Star Angel

By Mia Archer

Copyright 2015 Mia Archer

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Individuals pictured on the cover are models and used for illustrative purposes only.

First digital edition electronically published by Mia Archer, May 2015

All participants are 18 years or older.

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Table of Contents

1: Scout Mission

2: Captured

3: Experimental Subject

4: Experimenting

5: Space Angel

6: Escape

7: Revenge

More from Mia Archer

1: Scout Mission

“Scout Captain Tyla Venture's log, supplemental.”

I leaned back from the control console and tried to gather my thoughts. This was another bust. It was my third scout of the Vega sector and there were absolutely no hostiles.

“The picket sensors around the edge of the system picked up something entering the system at sublight speeds, but I’ve found nothing so far. No fleet craft are scheduled to be out here and standard communication didn’t raise any civilians. It’s a promising lead but no luck yet. Will update when there’s more to report.”

Of course there was as good a chance that the picket sensors picked up a piece of ice falling in towards Vega and not a massive Klik battle cruiser. They’d made sillier mistakes. I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice, but it was difficult. Where the hell were they? Five years since the incident with the Leyte Gulf. Five years of searching. Five years of nothing.

“Charging up faster than light drive and making the jump to the next planet,” I said. “So far Vega sector seems clear.”

I was disappointed. I’d hoped to find something this close to Earth, but no dice. That seemed to be where they showed up, which is what made it so infuriating when we couldn’t find them in our own back yard. The Kliks seemed to come out of nowhere, fading out of the very darkness of the stars themselves, hitting random merchant ships, and then disappearing into the void. And no one could find them. No one could even figure out where their home world was.

Nowhere within a good hundred light year radius of the Sol system, that was for sure, which made it all the more frustrating that they kept melting in and out of our territory hitting us with such little effort and such great success. Sure they were only annoying raids, pinpricks in the grand scheme of things, but it had become personal for me when the Leyte Gulf went down.

It still shamed me that I didn’t go down with her.

The faster than light drive spooled up and there was a brief flash, a brief passing wave of nausea, as I was pulled slightly out of normal space and then reinserted in front of the next planet in the Vega sector. I glanced at my readouts once the ship flashed back into normal space. Everything looked good on the FTL, but it’d be a short while before it was charged enough for the next jump.

Not that the recharge time was an issue in this instance. I planned on taking a leisurely look around anyways.

I looked outs the windows which was silly but it was habit. My instruments would catch anything far before I saw anything with my mark one eyeball. And yet I couldn’t help but look out at the planet. It was the habit of an old space explorer, even though I was only about a decade out of the academy and still fairly young for a captain in the fleet.

I was already ridiculously young when I took command of the Gulf, but thinking of that brought up too many bad memories. A Klik ship appearing from behind a moon. Power draining from the ship. The order to fire kinetic weapons. The Gulf breaking up around me as I was shoved, very much against my will, into an escape pod.

The only miracle of that day was that the people who went into the escape pods made it back to human space. The Klik ship disappeared which was very odd. Usually it was any human involved in a Klik attack who disappeared.

I definitely shouldn’t have been in a backwater this close to Earth driving a scout ship. I should’ve been on to my next command despite what happened on the Gulf. But I had a different mission now. A mission I’d sworn the day my ship went down around me.

And so I scanned the skies. I looked down at the planet below. A gas giant that roiled with flashes of lightning. This planet had a couple of moons, though none of them could support life. Whenever people got around to actually populating this system it would be nice and easy to strip mine them for resources. No blue humanoids to fight off.

I rolled my eyes and let out a disgusted sound. Movies from the days of ancient spaceflight could be so ridiculous. As though people would actually fight on the surface of a moon instead of just bombarding a place from orbit and picking up the pieces afterwards. The fleet’s motto had always been if you have to use a breathing apparatus anyways to fight against a native force that didn’t have air tanks then removing the atmosphere made pacifying the natives a hell of a lot easier.

These moons held no interest for me though. Sure they’d be of interest once humans actually decided to start terraforming this system. Not that terraforming was something that would happen anytime soon. Plenty of matter in this system to work with, no convenient earthlike planets though. That meant it would be awhile before they got some of the heavy duty matter transmogrifiers in here to start turning the system into something a little more palatable to life as we knew it.

Whatever. That was a concern of the eggheads. There wasn’t even a scrap of life in the system to make things interesting. No, I was purely looking for non-native life forms. The kind that I could blow up with some of the weapons on my scout ship that was armed to the teeth. Armed far more than your usual scout ship.

One of the benefits of having friends in high places in the Admiralty who felt sorry for you and were willing to give you a little leeway because of a little incident with hostile alien life forms.

“Anything in this area?” I asked.

“Nothing on the sensors ma’am,” the computer read back to me.

I rolled my eyes and let out another disgusted sound. That was exactly what I’d heard from the computer on that fateful day when the Kliks got the drop on us. It turned out the computer’s definition of “nothing showing up on the sensors” included nothing showing up because it was hiding behind, say, the mass of a moon. The mass of a moon that allow them to get the drop on me.

I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

“Let’s launch a probe here and leave it. Maybe it will tell us something before we leave the system,” I said.

The ship bucked under me as a probe launched. Immediately the comforting steady ping from its signal filled the cabin. I turned it down so that it was just barely on the level of conscious thought. The pinging wasn’t absolutely necessary, especially in this day and age, but I already had so many things to keep track of in the cockpit and at this point all the various beeps and whistles were like a symphony to me. I could make out any discordant note in an instant, and it would alert me far faster than a blinking light.

Where the hell were they?

The Kliks were so odd. So erratic. They tended to hit human outpost in spots we barely thought were important. At least they were spots that were barely important in this day and age. The sort of outposts that would have been long forgotten by any species that had discovered faster than light travel.

Faster than light travel.

“Computer, how fast was the object that tripped the sensors traveling?”

“It appeared to be traveling at 0.5c and slowing.”

Interesting. That definitely wasn’t a chunk of ice falling into the star system. That also got me to thinking about something I hadn’t really considered before. They hit old bases that would only be of strategic importance to a slower than light species. What if they didn’t have FTL? It was something nobody had considered before as far as I knew, though I don’t know why it was never considered since our first contact with the Kliks came before humanity developed faster than light technology.

Still, the notion was crazy, especially considering how much trouble they’d caused for us with their raids. It boggled the mind to think all that trouble could be caused by aliens moving around slower than c, but it was also something worth following up on. Particularly if they were scouting a system so close to Earth. And if my hunch was correct then they were out there. I just had to find them.

“Are there any likely sources of water in the system?” I asked.

“One moment,” the computer said. “Searching through spectral analysis from previous surveys of this system over the past century.”

I rolled my eyes. That could take the computer awhile. I also had another reason for rolling my eyes. It had to search over the last century because their probably wasn’t any recent data. Mankind had grown afraid of exploring, grown afraid of sending out scientific expeditions for fear that a Klik raid would pick them up and they’d never be heard from again. It happened far more often than people in the fleet liked to admit. It was one of the many reasons why I was on my all-encompassing mission right now. Sure I was out here for a bit of vengeance, but I was also out here to help humanity reclaim the stars.

And I was going to be really annoyed if it turned out that the great and powerful enemy that had humanity afraid to explore was barely able to travel as fast as the light twinkling from those stars.

I tapped an irritated finger against one of my consoles as I waited for the computer to finish its calculations. Once that was finished I could go for a leisurely jaunt around the planets and planetoids in the system to see what there was to see. Space was big, but faster than light travel made it a hell of a lot smaller. All that surface area out there got a hell of a lot closer and all the space in between a hell of a lot more trivial when you could pop between it instantaneously.

So why was it so damn hard to find them?

