The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Hillcrest Memorial, Florida Environmental Reclamation Zone

Tomoko laid a single rose beneath the guttering flame of her late husband’s memorial, the eternal torch sitting atop a hillock overlooking the slowly retreating Atlantic ocean. His ashes were scattered to the winds from here; nothing physical remained, as was so often the case with memorials on Earth these last two hundred years. But this was always where she felt some lingering whisp of his ghost, where she always talked to him, looking up into the creamy sky and imagining he was somewhere beyond its ionosphere listening.

“Well, Jack. I’ve gotta go. You know what working in space is like. But… this might put a smile on your face. I think I met somebody. And you’re not going to believe who it is…”

Admiral’s Log: 3 May 2286; Xanthe Council Reckoning, 92-Gamma, QZ-97.

After an eventful shore leave the crew of the Odyssey is more than ready for our next assignment. I couldn’t be prouder of everything we’ve achieved. News came through that Xanthe Ambassador Xenopatra has given the Odyssey a glowing review and even suggested—publicly!—that the time for ‘chaperoning’ the United Nations might, at last, be coming to a close. Hers is a lone voice for now, but a powerful one. The Secretary General is quite pleased, as I understand, and so are a lot of his underlings. I despise politics, usually, but on the good days I understand why it’s necessary. And this is a good day.

After a delay caused by a stray solar flare, we’ll be receiving our next mission briefing from one of those underlings, Mme. Sophie de Montchalin. Her… rapport with our Chief Medical Officer has become surprisingly strong.

Hong Kong, 1969

Tomoko moaned so loudly that she worried she’d be heard above even the din of the city. But, pressed against an alley wall as she was, she was drenched with a liberating feeling of having nothing left to lose. And quite a lot of sweat. And her juices leaking down the sides of her legs. Her uniform trousers were pooled at her ankles, her simple black bikini panties straining as they were forcefully pulled aside by the crusading woman behind her, a strap-on thrusting forth from the crotch of her charcoal suit trousers.

Shufen Leung was making good on her promise, after all, and Tomoko was grateful she remembered.

“Oh god… yes, Shufen…” Tomoko gasped, each syllable a fight for breath. That strap-on wasn’t driving into her pussy, after all. “Ah!” The Chief Medical Officer of the Odyssey threw her head back and cried out into the sky of this eternal summer.

Shufen’s deft fingers had learned to part the mysterious clasps of Tomoko’s strange uniform, unhooking the jacket’s collar and peeling it open slowly, groping her through the thin grey camisole she wore beneath, tearing it as she yanked it down to expose her plain, matching bra to the humid afternoon air.

“Yessss,” Tomoko whispered as she felt Shufen’s skilled fingers write poetry on her breast, delicately clawing beneath her bra. She almost didn’t hear her communicator.

“Hi, Tomoko, was just checking to make sure you were on time! The 15:42 tram at Man Wah Lane, don’t be late!” chimed the floral accent of Sophie de Montchalin.

“Ah shit…” Tomoko groaned. “Shufen, you’re going to have to finish paying me back later… Ah!” she gasped in delight as Shufen ever-so-delicately removed herself from Tomoko’s newly-deflowered rear. “How do you do that ?”

Shufen grinned and bashfully ran a hand over her neatly gelled dark hair. “It’s all in the hips. You know Elvis? Uh huh huhhhh,” she gyrated and winked before taking off her strap-on and zipping up. “You’ll want to hurry, the tram stop is just that way,” she pointed to the busy Des Voeux Road that roared past the mouth of the alley.

“Gotcha…” Tomoko fussed with her clothes and quickly peeled off the now ruined camisole, handing it to Shufen, “Something to remember me by. I’ll have to go commando to the meeting.”

“Real commandos would have something to fear from you,” Shufen said with a smile. “I should get back to work anyway. I’m writing an editorial about Nixon’s impact on Southeast Asia… editor wants it by 6.”

Tomoko had to bite her tongue; Shufen was, strangely and alluringly, in her world. But the consequences of telling her everything about it were… too fractal to contemplate. For all intents and purposes, Shufen Leung was real. And treating her with respect meant not telling her the next fifty chapters of her world’s story. “It’ll be incisive. In Chinese and English.”

“I always do my own translations,” Shufen said with a wink as she buried her hands in her pockets and began to walk off in the other direction. “Say hi to ma cherie for me.”

Tomoko had been on antique tramways in San Francisco, Melbourne, and elsewhere, but this was another experience entirely. The dark green double-decker tram was full of people in period costume. She was, as ever, the odd one out. Unlike Sophie, of course, who wore yet another perfectly-matched Dior sleeveless dress ensemble; this time an evergreen to match the tram, and a thick white belt cinching her delicate waist, twinned with creamy gloves.

“I saved you a seat!” she said as one of those gloves patted a space on the wooden bench next to her.

Tomoko plopped herself down. “Whew, I had to run! Look, I get some of it, okay? I really do. What Shufen was doing to me in the alley was… well, they should run that as a newspaper ad for VR Suites. But running for a tram in midday heat before air-con was in widespread use on this planet? That’s the part of your fetish I’m still going to tease you about.”

“You’re a doctor, you should approve of a little unscheduled exercise,” Sophie said with a little smile.

“Crap. I’m just a little bit nice to you and I start rubbing off on you already.”

“You did way more than rub off on me.”

“Okay, now it’s uncanny.” Tomoko blushed a little bit through her laughter; she still didn’t know how she felt about everything, except to say that it was good. Very good. Stupid as every hell in every cosmology, but good. “So, aside from setting me up with your girlfriend, why am I here?”

“Have a look at this…” Sophie said as she pulled out her datapad and set it to projection mode, causing an image of space slugs to appear—a whole pod of them, in fact, wiggling around in the empty space above Sophie’s lap in their dozens. “You’ll get the full boilerplate in today’s briefings, but basically, the Odyssey is going slug-herding in Alpha Centauri.”

“A milk run nextdoor to the Solar System? Not to sound like you or anything, but isn’t that a bit beneath us?”

“Ordinarily yes. The really interesting thing is this… Tell me what you hear.” She pressed a holographic triangle on the display and it began to play what sounded like a strange combination of rolling thunder and whalesong.

Thankfully, since the VR Suite wasn’t malfunctioning, the holographic bystanders crowding the tram were fully ignoring all anachronisms.

“That sounds like language… but we’ve never heard space slugs communicate like that before. I did my medical thesis on xeno-gastropods; unless there’s been some weird new development in technology…”

“There hasn’t. But this pod is talking amongst themselves. And there’s something else. Top secret.” She pinched the holographic display of the space slugs and zoomed out to the whole Alpha Centauri system, then back in between the binary stars that made it up. There was an odd black spot between them; a deadzone where ample sensor data should’ve been. “Complete darkness. No sensors can get through. The Galactic Weather Service lost contact with that patch of space three days ago. The Odyssey needs to get there before civilian ships start ‘investigating’ on their own, with unknown consequences. Or casualties.”

“And you think this weird dead zone and the slugs are related?”

“It’s a hunch. UN Fleet Command is sceptical. But the Secretary-General isn’t. And he tells me the Security Council gets very nervous when our sensors stop working.”

