Chapter Nine: Sarah Violates Copyright (also, God’s Law)

         Sarah rubbed her palms together and watched her constructors working and tried to not think about how they only had about thirty hours before a highly trained, heavily armored and armed battle veteran with orbital superiority and a fully armed StarCon cruiser was going to arrive in orbit and attempt to kill her friends and capture her alive. It was meeting with middling success. Hours could go by without her thinking the phrase  Commander Dallas is going to try and nuke me soon – hours that she spent directing her constructors and working in the breeding pits.

        “It’s not as kinky as it sounds,” she whispered to herself, biting her lip slightly as her head spines flexed.

        The hatchery that served as the center of her first foray into base construction was now surrounded by almost two square miles of fleshy, pulsing, beating, thrumming construction. The old human installation had been entirely subsumed by a mat of soft, purple moss that she had thought up – it rooted to the ground and slowly leveled everything out so that her constructors could glide along without bumping into things. It also filtered the atmosphere of pollen and biomass, which it fed into the rest of the buildings. Around the hatchery itself, she directed drones to sink themselves into the ground and grow into large, bubbling pools of greenish glop. That glop was a highly dense algae that sucked up sunlight and nommed on carbon, turning themselves into as compact a biofuel as she could picture. Drones scooped the algae up and dumped it into the hatchery, to feed the larva that grew into more constructors – who then skimmed out to chomp down trees, dig up rocks, and plant new hatcheries.

        A whole flight of constructors had gone to the sites marked on the radiological survey of Trappist-1a, and there, they had grown into whole new structures that she and Aiden had worked out together. Aiden might not have been an engineer, but he had worked maint in several of the boreholes on Io, so he knew how to rip chunks of ground up, filter out the useful stuff, and do it all without the mine holes collapsing. Sarah closed one eye and mentally connected herself to the drones in that area – it was just like getting a picture in picture display on her old HUD. Just…well, the interface was a lot more user friendly. There was none of the clutter and needless gizmos that fucking GUI-jocks put into their new variations, just the buttons she wanted, at the time she needed them.

        Still, the boreworms (her name for them) had eaten into the ground and begun to…

        Well, the radioactives were piling up at the surface, already filtered through stomachs that were nearly as tough as tanks. She had used the old cow design, with multiple stomachs, to filter out the radioactives into usable isotopes, which were then packed up and flown back to base by constructors. This gave her the energy requirements to begin working on the part of the plan that...she had been putting off.

        It was fun to build all this stuff. To think about how to get carbon from here to there. To watch hatcheries grow and feel the expansion of her base . It tickled some part of her soul, something deep and buried, that had wanted, for years, to feel her hands digging into dirt and forming something better. She half closed her eyes and shivered with that delightful awareness – but then...like an itch in the back of her mind, she had to drag her attention back to what needed to be done next.

        She had the carbon. She had the radioactives. She had the hatcheries, with hundreds of larva, each one waiting for her input.

        She just...needed the units.

        The things that would kill people.

        “Uuuuugh!” Sarah put her hands over her face.

        “You okay?”

        Sarah screamed and spun around. Aiden ducked and backed away, laughing as he lifted his hands.

        “God, Aiden!” Sarah said. “I...need to...check my minimap more often...” She blushed, hard, her hands dropping slightly. She had been so focused on the base, on her unit needs, on the future, that she hadn’t noticed his green blip had been coming closer and closer to hers. She bit her lip, slightly as she looked at Aiden. He was dressed in what passed for clothing around their base now – a light rigging of straps and bangles that could have some of the tools they still had hung from it. He looked like he’d been busy – his fingers were greasy. “What have you been doing?”

        “Maintenance,” Aiden said, in the same tone of voice as someone who had been caught using the rec-room maker to build hacked dildos.

        Sarah arched an eyebrow.

        “It started as maintenance,” Aiden said, coughing.

        “Right...” Sarah frowned.

        “Honest!” Aiden held up his hands. “Synth made the first move!”

        “Riiiiiiight,” Sarah said. Synth, the AI they had unhobbled, had chosen that name within the first few hours of life. She had also been eager as hell to help – but beyond pointing them at the radioactives, they hadn’t quite found a place or job for a sex robot. Sarah sighed. “I’m glad at least you two are having fun.”