It was so damn hard because we were afraid to put out new probes. We were afraid to send out new missions because everybody was terrified. Everybody was afraid they’d be the next ship to disappear under mysterious circumstances. Nothing made people more reluctant to do some exploring like disappearing under mysterious circumstances.

I smiled. I hoped they tried to turn me into a mysterious disappearance. It would be the perfect opportunity for me to get some target practice in with my heavy weapons.

Idly I reached out and tapped a button to spool up the faster than light drive. When the computer was finished with its calculations I wanted to be ready to go instantaneously. At least the drive took a hell of a lot shorter to spool up on this scout ship than it used to on the Gulf. The bigger the ass on a ship the longer it took for the drive to do calculations and throw a ship across a star system or in between the massive void in between those star systems.

“Calculation complete,” the computer said.

“Finally!” I said. “What do you have?”

“At least five hundred probable locations for water in this system,” the computer said.

That didn’t help at all. There was no way I was going to be able to search all of those locations in a timely manner. If there was still anything in this system they’d be long gone by the time I got around to wherever they were. I’d get the notification from the faster than light pickets that whatever was out there was on its way out when I was halfway through that search.

“New parameter computer,” I said. “I want you to give me probable locations based on a ship stopping to gather water.”

“With faster than light technology any of those locations would be as likely as the next,” the computer said.

They said these computers weren’t exactly thinking machines. They were impressive, but they didn’t have anything pesky like sentience or consciousness. There were computers out there that did that, but it was pesky dealing with sentience in the thing running a ship’s systems. It was bad enough that the human element was already part of a warship. Only there were times that I suspected the computer was getting just a little snippy, just a little sarcastic with me. I figured that was just my time in deep space and my mind grasping for some sort of emotional interaction, but still.

“I want you to pretend we’re talking about a capital ship,” I said. I held up a hand as the computer started to talk again. “A capital ship from before the days of faster than light travel.”

Heck, there were still more than a few of those of human origin screaming around the stars. One of the pesky things about making war in the days before faster than light travel was discovered was you had to send your fleets screaming across the endless void at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light with no way of actually getting in touch with them once they’d been sent out across that void.

That led to some awkward situations once somebody actually decided to do some experiments with faster than light travel outside of our gravity well. War fleets still showed up at the edge of star systems poised to go in and rip any civilizations living inside to pieces only to discover a fleet envoy already there waiting for them to let them know the war was long over and they could all go home, and oh, by the way, they’d be going home immediately rather than turning around and spending another couple of years, relatively speaking, traveling between the stars.

I’d had to do at least one of those envoys. It was always loads of fun talking to a captain who’d been sent out nearly a century ago, though to them only a few months or a few years had passed, and was preparing for one hell of a fight, but it was part of doing business in the fleet. It was also something that they more or less kept quiet. Most of the people who were old enough to remember the men who’d shipped out on those fleets were long dead by now, or they were so old it didn’t matter.

A beep from the computer brought me out of my reverie.

“New calculations completed,” the computer said. “Showing three likely locations for a refueling spot for water, assuming a pre-faster than light travel capital ship.”

“Good. Take us to the one closest to the sensor that tripped the alarm.”

There was a small problem with going on a long search like this. A problem with going on a search where I don’t find what I was looking for time and time again. I was starting to get sloppy, and I didn’t even realize it until the ship popped out of faster than light and I saw a giant capital ship looming in front of me.

I grinned. “That’s a bingo!”

Only that massive capital ship was turning towards me. I could see on my readout that various weapons were powering up. Particularly interesting was a new reading I’d only seen once before on the Gulf right before we lost power. That reading surged and a beam shot out and hit my ship. Immediately everything went dark around me. Emergency power came up, but it wasn’t nearly enough to launch anything from the vast array of energy weapons at my disposal.

If I’d told the computer to come out of FTL farther from the point of interest I might’ve been able to get the drop on them. If I’d been faster on the draw I might’ve gotten a shot off. If I’d realized that energy surge was related to that damn beam that took out power and made energy weapons ineffective, a weapon you couldn’t fire was worthless after all, then I might’ve gotten away a second time.

Only I didn’t do any of that and basically I was a sitting duck. Shit.

2: Captured

I watched, helpless, as a tractor beam hit my ship and started pulling me towards the big capital ship. My lights flickered and across my viewport I could see the telltale static flickering where the field made contact with my hull. I wanted to beat my fists against that viewport.

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it!

I’d finally found them. I’d finally figured out how to track them down. I’d figured out why we were having such a hard time tracking down the Kliks. We were thinking all wrong, only now that I’d started thinking right, started thinking like the enemy, I’d also managed to stumble right into them and get captured.

Beeping sounded off to my left. That meant somebody was trying to hail me. And it probably wasn’t somebody from the fleet calling to tell me they had a couple of massive capital ships ready to come to my aid. There were only two ships out here in this system right now, and I had a pretty good idea who was calling.

I ignored the signal. Instead I desperately tried powering up several weapons. I winced as several lights indicated the ship was trying its best, but none of the indicators had a healthy green glow. They were all red. Not even an angry red. More like a dim impotent red because there was barely enough power to keep them going. Damn it.

Apparently keeping me powerless wasn’t enough though. A quick blast shot out from the ship, a warning shot since it didn’t blow me to smithereens, but the message was obvious enough. Whatever alien intelligence was on that massive ship, and I was a damn sure that was a Klik ship even though we didn’t have any good images on file and I’d been a little busy to take a look while the Gulf was under attack, obviously didn’t want me pressing any of the buttons on my ship that powered up my weapons even if there was no way to actually power them up.

I briefly considered starting up the self-destruct sequence and going out in a blaze of glory, to quote that ancient ballad of my people, but instead I pulled my hand off of the self-destruct controls. I had important information. Information the fleet needed if I was right. If my hunch was correct. And what better way to prove that hunch than by getting onto the Klik ship and finding out firsthand and for sure whether or not I was right?

If my hunch was correct then I needed to live. I needed to get out of this however I could. So I prepared myself for a boarding in every way possible. I loaded up my belt with plasma grenades. I strapped every firearm I could think of to my body in every position imaginable. I pulled out a pulse rifle and loaded it up, adding on the grenade launcher attachment for good measure. When they boarded I wanted to make sure I was armed to the teeth.

Then I got to the final and the most important part of suiting up. I pulled up my trusty blaster, the weapon that had seen me through hairier situations than this, and watched with satisfaction as it dematerialized in my hand. A small subcutaneous teleporter attached to a pattern buffer implanted inside my wrist allowed me to pull of that trick. Hopefully they wouldn’t bother to look there. Hopefully they didn’t even know teleportation technology existed. Hey, if I was right and they didn’t have FTL then who knows what else they didn’t have?

I said a quiet prayer of thanks to Night Terror industries who’d invented this particular surprise several hundred years ago. In fact I’m pretty sure it was the founder of Night Terror industries who’d helped fight off the first Klik invasion, though I wasn’t exactly up to speed on ancient history. Modern military doctrine had always been my favorite subject in school and I only paid attention to the rest of that crap long enough to get a decent grade.

When I turned my attention back to the massive Klik capital ship in front of me it loomed over my scout ship. And it appeared I was being pulled towards some sort of launch bay. Already I could see troops scuttling around. And scuttling was a pretty accurate description. They resembled oversized crabs in armor, though it was hard to see how many legs they had from this distance.

I also saw several massive turrets trained on me. It was obvious they were expecting me to try and pull something as they moved me into their ship, though I don’t know what they were expecting since they’d used that weird power draining beam on me.

I was going to play nice. Until I got into a position where I didn’t have to play nice anymore. I did notice something odd as I was pulled into this docking area. None of those turrets pointed at me seemed to be shielded. None of them seemed to be particularly powerful either, at least compared to some of the human weaponry we had these days. It was the lack of shielding that surprised me the most though. That was 101 stuff. Independent shielding units on all major artillery.

