- Joined
- Aug 10, 2024
Author's note: this is my first completed zako story. It's intended as a campy space opera. If you've seen movies like Barbarella or Starcrash, then you know what I'm talking about. For full effect, imagine flimsy sets, gaudy costumes and some rather broad acting. Please be aware that it does contain graphic violence (not very intense compared to some other material on this forum, but possibly disturbing to some people).
Cast in order of appearance:
Captain Aurora Wheellock of the Interstellar League
Commander Ember Le Fleur of the Dark Fleet
Admiral Cosima Halko of the Dark Fleet
Lieutenant Reina Holbrook of Space Patrol
Ensign Astrid Elrod of Space Patrol
Ensign Caia Cassidy of Space Patrol
Cast in order of appearance:
Captain Aurora Wheellock of the Interstellar League
Commander Ember Le Fleur of the Dark Fleet
Admiral Cosima Halko of the Dark Fleet
Lieutenant Reina Holbrook of Space Patrol
Ensign Astrid Elrod of Space Patrol
Ensign Caia Cassidy of Space Patrol
Escape From Awilda
“Take your hands off me, slatterns!” cried Aurora Wheellock with scornful indignation. The beautiful blonde space captain thrashed to and fro while two black-clad female guards tottered in a zig-zag motion, gripping her arms as they attempted to escort her down the hallway.
“Plucky little beetle-brow, aren't you?” hissed a third female guard, who was following close at their heels. When she heard the woman's low, nasal voice, Aurora also felt the muzzle of a ray gun tapping the back of her head. “What if I were to melt that pretty head of yours?” croaked the guard. “Wouldn't be so boisterous then, would you?” Aurora bit her lip and relented, allowing her captors to lead her down the corridor, toward the control deck of the corsair Awilda. “There's a good girl,” clucked the guard behind her.
The ship's interior was dim, austere and blocky – a fitting environment for the scum who dwelt within it, thought Aurora. Her sparkling silver leotard and matching knee-high boots stood out against the dusky background while providing a marked contrast to the guards, who wore pitch-black helmets and tight, very short romper-style uniforms of charcoal grey, with belts across the waists. The dark, smooth, polished floor of the ship reflected the images of the women who trod upon it, while the tapping of their high heels reverberated throughout the passages.
Aurora was ushered into a room from which a grand, bubble-shaped window looked out onto a vast expanse dotted by countless twinkling stars.
“What is this?” demanded Aurora, beginning to struggle again.
“So help me, I'll vaporize that yellow-plumed skull of yours!” snarled the nasal-toned guard, brandishing her pistol.
“Vaporize?” sounded a sinister voice from a shadowy corner of the deck. “I'm surprised at you, Le Fleur! Melt the brain of my good friend, Captain Wheellock?” A dark-haired, one-eyed woman emerged into the light, her heels clicking menacingly on the spaceship floor as she approached. She was dressed flamboyantly, and all in black: black eyepatch, black boots, black gloves and an ankle-length black cape with an upturned collar, which she wore over a skintight black jumpsuit.
“Admiral Halko!” cried Aurora, her eyes flashing with hatred.
“The one and only,” replied the woman, drawing her cape aside and stooping in mock genuflection. She waved at the guards, who responded by letting go of Aurora's arms. The captain instantly tore herself away from them and stepped forward.
“What's the meaning of this, Halko?” she demanded. “Why am I here?”
“To hear my proposal,” smiled the wicked admiral.
“Proposal?” asked Aurora, her eyes narrowing. Then she placed her hands on her hips and stood tall, with chin held high in defiance. “I'll hear only one proposal from you, and that's for your complete and unconditional surrender to the League!”
“Ha!” scoffed Admiral Halko. “I had something a bit different in mind: instead of working at cross-purposes all the time, why don't you and I combine forces?” Now it was Aurora's turn to scoff.
“You're crazy if you think I would ever join you! You killed my parents!”
“That wasn't exactly intentional,” shrugged Halko with a twisted smile. “Anyway, you took my eye, and I don't hold a grudge over that!” She tapped her black eyepatch, as if Aurora might not remember. Then, with her cape trailing behind her, she walked over to a rectangular, synthetic glass box around five feet in height which stood near the command interface. Inside this large transparent casket, four seminude women were submerged in luminous fluorokinetic fluid. Though the women were packed tightly together (the tank seemed hardly big enough for two of them) the lubricating gel in which they were immersed caused their bodies to slip and slide over, below and around one another, almost as easily as fish in water.
This device was a navigational aid, as Aurora well knew – her own ship had one quite like it. The fluorokinetic substance, which the navigators were able to breathe, helped them communicate psychically with the routing system and direct the ship to its proper destination. Contact with the bodies of other navigators amplified the signal, and the more of them were present in the tank, the more accurate their guidance would be. The one on Aurora's ship, however, had an open top, and the navigators could come and go as they pleased. This tank had its lid sealed shut, leaving the occupants trapped like aquarium specimens.
