Chapter 20. Time for a Spanking.
Life for Petty Officer Grenk was not bad. He had been assigned to the Red Oblivion after his family pulled a few strings. He didn’t come from one of the heralded families that often sent sons to the esteemed military academies of his home world, but still, he couldn’t complain about his current station.
Today was meant to be another day of ensuring that the processes, procedures, and daily routines he was tasked with maintaining were completed. With his checklist for the day complete, he settled into the small workstation he had been assigned to update his reports when the alarms started blaring. Grenk contacted his commanding officer for orders but was soon told to stand down. It seemed a derelict ship had miscalculated warp coordinates and had suffered catastrophic failures, leading to an immediate failure of life and environmental support. Soon after, the alarms stopped, and Captain Drokin announced that an EVA team was in the process of attaching tow cables to the ship.
“It looks like Drokin just increased his payout,” Grenk muttered as he returned to his workstation with a hot beverage to continue working on his reports.
Reports were monotonous, and Grenk abhorred this particular part of his job, so it wasn’t long before his attention wandered. Grenk opened his personal communications tab to see if he had gotten word from his family or friends. After all, the brass would all be busy with the derelict ship, so nobody would notice that his attention wandered for a few minutes.
Grenk’s eyes wandered to a new message on his workstation,” Hmm,” he muttered as he read the subject.
It seemed that Grenk had been contacted by the prince of a foreign government; not only that, but the prince needed his help to move some credits. By doing this, Grenk would get a hefty commission. Who didn’t like easy money?
“I guess Drokin isn’t the only one who is gonna make a few extra credits today!” Grenk smiled and flicked his tongue as he rubbed his hands together.
Grenk read through the rest of the communication before he got to the end. He replied to the communication from the foreign dignitary that he honestly hadn’t heard of, but who was he to say that the name Ron Jeremy didn’t sound very princely?
Natasha had completely shut down the Bloodhound. It wasn’t the best idea to go completely cold, but she was confident that she could activate the necessary functions in the limited time she would have. Natasha knew that the Rerek battle cruisers would most likely enter a linear support formation once the Red Oblivion started its salvage mission. She knew that the Red Oblivion would take the lead position and be defensively supported by the second cruiser while the third would bring up the rear and protect while the Oblivion was vulnerable.
In order to bring a salvage ship to tow, the Oblivion would have to deactivate its defensive shielding and bring the salvage vessel under its belly before securing it for transport. This was a weakness, but the other two ships offered support until the Oblivion’s shields were back online. Natasha was betting on the greed of the Oblivion’s Captain. Rereks were well known to be greedy and rash. If there were an opportunity to snatch up extra credits, the captain would jump at the opportunity.
That was the first part of the plan, but it wasn’t the only part. Being close to the Lead ship allowed Natasha to exploit a weakness on one ship, but she needed to incapacitate all three if they were going to eliminate the threat.
As the Bloodhound was dragged and secured onto the belly of the Red Oblivion, Natasha made her move. She had encrypted a worm into a communication to a low-ranking member of the Oblivion’s crew, and just like she did with the captain, she intended to exploit the intrinsic greed that the Rerek were well known for.
“Is the ship secured?” Drokin growled with a grin from his seat on the bridge. He was already calculating the probable value of the derelict ship. He would, of course, need to send a team to board the ship and see if there were any other items of value aboard, but scans had already verified that there were no life signs present. This was enough information to convince Drokin that there was no immediate threat; after all, an AI couldn’t pilot a ship without a biological to give direction and permissions.
“Yes, Captain. The ship is secured, and we are preparing to reactivate defensive shielding,” an officer said from a station in front of Drokin and to the left.
“That is good,” Drokin said as he again began to stroke one of the long, curved horns on his head. " Inform the King Killer and the Scar Giver to return to monitoring formation and await further orders,” Drokin said.
“Aye, Cap….” The XO started to say as he looked down at his tablet, mouth agape.
“What is it, XO? Send the order!” Drokin growled.
“Captain, my tablet seems to be malfunctioning. I’ll send the order from the navigation station,” the XO replied quickly.
“Aagh,” Drokin spat, “Incompetent the lot of you. Open a channel and put it on the main display so I can see their faces.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Before anyone could make a move, the main display flashed to life. To Drokin's surprise, there was the image of a human wearing some sort of red silk robe splashed across the wall in front of him.
“What is the meaning of this XO?!” Drokin stood from his chair and bellowed, pointing at the image in front of him.
The man in the image walked toward them as he untied the robe. The human had black hair and some sort of hair growing on his lip as well. Even with the robe on, Drokin could tell that he was overweight and looked very unhealthy, to say the least.
“What is happening, XO?! Who is this human, and why is he on my main display?” Drokin, now completely losing control, yelled.
“I am not sure, Captain. It seems that we have lost control of our communications. Officers from every workstation began to look around and ask for assistance as they also lost control of their individual systems.
“Weapons systems are engaging, Captain! We are locking onto the King Killer!” an officer yelled in panic.
“What do you mean? Who is this man?!” Drokin looked back at the screen as the overweight, hairy human finished untying his robe before opening it and letting it drop away.