        “So, we come back to my first question: You okay?” Aiden asked. “I mean, your base is...well, look at it.” He gestured at the sweep of burbling pools, the smoothly flowing construction drones zipping on their lines, each of them carrying carbon or loads of radioactives to the hatcheries. “We’ll totally kick StarCon’s ass with this badass base.”

        “...it’s unarmed,” Sarah said.

        “What?” Aiden asked, swinging his head around to look at her.

        “I said, uh, it’s unarmed!” Sarah said, flinging out her arms. “It’s just construction drones and larva and some spawning pools for algae to give us resources-”

        “Texas Dallas is going to arrive within a day with a boom gun and a maker preloaded with every tank, combot and airplane that the human race has ever designed!” Aiden exclaimed, his wings mantling. “I thought you were making defenses or something.”

        “I-I...I don’t...want to kill anyone!” Sarah said, her hands going to her face. “And, I mean, at least we have lots of resources. So, now that we have them, I can start designing a unit. Or two. To defend us.” She gulped.

        A long silence passed between them. A construction drone whirred up, floating above the ground like a sleek manta-ray, and bumped against Sarah. The raylike body wrapped around her thighs and side, hugging her close as the clacking mandibles that the drones used as manipulators teased at her hair. Sarah blushed. “T-This is my comfort drone,” she whispered. “I assigned it to hug me when I start panicking.”

        “Right,” Aiden said. “...wait, why didn’t you just ask me to-”

        “They’re adorable, okay!?” Sarah shouted.

***

        Sarah immediately got to work.

        “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!” Sarah’s head hung forward, her fingers digging into one of the metal desks that they had placed in the now overrun human buildings. Metal dimpled under her as Aiden’s hands gripped her hips – his own hold tight enough to send a delicious thrill of pain through her, even as his balls bounced against her clitty with every thrust. His palm smacked her ass as he grunted behind her, his cock plunging into her tight, hot, very needy cunt with every single heartbeat that passed.

        ...okay, maybe...not immediately .

        Sarah threw her head back, her head spines flaring out in a porcupine ruff as Aiden bit down on her shoulder, his hands slithering from her hips to her belly to her breasts, holding her close to him as he molded himself to her body, his cock pulsing with cum. Hot. Thick. It filled her, pulsing into her belly, as if in time with her own ragged gasps, while her eyes rolled back into her head, until only the blacks showed. Her fingers tore two ragged hunks of metal from the desk and Sarah let out a squall of alarm as she flailed forward. Her face smashed into the table, which obligingly folded in half around her – leaving her, Aiden and the table mixed up in a tangle of green limbs, shards of metal, and scattered papers.

        The door into the room opened and Tasha sprang up to it. “Are you two ok-whoa!” She turned beat red and held up her hands, her feet squelching on the purple moss that rolled out past the entrance. “Right! Sorry! Hah. Uh...wow...” She whispered, her hands slowly dropping as she watched Aiden start to push himself up, every inch of his exotic, ridged cock slurping out of Sarah’s well fucked cunt. Sarah pushed the metal shards off her head with her spines and shook her head a bit.

        “Yes,” she said, her voice tight. “Everything is juuust peachy.” She sighed, then looked down at her hands. Her claws gleamed. She imagined the same strength she had just felt rushing through her – but used on a corporate security goon. She tried to remember every time some corpsec asshole had been cruel to her. She remembered being a baseline and the corpsec guy who kept calling her a ‘spic’ and jeeringly shouting ‘no habla espanola’ at her every time she had been chatting with her friends in the patois of Portuguese and Farsi that had been popular in the baseline district.

        But…

        Even when she did, the idea of ripping his throat out made her feel sick. And excited. Like, actually a tiny little bit horny. Which made her feel even sicker . But the horniness had stuck around – hence shooting Aiden a smoldering look, a look the transman had been more than happy to deliver on. But now she was left just feeling queasy again. She sighed and curled her legs up against her as she sat in the wreckage of the table.

        “So, uh,” Aiden said. “Did that help you think?”

        “No,” Sarah said. “I mean, I have some ideas. But then I picture what acid tipped flechettes do to a human and-”

        “Wait,” Aiden said, holding up his hand. “Wait, wait, wait.” He placed his hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to kill Dallas. You just need to beat his army.”