“You were a navigator yourself at one point,” remarked Admiral Halko. “One of the best, as I understand. With my leadership and your know-how, the Dark Fleet would be unstoppable! We could bring the League to its knees!” Her voice rose to a scream at these last several words, and she shook a raised first with theatrical aplomb, but Aurora remained unimpressed.
“You want to keep me in that sardine can?” she asked skeptically, folding her arms.
“I'd let you out from time to time, of course,” Halko assured her. “I know you're as handy with a zapper as you are with navigation. You'd be an asset on the battlefield too!”
“You witch!” cried Aurora. “I didn't learn to use a zapper so I could join your flock of brigandly trulls!”
“Trust me, captain,” smiled the admiral as she gestured to the stars through the window, “when all this is mine, it will be better to be by my side than beneath my boot!”
“I'll never join up with you, cyclops! Or your band of scallywags!” snapped Aurora proudly.
“Scallywags?” gasped Halko. She shook her head and clicked her tongue. “We have a legitimate political program, I'll have you know!”
“You're pirates!” cried Aurora.
“Well,” huffed Halko, “I can see there's no getting through to you. I guess we'll have to … shoot you out of the airlock? Yes, let's do that!”
Aurora began scuffling again with the guards that flanked her, but just at that moment, another black-helmeted girl rushed into the room.
“My lady,” she breathlessly declared, “a League frigate is approaching at 200 space-knots!”
“That would be Space Patrol coming to my rescue,” said Aurora with a cocky smile.
“What abysmal timing!” grumbled Halko as she strutted angrily to the control panel and accessed the ship's sound system. “Battle stations, girls!” she commanded over the speakers. “Get ready to fry some scurvy Space Patrol snollygosters!”
Aurora seized the opportunity. She grabbed the wrist of Le Fleur – the guard with the nasal voice – and pushed the pirate's deadly ray guy away from her. A hot red laser beam shot out from the weapon, striking the guard on Aurora's right side. With a shrill cry of anguish, the woman buckled and sank backwards, clutching the smoking hole in her heart.
As Aurora struggled with Le Fleur, a second laser burst issued from the gun, this time flying in Admiral Halko's direction. The villainess managed to duck just in time to save herself, and the beam instead hit the navigation tank, narrowly missing one of the women inside. Aurora then drove a knee into Le Fleur's stomach and wrenched the gun away from the stunned pirate before fleeing the room.
Halko peeked out over the sound console and rose to full height when she saw that no more laser beams were coming at her.
“After her, you bobolynes!” she shrieked, jabbing her finger in the fugitive's direction. Then she noticed the viscous, luminescent fluid spouting from a hole in the navigation box and splattering onto the floor of the control deck. “No, no, no!” she screeched, managing to arrest the departure of Le Fleur, who was still wincing by the doorway as the other two guards gave chase to Aurora. “Get someone to fix this hole, or we'll be grounded here!” Halko ordered, her voice quivering with rage. With that, the admiral turned on one heel, dramatically twirling her cape as she went to fetch a weapon for herself.
Aurora charged down the hallway until she saw four guards – women, like everyone else aboard the corsair – approaching on the way to their battle stations. The minions froze for a brief moment, surprised to see a prisoner on the loose. When they raised their zappers, Aurora fired her newly-acquired ray gun, killing one of them before dashing down a different path and hoping to lose the rest.
Hugging the wall as she approached the next corner, she peeped around the edge and saw several more guards waiting with weapons drawn. A half-dozen laser blasts singed the wall near her head, and she ducked back behind the corner. Now she could see that three pirates had followed her from the other corridor, approaching via the route she had taken moments earlier. Their heels clacked on the shiny floor as they began to close in on their quarry.
With heart pounding and adrenaline surging, Aurora fingered her pistol. This was a tight spot, but she had been in tighter.
Taking aim, she fired a few blasts at her pursuers, striking one squarely in the forehead, just below the rim of her helmet. The woman dropped to her knees as smoke curled from the hole between her wide-open eyes. A second guard was hit in the throat and crumpled to the floor, clutching her neck in pain. As her compatriots fell around her, the third pirate crouched on one knee and squeezed her trigger, blasting the wall dangerously close to where Aurora stood. The blonde captain returned fire, zapping her attacker in the belly. The black-clad woman let out a feminine groan and collapsed forward onto the now-prone body of the girl who had sustained the headshot. As smoke rose, both from the dead pirates and the holes cut into the walls by lasers, the woman with the throat wound crawled forward a few feet before becoming still.
The firefight had lasted mere seconds, and Aurora remained unscathed. She now inched around the corner again, firing a shot that struck one of pirates standing beyond. A volley of retaliatory laser bursts ensued, nearly striking Aurora before she could duck behind cover again.
“Bedswervers!” she cursed through gritted teeth. Meanwhile, around the corner, the woman she had just zapped dropped her gun and fell with her back against the wall. She sank to the floor slowly, finally coming to rest with her legs splayed, back propped up and head lolling sightlessly.
