Wait here and keep an eye out,” Will directed June. “I’ll only be a couple of minutes, then we’ll start in earnest.” He pulled her close, pressing her body to his. “I almost forgot how much I like working closely with you,” he whispered in her ear.

  “You were working pretty close st night, if I remember correctly.” June smiled devilishly.

  “Mmm that's right, how could I forget?” Will joked but then grew sober. “Thank you. Not just for helping today, but for everything.”

  June smiled and softly brushed Will’s cheek. “Remember, Love, we are all Bonded which means we never have to be or do anything alone again.” She pced a soft kiss on his lips. “Now get going.” She said, releasing him, and swatted his ass lightly as he turned to the Security Office.

  Smiling, Will pulled open the mirrored gss door to the Office and entered and was greeted by the low cacophony of dozens of conversations from all over the office. There was a long counter with a couple of officers speaking with a few passengers over it and a small waiting area off to the right, the dozen or so seats currently unoccupied. To the left of the front counter was a secured door allowing access to the reception area from the open office area behind the counter. The short, brown hair officer he usually spoke with each morning happened to be free, so he approached the counter and greeted her with a friendly hello. “Good Morning Officer Fairbanks; how are you today?”

  “I am well, Mr. Foucault," she said, falling into the familiar pattern with him. “And have you found anything in your ship-wide roving yesterday?” she asked, aware of his activities from Security surveilnce.

  “No luck yet, but I brought along help today, so who knows.” He said, smiling as he and Fairbanks looked out through the one-way gss at June, who seemed oblivious, looking out over the mezzanine railing at the crowd below.

  “She’s cute,” June mischievously told Will over his earpiece. He smiled, knowing a little thing like one-way gss didn’t hamper her sight.

  “Any news on the pirate front?” Will asked Fairbanks the same question he asked her every morning. As Fairbanks began to respond in the negative once again, Will’s senses lit up as the unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach finally made its presence known. He gazed out at June, who caught the subtle change in his expression.

  “Got something?” She asked, now on high alert. He nodded imperceptibly to acknowledge her, then scanned around until he identified the source of his discomfort. Behind the front counter, a dozen or so desks were arranged in a grid pattern, most of which were occupied with officers doing paperwork or conversing with other officers. Will zeroed in on a man standing with his back to Will, trying to chat up a disinterested officer seated at her desk. He was out of uniform, his hair wet and slicked straight back as if fresh from a shower, and he carried a duffle bag, apparently at the end of his shift, trying unsuccessfully to convince the seated officer to get drinks ter.

  After being shot down, he waved and said goodbye, to which she unenthusiastically gave him a half smile and said goodbye as well.

  “Well, I’m off,” Will said to Fairbanks. “I’ll probably see you tomorrow.”

  She smiled unreservedly and responded, “Very good, Mr. Foucault. Have a good day.”

  Will watched the man approach the front of the office out of the corner of his eye and timed his exit so he would be just in front of him. Will thought quickly; then, as the off-duty officer was about to open the secured door to the back of the office, Will reached into his ear, removed his earpiece, and palmed it.

  By the time the officer opened his door, Will was opening the gss door leading to the mezzanine. He turned and, in faux surprise, said, “Oh, uh, after you.”

  The disappointed-looking officer didn’t pay Will much attention as his fresh rejection occupied his mind and absentmindedly said, “Thanks.” Then he passed Will on his way out the door, almost brushing up against him. As he passed, Will dropped his earpiece into an open pouch of the man’s duffle bag and followed him out, and then went to where June was standing pointedly looking out over the crowd in the Concourse below, rather than the off-duty officer, heading away down the mezzanine.

  “Did you get a good look at him?” Will asked as June rested her elbows on the railing next to Will.

  “Yes. His aura says he’s very, very nervous about something, and he’s trying hard to py it cool.” June responded.

  “Ask Inta if she can track the earpiece and if she can send me another right away.” Will nodded his head in the general direction of the man, indicating they should follow him. The foot traffic was beginning to pick up, so they could follow a little closer without being noticed.

  “Inta says she can give us his position retive to ours, and to hold out your hand,” June said, following close behind Will. He cupped his right hand behind his back so June was shielding it with her body, and silver flowed down his arm from his bracer, covered his hand briefly, then flowed back up his arm, leaving behind another earpiece, which he quickly pced in his ear.

  “Inta, I need you to monitor that earpiece and filter out everything but what he says or is said to him; I need to know if he talks to anyone.’

  “You got it.” She responded in her usual cheerful tone.

  They followed their suspect to the lifts and loitered some distance away as he waited for one to arrive. Will gnced around and found the set of stairs nearby that he was looking for. “You ready for a stair run?” he said, smiling. June groaned, then nodded.

  The lift doors opened, and the officer shifted the duffle bag on his shoulder and stepped inside with a bunch of other people. The red arrow above the lift indicated it was traveling down, and as soon as the lift doors closed, Will and June hurried to the stairs. “Down we go,” he said, running down the stairs as fast as he could, taking three steps at a time, June right behind him.

