Azure Woman of Space

Authors note: This story was inspired by the original retro image, which to me so typified the age of “rockets to space.” I finally found that it was a piece done by Scott Wade for a contest. His work can be seen at. https://www.swadeart.com/. The above pencil drawing is mine based on his image.

“What are you doing?” the apparition asked.

I checked the oxygen meter on the heads-up display of my suit. I had an hour of life left. No reason hypoxia should be setting in so soon.

“I’m dying” I said to the apparition. “How come you aren’t?”

I could not for the life of me think why this image had come to me in my final hour. The thing standing before me looked like a human woman in her early twenties. She was well-built, as I could see from her odd and brief outfit of silver-green tights and gloves. None of this should have protected her from explosive decompression as she stood, long red hair floating about her, unprotected in space. The oddest thing was the eyes, white from edge to edge and outlined in black. This gave a vaguely insect-like appearance to her, as if a pretty butterfly had morphed in to a human. Two pistols were belted on her waist and she wore some form of jet pack on her shoulders.

Maybe I saw this image as a kid somewhere? Still, it would have been nicer to have an image of a studly hero of the spaceways come to rescue me.

“No reason for me to be,” she said. I saw her lips move and heard her voice in my head, another impossibility. Maybe the suit computer was damaged?

“Nice to have company,” I said, “even if you’re only hypoxia, hysteria, or hopelessness.”

The girl walked up to me and smartly rapped my helmet with her gloved fist.

What the actual fuck?

“I am quite real. My name is Azure, Woman of Space.”

“Yeah,” I said, in numb amazement. “Ensign, Estrella Camber, Confederation Space Forces, also a woman of space.”

She shook her head. “You are a woman in space, encased in the air of your preferred planets. I,” she said striking a pose and gesturing at the universe, “am a woman of space. This is my home.”

“You’re claiming to be a space-based life form, shaped like a human female, who lives in space unprotected? Impossible.”

“Human girl,” she said haughtily, “you should recognize a fact when it bangs on your helmet. Next step is a swift kick in the ass.”

We stared at each other.

“Pleased as I am to meet you, Azure,” I said, “you don’t seem to have a ship with you so this is apt to be a short friendship. I was disabled three days ago by a one in a million shot by a pirate fighter. Worse yet, they captured the freighter I was escorting. I’m out of power and that means out of air.”

“Perhaps I can do something about it. Shall we go inside, or are you dedicated to this dying of yours?” Without waiting, she headed toward the open hatch of my cutter. Stunned and numb, I rose and followed her. The inside of my patrol cutter was already cold and dark with only a few telltales still glowing.

“Wow,” Azure said, “you’re brave to have set out in this thing.”

“Hey, I know it’s not new, but we’re far out on the frontier here—”

“Never mind. Where were you hit?”

“In the engine, I had to dump my supergravity core to avoid an explosion. Without that, I was just running on batteries.”

“I see.” Azure led the way to the supergravity chamber. Cutter 341 was too small to boast an engine room but had a separate section for accessing the engine.

Azure opened the panel, reached her hand in and a glow lit the space. I felt an abortive impulse to stop her and then wondered why. What damage could—

The lights came on. I felt power vibrate through the deck.

“Your engine wasn’t badly damaged fortunately,” Azure said. “It was only necessary to generate a micro-singularity for an instant for the chain reaction to take place. I stabilized the singularity so your engine should function.”

I stood there gaping. Generating a micro-singularity took a full starship engine. The ones loaded into fighters, cutters and lighters were temporary as those ships lacked the power to keep them going, and they’d fizzle out. Azure had done it…how?

“That…that’s great. We have power,” I managed. “But I drained my oxygen tanks.”

Azure nodded. “More difficult but manageable. Stay here; don’t die. Begin to ready your ship.” She walked back to the airlock with me trailing like a child. Seconds later she was out. I raced to my canopy to see her flitting about on the little jetpack she wore on her back, looking more like a beautiful bug than ever.

Like someone waking from a dream, I began to reinitialize my systems. The ramjet combination of inlet and electronic fields that fed into the engine came on-line. To my surprise the ramjet was receiving an astonishing amount of hydrogen for open space. It should barely be working at the inertial speed 341 was making.