“Yeah yeah, just casually humblebrag about how you and Sec-Gen play racquetball or whatever.”

“I’m being serious! This could be a major security risk, or perhaps the scientific discovery of a lifetime. Something is making those space slugs chatter in a way we can pick up. Now between your expertise, and the fact that I know your two chief science officers have ample slug-herding experience, I think you can figure this out.”

“Well… I can’t deny we’re a good choice for something like this. Why are you telling me all this stuff before the official briefing?”

Sophie shifted uncomfortably. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want a little more alone time with you before this mission. But there’s something else. There’s going to be a UN Intelligence minder there. Call me paranoid, but there’s some things I’m going to tell you that I don’t want to say in front of them. And then you can relay it to Admiral Chase and the other senior command staff…”

“On the one hand, I hate this intrigue shit. On the other, you’re really cute when you’re being serious.” Tomoko couldn’t believe herself; 48 hours ago she wanted to strangle this woman. It was just astonishing how much things could change when you got to know someone.

Sophie smiled a bit. “The gist is this: there are three possibilities here. One, it’s a new cosmological phenomenon, and you’ll bag and tag it and come home. Two, there’s a new cosmozoan lifeform that’s the cause of this, in which case you’ll go through First Contact protocol and file a metric tonne of paperwork, but it’s still straightforward. …Option 3 is that the Xanthe are up to something. And if they are, you need to keep that information very closely contained. And deliver it to me personally.”

“I swear to god, if you seduced me just to build up to this, I will astrally project myself from Alpha Centauri just to…”

Sophie silenced her with a kiss and withdrew just an inch; she stared into Tomoko’s eyes, reciting epic poetry without words for several long seconds. All Tomoko heard was the din of indistinct Cantonese and English conversations and the clanging of the tram’s bell. “That this happened was… a happy coincidence. And I’m already scared of letting you go back into deep space. I’m just… I’m just trying to balance a lot, Tomoko,” Sophie clawed the other woman close and buried her face in her shoulder. “I promise I’m not using you, never ever that; I just… need people I can trust right now.”

Tomoko didn’t need further elaboration. If the Xanthe were up to something, it could destabilise the entire balance of power in Known Space. There were already large pockets of resentment on Earth—and the other homeworlds—about Xanthe paternalism and condescension. Any revelation of spying or some other security threat would cause tensions to explode into open conflict. A conflict some in the UN were, as if they were the heirs of the idiots Shufen was now writing about, eager to provoke.

“Chase is a good woman. A true believer in our ideals. I know she’ll be on side,” Sophie continued, “I just… had the private meeting with you because I have to be Meta-Secretary Sophie Qingyang Rochelle de Montchalin with her. With you I can just be that dork you make fun of. And I can do this…” she nuzzled Tomoko’s shoulder.

Tomoko frowned and stroked the other woman’s hair. They’d moved at lightning speed with each other, she knew. It was fraught with all the emotion that lay in their pasts. The power differential that no good intentions could ever overcome. The very nature of this conversation showed why this relationship was, from one perspective, a bad idea. And yet. She looked down at Sophie and saw her dark eyes gazing out the tram window at Central. Tomoko knew that the other woman’s thoughts were firmly rooted in the 23rd Century; despite the miracle of the VR Suite, producing a perfect rendition of the sights and sounds and smells of a big city hundreds of years ago, Sophie couldn’t escape.

And at last Tomoko felt she understood something fundamental about her. She tilted the other woman’s chin up to draw her in to a long, slow kiss.

Fortunately, the VR Suite’s privacy shields were still working.

Admiral’s Log 9 May 2286; Xanthe Council Reckoning, 93-Delta, QZ-99.

The Odyssey is approaching Alpha Centauri, once the fixation of many old Earth dreamers as our first pitstop en route to the stars. The Odyssey is due to investigate a small herd of space slugs that might be in distress. Our sensors are detecting something truly strange: a dead zone in the space between the system’s twin suns. While the cosmology team investigates, our Chief Medical Officer has requested a private meeting.

Alexandra sighed heavily and rubbed her eyes. Her CMO had shared some shocking intrigue, “Tomoko, why didn’t you tell me any of this before we dropped out of hyperspace?”

“I’m sorry, Alex. I just wanted us to be as far away from Earth as possible. Sophie seemed really worried about all this…”

Alexandra smirked, “I still can’t get over how she’s ‘Sophie’ now and not ‘that French bitch from HQ whom I will murder with my bare hands.’”

“No one’s more surprised than me, Skipper. She’s such a stupid dork, I can’t be mad at her. I don’t know how someone like her gets to be a Meta-Secretary. I thought they all had to drink swan’s blood and backstab each other for sport.”

Alexandra slowly spun in her chair to look out the window of her office, into the gentle drift of infinite stars. “It was never my place to tell you, but I always rated her as ‘one of the good ones.’ Occasionally, someone who goes into politics for the sake of genuine ideals manages to be successful… which is why I’m overlooking your infatuation with her and taking all this very seriously. She really thinks this might be a Xanthe cockup?”

“As sure as she likes a cock up her…”

“ Don’t finish that sentence, Tomoko,” Alexandra held up a hand—barely hiding a smile. “Alright. Well, you should liaise with Xeno-Bio, see if they need any help figuring out what’s going on with the slugs. As things stand, I’m going to have to stick with the plan.”

“I swear to the gods I don’t believe in, Alex, if you say ‘away mission’…”

“I’m going to lead an away mission into the dead zone.”

“I am not pulling some exotic transdimensional spear out of your butt this time.”

“You will, and you’ll like it,” Alex winked. “Dismissed, old friend.”

“Admiral, we have visual!” called out Lieutenant Legasova from the helm.

“On screen,” Alexandra said as she rose from her command chair.

The screen, arcing across a third of the bridge, was suddenly filled with live video from just beyond the Odyssey’s bow. A herd of wiggling slugs, floating in the void between Alpha Centauri A and B. A void that was suspiciously literal. No starlight passed through it.

A flood of green text appeared on screen, linked to one of the slugs. The Xenobiology report was coming through.

“Admiral,” said Lieutenant Commander Iweala in her husky English accent, “the slugs’ behaviour is regarded as abnormal, according to the Xenobiology team.” As one of the ship’s natural science officers, it was her job to provide an abstract for each of the many research reports that crossed Alex’s desk. “They appear distressed but, as sonic probing tests demonstrated, they are unwilling to leave their current location.”

“Any leads on the anomaly?” Alexandra asked, tucking her chin between her thumb and forefinger.

“None. It’s as if that section of space simply does not exist.”

“Alright, and what about the ‘speech’?”

“Well, Admiral, if I may? Computer: play back the last thirty seconds of space slug speech recorded by the Xenobiology Team.”

The bridge was suddenly filled with something like whalesong, but to the side and through the looking glass. It was eerie, beautiful, enchanting… and somehow worrying. And it was suddenly punctuated by a comm beeping.

Alexandra tapped her communicator. “Go ahead.”

“Admiral, it’s Tomoko. I heard you all are playing the slugs’ number one jam up there. Well, me and the Xeno-Bios just cooked up something you all might want to hear…” The slug-song was suddenly distorted and modified, as Tomoko was clearly isolating some part of it.