  “Inta, I need to know when he gets off the lift,” Will said, panting as they sprinted down the stairs.

  “He’s still moving down, though it looks like the lift is making stops on the way down. You’re keeping up with it.” Inta said in their earpieces.

  They continued to race down, panting but hardly winded. Will briefly wondered what his hundred-meter dash time would be now with Inta’s influence until she announced, “He’s gotten off the lift, four floors down.”

  As he rushed down the stairs, Will’s pnted earpiece began picking up voices. “Oh, hey fels I didn’t expect to see you until ter.” The security officer's voice carried tones of surprise and a little concern.

  “The Boss wanted us to ‘touch base’ with you sooner. Have the schedules for tomorrow been changed?” A rough, deep voice asked, full of impatience.

  “Don’t worry. I verified it not more than an hour ago. They’re just like I id out for you guys, no changes,” the officer said, trying to pcate the other man.

  “Good,” was all the reply he got.

  Then suddenly, there were sounds of scuffling and of the officer yelling, “Hey, wait a minute, get your hands off.” He was cut off as they heard a sound that was a mix of wet-sounding thuds, like the smashing of a watermelon, followed by the rustling thump of the duffle bag being dropped to the floor.

  “Come on, let’s get rid of this. Don’t forget his bag.” They heard the bag being picked back up, followed by the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. Will and June made it to the floor where the officer was.

  They burst through the door, and Will called, “Inta?” looking for guidance.

  “Left, then the second right, about a hundred meters down the corridor. Hurry, they’re moving fast.” Inta called out directions.

  They sprinted down the empty hallway and followed Inta’s directions. Will and June ran the cabin doors on either side, practically a blur. They stopped when they came to a rge, fresh pool of blood on the carpet, mixed with a small amount of what appeared to be skull and gray matter. They paused momentarily as they could see a trail of blood leading onward, so they hurried on.

  As Will and June ran, the bloody trail thinned and then disappeared, the security officer finally bleeding completely out. “They went through the maintenance hatch on your left,” Inta called out directions.

  They found the maintenance hatch closed and locked, and the security keypad on the wall beside it illuminated in red, indicating it was locked. “Inta, can you open it?” June asked in a hurried tone.

  “I’m not connected to Dals’ network, and the security pads don’t allow remote connections.” She replied quickly. Will squinted his eyes, backed to the far wall opposite the hatch, and then unched himself at it, ramming it with his shoulder. The hatch door shuttered and dented from the impact, and then Will backed up and charged it again. This time, the hatch squealed in distress as its shape was distorted from Will’s impact, and it tore off its hinges.

  “Holy Shit, Will!” June excimed in surprise as he stepped through the shattered hatchway. She followed him quickly through. The maintenance corridor wasn’t wide and open like the cabin access hallways; it was cramped and narrow, with pipes and conduits of various colors running along the walls. There was barely enough room to walk through; Will had to stoop just a little as he entered.

  “Straight for a bit, then right.” Inta’s voice directed over their earpieces. They hurried down the tight passageway and took the corner at full speed. “They’ve stopped. Oh no, it’s an airlock.” Inta gasped. They ran hard, bent over slightly, and quickly arrived at the airlock, already cycling. The passage was empty in front of the airlock door, and peering in through the small window on the door, they saw a slumped body and a duffle bag on the airlock floor.

  June rushed to the controls and found someone had overridden the safety interlocks. Then they heard a ‘whoosh-thump’ as the airlock explosively decompressed, jettisoning its contents into space. They watched the security officer's body and duffle tumble end over end away from the ship towards the stream of rainbow-streaking stars. As the body crossed the boundary of the warp field carrying the ferry through FTL, it was shredded on an atomic level to be scattered into space in the ferry’s wake.

  Will clenched his fist and smmed it into the airlock door in frustration. “Fuck!” He excimed. Then, turning to June, “Come on, we’ve got to catch them.” They ran on down the maintenance corridor until they came to a tee. “Inta?” Will said, looking for guidance.

  “I don’t know Will,” Inta said apologetically. “I was tracking the earpiece in the duffle bag. Nestia’s sensors can’t penetrate the interference created by all of Dals' systems.” Will sighed in frustration.

  “Take the left, I’ll go right,” June said, and Will nodded. They split up, running hard in opposite directions.

  Will ran and came to another junction, and he stopped and closed his eyes for a moment, then ran left. He came another. Left. Another. Right. Soon, he was completely turned around in the byrinthine belly of the Dals maintenance ways, no longer sure which way to go. He stopped after fifteen minutes of running through the twisting and turning passageways. “June, any luck?” He asked hopefully over comms.

  “Nope, no sign of them,” she responded with a frustration in her voice that matched Will’s mood.

