Worlds of BBW Erotic Romance - Box Set (29 page)

Astral Tryst
plunged forward. Their previous use of the black hole weapon had created a rift in the enemy shields beside the cell tower… Heather took them through the gap just as the self-repairing shields sealed themselves behind them.

She had to swerve sharply to avoid the needle of the cell phone tower itself. She did so effortlessly, without thought.

Damn, she thought. Look at me. Heather Holzengruber von Teague, the Blueberry Baroness, Queen of the Intergalactic Flying Circus. Woot!

There were Enpathians ships inside the barrier of the shields, too, though…

And they started to fire.

Bolts of energy seethed through the air, some just barely missing them.

Ok, apparently they know something’s up. Maybe it’s time for an actual plan here?

Would it be possible to circle around in air for the better part of two minutes, playing keep away from the bad guys until the black hole weapon charged? That was a
looooong
time with a whole swarm of ships blasting at you.

Now,
Astral Tryst
was trapped inside the roughly spherical perimeter of the shields, like a silver fish in a giant fishbowl with the big pufferfish that was Grommalacht… And about a hundred deadly minnows that were his fleet shooting energy beams at them.

There was an unpleasant tingling in the back of her neck, and a klaxon blaring somewhere in the ship. Both were the ship’s way of telling them that there were massive energy discharges, they were in imminent danger, etcetera…

She veered sharply and took them in closely towards Grommalacht itself, circling the thing. It was roughly spherical and pulsing with every flowing, changing waves of energy in different hues… Close up it was still beautiful, and she still hated it for that.

The thing was roughly spherical, several city blocks in diameter, suspended a hundred feet or so above the roofs of the highest skyscrapers.

Like a miniature planet, she thought, hovering over the city.

That gave her an idea… If it was spherical, like a little planet—perhaps they could orbit it?

She took the ship in close to the changing hues of the surface of Grommalacht, and started to follow it around in a clockwise path, with the starboard side towards Grommalacht, and the port side still exposed.

Immediately, their pursuers stopped firing…

They don’t want to hit their precious God-Thing, she thought.

She didn’t think they could hurt it… After all it was supposed to take a precise hit with a black hole, right? But they still might consider shooting it sacrilegious or something.

Astral Tryst
continued to “orbit” Grommalacht…

Meanwhile, Gearon had activated the ship’s more “conventional” weapons. She could see through the ship’s eyes as silver needles bristled forth all over the hull of
Astral Tryst.
These were the gun-barrels of grazers and particle beams—not quite black hole cannons, but enough to take down Enpathian gunships.

A few seconds later, several of the enemy craft lined up just behind their ship—so that Grommalacht would not be hit by accident—and started shooting.

One of the propulsion units was struck by a glancing shot. The ship jerked and threatened to dive into one of the buildings below.

Heather forced herself to remain calm, reaching down into the guts of the ship to activate circuits that would provide a temporary boost to other units, and smooth out the ship’s flight.

She did so… And they pulled up, continuing their little circling flight around the mass of Grommalacht.

Distantly, she could feel the thrumming of the ship’s black hole weapon building, building…

How much longer will it take?,
she wondered. But the ship knew, and gave her the answer:

Seventy seconds.

Meanwhile, other Enpathian ships were entering the area from outside the shields. She saw flickers of blue energy as the shields momentarily parted to let them through.

Too many flickers. How many more ships… thirty, fifty?

It was getting pretty packed inside this fishbowl with Grommalacht…

“Gearon,” she shouted, “we need to keep them busy!”

Gearon wasn’t sitting on his big strong hands, though. Using the conventional weapons of the ship, he created a veritable light show of orange and blue energy beams behind the ship... A deadly surprise for the pursuing craft

One pursuing Enpathian craft after another exploded into clouds of debris and blue-white energy.

“GRAAAAAAAAH!” she heard her Mekron Lord growl: a gleeful, masculine sound… A beast rejoicing in the hunt.

Meanwhile, one Enpathian mermaid flyer had tried to get in front of them…

And had come at them head on, too fast. The small, relatively fragile mermaid rig impacted on the front of the ship, and Heather saw the female pilot’s broken body twitching for a moment before she slid off the ship.

Yuck,
she thought. Just like a bug. Like driving on a summer day… Why do I feel the need to get out and clean a windshield?

Sixty seconds,
the ship reminded her.

Okey-doke.

She needed to figure out where they were going to aim the weapon. Jessam had said something about getting inside the space-time curves?

She reached out with the ship’s sensors… and saw it.

Grommalacht was “hollow!”

Well, not quite. The energy made a pattern. There was an opening near the top of the sphere of energy, and a curving passage spiraled in… It was as if Grommalacht was hiding its most tender parts inside, like a sea creature in a curving shell.

It would be a tight fit, especially for
Astral Tryst,
which was larger than their Enpathian pursuers. And the “walls” of the passage warped the fabric of the universe itself, curved spacetime—in principle, not unlike the black hole, though less powerful.

One brush against those walls could tear a ship apart…

Sensors showed that there was something at the center. A life-force, and an incredibly powerful source of energy.

That’s the
very bastard, she thought. The heart of Grommalacht, the core, nucleus, master brain… something.

But she knew that was where they had to shoot the big gun. HAD to be.

“I’m taking her in!” she shouted to Gearon—

And she took the ship, climbing, towards the narrow opening at the top of the energy sphere.

