[tent Warning: svery, sci-f

  K’rra stepped away from the autodoc. The Fury Jae looked down at her elder lying unscious on the exam table. The servo arms focused along the burned scar running across his torso. As they reope K’rra saw Jae flinch.

  Toug the Fury’s shoulder, K’rra said, “Don’t watch. It will make you emotional. Walk with me instead.”

  Jae turo follow, struggling to tear her gaze away from her wounded mentor.

  K’rra went to the exit and moved back down the ramp onto the dirt nding pad the Outnder parked upon. She turned and faced Jae, surprised at how young the Fury was.

  “Take a deep breath. You ’t let the rest of them see you upset. You have to be the pilr they rest o’s do a p around the ship to catch our breath.”

  Jae nodded and said nothing.

  sideriarship officer’s training, K’rra recalled the instrus for leading crews during difficult times. As they walked K’rra found herself breathing, trying to clear her mind and remain focused on being as stoic as possible. She khe Furys could read and seions, and so had to be careful not to actally reveal too much.

  “Is this your first and?” K’rra asked.

  “and?”

  “Whether you are, or not, all those people on the ship are looking to you fuidance.”

  “I’ve just graduated my trials this st year. I’m in no position to lead.”

  “The universe does that, hits you with challenges you don’t think you are ready for.” They had circled the ship and K’rra tinued her pep-talk, “I thought the same thing when I graduated and found myself in charge on a sce vessel.”

  “You’re a captain? You don’t look that much older than me.”

  “Not a captain, I’m a ander, a doctor on a sce ship. But all the stists… and medical personnel…” K’rra flinched inside, she was supposed to be pying a doctor, not a stist. She had a doctorate degree making her a Doctor of Physics, but that did not fer the same honorific as a Doctor of Medie.

  She pushed to smooth over her fumble, “They all looked to me since I’d graduated Academy and had the heaviest bars on my colr. Some of them, had been doing field work for years. What was I supposed to know, o their actual experience? But that didn’t matter, they’d been told I was their leader, and I had to pretend every single day that I was. Aation, any show of doubt, and the fa?ade would be over.”

  Jae stopped and looked into K’rra’s face. The younger woman looked flicted. She took a long breath.

  K’rra kept her mind as clear as possible, reg natural ws to keep her mind clear aions steady. If the Fury caught so much as a whiff of insecurity in the sce officer, the game would be over.

  “Why don’t you take a moment and catch your breath. Let the port master know the Outnder is ready to take off and have round lock lifted. It will give you a few moments. I’ll check up on your Maester.”

  The Fury nodded and turned heading across the dirt nding pad to the starport and building. It was a shack really, nothing more than a room with some fanav-puters and a desk. K’rra turned and walked methodically up the ramp. She wao exhale a sigh of relief, the most dangerous person was now off her ship. Off Kaster’s ship. She forced herself to walk slowly up and inside.

  Instead of going to the wounded she turned aered the cockpit. Sitting in the pilot’s seat she saw Jae at the and shack, arm lifted to enter, wheurned suddenly and looked back. K’rra reached out and activated the scrambler. The ground lock switched from red to green, indig that take off was now possible.

  K’rra smmed the trols spinning the engines up from idle to full power. She grabbed the flight stid yanked back, pulling ba the ehrottles the ship kicked up off the ground in an instant.

  There was a single moment where her eyes locked with Jae’s. A moment of wounded hope.

  As the ship rocketed into the sky, K’rra knew Jae would call the attendants and warhere were four of them still in the ship. Even without ons they’d be able to overpower K’rra easily. She reached out to the gravity trols, and flicked them off. There were yelps and cries for help from the rear of the ship.

  Bsting straight up towards space K’rra did g-force calcutions in her head. The sound barrier would be somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve hundred kilometers per hour. This was muddled by the fact she wasn’t pletely sure of the atmospherisity, safe to guess that anything around nine hundred would be safe. Accelerating that fast spread out over five seds would create roughly four to five g’s of force. It was easily enough to knock down everyone in the back. At that speed they would hit spa under six mihen zero g would render everyone helpless.

  K’rra eased off the throttle and lowered the elevation of climb. There’s still be more than one g of force, making it an uphill climb for anyone in the back to get to the cockpit. The floor felt like it was tilting down at a crazy angle, making it difficult to traverse. She repared, havihe ship this way on purpose. She just hoped none of the attendants were Furies-in-training.