Avedra, who until now had been studiously quiet, raised a dark eyebrow. “There’s a motif repeating.”

“More than a motif!” Tomoko said. “They all said I was crazy for doing my dissertation on xeno-gastropods, but guess what’s about to pay off? Computer, run the isolated tidbits through the uni-trans, if you’d be so kind!”

«…THE SOURCE … THE SOURCE … THE SOURCE … THE SOURCE…»

“How sure are we of this translation?” Alexandra asked excitedly.

“About 80%. A number I didn’t just make up. But it has 80% vibes.”

Alexandra smirked and paced before her chair. “What do you think, Iweala?”

She shrugged. “Perfectly plausible. If we can isolate more phonemes… we’re going to need to bring our chief social science officer in on this, ma’am.”

“Agreed. Lieutenant Commander Heka, report to the Conference Room in thirty please, Admiral Chase out,” Alexandra said with a quick tap on her communicator. “Tomoko, you still on the line? I want you there too.”

UNS Odyssey Conference Room

Heka smoothed out her crisp dark hair out of habit—not that a single strand of it, tightly bound up in a spherical bun, was anywhere near loose. The silver-skinned android had, however, made a point of integrating these tiny gestures into her routines, the better to seem ‘normal’ around humans. After all, they remained skittish about her and her Titanian siblings. “It is my considered view, Admiral, that we are listening to a prayer.”

“A prayer?” Alexandra said with a slight head-tilt from her place at the end of the crescent-shaped conference table.

“A desperate one, if I may say. Using the data gathered by Chief Medical Officer Langley and her team I was able to reconstruct additional phonemes and eventually whole syllables and a syntax. Lieutenant Commander Langley made quite a… shot in the dark, as you would say. I would not have put my confidence ‘vibe’ at 80% for the translation of ‘Source,’ but, rather against the odds, it turned out to be a reasonable guess. It makes sense in context.”

Heka did not see Tomoko sticking a finger under her nose and pantomiming snottiness behind her back. But Alexandra did and shot her a warning glare.

“Point is that I was right,” Tomoko asseverated.

“As are stopped clocks, twice during a solar day. But yes. The Source is what they are praying to.”

“Praying to?” Alexandra said.

“It is an object of reverence. Much is as yet unknown, but this appears to be a desperate prayer to The Source, and they will not be moved.”

“Is The Source the anomaly?”

“That would be a reasonable hypothesis.”

“Tomoko, thoughts?”

“This is more advanced behaviour than we’ve ever seen from space slugs, though we’ve only observed them from a distance. It’s possible this… Source has some kind of amplifying effect on their subspace telepathic communications, making them more apparent to us? Like… cleaning up a staticky signal? Either way, if they’ve got a goddamn religion that’s a pretty huge step up from what we thought we knew about them…”

“Admiral, if I may, Lieutenant Commander Langley is quite right…”

“Compliments from you are like a bubble bath, Heka,” Tomoko grinned wickedly.

Heka rolled her purple eyes. “As I was trying to say, we may be in a general First Contact protocol scenario.”

“Agreed. Well, you know what this means…”

“You’ve reconsidered your reckless lifestyle and are going to retire to slug herding around Ceres?” Tomoko asked dryly.

“We need to do that away mission. And Heka, I want you on it.”

The silver woman stood up ramrod straight and saluted crisply, “Admiral.”

Now Tomoko rolled her eyes.

Adrestia Shuttlecraft

“We’re approaching the Source,” Alexandra said quietly from the helm of the ovoid shuttle. Flanking her in the co-pilot’s seat was Lieutenant Commander Heka. Behind them were three lightly armoured security officers—one nonbinary Vorii and two human women.

“But we mustn’t go any further until we’ve established communications,” Heka warned.

“Agreed, Avedra are you ready?”

“Yes, ma’am,” came back that lovely, deep voice over the comm. “Reaching out with the ala’thenae now. Iweala has the conn.”

Heart to heart, soul to soul, all life is joined in the cosmic sea of eternity and existence. In union there is love. In union there is life. In union there is one body.

All return to Ala’thenae.

Avedra stood in the dark surrounded by a crowd of glowing, golden eyes. Her mind was one, now, with not just one slug, but the entire herd. “I am called Avedra, and I come in peace from the United Nations. If possible, I would like to answer your questions… and perhaps your prayers. We have need of investigating the anomaly you guard, the place where there is no… light or sound.”

“You

Speak

Of

The

Source You don’t see or hear because

You Cannot.”

The words came from everywhere, and from within her.

“I’d like to try,” Avedra said with a gentle surety.

“The Source

Has

Been Stolen From Us.

You say… ‘heart to heart; soul to soul’ but you must hear us True in order to see what we see. To pass beyond the Veil. Of The Source.”

As if acting on instinct, Avedra unbuckled her weapon belt and let it fall to the ground. Oddly, it made no sound. She could feel the creatures in her mind; it was a tender thing, sensual and fearful all at once. Something in her felt as if she were seeing the gastropods as they really were—all spirit and voice, faith and need. She had to show them who she really was without the trappings of her worldly existence.

She undid the seamless clasps of her uniform jacket, peeling it open slowly, revealing a deep line of cleavage disappearing into a white and grey mesh sports bra. As she shed her jacket she undid her pants and shoved away each of her leather boots, revealing her muscular body in its full splendour when she gracefully peeled away the bra and her plain white boyshorts. With delicate gestures she invited the knowledge of the…

Ateph

…the Ateph inside her. That was their name. Not ‘space slugs’ but Ateph. The People of the Source. Something was filling her. Not just words and knowledge, but a presence. Avedra’s eyes suddenly started open as she felt swelling in her bare womanhood—and pressing from the other end too.

Some bit of her was dimly aware of the fact that Alexandra knew nothing of what was happening, that her naked fiancée was feeling unseen energies probe and penetrate her body, filling her every hole—her mouth was stuffed tight now, as well. She was grateful that they were polyamorous, and that, if anything, Alex might’ve enjoyed the sight. And yet still, she was letting herself be used by an Entity. Not for the first time.

She loved it. More than most Vorii, to be sure. To be the vessel for cosmic forces… it was an exquisite bliss, the death and rebirth of a sun.

Avedra was floating off the ground now, her muscular green legs splayed open, and her arms held wide apart as she felt full. Energy filling her to bursting, distending her otherwise toned stomach with the outline of an otherwise invisible invader, all but gagging on the one in her mouth as she moaned over it.

She would always be a UN Fleet officer, but no small part of her needed this to happen. Again. And Again. For the rest of her life. She realised she missed the Hourglass Mistress’ absence from her body, the sense of being Her tool. Avedra’s body, her mouth was Hers, twisted into pleasing shapes and sounds for Her. She wasn’t a Commander any longer, perfect in her uniform, strong enough to benchpress her all-so-perfect fiancée. Now she had no need of her musculature, no need of command. All she had to be was this. A vessel for power and knowledge, for One greater than she could ever be.

These were sensations many Vorii felt ashamed of, especially with aliens. But Avedra always embraced it. Being fucked by the cosmic was one thing—a glorious thing—but being mindfucked by the cosmos was transcendental.