Come to think of it I didn’t notice any shields when they used that weird draining beam on me either. More and more interesting.

If the readings I was getting now that I was in the belly of the beast were any indication then this massive capital ship was a paper tiger. Sure I wouldn’t be able to take it out with just my scout ship, but even a gunship that was only moderately armed to the teeth would probably be able to take it out if it didn’t jump out of FTL right on top of them and give them time to use that strange beam like I’d been stupid enough to do.

My ship settled to the floor of the docking bay. Now that was also interesting. There definitely seemed to be a down on this ship which wasn’t always a given since gravity wasn’t the normal state of affairs in deep space. All the troops scuttling around out there, and now that I was closer scuttling really was the appropriate word for the way the Kliks moved looking for all the world like oversized crabs with heads at the end of a long neck and three eyestalks protruding from the head. Scuttling meant they had artificial gravity, or at least something that approximated artificial gravity.

All the Kliks out there wore armor and had what looked like the Klik equivalent of guns pointed at me. The meaning was clear. I needed to get the hell out of my ship, and I needed to get out now. I reached out and hit a button that put the ship into a dormant mode. Nothing would turn it back on unless I was the one turning it on. The ship was tuned to my particular bio patterns.

Time to go out for a stroll. I was more curious than worried at this point. Curious about whether or not my hunch about the Kliks and their ability to travel faster than light was true. Curious about why this dreaded monstrosity of an alien race that had been terrorizing humanity on and off for the past couple of centuries was actually as terrifying as they seemed to be.

I opened the doors and stepped out, armed to the teeth and ready for trouble.

Not that I actually did anything with those weapons when I stepped out. I was curious, not suicidal. I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. For them to reveal the hyper advanced weapons systems that made them the terror lurking around the edge of human space. Surely it wasn’t just a case of tactics and that draining beam.

That would be one hell of an embarrassment for the fleet if it turned out to be true.

It couldn’t possibly be that simple. That couldn’t possibly be the reason. I refused to believe that the whole reason for the Klik menace was centuries of the fleet screwing up. Centuries of the fleet and merchant ships committing the same tactical error over and over.

And yet it was entirely possible. There were never any survivors as far as we could tell. At the very least they always took everyone captive. The Leyte Gulf was the only ship to ever have survivors, and that was one of the reasons that surviving the encounter despite having my ship destroyed around me and left a useless husk that was barely able to limp away from the battle had turned into a hero of the fleet rather than being forced to retire young in disgrace.

It galled me that my greatest accomplishment in the fleet was not screwing up to the same degree that other captains had screwed up. That was one reason why I was constantly out in my scout ship seeking revenge. Seeking justice. Trying to find out what happened that day.

Jumping out of faster than light. A warning and then the power drained. I ordered kinetic weapons to fire and then we were hit with the space warfare equivalent of a broadside and the Klik ship disappeared.

I needed to know why we made it, but no time to think about that right now though. I had a more pressing concerns. Like the Klik shock troopers who were marching up to me in odd segmented body armor and pointing what were very clearly energy weapons at me despite the vastly different aesthetics of said weapons.

I took in every detail I could as they approached me. They walked on four legs and seemed to have two arm-like protrusions. Only instead of hands and fingers like I was used to thanks to my comfortably familiar ape-descended evolution they seemed to have claws. Only their claws had some sort of odd tendril things that moved out and allowed them to manipulate their weapons with the same manual dexterity as monkeys who managed to take over their planet after a couple million years of clever evolution.

I took it all in. I wanted to remember as much as possible. I fully intended to be the first person to escape from the Kliks two times in a row, and I also fully intended to come back with one hell of a battle fleet and give them a piece of my mind. I just had to figure out exactly how I was going to escape with my hide intact.

They immediately stripped me of all of my weapons. I smiled as they did that. So far the plan was working well enough. They were so intent on the obvious weapons I had strewn about my person that they never gave a thought to the pattern buffer hidden in my wrist. Again I wondered if they even had teleportation technology. A lack of shields plus a lack of teleportation technology opened the door to some very interesting battle tactics. The kind of battle tactics that hadn’t been used by humanity in several hundred years. It became very easy to win a battle if you could teleport a nuclear warhead directly into a ship’s engine room.

And I just so happened to have a couple of nuclear warheads waiting for a good home back in my scout ship.

The shock troops parted in front of me as soon as I was disarmed. Well, disarmed as far as they knew. I wasn’t going to tip that particular hand yet. Although it was more my wrist than my hand. Whatever.

As they parted another Klik moved forward, though this one wasn’t in body armor. Instead it had elaborate paint running all over what looked like a shell or carapace or something. I was more interested in exocombustion than exobiology. No face armor either, which allowed me to get a good look at a Klik face for the first time. If you could call it a face.

“Damn you are one ugly motherfucker,” I said.

“Believe me,” the Klik said, its voice high-pitched and slightly squeaky, but still clearly English for all that. “I don’t find the aesthetics of your face particularly pleasing either.”

I blinked. It could speak English. Although I guess that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. Humanity’s encounters with the Kliks always ended with them carting said humanity off to wherever it was they came from. It would only stand to reason that they studied us, had a chance to learn our language. Hell, I could speak Klik thanks to what we’d learned from the few captives we managed to take over the past couple of centuries, though I wasn’t about to let them in on that fact.

It also stood to reason that it would choose English. American cultural hegemony at the end of the 20th century when mass communication became a thing assured that English was one of the two official languages of Earth. Mandarin came in a close second through sheer inertia and the number of people who spoke it at the end of said 20th century when mass communication started the consolidation and death of most smaller languages.

“What do you want from me?”

The creature pulled out a tablet. A tablet of all things! Didn’t they have holographic projectors that could create screens on the fly? What kind of a primitive place had I landed in?

“This one will do nicely,” the Klik said.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Do nicely for what?

Only I never did find out what I would do nicely for from that particular Klik. It waved a claw and two guards to either side of me picked me up and I was being carried away. I screamed and tried to break free, suddenly not liking where this was going, but what could I do? I was still in the middle of their hangar bay surrounded by a bunch of guards, and this definitely wasn’t the opportune moment to try and make an escape. No, I was going to have to wait until we were in a quieter spot.

Plus I have to admit I was damn curious about what exactly they had planned. Not to mention that I hadn’t answered my question about their faster than light capability. Everything that I saw from this place indicated they were far less technologically advanced than we originally thought, but I didn’t have a confirmation.

So I let the guards carry me away to wherever the hell they were carrying me away too.

3: Experimental Subject

At least being carried down gave me a chance to mull over everything that had happened since I was captured. Something about the way that beam drained all the power in my scout ship bothered me. It had me thinking back to when the Leyte Gulf was lost, and I didn’t like thinking back on that moment. And yet it was all I could think about as they escorted me through their massive ship.

I ran over the attack in my mind once more, only this time with the fresh information I’d gleaned from my recent encounter.

The Klik ship appeared out of nowhere. Probably hiding behind a planetoid where we couldn’t see it immediately. They’d probably been gathering resources if my hunch about their faster than light capabilities were right. I ordered shields up and to fire off everything we had. Only everything had gone dark and emergency systems had come on. That strange beam had been enough to almost completely drain the power from my ship, but it hadn’t been enough to drain a ship like the Gulf entirely. Just enough to take all the energy weapons off-line. And most captains in the fleet were helpless without their energy weapons. Not me though, I’d ordered kinetics.

Then it hit me. Kinetic weapons. I’d ordered my crew to fire off the kinetic weapons! Energy weapons were all well and good, but a good old fashioned hunk of mass sufficiently accelerated still did plenty of damage too.

