Chapter Seven: Sarah Tries Diplomacy

        It took about ten minutes of reading manuals and swearing before the tachyon communication satellite finally managed to squirt an FTL bust towards the Excalibur ™. It took five seconds before Texas Dallas’ return link popped up. With a constant stream of tachyons going from point to point, the computer was able to throw up the image of StarCon’s most decorated Commander instantly.

        Texas Dallas, as befitted his name, was blond and blue eyed and lantern jawed. He had three raking clawmarks that ran in parallel along the left side of his face, leaving one of those blue eyes grayed out and milky. The claws, after they turned one eye into a ruin, had then tugged his mouth into a perpetual snarl. His hair was buzzed to a short crop, and the marks of his Commander status were clear on his neck and on his temples: The stud jacks for hardened connections into his battle suit and the little implanted half-disk optical unit around his intact eye. The camera had just enough space around it to show his high backed command chair and the crisp, corporate military uniform he wore.

        He scowled at Sarah.

        “Hi!” Sarah said, waving. “I’m Dr. Cappel, uh...NovaDyne research. Hi.”

        “You look like an alien freak,” Texas Dallas said, his voice raspy and rough.

        Sarah blushed. “I, uh, there have been, um, something-”

        “We’ve been informed by NovaDyne that an alien enemy has taken control of their base,” Texas Dallas said.

        “No! No! No! No!” Sarah held up her hands and shook her head hurriedly. “I really am Sarah Kappel! I was transformed by an alien-”

        “Right,” Texas Dallas growled. He actually pulled up a thick cigar and chomped into it. “And I like wearing panties under this uniform.” He leaned forward. “Save it for the United Nations, alien.”

        “I’m not an alien!” Sarah shouted, grabbing onto both sides of the screen so she could shake it. “But there is an alien force that we need to be ready to deal with! They’re what changed me, you-”

        “We?” Texas Dallas snorted. “StarCon doesn’t need help dealing with pre-tech alien scum. Now, unless you want to get that top of yours off and give me something nice to think about before I waste your ass-”

        Sarah’s eyebrow twitched. “Listen to me, you stupid, stupid man,” she snarled. “I was captured and changed by an entity with a race memory stretching back millions of years . They have who knows how many solar systems under their control and biotech that makes our nanotech look like fucking...fucking...” She groped for some primitive technology. “Like fucking iPhones! Now, if we work together, maybe we can learn more, maybe we can...”

        She trailed off.

        Texas Dallas was smoking his cigar and leaning back in his seat, watching her with a cool expression – one that made her skin crawl. He tapped ash into an ashtray by his hand and blew out a slow ring of smoke. “I’ve fought aliens on four planets,” Texas Dallas rumbled. His eyes narrowed. “Bugs gave me this.” He pointed at the furrows. “And I’ll tell you this, alien...” He leaned forward. “The only acceptable outcome for this is your complete and total annihilation . ”

        Sarah gulped.

        “Any questions?” Texas growled.

        Sarah hung up.

        Tasha stood still and silent beside her.

        “So, uh, not getting that autograph, huh?” she whispered. “Are...are we going to die?”

        Sarah shook her head. “No. No, we’re not.”

        “C-Can’t they just glass us? That’s the term, right?” Tasha asked as Sarah stood.

        “But they’re not sending an asteroid tug out to drop a rock on us,” Sarah said. “T-They’re sending a Commander. That means a ground attack. They want to take the base. They want to take...me...” She trailed off. “Who knows what they know, or what they suspect, or...or anything.” She shook her head, then turned to the computer, tapping at it. After another few glances at the manual, with Tasha’s help, they managed to bring up an ETA.

        “Four days,” she said. “Then he’ll land.”

        “Great. We can hide!” Tasha said.

        But Sarah was already thinking. She was thinking a mile a minute, her eyes wide. A Commander wasn’t just a single person with a single starship. They came with general makers and the best technology that a corporation could invent, buy or steal. They had unchained gamma and beta AIs to serve as their on the field troops. A Commander could drop onto an uninhabited planet and, within a few hours, build the industrial capacity to build a 25 th  century army. The only way to stop a Commander was to fight your way past their army, past their base, and then take on the Commander proper. And that meant taking on a veteran soldier in the most advanced power armor money could buy, armed with…

        Well.

        Rumors called it the boom gun .

        No one was quite sure what the B-gun could do. Or what it fired.

