Bright Star (8 page)

He shakes his head. “I wasn’t even able to make you reach the end.” A pause, then he adds, “I didn’t think you could release your pleasure. It has been a surprise.”

I grin. Maybe he thought I was a kind of statue inside that crappy sarcophagus. I’m not.

“We can fix this problem,” I say in his ear. “I can come. And I want to come, actually.” I caress his spine and then his buttocks lazily. At once, his cock perks up with interest inside my hole. He’s so young, so frustrated, and so devoted that he could fuck me forever. I grab his head and force him to kiss me, slipping my tongue inside his mouth hungrily. I
need
to come. I clench my muscles around his cock until I feel it harden. He looks at me, amazed.

“I want to shift on top, but without you slipping out,” I say. “Can you help me?”

He grabs my hips and rolls both of us on the narrow cot until I’m on top of him. I prop on my knees, adjusting my body around his cock. He holds his breath at our new position.

Now his cock is fully hard and presses against my inner walls. “I’m going to ride you. Meaning, I have to move and you have to stay put. But I want you to stroke my back and my ass as I do it.”

He rushes to please me, caressing my back all along my spine. I adjust my hips a little. His cock seems big enough to fill me completely, making me slightly incoherent. I pause, my eyes closed, savoring the moment of anticipation.

He strokes his palms on my asscheeks, squeezing them gently, then moves slightly inside me.

“Don’t you dare move,” I say, pretending to be pissed.

“Sorry.” In the effort to remain still, some sweat droplets grow on his upper lip.

I need something to prolong this sweet torture a little. To make it delightfully unbearable. “Suck my nipples, Phae,” I order.

He accomplishes it. He strokes my right nipple with his thumb and rises on his elbow to nibble it. Even before he can shift to the other nipple, I give up trying to stay still and begin to ride him. He falls on the cot, his eyes shut. “Oh, Corp. Oh, Prince.”

My rhythm grows frantic. “Don’t you dare come!”

He squirms in the effort to resist. I prop my hands on his chest and use him for my pleasure. I move my body around him. I rotate my hips to rub his fat cock all the way inside me. In my mind, his shaft is huge and exists only for me, to give me pleasure. I have never had a big cock all for me. They always did what they wanted with me.

He moans and squeezes my asscheeks, and I feel my orgasm grow inside, a warm ball at the end of my spine, ready to blow. “Come for me, Phae,” I say. “Now. Fill me.”

As always, he obeys.

He explodes inside me, groaning, triggering my orgasm. It’s blinding. I raise my head to the ceiling, and I let the storm shake me to the core. This bond, formed between our bodies, I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to die here, on this wreck. I want a future. I want to be happy, and I want to have him by my side. I don’t care if he’s a clone. I never wanted anything so much. It will be my mission from now on.

We look at each other, panting.

“Phae, you too are special to me,” I say, out of breath. “I think I—”

He puts a hand over my mouth. His eyes are big and scared. “I heard a noise,” he whispers.

M
ETALLIC
,
THREATENING
paces resonate in the deserted hall.

I saw the aliens’ spider legs inside the bright wall of the sarcophagus cocoon, and I can easily associate that noise with them. Without a doubt, it’s the sound of alien steps.

Prince turns pale. The paces, amplified under the abandoned and silent vault of the Main Bridge, scare the soul out of me too.

We listen, breathless.

The strides are confused and hesitant, with long pauses. It seems the aliens haven’t a precise destination, so maybe they haven’t identified our location. I deceive myself for a moment, but then the steps begin undeniably to approach.

The aliens are climbing.

I have to take Prince away from here. We have to hide. Soon.

Prince is still straddling me. I raise him, slipping myself out of his body with a last shiver, and put him aside. I get to my feet, find my uniform pants, and put them on. My chest is covered with Prince’s cum. It starts to drip on my belly.

Prince looks at me in silence, sitting on the cot, his knees together. He doesn’t have any clothes. I grab the crumpled top of my uniform from the floor and give it to him. Prince puts it on, slipping it over his head, then stands up. The top barely covers his groin.

