Chapter One Thirty-Five Operation Double-Agent

Anai settled into her seat, and suppressed a yawn. She didn’t get much sleep the night before, but she’d been pretty busy all week. There had been a lot going on with the refit, but thankfully she had Reyna helping keep things on track.

Glancing at the pad, Reyna had given her, she gave her order, “Helm, ahead slow.”

The ship was already secure and all departments had reported ready. Every test showed the upgrades were working as intended, which meant it was time to get underway. At first there didn’t seem to be a change, even as the helm responded to her order. After a minute she could hear the hum of the engines build and the ship started to move. Slowly at first and then with increasing speed as the young lady at the helm guided them out of port.

Once they were clear of the starbase, she gave her next order, “Set heading 114 mark 23, ahead one half.”

They were heading to jump point twelve, and she already had a course to follow courtesy of Reyna. The mission details left a fair amount of room to pick a course, she merely had to visit one of the three lost core worlds and investigate. The admiralty wanted to know why the aliens stopped when they took these worlds, but they needed intel in general. Something they were quite lacking in.

As she thought about the mission, it wasn’t long before they reached the jump point and were underway. Stretching she slipped out of her chair just moments before Reyna came up to take command. Reyna smiled, “Take your clothes off, and then head down to see Larrisa, she still has work to do on your boobs.”

“Of course,” she replied as she stripped out of her uniform before leaving. Noting idly that the other crewman on the bridge were ordered to strip, just before she left.

Elsewhere a younger captain watched the Yuras as she made the jump to hyperspace. A couple of minutes later she gave the order to follow, but she couldn’t help dwelling on her doubts about this mission. Previous forays into menace-held space had been less than successful. Few ships had made it back and those that did often came back damaged and battered. Driven off before they could obtain anything of value.

Now here she was with an upgraded cloaking generator, the latest technology and on a mission to shadow the recently refitted Yuras. Not that she had much confidence in either mission, but she hoped her father’s paranoia was unfounded. Of course sometimes he was right about these things, and she often hated it when he was right. At the moment, she was inclined to say he was wrong and even gone so far as to bet that he was.

In any case, she had a fair bit to worry about as her navigator locked onto the beacon that had been secretly installed on the Yuras by one of the crew. Father hadn’t given her much to do this mission. Aside from a few people on the Yuras for eyes on the other ship, all of her resources were here on this little frigate. A hundred and thirty meters long, seven decks and a crew of two hundred and seventy. Her ship the Eyes of Kir, was a custom build that her father had commissioned specifically for her upon her promotion to captain two years ago. The crew were people she had handpicked herself, well plus a few additions her father chose.

She didn’t exactly trust the people father put on her crew, but she had to live with them. Sadly, since she couldn’t fire them. Even if the ship was hers, it was still a military vessel, not a civilian yacht. At least she could be happy about the ship itself. The Eyes of Kir had two ship-to-ship beam arrays, sixteen lighter particle cannon mounts, two small shuttle bays, along with fore and aft torpedo launchers.

Those torpedoes could even be fired while cloaked, and were a major part of her armament. The ship was quite the predator. Thanks to its advanced cloaking shields, few ships could see her coming and those that did were usually already dead by the time they could spot the ship. The antimatter warheads in her torpedo bays were very effective and deadly weapons that could cripple even larger capital ships like the Yuras. Assuming the Yuras was caught off guard, which the cloak would allow. They wouldn’t scratch the paint, if fired while the Yuras had her shields up.

Standing up, she turned to her first officer, “I’ll be in my office. Alert me if anything requiring my attention occurs.”

The woman smiled, “Of course, captain.”

Anai slipped off the bed. Larrisa smiled, “I’ll see you next week to see how your boobs are doing?”

“Am I allowed to know what you’ve been doing to them yet?”

“Not yet,” replied Larrisa.

She nodded but didn’t press further. Her gaze turned to the girls on the other tables. They had devices attached to their heads, for some purpose or another, but Anai didn’t know. She didn’t bother to ask either, if she needed to know she would have been told.

Instead she asked, “Are they doing well?”

“So far. Anyway, Reyna wanted to see you on the bridge as soon as you were up.”

“I better get going then,” she paused, “No uniform?”

“Reyna wants you to stay naked,” said Larrisa. Anai nodded, and recalled that Reyna seemed to like her being naked for some reason and headed on out of the medical bay.