  Will leaned against the wall, breathing hard from all the running. “Ugh. What a mess.” He said, wiping his hand down over his face in frustration. He regrouped his thoughts to the task at hand. “We can’t be seen here. There’s no way Security is going to buy that we didn’t have anything to do with that officer’s death, and we can’t afford to be locked up when we know something is going down tomorrow.”

  He pushed off the wall and paced back and forth in the tight corridor, looking for a solution. There was simply too much distance and too many people between them and the Nestia to be able to get back without being seen.

  June crouched down on her haunches in another part of the twisting byrinth of maintenance corridors, thinking the same thing. She scratched her forehead, trying to conjure a pn, and then she gnced down at her forearm and saw her new silver bracer. An idea came to mind. “Ben, are your new pressure suit designs ready?” she asked, with a hint of hope in her voice.

  He had been listening intently over comms during their chase and responded immediately. “Very nearly, I probably have another couple of hours of work to finish up.” He realized what June had in mind. “Inta, can you fill in the gaps of the design with filler material and dispce them anyway?”

  “Yes, yes I can. Hold on.” Inta said excitedly. “It’ll take a few moments to increase levels in the power core.” As she spoke, the low thrumming of the core grew louder, beginning to ramp up.

  June rested against the wall of the narrow corridor. As she sat there, she thought she heard panicked voices in the distance. “You better hurry. It sounds like I’m going to have company in a minute here.”

  After a few moments, Inta called back over the comms link. “Okay I’m ready, but I can only do one at a time.”

  “Bring June home first. I’m clear where I am for at least a few more minutes,” Will said as he tried his best to blend into the shadows. He, too, heard voices getting closer and coming down the corridors towards him.

  June stood up straight in the middle of the passageway. “I’m ready, Inta.” A silver film poured down and up her arm from her bracer, covering her as the edge of the material raced over her body. It flowed down her torso and legs, down over her other arm, and finally up and over her head and face, blinding her. Her form appeared to shrink into the distance without moving until no trace of her was left, just a moment before four security officers came around the corner with ser rifles raised, sweeping through where she had just been standing.

  “We got June,” Ben called over the comms.

  “Just a moment Will, I need to generate more power,” Inta warned, a note of distress in her voice.

  The sound of many boots cnking on the metal floor pting was getting uncomfortably close. “I’ve got to move,” Will said, and as quick and quietly as he could manage, he ran off in the opposite direction of the oncoming footsteps. He only made it a short distance before he heard boots clunking from the other direction as well.

  With more than a little concern in his voice, Will whispered, “Now would be a good time.” He crouched low and pressed against the wall, trying to become invisible.

  “Okay, ready. Here we go.” Silver poured over Will from his bracer as he crouched, and then he was pulled through 4-D space back to the Nestia a breath before the two Security details met where Will had just been.

  The short ride through 4-D space scrambled his equilibrium, and when his head and face were uncovered, he fell over from dizziness and vomited onto the Engineering room floor. Ben rushed over, rubbed his back, comforted him, and gave him a towel to wipe his mouth. He looked across the floor and saw that June was in a simir state, with Inta tending to her.

  “That was not as fun as you made it sound, Inta.” Will joked weakly. With Ben’s assistance, Will rolled onto his butt and rested his elbows on his knees, recovering his senses. June looked like she was already recovering and started to get back on her feet. Will took a breath, then said. “We have a lot to pn to get ready for tomorrow.”

  ****

  Three separate video feeds dispying different angles of the graceful-looking, white shuttle berthed in Maintenance Bay B were on rge screens in Compaan’s control room. A few dozen body cam joined these feeds in smaller windows on several other monitors. A rge clock on the wall over the monitors dispyed the ship’s time and a countdown, currently at one hour and forty-five minutes.

  Compaan paced in the tight space of his makeshift op-center, gring at the clock, willing time to move faster. The st twenty-four hours had been hell. This entire operation had almost unraveled due to the marks zeroing in on one of his paid informants, which would have led them straight to his operation. His cutting of that particur loose thread had kicked the hornet’s nest and had Security Detail crawling all over the ship, severely hampering his ability to operate.

  Even though Dals Security had doubled patrols, Compaan’s strike teams were well positioned and could handle the extra security even if they had tripled it. All teams were in position and ready to execute at his ‘Go’ signal.

  “Marks are on the move,” one of his men at the monitor consoles called over comms. Compaan watched the monitors as the shuttle door opened in that strange, fluid-like way. The four marks stepped down the short stairs and made their way to the tram to take them to the Concourse for their usual breakfast. They had seen ‘Turtleneck’ head to her shift at the bookstore earlier, so now the target was empty and soon would be his.

  He followed their progress through several hidden cameras until he watched the four enter the same restaurant they ate at every morning. Even if they ran back now, it would take them at least fifteen minutes to get back to their shuttle once they knew something was wrong, but it would be gone in five.