“Oxygen!” I said aloud and quickly set the system to separate hydrogen and helium into the building blocks of oxygen. It wasn’t a lot, but compared to what one would expect in open space, it was a torrent. I quickly plugged my suit into the onboard 02 regulator and watched in relief as the indicator showed more 02 coming in than I was using. I began gaining on death.

Azure did not reappear for hours but the flow of life-sustaining air to me increased. My space suit tank was soon full and I began to repressurize my ship. Now that I had power, the carbon dioxide scrubber was working, converting the poisonous atmosphere back into air. I got out of my helmet and started working on those repairs I hadn’t been able to tackle without power. 341 would not fly atmosphere without a rebuild, but she was navigable again.

Later, exhausted and with shaking hands, I made coffee and some food in the tiny cooking space. At that moment Azure flew up to the canopy, gave me a cheery wave that I returned feebly and indicated the airlock. I nodded. Moments later the inner door rolled open and Azure strode in. She shrugged out of her jet pack and placed it on the deck, hanging her pistol belt with its dual beam guns on utility hook. Her long red hair, held back by a band of some greenish silver metal, fell over her shoulders. Well, she didn’t need to worry about a helmet fitting.

“That’s better,” she said, looking me over.

I realized that I badly needed the refresher. My own brown hair was cut short like most spacers, but was surely a mess. However first food and coffee.

“Would you like something to eat?” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “a diet of rarified gasses may sustain me but it doesn’t do much for the pallet. But finish yours first. You look done in.”

I quickly finished my meal and popped a tray in the warmer for her. Figuring if she could restart a singularity engine she could manage the warmer, I undressed, threw my clothes into one unit and me into the other. Five minutes delightful sluicing with sonics and not enough water and I began to feel human again. Which left me wondering what I was sharing a deck with.

Azure looked human but simply couldn’t be. There was no science involved with such a creature; she seemed a being of magic. Since she was the only reason I was alive, I had to regard her as friendly or very devious.

I came out and changed into a fresh uniform with Azure studying me unselfconsciously. I didn’t quite compare with her long-legged elegance, shown off by her absurdly skimpy outfit. She looked to be almost six feet tall, so six inches taller than me. I was stockier and more muscular to her dancer’s body. The eyes were the big difference—mine were brown like my hair and hers white and looking like polished marble. That she could see me without issue was clear but how and in what spectrum I had no idea.

“One hopes there is better food to be found in this time and space,” she said.

“Precooked rations are all I have to offer. There’s better on my base or the sector carrier.”

Dressed now, I sat opposite her in the control compartment, almost close enough to touch knees. 341 had originally been designed for a three-person crew but automatics had made the others redundant. I noticed a slight but pleasant spicy scent that was her and was sure both of us were glad for my shower.

“Let’s start with introductions.”

“I thought we did that. I’m Azure and you’re Ensign Estrella Camber of the Confederation Space Patrol.”

“I didn’t tell you I was CSP.”

“It’s painted on the side of your ship.”

“Oh, right. But anyway, what are you?”

“Azure Woman of Space.”

“Umm, why are you dressed that way, and why do you look the way you do if you’re a creature of space?”

“I wear the garb and appearance of the Royal Cren’tha. In this manifestation I remember little beyond my fondness for them. Why? Is it troublesome?”

“No. Though you look like an inner world fashion model.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re not a human, though you look a lot like one.”

“No.”

“Then what are you?”

She seemed to ponder my question for a bit and I began to wonder if she would answer at all.

“I am a manifestation of something very old,” she said finally. “Sometimes I incorporate myself for a time in a more physical body, like this one. It is far weaker and unimaginably tinier than my usual form, but it allows me to interact with other species and visit planets.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. You see this tiny body cannot hold all of the vast memory and mind of my true self. What I’ve told you is a nugget of information my true self leaves to tell me that which I must know.”

“What is your purpose or your mission?”

“None as you mean it. I am here to acquire new experiences. You might say I am simply an adventurer looking for excitement. While I do not feel it at all, I am very ancient. Right now I feel newborn. Even rescuing you was exciting.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied with the first smile I’d scene.

“This is a monumental event,” I said. “The Confederation would love to meet a being of your power, your knowledge—”

“I’d rather not.”

“What?”

“Your Confederation is less coercive than most governments, but would try to curtail my freedom of action. They would either try to influence me with flattery, gifts or force. I am not here for that.”