I wipe my chest with my hand, then rub it upon the foam on the cot. I can’t do better until we reach a working sanitizer. I search for my shoes. I realize I don’t have shoes for Prince. I don’t like it. Ship’s floor is covered with dirt and debris that could hurt him and keep him from running fast.

“Phae,” Prince whispers. He’s trembling. I put my arms around him, dragging him to my chest. “We have to reach a terminal,” he says softly in my ear. “I have to communicate with the ship’s AI.”

I blink.

Prince glances at me, his eyes huge in the dim light. “There’s still an Artificial Intelligence on this ship, right?”

“Well….”

Prince puts his hands on his temples. “Oh. My. There isn’t an AI. Right?”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what this AI is. This must be evident from my face, because his breathing becomes fast and scared. More than it already was. “It cannot be. It
cannot
be! We are sailing with what, exactly? Only the automatic systems?”

“Sorry.” I can’t find anything better to say.

He drops his hands on my chest. His palms are cold. “Not your fault, Phae. My father has spared no expense for my trip, it seems.” His voice becomes bitter, sarcastic, a tone I can’t understand, and that scares me a little. “Who knows where the fuck he found this wreck. It looks like a colonization ship. He must have won it in some bankruptcy auction.”

I don’t even try to understand his words. “Anyway, in the sarcophagus cocoon, there is a strange wall that becomes light. It talked to me with a registered voice of Corp.”

Prince nods, thoughtful, biting the inside of his cheek in a way that I find fascinating, strange and seductive. “It must be the sarcophagus operating system. It’s the only thing we have, apparently.”

“Corp asked me if I wanted to contact Earth,” I add, “so there must be a way to ask for help, though when I tried I failed.”

Prince touches my cheek. “We have to try again, Phae.”

“Okay. We have to go back and verify the sarcophagus is still in place. You’ll know how to operate the system. You aren’t only a stupid clone.”

Prince glances at me with a strange look, melancholy, or apology perhaps, but not really. Once again, the many nuances of his emotions amaze me.

“Come on.” I grab his hand. Together we leave the cubicle and exit the officers’ quarters.

We walk toward the main staircase. The floor is terribly dirty and Prince’s feet sink into a slime of filth, but he goes ahead without complaining. I could give him my shoes, but they will be huge for him and this would prevent me from protecting him if we have to run. I grit my teeth.

We reach the arch of the main access to the officers’ quarters. I push Prince behind a column and peer down to the atrium.

I see nothing. I’m beginning to believe they’re gone when the gloomy echoes of alien steps spread again in the silence. Here it is. One of them is climbing the main walkway under the starry vault of Outside, straight toward us. Prince leans over to look, holds his breath, and stiffens at my side.

The noise of the many legs has deceived me, but the alien is alone. This confirms the theory that they are just browsing around without a specific goal. The creature is maybe twice my height, whitish, the eight spider legs absurdly articulated, ending with weird three-toed feet. The absence of a head or eyes is inexplicable and disturbing. Its round belly is translucent, filled with a pale blue liquid in which its internal organs float. A blue laser, originating from somewhere deep inside its core, explores the surroundings lazily.

We can’t escape from here. I retreat into the darkness, dragging Prince with me. We have to reach one of the exits on the other side. Silently, we run away in the opposite direction.

After a little, Prince tugs my hand. “Phae!”

I turn to him, slowing down. He’s very pale.

“It’s a kind of biomechanical exoskeleton, I think,” Prince says. “The real alien is inside the liquid.”

I frown. I trust him completely about this. I’m just a stupid clone and can’t understand things like this. I guess this just means the creature is much stronger than me and out of my reach, as I already suspected. “Listen to me,” I say. “We need to get down some levels and reach a hallway where we’ll find one of the service elevators still in operation. The elevator can shoot us back to the sarcophagus cocoon. Problem is, the elevator is in the direction from which the alien is coming. We have to climb down and cross the Main Bridge under it. But the Main Bridge, it’s an open space. No places to hide. So, we have to sneak in one of the lower walkways while the alien walks on top of our heads.”