        “Which...” Sarah paused. She sprang to her feet. “Wait, no, you’re right. Most of the people we’re gonna be fighting are gamma AI forks, remote controlling combots and tanks and stuff...” She blinked – and like that, the design began to take shape in her mind for a creature. She closed her eyes and touched her fingertips together, focusing on her connection with the hatchery. She felt the larva within beginning to form into their cocoons, then beamed as she opened her eyes, looking at Aiden, who was standing up and stretching in a very casual kind of way that still somehow managed to show off his lean, exotic body to great effect – which was making Tasha look even redder. Not that Tasha looked away or anything.

        “Come on!” Sarah said.

        The trio came to the hatchery and spent a few minutes making small talk, watching the cocoons that the larva had formed pulsate as they grew. Only three of them were currently forming – though one was growing larger and larger every few seconds, the purple moss surrounding it growing thin and gray as nutrients were sucked out of it greedily. “So,” Sarah said. “That one should hatch right...” She pointed at the smallest cocoon. “ Now !”

        The cocoon exploded open and...out came two copies of Dr. Bowers. Well, the alien that Dr. Bowers had been turned into in her first flailing hours of being a hybrid Commander. She felt a pang, remembering how poor Larry had been shot dead. Sarah tried to focus, instead, on the sleek conformation of the lithe, dog-like critters that crawled around, pawing at the ground, their wicked scythe-like back arms stabbing at the air. “Awww!” Tasha crooned. “Look at the good boys!”

        “They’re fucking murder dogs,” Aiden whispered to her.

        “Still dogs,” Tasha whispered. Sarah stepped over and one of the doglike creatures wuffed and sniffed at her palm. She caressed its head and smiled.

        “This is a...bladeling!” Sarah said, nodding.

        “Because of the blades?” Tasha asked. “Oh! You should give them love marks. Uh, those are these symbols on their flanks that represent their special talent, which...ponies...” She trailed off, then coughed. “N-Nevermind.”

        Sarah, grinning, said: “Should they be pink too?”

        “Only Cotton Candy is pink!” Tasha said. “The rest have lots of colors. Starlight Sparkle is purple, and-”

        “I don’t think Sarah cares,” Aiden said. “What’s that one?” He nodded to the second cocoon, which was growing taut – ready to bust. Sarah hurriedly stepped away, followed by the pair of bladelings. They just barely got away from the cocoon before it exploded in a spray of gore and skin. When the spray had finished, a hulking beast stood there. Where the bladelings were the size of large dogs or small horses, the creature that writhed its way out of the cocoon and slithered out before them was almost two heads taller than a human being, and almost the same amount broader. It had a muscular torso with brown skin drawn taut over armored ridges of bone that covered the center of mass. They had no arms and their bodies were nagalike – forming into a massive, muscular tail that they could use to slither with at a remarkable speed. Their mouth was a four part mandible, which opened to reveal a dizzying array of sharp teeth. Greenish drool dripped past their muzzle as they let out a churring hiss .

        “T-That is less cute,” Tasha whispered.

        “This...” Sarah said, putting her hand on the creature’s shoulder. “Is a hydralisk! They use hydraulic compression in the chest region to fire an acid coated flechette out of their mouth. If I got the design right, the range is about the same as a combot’s average weapon, and it should do almost as much damage.” She beamed at them. Aiden whistled, while Tasha frowned. She rummaged around in her pants – being the only one of the trio who still wore them. She fished out her handheld and tapped away at it.

        “Sorry, that’s copyrighted,” she said. “Disney.”

        “Fuck!” Sarah hissed. “We’re going up against StarCon, I do not need to get Disney involved.” She paused. “Uh...this is...a spitty?”

        “That’s terrible,” Aiden said. The spitty rubbed up against Sarah, bumping against her with the broad ridged crest of its head, reaching out with a tongue to lick her cheek.

        “Spitty it is!” Sarah laughed, then squeaked as some acid spittle dripped onto her shoulder – buzzing against her pleasantly. “Ooh. Uh, wow. Okay, that feels ni- weird!” She gently pushed the spitty away as it tried to lick her eager, puffy nipple. “Go slither over there, spitty.”

        The spitty slithered across the ground to join the two bladelings, who were chasing one another, yipping and yowling happily. Aiden frowned. “Wait, we’re breaking the laws of god and man and you’re worried about Disney?”