  “Attention all passengers and crew. This is Captain Ugaki. Please be aware that docking procedures will begin in thirty minutes. Please minimize your time in all hangars so that the crew can expedite loading and unloading and we can get underway on schedule.”

  His teams were briefed that the Captain’s announcement was the final cue to check in, and the indicators from all teams lit up on the control screen confirmed that all teams were in position and ready. These st few minutes before action was initiated were always the roughest on his nerves, not that he ever let any of his crew see it. Compaan anxiously waited for the countdown clock to creep down.

  The atmospheric force shields activated with perfect timing as the countdown clock hit zero. And Compaan watched as the bay doors slowly opened. “Teams, begin your approach," he commanded over the comms, watching from various body and wide-angle cameras as two teams dressed in maintenance personnel jumpsuits approached the target along either wall. They were all carrying tool bags or rge bck duffle bags, not hurrying but moving quickly.

  “Distraction team, go in five, four, three, two, one, Execute.” On command, explosions ripped through several passenger cabins in scattered locations throughout the ferry. The hallway doors to each of these had been propped open slightly, so when the explosives went off, not only did it vent the air in the cabins to the vacuum of space, but also the connected hallway. A few unlucky passengers were in the hallways at the time and were knocked to the floor with the force of the air rushing into space until the emergency atmo force shield sprang to life, isoting the rooms exposed to space.

  The adjoining rooms from the bsts had managed to survive intact, and the only injuries sustained were some sprains and concussions from falls caused by the sudden rush of air. Warning sirens sounded all over the ferry, to which the Security and engineering teams immediately responded, rushing to the incident sites like hornets responding to an attack on their hive.

  The five Security team members in the office overlooking Maintenance Bay B were frantically calling the main office or other remote offices to find out what happened and what assistance they could provide. They were, therefore, caught by surprise when the door lock to their office chimed, the indicators turned green, and three men quickly stepped into the office, brandishing rifles.

  The two officers closest gaped at them in surprise, still holding the phone receivers to their ears, when ser bolts shed out, punching smoking holes directly through their center of mass, bsting the console in front of them, causing it to spark and catch fire. The intruders turned their guns on the rest of the officers, catching the next officer in the head as she tried to dive for cover. The st two officers managed to jump up and draw their pistols before receiving a full volley of ser bolts, riddling their bodies with smoking holes, causing them to fall back against the window and slowly slump down to the floor. “Maintenance Security neutralized.” One of the gunmen reported over comms.

  At the first sound of weapons fire, the faux maintenance crew carrying tool bags removed snub-nosed rifles and formed a fire team, moving with precision towards their target. Maintenance personnel ran in the opposite direction while the fire team approached the steps of the white shuttle.

  “Four minutes,” Compaan called out over the comms. “Breach team, go.”

  One of the attackers, carrying a rge duffle bag, stopped just behind the fire team covering the area. He removed a shoebox-sized device from his duffle bag and swiftly ran up the short steps to the side of the shuttle. He pced it on the surface of the door and pressed a button, magnetically locking it to the door. Then, he pressed two more buttons and ran back down the stairs, some distance away, followed by the fire team to find cover.

  The device beeped three times and then exploded into an enormous fireball intended to breach the door. The fire team formed back up and swiftly covered the distance to the shuttle’s stairs. When the smoke cleared, the door was nowhere to be found. They ran up the stairs and into the shuttle, stepping over small chunks of the door on the floor. They swept through the sitting area and bunk room, decring, “All Clear!”

  “Three minutes. Hijack team, go.” Compaan called out.

  The other two men carrying duffle bags rushed into the shuttle, and while one immediately sat at the controls, the other unpacked the bags. He removed several tools from the bag, a couple of pry bars, and a handheld electronic device with several leads coming off and handed them to the hijacker seated at the controls.

  He tried to work the pry bars into the console to lift the top but was frustrated to find that the construction of the console had no seams to pry into. So, he decided to try smashing a corner to create a leverage point, only to realize that the material was significantly tougher than he had encountered before. “Who armors control consoles?” he asked his assistant, who handed him a rge hammer.

  The three assaints from the Security office wasted no time. They came down to the hangar and took up defensive positions with the fire team just outside the shuttle door, clearly intending to board the shuttle with the rest of the attack teams for their escape.

  “A minute - thirty. Move your asses!” Compaan shouted through the comms.

  The hijacker at the console swung the rge hammer with all his might, but his blows barely cracked the surface of the control dispys. As he continued his attempts to access the control circuitry, the rest of the hijackers began donning helmets and locking them into the pressure suits they wore under their stolen jumpsuits.

  The hijacker at the controls rained down hammer blows frantically at the corner of the console, finally managing to break off a corner of the surface enough to see the internals and begin hotwiring the control.

  “Thirty seconds!” Compaan yelled as if the volume of voice alone would spur his teams to quicker action.