Damn! That explained a hell of a lot. The Kliks knew they couldn’t beat us in a fair fight. There hadn’t actually been a pitched space battle with them in living memory. There hadn’t been a pitched battle with them since before we discovered faster than light travel, and things had been more or less even. Their reputation had grown from that point.

What would I do if I was in a situation where I knew I was dealing with an enemy that could pop between star systems at a whim? An enemy that could certainly take me out if I didn’t take advantage of my one true weapon, the one thing that exploited a blind spot in their doctrine?

I’d exploit the hell out of that blind spot.

If I was that enemy, forced to pick my way through the universe at less than the speed limit imposed on the universe by Einstein and then later broken by other Earth scientists then I’d do the same thing. I’d rely on ambush attacks. Guerrilla warfare writ large across the stars. I’d keep large capital ships that could self-sustain with a little refueling here and there in star systems close to my enemies’ home system without actually attacking them directly. Ambushes would be the name of the game. Attacking and exploiting that weakness, which in our case was an overreliance on energy weapons.

It all made sense. It was all coming together. It was absolute genius. This was the key that could break everything open, that could change this conflict forever. The only problem? I had absolutely no concrete proof. I needed proof, damn it!

Yet it all made sense. I managed to escape the Klik attack precisely because I went beyond traditional fleet doctrine. I used everything at my disposal. I’d studied ancient space conflicts before energy weapons were a thing and so I was aware of exactly what to do when energy weapons failed.

Though that wasn’t entirely fair. Other members of the fleet were aware of what they were supposed to do when their energy weapons failed. The problem was that every war game we ever conducted used energy weapons on the assumption that they provided an overwhelming advantage against any opponent we might run into, including civilizations that were less technologically advantaged and therefore more likely to have the light of modern spacefaring civilization brought to them via the light of modern spacefaring energy weapons. Why wouldn’t you bring a bazooka to a pistol fight if you had one, after all? The best kind of force was the overwhelming variety.

It all came down to instincts. The fleet trained people to instinctively use those weapons. And when they were gonna people didn’t instinctively switch to other weapons. Only I had because I was a geek like that and I’d historical texts. I didn’t have enough power to fire plasma cannons, but I did have more than enough power to accelerate a big hunk of metal to an appreciable speed that must’ve dealt some severe damage to the Klik ship that attacked us.

They’d limped away from the battle without capturing us, and the Gulf had limped away from the battle to be scrapped after all the damage done in the initial salvo before one of those kinetic weapons made contact.

Damn it. Putting all this together was enough to make me wish that enough of the Gulf’s central computer had survived to review the footage from the attack. I could’ve put this all together years ago. It could’ve turned the tide of the war without embarrassing myself and getting my scout ship captured.

I had to get the hell out of here. I had the keys to bring humanity back to the stars, to show everybody that we’d been running from a paper tiger for the better part of a century.

Only my thoughts were interrupted as I was thrown to the ground. I looked up and found myself staring at another unarmed Klik who wasn’t wearing body armor. Only there wasn’t a chance of me trying anything with him because both guards who’d brought me down were keeping an eye on me and, more importantly, keeping their weapons trained on me as well. They were also standing at such an angle that one of them could definitely get a shot off even if I managed to re-materialized my gun and take out the other.

I bit back a curse. Why couldn’t I get lazy guards? Why did they have to stick to good tactics even when they thought I was completely defenseless?

This new Klik stepped forward and made an odd sort of rattling noise in its throat. The massive stalk that its head rested on, if you could call it a head, waved back and forth. I wondered what the hell that meant. I wondered how easy would be to snap that stalk of a neck.

It said a few words in Mandarin and I cocked my head. I could speak Mandarin, but I figured playing dumb would be helpful. Maybe they’d do something stupid and start talking in that language. Not likely, but whatever. I’d already given away that I knew English, so best to stick with that.

“English?” it asked.

“Yes,” I said.

I didn’t bother with nodding or using any other body language cues. In my experience dealing with exobiologicals body language was usually lost on them anyways unless they spent their entire life studying human behavior.

“Very good,” it said. “”You should do nicely for the experiment.”

I arched an eyebrow. Experiment? What the hell was going on here? I tensed and prepared to pull out my weapon. Chances are I was about to die if I did pull it out, but I was going to go out fighting. I definitely wasn’t going to go out allowing myself to be dissected by some alien mad scientist. If I was going out then I was taking them with me.

The Klik hit a button and let out a series of warbling noises that sounded like a combination of pops and hisses from a bad radio transmission. It was telling another Klik, a superior from the way it was tacking on the honorifics and polite phrasing, that the subject was ready.

I was tensed to strike when a door opened on the other side of the room. Another creature that had similar markings though far more elaborate on its shell came scuttling through the door. And what I saw on the other side of that creature made me stop. It was a room. Not exactly luxurious, but not exactly a prison cell either, and there was a human in there. A human female if I didn’t miss my guess. It was hard to tell with the new alien blocking the view.

This new creature looked slightly distracted. It had an old style tablet out in front and it was waving those weird tentacle things extending from its claws up and down the screen. It seemed distracted. I guess that was an emotion that was universal to all intelligent creatures. Of course I had no way of knowing. It could also be these creatures’ way of exhibiting anger, love, lust. I had no way of knowing for sure.

“Excellent,” it said in English. “You are very fortunate human. You are going to be the new subject in our survey of human mating behavior!”

I blinked. Human mating behavior? What the hell kind of sick perverted ship were they running here anyways? One of the creature’s eyestalks moved up from the tablet it was manipulating and it immediately stopped. It turned the other eyestalk to the creature that had initially addressed me, I assumed it was some sort of research assistant or something, and it made a noise that sounded like an angry tea kettle boiling over. Not that the tea kettles could exhibit emotion, but you get the point. Anger was an emotion that was fairly straightforward no matter what species you were dealing with.

“What is this?” The more senior one asked in their language. I schooled my face to a blank expression and tried not to react. These were presumably experts in human behavior, after all, and who knows what cues they might pick up on?

“It’s the human you asked for,” the assistant said.

“This one is a female! How long have you been working with humans and you can’t even tell the difference between their genders?”

The eyestalk on the junior research Klik, that’s how I thought of it now, lowered. Maybe a show of submission? Who knew? Either way, this conversation was quite interesting. I looked around the room so it wasn’t obvious I was listening in on their conversation and able to understand every damn word of it.

“No matter,” the senior one said. “We can still work with this. It just won’t be as good as having an actual male of their species to work with.”

Now at that I did have a hard time pretending I wasn’t interested in what they were saying. What exactly were they going on about? I'd had a few dalliances with the fairer sex at the academy but never anything terribly serious. Not that I was against the idea, just that my focus on career meant I didn't have time to invest in relationships male or female. Either way, if they thought they’d be able to force me into going in there and giving them an example of human mating rituals then they had another thing coming. Hell, even if I was a “male” as they put it, though the word in the Klik language was actually a series of hisses and pops rather than the actual word like we said it, they’d have another thing coming.

I was a member of the fleet. I was sworn to uphold and defend humanity. The last thing I’d do was allow myself to get pulled into some damned experiment where they were doing research on human mating habits!

The senior researcher scuttled towards me. It waggled one of its eyestalks and the two guards at either side moved their guns down. Only they were too fast for me. I wasn’t able to pull out my own weapon before I could stop whatever the hell it was that thing was planning. I felt my arms being wrapped up in their strong claws and I was held fast in place.

I tried to struggle against them but they were strong. Damn strong. I wondered if all of them were this strong or if it was just my luck to have a couple of guards who were the Klik equivalent of the ground troops that sometimes traveled with the fleet and spent all their time pumping iron when they weren’t going down to some planet on a bug hunt. Or maybe they were augmented by that armor. I fully intended to test that if I managed to get out of here.