Glancing back beyond the slain guards in the corridor, Aurora saw, to her dismay, another wave of pirates approaching – five of them this time. She sensed that her luck might be running out. Could this be the end? Clearing her mind of these thoughts, the brave captain readied her laser pistol. If defeat was her destiny, she would face it on her feet with a warm zapper in hand, not on her knees kissing Halko's ring. She braced herself for a desperate fight.
Then she smiled. Four more women had appeared behind the five encroaching pirates, but they didn't wear black helmets. Their uncovered hair flowed freely, and they wore silver leotards much like Aurora's. It was Space Patrol!
The silver-suited women quickly cut down the five black-clad guards with their ray guns, though one pirate, before dying, managed to send a laser beam through the belly of a young patrolwoman. The cadet fell to her knees, tearfully clutching the searing hole in her stomach before toppling facedown with a final sigh. The surviving Patrol girls gave her a sad, momentary glance before quickly moving in Aurora's direction. They had no time to mourn their fallen sister.
“Captain Wheellock!” one of them called, happy to have located their distressed comrade.
“Nice shooting, girls!” smiled Aurora as they arrived at her side.
“Thanks!” replied one of the women, a long-legged brunette on whom the Space Patrol leotard looked particularly flattering. “We've just been itching to fry some renegade tail, haven't we, ladies?”
“Yes, ma'am!” replied the two other Patrol girls, a pair of pretty blondes.
“Glad to hear it,” smiled Aurora. “What's your name, patrolwoman?” she asked
“Lieutenant Reina Holbrook, ma'am!” answered the brunette while saluting the captain. The other two Patrol girls introduced themselves, saluting as well: “Astrid Elrod, ensign, second-class!” “Caia Cassidy, ensign, first-class!” They all spoke quickly, knowing there were enemies just around the corner, and possibly more on the way.
Suddenly, the ship was rocked by a series of explosions, and Ensign Cassidy almost lost her footing. Aurora surmised that there was a battle going on outside: to allow boarding by patrolwomen, the League frigate would have first disabled the Awilda with its grappling beam. After that, the Awilda's crew had probably responded with laser cannons, and by launching small, individually-manned war sloops in an attempt to pick off the frigate's grappling antennae.
Aurora was correct; in fact, League pilots were engaged in dogfights with Dark Fleet sloops outside the Awilda at that very moment. Though she couldn't see it, dozens of women on both sides had already perished in the battle; some vaporized instantly when their spacecraft had exploded, and some now drifting lifelessly in space beyond the hulls of the ships.
“Let's get out of here!” urged Aurora. She'd considered going back for a showdown with Admiral Halko, but personal revenge was unbecoming of a League officer. She could do more good commanding from the deck of the frigate, or even piloting a war sloop herself.
“Right!” agreed the others – but just then, more black-helmeted guards began pouring into the hallway. Lethal red beams flew through the air towards Aurora and her friends, which the three surviving patrolwomen repaid with the equally-deadly blue beams emitted from their League-issued zappers.
More bodies piled up on top of the nine slain women already strewn about the corridor. Some guards slumped against the wall before sinking to the floor, while one collapsed to her knees and then face-planted with her bottom pointing up at the ceiling. A crafty space pirate then crouched down, using her fallen comrade's upturned derriere as a battlement. Resting her pistol upon the cleft between the dead woman's buttocks, she fired a burst that struck Ensign Elrod in the chest.
“Astrid! No!” cried Ensign Cassidy as her friend fell to the floor with a deathly gasp. Taking aim, she avenged her battle-sister by zapping the cunning pirate in the head. The stricken guard went limp, her face resting eternally in the soft behind of the woman she'd been using for cover.
Aurora knew they'd be cut to pieces if they remained pinned down here, so she made a daring shoulder-roll around the corner, frying one guard before her feet landed and then shooting another as she stood back up. The first woman fell back, dead instantly, while the second let out a sharp squeal of pain before stumbling to a large shipping crate, upon which, with her failing strength, she tried to prop herself up. She finally collapsed with her body slumped over the crate and her shapely rear on display. Another helmeted woman, taking cover behind the crate, fired at Aurora, but was shot through the head by Lieutenant Holbrook. This pirate, too, slumped over the crate with her bottom sticking out behind her.
“Thanks,” said Aurora, glancing at Reina with a smile.
“Don't mention it,” replied the lieutenant, grinning. She raised her forearm, speaking into her wrist transmitter: “Holbrook to mothership: we have located Captain Wheellock, but we're outzappered in here. Requesting permission to regroup aboard frigate.”
“Permission granted, lieutenant,” buzzed a female voice from the transmitter. “Withdrawing all patrolwomen immediately.”
“But the way we came is completely blocked off!” exclaimed Caia Cassidy. “We can't get back to the boarding dock!”
“Let's cut through the reactor chamber,” suggested Aurora. “We can escape through the hatch in the ship's sail!”
“Yes, ma'am!” replied Reina and Caia. With all in agreement – and with the ominous clacking of pirate heels resounding in the passages behind them – the blonde captain and her two surviving allies ran past the crate towards a large metal door beyond it. Aurora took the lead, while the two other Patrol girls directed retreating fire at the pirates pursuing them.