“I don’t know—”

“But I do. It is one of the nuggets of direction I left myself. Be secret for so long as you can. Be free.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Hunting pirates sounds like fun. You said they captured the freighter you were escorting.”

My eyes narrowed. “That idea would be a suicidal with one patroller in a damaged cutter but you, what can you do? Do you even need my help? Can you just zap a ship out of the sky?”

“No,” Azure said. “In this manifestation I have far more limits.”

Limits, hah

“I am an immortal being, as far as I know anyway, nothing can kill that version of me. But,” she said putting her hand to her chest, “in this form I can know pain and, in a way, death.”

“In a way?”

“If this shell is destroyed, I will somewhere, sometime, reappear between the stars. But all that I know here, all that I was involved with and interested in here and now, will be long gone. You would never see me again for certain.

“So, Ensign Estrella Camber are you interested in a secret friend to aid you in your duties?”

“Why not,” I said, “I’ve no prayer of accomplishing anything otherwise.”

I checked over the engine both inside and outside. Azure had provided the spark that had reinitiated the engine, but that was all. There was torn metal over the singularity housing. Azure dealt with that with her beam guns. She adjusted them to an incredibly fine beam and cut or smoothed the metal to where it was safe for me to work in a suit. I found the stabilator that had been damaged and caused the singularity to head for explosion. The damage was not major but it was in the perfect spot. The pirate had been lucky. An hour’s cursing had the unit out and in the machine shop.

Azure’s weapons were like nothing I’d ever seen, malleable, capable of incredible adjustments. I began to see why she needed no other instruments beyond them and her backpack. While she knew nothing of the details of the stabilator, the principles were obvious to her. With her help the unit was ready to be replaced in three hours.

Slowly I edged 341 to speed, hoping there was nothing I’d missed.

“Do you have any idea where the pirate’s went?” Azure asked.

“Not exactly. There was a mother ship and two fighters. One fighter lured me away from the freighter and the second was lairing, powered-down, waiting to bag me. He had the bad luck to get occluded by a nebula and I socked a missile into him before he could do anything. Then the other pirate fired at me from beyond effective range. Panic or expertise, but he hit me. We were well out of visual range so when my singularity popped and went bang, he must have assumed he got me, as he didn’t close to confirm.

“All that to say that after they secured the freighter, I Ching, there was no reason for them not to head directly to their den. I was monitoring them on passive instruments so I have a base line.

“But it has been 661 hours since contact was lost,” Azure mused. “They could be anywhere.”

“It’s the only shot we have,” I replied, my voice suddenly shaking. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to fail this miserably on my first solo mission.”

Azure looked at me. “You were put up against two fighters and a converted merchant ship which itself would have outgunned you. You fought. More could not be done.”

“As we say in the Space Patrol, ‘excuses are for your mother.’”

“We pursue your enemy but with what intention?”

“I want to rescue the freighter crew. If I can do anything about the pirates that’s a bonus.”

“Would they have killed the crew?” Azure asked.

“Possibly but that would be unusual. Pirates normally keep the crew of a civilian ship under guard to run it. Afterward they may be ransomed back, exchanged for captured pirates, or horribly enough, there’s still a slave market in the galaxy. Highly trained spacers make dangerous slaves, so that is less likely.

“My hope is that the crew were too smart to put up a fight and most are still alive. I suspect the pirates, thinking me destroyed, set a direct course to their base. It’s the only hope I have. We’re near a red dwarf star that has two rocky planets. Survey reports show neither is habitable, and the inner one orbits too close to the star for comfort. I’m betting that they set up shop around the outer one. It’s earth-sized, so the gravity would be easier to manage when establishing an orbit.”

“How then to sneak up on them?” Azure mused.

“The system is full of rocks and debris from when the star exploded and collapsed. We find one going in the right direction, or nudge one, then hide in its shadow. Beyond that, well we need to see what we are up against.” Exhaustion suddenly bit at me and my vision dimmed.

Azure who seemed surprisingly alert to such things, nodded. “Sleep, young one. I shall maintain a watch.”

“How good are you with these instruments?” I said, waving a sluggish hand at my sensor suite.

“I shall be outside with the cosmic wind in my face,” she said grandly. “Nothing shall escape my watch.”