I was particularly annoyed because I realized too late I’d allowed this to go on for far too long. I’d kept up the charade, refused to pull out my weapon and try to break free, because I was looking for information. Because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to take out both guards at the same time. Only now it looked like I’d allowed myself to be escorted straight from the fire into the frying pan, or however that phrase worked.

My two guards pulled me forward towards the door. I felt myself being tossed in, had a glimpse of the girl in there, and then I hit the floor and blacked out for a moment.

4: Experimenting

I opened my eyes and blinked. Immediately a bit of superstition came crashing down around me and I thought surely I’d died. I’d never believed all those stories some of the older guys told about angels, it was as ridiculous as ancient Earth explorers claiming they saw mermaids, but it looked like I was staring up at one. And the only explanation I could think of was that the Klik injection, whatever the hell it was, had accidentally killed me.

“Are you okay?”

“You speak English?”

I’d seen an alien speaking English today. I don’t know why I’d be surprised that an angel was speaking slightly accented English. She really was gorgeous. Curly blonde hair that framed a pretty almost elfin face. Striking blue eyes, luscious lips that just begged to be kissed…

Wait a minute. Now where the hell did that thought come from? Why was I suddenly considering kissing those lips? Sure this girl was attractive, damn attractive, but being captured in the middle of an alien battle cruiser was hardly the time to be having those sorts of thoughts!

Not that they were entirely unwelcome now that I was having them. Actually, they were quite welcome. I was starting to feel warm all over. I wasn’t sure if that was a side effect of coming down from the adrenaline high I'd been feeling since I was captured or if it was just looking up at this beauty that was setting me on fire.

The angel giggled. “Of course I speak English. I’m human after all!”

I scrambled back and sat up. I looked at my surroundings. I was in that room. The one I’d seen on the other side of the Klik senior researcher. It was nice, but not luxurious. It was definitely nicer than most of the rooms I’d seen on museum pieces from human battleships before the speed of light was made a minor inconvenience. Back when economy of space was more of a concern when you had to be on a flight for a long time and a lot of real estate was taken up by stasis chambers.

I shook my head and immediately regretted it. I was feeling lightheaded for some reason. There was a strange buzzing just behind my temples, almost as though I’d had too much to drink. Only that wasn’t possible. I hadn’t had too much to drink since my last shore leave. I definitely hadn’t had any alcohol since I started going on my scouting missions. I must've bumped my head good when they threw me in here. My eyes narrowed. I was going to have to repay them that courtesy when I got out of here. Not that I had any idea how I was going to get out of here.

My angel had a slight accent, though it was difficult to place. As I sat up and pulled away from her slightly, though there was a part of me that regretted pulling away from her, I got a better look at her. She wore a tight fitting jumpsuit. A jumpsuit that formed to every curve of her body, and the curves on her body were looking damn nice. It was obvious she kept in shape, though I wasn’t sure how they had human workout facilities on this alien spaceship.

“How did they catch you?”

She shrugged. “I was on the Charles de Gaulle when it went up about six months ago. I managed to get into an escape pod and they captured me while I was trying to break free.”

Well that explained the accent. They weren’t as much of a thing today as they’d been several hundred years ago thanks to English becoming the lingua franca through sheer linguistic inertia, but there were some countries that hung onto enough of a sense of national pride that they stressed the local language before teaching the global languages. Japan, Russia, and particularly France.

I raised an eyebrow. “Six months ago?”

The angel shrugged. “As near as I can tell? It gets hard to keep track of time in here, but I think I’ve mostly managed to make sense of the timekeeping system they use on these ridiculous antique tablets. It would help if I could speak the damn language.”

I did some quick calculations. The Charles de Gaulle was a well-known incident. It was a medium-sized gunboat that had disappeared and it was presumed all hands were lost. Only now it was starting to seem like not all hands were lost. At least this one girl managed to get away. I realized that I was thinking of her as a girl because she looked slightly younger than me, though I was young for a captain in the fleet, but if the math was correct then she was almost old enough to be my grandmother.

The Charles de Gaulle had gone missing 50 years ago. Not six months ago. That meant this beautiful girl sitting before me was an impossibility no matter how you sliced it. There was no way that a survivor from the Charles de Gaulle could still be alive today and not be ancient. No way unless relativity started to play into it.

How long had this ship been rattling around between the stars at sublight speeds? How long had it been patrolling near earth moving at relativistic speeds?

I smiled as the realization dawned on me. That was all the confirmation I needed.

I opened my mouth to ask her more questions about where exactly she came from, but I never got a chance to. No sooner had I opened my mouth then her face descended on mine. Her lips pressed against mine.

My eyes widened in surprise but I found myself involuntarily moving my arms around her back before I could think about it. What the hell? Why was I doing that?

Yet I couldn’t deny the heat that was pulsing through my body. Particularly the heat that was pulsing down between my legs. After so long flying between the stars with nothing but a computer to keep me company, and before that with the burden of command to isolate me from human contact, it felt good to have her kissing me like that. It didn't hurt that she was so damn intriguing!

An explosion of heat exploded through my body and my back arched up. The entire time this strange woman continued kissing me. I wrapped my arms around her, though at this point that felt more an involuntary muscle spasm than a voluntary desire to wrap my arms around her.

I was overwhelmed by that heat. I was overwhelmed by an intense desire. An intense desire that I couldn’t explain. She pulled away and smiled down at me. A hesitant uncertain smile. Meanwhile all I could do it was lie back on the floor and blink. Stars danced in front of my eyes. That had been so fucking intense. What the hell was going on with me?

"That was interesting," I said.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," she said.

I looked at her, glanced up and down her oh so intriguing and sexy body. "Not saying it was a bad thing, but what brought that on?"

She pulled her knees up to her chest and started rocking back and forth. She still had that uncertain smile on her face, but there was something else there. Something that sent a chill running through me right along with that impossible arousal that was also running up and down my spine. There was worry on her face.

"It's what they're looking for. Their experiments," she said.

"I'm not the first, am I?" I asked.

She shook her head. "There have been others, but they all refused. I thought that if..."

"If you went along with it from the start that it might end better for me?"

She nodded.

"What happened to the others?"

"I don't know. They took them away," she said. "I don't even know why they've kept me in here while they bring in a steady stream of others for me to, you know..."

I shook my head. I couldn't believe they were doing this to people they'd captured, and yet at the same time I had no trouble at all believing they were doing exactly that.

"So what happens now?"

The girl shrugged. "Usually whoever they bring in makes a principled stand until they send in a couple of guards to take them away. Could be a few hours, could be a few days. Depends on how patient they are. Assuming the Kliks even have patience."

I grinned and leaned closer to her. That really had felt pleasant when she leaned down and kissed me like that. It had awakened feelings in me. Feelings that I'd been denying for a long time. Feelings that I suddenly felt an urge to explore.

And a plan was starting to form.

"You cooperate, do they use soldiers when they come in to talk with you?" I asked.

"Well... no?"

"Good," I said. "Because that gives me an idea."

Her eyes widened in surprise as I wrapped an arm around her head and pulled her against me again. My lips pressed against hers and we melted together. A new wave of heat washed over me and a strange tingle went along with it. A strange tingle that was focused specifically down in between my legs. A tingle that felt damn good. That almost felt borderline orgasmic.

I'd give the Kliks what they wanted, give myself something I apparently desperately needed even if I'd been denying it to myself for years, and maybe get a little revenge in the process.

5: Space Angel

I pulled away from the kiss and my angel stared at me in obvious surprise. She looked so damn hot as she smiled down at me. As she reached up and pulled a strand of hair away from my face. Her touch was so delicate, so soft, and it left a tingling trail of heat everywhere her body made contact with mine.

Yeah,  I was really going to enjoy this escape plan.