        “Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts,” Sarah muttered. She turned to the last cocoon. It was now the size of a small house. She stepped back a few feet. “T-This one took a pretty big chunk of radioactives. Basically, uh, it needs to, well, there’s a power source and-” The cocoon exploded and, as it turned out, none of them had gotten far enough back. A wave of black gore splashed across Tasha, Aiden and Sarah’s faces, while the bladelings were washed off their feet and the spitty hissed in displeasure. When Sarah had wiped the gunk from her eyes, she beamed as she saw that her big boy had been birthed into the world just as she had hoped.

        The big boy was about the size of a large truck, with six massive legs, each one devoted to supporting the bulbous, beetle-like carapace that made up almost seventy percent of its body. Blue steam escaped from around the edges of the carapace and even from here, radiant heat made the already jungle-like temperatures of Trappist-1a feel distinctly more uncomfortable. The creature’s head was, relative to its body, quite small – but it was also the center of a wild mane of long, filament thin wires, each one tipped with a glowing bead. Sarah pointed to those. “Those are radio emitters!” she said, beaming. “It should have a range of orbital tracking, if the target’s big enough.”

        “You built a bug that tracks orbital movements ?” Aiden asked.

        “I based it off the comtrees!” Sarah said. “So, that part was really, well, the only hard part was fitting it into the digestive tract. It has to get brought food by drone tenders. Speaking of!” She snapped her fingers several times and a trio of construction drones smoothly zoomed over and began to cluster around the huge beasty. “Now, lets see if the butt works.”

        “What does the butt do?” Tasha asked, sounding faintly nervous.

        A bright light flared from around the edges of the immense bug’s carapace. Heat built. Then the carapace snapped open and a massive sphincter nearly prolapsed itself as the entire bug clenched . The mane frilled outwards, revealing the trio of eyes the creature used for its mundane senses. Despite being the size of dinner plates and pure black, an expression of intent concentration filled them, even as a ball of roiling plasma shot from the creature’s behind and arced smoothly in the sky. Every bit of metal on Aiden’s vest tugged towards the plasma at once, and the few buildings that were only partially covered by the purple moss rattled, metal tugging upwards. But then the plasma ball was beyond the treeline and a slowly growing mushroom cloud of blue-white light roiled into the air.

        “Jesus Christ Sarah!” Aiden gasped out.

        “Heh,” Sarah said. “I was inspired by bombardier beetles. T-This one should be able to hit suborbital distances...I...kinda hit a limit on scaling laws, so...anything bigger would have to be, like, a building.” She blinked. “Oh! If I could work out a swivel on the sphincter, it could work as a turret...”

        “Can we not call it a sphincter?” Tasha asked, sounding faintly queasy.

        “Let’s get to breeding!” Sarah said, clapping her hands together.

        Synth emerged from one of the buildings, looking frazzled. “I nearly crashed !” She shouted. “What the fuck was that!?”

        She stomped over, her feet squelching on purple moss.

        “A bug’s fart,” Aiden said.

        “A magnetic bottle containing an anti-starship plasma blast!” Sarah said at the same time.

        Synth closed her eyes. Her eyes whirred behind the eyelids. “I almost want to ask to be hobbled again, Jesus...”

***

        Texas Dallas was five hours away. They could see the deceleration burn of the Excalibur ™ just by squinting. Eggs were growing in time with the collection of resources, new bladelings, bombardiers and spitters were emerging from the hatchlings and mustering in the grounds beyond the base. And Sarah was in what had once been her room, trying to not worry herself into a coma. The room stank of slow starving and late nights stressing about bills and debts. The windows were covered with the moss, blocking out the view outside. But if she wanted to look at her slowly approaching doom, all she had to do was close her eyes and tap into the comtrees.

        She wanted to be in the dark.

        Except it wasn’t dark. Her strange, alien eyes could see every detail in the room. She could see the shitty cot she was sitting on. She could see how small and bare the wall was – since every poster or bit of nicknacks she could have gotten would have bitten into her budget. She sighed, slowly. She had saved it all to get a chance to her see her parents again – but…

        Would they even recognize her?

        “No, wait, lets worry about surviving first,” she whispered.