  The hijacker dropped his hammer and peered in through the small opening with a small fshlight. When he saw only strange crystals inside, he howled in frustration, “What the hell is all that? Where’s the wiring?” At that moment, the entire cabin became a maelstrom of chaos.

  ****

  “Remember,” Will said as they stood in the faux shuttle compartment's sitting room, “we are being watched, so we need to act like this is like every other trip outing. Rex, smile, and pretend we’re just getting breakfast.” Then he pulled them in for a group hug. We have a solid pn and the element of surprise. Everything will work out.”

  Will stepped back from the embrace. “Ok, show time,” he said, smiling. Inta opened the door, and they descended the short stairs as it closed behind them, then headed for the tram. Inta took hold of Ben’s hands and interced her fingers with his, while Will put his arm around June’s waist as she did the same with his. They boarded the tram to the Concourse, which stopped along the way to pick up a few other passengers starting their day.

  When they arrived at the Concourse, they headed to their usual breakfast spot, where they let the hostess seat them in the booth in the corner, as per usual, and ordered coffee. After the waiter delivered their drinks and left, Will nodded almost imperceptibly to Inta, who then excused herself and went to the restroom. A minute ter, June got up and followed Inta to the restroom, and then a short while after her, Ben excused himself and went.

  Will took one st sip of coffee, got up, headed to the restrooms at the back of the restaurant, went into a stall, and closed the door behind him. “Ready Inta.” Silver flowed over his body from his bracer like the day before, and he braced himself for the overwhelming disorientation of 4-D travel.

  When the silver second skin poured back into his bracer, he was back in Nestia’s Engineering compartment. The disorientation sent him reeling, and his knees threatened to buckle, but Inta was right there. She caught him around the waist and threw one of his arms over her shoulder, holding him up.

  “I must be getting used to this,” he said to Inta as he helped him into a nearby seat. He weathered a couple of minutes of nausea but managed to hold down the bile threatening to rise from his stomach. June and another instance of Inta were tending to Ben, who was still bent over vomiting. “It gets better,” Will called over to Ben, who smiled weakly and promptly vomited again.

  After a few minutes, Ben looked significantly less green and said to Inta, who was still doting on him, “I’m alright, I just needed a minute. Let’s get going.” He stood, his knees a little wobbly, Inta holding onto him for support. “Spock made it look so easy.” Inta raised one eyebrow in confusion. “Watched a lot of old Earth media at Old Mrs Jensen’s house when she was trying to keep me off the streets. She was obsessed with that stuff.”

  “Come on,” Will said, cpping Ben on the back as they headed off, leaving an Inta behind to clean up. “First stop, the armory.”

  They took the lift up a couple of decks, and This Inta led them up the hallway to a room in the forward portion of the deck. As the door melted open and they stepped through, they were greeted by the sight of several long rows of weapons secured to racks running along both walls. A row of gleaming white rifles were held in the racks pointing up while in front of each were side arms holstered in cubbies with a belt and holster made of brown leather-looking material hanging on hooks, enough for each of the pistols. The belts had a couple of buckles to adjust the height at which the holster hung and a smaller strap with a single buckle at the bottom to keep the holster tight to the wearer’s thigh, keeping it from bouncing around.

  About halfway into the room sat yet another Inta industriously at a table with a pistol in pieces she was still disassembling, a pile of finished weapons to one side. She didn’t look up or even acknowledge their presence, which seemed odd to June. No matter how many instances Inta spun up, she would usually blow a kiss or wink or show some sort of affection.

  The Inta that entered the room with them noticed June’s puzzlement. “I’m stretched a little thin to be able to fully control four bodies at once, so I’ve bubbled off enough to concentrate on the task at hand. That ‘me’ won’t be much of a conversationalist.” She expined.

  “Bubbled off? Like completely separate?” Ben asked, intrigued, always hungry to understand her inner workings.

  “Not separate, but more independent. If I were a program, she would be a subroutine I wrote to independently execute a function. Still connected, but I’m not fully there like I am with my other instances, down in Engineering or at the bookstore right now.” Ben nodded in understanding.

  Inta went to the table, picked up a rifle, and held it in front of her, dispying it with the solid, rounded end pointing at the floor. “These gravitic rifles and pistols work on the same principles as the Nestia’s gravitic sers and draw power from the ship’s core. Both the rifles and pistols have the same firepower, the main difference between the two is range, the rifle being able to fire about ten times farther than the pistols, about two thousand meters. If you need to, the firing range is selectable using this dial on the side.” She twisted it in demonstration, and it clicked several times as she adjusted it. “This selector here is to switch between single shot, burst, or full auto. For these, avaible power isn’t a concern, where they are connected to the power core, but in full auto, they will overheat; You’ll get about ten seconds of full auto before it will require a cool down. I’ve also added precursor fluid in the hand grips and stocks of these so that if needed, I can send them to you with just a moment’s notice.”

