No Moon

Emely combed one of her tails despondently as she watched the communications terminal in front of her. She didn’t mind doing her job - if nothing else, it let her sit with her Sir during work hours when he was being all official and captain-y, but right now she felt largely like an ornament. The lack of any life in Fractal space over the past two days of travel meant that the sum total of her job was watching to see if any messages came in from EarthGov. And naturally, there hadn’t been, so she spent most of her days the same way as she was currently doing - preening her tails and thinking about things.

There certainly was a lot to think about at least. The Feliax woman’s eyes flickered sideways to where Meli was hard at work scanning the planets on this latest system they’d entered, the second one they’d found scoured clean by the Fractals. Her matriarch was working hard despite her pregnancy advancing more rapidly than was normal for her kind, a model for Emely to aspire to when her Sir finally opted to make her a mother.

She bit her lip at that thought, trying to avoid going down the line of wondering if or when he’d realize just how much she wanted him to be the one to make that decision - to just order her to turn off her contraceptive and take her. The last time she’d let herself dwell on that topic she’d gotten far too aroused to want to risk a repeat when on duty and unable to do anything about it. Back to her middle tail, stroke out the matt in the fur near the tip, don’t think about him pinning you down and…

Blinking rapidly, the redhead tried to think about something - anything - else. Things with Aricia were going well at least, that was a safer line of thought. Although… Sir had ordered her not to try and recruit the woman, which was fine - but then the Lieviran had asked Emely to join one of her sessions with Trea’k. It’d seemed harmless, until the air-head had asked more and more questions about their relationship with Dustin until at last deciding to ask why Emely had been hesitant to answer. Telling her outright “my patriarch asked me not to try and recruit you to our bed” had apparently been the wrong thing to say for many reasons.

Firstly, because the possibility of joining them had apparently not crossed Aricia’s mind as something she could aspire to, and now Emely was one hundred percent sure the winged woman was plotting to get in Sir’s pants - which was great, but would probably land them both in trouble eventually. And secondly, because Trea’k had pointedly told her off after Aricia had left, explaining at length that what she had just done was against the spirit of the orders Sir had given her, and as such she would need suitable punishment. Suitable punishment had apparently meant no insect-woman-bondage time - nor any play with any of the others for the entire day after, Trea’k having spoken to all of them and explained what had happened. Even Naera and Rye had refused to help her out! It was so unfair.

Wincing as her frustration at that situation caused her to tug too hard on a particularly tangled bit of fur, Emely allowed her thoughts to drift to the other project - the one Dustin had not explicitly told her not to work on. Defia. The Fractal still made Emely uneasy, but… she was working hard on becoming more like the rest of them emotionally, and seemed determined to do so by making herself a functional sexual being. That meant, as far as Emely was concerned, that eventually the rogue Fractal would want to do sex stuff with another person or persons. Since the fox girl wanted to help Defia out, she was doing her best to drop subtle hints in the direction of this person being Dustin, as he was the obvious choice as the best person to sleep with on the entire ship. At least, she was dropping hints whenever the others weren’t around to hear her do so.

As she pondered her ongoing plot there, Emely grew dimly aware of the woman in question entering the bridge. Defia’s footsteps paused as the Fractal considered where to go - without looking up, Emely was sure that the other woman would be doing the head to the side tilt thing she did, as if looking at the world at a forty-five degree angle would somehow make things clearer. Footsteps leading away indicated that today Defia had opted to join Meli at the scanners once more.

Emely’s thoughts drifted again for a moment - before snapping into focus as Defia’s voice cut across the room, clear but alarmed. “Statement: Unit Sammie, Full emergency stop!”

The dark-skinned woman reacted instantly. Officially, Defia wasn’t part of the chain of command, but both Sammie and Dustin had agreed that they’d listen to anything the rogue Fractal said while they were navigating in what Sammie personally thought of as creepy horror-movie systems. One hand flicked on the retro-thrusters while the other flipped the main engines into reverse, the hull creaking as she rode the craft on the edge of what Sola’s designers had accounted for.

A moment later, pilot and comms officer alike realized what the Fractal had spotted in the reams of data coming in from the sensors. A lance of red fire carved across the space they’d been about to enter - if they’d not stopped when they had, the beam would have hit them amidships, and despite the danger posed by the Fractals they’d been flying with their shields down to allow a little more power to be diverted to the engines to cross what they’d thought was just another dead star system a little faster.

