CONTINUANCE

by Mr. David R. Dorrycott

Rita Roswell copyright Mr. Scott Thomas

Planetary Control was a madhouse, messengers running back and forth, ships on the pads lifting as fast as they could. Above the planet a Starbase had suddenly appeared hours ago. Kilometers long it drifted well within planetary defenses range. Planetary defenses that simply couldn't dent the massive shielding protecting the fragile seeming structure. "You will release my crewfem Yuki and Rita Roswell alive in sixty seconds, or I will reduce your planet to dust" came over every station on the planet. Microwave, laser, maser, military ultra-secure line or public telephone... It didn't seem to matter. "Fifty nine seconds and counting."

Aboard the base a single organic lifeform sat in the oversized Command Chair. <Destruction. Of a Planet. For two lives...>

"Shaddap Kalith" Snowaters barked. "A month. They've been missing a full month... Someone's been sending false messages. If it hadn't been I sent Diamond to retrieve them because I needed Rita for an experiment it could have been another month.... I won't lose anyone else I love. Not like I lost Opal." She studied a clock to her side, snapping the transmission switch so hard it almost locked open. "Thirty Seconds. This is your final warning." Almost absently she locked the stations weapons on the planets smaller moon. The size of Demos it vanished in a flash of fire and billowing dust. It had been abandoned just hours ago after her first warning volley.

<Three Thousand. Lives just. Changed.> Kalith reported almost sadly.

"No shit. They weren't there, sensors already reported that."

"I donno 'Lith, but I can't live without her. Dammit, over a thousand years of peace and now I'm blowing things up like a mad woman. I need her and I want Yuki back unharmed. I need Aries and Kela. I need my kids and I just can't stand being alone anymore." Three massive warships closed in, heavy weapons glowing as they fired against shields their sun couldn't hope to dent. She ignored them.

"Snowaters Station. This is the planetary Council." came a call.

Snowy flipped the switch. "You got my people or just askin to be first on the list" she answered coldly.

"Please, can we talk?"

She looked at the clock. "Holding at seven seconds" she agreed. "Yap on fat boy." Before her the screen finally cleared as she allowed visual communications.

"Please" a stately elder asked. "We are investigating. Currently no one knows anything other than your Rita Roswell was abducted, along with two dancers at the EVENT HORIZON. Yuki appears to have been abducted at THE GREENHOUSE. Were asking questions but it takes time. Please."

Snowaters growled in frustration. They were alive she could feel it. Yuki and Rita's implants had been located by her sensors hours ago in a city dump. Robotic retrievers had brought them back, Rita's encrusted with her own blood. Yuki's with shreds of her unique flesh still hanging from the locking mounts. Apparently they had been removed crudely, very crudely. Sensor readings showed they had been torn out of their hosts physically. Both women had to have sustained massive physical shock from the 'operations.' Already Snowaters had formulated a dozen extremely slow and very painful deaths for whomever had done this to people so close to her heart. "I'm coming down" she decided. "If anything happens to me, your sun's history. Your damn filthy planet will float frozen and forgotten in space. Every ship that tries to leave dies. Understand?"

The man slumped, "We will comply with your demands" he agreed in a defeated voice.

"Damn straight you will pimp" she spit back. Cutting the channel she stood, her powerful battle armor barely making a sound as it slid seamlessly around her. "Hold the fort 'Lith. I will return."

Snowaters stood staring at the young woman sobbing at her feet. "I didn't know" the Martian cried as she fought her tears. "They said it was because the woman were running from you..."

Not too gently the enraged woman reached down, lifting the Martian by her hair. "You have told these men everything you know?" she hissed in a starcold voice. The brilliantly dressed woman nodded affirmative. Snowaters dropped her. "Have her delivered to my station naked and in chains" she ordered. "I'll skin her alive with my own hands." A police officer started to object until he saw her eyes. "Unless you want a few inhabited islands to vanish" she added in a death soft voice. "Your world is my property human. Until I get my people back alive and those who did this are punished, to my satisfaction. Do that and whoever catches them, alive, gets twenty trillion credits cash. Don't do that, your children will freeze in their beds. Any questions?"

The officer stuttered, Snowaters was shorter than him. Her reputation for kindness and aiding all preceded her a thousand thousand times. Nothing he had heard or seen had prepared him for the death cold eyes that stared into his. Someone had finally pushed one of the most powerful mortals alive too far. Quietly he prayed she'd leave his planet habitable. "None Lady Snowaters" he stammered. "None at all."

Her hunt continued.

"Seven hundred and four dust clouds Snowaters Two sighed. "Nothing matching Rita's homeworld, damn near nothing close." Yuki Two looked up from the cup of cider she was slowly sipping. After six hundred years she'd matured, her tastes had changed and she had legs. "You knew" she answered softly, still the same slow moving woman. "It would be a long mission." Snowaters lifted her bare legs, letting them rest on Yuki's cooler legs. The planet woman automatically began caressing the legs of her lover. "Aries gone, Kela gone. Eve and Dawn committed suicide moments after stepping on that farging mud bank of a planet." Snowy sighed again. "Everyone gone. Just you and me. It's a lonely mission lover."

Yuki blushed. Silently she thought of the day she'd decided to grow legs. It had the month after Kena had gone suddenly mad, throwing herself out an airlock without a spacesuit after being caught in a massive coolant break. Snowaters had been managing alone, but Yuki knew enough to have realized she couldn't last much longer alone. Learning to walk had taken weeks, now she couldn't imagine being pot bound again. Over a hundred years later her body was still adapting, her reactions speeding up, her mind clearing as she slowly evolved into a more humanoid being. The long leaves that had once encircled her were gone, she found being naked the only way to get enough light now. "I know. No one thought it would take so long." The sensor alarm broke into their conversation and both women groaned. "Another maybe" Yuki moaned as Snowy lifted her feet.

It wasn't a maybe. It was paydirt. But long too late paydirt. The planet matched all their pre-determined theories to a 'T', except the cities had been abandoned millennium ago. In orbit remains of shattered ships still drifted, dissected bodies of Grays... and Drith slavers. "Now we know" Yuki whispered as she studied the ships sensor readings. Whatever had happened had been thousands of years ago. Below them the planet lay uninhabited, no sentient being walked, no baby cried.

"They ran" Snowy agreed, "These stayed behind to give them time."

"And the Drith followed them to Earth." Yuki finished. "Samples, readings, then we bounce back home a few months after we left, for safety margins." Snowaters reached over to lay her hand on Yuki's ring adorned naked breast. "Honey, we have to find a way to get Snowaters Prime to agree to violence. It's time to stop the Drith. No more dead worlds. We jump home tomorrow." Yuki reached up, pressing the warm human hand tightly against her cooler flesh, feeling the gold nipple ring press into her. "I will never leave you" she whispered, knowing deep inside it was true.