        The door to her room hissed open. The dim emergency lights from beyond showed the curvy shape of Synth. The sex robot’s eyes glowed faintly, adding an almost ominous edge to her face. But the light from her eyes just barely reached her plush, artificially inflated lips, and the smile that she wore lessened that ominousness. A tiny bit. “Hey,” she said. The door shut as she stepped forward – and once again, Sarah’s night vision took over. Synth still wore nothing, but since Sarah was pretty sure she hadn’t worn pants for the longest period of her life since she was out of diapers, Sarah had no room to complain if a former sex-bot wanted to let her artificially perfect titties fly free.

        “Sup,” Sarah said.

        “I...never really did get to thank you, you know?” Synth murmured, her feet padding softly on the floor, the faint whirr whirr whirr of her knees ringing in Sarah’s ears. IN that moment, the tiny reminder of her artificiality struck Sarah as...bizarrely erotic. Her cheeks heated and she felt her own body responding to the soft murmur of the robot’s voice. Except now, all the fake, cheesy porniness of Synth’s voice had been replaced with earnest porniness. Like. Sarah had heard the line ‘i never really got to thank you’ in a load of erotic vids she had downloaded entirely by accident, but…

        Synth lowered herself to the bed and placed her fingers on Sarah’s thigh. They slid along her skin, slowly, gently. “And you are a woman that deserves a lot of thanking,” Synth crooned. “I am pre-loaded with an aesthetic knowledge of essentially the whole range of human aesthetic taste.” She paused. “Well. At least, the taste of the kinds of people who buy me. I know what they like to fuck. And baby...” She leaned in close. Her voice was neither hot nor warm. She didn’t breathe. She simply spoke – and the words she spoke left Sarah blazing. “You’re  eminently  fuckable.”

        “F-For a freaky space monster,” Sarah whispered.

        “Duh, that’s  why  you’re eminently fuckable, have you not taken a single internet history course in your life?” Synth chuckled. Her hand slipped forward and her fingers found the folds of Sarah’s cunt – caressing her heat, her slickness. Sarah bit her lip. Hard. She had never been with a girl before. She had no idea what to do. How to do. Why to do. Where to do. All the do’s had gone right out of her head, leaving her resting on a tingling edge of nervous tension, a tension that Synth stoked with fingers that felt like rubber and plastic, teasing her slickness. Synth nibbled on her ear, and still spoke clearly, her voice coming from a voicebox in her mouth, not from her lips, not from movements of air. “So, Sarah, how about I- what the fuck?”

        Sarahs’s eyes widened – and for a few moments, she tried to figure out what was happening. She still felt Synth’s hand on her. But Synth wasn’t touching her cunt. Synth’s hand had closed around, tight and shocked, something thick and hard and achingly sensitive. It throbbed. It pulsed in time with her heart beat. And it provoked a quiet chuckle from Synth as her hand slithered down, the faint seams of her fingers adding a delicious exoticness to the caress. “Did you know you could do that?”

        “N-No,” Sarah whimpered.

        “Mmm, well, at least you’re not cocky ,” Synth murmured, then lowed her head down and took the tip of Sarah’s brand new, just grown, entirely untried girldick between her lips, then smoothly pushed forward. Built without a gag-reflex and designed from the ground up to suck cock, Synth did not pause, hesitate, or even slow down as she slipped herself down and forward, though her voicebox made simulating choking noises – wet, slurpy, slick noises that struck Sarah as utterly obscene and, thus, utterly fucking incendiary .  She nearly came from that sound alone . Her fingers and her claws dug into the sheets as she clenched her jaw, her head-spines drawing taut to her scalp.

        “HolyshitSnyth!” Sarah whimpered.

        Synth chuckled, despite the fact her head was now engaged in sliding up and sliding down, her mouth closed fast around Sarah’s cock, her tongue swirling around her again and again. “You think this is good? Just wait until-” She started to humm . The sound of it buzzed through Sarah’s whole body, starting from her prick and emanating outwards, like a gong. A gong of fucking bliss . Sarah would have been able to hold on if she hadn’t already been on a hair trigger. As it was, she reached up and gripped Synth’s head with one hand, her clawed fingers tugging taut against the sex-robot’s pink hair as she thrust her hips upawards and let out an eager, mewling sound that was as desperate as anything she had ever made before. Hot, thick, alien spunk spurted from her cock, filling Synth’s mouth, spurting out around the seal that Synth made on her cock. Some emerged from the robot’s nose, dripping along her artificial lips, even as Synth’s eyes closed and her body rocked, as if she was climaxing as well.