Why not? It’s no more absurd then the rest of today. I barely got into my bunk before sleep hammered me down.

I awoke with a start, convinced that I had had been the victim of mad dreams. Wiping sleep from my eyes I stumbled to my screens and activated the outside camera.

There she was: tall, beautiful, in her skin-tight outfit of silver green and pale skin, totally unprotected in space wearing a jetpack and beam guns.

Madness.

As if she sensed my awakening she turned to the nearest camera and headed for the airlock. I, realizing that I had been asleep too long for my kidneys, attended to things and made quick use of a toothbrush. When her tall, red-headed, gorgeousness greeted me on the flight deck, I was at least a presentable specimen of humanity.

“You have slept for a full diurnal rotation of your homeworld,” she said. “Are you refreshed?”

“Yeah. I begin to resemble the living. What’s our sitrep?”

“We have closed on the red star, you can see for yourself.”

I glanced out the canopy. The star glowed like a campfire coal, the remnant of some main sequence star that had perished in the galaxy’s youth.

“Nothing has threatened or noted us, and I have found a suitable asteroid ahead which between your engines and my power, we can nudge into a near approach of the second world. Your instincts have proven correct; I have determined that there are electronic signals there.”

“Eureka,” I said. I watched Azure narrowly but she did not seem puzzled by the reference. For a…whatever the hell she was, she seemed incredibly comfortably with Confed idiom and speech, even our history. Where had she acquired this knowledge? Again I wondered what I was sharing my deck with.

“Are their others like you?” I asked. “What can you tell me about your people?”

“Those answers were left on the other side, quite deliberately. Best if you think of me as a chance companion found in a dire adventure.”

“You have a dramatic way of putting things,” I said.

She merely gazed back.

“Tell me about the asteroid you found.”

Hours later, we closed on the second world, hidden in the shadow of an ancient piece of nickel iron asteroid. Braced against the asteroid, I’d used my engines but only for a second’s burn. The additional and more precise shove came from Azure who flew around my ship in an intricate pattern that somehow altered the path. I found it somewhat reassuring that she had needed my help at all.

In only a little while, we were on our way, shielded from detection. Azure joined me on the bridge, accepting the cup of coffee I offered her with interest and a wrinkling of her delicate nose. We waited through the hours of approach. Azure had placed a small passive scanner on the opposite side of the rock. Gradually, it built up an image of an orbiting mass that had to be artificial.

“I have an idea,” I said. “Much of it depends on you and your abilities. I can’t risk an active scan on my instruments; nor can I emerge from the shadow of this rock without risk of detection. I need intel on what we are facing. Can you get close enough to see what is going on?”

“I am capable of great speed for short periods of time, using an interaction with what you call dark matter. It is unlikely I can be detected by a sensor.”

“Even with all that metal on you?” I gestured at her backpack and beam guns.

“They are not metal,” Azure replied, “any more than my body is warm flesh and blood.”

I frowned in confusion. I hadn’t touched Azure herself, but I had moved the weapons and backpack out of my way, after she assured me they would trigger for no one but her. They’d been incredibly heavy for their size and certainly felt metallic.

“How close would you have to get? Your eyes…”

“Are different from yours. A creature of space that moves at the speed I do must be able to see far.

“Are you willing to risk it?”

“I am.”

“How far away can you be and mindspeak to me.”

“Not across such distances. Only some tens of kilometers. You will have to await my return.”

“Ok. Be careful.”

She regarded me with her white gem eyes, and a touch of shy smile came to the perfect lips. “I will.”

Azure slipped out the airlock and jetted out of sight behind the asteroid. I continued repairs on my cutter, made some food and worried. The hours dragged leadenly until Azure returned from her scouting trip, jetting around the asteroid the same way she had gone. My relief at seeing her startled me, and I stood by the airlock impatiently until she was in.

“You ok?” I demanded.

“I am somewhat fatigued as you would put it,” she unbelted her weapon and jetpack and placed them on the deck with a sigh. We both moved to sit in the control cabin.

“The pirates have a small station of prefabricated modules orbiting the planet. The freighter is docked with it. The pirate warship is in a parking orbit nearby and the surviving fighter is doing a patrol.”

