Agent Joamo shows off her skills

Orbital Mechanics 101 was Captain Serrah Joamo's least favourite course in college. Studying the Newtonian carousel motions of rocks and gas giants had felt so boring, especially compared to the more applied, interesting lessons on the Alcubierre-Kipthornian drive and Raychundrapan wormhole initializer. She'd slept through so many lectures that in the end, there had been no other option left for her than to sleep with the professor. That was the main reason why she now had to sit down, concentrate, and make a rough sketch on paper, when Haruntos reminded her that Tasim was in fact a binary star system.

The system had two extremes. Counter-intuitively, the darkest night occurred when both stars were at perigee, closest to the planets, since Beta would be obscured behind Alpha. In the following weeks it stayed mostly dark at midnight, with increasingly bright dawns, until suddenly, the brightest midnights came around, when Alpha and Beta formed a 90 degree angle as seen from the planets. After this, Beta moved further and further away from the inner, populated rocks, and at apogee, the red dwarf was nothing but a distant star. The whole cycle took about twelve years to complete, but when Beta was at apogee, it moved fast, so they were very lucky that tonight was the Darkest Night.

Lucky, because although officially they were the king's guests, in reality they were also the king's captives. As imperial representatives, they were not allowed to leave the castle.

So darkness was a friend.

Serrah had decided it would be best to go alone. She was the only one with knowledge about the location of the object, and the only one who could hack her way into the escape pod. Also, she wasn't jacked up on hormones, so she could think straight. Unlike someone else.

Sarantos, the friendly guard, had provided access to the castle's door lock schematics. Getting out of the castle had thus been the easy part. Now, she was hesitant. Before her lay the big open tarmac, usually full of activity, but currently silent and fairly empty. However, soldiers walked on scheduled patrols, with bright headlights and heavy plasma guns.

She was unarmed. She was also visible, her personal cloaking device floating somewhere in space after Lt. Meea Jaymes had pushed the self-destruct button of the Queen Seleza. Having squeezed into a dark one-piece recon suit Haruntos had secretly secured her, Serrah was less visible than most people, but unfortunately she still reflected many photons. Usually, she loved her tallness and curves, but tonight, she almost wished she were been a petite, five foot girl.

When the closest patrol had passed by her, she made a silent dash for the hangar. The two hundred steps took forever to cross, but she made it. Squeezing herself up against the wall, she thanked her lucky star that the Tainees hadn't invested in surveillance cameras. They seemed to almost always prefer humans to machines.

The hangar was unprotected, with only a few ships still present. In one corner, their tiny escape pod. She almost couldn't believe that they'd survived for months in that fridge. With her butt pressed up against the heat sucking wall in the darkness, she waited. Waited. The big hall was empty. She walked with feline steps, carefully clinging to the wall until she reached the pod, then went for it. Unlocking it was easy, but you'd had to know. Her fingerprint or access code would make the whole thing self-destruct, she'd made sure of that in case someone tried to **** her. The pod was full of imperial technology they just couldn't let the Tainees explore, not even as their allies. So she'd booby-trapped the lock. Literally.

Unzipping the recon catsuit, she whipped out her right breast and pressed the nipple and areola against the fingerprint reader. Only the exact match of her veins and nipple wrinkles would unlock the pod. The red light scanned her tit.

*blip*

*psssh*

The door opened. Serrah couldn't help herself, and smiled wickedly as she pulled the suit back on. As a child she'd always loved playing secret agent.

Entering the pod, she quickly turned on the amber night lights to have some vision without announcing to the world that she was inside.

It took her about two minutes to find the substance. Only fifty millibhroms left, but that would be more than enough, even considering the king's size. She smiled and wrapped it in an anti-biohazard skin, tightly enough that she could slip it into the one place she knew the guards wouldn't look if she got caught, even if they desperately wanted to.