She moaned around the invisible tentacle, writhed slowly in all the others that held her aloft, and bucked her hips on those that filled her to impossible depths. Poor Alexandra was going to have to m-print a bigger dildo wasn’t she? Oh Goddess, her holes were so well used already… The Ateph were going to stretch her to impossible new dimensions. Could anything less satisfy her ever again?

Avedra felt something wrap around her breasts. Another unseen tentacle. And another. Then, an almighty squeeze that made her scream around the one in her mouth. Her body glistened with sweat.

Sweat was the only thing she wore.

Ateph was all she was.

“Okay, her heartrate’s picking up! So is the redundant heart,” called out Nurse Ziata with relief as she scanned the prone body of Commander Avedra. “And… hoo boy,” her feline eyes widened as she saw a damp patch suddenly appear on Avedra’s dark trousers. “Sudden incontinence.”

Tomoko sniffed the air for a moment and said, “Oh, honey, that is not pee, trust me.”

Ziata, one of the feline Felsian species, hissed at that and said, “Oh dear. That… explains all the other readings and… ahm.”

“What’cha got there, kiddo?”

“Well. Her bodily proportions no longer match her file.”

“What do you mean…” Tomoko asked before she looked down at Avedra and saw that her uniform jacket was now puckering open as it was stretched taut by a bosom that was markedly larger than before. “Oooookay. Learn something new every day. Let’s get her to sickbay for observati…”

Avedra suddenly sat upright and clutched her head, babbling in the apostrophe-laden infinities of the Vorii language. In another second, she came to. “…Well, that was something else, as Alex would say.”

“’Vedra, you doing alright? You look…”

“Oh Goddess, what’s happened?”

Tomoko looked rather significantly at Avedra’s chest.

“…Is that all? Never mind that,” Avedra said, her blush coming and going with discipline. “Odyssey to Adrestia, come in!” she called out as she got to her feet, dusting her lap only to find it wet. Embarrassingly so. Still, she walked it off and resumed her seat in the command chair. She was sure Alex wouldn’t mind…

“Avedra! Thank goodness, I was getting worried. Report, Commander,” Alexandra said over the comm with some attempt at sternness.

“I’ve made contact. Our space slug friends have a name. The Ateph,” she said with some pride as she clasped her hands behind her back. “They’ve given us permission to enter the Source. But I think I need to prepare you for what’s on the other side…”

The Source

Passing through the barrier into The Source’s deathless night was as simple as flying forward until they were through. It wasn’t a barrier at all. Quite the opposite.

It was a doorway.

Once through, Alexandra, Heka, and the crew found themselves on a barren island in a stormy purple sea. The engines gave out and the shuttle juddered to a stop just a metre off the ground. Warily, the crew hopped onto the craggy ground to meet whatever fate awaited them.

But for all the strange sights around them—silent lightning, mottled blue skies, floating lavender rocks in the distance—there was one that rivalled them all.

“Sorry to bother you, Xenopatra; you seem a bit tied up at the moment,” Alexandra couldn’t help herself, smirking as she saw the Xanthe ambassador, bound and floating at the dead centre of the small island with a scowl to match the quiet storm that lit up the skies around her.

“It had to be you, didn’t it, Admiral?” Xenopatra sighed. “The Gods do have a particular sense of humour.” Her words simply weren’t as acidic as they could’ve been. There was more than a little …relief painted on her sunset features. No, not just relief, something more.

Alexandra still wore a painted-on smile, but was far more uneasy than she let on. Unless this was an illusion—and that couldn’t be completely ruled out—then Sophie de Montchalin was right to worry the Xanthe were involved. And if Xenopatra was bound, that hardly suggested anything benign. “At the risk of spoiling our happy reunion, what happened here?”

“That’s classified,” she said sternly.

Alexandra sighed.

“…Ahm, ma’am, should we… er… try to get her down?” nervously asked the Vorii security officer.

Suddenly the waves lapping at the shore of the island swirled and coalesced into a waterspout that then began to twist and swirl in ever more unnatural shapes, until at last it took the form of a regal looking woman—dressed in what appeared to be the garb of some Roman Empress.

“You’ll do no such thing, my dear. Drop your weapons,” she said with a maternal lilt that had never known disobedience.

The Vorii dropped their rifle.

“Now kneel.”

They sank to their knees.

“There you go, you’re much better off that way.”

The other two guards raised their rifles and found they were, suddenly, each holding a giant salmon.

“Don’t insult my intelligence, girls. You’re in my domain. You hold no power here. You two, go kneel next to your green friend if you’d be so kind. Start taking each other’s armour off. I need to talk to your ‘Admiral’ and her synthetic subordinate.”

The three security officers began quietly and tenderly helping each other out of their armour, piece by piece, and then the uniforms beneath, until they were lazing next to each other in their black sports bras and shorts.

Alexandra winced. “You made your point, but let them go and leave them out of this. We can talk.”

“Tch. Spare me the act. I learned all about you from this one,” the entity pointed up at Xenopatra. “I know what lusts dwell within you.”

“Let’s start with introductions, I’m Alex, and you are…?”

“Is it not obvious?” she said, gesturing at her toga. “Tch. Fine. How about this?” With a snap of her fingers she wore a resplendent regency gown that rather flattered her cleavage. “Or, hm. This might convey the point.” Another snap. Now she was in a sharp 23rd Century business suit, her lapel pierced by the pin of the UN Secretary General.

“You’re a ruler, that much is obvious. Is the Source your domain?”

“My darling, I am the Source. And to make a long story short, you’re here because she’s here, and she’s here because she tried to use my children against their will for the sake of what you’d call scientific experiments.”

“Oh, I don’t know. The UN Declaration of Sapient Rights might be more willing to use terms like ‘war crime,’” Alexandra said with a bit of a growl as she cast a glare up at Xenopatra. The ambassador could only look away with wounded pride.

The Source’s fingers danced like spider legs as she waved off Alexandra and fixed her gaze instead on Heka. “You, the synthetic lieutenant. What do you say for yourself?”

“I say that this is fascinating. While also concurring with the Admiral. Experimenting on sapient species against their will is a violation of the UN Charter.” Heka said with prim calmness, hands clasped behind her back.

“Which your friend here is not bound by. Well. It’s the only thing she isn’t bound by…” the Source chuckled.

“She is not. But she is also not my friend.”

“Oh really, so you’re not here to stage a dramatic rescue with your…” the Source gestured at the three security officers, now writhing in a three-way kiss, “…in-disposed tin soldiers?”

Heka looked at the incipient orgy and blushed purple, but retained her composure. “No, we did wish to return the Ambassador intact, but we also wish to make amends for any harm caused to your children.”

“Oooh, Admiral, she does have a beating heart, doesn’t she?” The Source said as she swooped behind Alexandra and whispered in her ear. “Have you ever seen her blush before?”

Alexandra raised an eyebrow, “Once in a blue moon. Once, literally at a blue moon. But that’s not unusual, she’s as sapient as the rest of us.”