  She forced herself out of the pilot chair and swung down into the cockpit door. When it slid open, she almost fell into the on room. Catg herself on the frame she saw that nobody was in the room, they were all still in the middle sick bay room.

  Using her grip on the frame, K’rra swung herself through the door and to one side of the crazily sloping on room. The furniture was all held fast with magic gripping. She pyed a game of hot va swinging to a couch, then leaping from it to the table. From there it was just a quick tap dance downhill to the equipment lockers. The lockers she’d just anized days prior.

  Ripping the locker she needed open, she grabbed a bst pistol then slid on her ass down the floor to the wall of doors. She hopped over the door to her room, then smmed the trols for the medical room open with her heel.

  Straddling the door with each foot she aimed the bster down into the room below. As she’d hoped, the attendants were in heap along the far wall of the room, and the two doors there. Sule was held in pce by the autodoc still perf surgery on him, but Kaster lie in a crumples heap with the attendants. Good thing he’s sedated, she thought.

  “Open those doors a in!” K’rra screamed down at them. She saw oendant had a unit in his hand, obviously unig with Jae already. They all looked up at her wide eyed.

  K’rra fired the bster into the ceilihe puppy pile. The attendants were a lot less sluggish in opening the doors and sliding into the two cells. She aimed carefully and slid down on her ass to the wall they’d been struggling on. Landiween the openings, she aimed the bster through the gaping doors at oheher. Kig the trol pahe doors slid shut.

  There was a well warranted exhale of relief, then the g forces started fading. The ship had hit its set speed and was no longer accelerating. It was now simply maintaining nine hundred kilometers per hour. She wao rush to Kaster, but he’d have to wait a little longer.

  Scrambling back the way she came she felt her struggles getting easier and lighter with every moment. The ship must be nearing space. Her scrambles became long leaps from hand hold to hand hold. By the end of her journey, she ractically weightless.

  Pulling herself into the pilot’s seat, she flicked the ship grav ba and things returo normal. Turning to the nav puter she pulled up a local star map aed a system at random. It was a three-hour jump away, something that close should take no time for the puter to plot the course. In her mind’s eye she could imagine Jae andeering a ship and closing in onder with every passing sed.

  It took six long minutes for the puter to plot the jump course. K’rra ighe multiple hails sent to the ship, and khe attendants were busy making calls with whatever units they had. When the ping sounded, she yanked ba the collective ung the ship into hyperspace.

  She sat in the pilot seat for three hours debating courses of a. In the end she decided she was out of her league, she needed help, and Kaster was in no dition to offer it. She weighed all her options, fleeing back to Coalition space would require dodging Federated patrols. Coalition space wasn’t far, but it was still dangerous. Ohere what would she do? She could use Kaster funds for hospitalizatio back to Hol Vydon for help. her sounded ideal. Remaining in Federated space was also dangerous, she couldn’t take Kaster to a hospital, he’d now been in multiple fights with deaths and casualties. Knowing he was injured, w enfort would be searg for him at hospitals. She also didn’t have any underworld es. She’d been a Naval Officer, not a criminal.

  After agonizing for hours, she finally decided she would have to reach out to Hol Vydon for help. When the ship lurched out of hyperspace, she immediately checked for a s buoy and made the call.

  “Operator,” a scaley snaky Ryptos woman on the el answered at the Vydon residence.

  “This is Indigo. I’m in need of medical aid he Brandak system. Any local help would be greatly appreciated.” K’rra said. She’d edited the s program so that her void image would be scrambled in transmission. If the Feds picked up her transmission there would be little to give her away other than the system name.

  There was a static filled pause, then, “Message received. Sit tight for instrus.”

  Nearly an hour ticked by with K’rra getting more nervous by the moment. When the s light blinked, she answered immediately.

  “Operator for Indigo.”

  “This is Indigo, go.”

  “Help is waiting. Instrus follow. If standing in the Hr’ythian Sorium, look to the hall of great minds, underh that, you will find your . Ier pool on the rimward side there will be help. Proceed with haste.”

  The message was coded, Vydon wouldn’t give the Feds easy instrus oo fihe Federation had experts, and expert systems however, that would be able to decode the message if given enough time.

  The sorium was ihian Temple of Thought, the hall coreward. She called up a regional map and sed the star systems nearby. From Brandak she looked coreward and saw a series of six systems, only one of them began with the first letter of her , R for Ry’attahk. She spotted a single system called Riimos. Zooming in she saw two asteroid belts, the outer pool must be one of those. She set the puter to plot a course.