The reactor chamber was a cavernous scene of mayhem. Scores of patrolwomen in silver boots and leotards were running down a series of catwalks suspended over the big vat of the glowing green sludge that powered the Awilda, exchanging laser fire with an equal number of charcoal-suited space pirates. Amid the clanging of heels on metal footpaths, several women hung dead from the catwalk railings, while others, Patrol girls and pirates alike, fell screaming into the acidic green goo below.
“Space Patrol, withdraw! I repeat, ladies – withdraw!” came the order from the wrist transmitter of every silver-suited woman.
Aurora gunned down a black-helmeted guard that was standing on the catwalk in front of her and then signaled to her friends to charge forward with her. They ran down the narrow bridge, each hopping over the body of the pirate girl, who in her death grip still clung to the railing. All the while, they fired at guards perched on the other catwalks. Aurora took out one guard on a plank high above, who had been aiming to shoot a Patrol woman on a different plank, and the grateful girl saluted her savior.
“Let's go! Go, go, go!” cried Aurora, waving her comrades forward again. A moment later, she heard a cry from behind and looked back to see Ensign Cassidy with a smoking hole in her shoulder. As if in a daze, the young woman grasped the railing and then toppled over the side.
“Noooooooo!” she screamed as she plunged towards the luminous slime.
“Caia!” cried Reina in anguish, but Aurora tugged at her arm.
“Keep moving, lieutenant!” shouted the captain. “There's nothing we can do for her.” Indeed, Ensign Cassidy's body was already beginning to dissolve in the green sludge.
Having made it through the reactor alive, Aurora and Reina now found themselves in a long corridor with a metal ladder at the end.
“That leads off the ship!” said Aurora as she sprinted towards the ladder. “We can board the frigate up there!”
“I'm right behind you cap…” began Reina, before being cut off by the zap of a ray gun. Aurora turned back just in time to see Lieutenant Holbrook's face light up like a lantern from the inside before going dim again. With smoke billowing from her mouth and nostrils, her eyes rolled back in her head and she dropped to the cold spaceship floor. When she fell, Aurora saw the pirate standing behind her with a raised pistol – it was Le Fleur.
“You!” the blonde captain exclaimed furiously. She fired several laser bursts in the pirate's direction, but Le Fleur ducked through a hatchway to safety, and Aurora kept running. She was almost at the ladder.
“Out of my way, you mooncalf!” shouted a familiar voice. Moments later, Admiral Halko stumbled out through the hatch. Steadying herself, she fired a burst of crimson rays from a laser pistol, singeing the handlebars of the ladder near Aurora's hands. The captain turned back and fired at her nemesis, but only a weak flash came out, harmlessly crackling against the wall near Halko. The weapon must be low on energy, thought Aurora as she threw it to the ground. Looking up, she began to ascend the ladder. If she climbed quickly, she could make it. Halko was far behind her, and after climbing about seven or eight feet, she would be out of the admiral's line of sight.
She gripped a handle, and then another, hoisting herself up as fast as humanly possible. Her back and buttocks flexed in her glittering leotard and she climbed. Almost there, she told herself. Soon she would be on the Patrol frigate, in friendly territory; her misadventure on the Awilda just another of the many close calls she'd had throughout her daring career.
Admiral Halko, her black cape fluttering in the breeze that whooshed down the corridor, stood perhaps a hundred feet from Aurora, near the fallen body of Lieutenant Reina Holbrook.
“I'll get you, Captain Wheellock!” she screamed, shaking her fist. Raising her pistol in one hand and squinting through her single eye, she aimed. Then she fired.
Aurora felt a hot flash on her back, and then a burning sensation. She gasped, and was horrified to find a wisp of smoke curling from her own mouth. Halko's laser beam had hit her dead-center between the shoulder blades.
No! Thought Aurora. This can't be! She tried to go on climbing, reaching for the next rung of the ladder, but found the movement incredibly taxing, as if she were trying to lift a massive weight. She felt her grip weaken. Though she tried to hold on, the metal bars slipped through her fingers like a mirage, and she fell backwards. No, she thought. No…
Captain Aurora Wheellock was dead before she hit the floor.
Lowering her zapper, Admiral Halko smirked and approached the spot where the captain lay.
“Excellent shot, my lady,” hissed Le Fleur, who had emerged from the hatchway to follow her boss.
“Oh my stars, was it satisfying!” replied the admiral with a wicked laugh as she came upon the body. Aurora was staring up with a look of disbelief frozen on her beautiful, lifeless face. “Poor Captain Wheellock!” gloated Halko as she stood triumphantly over her fallen opponent. “You should have joined me when you had the chance!”
The voice of a pirate officer then sounded over the Awilda's speakers.
“All enemy women cleared from ship,” it said. “Enemy grappling beam neutralized.”
“Well,” smiled the admiral, “that was a lovely little broil, but I suppose it's time to make haste!” She turned to Le Fleur. “Did you get someone to fix the navigation tank like I asked?”