  Will stepped close to Inta and kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks, Honey. That was a perfect weapons brief. Is there any way we can test fire or shoot a few targets to get the feel of these?” He asked.

  “I’m afraid the best I can do is the ser catcher here.” She gestured to a squat box standing about waist height in the corner. “Just put the tip in and fire off a few shots.” She purred, grinning mischievously at the double entendre.

  “Insatiable, even now.” He said, leaning close, putting a hand on the small part of her back, and giving her a couple of kisses in the crook of her neck. Then he stepped back and shook his head to clear his mind, regaining a measure of self-control. He then picked up a rifle, examining the heft and weight distribution. “Not as heavy as I expected.” He said, walking over to the live-fire box.

  He inserted the tip of the weapon as instructed and first fired off a series of single shots, the rifle making a humming noise at the low end of the range of hearing with each shot. Satisfied, he selected burst mode and fired a few more times, then full auto until it overheated, requiring a cooldown. He noticed a little red indicator glowing on the weapon and waited a few seconds for it to blink off before firing another full volley until it required another cooldown. Will proceeded to do the same with the pistol and noted that the full auto fire duration was slightly shorter and required a longer cooldown period. “Probably best to use burst or single shot with the pistols.” He said to Will and June as he handed each of them a belt after putting one on himself.

  June and Ben both took turns firing their weapons into the ser catcher and, once satisfied, holstered their side arms as Will had already done.

  “Great job, Hon,” Will said to Inta as he slung the rifle over his shoulder.

  “I’ll keep processing these until I’ve reconditioned them all, just in case,” Inta said, gncing at her other self, industriously working silently at the table.

  “What about you? There are only three sets here?” Ben asked, suddenly realizing that she would be unarmed.

  “Don’t worry about me, I’m packing the biggest guns of the bunch of us.” She said, patting the wall meaning the entire ship. A wide smile broke out across her face, but it faded slightly. “Besides, I’m hoping that we can minimize the bloodshed if we can.”

  “We’ll do what we can, but our hands might be forced,” Will said soberly. “If I have to choose between them and us, I choose us.”

  Now armed and ready, the crew left ‘Silent Inta’ to her work and went up to the bridge. When they arrived, the rge viewport dispyed a wide-angle view of the Maintenance bay, and they could see that Inta was busy scanning every person in the area. Square blue overys surrounded each person with a small still frame picture of their face and a list of personal details Inta had gleaned from monitoring everything since they arrived.

  “This is perfect. We can monitor the entire bay from here, and at the first sign of trouble, we’ll be ready.” June said.

  “I’m betting that we won’t have to wait long,” Will said as he dropped into his usual seat.

  They sat on the bridge, watching the maintenance crews' comings and goings, all of them feeling the tension in the air slowly ratchet up as they waited for the unknown assaints to make their move. June fidgeted with her hands while Ben absentmindedly swiveled his seat back and forth. Will stared out the forward viewport intently, hardly blinking.

  In an attempt to break the tense atmosphere, she asked, “Does anyone need something to drink? I could go get some coffee from the …” Before she could finish the sentence, the sensors picked up on the anomalous behavior of some of the maintenance crew. There were two groups of people wearing maintenance jumpsuits whom Inta had never logged their faces as being in the engineering bay before, walking casually in their direction, carrying bags.

  “What are they carrying?” Ben asked.

  “Let's find out,” Inta replied, engaging Nestia’s active scanners.

  “Weapons!” She said in arm, and just as she spoke, intense fshes of ser fire could be seen through the security office windows overlooking the hangar bay; they were momentarily stunned as they watched as two of the officers were murdered and fell to the floor of the office out of sight.

  “Oh god.” June gasped, covering her mouth in shock at the brutality of the attack.

  The fake maintenance workers abandoned their pretense, drew the weapons concealed in their bags, formed a fire team, and headed directly for the Nestia.

  “This is it! Get to the airlock!” Will commanded as he leaped up, grabbing his rifle. Ben, June, and Inta followed suit. They ran down the corridor a short way to the concealed door of the faux shuttle, and when Inta arrived, she made both the hidden door and the outer door one-way transparent, like the view screen on the bridge, as they had discussed earlier. She also pulled up a side-long view of the stairs on the small terminal next to the door for an additional perspective.

  They watched the fire team secure the perimeter around the stairs leading up to the door, then one of the men ran up the stairs, attached a shoebox-sized device to the door, and ran back down the stairs for cover.

  The device exploded into a massive fireball, sending tremors through the entire ship. It also managed to punch a fist-sized hole in the outer door.

  Will, thinking quick, said, “Inta, open the door, let them in.” She did so before the smoke could clear, giving their adversaries easy access.

  Through the one-way transparent inner door, they watch three members of the fire team storm in and sweep the faux shuttle, ready to gun down any who might be inside.

  “Will?” June said, looking at him for direction.

  “Not yet. Give them a moment to get comfortable.” He said coldly.

