Adrift in Space

"Seaskimmer," she slid over and looked into the hall, "no one else."

She pointed the phaser at him and fired.

"Anna," Angie said in surprise, "did you kill him?"

"Not on max," her voice offered disappointment.

She slid the door hard into his head before she shifted it with her foot and latched the doors.

"Angie, how are they?"

"Iris is dead."

"At least shome good news," muttered Brittany before she howled again when Anna blindsided her with a slap upside her head.

"Concussion, this one, alive. But out of it."

"Great," Peter muttered, "we're right out of reactor techs. Brittany... BRITTANY!"

"Wha... what?"

"What's fighting me? I'm trying to throttle down the reactor. It's all we can do with you morons pulling interlocks. Half the ops supercomputers are down and they're losing coolant rapidly. More will shut down. If I drop the reactors to standby they'll keep the stealth field but we'll lose gravity. At least we'll stay in orbit and keep minimal life support, fine if most everyone evacuated. But something's in the way. And I'm pretty sure if anyone was down in the reactor ops room they're dead. Fried, irradiated, probably both."

"Good job, blue eyesh," Anna slapped her again.

"Anna, not helping...," she snorted at him, "what's fighting me?"

"My agents," Brittany said, her voice had a modicum of pride but then it went soft, "have a... bug."

"A bug?" It was a tone he'd used a couple of times with her, disdainful and dismissive, when she'd made errors from being too hasty and thinking she'd had the solution.

"Yes, I coded them to ignore orders from you, from Anna. Only accept orders from me. But I erred, I ordered them to accept no orders once we'd forced the first reactor error. We were trying to fix that when you arrived. But, we failed and in reaction it removed the rest of the blocks. Now it's blocked us out too."

"Paetor, the evacuashion?"

"A sec," he scrolled, "looks like everyone who's going is gone. I'd locked shuttle bay 3B. Bernard is there and blue-eye's brother just got there. They can't get out. Your brother left you behind, Brittany, he ran. Well, trying to. Anyway, we need reactor techs. Where are they? They'll need radiation suits, need someone who knows their way around down there. Otherwise your fucked code is going to run them to overload and we become a meteor."

"They're in a room, all unconscious. Charles took them out, zapped them all."

"Angie, go get a phaser off of Hardy," Anna spoke Sylvan to be clear, "and Kim. Do you have something in your kit that'll wake people up?"

She looked, nodded and pulled out a handful of pinprick injectors.

"Good. Use your tape and wrap Brittany's hands then have her take you to them. Feel free to shoot her at anytime after that. Wake them up and hurry."

Angie made a show of manipulating the setting level to show she knew how to use it. Brittany appealed to Peter with her eyes but he glared at her then turned back to his padlet. Kim handed her a wad of gauze from the kit and she wiped at the blood as she stood. It had mostly stopped flowing, then the changeling quickly pulled her hands behind her back and did a figure eight with the medical tape around her wrists.

"Lead on, bitch," Angie's voice had a hardness Peter had never suspected as she poked Brittany in the lower back with the phaser. Kim led and opened the door, grimaced at the sight of Seaskimmer's prone body before they stepped around it and the door closed.

"Ish there any hope?" Anna's body softened with just the two of them left in the room, she stood close and put her left arm around his shoulders.

"If you go now you can make an evac ball," Peter answered as he checked the reactor stats, "I could fight my way around her code but not in the next ten minutes."

Anna's wristlet chirped and she said "yesh?"

After a moment she let out a long, slow breath. She hurriedly released catches and tossed the body armor away onto the pile of corpses in the corner.

"Feel free to shoot Brittany on max. Wake up who you can. Hurry," she tapped her wristlet.

"Most are dead. These fuckers couldn't do anything right..."

"Go, Anna, if you hurry you might make an evac ball."

"Earth will know we are here without a doubt," she said with a chuckle, "I will not go. Pleashe keep trying."

"Do my fingers look like they're resting?" She laughed and for the first time kissed his cheek as he typed for a moment before he studied a screen full of code. She rested her chin on his shoulder and nuzzled his neck, slipped the phaser into her pocket and put her right hand across his chest. He met it with his left hand as his right worked the padlet.

"Anna, how is Carole? She mostly ignores my emails and you put up that block on me seeing info about her."

"Shae ashked for that," Peter huffed, "you could have bypashed it."

"Didn't seem right to do that...," Anna kissed his cheek again.

"She found her passion, she teaches the young onesh, not just humansh. Ralph and Catanie's children were in her classh lasht term. She shpeaks our language better than you ever would."

"Good. I'm happy about that. Two goons forced us into an invisible shuttle, who'd have guessed all this would come," he squeezed Anna's hand and had it returned.

"Whay did we never fuck?"