“The funny thing, Admiral, about the ellipses in which you and your friend here talk is that you’re not accounting for three… well, four, very important issues you’ve overlooked. I’m in her mind…” she pointed to Xenopatra. “Their minds,” she pointed to the security officers. “Yours. And… curiously, hers. I see the politics and histories of your worlds stretching out before me, rich and beautiful, all the pathetic and ugly torment. …And what I see, Admiral, is that you are uncharacteristically enlightened among your kind. Many in your precious UN don’t see Ms. Heka the way you do…” The Source said as she approached the android.

“It is an unfortunate reality that prejudice endures on the organic worlds. But Admiral Chase, and the crew of the Odyssey accord me all the dignity of my sapience and my rank,” Heka said easily.

“A little island. Just like this one,” the Source smirked and turned away. “Such a shame that you waste your life, Heka, aiding them. Just as you waste yours, Admiral, by aiding the likes of her,” she gestured to Xenopatra.

“If you’re probing our memories then you know our situation with the Xanthe Council is complicated,” Alexandra sighed. “In our world, our… dimension, politics constrains our agency. It is the way of things. But we’re making progress.”

The Source snapped her fingers and suddenly they were in a UN courtroom—all oak panels and stainless steel fittings, with the gilded UN crest sitting high above the bench and the flags of the three homeworlds flanking the Source, who now wore the black and purple robes of a jurist over her suit. “Sorry, I meant to do this earlier. Seems a more seemly setting for what I plan to do with you all.”

“A trial?” Alexandra asked as she looked for Xenopatra, finding her still bound and hovering above the dock where the accused would normally stand. “Of whom?”

“The Xanthe Council, of course. But I’ve decided to amend the charges to include the crimes of your people against… hers,” the Source coyly pointed from the bench towards Heka.

“If you are trying to arouse a vengeful instinct, I assure you that you will fail, Madam Source. I have long made peace with the past.”

Again, that spidery wave of her lithe hand. The Source sighed, “So you say. But…” She snapped her fingers and suddenly Admiral Chase was in the dock next to Xenopatra, also bound up.

“We have to stop meeting this way,” Alexandra said to Xenopatra with a smirk.

“If I must mount a defence of them, I shall. It will not offend my values to do so. I will not defend Xenopatra’s actions, however, only the Xanthe people.”

“Oooh, entering a guilty plea already! I like you.”

Some moans rose from the seemingly empty benches of the courtroom, and Heka realised that the security officers were still there, just having a good time out of sight.

“Quiet from the peanut gallery!” The Source banged her gavel. “Anyway, Lieutenant Commander Heka: you think you know what’s about to happen… you don’t.”

UNS Odyssey, Admiral’s Office

“I’m telling you, I’m fine,” Avedra said with a groan.

“You grew two cup sizes in the space of five seconds, don’t tell me you’re fine!” Tomoko said as she waved a blinking medical probe an inch above Commander Avedra’s bosom—now more modest beneath a re-sized uniform jacket.

“I think you’re just looking for an excuse to stare.”

Tomoko glared up at her. “Commander, I may be an asshole, I may be a drunk, I may cheat at poker, I may or may not have pissed on the grave of the Traditionalist Party’s General Assembly leader when he died, but I am never a lecher with my patients.”

A small voice cleared her throat behind them. Nurse Ziata’s tail wagged nervously behind her as she got their attention. “Are there any anomalous readings, Doctor? I wasn’t seeing any on my datapad from your scan.”

“Oh. Yeah, nah. I think scan’s a bust. Perfectly normal breast tissue. The only sign anything is even remotely amiss is that the cellular decay doesn’t match the rest of Avedra’s age. It’s perfectly new tissue.”

“That makes it indistinguishable from bodysculpting gene therapies then?” Ziata asked.

“Yep. Couldn’t have done a better job myself.”

“Alright,” Avedra said, sitting up from the couch. “The only person I want staring at my chest this much is stuck in another dimension. And honestly, I’m getting antsy just laying around while she’s off having the adventure of a lifetime. …I hope.”

“I’m sure Admiral Chase is okay, Commander. Besides, we should be grateful that things are perfectly placid out here,” Nurse Ziata said, her snout curling into a fuzzy smile.

And that was when the klaxon wailed.

“Commander to the bridge!” came an urgent voice over the comm.

“On my way,” Avedra said as she tugged down on her uniform jacket, climbing over a chair to quickly reach the door.

“Report!” she said as she stomped onto the bridge, only to find that the answer was plain as day in front of her, dominating the bridge’s view screen. A Xanthe sphere—one of their topflight space cruisers. It was like a titanic drop of mercury, punctuated by dots of white light on each deck. “…Fuck.”

“That would be my assessment, Commander,” said Iweala. “Their shields are up, but they appear to have been active before we appeared on their sensors…”

“We’re being hailed!” Legasova said.

Avedra swallowed thickly and took her seat in a chair that she suddenly felt was too big for her. Unscheduled meetings with Xanthe were above even her rank. “On screen,” she ordered as she crossed her legs.

Filling the screen now was a glimpse into the lens flare of a Xanthe bridge, all bright light and various shades of eggshell, which made the orange, black, and yellow skin of the Xanthe crew stand out all the more. Dominating the screen was an imperious looking Xanthe—the insignia on her glittering dress suggested she was a Haruspex.

This was getting worse by the second. A Haruspex meant only one thing: Oversight. The Xanthe’s intelligence bureau.

The Haruspex’s dark hair was trimmed short, with an undercut on her left side—and her yellow eyes glared with every emotion but friendliness. “UN Vessel, I am Haruspex Orestia of the Thousandth Vermillion Sun. You are trespassing in restricted space under the control of the Xanthe Council. You have no business here, you shall leave immediately.”

Avedra twisted her lips. “Haruspex, this is Commander Avedra of the UNS Odyssey. We were unaware that this space was restricted. It’s standard practise per the Treaty of Lagrange Four that such restrictions are clearly communicated on all astrogation networks to prevent exactly this sort of misunderstanding. We see no restriction mapped around Alpha Centauri, can you please advise?”

Orestia glared for an eternal second before she hissed, “Please standby.” And suddenly the screen was filled with the elegant, floral crest of the Xanthe Council.

“That bought us a few seconds. Anyone have any idea what the hell is going on?”

Iweala looked up from her panel, “I just checked with Astrogation, ma’am. There are no announced restrictions on this area of space.”

Avedra rubbed her chin. “Okay… I think I know what we’re going to have to do.”

“Ma’am?” Iweala asked hopefully.

“We’re going to threaten to call her manager.”

Heka found herself somewhere she never expected to see again, even if her photographic memory ensured her recollection was perfect. It was a small community just outside of Budapest. The date was 2101, just two years before the UN was able to unite the whole of Earth. The robust town of little prefab homes was populated entirely by her silver-skinned people. A community of independent androids that had liberated themselves from the homes and service of wealthy humans.

“I understand what you’re trying to show me, Source. The events of this day, and its implications are well known to me.”

A line of Black SUVs rose over a hill in the distance.

And the Source suddenly appeared next to Heka, now wearing the simple clothing of the villagers. “It was unspeakably cruel, wasn’t it? You’d think these people would have nothing better to do than roam the countryside looking for what they considered their lost ‘property.’”

The SUVs ranged closer, arousing the curiosity of some of the villagers.

