The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (best ereader for pdf and epub TXT) 📗

to life and projected a bluish sphere into his hands. The sphere changed, turning from transparent blue light to a darker blue and gray, rotating, and materializing. A tracery of golden lines and swirls rippled across it, shimmering, taking on intricate shapes. The "Sphere of Unity."

This was the Ritual of Netfolding, practiced by cyborgs like Yiorgos who had cerebral implants, and a central component of the Cyberalia network. It was a form of meditation where they probed their inner neural network, their natural brain and their digital "neurosphere" — cleansing themselves of immorality and spiritual inefficiencies and connecting both minds into one. Masters claimed to be able to completely separate the two minds on command or to perform feats of intellect far surpassing their theoretical limitations, all for the purpose of achieving a new "awakening." Netfolding was supposed to be performed at least once a day by adherents. Yiorgos usually did it twice.

Dirken didn't believe in such religious mumbo jumbo. Every culture had its wacko religions, even cyborg culture. The closest thing Dirken had to religion was his sense of freedom.

All the talk about the Luhmanian Queen's daughter had gotten him aroused. He glanced over toward Yiorgos to see that his partner was meditating, then he reached into his pack. Rifling past a change of clothes, food packages, and a couple of Martian ales, he pulled out a tablet and headband. Accessing his extensive alien porn collection on the tablet, he found a particularly titillating vid title, "D'bee Does Dracorda." One of his favorites.

Dirken eagerly donned the silvery headband and clicked on the tablet link. The headband came alive with vibrations and beamed the video directly to his brain and all five senses for a full sensual experience. Immediately he found himself standing in the hibernation chamber, cocoon swings hanging from the low ceiling and warm, steamy waters swirling around the edges of the room, making the chamber a sauna. A door opened, and in stepped a Pleiadean male. Faun-like, covered in brown fur and with feet that were hooves, he wore only a loincloth. "Oh dear," the Pleiadean said, scratching at the mass of tiny horns on his head, "I think I'm lost." The squeaking Pleiadean language had been dubbed into Terran.

Teslan disco music started up and one of the cocoons parted. A reptilian leg, green and scaly, stepped out. Then an arm. Then out slipped a large Reptiloc woman, her iguana-like head opening to show rows of sharp teeth. "Lost, you say?" she asked, also dubbed. Her hands ran down her tight abdomen to a bikini bottom. "You poor man. I'm D'bee. Let me comfort you."

The Pleiadean's eyes opened wide in fear, but his loincloth betrayed a growing erection.

The Reptiloc woman slipped off her bikini and laid back into the cocoon. She opened her legs and revealed her cloaca between, wide and wet, with three folds of light green, fleshy lips, running horizontally between scales. She slipped a three-fingered hand down to it and rubbed it. The lips turned from green to a vibrant red as they engorged. The disco music grew louder and more urgent. Dirken smelled the musky scent of her pheromones.

"Well, maybe just a quickie," the Pleiadean said, letting his loincloth drop and revealing his throbbing white penis and overlarge, furry testicles.

"Oh yes," the Reptiloc woman moaned, opening her legs wider and inserting a thick finger into herself, claw and all.

The Pleiadean stepped over to the cocoon swing, between her legs, and entered her with a…."

"Hey!" Yiorgos shouted.

Dirken was shaken out of his revelry, then pulled off the headband to look at the cyborg, annoyed. "What?"

"Get your hands out of your pants and stop watching porn. You know I don't want to see that shit. I'm trying to meditate here. Find somewhere else to masturbate!"

Dirken huffed in annoyance and put the tablet and glasses back in his pack. He stood, straightened his leather jacket, and adjusted his holster. "Fine. I need a change of scenery anyway." After touching a glowing contact, the door slid open and he stepped outside into a corridor that overlooked the bridge.

He bumped into the curly-headed yeoman.

"Sorry, sir!" the yeoman said.

Dirken grimaced in annoyance. "Maybe don't stand in front of the fucking door?"

"Is there something you need, sir?"

"No. And we don't need a yeoman chaperone."

He just grinned back and blinked innocently… and didn't leave. "A drink, perhaps?" He gestured with his arm as he said it.

Dirken noticed an odd scar on the man's wrist, a small "A" no bigger than a thumbnail branded into his skin.

Dirken shook his head in exasperation and turned away, stepping the short distance to the ship's bridge and command center.

There were two levels to the bridge. The upper level was where the Captain and First Mate presided, along with other principal officers. The lower level held the secondary officers: navigators, engineers, sensor techs, medical, and weapons specialists. Both levels looked out over a wide bank of windows made of transparent aluminum, like all the windows of the ship. Dirken stood at an entrance to the lower level.

Most of the officers were busy at their workstations, but some of them glanced his way, then back to their consoles. The glance was enough to gauge their opinions: he was a civilian interloper on a military vessel: in the way, out of place, and not fit for a uniform.

Captain Chen looked down from the upper bridge railing at him and narrowed her eyes as if to say "you shouldn't be here." She started to open her mouth but was interrupted.

"Commander," a navigation lieutenant said to the First Mate, a white-haired man named Prasad who stood next to the Captain. A hologram of navigation charts floated in front of the navigator. "Gravwell engines are ready. Awaiting your command."

The First Mate gave a glance to the Captain, then turned back to the navigator. "Proceed with Gravjump Six." It was clear from the look Captain Chen gave him that Prasad was trusted.

"Aye," the navigator said. "Proceeding with Gravjump Six." Then he relayed