That view changed as more beams latticed in front of Sola, originating from a pair of moons orbiting the nearest planet. Emely braced as Dustin barked orders and Rye’s voice crackled over the intercom, swearing profusely as the genius engineer worked to shunt power from the engines back to the shields and weapons systems.

The next beam slammed into the hastily raised shields, green light crackling across the viewport as Sammie threw Sola sideways to bring her guns to bear on the moons - which were rapidly unfolding into a pair of multi-limbed attack platforms. From behind her at one of the secondary consoles, Emely swore she heard one of the junior officers comment something about their being damn spider moons now before the whine of Sola’s main gun discharging crackled across the bridge.

Fire blossomed on the nearest of the defence platforms as the human weapon blew one of it’s limbs away - the destroyed armament tumbling rapidly towards the planet below even as more blasts slammed into Sola’s shields. The bridge shook around them as Sammie struggled to hold the ship steady, Sola’s other weapons joining the main gun in tearing chunks from the orbital assailants. These didn’t seem to be as heavily defended as normal Fractal ships - probably due to the way they’d attacked from ambush. Without both the shields and especially Defia’s warning, they’d have been floating debris long before they could counter.

Emely started in her chair as the dark woman slid into the seat next to her, the rogue Fractal having moved silently across the bridge. “Statement. Our current weapons will shortly defeat these two platforms. At that point, one or both will send a communication to the nearest cluster node. Monitor for narrow band transmissions, then track to locate. Disrupting a node will cause significant chaos to this area of the cluster, or potentially even the greater cluster.”

Defia’s eyes sparkled as she gestured to Emely’s console, silver and gold lines crackling over her body as she moved. Nodding in reply, the fox girl flicked her system to wide scanning, looking for an elusive message as the battle raged on around her.

One of the Fractal stations detonated in a sudden ball of atomic fire - a lucky hit from Sola’s main gun had clipped their reactor containment. As fragments of irradiated metal began to rain down on the dead rocky planet below them, Emely’s tails perked up as she spotted something in amongst the background crackle of weapons discharge. A single pulsing signal coming from the one remaining station - narrow, so narrow against the background that she’d never have spotted it without Defia’s heads up to look out for it.

Dustin breathed a deep sigh of relief as the second station pinwheeled into the planet’s atmosphere, the heat of re-entry glowing brightly over the damage Sola’s weapons had caused. Glancing around at his crew, his eyes rested on the rogue Fractal sitting next to Emely. “Good work, Defia,” he said before glancing over the rest of the bridge. “And good work, all of you. Even with the warning Defia gave us, without everyone’s efforts that would have been a lot rougher than it was. Swap out for fresh officers, get some downtime while Rye and the rest of engineering assesses what damage if any we’ve taken, and we get a time estimate for repairs.”

As he stood to leave, Emely and Defia moved to join him. “Statement. Unit Emely has traced the station’s distress signal.” Defia said as the trio left the bridge. “Addendum. Based on protocol, likely deployment of investigative fleet within two days. Suggest leaving the system before then to maximise disruption to cluster and minimize risk to us.”

Emely bounced alongside them, clearly excited about the potential find. “Defia says that the signal should have gone to a control node - a Fractal organizational facility.” She said, tails twitching behind her. “If we hit that, we could do more than disrupt the cluster, we could send it into disarray.” Dustin paused as their words sank in. The possibility of not just fighting scrappy battles with rogue Fractal vessels or an attack fleet, but actually striking against the Fractal’s own systems in a targeted manner was certainly appealing…

“Any risk of them moving the facility?” he asked Defia as he thumbed open the door to his ready room. The red-eyed woman shook her head. “Statement. Control nodes are the size of planets. Rerouting or movement is only done in the most **** of circumstances. Certainly, the destruction of two defensive platforms would not initiate a redeployment protocol.” Dustin nodded thoughtfully as he walked in and sank into his seat. “Alright then. Once we’re ready to go, Emely you send a message to EarthGov asking for fleet backup, we’ll head back the way we came to avoid conflict until we’re ready - and then plot a new route to go mess up this system you’ve targeted for me. Jumping in alone seems unwise, but I am looking forward to causing hell for those bastards.”