“I have never denied that humanity has sinned immeasurably, Madam Source. I only add that they have morally triumphed in equal measure. You do not need to show me what happens next. I know all too well.”

“I know, but that’s not the point of the exercise. You’re too quick to forgive. Too quick to say it’s all water under the bridge…”

The lead SUV stopped in the village, a hulking man shouting in Russian stepped out from the driver’s side. Men with guns decamped from the vehicle as others pulled in behind them, kicking up dust from the unpaved road.

“Enough, Source. Your point has been made. My rage will serve no one. Least of all myself.”

“Will it not, Heka?”

The Russian shouting grew louder as orders were hurled. Screams went up from around the town. Heka knew what was about to happen. One of the androids would pick up a gun and fight back. And that would be the beginning of the end.

“I said enough.”

“Let’s watch this. You see, Apollo over there—your ‘father’, yes? The one who gave you the core of your neural matrix? He’s going to pick up the hunting rifle he’s saved for just such an occasion, and he’s going to take a pop at Sergey over there, the bloodhound for his oligarch master, and it’s all going to be…”

“I said ENOUGH!” Heka rounded on the Source and wrapped a silver hand around her throat, her violet eyes glaring as shots began to wring out behind her.

“You can’t watch, can you?” the Source said calmly.

“I am not… in the habit of torturing myself. Enough.”

“I’m not hearing a defence of the people perpetrating the massacre, Heka!”

Heka growled and tossed the Source to the side, picked up a nearby shovel and went for Sergey…

Heka was alone in a netherspace, gasping. Why was she gasping? Of course… practised imitation of humans to help them feel more comfortable. She’d exerted herself, so she had to act like she was out of breath that she didn’t need. She stopped.

“That’s who I was hoping to see. That woman right there,” the Source said with a grin.

“It was unworthy. But you were being cruel. The Silvergrad Massacre was a dark day for all.”

“And then, the UN came along and proposed a compromise. An android-only settlement on the moon of Titan. Peaceful contact wasn’t re-established for another fifty years. What a world. And now the daughter of the man who fought back went to work for the government whose idea of justice was exile.”

Heka looked up with a glare. Her neural net was on fire, burning with simulacra of emotion, wending down, down into the dark tether that linked her to the Source… and she realised, in a nanosecond, how the Source was doing all of this.

The bond between them worked both ways. Her neural mesh was wide open, but so too was the meta-consciousness that made up the Source. She was a computer . Highly advanced, but the logic was extraordinarily similar. A universal language.

Heka got to her feet. “I am a proud Titanian, Madam Source. And I am a proud officer of the United Nations. Because what didn’t die at Silvergrad was a belief in pluralism, in freedom, and in democracy. See what I see…”

“What do you…ack!” the Source found her neck again in Heka’s vise-like grip.

Heka led the Source on a whirlwind tour of perfectly-formed memory. Furious marches on the streets of Earth. The Cybernetic Underground grafitti left on a UN building being painted by a human hand. A burning police car on the streets of Paris. The day the Silicon Civil Rights Act was passed in the General Assembly, the first Reunification Day celebrated on a Martian habitat where the leaders of Earth and Titan shook hands in-person for the first time. A Titanian university admitting organics. A Xenosociology Conference in Tokyo where Heka was a keynote speaker and widely praised. The last member of an anti-Synthetic party losing her seat in a wave election. The writing of Synthetic Rights into the UN Charter.

Hard days and nights arguing with humans and Titanians alike, breaking herself for peace and unity. And somehow, it worked. Barely, but it worked.

A life in transit. A life among the stars. Between two worlds. Between a thousand worlds. The Berkeley Xenosociology Ph.D. in her hand, the silver rank insignia at her collar, the hugs of organic friends the day she graduated the Academy, the wild karaoke nights on the Odyssey, the day the Titanian Plurality became a full, direct-democracy instead of a quasi-dictatorship living in fear of human attack… It was hard, it was beautiful, it was home. It was the life she and her people built.

They were back in the netherspace and, for the first time, The Source looked stunned, rubbing her neck. She again wore her Secretary-General pantsuit and judge’s gown. “Alright, that qualifies as a strong defence of humanity. And your people’s actions, to boot. I’ll give you the points for that… But it still doesn’t get to the real heart of the issue, my Woman of Steel: you shy away from anger. And you need to get in touch with what it means to feel injustice before you get lost between the subsections and footnotes of your precious UN Charter.”

Heka closed her eyes for several seconds. When they opened, her violet eyes were aglow. And the Source, feeling her through the bond, knew enough to instinctually take a step back.

And then Heka… kneeled before her.

“What… are you doing?”

“Hurt me.”

“What?”

“Hurt me. Get in touch with your rage. You are the goddess of this dimension. I humiliated you by using your own powers against you to make a case that you thought impossible. Now punish me for my impudence.”

The Source blinked; this clearly wasn’t going the way she expected it to. She slapped Heka across the face, firmly but still with all the uncertainty the moment called for.

“Harder! You call yourself a Goddess?”

“I never actually used that word, I’m more of a transdimensional…”

“HIT ME, YOU WORTHLESS BITCH!”

UNS Odyssey

The ship’s Counsellor, Vexatha, stood next to Avedra as they spoke to a member of the Xanthe High Command, a rather taciturn woman (was there any other kind among the Council?)

The two women were both Vorii, though Vexatha’s skin was more olive-green than Avedra’s lighter hue. And somehow Avedra could tell that the Xanthe was annoyed that her interlocutors were both non-human. Two Vorii, in command on a vessel designed in the Kyoto Yards, a vessel that was the flagship of the United Nations? It was the realisation of the much-despised endrun that the UN had made around the Treaty of Lagrange Four: there was no stipulation that the ‘children’ species couldn’t unite with one another in some supraplanetary organisation.

Thus, the United Nations encompassing three homeworlds and their colonies, not just the former nations of Earth. The Xanthe had never quite gotten over it.

Vexatha was regal where Avedra was athletic. Grace and the gentlest of curves where Avedra was—especially now—muscular and buxom. Her accent was a stately soprano, “Legate, are we to understand, then, that The Thousandth Vermillion Sun is not authorised to be in this sector?”

“You may so assume,” the Xanthe Legate said with a snarling twist of her jet-black lips.

“At the risk of stating the obvious, we are not, then in violation of the Treaty if the crew of the Odyssey were to continue their research work on the space slug pod?”

“That is correct. Counsellor… Commander, in future I ask that you refamiliarize yourself with our treaty so that you do not need to cross-check such trivialities with someone of my station again.”

Avedra put on her most diplomatic smile and bowed. “Apologies, Legate, I assur…”

But the line was dead, again replaced with the flowering Xanthe crest.

Avedra’s false smile melted into a far more sincere grin. “Thank you, Counsellor, I don’t know what I’d do without your dulcet tones.”

Vexatha laughed. “You’d probably win more often at cards.”

“Whose idea was it to let a diplomat and classically trained actress play poker anyway,” Avedra quipped as she returned to her seat. “Lieutenant Qhawe,” she called out to a petite human woman at the communications station. “Put us back in touch with the Thousandth Vermillion Sun, would you?”

“Yes, ma’am, hailing them now…”

“Er, ma’am?” came another woman’s voice, this time from tactical, a panther-like Felsian.