        But all the rumors said it was scary. Like ‘makes hardened veterans of World War 3 blanch’ scary.

        Sarah nodded. “I have an idea,” she said.

        “Hiding?” Tasha whimpered.

***

        The door to the labs opened as Sarah rubbed her palms together. “Okay, first thing we need to do is figure out how to move-”

        Aiden’s cocoon exploded in a spray of green glop and bits of fleshy skin.

        Tasha, who had just stepped in through the airlock, froze.

        Sarah froze.

        And Aiden stood, still dripping and slick.

        Standing in the ring of hardened bone that was all that was left of his cocoon, Aiden rubbed his hands through his hair. The sound he left out was the kind of orgasmic sigh normally used after the best sex in the universe. His eyes – bright, golden eyes – closed and he grinned as he stretched his body. The first thing that struck Sarah was the lithe perfection of that body. She could count every single ab and pectoral and deltoid and...and she...honestly couldn’t remember the names of some of the other muscle groups. They were dribbling out of her ear alongside her ability to speak English, stand, and breathe. Because Aiden’s skin was now a sleek gray green. His shoulders were armored with a series of overlapping plates that could flex apart, revealing membranes stretching between them, making it look as if he had a frilled coat on. His hair was a collection of smooth spines, thrusting straight back and away from his angular, sharp features. His teeth were razor sharp and when he opened his eyes, the gold that Sarah had seen before resolved into the vertical slit pupils of a goat or an octopus’ eyes.

        He was also hung like a horse.

        His cock, as exotic as the rest of him, was ridged and knotted and a dark, midnight black. It looked like it had been designed to bump and grind against every single part of Sarah going into her. His balls were lightly scaled and looked firm and large and eminently nuzzleable.

        Then, with a languid, creaking noise, a pair of batlike wings fanned out behind him as a pair of horns thrust from tiny slits on his forehead and a foot long black tongue emerged from between his black lips. It curled and flicked at the air as he crooned. “Hey Sarah...”

        “...I...I thought you were just giving him HRT...” Tasha whispered.

        Sarah let out a little nervous giggle.

        Aiden stepped daintily out of the cocoon, his wings folding behind his back. He breathed in, then out, then grinned at her. “This feels so fucking cool,” he whispered. Sarah tentatively reached out. Her finger slowly brushed along one of his horns. Aiden’s teeth bared in a wry smile – and then his eyes closed as Sarah rubbed her fingers up and down the horn. It felt so hard, and so warm. Aiden hooked one of his fangs over his lower lip and closed his eyes even tigther. “S-Sarah!” He hissed as she gripped his horn firmly, tugging him just a bit closer.

        “Mistress,” Sarah crooned.

        That was not what she had meant to say. She had meant to say ‘oh my god, I’m so sorry’ or ‘what the hell did I do to you’ or ‘are you okay?’

        “Mistresssssss,” Aiden hissed. His tongue thrust out and flicked against her throat, tasting her. His hand reached up to grip her hip. She tightened her grip on his horn, then leaned in close. Her mouth opened. Closed. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to bite him. The rest of the world, the rest of the situation was fading rapidly as she smelled his scent. He was warm and so very male . Sarah jerked him forward by her grip on his horn and his mouth and hers met. His tongue thrust down her throat in a single, questing push . Sarah’s toes clenched against the floor, bending it with a squeal of stressed metal. His tongue began to thrust inside of her as his hands reached back, trying to find the zipper on her suit.

        He gave up on that and just hooked a claw under the collar and tore. The fabric split and her skin dimpled against his claw as she slid her hands along his back, rubbing the join of bat wing and shoulder blades. His wings furled and closed around them both, hooking and trapping her in a leathery cocoon that smelled and tasted of him. Every breath she took was warmed by his body, was scented by his eagerness, even as the tatters of her outfit hit the floor and she was naked and she was wet .

        His mouth drew back. His tongue retracted a moment later. Those golden eyes met hers.

        “I want you, Aiden,” she crooned.

        “I need you, mistress,” he murmured back.

        “Mmm...” Sarah’s lips split into a wicked smirk. “Do you now?”

        “More than oxygen...” Aiden leaned forward, kissing her neck tenderly. His fangs and his sharp, sharp teeth teased her skin. His tongue darted against her pulse point, licking her gently, nuzzling her afterwards. His free hand cupped the back of her head, stroking his way through the tiny spines of her hair. Sarah smiled, then murmured.

        “Do you like the changes your mistress bequeathed you?” she purred.