I had to have her. The desire was overwhelming me. It was overriding every other concern. I didn’t even care that I should be concerned about other things like being trapped in the middle of an enemy cruiser that was dangerously close to the Sol system. All I knew was that she was gorgeous. She was incredible. She was the most desirable creature in the entire universe as far as I was concerned. And if I could have a little fun with her in service of escaping then why shouldn't I?

Her eyes widened and she giggled as my hands wrapped around her as I cupped her cheeks and pulled her down for another kiss.

This time it was her turn to look surprised, though surprise quickly turned to a delighted arousal as she purred into my mouth. As our mouths parted and our tongues moved to explore one another.

For that one perfect moment I was the feeling of our two bodies pressing together, of our tongues swirling around one another, of her taste filling my mouth, of my arms running up and down her perfectly sculpted body. She still had the rock hard look and feel of a woman who was tempered by service in the fleet even if it had been six months since she was captured. Or closer to a hundred years since she was captured. Relativity was a mind warping bitch of a thing to try and wrap your head around, especially if you came up in the fleet in a time when humanity had made relativity its bitch.

Whatever. Less higher math. More making out.

I sighed into her mouth as we started rolling around. As my hands explored every inch of her body. Her ass felt so firm. It had been so very long since I last enjoyed the soft curve of a woman’s ass. Her breasts felt incredible press against mine. So soft and yet so firm at the same time. I felt my mouth watering as I wondered what they looked like. Wondered what it would feel like to run my hands along them with no clothes between us.

Yet none of that was anything compared to the delicious sensation growing in between my legs. She was grinding her thigh against me, obviously overcome with lust and arousal. I was more than happy to grind back up against her. I was a woman possessed. I was a woman with a single-minded goal. Well, two goals, but right now she was the only goal that I truly cared about.

I tugged frantically on the front of her uniform. Humanity had long ago developed past primitive concepts like zippers and buttons. Now things were held together by good old-fashioned subatomic bonds that were created by sending an electric pulse through the fabric in certain areas. Nice and easy. I pressed in the right spots and her jumpsuit fell open. She gasped and I gasped in turn as her breasts were revealed to me for the first time.

I’d seen plenty of breasts before. I was in the fleet, after all, and that meant plenty of time spent in the locker rooms. Plenty of time spent in a communal barracks where there were plenty of women walking around wearing practically nothing. And yet that was all so clinical. So mundane. It had been so long since I looked at a woman like this.

I was looking at this woman with a hunger that had been tempered by those years alone searching the stars for the Kliks and eschewing any truly meaningful human contact. Of course it didn't hurt that the human contact I was enjoying right now was so damn beautiful! It was as though I was seeing one of the most captivating, hypnotic, and intoxicating sights in the universe. I immediately moved my head down between her tits and started moving my tongue up and down her cleavage, trailing kisses up to her nipple which I swirled my tongue around then moved back to the other. She tasted absolutely intoxicating.

“Oh fuck!” she moaned.

Her hands wrapped around my head and pulled me against her chest, but I wasn’t even getting started. No, not by a long shot. As my mouth worked at her tits, those incredible tits that tasted and felt so amazing, not too big and not too small, my hands were busy moving down her jumpsuit and loosening those subatomic bonds all the way down. I pulled at her arms and she shrugged out of her top leaving her completely topless above me. I sat up and with a growl I yanked down on her jumpsuit. I pulled until she was before me completely naked.

She fell back on the padded floor. I looked down at her and there was an uncontrollable hunger in my eyes. She blinked as I stared down at her and I could only imagine what I looked like standing here in this strange alien cell staring down at her with pure unadulterated lust, my own chest heaving and my eyes burning with desire and arousal.

I wasted no time in shrugging out of my own clothes. Once I was out of my own uniform it was this girl’s turn to stare. I realized with a start that I didn’t even know her name. She stared up at me, licking her lips, and staring at me with some of the same lust that I imagined was radiating out from my body.

It was odd. I’d stood naked like this in front of women before, I’d gotten laid plenty of times, but it was different now. I was so damn turned on that I could hardly think. My breasts heaved and pressed out as though they weren’t affected by even a hint of gravity. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say they weren’t affected by a hint of whatever field the Kliks were using to simulate the appearance of gravity.

Whatever. Metaphors tended to get mixed up when you were dealing with space travel.

With a growl I dove down to the cushioned floor. I moved up in between this beautiful angel’s legs. I moved my hand down behind her ass as I moved down to taste the delicious treasures she had to offer. If the Kliks wanted a show I'd be more than happy to give it to them, but that didn't mean I couldn't enjoy giving the show!

I felt an electric shock where my hands made contact with her body. It felt so strange. It was like my touch was feeding directly into the pleasure centers of my brain. Everywhere my fingers made contact it was sending a pleasurable tingle running through my body. A pleasurable tingle that I wanted more of. That I needed more of.

And that was nothing compared to the feeling as my tongue pressed against this angel’s pussy lips. As I felt that warm sheath wrapping around the top of my tongue sending her tangy taste running along my taste buds and straight down to my own pussy! Damn!.

I’d fingered myself before, I was intimately familiar with what a woman felt like on the inside thanks to my own exploration over the years. I'd even done this a couple of times in my younger days when I still had time for this sort of thing, and yet that was nothing compared to the feeling of sliding my tongue inside this beauty. Nothing compared to the feeling, the taste, as I nibbled around the edges of her pussy and then dove in with my tongue eliciting a series of delicious gasps as her body jumped under my attentions. Feeling that impossible wet warmth wrapping around the impossibly sensitive bundle of nerve endings in my tongue was incredible.

I let out a quiet gasp as I pressed inside her. As I smelled her scent. As I allowed myself to let go in a way that I hadn't in so very long.

The sensations as I pressed inside her, as I added my fingers to my forbidden exploration right alongside my tongue, were so much more incredible even than what I’d felt when we were making out. My hair fell out across her thighs which were clamping down around my head as I pressed inside her. Her body was writhing on the cushioned floor. She threw her head back and forth, her golden curls flopping from side to side. She reached out and grabbed at my hair trying to pull me deeper and deeper as though that was possible, but I welcomed the compliment regardless.

Her taste, her smell, the feel of her body. It was all so incredible.

She looked absolutely amazing as she writhed under me. Her lips pouted as she bit her lower lip and looked down at me buried between her legs with gorgeous blue eyes. Her hair was fanned out on the cushioned floor around her. Her tits were rising and falling, heaving with her every breath as I continued my attentions. Her nipples were perfect pink points that looked absolutely delicious, and my only regret was that I couldn't feel them pressing against my body, but there'd be plenty of time for that later if we managed to escape. I devoured the sight her slim stomach running down to that incredible spot in between her legs where I was pleasuring her with my tongue and fingers. Where her hips were moving and grinding ever so subtly trying as she took me in.

Well if she wanted me to take her then I was more than happy to oblige her.

I’d like to say I took things slowly from that point. I’d like to say I was a lady about fucking this girl. Only the sensations running through my body, particularly the sensations down between my legs which burned with that impossibly delicious warmth, overtook me.

I couldn't help myself. I moved a hand down between my own legs and started running my fingers along my lips, pressing inside even as my tongue pressed inside this beauty before me.

“Yes,” she gasped. “Do it. So good!”

Over and over I ran my tongue in and out of her body, swirled around her clit and then returned my attention to her lips. I tried to lick and tease everywhere that I knew I enjoyed even as I did the very same to my own body as I explored my own pussy with my fingers. I devoured her petite body and her delicious pussy. Her tits bounced in time with my tongue and fingers. My own tits were bouncing in time with my thrusts as I gasped and moaned into her body. It was amazing, incredible, indescribable. Everywhere our bodies made contact it was as though an electric shock was coursing through my body.