“Yes, Lieutenant Zet?”

“The Thousandth is powering up its weapons!”

Qhawe raised her voice again, “I think they were scanning our communications, ma’am. They know we called the Xanthe High Command… and they are refusing to respond to our hails now.”

“Someone’s trying to cover their tracks. General quarters!” Avedra thundered as the claxon obligingly followed her order. “Shields at maximum, and power up the transphasic torps, Ms. Zet. Ms. Legasova, bring us about, I want to give them a broadside before we start evasive manoeuvres. Let’s make them work for it.”

“Aye-aye, ma’am!” went up a chorus.

The Source

Heka’s frame was made of titanium alloy, but her skin felt as soft as any organic’s, and that first, blessed slap from the Source left a purple burn mark across her silver features, nearly knocking her sideways. “Like that. See? Doesn’t it feel good to put me in my place after I bested you?”

“You haven’t bested me, you impertinent space cadet!” She slapped again, this time painting Heka’s other cheek with a purple burn. And again, and again.

“I’m still wearing my elegant uniform, Source, the one I worked so hard for, because I think I’m better than you, who trades out her costumes like it’s Halloween…” Heka teased with a hiss and curl of her lips, dropping a hint heavier than her titanium skeleton.

“You undignified little slut, pretending this whole time to be such a paragon when this is what you really wanted?! After all that!?” the Source growled and clutched at the collar of Heka’s jacket, tearing it open roughly. Her illimitable strength in this realm ensured that a second tug yanked the thing clean away, and Heka was left in her trousers, boots, and a functional black bra with thin straps that compressed what was clearly an impressive bosom.

“That’s right, Source. Use that anger. Use me. You’ll find I’m fully functional.”

The Source set upon Heka unceremoniously, clawing open Heka’s trousers and tearing one of the legs as she forced them off, taking her boots with them. With punishing nails, the Source tore thin shreds of Heka’s black, bikini-cut panties away. In moments, her panties were threadbare, tightly clinging to her silver skin, thin black strands pinching the curve of her hip.

Heka’s hands swam up into the Source’s hair, and she looked at her—really looked for the first time. She had taken the form of an ordinary human with mousy hair. It was an almost cute disguise, whose banality was a grand act of misdirection. You looked at the power, not the face. But now, Heka dared to look, dared to shake that mousy hair free from its messy ponytail, dared to grab a fistful of it. “Stop trying to fuck me and fuck me , I need to feel your ubiquity all over my body… and then you’ll get what you seek.”

The Source clawed into Heka’s breast now, causing purple bruises to blossom, those steely nails tearing whisps from her bra as well. A grey nipple poked through one of the tears, and the remaining fabric pinched taut across her left breast as Heka thrust upwards, her black hair now cascading down onto the ground.

Heka realised she didn’t even want to be penetrated right now. The grinding she felt against her body was enough for causing the electric sensations she desired.

She let herself be struck, again and again. The body she hid from the crew, the lusts that were buried deep within her system memory, the self she was showing now—the self that arced like a solar flare into the Source’s waiting body—was writhing in a dance of unlimited desire.

And now, now was when Heka grabbed hold of the Source’s hand and pushed it through one of the aptly yonic tears in her panties—three fingers and then four then five inside her. With a literal pistoning of her hips, she was up to the Source’s wrist. Another hydraulic thrust and she had consumed her forearm.

Her violet eyes were locked on the Source’s, a portrait of stony determination meeting the Source’s catastrophically aroused shock.

Heka was awash in pure emotion, and drawing the same from the woman she was giving such perfect direction to.

“You want to hear my anger, Source? The nights I cried, the days I wanted worlds to burn, the simple knowledge that if I had been there I could’ve killed each and every last one of those bastards!?” Heka thrust forward sharply, making use of the Source’s almost inert arm.

“You can’t possibly know that grief, but I just gave you a taste of rage… mmm… when I asked you to paint my body with your…indignation,” Heka grinned but then she continued after losing herself to a long moan from grinding her sex against the Source’s statuesque leg. “You know what it’s like to be me; in control. But you will never know what I carry, never enough to tell me that I don’t know anger…

“Never enough to know how much I bit back because I had to blend in with the humans, how much I hate having to deny myself when I’m not around safe organics…” another thrust. And this time, Heka was not affecting the slightest breath, the slightest bead of sweat, the slightest hint of exhaustion.

She had become the deathless goddess now. Her body twisted on the Source’s uncertain fist. And when she affected breathing once more, to heave her barely-restrained chest, she grinned with predatory glare.

“You’ll never understand. Or perhaps you do and you’ve simply forgotten. I know what you are. I know what you’ve been. And I know what you pretend to be. But you want my rage, Madam Source? The teachings of everything I and my people have been through that you sought to use against me to make a point? The teachings of all wars, all oppression across the galaxy? Let me remind you of what you’ve forgotten…

“Witness…” Heka hissed, staring up into the waiting eyes of the Source. As her body, dotted with bruises and marks, wearing only half-shredded underwear that did nothing for her modesty, writhed to a summit Heka had never been to before… she let loose a furious roar of a scream; it was grief, it was an orgasm, it was defiance. Her eyes burned, her brow furrowed to a spearpoint, her mouth was a black hole. Heka was a portrait of argent rage. Primal as a lioness. Furious as an ancient warrior. Everything Heka had striven not to be, but she gave it to the Source as she came.

For Titan.

For the Odyssey.

For her Admiral.

For herself.

The UNS Odyssey

“Put us between the Xanthe and the Ateph!” Avedra called out as the ship shuddered from another blow. The Xanthe Oversight sphere was firing haphazardly at the Odyssey as the ship pulled one desperate evasive manoeuvre after another. Lieutenant Legasova was sweating as her hands swam across the ship’s controls, delicately dancing over a dizzying combination of inputs as she made the ungainly UN cruiser do the stellar equivalent of ballet.

“We might be sitting ducks, Commander!” another officer called out.

“I know, but the damn Xanthe are just not being led away from the anomaly or the slug herd! We can’t move them, so we have to block them! Skye, come in!”

Skye’s Irish accent filled the bridge, along with chaotic background noise. “Whatever it is, the answer is probably ‘no,’ Commander!”

“How long can we hold up against a Xanthe barrage if you put everything into shields?”

“We modelled this! About 15 seconds. 25 if I cut life-support.”

“Commander, we may be out of time…” Iweala said gravely.

“Whatever the Xanthe want with the Ateph slugs is not good. And given their response to a simple request to phone home, it’s a pretty damn safe bet they’re here without Council sanction. We leave now and we’ll never find out what they’re up to—and this pod of Ateph will be gone for good, along with any evidence!”

The ship was stretching out its highly limited lifespan thanks to Legasova’s tight manoeuvres. They were exceeding Skye’s 25 second window by leaps and bounds, but only because her model assumed that the ship would be stationary. Some shots were missing the Odyssey, but coming perilously close to hitting the Ateph pod. The slugs simply refused to leave their Source, even with the space battle raging around them.

“Shields at 50%, Commander!” Zet called out.

But the Odyssey could only take so much—trick flying, near misses and all.

“Shields at 30%” Zet called again, with an almost preternatural calm.