        “Goddess, yesssss...” He kissed the tip of one of her breasts. The contact made her back arch and her mouth open in a wanton, eager moan. She leaned into his wings, nuzzling the membrane. She licked him as he suckled to her breast as tenderly, as eagerly as a newborn. Her knees quivered and her breath caught as his other hand darted down to cup her ass, holding her firmly as he started to add the pressure of his teeth to her nipple, coaxing a fiercer croon from her. She let herself relax into his grip as he sucked on the other nipple, leaving both of her breasts glistening – his tongue swirling about them, caressing and licking every inch of them. She gleamed with his attention.

        Her thighs were soaked.

        “Do you want to fuck your mistress?” Sarah whispered, huskily.

        He nodded, unable to even form words.

        Sarah reached up, her arm moving between the two of them. She caught his chin, tilting his head back. She looked down into his eyes – black peering into gold. She stood taller than him because he was bent forward – but she felt taller than him because she was his mistress. His goddess. His queen . Part of it felt so natural, so pure. But at the very back of her mind, a teeny tiny voice was screaming. Screaming in terror . Terror at what she had done. What she was becoming. What she could become. Her fingers paused in their stroking. Her thumb grew gentle.

        Her voice was soft. “Aiden...”

        “Mistress,” he murmured. His lips kissed the tip of her thumb. His tongue darted against it.

        “I-I’m...you don’t have to serve me. I-” Her breath caught as he bit down on her thumb. It was a playful bite, one that sent an electric thrill through her whole body. He didn’t break her skin. He didn’t even come close. But he did dimple her flesh and send a tiny edging pain along her nerve endings. His eyes glittered.

        He released her thumb. “Don’t say stupid shit, Sarah.”

        And then he knelt before her. His hands cupped her ass as his wings furled behind him, letting her breathe air that wasn’t directly warmed by his body. She could see, sitting on a lab bench...Tasha. Tasha was watching them. Drooling. Her hand cupped one of her breasts, tweaking and teasing her nipple. Her exposed nipple. She had stripped off her jumpsuit – revealing every curve of her generous body. Her free hand was dipped between her legs and she was stroking her sex through a thick snatch of pubic hair. Her breath was short and shallow and her eyes looked hooded – and when she and Sarah’s gazes met, Tasha looked aside, her whole body burning red with embarrassment.

        Not that she stopped .

        Then Sarah had to grab onto both of Aiden’s horns, gripping them hard as he pressed his mouth to her cunt. His mouth was opened wide, allowing every single inch of his long, flexible tongue to plunge into his sex. Her body quivered as she gripped onto him tighter, her mouth hanging open in shock as she moaned. “Oh god. Oh god. Oh god .” Her eyes half closed and she rocked her hips, moaning and gasping as his tongue ground against her G-spot, tickled against her deepest centers of pleasure. Sarah leaned her whole weight against Aiden’s neck – and he took the weight with ease. His hand cupped her ass, his other hand finding the bottom of her leg, lifting and spreading her even wider.

        Sarah’s mouth went slack and she stopped being able to even make noises .

        The pleasure was so intense, it rose and rose and rose and crashed against her nerves. Lightning burst behind her eyes and her spine arched as her juices spurted down Aiden’s throat. They frothed past his lips, dripped down his chin, pattered onto his xeno cock. As she wailed her bliss, incoherently, she could faintly hear Tasha screaming her own pleasure, throwing her own head back. The human girl’s skin glistened with sweat and what words Sarah could hear and understand were god and Aiden and Sarah .

        Aiden drew his mouth back as Sarah slumped. He let her fell to her knees, so that their foreheads pressed together. His tongue remained lolling out of his mouth, his eyes unfocused as he looked into hers. His tongue retracted slowly and he grinned at her, fiercely. “How was that, mistress?”

        “New...” Sarah panted. “Morale...” She panted again. “Officer.”

        Tasha, her body trembling, mumbled. “We’ll need it...”

        Aiden chuckled. “Will we?”

        “Yeah...” Tasha slumped against the wall. Her body was still beat red. But she managed to speak, despite her embarrassment. “Texas Dallas is coming to kill us.”

        Aiden, who had been licking Sarah’s juices off his palm, choked, coughed, and spurted Sarah’s girlcum out his nose.