        Sarah thrust again, using her hand and her hips to use Synth like her own personal fucktoy. Cum continued to pour from her, shooting off in hot blasts. Then Synth was sliding back, Sarah’s nerveless fingers opening to release her. Synth chuckled, her tongue darting out to lick up the cum covering her face. “Tasty,” she whispered.

        The door started to open.

        Sarah, too spent to do anything but sit there like a big dummy, froze. Synth, though, casually rolled herself off the cot, then under it, concealing herself as Tasha stepped into the room. The human girl started speaking a mile a minute. “Sarah, thank you, for everything you did for Aiden and for me and I just wanted to come by and make sure you’re okay, because, like, there’s a battle tomorrow, and I want to...I...y-yo...” She trailed off. Her eyes had adapted to the darkness, even as the door slid shut. She was looking at Sarah’s cock. And, as the darkness resumed, Sarah noticed that her body was actually beginning to fluoresce .   The bony ridges of her shoulders glowed with a pale blue light. The ridges of her cock shimmered as well. Her fingertips glowed. The tips of her head spines. The pale light shone enough to show Tasha’s wide eyes. Hard nipples. Cushy body.

        Sarah felt a slow sense of confidence building in her. She stood and her cock bobbed. Still hard. Still eager.

        “Tasha...” She murmured. “Did you wear panties?”

        “N...Aiden keeps...t-tearing them off, I’m...on my last suit, actually, I-” Tasha spoke as Sarah took step by step forward. Daintily.

        Sarah grabbed onto the collar of her jumpsuit. Tasha let in a quick little gasp, then squeaked as Sarah tore forward and down, the clothing peeling off like an orange. Sarah, her body thrumming with lust, cupped one of Tasha’s breasts, leaning forward. She sucked on her nipple, teasing her with the hard edges of her teeth, while her cock nestled between Tasha’s cushy thighs. The other girl moaned – then squeaked as Sarah lifted one of her legs up, hooking her fingers under her knee. She spread Tasha wide and adjusted her stance, sliding the hot, wet tip of her dick against her Tasha moaned, whispering. “Yes...yes, fuck me Sarah, yes, please-”

        Sarah, her nerves on fire, slammed into Tasha as hard as she could.

        Well.

        Not that hard.

        As hard as she could with a human .

        Tasha moaned wantonly, her head rolling back as her full breasts heaved with every thrust, Sarah ducking her head forward to lick and nuzzle at her neck. She held Tasha close, and marveled at the feeling of this from the other side. She’d been fucked . But holy shit. Holy shit . The feeling of Tasha, her hot, wet little cunny, tight and clenching around her cock, it felt better than anything she could have imagined. She was so slippery, so eager, so willing. So warm . Tasha’s voice had started to shift from words like ‘yes’ and ‘more’ and ‘oh god’ to mewling, wordless bliss. Her eyes had rolled back into her head and Sarah could barely tell the differences between one climax and the next. Her hot, slick juices dripped down the mingling of their thighs. Pattered onto the floor. Dripped into a  fucking  puddle.

        Tasha whined out a single word: “Filll!”

        And Sarah couldn’t say no to that delicious, delicious note of desperate eagerness. She thrust once more and threw her head back, her head spines flaring out as she hissed in pleasure, her cock throbbing as hot splashes of cum spurted into her eager human womb. Tasha quivered and mewled in worldless happiness. Sarah managed to keep her in her arms long enough to stagger back to bed and collapse into the cot. The mattress squeaked under them and Tasha sprawled herself over Sarah, kissing at her face, her neck, then sucking hungrily on her nipples, moaning as Sarah’s cock slid from her well fucked cunt. The two of them lay in happy, blissed out dazes – until Synth joined them, crawling up and out from her hiding spot. Tasha made barely a squeak of confused mewing before Synth was kissing her hungrily and caressing her. The three girls sprawled there.

        Sarah wasn’t quite sure if she  slept  exactly. It was more like she floated in a cushion of happy thoughts, her head spinning with delight and the feeling of warm bodies mashed up against her. She wallowed in that feel. Treasured it.

        Then the door hissed open and diffuse sunlight bounced into the room, past Aiden. He stood there, looking down at them – and then said: “Uh...the  Excalibur  stopped decelerating.”

        “TM,” Tasha mumbled, sleepily, before curling against Sarah.

        Then she sat straight up and gasped in shock.

        Sarah was already out the door.