“Why, yes, my lady,” replied Le Fleur.
“This is your admiral speaking,” Halko chirped into the sound system after opening a wall-mounted control cabinet. “Prepare Awilda for light-speed escape…”
The two evil women were walking back the way they had come when Halko stopped to prod Reina's dead body with the toe of her high-heeled boot. “You got to vaporize someone's brains today, after all,” she told Le Fleur as her lip curled into another one of her cruel smirks.
With that, Halko marched off in the direction of the control deck, a lively spring in her step. Le Fleur shrugged before following her.
“Take your hands off me, slatterns!” cried Aurora Wheellock with scornful indignation. The beautiful blonde space captain thrashed to and fro while two black-clad female guards tottered in a zig-zag motion, gripping her arms as they attempted to escort her down the hallway.
“Plucky little beetle-brow, aren't you?” hissed a third female guard, who was following close at their heels. When she heard the woman's low, nasal voice, Aurora also felt the muzzle of a ray gun tapping the back of her head. “What if I were to melt that pretty head of yours?” croaked the guard. “Wouldn't be so boisterous then, would you?” Aurora bit her lip and relented, allowing her captors to lead her down the corridor, toward the control deck of the corsair Awilda. “There's a good girl,” clucked the guard behind her.
The ship's interior was dim, austere and blocky – a fitting environment for the scum who dwelt within it, thought Aurora. Her sparkling silver leotard and matching knee-high boots stood out against the dusky background while providing a marked contrast to the guards, who wore pitch-black helmets and tight, very short romper-style uniforms of charcoal grey, with belts across the waists. The dark, smooth, polished floor of the ship reflected the images of the women who trod upon it, while the tapping of their high heels reverberated throughout the passages.
Aurora was ushered into a room from which a grand, bubble-shaped window looked out onto a vast expanse dotted by countless twinkling stars.
“What is this?” demanded Aurora, beginning to struggle again.
“So help me, I'll vaporize that yellow-plumed skull of yours!” snarled the nasal-toned guard, brandishing her pistol.
“Vaporize?” sounded a sinister voice from a shadowy corner of the deck. “I'm surprised at you, Le Fleur! Melt the brain of my good friend, Captain Wheellock?” A dark-haired, one-eyed woman emerged into the light, her heels clicking menacingly on the spaceship floor as she approached. She was dressed flamboyantly, and all in black: black eyepatch, black boots, black gloves and an ankle-length black cape with an upturned collar, which she wore over a skintight black jumpsuit.
“Admiral Halko!” cried Aurora, her eyes flashing with hatred.
“The one and only,” replied the woman, drawing her cape aside and stooping in mock genuflection. She waved at the guards, who responded by letting go of Aurora's arms. The captain instantly tore herself away from them and stepped forward.
“What's the meaning of this, Halko?” she demanded. “Why am I here?”
“To hear my proposal,” smiled the wicked admiral.
“Proposal?” asked Aurora, her eyes narrowing. Then she placed her hands on her hips and stood tall, with chin held high in defiance. “I'll hear only one proposal from you, and that's for your complete and unconditional surrender to the League!”
“Ha!” scoffed Admiral Halko. “I had something a bit different in mind: instead of working at cross-purposes all the time, why don't you and I combine forces?” Now it was Aurora's turn to scoff.
“You're crazy if you think I would ever join you! You killed my parents!”
“That wasn't exactly intentional,” shrugged Halko with a twisted smile. “Anyway, you took my eye, and I don't hold a grudge over that!” She tapped her black eyepatch, as if Aurora might not remember. Then, with her cape trailing behind her, she walked over to a rectangular, synthetic glass box around five feet in height which stood near the command interface. Inside this large transparent casket, four seminude women were submerged in luminous fluorokinetic fluid. Though the women were packed tightly together (the tank seemed hardly big enough for two of them) the lubricating gel in which they were immersed caused their bodies to slip and slide over, below and around one another, almost as easily as fish in water.
This device was a navigational aid, as Aurora well knew – her own ship had one quite like it. The fluorokinetic substance, which the navigators were able to breathe, helped them communicate psychically with the routing system and direct the ship to its proper destination. Contact with the bodies of other navigators amplified the signal, and the more of them were present in the tank, the more accurate their guidance would be. The one on Aurora's ship, however, had an open top, and the navigators could come and go as they pleased. This tank had its lid sealed shut, leaving the occupants trapped like aquarium specimens.
“You were a navigator yourself at one point,” remarked Admiral Halko. “One of the best, as I understand. With my leadership and your know-how, the Dark Fleet would be unstoppable! We could bring the League to its knees!” Her voice rose to a scream at these last several words, and she shook a raised first with theatrical aplomb, but Aurora remained unimpressed.
“You want to keep me in that sardine can?” she asked skeptically, folding her arms.
“I'd let you out from time to time, of course,” Halko assured her. “I know you're as handy with a zapper as you are with navigation. You'd be an asset on the battlefield too!”
“You witch!” cried Aurora. “I didn't learn to use a zapper so I could join your flock of brigandly trulls!”