"Ian," Peter said softly as he scrolled the screen, "I couldn't replace him."

She exhaled slowly, kissed his cheek.

"No," barely more than a whisper, "you could have. That wash whay. Vikrangia maede that clear to mae. Shae deservesh you more, though, y

ou should be with her."

Before he could respond a bright red window appeared on the padlet and Anna held him as the artificial gravity quit then shifted and they pushed forward hard. Peter used his thighs to hold them at the table and Anna braced her right hand against the table edge. The structure groaned as it quickly slewed to their left at the same time and pushed Anna into Peter before some semblance of gravity returned.

Iris's corpse and the unconscious male slid sideways along the floor to collide together against the wall. The row of keyboards and mice on the table slid to the ends of their cables and the larger pile of bodies at the far corner slid diagonally to the wall behind the pair.

"What wash that?"

"One of the reactors just blew, took out a third of the farms," Anna huffed at his grunted explanation, "and caused another spasm in the gravity generator. Nothing I read about your tech said they could do that."

"Ash I said they cannot. Do not believe what ish happeniang."

"SHIIT," they said in unison as the satellite seemingly slammed on the brakes. Peter barely kept his padlet in place but he groaned as the table edge pressed against his bruised abdomen. A split second later the lights in the room went off and they were left with a few UV strips. More red warnings on his padlet.

"Anna," he said slowly to her grunted acknowledgement, "tell Kim and Angie to run, go. We're going down. Please, go."

He tapped furiously and pulled up an orbital diagram. She tapped her wristlet a couple of times.

"I cannot get them," her voice reminded him of her sadness on Ian's birthday, "I hope they will maike it. Where will we land?"

The ship jerked again and Peter shouted in frustration.

"Land? Uh, yeah. Land... What? Oh, you goddam blue-eyed piece of shi..."

"Ok, crash. Shae ish. You have bad taishte. Why?"

"Her bug-ridden AI just aimed us for Pike Place Market."

"Where?"

"We were headed for the Pacific, off Washington. It just slowed us to hit downtown Seattle. Anna, it's time for the beacon, the comm lasers are useless. I will... adjust this. Ok, I have you connected. Whenever."

He went back to his padlet.

"This is Anna Lightbringer, Council President of the Second Expedition. I am with Paetor Miller, my pet human and fuck toy," he snorted as his fingers worked as she continued her statement that would be recorded and launched in a small probe to hopefully be recovered. They bounced as she spoke and he fought the rogue agent.

"Done," he nodded at her directive and tapped a button. He hoped the confirmation of its release was correct but nothing else could be done.

"Where?"

"Sulphur. Or Denio. Northern Nevada. Well, maybe southern Oregon. But empty. As empty as it gets. Might be a couple campers or prospectors. No one else."

"Good. Maiby thaey will think us a maeteor."

"Stealth field still up. Somehow. I just have to keep fighting this fucker another minute, then..."

"Then?"

"We're locked in."

The entire structure groaned, bright red warnings showed they'd met Earth's atmosphere.

"Stealth field gone. Everyone down there sees us now. Course, we're on fire... I'm almost going home, zip past the Valley. They'll see us."

"Can you do anythaing else?"

He sat back and pulled the borrowed padlet out of his pouch and tossed it onto the table. He tapped his primary padlet a couple of times and all of the alerts and windows disappeared, replaced with two lines of text.

'Carole's crazy green eyes.'

'Tall. So pale. Green eyes.'

"No. And they can't either," he slid the padlet into his pouch.

She pushed his chair back and threw herself onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck, one of his hands landed between her shoulder blades, the other the top of her ass, alien but shapely.

The shock of their kiss was strong but neither backed off. After the initial crush their mouths relaxed and their tongues slowly rotated around one another and drove electricity through both as the ship shimmied and groaned around them. Audible alarms wailed but died quickly. Their chair rolled backwards for a moment before it left the floor in a gentle rise and the twined couple floated off.

They never broke the kiss.

Postscript

"... I am with Paetor Miller, my pet human and fuck toy."

Vikrangia Zarcharnerr's, Vicki Skyburster's, cheeks were moist but the freely running tears had ended days before, replaced with cold anger as she sat in her darkened quarters and listened to the recovered message.

"... Our home, Highrider, is dead. Killed by treachery. We have defeated the plotters but their damage was without wit or thought and too severe. I hope most of our paeple escaped but I despair for Kim and Angie and others. Paetor has denied them their last cruelty and directed us to crash in the wilderness, not in a city. I do not grieve for the Duskrider siblings or Seaskimmer siblings, chief in responsibility. Nor the others. This is all terrible. But worse is the nanomachines that they've sent to Earth that are designed to kill. But not just humans..."