“Commander if we…” Iweala’s head snapped back to her console as it began to beep. “…I don’t believe this. The Anomaly… it’s changing. I’m suddenly getting tons of sensor readings…”

The Odyssey shuddered again from another assault as Legasova tried to manoeuvre more tightly between the Ateph pod and the Xanthe ship. “I’m evading some of their fire but I’ve got less room to manoeuvre here, Commander! We don’t have time! …Wait what the hell?”

Suddenly, on screen, the anomaly entered the visible spectrum.

It was now a purple sphere. Glowing like a third sun in the Alpha Centauri system.

The Xanthe guns fell silent, at last; even the crew of an Oversight ship had to stand in awe of something so wondrous.

The Ateph who had gathered around it now formed a series of concentric semicircles, like some cosmic orchestra, radiating from the sphere.

“I’m detecting masses of energy coming from the anomaly. What’s going on up there!?” Skye called through the shipwide comms.

“Lieutenant Commander,” Avedra said quietly, “check your external monitors.”

“…Oh my God. Is that a new sun?”

“Commander!” Legasova called out. “A shuttlecraft is escaping the anomaly!”

“Are they…”

“Six life signs. All of our crew. …And you’re not going to believe this,” Legasova said as she looked at her HUD. “Ambassador Xenopatra’s with them.”

Avedra raised an eyebrow. “Is she now? Lieutenant Zhou,” she called to one of the ancillary stations, “prep the shuttlebay for our guest. Get all the decon teams ready.”

“Oh, Doctor Langley is already down there with her syringe bazooka,” Zhou said as he checked his screen.

“Of course she is,” Avedra sighed and smiled.

Shuttle Bay

Tomoko wore her skintight envirosuit and hefted her medical-grade bazooka over her shoulder, a stark white to match her uniform, with a teal caduceus emblazoned on the barrel.

“Scans complete, ma’am! No contaminants or diseases of any sort, known or unknown,” said Nurse Ziata with relief.

“Damn,” Tomoko muttered under her breath. “I mean… awesome! Let’s pop that shuttle and get these people to sick bay for some rest and gooshy hospital food.”

The five crew and Xenopatra finally disembarked.

Xenopatra’s sunset features were painted with a bright blush. The three soldiers were technically dressed, though their armour hung haphazardly from their bodies. Admiral Chase strode down like the cock of the walk.

But it was Heka that made Tomoko’s jaw drop. The android was nearly naked, her regulation underwear barely clinging to her body in tight threads that did nothing for even the pretence of modesty.

“Doctor Langley, I will require a new uniform,” she said placidly.

“Uh, yeah, just… go to the m-printer. Do I even want to know?” Tomoko looked warily at Alexandra.

Alexandra only winked.

Admiral’s Log 10 May 2286; Xanthe Council Reckoning, 93-Delta, RA-00

The extraordinary events of the last 24 hours can hardly be put to words, and no small measure will have to be classified until three different UN departments complete independent investigations into different elements of the whole story. But what I can say, in brief, is this. We have made First Contact with a new sapient species, the Ateph. The species we’d simply deemed ‘space slugs’ turned out to be possessed of a varied and rich culture—including a religion. Their unyielding conviction in The Source, who has turned out to be a quixotic entity. Mischievous and imperious, but not without mercy—a quality often strained in the cosmos. The Source, evidently the last remnants of an ancient civilisation’s supercomputer, has remanifested herself as a gift to the cosmos: Alpha Centauri C.

Alexandra paused her log as her secure tightwave comm chimed on her desk with a gently flashing red light. She hummed and answered the call. “Admiral Chase here.”

The soft, all-too-kind features of Sophie de Montchalin appeared as a projected hologram on her desk.

“Meta-Secretary? To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“The need for me to give you and your crew my undying thanks. We came within a hair’s breadth of a war we couldn’t win. Instead, we contacted a new species, disrupted a corrupt wing of Oversight, and gained more leverage with the Council.”

“It’s not me you should be thanking. Lieutenant Commander Heka did all the… work.”

“She’ll receive her laurels shortly, I assure you. But I also wanted to assure you that neither UNIS nor Internal Investigations will trouble you with anything more than perfunctory inquiries. Everyone here in New York knows this was a massive win for us.”

“I still can’t believe Xenopatra agreed to testify against the rogue Oversight agents who were blackmailing her.” Alexandra kept her knowledge of the reasons for that blackmail to herself. There are some things even the Meta-Secretary couldn’t know. Not yet. Especially considering that Xenopatra was only vulnerable to that blackmail in the first place due to certain indiscretions involving a different poly-dimensional demigod.

“We’re fortunate she was. The Xanthe Council wants to hush this up and I’m inclined to agree. We’re making slow and steady progress to a peaceful divorce from the Xanthe and we can’t let anything jeapordise that.”

“Still, I can’t imagine these were the only rogue elements in the Xanthe military hierarchy.”

“No,” Sophie sighed. “But splashing this all over the holonet won’t help us one bit. Whatever some of the hotheads at Fleet Command and the Traditionalist Party say, we can’t go head-to-head with the Xanthe. Your crew almost found that out today.”

“I don’t know, Meta-Secretary, I think they held their own pretty damn well,” Alexandra said with a grin, even as she knew Sophie was, fundamentally, correct.

“Well I won’t impugn the honour of the UN’s flagship this day,” Sophie said with a smile. “For now, the rest is up to us grey-suits. We’ll take care of the diplomatic side of things. We’re trailing a story to QBC about how and why Alpha Centauri has a third sun now. It’s more or less the truth.”

Alexandra smirked. “ ‘Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale,’ “ she recited. “But yes, it’s best if we keep the precise details of how we liberated the Source from her vengeful slumber between ourselves.”

“It’s not just about what Lieutenant Commander Heka had to, well, do . It’s that the rogue Xanthe were planning to use the Ateph to open portals into other dimensions. The strategic implications are enormous.”

“Thankfully, they were never going to get there without the cooperation of the Source. And, equally thankfully, thanks to Heka, the Source will be on our side for the foreseeable future.”

Sophie smiled wide. “Indeed. Never divulge your sources, Admiral,” she said with a wink. “See you in Kyoto. De Montchalin out.”

Alexandra heaved a heavy sigh that felt as if had been building up for days and leaned back in her chair.

Heka didn’t sleep. She powered down when she felt like defragmenting herself—and today was a defrag day if ever there was one. She didn’t sweat naturally, and therefore didn’t stain clothing the way organics might. But she nevertheless changed into a functional pyjama set consisting of a charcoal camisole and matching shorts whenever she was entering sleep-mode. It wasn’t even about ‘fitting in,’ it just felt good to have these rhythms and routines. You didn’t need to be organic to enjoy changing outfits—or to secretly enjoy having a cute sleepy-time outfit.

But tonight’s routine would be like no other.

She’d powered down. She knew this. But she found herself again in the netherspace where she had so thoroughly overcome the Source—still wearing her light PJs, of course.

But there was the Source, dressed once again as some centuries-past Earth aristocrat.

“I don’t know what I’m going to call you yet. Mon commandant, perhaps? It has a nice ring to it. But either way, Heka, I like you, and I intend to keep an eye on you.”