  The jump took eight hours. She got Kaster ba his stretcher and made sure he was kept in slumber through drugs. The Fury Maester was no longer undergoing surgery, but the autodoc fretted like a worried mother, its arms sing, and shifting, and pig at him. The prisoapped on the doors hoping for iion, she ighem.

  K’rra tried sleeping in the pilot’s chair. It seemed disrespectful to Kaster to try napping in her bed while he y on a stretcher on the floor. She napped infrequently, mostly worried, mostly assessing how things should have goer.

  When the double ping sounded K’rra was relieved. She was nervous about the type of help that Vydon could muster inside Federated Space, but that was out of her hands now. She pulled the collective back, and the ship unched into real space. Before her stretched a massive ring of floating rocks. She cruised toward it, w if she should broadcast, or wait to receive one.

  The s light flickered, and she answered hastily.

  “This is Indigo.”

  “Prepare for dog. Cut engines and wait. Out.” A gruff voice demanded.

  She did exactly as they said, pulled the throttle bad waited sitting silently. After a few minutes a corsair ship eased out of the asteroids. It was a wicked looki, bck as the void around it with spshes of red spttered across stubby wings bristling with ons. It looked like a pirate ship that had run down a great giant a its blood across the hull.

  The corsair loomed over the Outnder, it was a much bigger ship. K’rra wasn’t certain of the exact make, but she guessed it had a crew of several dozen, maybe forty all together. There was a massive g as it ected, and the hatch above the exit ramp lit up.

  K’rra hesitated only a moment before hitting the trol that would opeo the other ship. Whoever Vydon had sent for help was already operating in this region. There was no way they had enough time to jump here from Coalition Space. That meant they were raiders, svers, or pirates.

  The hatch opened with a bst of air rushing in from the rger ship. As it swung open K’rra stood her ground, anxious to have invaders e aboard.

  At the front of the pirate crew stood a tall humanoid, two heads taller than K’rra with a wide bare chest. She first noticed the green tint to his bald head, then the impossibly long ears sweeping back past his skull with little tufts of fur at their tips. It was the first Xuriant she’d ever seen. A beast people from a low-tech world known for their violent honor system.

  He sauntered over to her slowly, each step spanning two Human sized ones. His dark eyes sed her up and down, assessing her. She pegged him on that alone as a sver determining her worth.

  She waited for him to speak, growing ever more nervous as his crew drove into the ship past him. They all had nasty looking bst ons at the ready as they fanned out into the interior of the Outnder.

  Uo bear the sileny longer K’rra asked, “Hol Vydo you?”

  “I’m no dog, girl!” The t green skinned man barked. “You’ll be paying dearly for our services. No?”

  K’rra nodded frantically, feeling small, helpless, and at the mercy of this sver. “Of course. I just wanted…”

  “Silence! Are you not a sve?”

  “Yes. I am the prop…”

  He cut her off again, “Why do you address me as equal, sve-girl?”

  “I...”

  “I!”

  K’rra snapped out of her terror and into a sve’s primary pose, feet spread, hands behind neck.

  “This is better.” His dark eyes glowered down into her. She had to look away. “And that is eveer. If a sve was my own, a beating she would get for looking up at me. You uand this?”

  K’rra nodded keeping her eyes downcast.

  “And why is this one clothed? Show yourself to me as a sve should, girl.”

  Her fingers flew to the fasteners of the jump suit stripping it off with a practiced efficy. In the room she could hear yelling as the raiders found the attendants in their cells. In just moments K’rra had gone from anding a ship, albeit poorly, to nothing more than a sve once again.

  The tall Xuriant walked around behind her. “Bend!”

  She bent at the waist while moving her hands back to her ass cheeks. Opening herself she knew his eyes were on her holes. The thought of it made pangs of ache that she hadn’t felt in days explode in her belly.

  Long delicate fingers, much rger than a Human’s cupped her making K’rra gasp. He worked her, massaging her roughly until she juiced up sliing his digits. When he slipped one inside her she moaned loudly.

  “Now this! This is how a sve acts.” His buried finger explored her intimately, making her gasp and cry out as he tinued, “A sve is wet, this is good. Will make having you so much easy. Is good that you wet so easily. A well-trained sve. I will enjoy you for as long as we offer our hospitality. No?”

  “Whatever your price,” K’rra moaned.

  She worried what Kaster would think when he woke, but knew in the end, she was just a sve, his to use or sell as he wished.