Only thirty five had gone down with Highrider. Over two hundred had escaped in a couple of shuttles and in the little evac balls to be scooped up when the following satellite passed the area. The loss of a number of experienced reactor engineers and techs had been severe, many had gathered on the command satellite for coincident training. Some too young students would get rapid opportunities and they'd have to hope the two remaining ships didn't suffer problems until training could catch up.

They'd closed in on the pair of students who'd designed the nanos, a junior researcher and a younger on his practical. Brittany had apparently left behind an agent that had thoroughly wiped all of their data before the pair had ejected themselves from an airlock. Peter had tried to send the data he'd found. Signatures to program air filters to detect the killer nanos had made it but much of his message had been lost due to the poor link. They'd updated the little spy balls that floated around Earth to also detect them but the couple hundred they had couldn't cover much of the planet.

The pair's suicide, not unprecedented for her paeple if incredibly rare, had probably been for the best. Sylvans didn't really have a justice system and both Angie's and Kim's mothers had vowed brutal revenge. Vicki hated them too but didn't want that, it could escalate dangerously. She was reminded of the days after they'd awakened to find all of the senior leaders dead in their booths and the horrific messages from the first expedition, itself doomed by treachery. An unfortunate precedent. Panic had been a knife's edge away. Anna had stepped up and the nickname they'd given her before their starship had left home had become a title of respect. This time though, Vicki knew she was many things but she was no Queen.

No one left among them was. And this hadn't simply been an accident, a failure of cutting edge tech.

"... Sheryl Grace is the leader. She has a team of human terrorists. Find them. Stop them. We'll never meet in peace if you do not."

Despite the fact Jayne the Cat and Sheryl lived in the same city, they'd barely been acquainted, their professional and social circles intersected little. The older woman had disappeared soon after the crash and not even the assets the rising reporter could call on had tracked her.

Carole's reaction had been beyond Vicki's ability to read. It had been by video since she'd refused a visit. She'd had her daughter on her lap, the almost-toddler's resemblance to her father clear even to an alien born thirty-two light years away and over two centuries ago. Had Anna broken their vow to the child's mother? There'd been no indication she had in those last moments but only she and Peter knew for sure.

It had been cruel, Vicki thought, but it had been Carole's price for her peace, that he not be told until she allowed it. Anna had the techs put up filters that Peter had respected despite his sneaking into almost every computer on the fleet. It was still surprising the secret had held. But hadn't it been as cruel that Anna had played that card just before she'd split them? A subtle spike of the dispenser in their quarters had 'fixed' his sperm and had deactivated her contraception without their knowledge until Carole's inevitable discovery a couple of months after moving. And Carole's edge of realism, of cynicism, was a valuable addition to their educational system. The travails of two fleets made clear that her paeple needed a more honed edge if they were to survive here.

Vicki worried for her own daughter. But considering that daughter was a genetically-modified alien spy born on a spaceship through a melding of three separate sets of genes of those aliens? This worry was only another tick on top. Queen Anna and Vicki had designed their's and Ian's daughter to be strong and with Peter's training touches she'd be able to beat two, three, possibly four male humans senseless in a straight up fight. And she was whip-smart. She'd cried. Once. Then she'd dried her tears and made a simple statement she'd find them. Peter had prepped her well. And Jayne wasn't just her contact, but her friend.

The recording ended and Vicki wiped her cheeks. It was eerie, some similarities. Unlike most liquids, tears were essentially the same between humans and the recent arrivals, both chemically and in their health and emotional meanings.

There were lots of decisions to be made. And no one to make them. She sighed. A Council meeting in the morning. They were all so well meaning.

And useless.

Vicki was Chief of Genetics. She was good. As good at it as her teacher and dear friend Queen Anna had been. Her insights had taken Anna's groundwork for changelings mostly to fruition. But as that was still incomplete so was another. Could she also be the Queen?

She stepped to her bed and laid her robe over a chair and crawled into bed naked. She pulled up a recording of one of hers and Peter's phone sex nights. She'd gone where the Queen, for all of her confidence and daring, hadn't. Couldn't. She'd remind herself of that tomorrow.

She hit play.

*****

I hope you enjoyed this tale. If you're interested in Peter's teacher turned policewoman Joyce Shaw's story, hot on the heels of this release is 'Chasing Robes & Shadows,' which follows their night at that fateful Halloween party and her searches for answers to what happened and what unfolds. You might also be interested in 'Chronicle: Mel & Chris Ch 04,' which follows the discoverers of the 'Caldicott-Bajevic Anomalies' and their own search for answers related to this tale and virgins.

I didn't mention it up front but if you've read 'The Princess & the Queen' in Group Sex you've likely noticed this is also a sequel to that tale. And on that note, certain White Haired individuals just might've had a role to play in another series in 'NonHuman.'