“Prefab makes sense,” I said. “They avoid staying in one place long enough to draw fleet attention. Pirates can’t fight real warships.”

“I confess,” Azure said, “that while we had a plan for finding the pirates, fighting them is a different matter. Even with the element of surprise, I cannot envision how to overcome them without endangering the freighter crew.”

“If they even live,” I said. “But that has to be our first priority. I can’t even break off and go for help, that base will likely be broken down and moved before we could return.” I sat staring out of the canopy for a long while. Azure, sensing my need to think, remained silent. Perhaps she slept; with her gem-white eyes it was impossible to tell.

Finally I turned to her with a sigh. “I have a plan. A mad plan but a plan. How up for a fight are you?”

Azure drew herself up, heroine of the spaceways, red-haired and imperiously beautiful. “I fear nothing.”

“I’m terrified myself,” I replied. “But I’m in bonus rounds. I should have been a corpsicle two days ago. I have to get into that station and find the crew to get them and that freighter on its way. There’s neither room nor life support on this cutter for all of them.”

“You are ambitious. I approve.”

“I have no choice. The freighter lifepods don’t have the range to get them anywhere but the hell planet below and they’d melt before they landed, assuming the pirate fighter didn’t use them for target practice.”

“But won’t the pirates simply pursue? They can surely out-accelerate a freighter even with a lead.”

“Yeah, we have to disable or destroy the pirate ship and its fighter. I have the one Mark 79 missile left on board. Even that’s only because its electronics got fried and it wouldn’t leave the rotary launcher.”

“We must make the most of the one advantage we have,” Azure said. “That is me. I am outside their knowledge or even imagination.”

“That’s what I thought. So here’s what we do…”

PS341 tumbled away from us, an apparent derelict again. This time, its escape pod was missing, staked to the asteroid we left behind. Hopefully the pirates would think the pilot had abandoned the powerless cutter. They shouldn’t think that this was the same cutter they fought so far from here. For them it would be merely a happy piece of salvage to add to their haul.

In what was surely one of the most bizarre sights in the history of spaceflight, we went the other way. I sat astride my Mark 79 missile, with a tether linking me to Azure, who towed us, backpack glowing. Had I tried to tow such an unbalanced load, we’d have been spinning in nauseating vectors. Somehow Azure kept us straight. My space suit prevented me from pinching myself nonstop to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. The view of Azure’s perfect butt and the blue glow of her rocket pack didn’t help with my sense of unreality.

No sensors or other indication of detection, she mindspoke to me. I will cut thrust until we must slow to land you on the station. I dislike leaving you to enter alone.

Thanks, I said, warmed by her concern. But you have the hard job.

Consider them destroyed, she said with breezy confidence.

Azure took me as close as she dared. Even with her ability to mask our signal, the missile was a considerable chunk of metal. I pushed off from it and dared a brief burst on my own vastly more simple jet pack. It would bring me to the station in fifteen minutes of anxious travel.

Azure disappeared, heading for the pirate cruiser kilometers away. Privately, I doubted her ability to close on it. I couldn’t help but feel we were on a suicide mission and no one but some pirates drinking in some future bar and laughing would know of our fate. The image made me grit my teeth.

The only sound was my breathing and the slight whirring of a circulation fan. Gradually, the pirate station grew close. Six dark modules surrounded a central core and an umbilical connected the freighter I Ching to the station’s central core. I’d planned to enter the pirate station directly but suddenly realized that entering through the I Ching would be safer, less likely to trigger an alarm.

I gave a tiny blast of air from my EVA suit and switched targets. A minute later my magboots touched down on the white and orange hull of the I Ching, opposite from the station. As quickly as I could, I made my way to the airlock. All Confed registered ships would open to a military code and evidently the pirates hadn’t altered that. The airlock cycled open, and I was in the freighter.

A quick check of gauges showed the ship at normal atmosphere and AG. I opened the inner door, weapons ready. My M-47 pistol held squash-head bullets. My other weapon was a laser, neither of them would breach the hull of even a civilian ship. I had two back up weapons on me as well. But there was no immediate need to shoot.

I got out of my suit, cursing the slowness and cumbersome nature it. Finally freed, I moved forward, weapons in hand and hoping my body armor would work at such close ranges.