“Trust me, captain,” smiled the admiral as she gestured to the stars through the window, “when all this is mine, it will be better to be by my side than beneath my boot!”
“I'll never join up with you, cyclops! Or your band of scallywags!” snapped Aurora proudly.
“Scallywags?” gasped Halko. She shook her head and clicked her tongue. “We have a legitimate political program, I'll have you know!”
“You're pirates!” cried Aurora.
“Well,” huffed Halko, “I can see there's no getting through to you. I guess we'll have to … shoot you out of the airlock? Yes, let's do that!”
Aurora began scuffling again with the guards that flanked her, but just at that moment, another black-helmeted girl rushed into the room.
“My lady,” she breathlessly declared, “a League frigate is approaching at 200 space-knots!”
“That would be Space Patrol coming to my rescue,” said Aurora with a cocky smile.
“What abysmal timing!” grumbled Halko as she strutted angrily to the control panel and accessed the ship's sound system. “Battle stations, girls!” she commanded over the speakers. “Get ready to fry some scurvy Space Patrol snollygosters!”
Aurora seized the opportunity. She grabbed the wrist of Le Fleur – the guard with the nasal voice – and pushed the pirate's deadly ray guy away from her. A hot red laser beam shot out from the weapon, striking the guard on Aurora's right side. With a shrill cry of anguish, the woman buckled and sank backwards, clutching the smoking hole in her heart.
As Aurora struggled with Le Fleur, a second laser burst issued from the gun, this time flying in Admiral Halko's direction. The villainess managed to duck just in time to save herself, and the beam instead hit the navigation tank, narrowly missing one of the women inside. Aurora then drove a knee into Le Fleur's stomach and wrenched the gun away from the stunned pirate before fleeing the room.
Halko peeked out over the sound console and rose to full height when she saw that no more laser beams were coming at her.
“After her, you bobolynes!” she shrieked, jabbing her finger in the fugitive's direction. Then she noticed the viscous, luminescent fluid spouting from a hole in the navigation box and splattering onto the floor of the control deck. “No, no, no!” she screeched, managing to arrest the departure of Le Fleur, who was still wincing by the doorway as the other two guards gave chase to Aurora. “Get someone to fix this hole, or we'll be grounded here!” Halko ordered, her voice quivering with rage. With that, the admiral turned on one heel, dramatically twirling her cape as she went to fetch a weapon for herself.
Aurora charged down the hallway until she saw four guards – women, like everyone else aboard the corsair – approaching on the way to their battle stations. The minions froze for a brief moment, surprised to see a prisoner on the loose. When they raised their zappers, Aurora fired her newly-acquired ray gun, killing one of them before dashing down a different path and hoping to lose the rest.
Hugging the wall as she approached the next corner, she peeped around the edge and saw several more guards waiting with weapons drawn. A half-dozen laser blasts singed the wall near her head, and she ducked back behind the corner. Now she could see that three pirates had followed her from the other corridor, approaching via the route she had taken moments earlier. Their heels clacked on the shiny floor as they began to close in on their quarry.
With heart pounding and adrenaline surging, Aurora fingered her pistol. This was a tight spot, but she had been in tighter.
Taking aim, she fired a few blasts at her pursuers, striking one squarely in the forehead, just below the rim of her helmet. The woman dropped to her knees as smoke curled from the hole between her wide-open eyes. A second guard was hit in the throat and crumpled to the floor, clutching her neck in pain. As her compatriots fell around her, the third pirate crouched on one knee and squeezed her trigger, blasting the wall dangerously close to where Aurora stood. The blonde captain returned fire, zapping her attacker in the belly. The black-clad woman let out a feminine groan and collapsed forward onto the now-prone body of the girl who had sustained the headshot. As smoke rose, both from the dead pirates and the holes cut into the walls by lasers, the woman with the throat wound crawled forward a few feet before becoming still.
The firefight had lasted mere seconds, and Aurora remained unscathed. She now inched around the corner again, firing a shot that struck one of pirates standing beyond. A volley of retaliatory laser bursts ensued, nearly striking Aurora before she could duck behind cover again.
“Bedswervers!” she cursed through gritted teeth. Meanwhile, around the corner, the woman she had just zapped dropped her gun and fell with her back against the wall. She sank to the floor slowly, finally coming to rest with her legs splayed, back propped up and head lolling sightlessly.
Glancing back beyond the slain guards in the corridor, Aurora saw, to her dismay, another wave of pirates approaching – five of them this time. She sensed that her luck might be running out. Could this be the end? Clearing her mind of these thoughts, the brave captain readied her laser pistol. If defeat was her destiny, she would face it on her feet with a warm zapper in hand, not on her knees kissing Halko's ring. She braced herself for a desperate fight.
Then she smiled. Four more women had appeared behind the five encroaching pirates, but they didn't wear black helmets. Their uncovered hair flowed freely, and they wore silver leotards much like Aurora's. It was Space Patrol!