***

        Sarah called the first meeting of the war council in Craid’s old lounge, if only because the chairs there were more comfortable than those in the laboratory. Thanks to his modifications, Aiden could breathe the air that filled the lounge, and they had jerryrigged a filtered set of nose and mouth plugs for Tasha, allowing her to walk around sans a space suit.

        Sarah clapped her hands together. “So,” she said. “What are our options here?”

        “Die?” Aiden suggested.

        “Panic?” Tasha threw out.

        “I’m thinking more ‘die stoically’ really,” Aiden said, then shook his head. “No. No, there’s gotta be something we can do. We’ve got the entire security bunker. That’s-”

        “Corpsec guns,” Tasha said, biting her lip. “I think Texas Dallas is packing something a bit more boomy.”

        Aiden scowled. “Superpowers?” He lifted one of his slender arms and flexed his green muscles.

        “You and Sarah might be able to stand up to pistols and rifles and stuff,” Tasha said. “But Commanders pack antimatter .”

        Sarah, leaned slowly back against the wall. Her hair frilled outwards and stabbed at the air in irregular patterns – as if tracing out her own thoughts. Those thoughts tumbled over and over in her head as Tasha and Aiden bounced off one another in the small room. Those thoughts were then tumbled right out of her head when a pair of large, soft pillows mashed against her cheek and her face and her nose, consuming her head with the same inexorable motion and pressure of a cheap movie monster. Lithe arms wrapped around her and the sex robot crooned.

        “You seem stressed, tiger,” she purred.

        “Mmmph!” Sarah mumbled.

        “I completed my diagnostics routine, tiger,” the sex bot continued, her fingers caressing around and around several of Sarah’s head spines. “There were two malware viruses logged on my programs and-” Sarah managed to extract her head from her breasts at this point. “-several other bugs.”

        Sarah put her hands over her face and forced herself to think logically. To think rationally. This was a sex robot. It was an artificial intelligence that had been deliberately hamstrung by people who had built it so that it wouldn’t start asking awkward questions about why it had zero rights and no freedoms. Anything and everything she could do to it was barely a patch on the injustice already visited upon it. And so, she breathed in, then said: “End sex robot program and enter standby mode.”

        “Are you sure?” the sex bot asked.

        “Yes,” Sarah said, forcefully.

        The sex bot nodded. The emotion drained from its face. Its eyes became utterly empty. Like two deep, dark pits. It didn’t shift its stance or posture more than a few inches – it shouldn’t have been as big a difference as it was. But it was. The robot looked out to the middle distance and said: “Done. You may input new parameters whenever you desire.”

        Sarah tore her eyes away from the sex robot and looked at Aiden and Tasha. Both of them were looking awkward.

        “Can...” Sarah paused. “Can a gamma-class AI have their learning hobble removed?” she whispered, as if she was trying to not be overheard.

        “Um,” Tasha said. “I’m not a tech. I’m just in maint. But I did read a few of the basic documents on AI.” She chewed on her lower limp, her brow furrowing. “I can take a look at it, at least. A little. Kinda.”

        “Okay, you do that while Aiden and I do some experimenting,” Sarah said.

        Tasha’s brow furrowed. “Is now the time?”

        “Not that kind of experimenting!”

        Outside the base, Aiden and Sarah strode through the jungle – Sarah with a kind of focused, stomping irritation, and Aiden with a wide eyed, wondrous gaze. He spun slowly on his green heel, his shoulder armor plates flexing up and then spreading out wide as if to take in as much of the alien atmosphere as he could. His hair spines flexed and he beamed. “This is so...I...thank you, Mistress!” He flashed his razor sharp teeth at her. Sarah tried for a smile back – but she was growing increasingly uncertain about the impulse that had led her to asking him to use that phrase. And so, she decided to make it official.

        “You know I was just, you know, joking, right? Ha ha, jokes,” Sarah said. “I don’t want to be your boss. I don’t want to be anyone’s boss.”

        Aiden shrugged one shoulder. “Everyone’s someone’s boss.”

        “Do you need a boss?” Sarah asked, turning to face him as her own hair spines flexed and twitched. “Like, okay, how many times in our lives has a boss actually helped us? Ever?” She paused. “Most of the time, they just kinda stick their oar in while I’m trying to get my job done, then take the credit.”

        Aiden opened his mouth, then closed it. “I mean, my last manager also liked to deadname me. I kept asking him not to, but...well, he said, if it wasn’t official , the guidelines required that he use my corporate ID.” He scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. “The fucker could have just called me Yang. I’m still Aiden Yang. But no, it was always Alison this and Alison that, the smug little transphobic piece of shit. And then there was...” He blinked. “But wait, if you’re not my boss, then...who is?”