#

It was as if the ship was ascending a tight spiral staircase… with walls made of energy that shifted in ever-changing hues.

But those walls also hid the spacetime gravity curves that, Heather knew, could rip the ship apart if they touched them. Fortunately, her link with the ship allowed her to “see” them in her mind’s eye, and avoid such danger.

One Enpathian gunship wasn’t so lucky. Having foolishly decided to pursue them into the guts of Grommalacht, it had followed them for a while, curving down through the spirals of the thing’s color-pulsing interior… Until its forward gun-boom struck the invisible edge of one of the spacetime curves.

The ship was whipped around like a cheap dollar store toy in the hands of an angry child. With a small explosion, it splintered into pieces that were whisked away quickly, twirling out of sight around the next turn in the passage.

Heather suspected that only
Astral Tryst’s
advanced technology and her direct neural link with the ship allowed her to safely steer the craft down through Grommalacht’s interior.

Jessam was right,
she thought. Gearon never could have made it alone, trying to steer with his joystick… He needed a Lady with mad spaceship skillz to get it done proper.

A gal with dangerous curves to steer the ship through dangerous curves… That’s me, baby.

Then, suddenly, they came around another bend…

And the passage opened up onto a spherical chamber of energy, about half a football field’s length across.

This is it, she thought. The center of Grommalacht. The heart of the bastard.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected to find there. Some kind of brain or nucleus or something? A giant floating eyeball? She wasn’t sure…

There was
something
at the center of the chamber, surrounded by a red-orange glow, with a ring of dark, jagged materials orbiting around it. Perhaps this was debris, some of it from the gunship that had exploded?

As they got closer, she saw that the
something
at the center of the chamber
was a person, the figure of a petite, naked humanoid engulfed in a fiery glow.

It was a male, she saw, based on his exposed genitalia… Which were rather small, but obviously masculine organs. He was skinny, almost emaciated, and had long hair that burned as if on fire with the energy flowing through it. He floated there with his arms stiff at his sides, his delicate features contorted in a silent snarl of rage, his eyes burning red like a demon’s.

Heather brought the ship to a stop.

“What… who is that?” she asked Gearon.

“In appearance it seem to be an Enpathian, yes?” Gearon said. He had come up behind her to place a firm, supportive hand upon her shoulder. “Perhaps he is the telepath who became the Grommalacht-entity.”

“Then we need to blast him,” Heather said. “How long until the weapon is charged? Should be about…” she checked with the ship’s own internal quantum clock, “forty seconds?”

“Yes, my Lady,” Gearon said.

She could hear and feel the THRUMMMM of the black hole gun charging up, vibrating the ship…

But forty whole seconds still remaining? There was no sign of further pursuit…

She looked up at the view screen, and the glowing figure of the skinny Enpathian floating there just glowed and scowled at them.

Funny, she thought. In the movies, the heroes always get there in the nick of time to blow up the doomsday weapon or whatever… But we’re just calmly sitting here waiting for our gun to charge.

Maybe I can talk to him…

She found the knob that turned on a projection of her image outside the ship.

“Hi!” she said, waving her hand. “Are you hungry, Mr. Grommalacht? Because we’re going to feed you a hot, steaming portion of black hole!”

The glowing man floating there just snarled at them again.

“That line was kind of cheesy, huh?” she asked Gearon.

“Uhh… I do not know your meaning,” he told her. “Prettiness, I must prepare the weapon, yes?” He kissed her cheek and returned to his gunner’s seat.

“Trying to be diplomatic, huh, hunny?” she sighed. “Ok, guess I gotta practice my badass heroine comments some more.”

There were still twenty seconds left… She tapped her fingers on the edge of her console.

The weapon THRUMMMED violently as it prepared to release…

“Hey,” she told the floating figure outside. “Umm… You have a very small weiner, you know that?”

No change in his expression.

“You have highly inadequate reproductive equipment, comprende?”

Ten seconds…

“Dearest love, you may want to brace yourself,” Gearon warned. “I have little idea as to what kind of shockwave the reaction of the discharge may create.”

Five seconds…

The weapon wailed loudly—

Two seconds—

ONE—

The pinpoint of blinding darkness that was the black hole emerged an almost imperceptibly tiny slot at the front of the ship…

The colors of Grommalacht’s glow swirled around it, sucked it… Reds, pinks, oranges…

The whirlwind of twisted light with the black hole at the center spun out towards the glowing man who floated in front of them.

It was hard to tell, but at the last second, Heather thought she saw him shrug and close his eyes.

Then---

There was an intense brightness, a rush of rainbow hues streaming past the ship, the energy of Grommalacht sucked into the black hole, glowing unbearably bright before disappearing forever inside.

The walls of energy around them shimmered and disappeared… There was blue sky and clouds…

“Hey,” Heather said, “that wasn’t so bad, maybe we---“

BOOOOOOM!

Heather was thrown violently against her console as a shockwave of white light filled her vision.

Astral Tryst
was flung backwards, spinning.

Inertial compensation or not, Heather thought she was going to be sick.

She struggled to regain control of the ship…

#

Finally, the ship stopped spinning and slid, as if skidding in air… Before coming to a hovering stop.

Heather looked out and…

Grommalacht was gone.

She found that they’d been flung several miles away from the platform above the buildings where Grommalacht had been ensconced. She could see the Osaka skyline close by… There didn’t seem to be any major damage to the human structures that she could see—but the blooming, shifting ball of energy that had been Grommalacht had disappeared.