The silver-suited women quickly cut down the five black-clad guards with their ray guns, though one pirate, before dying, managed to send a laser beam through the belly of a young patrolwoman. The cadet fell to her knees, tearfully clutching the searing hole in her stomach before toppling facedown with a final sigh. The surviving Patrol girls gave her a sad, momentary glance before quickly moving in Aurora's direction. They had no time to mourn their fallen sister.
“Captain Wheellock!” one of them called, happy to have located their distressed comrade.
“Nice shooting, girls!” smiled Aurora as they arrived at her side.
“Thanks!” replied one of the women, a long-legged brunette on whom the Space Patrol leotard looked particularly flattering. “We've just been itching to fry some renegade tail, haven't we, ladies?”
“Yes, ma'am!” replied the two other Patrol girls, a pair of pretty blondes.
“Glad to hear it,” smiled Aurora. “What's your name, patrolwoman?” she asked
“Lieutenant Reina Holbrook, ma'am!” answered the brunette while saluting the captain. The other two Patrol girls introduced themselves, saluting as well: “Astrid Elrod, ensign, second-class!” “Caia Cassidy, ensign, first-class!” They all spoke quickly, knowing there were enemies just around the corner, and possibly more on the way.
Suddenly, the ship was rocked by a series of explosions, and Ensign Cassidy almost lost her footing. Aurora surmised that there was a battle going on outside: to allow boarding by patrolwomen, the League frigate would have first disabled the Awilda with its grappling beam. After that, the Awilda's crew had probably responded with laser cannons, and by launching small, individually-manned war sloops in an attempt to pick off the frigate's grappling antennae.
Aurora was correct; in fact, League pilots were engaged in dogfights with Dark Fleet sloops outside the Awilda at that very moment. Though she couldn't see it, dozens of women on both sides had already perished in the battle; some vaporized instantly when their spacecraft had exploded, and some now drifting lifelessly in space beyond the hulls of the ships.
“Let's get out of here!” urged Aurora. She'd considered going back for a showdown with Admiral Halko, but personal revenge was unbecoming of a League officer. She could do more good commanding from the deck of the frigate, or even piloting a war sloop herself.
“Right!” agreed the others – but just then, more black-helmeted guards began pouring into the hallway. Lethal red beams flew through the air towards Aurora and her friends, which the three surviving patrolwomen repaid with the equally-deadly blue beams emitted from their League-issued zappers.
More bodies piled up on top of the nine slain women already strewn about the corridor. Some guards slumped against the wall before sinking to the floor, while one collapsed to her knees and then face-planted with her bottom pointing up at the ceiling. A crafty space pirate then crouched down, using her fallen comrade's upturned derriere as a battlement. Resting her pistol upon the cleft between the dead woman's buttocks, she fired a burst that struck Ensign Elrod in the chest.
“Astrid! No!” cried Ensign Cassidy as her friend fell to the floor with a deathly gasp. Taking aim, she avenged her battle-sister by zapping the cunning pirate in the head. The stricken guard went limp, her face resting eternally in the soft behind of the woman she'd been using for cover.
Aurora knew they'd be cut to pieces if they remained pinned down here, so she made a daring shoulder-roll around the corner, frying one guard before her feet landed and then shooting another as she stood back up. The first woman fell back, dead instantly, while the second let out a sharp squeal of pain before stumbling to a large shipping crate, upon which, with her failing strength, she tried to prop herself up. She finally collapsed with her body slumped over the crate and her shapely rear on display. Another helmeted woman, taking cover behind the crate, fired at Aurora, but was shot through the head by Lieutenant Holbrook. This pirate, too, slumped over the crate with her bottom sticking out behind her.
“Thanks,” said Aurora, glancing at Reina with a smile.
“Don't mention it,” replied the lieutenant, grinning. She raised her forearm, speaking into her wrist transmitter: “Holbrook to mothership: we have located Captain Wheellock, but we're outzappered in here. Requesting permission to regroup aboard frigate.”
“Permission granted, lieutenant,” buzzed a female voice from the transmitter. “Withdrawing all patrolwomen immediately.”
“But the way we came is completely blocked off!” exclaimed Caia Cassidy. “We can't get back to the boarding dock!”
“Let's cut through the reactor chamber,” suggested Aurora. “We can escape through the hatch in the ship's sail!”
“Yes, ma'am!” replied Reina and Caia. With all in agreement – and with the ominous clacking of pirate heels resounding in the passages behind them – the blonde captain and her two surviving allies ran past the crate towards a large metal door beyond it. Aurora took the lead, while the two other Patrol girls directed retreating fire at the pirates pursuing them.
The reactor chamber was a cavernous scene of mayhem. Scores of patrolwomen in silver boots and leotards were running down a series of catwalks suspended over the big vat of the glowing green sludge that powered the Awilda, exchanging laser fire with an equal number of charcoal-suited space pirates. Amid the clanging of heels on metal footpaths, several women hung dead from the catwalk railings, while others, Patrol girls and pirates alike, fell screaming into the acidic green goo below.