Entering the corridor, she watched several naked women passing in either direction. Not that she paid them much mind before picking her own course. One that would lead her to the bridge before long. As she walked her mind drifted to the mission, briefly wondering how long she had been resting while Larrisa worked. Reyna would probably tell her, but with any luck they would be halfway to Collective space. It would save her a lot of boring time just waiting to get to their destination.

Thankfully she wouldn’t have to wait long. Stepping onto the bridge, she headed up to her chair, where she found a naked Reyna reclining in it. Idly she noticed that the usually female officers for the first shift were all here, but the male officers were absent. That was a little odd, but she didn’t dwell on it.

“Sleep well Anai?”

She nodded, as Reyna gestured to a spot on the floor.

“Glad to hear it, if you sit down I can update you on things,” started Reyna. Anai listened to her and sat where she was told to, and then listened as Reyna got her up to speed on things. She’d been asleep for the last five days while Larrisa finished working on her boobs. Without the interruption of the refit, she was able to work faster. Idly she fingered her breasts, noting that they were rather swollen and red. They looked painful, but she didn’t really feel it.

“Curious about your boobs?”

“A little,” she replied, but she wasn’t curious enough to force the issue.

“Well I’m not going to tell you just yet, but they are more useful to me now.”

“I’m glad. How close are we to... Collective space?”

“We passed into it yesterday and so did our shadow, which I have a plan for.” said Reyna before she started telling Anai what she was supposed to do. Anai listened closely.

The captain sat idly as she watched the plots, feeling rather bored. It had been a dull week so far. Reports from the front showed things were still rather quiet with the alien menace having not moved at all since they took those core worlds. Part of her felt relieved for the reprieve, but she couldn’t help feeling a little worried. She knew her father didn’t like this silence, and she had to admit that in some ways it felt worse. Somehow more sinister than if the war had kept going unabated the way it had been.

They’d crossed into enemy-controlled space a day ago, but so far nothing had happened. That was good honestly, many missions had failed sooner than this. Perhaps this was a good sign for the mission.

An officer walked up to her, “You wanted me to tell you when we left the range of Monitoring Station Ninety-Four Eleven.”

She nodded, “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

The woman turned back to her plots, dismissing the officer. Now that they were out of range of that station, they were now on their own. They were too far for the station to send help, not only that, but they could no longer use the station's sensors to monitor threats in the area. Even if she had to be careful using the station in that fashion, so as to avoid detection by the Yuras. She hated not trusting their own ship.

Her thoughts broke a moment later when the Yuras suddenly dropped out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere.Her mind raced, she could think of no reason for them to drop out of hyperspace, she turned to helm, “REVERSE COURSE!”

Then suddenly the ship shook and she knew at that moment it was too late. “Sir, we are being forced into normal space.”

A second later, they resolved into normal space. The first thing she noticed was the Yuras surrounded by three enemy battleships, but she quickly realized she had something more pressing to focus on. An alien cruiser was approaching their position, and worse, it had a sensor lock. She ordered to drop the cloak and raise shields. It was no time to worry about her orders.

“We are being hailed.”

“Titari vessel, lower your shields and prepare to be boarded.”

She cursed, “Bring us about, full power to the engines.”

“Aye, sir coming about!”

Then suddenly the ship shook, as the engine hum changed. “They have us in a tractor beam!”

“Aft torpedoes! Fire!”

“No effect, enemy shields are holding.”

She cursed, there wasn’t a clear way out, and the enemy was clearly intending to board them. With no clear escape available, she reluctantly chose to follow protocol. Somehow she expected something like this, “Computer, initiate auto destruct sequence, authorization code, Qeina-227-Alpha.”

“Biometric verification required, please standby... scan complete. Initiating sequence... error auto-destruct system is offline... attempting to correct... error reactor controls are frozen...”

“What!? That’s not...” she didn’t have time to finish her outburst before she was informed by an officer that their shields were dropping. Something she knew shouldn’t be possible, the console beneath her showed it was happening, but they weren’t being drained. The alien cruiser wasn’t even firing on them, just locking them in a tractor beam. It was as if they had their prefix codes and ordered the shields to be lowered, but that was “Impossible,” she muttered just before the cruiser fired and darkness took her.