I was suddenly finding myself overwhelmed with desire. This wasn’t the usual way that I got turned on where it was a rising arousal. No, I was just switched on and I had to have her.

Faster and faster. I felt an impossible warmth, an incredible tingling, an indescribable pleasure that seemed to be overtaking my entire body while particularly focused on that spot between my legs.

“I think I’m close,” she gasped.

My angel tightened her legs around me. Willed me deeper inside her. Our slim bodies came together, our bodies pressed together, and then I was overwhelmed by a strange sensation. It was as though there were repeating blasts of pleasure exploding between my legs.

I felt lightheaded. I felt an impossible tingle coursing through my body. I saw stars dancing in front of me and through it all I saw this incredible petite beauty with her amazing body and her beautiful face looking down at me, her mouth opened in a moan as she threw her head back and went over the edge right along with me.

It was all too incredible. All too intense. All too strange and new. It was all too overwhelming. I pressed myself as deep as I could go, and with a final cry I felt myself blacking out. I felt myself falling to the side and then for the second time in the last hour everything went dark around me.

6: Escape

Hissing, clicking, and popping like an angry teakettle, though that still wasn’t exactly the greatest analogy since tea kettles still couldn’t exactly feel emotion even if they had rudimentary AI programmed into them, filled my mind. I opened my eyes and blinked.

The senior and junior Klik researchers stood over me. I smiled. The researchers, not the soldiers. Just as I'd hoped. Both had those primitive looking tablets out. Both were making notes as they looked between the two of us.

“Very interesting,” the senior one said. Its eyestalks wiggled in what I was going to assume was excitement. “That was far more of a reaction than we've gotten out of any of the others.”

“How long do you think before they start again?” the junior one asked.

“Probably soon. They seem to be unable to resist the urge to copulate,” the senior researcher said. “I imagine it’s a weakness of the species. It’s a wonder they ever developed intelligence with their preoccupation with procreation.”

Both of them made a noise that I was pretty sure was laughter. Then again, exolinguistics could be a tricky subject even if you were an expert. Even if it was an alien species that we had a lot of experience with, and the Kliks weren’t a species we had a lot of firsthand experience with. For all I knew they could simply be remarking on how the weather was, though it’s not like there was weather in a spaceship so that’s a bad analogy as well.

Whatever. What I’m trying to get at is our understanding of their body language was spotty at best, and I really had no way of knowing what they were doing.

What I did know was I wasn’t feeling arousal like they expected. No, the only thing burning inside me at the moment was white-hot rage. Was the desire to see both of them go down for what they’d done to me. I'd hoped that by giving them what they wanted I'd get the researchers with their tools rather than the soldiers with their guns. That was all the opening that I needed for a little revenge and a little escape. And I had just the thing to do that.

I tapped my wrist. The pattern buffer embedded there went to work and a moment later I held a blaster in my hand. Leveled directly at the two Klik researchers. They were so preoccupied with their conversation that they didn’t notice at first, but then the junior researcher turned an eyestalk towards me. A moment later all three eyestalks turned towards me and I had the satisfaction of seeing something new on its face. Something that I was going to go ahead and assume was worry or fear. Maybe both.

The junior Klik researcher prodded the senior researcher who turned an eyestalk towards me. He reacted in the same way with that look that I assumed was worry and fear. They definitely weren’t expecting the human to be packing heat.

“How?” the senior researcher asked.

“You arrogant asshole,” I said.

Only the word I used wasn’t exactly asshole. It was a piece of anatomy that was, as far as we could tell, completely unique to a Klik. Suffice it to say one of its purposes was similar to what we used our own assholes for and the insult meant more or less the same thing even if the anatomical analogue didn’t quite exist on terrestrial mammals.

The senior researcher’s eyestalks waggled in a look that I was going to go ahead and call surprise. Like I said, I wasn’t exactly a noted exobiologist or exolinguist. I was far more accomplished in the field of exodemolition than anything else.

“You speak our language?”

“Surprise. Now what did you do with the others like me?”

“But you shouldn’t be reacting like this!” the junior researcher said. “You’re supposed to be preoccupied with mating. And how did you get that in here?”

I turned up the setting on my blaster until it started making an ominous hum. I liked it when my blaster started making an ominous hum. I’d also discovered that a blaster pointed directly at an intelligent being making that ominous hum was the kind of the noise that transcended language barriers. It certainly seemed both of these researchers were getting the point.

"The other prisoners?" I asked.

"When they refused to cooperate we gave them to the military people for their brand of testing!" the senior one said, looking more and more agitated.

I rolled my eyes. That was helpful. Military testing could only mean one thing, and it didn't seem to bode well for the people who were captured and tossed in with my sexy star angel.

"So you condemned them to death?" I asked.

“Why do I care what they do with a test subject?” the junior researcher asked. “They wouldn't cooperate so they were..."

His words still hung in the air as the final few molecular bonds holding his body together completely disassociated and he was turned into a puff of vapor. I figured that was the least he deserved for so casually shrugging off the death of so many humans who'd been in his care. Not that he could really shrug since they didn't have shoulders. Just that hardened carapace. Whatever. Metaphors. Aliens. Not working.

I turned the blaster on the senior researcher. “Wrong answer. Now let’s see if you know a little more.”

“We never bothered to find out what happened after we sent test subjects away. Why would we when we…”

His words hung in the air for a moment after he was completely vaporized as well. It was always creepy when the vaporization process didn’t quite catch up to the vocal cords fast enough to stop what they were saying as their body was vaporized. Whatever.

I stood and pulled my uniform on. My newfound companion looked up at me then to the weapon in my hand with a mixture of astonishment and giddiness. I smiled.

“You’ve been trapped here for a hundred years, six months, whatever,” I said. “You ready to get the hell out of here?”

“You bet your sweet ass!” the girl said as she stood and started pulling on her own uniform. I smiled at her eagerness.

She looked over to me as she was about halfway in her uniform, her tits still spilling out and looking incredibly inviting. “So that was all part of a plan to escape?”

I moved in close to her and shifted my gun in one hand as I used my free arm to wrap around her and pull her against me. Her body felt delicious. It felt amazing. It felt like something I was going to explore thoroughly once I was back in the safety of the scout ship.

But not now.

“You’re really fucking hot baby.” I leaned down and punctuated that by kissing her. Kissing her thoroughly. To the point that she gasped and started pressing against me, wrapped her arms around me. Only I pulled away and smiled down at her. “That was way more than a plan to escape. I plan on having a lot more fun once we're in a safe place, but let’s just say I’m a hell of a lot more pissed off at the Kliks right now than I’m turned on by you.”

I pulled away from her and moved to the door. I peered out into the lab and saw the two guards standing there looking bored. Now they let their guard down. Not earlier when I could've used it. Not that I was too annoyed that they waited to let their guard down considering how much fun I'd just had. Well, it was time for a different kind of fun. Because I had a hunch about outdated Klik technology and how it stacked up against the best modern destructive toys humanity had to offer.

I charged my blaster until it was making that delightful ominous hum once more. It was time to run an experiment and test that hunch.

7: Revenge

I strode into the room like I owned the place. “Excuse me?”

Both guards looked up. Both of their triple eyestalks waggled in surprise. What I was going to go ahead and assume it was surprise because the prospect was so delicious.

“I was hoping you could help me test something?”

And before either of them had a chance to raise their weapons I raised my own. Two blasts. It hit their body armor and I was gratified and just a little relieved despite my cocky demeanor to see it melt away along with the rest of their bodies. Then there was nothing left.

“Just as I suspected,” I said.

“What the hell kind of gun is that?” the girl asked.

“The latest in beam weapon vaporization technology,” I said. “Humanity’s come up with some nasty toys in the century since your ship was captured.”