  A scant few seconds ticked past; then, two more men rushed in carrying rge duffle bags. As they began to work at cracking into the control console, June asked again, “Will?” a little more urgently.

  “Almost," he replied, staring intently at the intruders just feet from them beyond the hidden door.

  The two working over the console began to get frantic and started smashing it with a rge hammer while the rest of their team began putting on helmets in preparation to escape with a ship with a blown open door.

  “Get ready,” Will said. “June, get low on the floor and cut their legs out from under them. Ben and I will stay high. Inta, when I say, open small ports in the door to fire through.”

  He held his breath for a moment, then shouted, “NOW!”

  Inta opened the ports, and they immediately began to open fire. Purple bolts nced through the two men at the controls, their flesh exploding into a pink mist where Ben and Will’s bolts zipped through them.

  June fired three shots in quick succession, striking each of the armed attackers in the shin, sending them tumbling to the floor, blood pouring out of the bloody stumps of their legs. As they fell, they fired wildly, spraying the interior of the faux shuttle with fiery red ser bolts, destroying the two pilots' seats and hitting the slumping bodies of the two hijackers trying to hot-wire the controls.

  Almost immediately, the others outside ran up the stairs, guns swinging back and forth wildly, looking for a target, but before they even made the st step, Will, Ben, and June punched a series of holes through him, spraying his comrade behind him with blood and gore that rocketed out of his back, accelerated by the gravitic force of the purple ser beams.

  A hail of red ser bolts rained in through the open door as the assaints returned fire. “Cover!” Will yelled, Ben and June ducking to one side of the door in an instant. Laser fire continued to pelt the inside of the faux shuttle, then shortly followed by a grenade thrown inside, cttering on the floor.

  Before Will had a chance to say anything, Inta snapped the ports in the inner door shut a fraction of a moment before the grenade went off, sending shrapnel fragments bsting through the entire compartment of the faux shuttle, shredding everything in the bst radius.

  Will stood there wide-eyed for a moment, terrified that one of them might have gotten hurt. But as he looked around this side of the door, he saw that everyone was unscathed but a little shaken. “Good thing Nestia is tough as nails!” he said, cracking a smile even as his hands shook from adrenaline overload. The other smiled back, nerves shaken but uninjured.

  On the camera feed dispyed on the terminal monitor next to the inner door, Will saw six more assaints, lined up three on each side of the stairs, pressed tight against the ship’s hull, while the point man fished out a small periscope to peek around the corner of the doorway into the ship.

  After visually confirming that everything within sight through the doorway was destroyed and dead, the point man waved a hand signal then one gunman from either side of the stairs cautiously crept up and slowly entered the devastated interior.

  Will’s Eyes fshed with an idea. “Inta once they’re inside close the door and seal them in. Ben, come with me, and let’s surprise them from the back door.” Ben fshed Will a wolfish grin.

  “We’ll make sure our guests behave,” Inta said with that mischievous smile of hers, then Will and Ben ran down the corridor to the lift, heading to the hangar and faux cargo hold.

  Will and Ben entered the lift and felt it accelerate down, traveling much faster than normal, for which Will silently thanked Inta. As soon as the doors were open, they sprinted across the wide-open hangar to the odd boxy walls of the fake cargo bay. Before Will could ask, a door opened, and they ran in, past the transponder strapped down and secured in the corner.

  “Inta, please open the outer doors just enough so that we can slip out,” Will asked, and a doorway melted open just rge enough for Will and Ben to slip through. They silently slipped out and quietly dropped to the maintenance hangar floor. Will carefully peeked around one of the ship’s back fins in time to see two of the six armed men step tentatively inside.

  Mentally counting to three, Will whispered over his comms, “Seal them in.” and watched as panic looks crossed the faces of the four remaining attackers outside.

  They were still taking cover pressed against the hull as Will carefully lined up a shot and pulled the trigger. A bolt of purple shot out and punched cleanly through the neck and head of the two nearest attackers, spraying the stairs and the other two gunmen with high-velocity blood.

  They turned and shouted in surprise, returning fire, pelting the aft fin with ser fire, scorching and pitting the gleaming white metal, forcing Will to duck for cover. Ben swung around Will behind the cover of the fin; then, together, they popped up, returning fire.

  Cut off, with time running out and now the numbers no longer in their favor, the attackers pulled back, providing each other cover fire as they retreated across the maintenance hangar.

  Will and Ben were pinned down behind Nestia’s fin and couldn’t move as the gunmen retreated while continuing their barrage of fire. Will looked around desperately for a way to advance on the gunmen, but there wasn’t enough cover to cross the open space without taking a hit.

  Inside Nestia, June and Inta watched the two gunmen trapped inside the grisly chamber of death and destruction that was once the faux shuttle. They beat on the now sealed outer door, once again opaque, with the butts of their rifles, their action becoming more panicked as the moments passed. They then stood back from the door standing side by side, then unleashed a flurry of ser fire, in a st-ditch attempt at escape. They managed to scorch and pit the surface of the white metal of the door, but it held fast, trapping them inside.