Prince nods. “Okay. It makes sense. We are a lot more silent than it. We can do it.”

I walk beside him on a secondary staircase and we go down for some levels. From behind a pillar, I peek out into the open. The alien proceeds right over our heads upon the main walkway. It’s close, and I can distinguish a gloomy drone accompanying its confused steps. Probably Prince is right. That’s a robot built around the real alien. Not that I care. I just want to take Prince away from here.

We need to go down more. I point to a spiral staircase. It’s extraordinarily far, on the other side of a little suspension bridge extending in the open. But it’s under the main walkway, and if we proceed in silence, the alien won’t spot us.

Prince nods. He squeezes my hand so hard it makes his knuckles white, and a wave of affection washes over me. Prince is ready to follow me without a protest. I am ignorant, but Prince seems to know I am ready to do the impossible to protect him. He doesn’t give me orders, and he doesn’t treat me with a distant and superior attitude, although he could and I wouldn’t flinch. His understanding toward me makes me feel light-headed, like in zero gravity. This amazes me. I always knew I had to respect him, but I wouldn’t ever have imagined he could reciprocate my feelings. I’m just a poor clone, but with him at my side, suddenly I am the King of the Universe.

I squeeze Prince’s hand back. As the alien keeps stomping noisily above us, we creep out on the suspension bridge and start to move side by side toward the stairs.

It works. We make our way just below the creature, silent and invisible. At least until the main walkway above us, at a point where it intersects other mobile platforms, turns into a metal grid.

I hadn’t expected this. I lift my face and see the spider-legged thing crossing the grid just over our heads. My heart jumps up in my throat. All the alien would have to do is look under its feet and it would see us. Damn.

At that moment, Prince stumbles on a metal fragment. The scrap tinkles on the bridge, then falls in the void.

The alien stops above our heads and its blue laser frames us.

Without thinking, I grab Prince in my arms and start to run.

T
HE
ALIEN
-
ROBOT
-
THING
moves unexpectedly fast, chasing me down. I run across the bridge, carrying my precious cargo. I’m almost at the stairs when the alien, with absurd agility, jumps toward us.

Incredible. The alien robot leans forward on the upper walkway and jumps into the void—just like that—landing on the bridge in front of me, making it wobble. The metal structure moans under its weight.

The alien crouches to absorb the recoil, its many legs clinging to the tubes and supports of the structure, then rises to its full height, the joints of its armor buzzing. It looms over me, cutting off any way out.

I failed to protect my Prince.

I step back, clutching Prince to my chest, waiting for a death ray to incinerate us. Prince lifts his head from my shoulder. The blue light coming from inside the liquid belly frames his face.

Prince was right. The real alien is inside. In the central part of the armor, drifting in the viscous blue liquid, a little, pale being with large, dark eyes scrutinizes us. The creature gurgles quietly as a series of lights and weird symbols appears on the translucent glass sphere enclosing its body. A blue laser emanating from the top of the globe scans us from every side, and a new wave of symbols pours onto the transparent surface. The creature blinks repeatedly—not using its eyelids, but thin membranes—and tilts his head in what might be wonder.

I blink too. I never thought I could see something of the sort. Inside the belly of the huge, threatening robot looming over us, the alien looks absurdly small and helpless.

“Incredible,” Prince says, trembling in my arms. “I’m seeing an alien. And he doesn’t seem to have bad intentions, Phae.”

As Prince speaks, the blue light moves, again framing his face. The alien stares at him, looking interested.

Yes. It doesn’t seem he wants to hurt us. Not immediately, at least. But suddenly a small slit in the alien’s face opens and begins to move and contract. I can hear a kind of gurgling, or buzzing, from inside the sphere. The symbols on the glass surface are blinking wildly.

At once, I seem to understand what the alien is doing. He keeps us here while communicating our location to his companions. And maybe they are coming.

I have to get Prince out of here. Now. I take a step back. Prince tells me something, but I don’t listen to him. I turn abruptly and run.

The alien follows me. His footsteps shake the platform beneath my feet, but I run faster, while Prince clings to my neck hard enough to choke me.