First, I checked the I Ching herself. The cargo holds were still under seal. Crew quarters were empty and plundered. The engine spaces were undamaged. On the bridge, I found some evidence of weapon fire, a few burns on the wall and signs of blood.

I checked the instruments. Nothing was locked or blocked. Why would they in their own lair? Mercifully the engines were in standby mode, not off. Which meant my guess that the pirates were planning to leave soon was correct. I quickly set up a course to the jump point back to base and prepped all for a get-away. Then it was time to find the crew. There had been twelve in the I Ching’s crew. Probably the pirate station had a pen for prisoners.

I made my way to the docking umbilical. There was no guard on this side, but I could hear voices in the distance. I stopped and concentrated. Azure herself had not been sure exactly how far away she could be and mind speak to me. I concentrated until sweat ran down the back of my neck. Then with what I swore was an audible snap, I felt her.

Azure, it’s me.

Well, it could be no one else.

True. How is with you?

The first part of the mission is accomplished. I await your word for the second.

I’m about to enter the station.

Ah, Azure said.

What?

The pirates have seen your disabled cutter. The fighter is drawing near and reports it empty. They are puzzled but will not look a gift horse so closely in the mouth. A small utility is going out to tow your vessel in.

Always bet on greed.

True. Now is your best time to seek entry. They are distracted.

Wish me luck.

I do.

I opened the hatch and slipped in weapon in each hand. My mouth was dry and I tried to slow my breathing. The inside hallways were the usual cool white and green of a station interior. Strip lights glowed above and on some of the walls. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but this clean normalcy wasn’t it. As usual on such a small station, gravity was set at about two-thirds to save power and money.

There was no cover, so I pressed against one wall as I moved. I had no schematic for the pirate station but it was made up of standard civilian modules, stolen or bought. There were only so many places a space large enough to hold prisoners would be.

Voices sounded behind me. I slipped into a radial corridor; grateful I’d sealed the hatch to the I Ching.

A human male and female passed, mercifully neither looked in my direction.

“Why do I always get the scut work?” the male, husky, grey-haired and wearing parts of several different military uniforms, complained.

The woman, a young and attractive black female I’d never have suspected of being a pirate, snorted derisively. “Could be worse. You could be down in red section, baby-sitting the prisoners.”

“We ought space them after what they did to Sylvia.”

“Patroller shot Sylvia up, not the crew. Besides Ratface got us even and slagged the Patroller.”

“You know he don’t like that name…”

The pair passed out of earshot. I started forward slowly heading for the access to the central corridor.

The door next to me suddenly hissed open. A young man stood there yawning, pulling a shirt have down over chest. His eyes widened on seeing me.

I thrust the slug-thrower into his stomach and fired twice. The dull whump of the pistol, silenced so as not deafen one during firing in confined spaces, still sounded like thunder to me as I body-checked him into the room. He fell to the floor clutching his stomach and trying to find air to scream. I slammed the doorplate, shot him in the face and stilled it.

Then I was alone in the room with a dead boy my own age on the floor. I stared at his sightless eyes before the smell of blood and loosened bowel got to me and I threw up. A few seconds gasping and a second heave and I could control myself again. I’d never killed before, and it had been so sudden.

There was sink in the small room. Shakily I washed my mouth out. I had to get going. The dead pirate might have been heading for a duty station. I opened the door, fully expecting to face an armed party, but there was no one. I slipped forward, heart hammering.

At the entrance to the central core I had an iota of luck. A panel showed the different colored modules. The module below the one I was in was red and some asshole had painted “abandon all hope” on it.

I opened the hatch, checked in all directions, then climbed down to the door labeled, Red Level.

I drew a few deep breaths and thought about calling Azure, realized I was just stalling and afraid, then hit the door panel. It slid open. Two pirates looked up, a Morok sipping a drink and a hard-faced human woman in her sixties, looking at a com pad. Both had time for a double-take as I shot them, laser lancing into the Morok’s chest as I pumped two rounds into the woman. Coffee flew as the Morok flailed and I shot him again.

More death. God, would it ever get any easier. Should it?

I hit the lock on the panel and moved to the cell door. Inside the first cell, Captain Helikos, a tall, dark-eyed man stared at me. “I thought you were dead!”

“Not yet,” I replied and opened his cell door from the panel the dead woman slumped over. I grabbed up their weapons. “Can you use—”

“Yes!” He almost snatched a weapon from my hand.