        “No one,” Sarah said. “We’ll be a...a...a...team of...friends.”

        “Like communists?” Aiden asked, frowning.

        “No, not like communists,” Sarah said, shaking her head.

        “Cause, I mean, communists killed, like, millions of people back in the 20 th  century, didn’t they?” Aiden asked.

        Sarah had learned the same thing in school. She nodded. “Not. Communists. We’re just friends who are working together to survive. Sound good?” She grinned at him. Aiden nodded.

        “Sounds good!”

        Sarah turned and started walking again.

        “...mistress.”

        Sarah spun back around and glared at him, then walked off, nose in the air. When she came to what she had been looking for, Aiden hissed between his teeth. “Oh, one of these things.” He glared at the radar jamming trees. “The whole science department and the entire corpsec team was breathing down tech’s neck about getting past the jammers. I had to tell a pissy security girl, like, six times that, one, I was a maintenance worker, not in the actual engineering department, and also, we didn’t have orbital capability because someone had lost the shooting war with StarCon.” He sighed. “Annoyingly, she was cute as hell too.”

        Sarah rubbed her palms together, feeling her own slippery, rubbery skin. “Okay.” She breathed in, then out. “Let's try this again.”

        She placed her palms against the tree and felt her connection to it spark back on. Aiden floated at the edge of her awareness and she focused on him – and felt him being dragged with her. When the surrounding jungle had faded away, Aiden yelped and swung himself around, looking wildly at the infinite blackness that surrounded them and the radar jamming tree. Or, as Sarah began to think of it: The com tree. The planet, Trappist 1a, floated into view and Sarah slowly pulled her hands back while still trying to keep herself connected to the CT. She felt the connection drawing taut, then becoming more solid. She smiled and stepped away from the tree, wringing out her hands.

        “What is this?” Aiden whispered.

        “It’s a planet wide communication and observation and radar jamming network,” Sarah said, her voice soft. “One that I can access at will. Now, let's see if I can...” She closed one of her eyes and felt the connection between her and the tree. She tried to tug on it, to strain and pull against it. She felt it skidding around inside of her brain, like a wire pressing against her gums during flossing. She tried to not picture her own brains being flossed. Instead, she tried to picture the connection being tamped down and squished into the upper right hand corner of her…

        Come on.

        Come…

         On .

         -pop-

         Sarah and Aiden both blinked at the same time, in the same way. Aiden looked shocked to see the jungle around him again. He tentatively slapped a flower to make sure it was real. Sarah, though, was beaming. Because in the upper right hand corner of her eye, right where she had used to pack her HUD’s com display, was a rectangular map that showed the surrounding terrain from a bird’s eye perspective. Two glowing green dots were marked on it – one of them back at the remains of the NovaDyne base, near the maint bays, while the other was right next to a glowing white dot that marked the center of the map. Next to the map were two small boxes, with strange symbols next to them.

        The first symbol looked like this: ||/\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\||-(\/ \/)-(\/ \/ \/ \/)

        The second symbol was one that was in constant movement. It showed a central mass of the upward facing arrows, buzzing and swirling around one another, while the exterior had the downward facing numbers, but those would zip away into the surrounding space, vanishing before they interfered with her vision. Sarah frowned. “What the fuck is that?” she whispered.

        “What is what?” Aiden asked.

        “I’ve given myself a HUD again,” Sarah said, cheerfully.

        “Again?”

        “Yeah, the weird alien biopit yanked mine out while it was te...while...it yanked it out,” Sarah said, her cheeks burning.

        “Ouch!” Aiden winced.

        “Y-Yes, ouch...” Sarah murmured.

        “...it was ouch, right?” Aiden asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

        “Yes!” Sarah said, too forcefully. She looked away from her HUD to Aiden.

        “I mean...when you changed me, it felt pretty good,” Aiden said, his sharp teeth flashing as he grinned.

        “I was molested by a tentacle monster!” Sarah said, her voice squeaking as she crossed her arms over her chest. “It was not fun. I hated every second of it.” She pursed her lips. Aiden arched an eyebrow slightly and one of his head-spines flexed outwards, stabbing into the air. “It wasn’t! I’m not...I...shut up!” Sarah spun to turn her back to Aiden, glaring at the interface. “What the fuck do these symbols – six positive, two negative, four negative!” She shouted the last, then turned and sprinted back for the base.

