“What are you fucking waiting for? Find her a sun-damned medical bay!”
She opens her mouth, squeaks out, “Ye-ye-yes, sir. Right away, sir,” then stops and sputters again. “Buuut… but which ship should I kick out of a bay, sir?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’ll handle it myself.”
I turn back to the elevator, get back in, and go up to the penthouse to find Crux. I could, theoretically, kick out any ship I want to get Booty the attention she deserves. But I’ve been gone for a long time and I have no clue what Crux is doing that has things so backed up.
Better to err on the side of respect and caution than fuck up his plans.
He’d do the same for me. And if there’s one thing the seven of us—six of us, now—realize, it’s that we have to stick together at all costs.
Alone we are nothing. We all know that. But together we are this. We are a team. We are Harem Station.
The elevator doors open to the harem room. I step out and look around, searching for Crux.
“ALCOR,” I say.
“Welcome back, Serpint. You look… better.”
“Liar,” I mutter. “Where’s Crux? I need to talk to him about Booty.”
“He’s in the cryogenic lab. I was actually just going to intrude on you for help about that.”
“About what?”
“He’s refusing to thaw out the new princess.”
“Corla?” I ask. “The one we brought in?”
The one who caused Draden’s death, is what I really mean. Crux has had a thing for this princess for ages. I cannot remember a time when he wasn’t talking about her, or looking for her, or cursing her name.
But it was always while we were drunk. So no one cared, really. The ramblings of a man on whiskey.
So when I was passing through Cetus on my way back from a too-long trip to Hydra—that ended up being a bust and the biggest waste of time in my life—and heard that the mythical Princess Corla was on the station where we stopped, already neatly packed up in a cryo-capsule… well. You don’t just pass up that kind of booty.
We took her.
And Draden died in the process. A stream of plasma coming from a dark hallway. Slicing across his neck and cutting through his guts. Ceres took the next hit. Blown into millions of pieces.
I was already maneuvering the princess’s cryo-capsule into the storage slot when I looked out Booty’s side window and saw the whole thing in real time.
Booty took over, closing the hatch. Less than a picosecond to determine there was no sense in delaying our departure since our two partners were undoubtedly damaged beyond repair.
Then she took the brunt of the battle. A fucking SEAR cannon wiping out most of her personality systems and a few other backup circuits—like auto-pilot—as we flew out of range and entered the nearby gate.
How the hell did that pitiful little station in Cetus get a hold of a goddamned SEAR cannon?
I was too busy piloting a dying ship to think of the princess again until I had to contact Harem to let them know I was coming home with losses.
And even through the audible grief in Crux’s voice and the sadness on his face as he stared back at me from the high-res communication monitor, I could feel his excitement.
Princess Corla was real. And I not only had her, I was bringing her to him.
I think I hate that bitch.
Turning the corner I spot Crux inside the cryogenic bay, staring down at the capsule.
What the fuck?
I palm my hand past the biometric security, and enter when the door opens.
“She’s still frozen?” I ask, a little too much residual anger in my voice. “For sun-fuck’s sake. Why haven’t you thawed her out? You’ve been pining over this dumb bitch for as long as I can remember.”
He doesn’t lift his head, just slides his eyes in my direction. Staring at me from underneath a curl of dark hair. Shoots me a look of…
“What?” I snarl. “She’s the whole fucking reason—”
“No one told you to steal her for me, Serpint. That was all you.”
“Yeah, well.” I huff out a laugh. “Maybe I got sick of your fucking whining all these years? Maybe I just wanted to shut you up for once. Maybe I just wanted to bring home the one thing…”
But I don’t have in me to keep going. So I just stop talking.
He redirects his eyes down at his princess and then leans over, placing both hands flat on the glass, and hangs his head. “It’s not right,” he says. “I can’t fucking do it.”
I take a few steps closer. Looking down at the princess’s face. She’s older than the one I have up in my quarters. Older than most of them out in the harem room too. More like a queen than a princess. She’s one of the silvers. You don’t see many of them. Most of the girls we see pass through here are golden-haired. That’s the default color, I guess. We get a few blues, a few more greens, and every now and then a red or an orange. But we’ve never had a silver before. Or a pink, for that matter.