“You keep mentioning a century since my ship was captured,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“Relativity,” I said. “They don’t go faster than light and we do now. That means the six months you’ve been on this ship, probably traveling at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, has actually been about a hundred years as we reckon it in faster than light Galactic Standard Time.”

“Damn,” she said.

I expected alarms to be sounding when we made it out into the hall, but there was nothing of the sort. The doors didn’t even bother to double check that we were actually Kliks before opening with a friendly whoosh. It looked like it was keyed to open up whenever somebody was standing near it. I shook my head. Sloppy security. Not something I would’ve ever allowed on my own ship.

It reminded me of nothing more than one of those total immersion games I played back in my teen years. The kind that connected directly to your brain and put you into a scenario where you were shooting at the enemy, usually Kliks. They’d been the favorite subject in that sort of game, an ancient art form at this point, since we first discovered them. Well, since they discovered us and started causing trouble.

Only this was real life. And it was as though I was using one of the cheat codes that put me into god mode. Every Klik I came upon was immediately vaporized. That might have something to do with the alarm not being raised. It was hard to raise an alarm if you were busy being forcefully dismantled to your component atomic parts.

I’d like to say I felt some sense of regret. Some sense of horror at what I was doing. I was essentially marching through a warship with a superior weapon and destroying any alien life form I came in contact with. Only I had trouble dredging up any sympathy. Especially now that I knew about the experiments they’d been running on the humans they took captive.

No, as far as I was concerned the only good Klik was a dead Klik. And now that I had this useful bit of information about their capabilities regarding faster than light travel and their surprising lack of anything approaching modern weapons technology aside from that weird power draining beam, well I intended to come to their home world at the head of one hell of an invasion fleet and make sure there were a lot of a good Kliks on their homeworld.

I just had to find out where the hell that was.

I had no idea where I was going at first, but I started seeing signs that indicated we were getting close to the hangar bay. I didn’t even bother trying to get into their computer systems. I could speak and read their language, but I wasn’t going to try and get involved with a strange computer. Soon enough we were at the entrance to the bay. I suddenly felt like I was in one of those ancient movies about heroes making their way out of an impossible situation sneaking into a hangar bay trying to get away from the enemy force that had overwhelmingly superior numbers.

I smiled. This was going to be nothing like those ancient movies. No, I was the superior force. The Kliks out there just didn’t know it yet.

I motioned for the girl to stay behind me and strode out onto the hangar floor as though I owned the place. Immediately several Kliks reacted. Started moving for their weapons, but I was faster. There was no way they could outrun the speed of light, and so every hint of movement I saw was immediately vaporized. I even fired at the turrets pointed at my scout ship and was satisfied to see them blow up.

No, the Kliks definitely weren’t the terrifying force we’d thought they were. They were just really good at guerrilla warfare, and they’d gotten really lucky. Up until now.

I fully intended to change that.

I didn’t even bother to run. I just walked without a care in the world and blasted anything that moved. Body armored guard, technicians, whatever it was they were destroyed equally by my blaster. And in moments I was sitting behind my scout ship controls once more. I was turning on the weapon systems as the girl strapped herself into one of the seats behind me.

I turned and smiled at her as I took off and let loose with a barrage of energy weapons that turned what remained of the hangar bay into black char.

I powered up the faster than light drive as I maneuvered my scout ship out of the hangar bay. I quickly moved around behind the ship. I could see movement and on my display I saw that their weapons systems were powering up. It seemed they finally realized something was wrong.

Good, let them try.

A Klik voice came over my comm system. I went ahead and let it through. It spoke English, though with a garbled staticy accent that was common to Kliks who weren’t too familiar with the language.

“Human craft, desist and return to the hangar bay immediately or be destroyed.”

“Sorry, can’t land there. I kind of blew it up. Now I’d like you to send me the location of your home world and defenses, and then I might not blow the rest of your ship up.”

“Unacceptable,” the Klik said.

I saw a familiar power signature. What I recognized as their little trick. Their ace in the hole. The way they were disabling human ships this whole time. I prepared a little surprise targeted at the area where the energy was building up.

And I waited. I wanted to give them a little demonstration.

The beam lanced out and hit my craft. Main power went out and I was down to emergency power. I definitely didn’t have enough energy left for the energy weapons on my ship. I didn’t even have enough power to use the kinetics like on the Gulf, but I did have something else. Something that would work far better than a kinetic weapon since they didn’t have any shielding.

One of the nice things about any ship was that emergency power was supposed to have enough juice to teleport someone out of a ship should they need it. That was supposed to be a last ditch escape mechanism, but it would be enough to teleport something else human sized out of the ship. Something like a mini-nuke. Maybe onto another ship where they didn’t have any sort of energy-based shielding technology to stop me from using my emergency teleporter because they were tooling around the galaxy in the equivalent of stone age technology.

I hit a button. Nothing seemed to happen, but a moment later there was a spectacular explosion out of the side of the Klik ship at the spot where that beam was firing. Immediately everything came back on. I was weapons hot, and I had every weapon pointing at their ship.

I made sure to turn everything up to full power. I wanted their scanners to realize exactly what they had pointed at them. I wanted them to realize they’d brought a level one civilization battle cruiser to a level three civilization fight.

The voice crackled on my ship again. “We surrender.”

I flipped my own communication button. Opened a channel to them. “That’s nice and all, and technically by our laws of war I’m supposed to go ahead and accept your surrender.”

“I knew you would do the honorable thing,” the Klik commander said.

“There’s just one problem. I surrendered to you earlier and you decided to use me as the subject of some weird science experiment. I also discovered you've been running experiments on any other human you capture. That means I’m not bound by any pesky laws of war that might apply to this scenario. You’ve already committed a war crime, and as far as I’m concerned you’re as good as dead. Hell, your whole species has committed a war crime. After I sift through the remains of your computer systems I‘m going straight to your home world with a fleet to make sure every last one of you pays for your crimes against humanity.”

“We will die before we reveal our location to you,” the Klik commander said.

“I can arrange that,” I said.

I hit a couple of buttons and all the weapons on my scout ship fired at the same time. It was really an impressive display. They lanced out and blasted into preprogrammed locations I’d scouted out while I was busy talking. Their engines blew as a bomb was teleported straight into their engine room. I blew holes in their life support system. I made sure to put a nice big hole in what I assumed was the bridge and was gratified to see Kliks flying out into the void. I wondered if one of them was the pleasant individual I’d just been chatting with.

I targeted everything but the computer's best guess as to the location of their central computer. There’d be nobody on the bridge to wipe any computer records, that’s for sure, and I was gambling that this would keep their records intact.

Once I’d finished my work I hit the button on the faster than light drive and my ship jumped an appreciable distance away from the spot where they’d been refueling their water stores.

I felt something over my shoulder. I turned to see the girl staring, wide-eyed. “Why aren’t we going to Earth?”

I grinned. “I’ve already sent a signal off to the fleet. We’re going to have one hell of a reception here in a couple of hours. They’ll go through that ship with a fine toothed comb and make sure we get all of their records. It’s time for humanity to pay a visit to the Kliks.”

She continued staring in wide-eyed astonishment, but then her attention turned back to me. “A couple of hours?”

“At least. They can get here almost instantly, but it’ll take time for them to muster up their forces.”

I knew that because I was the one who’d designed the protocol for dealing with this situation. The Admiralty trusted me enough that they allowed me to write the plan up for what would happen if I did eventually manage to find and neutralize a Klik ship. And so I knew exactly how long it would take them to get out here.

Her grin widened. “So what are we going to do for those couple of hours?”

My anger was subsiding, and it was being replaced by lust once more. Not the burning lust that she’d described, it seemed I’d been spared that particular fate because I was so pissed off at the Kliks. That tempered my desire at the time and I felt more in control of things now.

I grinned back at her. “I’m sure we could think of something to pass the time.”

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