  June turned her attention to the scene outside, dispyed on the wall terminal. She was watching the remaining gunmen retreat across the maintenance hangar, taking cover next to two maintenance pods. Gncing at the open maintenance bay hangar doors, she suddenly realized their next move.

  Outside, Ben and Will returned fire as best they could from across the open space of the maintenance bay when suddenly the incoming fire ceased. He risked a quick look from behind the edge of the fin providing cover, and to his dismay, he couldn’t see the gunmen anywhere. He looked all around, worried they were circling to fnk Will and Ben, or finding another vantage point to fire, when he heard the unmistakable sound of engines firing up.

  Peering back out again from behind the fin, he caught sight of the source of the engine sounds as two of the maintenance pods lifted off and quickly spun around and raced across the hangar, flying full speed towards the open hangar doors.

  “Fuck!” Will shouted in anger, raised his rifle, and fired on the fleeing pods, but they were through the atmospheric force barrier and out into space before he nded a shot.

  Just then, Nestia’s hangar door opened wide, and a rge silver object flew out, banked hard, and shot into space in pursuit. “I’ve got the bastards.” June’s voice said over their earpieces.

  As she flew out of the maintenance hangar, “Fuck Yeah!” June whooped as the hangar entrance shrank away behind her. To her starboard, she saw hundreds of ships of various sizes all queued up, patiently waiting for their turn to dock.

  She threw the silver pod into a barrel roll, then a hard turn left and then right, ughing maniacally all the way. It was everything she had hoped it would be, and she danced her pod around like a hummingbird. Then she remembered the pursuit and the need to hunt down her quarry, so set aside the urge to py and got down to business.

  “Inta are you tracking them?” She asked over comms. Two target overys suddenly appeared on her viewport.

  “I got ya.” Inta chirped.

  June grinned wickedly. “Love you, Silver Girl.” She decred, then accelerated after them.

  The maintenance pods were slow and stodgy, built for careful, precise maneuvering for ferry repairs, not speed or combat. June swiftly overtook the trailing maintenance pod and proceeded to hang on its six. She then opened a broadcast channel and transmitted, “Rogue maintenance pod, come to a full stop and shut down your engines. If you do not comply, you will be fired upon. This is your only warning.”

  The slow maintenance pod abruptly changed course, heading back towards the lines of ships in the queue, possibly hoping to lose June in the crowd, but it was too slow and far away from the other ships.

  “Okay, have it your way.” She said to herself. June took careful aim, and two well-aimed shots bsted the maintenance pod's engines cleanly leaving the pilot and pod marooned. June changed her focus to the other pod and streaked after it.

  The maintenance pod seemed to be heading to an empty stretch of space a couple of thousand klicks away from the ferry and ship traffic. June closed rapidly on it, and just as she was settling in behind it, ready to give her ultimatum again, a brilliant light fsh directly in front of the fleeing pod momentarily blinded her.

  As her eyes readjusted, she saw that a small destroyer had just jumped into the system, ridiculously close to traffic and the local gravity well, which could have ended very badly. She checked her console, and it did not have a transponder broadcast, which meant one thing: pirates.

  “June, the pods are transmitting a pickup request!” Inta warned, decoding their transmissions. But before June could react, two enormous ser bsts were fired from the destroyer, obliterating both pods, narrowly missing June, and showering her pod with debris.

  The destroyer then swiftly turned about and jumped away into FTL. The subspace wake from the departing ship washed over June’s pod, knocking her about the little cockpit. “What the hell was that?” She blurted, dazed by the rapid turn of events.

  “Silver fighter, slow your speed and follow the escorts back to the ferry. Any aggressive actions will not be tolerated.” June looked out to her left and right, and she saw that she was now fnked by the ferry’s Defender css fighters, who finally managed to deploy after the action was over.

  “Better te than never,” June said to herself glumly. “I read you, Defenders. I will comply.” She broadcasted over comms. They flew in formation the short distance back to the ferry, but instead of heading to the maintenance bay hangar, they approached one several decks below it. As they got close, she could see more than a hundred of the Defenders lined up, ready for flight with many more berthed behind them.

  They brought her into the Defender hangar and nded on the deck just inside the Atmo barrier. She powered the pod down, and its silver skin shimmered away to reveal the bright white hull. As soon as the three craft touched down, they were swarmed by security personnel, all armed and looking extremely nervous.

  “Out of the ship, Now!” A sergeant barked.

  Before opening her hatch, she removed her sidearm and set it on her console so that she would seem less dangerous. June unclipped her harness, pressed the hatch release, and raised her hands over her head as the gull wing slowly opened, revealing a dozen rifles pointing directly at her.

  She smiled sweetly and said, “Hi there. And… I’m sorry?”