        Aiden watched her run – watched her rump jiggling. He watched and he grinned. “I’m so glad she’s not my boss,” he murmured. “Screwing your boss sucks .”

        And casually, he followed.

        Aiden came back to find that Sarah had, without even thinking of it, ripped a hole in the wall of the base’s garage and was now rummaging through the hastily abandoned supplies. The garage was one of the larger prefabbed rooms that the base had had, and it contained the four huge hauler trucks that they were using for the major mineralogical sample taking. One was currently half disassembled and Aiden remembered the hard work that he had put in trying to clear the gunk out of the engine with a shudder. The other three loomed like monuments to a long dead king, tall enough that he barely stood taller than their wheels. He leaned, elbow first, on the ladder rung that hung down to his level and watched as Sarah kicked over a pile of tires for the smaller scout vehicles.

        “If I was a PCCT, where would I be?” She muttered.

        “What do you want with a PCCT?” Aiden asked.

        “I have a theory!” Sarah said, then stepped over to the main work station in the garage. She scowled at the plasma welder someone had left behind. “Seriously, where do you guys-” She saw Aiden’s smirk. He was pointing to his left. In the left side of the room, taller than most trees, were five immense PCCTs. Their nozzles were still latched into place – no one had been using them when the evacuation was called. Sarah looked at the tanks, then over at Aiden. She blushed.

        “I knew they were there,” she said. “I was just...I was...shut up.”

        “Didn’t say anything, Doc,” Aiden said.

        “Don’t call me Doc!” Sarah shouted over her shoulder as she hustled through the mess she had made towards the PCCTs. “...wait, no, I went to college, call me Doc more!”

        “Sure thing, toots,” Aiden called after her.

        “Don’t-” Sarah shook her head. “Aiden, you’re lucky I made you hot!”

        “Thank you, by the way, cutie!”

        “Argh!” Sarah flung her hands up, then placed them onto the side of the first of the PCCT. She closed her eyes. “And now...I...don’t know what to do.” She bit her lip, then blinked as she felt the contents of the immense, metal tank shivering . It was as if her body was reaching out with the same non-physical force that enhanced her muscles or made her skin sturdy enough to withstand small arms fire. She felt the vast, viscous pile of glop inside of the tank and saw the image in her HUD shiver. Tally marks began to buzz upwards next to the higher symbol – and as understanding struck her, the symbol glowed, shimmered, translated itself into a word in English: Carbon .

        “Atomic number six,” she whispered, beaming to herself. She touched the each Petrochemical Containment Tank, one after the other, and saw the tally numbers going up higher and higher. “And the other symbol – that’s enough positrons, but they’re constantly losing...ah! Radioactive. Radioactives! Carbon and radioactives!” She clapped her hands, beaming. “Aiden! Aiden! I’ve figured out what I am, I’ve figured out what the Claw made me to be!”

        It was like a lightning bolt, honestly. Half-thought memories, buzzing dreamlike snatches from the time that they Eye had claimed her. But touching the carbon, declaring it her own, seeing the number tick up in her newly reborn HUD, it had awakened the knowledge and she could see it all so clearly now.

        “The Eye?” Aiden asked.

        “The entity, the controlling intelligence of the alien species that converted me,” Sarah said, talking a mile a minute. “They have no FTL travel technology; instead, they send out slower than light seed ships that grow their civilization on every planet that they come to. The first thing they do, though, is if they detect a sentient civilization that might be able to subvert or combat their plans, is they lay low. They hide. Then they grab a member of that civilization and convert them into a hybrid, so they can have the advantages and strengths of both their own technology and the technology of the civilization that already lives there. They use the hybrid to destroy them from within. With sex. With power. With intelligence. With...with whatever they need...”

        She turned to face Aiden, grinning fiercely. “But they picked the wrong post-doc to fuck with, Aiden.” Confidence was growing inside of her. A crazy, wild confidence, like being punch drunk or like how she had felt after Larry had fucked her silly.

        “The Eye did?” Aiden asked.

        “Yeah. Them and StarCon. And NovaDyne. And every last corporation on fucking Earth!” Sarah swung her hand to the side. “We’re going to kick Texas Dallas’ ass, we’re going to take his spaceship, and we’re going to make sure humanity is ready to face the Eye and their Claw, and we’re going to do it...because...”

        She puffed up her chest.

        “I...am a Commander.”