“I’ll release your crew. We have weapons enough for six. How many of your people are there?”

Captain Helikos’ mouth drew into a thin line. “My Third Mate, Nguyen, was a pirate plant. That’s how they knew our route. He didn’t get the information that we had an escort to them or they wouldn’t have tangled with even a cutter over a small ship like ours. My only pleasure was listening to them bewail the loss of their other fighter.”

“Damn.”

“Nuyen killed my First Mate, and the engine room guys seem pretty cowed. My Second Mate, Tarkiel is with me. along with the rest of the crew. So, six we can count on and three who are iffy.”

“OK. You hand out the weapons.” My hands danced over the cell controls and doors slid open. Immediately a blue-skinned, goblin-like Morok came out. Others looked out more cautiously.

“Tarkeil,” the captain called.

The Morok grinned a toothy grin and shouted some names over his shoulder. Crew dashed forward and seized the weapons avidly. I kept the laser for myself.

“What’s the plan?”

“You get to the I Ching, cast off and burn out your tubes getting the hell out of here. I’ll make sure you’re not pursued. I’ll follow in my cutter if I can.” I hit a screen control hoping the pirates hadn’t bothered with extra security in their lair. The screen showed me what I hoped for, my cutter docked at the lowest level of the station.

“There must be a hundred between their ship and station. I can’t leave you—”

“Don’t argue. No time. Military order. Go now.” I rapped.

He stared at me for a second and then gestured for his crew to follow. All but the three he expressed concern about did and I noted that he had an armed man behind them. That man leveled a weapon at them and they moved.

We opened the door. I pointed them up and I went down.

“Good luck,” the Captain called softly.

I nodded, now too busy to be afraid. My entrance had been stealthy. Their exit would not be.

Azure, I called.

No response.

Azure. No, please. You have to be there. You have to be real.

Seconds ticked by as I slid down the ladder, as fast as I dared even in the low gravity of the station.

Azure! I screamed in my head in despair.

I am here. Somehow across the link I sensed she was strained and fatigued.

Relief made me dizzy. Then the hoot of an alarm galvanized me.

We’re discovered. Blow it.

“Alert, Alert,” a voice called over the com. A second later a screen near me lit with the face of a scarred and black-haired man wearing ornate googles.

I felt a spasm of terror that he was looking at me, then realized it was a station-wide broadcast from the pirate’s central control.

“Finnegan’s body was just found in his quarters,” the man said. “All crew to repel boarders stations. Either somebody’s on board, or some stupid son-of-a-bitch murdered Finnegan. Either way that person is dead.”

“Chief, another voice broke in. “Armed men by the—”

The voice was cut off by a scream and the sound of weapons.

“Brig come in. Brig!” the Chief yelled. “Somebody must have let them out. All crew to the armory. Anybody armed head for the freighter dock.”

“Buchwald, alert the Grim. Have them cut off the freighter’s escape.”

I hit the lowest level. Two pirates were staring at a screen open mouthed. On it the screen split between the pirate chief and the pirate cruiser. The cruiser flared and tumbled, flayed open by the missile Azure had attached to its hull.

“Fuck, the Grim just blew up.” someone shouted.

“What?” the Commander shouted. “What the hell happened? Ratface, report.”

“I don’t know,” the unknown fighter pilot said. “Maybe that impeller tube the shorted out.”

“Get in there and sweep for survivors.”

“You’re kidding! Unless they were standing in an escape pod—”

“Shut up and do what you’re told.”

I moved forward but my boot slid on the surface and squeaked. The female pirate spun and snapped two shots at me almost instantly. The other jumped. “What—”

The pirate’s rounds hit the wall next to me and one creased my armor. It felt like being kicked in the chest. My laser shot caught her in the face.. She screamed and fell over. The other man wasn’t armed. He started to run. I had no choice and shot him in the back.

“Alright, Chief,” came the voice of Ratface. ’Hey, I see a body. Wait, it’s moving. What the fuck? It’s a woman in her underwear—”

Ratface screamed and the channel went dead.

Scratch one pirate fighter, Azure said in my head. He died with a most surprised expression on his face.

Are you ok?

Yes but I am nearing exhaustion. We do not have much time left.