“Space Patrol, withdraw! I repeat, ladies – withdraw!” came the order from the wrist transmitter of every silver-suited woman.
Aurora gunned down a black-helmeted guard that was standing on the catwalk in front of her and then signaled to her friends to charge forward with her. They ran down the narrow bridge, each hopping over the body of the pirate girl, who in her death grip still clung to the railing. All the while, they fired at guards perched on the other catwalks. Aurora took out one guard on a plank high above, who had been aiming to shoot a Patrol woman on a different plank, and the grateful girl saluted her savior.
“Let's go! Go, go, go!” cried Aurora, waving her comrades forward again. A moment later, she heard a cry from behind and looked back to see Ensign Cassidy with a smoking hole in her shoulder. As if in a daze, the young woman grasped the railing and then toppled over the side.
“Noooooooo!” she screamed as she plunged towards the luminous slime.
“Caia!” cried Reina in anguish, but Aurora tugged at her arm.
“Keep moving, lieutenant!” shouted the captain. “There's nothing we can do for her.” Indeed, Ensign Cassidy's body was already beginning to dissolve in the green sludge.
Having made it through the reactor alive, Aurora and Reina now found themselves in a long corridor with a metal ladder at the end.
“That leads off the ship!” said Aurora as she sprinted towards the ladder. “We can board the frigate up there!”
“I'm right behind you cap…” began Reina, before being cut off by the zap of a ray gun. Aurora turned back just in time to see Lieutenant Holbrook's face light up like a lantern from the inside before going dim again. With smoke billowing from her mouth and nostrils, her eyes rolled back in her head and she dropped to the cold spaceship floor. When she fell, Aurora saw the pirate standing behind her with a raised pistol – it was Le Fleur.
“You!” the blonde captain exclaimed furiously. She fired several laser bursts in the pirate's direction, but Le Fleur ducked through a hatchway to safety, and Aurora kept running. She was almost at the ladder.
“Out of my way, you mooncalf!” shouted a familiar voice. Moments later, Admiral Halko stumbled out through the hatch. Steadying herself, she fired a burst of crimson rays from a laser pistol, singeing the handlebars of the ladder near Aurora's hands. The captain turned back and fired at her nemesis, but only a weak flash came out, harmlessly crackling against the wall near Halko. The weapon must be low on energy, thought Aurora as she threw it to the ground. Looking up, she began to ascend the ladder. If she climbed quickly, she could make it. Halko was far behind her, and after climbing about seven or eight feet, she would be out of the admiral's line of sight.
She gripped a handle, and then another, hoisting herself up as fast as humanly possible. Her back and buttocks flexed in her glittering leotard and she climbed. Almost there, she told herself. Soon she would be on the Patrol frigate, in friendly territory; her misadventure on the Awilda just another of the many close calls she'd had throughout her daring career.
Admiral Halko, her black cape fluttering in the breeze that whooshed down the corridor, stood perhaps a hundred feet from Aurora, near the fallen body of Lieutenant Reina Holbrook.
“I'll get you, Captain Wheellock!” she screamed, shaking her fist. Raising her pistol in one hand and squinting through her single eye, she aimed. Then she fired.
Aurora felt a hot flash on her back, and then a burning sensation. She gasped, and was horrified to find a wisp of smoke curling from her own mouth. Halko's laser beam had hit her dead-center between the shoulder blades.
No! Thought Aurora. This can't be! She tried to go on climbing, reaching for the next rung of the ladder, but found the movement incredibly taxing, as if she were trying to lift a massive weight. She felt her grip weaken. Though she tried to hold on, the metal bars slipped through her fingers like a mirage, and she fell backwards. No, she thought. No…
Captain Aurora Wheellock was dead before she hit the floor.
Lowering her zapper, Admiral Halko smirked and approached the spot where the captain lay.
“Excellent shot, my lady,” hissed Le Fleur, who had emerged from the hatchway to follow her boss.
“Oh my stars, was it satisfying!” replied the admiral with a wicked laugh as she came upon the body. Aurora was staring up with a look of disbelief frozen on her beautiful, lifeless face. “Poor Captain Wheellock!” gloated Halko as she stood triumphantly over her fallen opponent. “You should have joined me when you had the chance!”
The voice of a pirate officer then sounded over the Awilda's speakers.
“All enemy women cleared from ship,” it said. “Enemy grappling beam neutralized.”
“Well,” smiled the admiral, “that was a lovely little broil, but I suppose it's time to make haste!” She turned to Le Fleur. “Did you get someone to fix the navigation tank like I asked?”
“Why, yes, my lady,” replied Le Fleur.
“This is your admiral speaking,” Halko chirped into the sound system after opening a wall-mounted control cabinet. “Prepare Awilda for light-speed escape…”
The two evil women were walking back the way they had come when Halko stopped to prod Reina's dead body with the toe of her high-heeled boot. “You got to vaporize someone's brains today, after all,” she told Le Fleur as her lip curled into another one of her cruel smirks.
With that, Halko marched off in the direction of the control deck, a lively spring in her step. Le Fleur shrugged before following her.