“You’ve been bad… Time for a spanking…” the man said with a smile as his massive member swung on the screen in front of the Rerek crew.
Grenk was running to the bridge to see what was happening. As he entered, he saw the display screen, “Hey! That is Prince Ron Jeremy!”
The Oblivion fired its main plasma cannon array directly into the nose of the King Killer. At close range, it melted through their defensive shields and breached the warp core, immediately taking it offline.
The Scar Giver spun, not knowing what was happening, the captain only thought to get to a safe distance and reassess. As the ship spun around, three ships materialized out of nothing directly in front of it. With no warning, they all fired. A mix of high-energy lasers and plasma cannons made short work of the third Rerek ship.
Natasha worked fast to take advantage of the chaos. She quickly brought the offensive systems back online as the Bloodhound blazed back to life under the belly of the Red Oblivion. She used thrusters to buck into the weakened ship and create some distance. As the Bloodhound separated, the tow cables holding it secured snapped under the pressure, the Oblivion rocked from the sudden force.
“Captain! The derelict ship has come back online! It is pulling away,” an officer shouted from the bridge of the Oblivion.
“Fire on that ship!” Drokin screamed in anger.
“Weapons systems are offline, captain,” the weapons chief replied.
“Get ready to see the glory of my big ol’ gun,” the man on the display said as he mounted the display and thrust his genitals toward the screen.
Natasha armed the Ron Jeremy and pumped one round through the stern of the Red Oblivion. The back third of the ship separated and began to spin away as the front two-thirds started floating aimlessly.
Natasha repositioned the Bloodhound to be directly in front of the crippled main body of the Red Oblivion.
The Red Oblivion was losing power. The lights on the bridge flickered, and maintenance bots put out small fires. The main display flickered away as the bridge went dark. The main viewing port was now visible, though much smaller than the main display.
Drokin picked himself up off the floor as he felt blood trickling from a small wound on his head. He shook his head, trying to figure out what was going on. He had just been on cloud nine; a pocket full of credits had literally fallen into his lap. Now? Now, his ship was mostly disabled; he had fired on an allied ship, and he had no idea what had happened to the third ship.
As he stood, his eyes went to the viewports located on the front wall of the bridge. He stumbled backward and flopped into his chair as his eyes settled on the sight of his demise. Outside, he watched the derelict ship approaching his mighty battle cruiser, fully powered up and undamaged. Rage and terror settled on him in equal measures as he watched the front of the ship open up like a mouth.
“Hah..Hah.. hahaha,” Drokin slumped in his chair and laughed hysterically as the Bloodhound consumed the Rerek battle cruiser.
Princess Danae watched from the bridge of the Flaming Retribution as the Bloodhound consumed the large part of the Rerek battle cruiser, then slowly repositioned to consume the remaining piece that had broken off after being fired on.
“I don’t think I will ever get used to seeing that,” Danae said
“Did… did it just eat that other ship, Princess?” the executive officer asked, mouth agape.
“Yes, yes it did, XO,” Danae replied.
Tiff, CJ and Kaj were helping with various tasks in settlement. Andrew would be gone for at least a while so they decided to keep busy and help where they could until Matty and the rest of the crew got back. They were all back at their camp having lunch when they saw it.
“What? What is going on up there?!” Tiff said, standing quickly and holding her hand over her eyes to try and get a better view.
“I'm just taking out the trash, XO. Don’t worry; we got them all,” Natasha replied over the comms.
“Natasha? What do you mean…we? The last message we got from you said you were jumping away because of the ships that jumped in. What is going on up there?” Tiff asked
“It looks like things got very kinetic up there,” CJ said, “Are you sure they don’t have backup?”
“Well….about that,” Natasha said with a coy tone.
“Tiffantrimore, is that you?” Danae said over the comms, “Natasha patched me in. Is the whole crew down there?”
“Danae? When did you get here?” Tiff asked, “and can someone tell us what exactly is going on up there?
Natasha took a few minutes to walk Tiff, CJ and Kaj through what happened. Danae explained that she had been instructed by the Coeus to come to Earth at this time before she and her ships left the Alcaran Moon.
“We didn’t know exactly what we would find,” Danae said, “the Coeus were very secretive but told me that it was imperative that we travel to Earth approximately three years after the implosion of the dungeon dimension. We have been very busy in the meantime, though. I have been recruiting and expanding the rebellion and we have gained a foothold in many galaxies that are sympathetic to our cause. I thought you were all dead though. I had not been able to find any evidence that the Bloodhound survived.”
“We lost a lot of time going through that Quasar. Once we came out we spent several weeks doing recon before coming back to Earth,” Tiff said when they had finished talking.
“Where is Captain Dawes? I don’t see his vitals on my scans,” Natasha asked.
“Uhh, yeah, about that. Andrew is kind of in another dimension. From what we can gather he is sort of inside a sort of tower? The Coeus sent him there to get some kind of seed,” CJ said.
“Oh my, is he okay? How could this happen?!” Natasha was completely panicking.
“A seed?” Danae asked, “Are you referring to a seed of power?”
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