I pushed past the dead woman. They’d pressurized my cutter prior to looting it. I raced through the airlock and onto the control deck. I sealed it from my side, jumped into my seat and hit the engines. I didn’t need to worry about their airlock, maybe it would depressurize them. As my instruments came on line I could see the I Ching, crawling away at the freighter’s pitiful best acceleration. Behind me, the station wobbled, venting gas. It was too much to hope it would last for more than seconds before their damage control kicked in.

I interposed my cutter between the base and freighter. None of my instruments revealed Azure. But she hadn’t registered on the pirate’s instruments either. I could only hope she was where she promised to be and able to do what she promised to do.

“This is Station to the I Ching,” the pirate chieftain broadcast. I tapped my panel and his furious face filled a small screen “Cut thrust and return to the station, or there’s an anti-shipping missile in what remains of your future.”

Behind me came a flare as the station fired a missile. Evidently they weren’t giving me the option of surrender.

“I Ching,” I called, breaking in visually on their signal. “This is Ensign Camber. Maintain maximum thrust. I will protect you.” I switched to two-way communication. The better to focus him on me.

The pirate commander looked at me through his googled eyes. “Nice try. But I know your ship’s weapons are expended. You should have quit while you were ahead, Patroller. I’d have been inclined to give a break to a brave and pretty youngster like you.”

I stared at him. “I’m ready to accept your surrender.”

I couldn’t see his eyes but his face looked like he’d but into something sour. “Now, you’ve become tedious and stupid. That missile catches you in twenty seconds. Eat space, Patroller.

“You should look at your scanner,” I replied.

Utter shock wiped the expression off his face. On both our screens was an incredible sight. Standing on the racing nuclear torpedo was a beautiful girl in a ridiculous outfit, hair streaming as if in a cosmic breeze. As if Azure could sense we were watching, she gave a wicked grin and made a flowing gesture with her arms. The missile turned back, heading for the pirate base.

Right, she can control magnetic fields.

“What kind of… It’s a trick,” he yelled to the others. “Gunner, report.”

“Missile reports on target,” the off-screen gunner called back. “It’s a fake, must be a holo-emitter.”

“Nice try,” the pirate commander said, a grin on his face.

“One of us is going to be very surprised in another ten seconds,” I replied.

“Hey, wait,” the Gunner called. “Something’s wrong.”

The Pirate commander turned and yelled. “Hit the self-destruct!”

“No response,” the gunner screamed.

And Azure can manipulate electronic transmissions.

The pirate turned back to me. “Well played, youngling. Looks like this game goes to you.”

The screen flared white and the signal died.

Azure flew back to the cutter and boarded. To my surprise, I had to help her with her weapons and jet pack. I managed to get her into the second seat before she passed out. She seemed only asleep and there was nothing I could do for her but cover with a blanket and worry.

Captain Helikos and his six-surviving crew, some had perished in the gunfight at the airlock, nursed their wounds and sped toward the jump point with me trailing. I accepted their profound thanks but not their invitation to dock and dine with them.

Space remained peaceful as we headed back to the jump point. I’d let the interval between the ship’s widen and watched I Ching disappear into jumpspace.

I roused my passenger with some difficulty. But after a warm shower, and food, she seemed back to normal. Whatever the hell normal was for her. She sat across the table at me, drinking the tea I’d prepared for her and looking well pleased with herself.

“I’d have been happier if there weren’t casualties on the freighter,” I said. The sting of that failure was still on me despite everything.

“It does not do,” Azure said, crossing her long elegant legs, “to expect too much of either of us. You did well and I was a force that they could not even imagine, yet we were both close to death. I may seem like magic to you but I am not, and on a planet my powers are further curtailed.”

“I still can’t believe it, even after all we have been through,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want to meet my superiors?”

“I do not,” Azure said. “I am here for purposes of my own and it suits me to befriend you alone just now. You may call for my aid when you will, and though you will not see me unless I wish it, I will not be far. But do not count my appearance being instant. I may bend what you see as the laws of physics, but even I cannot disregard time and distance.”

“How will I reach you?”

“Call my name on frequency 270 MHZ. I will know it is you and come as fast as I may.”

“Well Azure,” I said, raiding my tea and wishing for something stronger. “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

The End

Stay tuned for more adventures of Azure, Woman of Space.