Stripped by the Alien Warlord

Chapter 1

- Nora -

Nearly two months alone in space, and I'm starting to see the shapes of naked men in the weird constellations around me. It's getting bad.

But I keep going. Somewhere ahead, beyond a weird area of space that nobody's mapped, lies the reason entire civilizations are running scared. My job is to find out why, and probably die in the attempt.

I enjoy the sexy men until the starboard attitude thruster coughs, sputters, and dies.

"Oh, that's the last thing we need." I catch the spin before it develops into anything serious, feeding corrective input through the stick while my left hand dances across a row of controls. The ship answers with all the enthusiasm of a drunk mule.

Somewhere behind me, a warning tone chimes. I silence it without looking.

"That sound usually means something expensive has broken," Lucius says from his docking cradle above the console.

"I appreciate the diagnosis," I say through clenched teeth.

The AI drone flashes a quick green with his light. "I'm here to help, Captain Ellis."

I snort and bring the scout ship back under control. The spin slows, then stops. Outside the canopy, the stars settle into their proper places. A faint vibration travels through the frame as the backup thrusters take over.

"The backup system engaged successfully," Lucius says. "Congratulations. We have avoided becoming a cautionary tale in the training manuals."

"Again," I say absentmindedly.

The drone unfolds from his cradle and drifts down beside my shoulder, barely using his rotors because of the weightlessness.

He's about the size of a frisbee, all matte-black armor and sensor lenses.

Space Force insists that drones don't have personalities.

Whoever designed Lucius never received that memo.

Diagnostic reports scroll across my displays. Most are yellow. Two are red. "The water recycler has nearly stopped recycling water," Lucius announces.

I close my eyes for a second. "When were you planning to tell me that?"

"There are levels to these things. It was not immediately critical." His emotion light flashes pale blue: miffed. "And you appeared busy."

My scout ship, Intrepid 21, was already old when I entered flight school. At some point a committee looked at the fleet, looked at me, and decided this particular collection of failing components was suitable for a mission beyond the edge of explored space.

The annoying part is that they were right. Most pilots would've turned back by now. All my personality tests show an alarming level of tenacity, bordering on requiring treatment. Turns out the best treatment is just flying out into space.

Ahead of me, the navigation display paints a thin green line through the darkness, toward a region that's occupied military planners for months.

Alien refugees keep arriving from that direction in entire convoys with damaged ships and half-finished stories. Every report is different. Every report ends with someone running. The only detail that stays consistent is the terror.

I glance at the mission timer. Fifty-three days since leaving Earth. Fifty-three days without another human being.

"Lucius."

"Yes, Captain?"

"When I get home, remind me to spend a month somewhere crowded."

"You said something similar twenty days ago."

"I was serious then, too."

He rotates a sensor cluster toward me. "Statistically speaking, your first destination should be a social gathering. Human pair-bonding opportunities increase significantly in environments involving alcohol."

I laugh despite myself. "If my love life depended on military-issued advice, I'd be doomed."

"Your love life appears doomed regardless," he quips.

"You could also note that I've gained twelve pounds since launch. The mission briefing didn't mention how much comfort eating a person does when her only company is a judgmental frisbee."

"Eleven point six pounds," Lucius corrects. "And I wasn't going to mention it."

I point toward his charging cradle. "Can you just get back in your box?"

"That response suggests emotional vulnerability." He retreats before I can think of a suitable threat, and I settle deeper into the seat. Somewhere ahead lies the reason entire worlds are running scared. I am absolutely going to find out why.

I work through a maintenance checklist while Intrepid 21 continues on autopilot. It's busywork, the sort of thing pilots do because the alternative is staring out a window wondering whether they're about to make history or die anonymously.

The motion brings a photograph into view, tucked into the corner of the console — six pilots in front of a shuttle after graduation. Not particularly old, yet it feels like a relic from someone else's life.

Two of those pilots are married now. One's engaged.

Another left Space Force entirely and spends her time posting beach photos from planets I couldn't find on a chart.

Everyone moved on. Everyone except me, still flying missions nobody else wants, alone in a ship held together by maintenance reports and optimism, three years since my last date and counting.

And then there's Sophia, right next to me in the picture.

Same grin as the rest of us, same cheap uniform, same impossible belief that the galaxy owed us something just because we'd fought hard enough to get there.

We bonded fast, two scholarship kids splitting noodles in the mess while the legacy pilots went out drinking.

She was the one who stayed up with me the night before my first solo flight. Not because I asked, but because she knew I wouldn't.

Now she's been missing for weeks on a mission much like mine, somewhere past the edge of the maps, and nobody talks about her anymore.

I straighten the photograph and turn back to the console.

"You're doing it again," Lucius says.

"Doing what?"

"Thinking about things that make your vital signs deteriorate." His light is back to neutral white. "Specifically, I suspect you're reflecting on your lack of companionship."

I lightly tap his case with one fingernail. "I am not discussing this with you."

"Understood." His light goes out.

The ridiculous part is that he's not entirely wrong. Somewhere along the way every promotion became easier than a first date, every mission simpler than letting someone close enough to be important. Work made sense. People never did.

Outside the canopy, the stars continue their slow procession. Somewhere among them lies Earth. Blue oceans. Crowded streets. Real food. Somebody to eat it with.

"Captain?" Something in Lucius's voice makes me look up. He's rotated toward the forward sensors, and the easy humor that usually colors his observations is gone.

"What is it?"

"I have detected something unusual ahead."

I pull the sensor feed onto the main display.

At first I don't see what's worried him.

It's the same scatter of stars we've stared at for weeks, the usual clutter of radiation readings.

Then a faint contact flickers at the edge of the display, the signal weak enough that I wonder if it's real. "Is that a sensor ghost?"

"It is statistically possible," he says with doubt in his voice.

"How statistically possible?"

"Four percent."

The contact sits there, a tiny mark against the dark. Space is full of objects that seem strange until you look closer. Then it moves, but not the way rocks move. "That looks deliberate."

"The contact is maneuvering," Lucius confirms. "The object appears to be under power. Mass estimates are inconclusive, but look high. Energy emissions do not match any known civilian or military design."

I zoom in. The object is holding position relative to a stretch of space ahead of us. There's nothing out here worth guarding. The nearest settled systems are weeks away, and every known shipping route avoids this area.

The contact brightens as new data arrives. The shape still won't resolve, but it's definitely a vessel. No identification codes. No answer to hails. It just sits there, silent and distant, as if it knows we're watching.

For the next hour the contact doesn't move at all. The closer we get, the less I believe it's a refugee. Refugees are eager to talk. They ask for supplies, directions, medical help. This ship ignores every hail. It doesn't answer, doesn't broadcast an identity, doesn't acknowledge us at all.

"It's seeing us, right?"

Lucius's light has gone thoughtful yellow. "There is no reasonable scenario in which it has failed to detect us."

I pull up the latest sensor analysis and go through it again, looking for something that will let me dismiss what Lucius just said.

I don't find it. The changes are subtle — adjustments to sensor systems, not weapons, not engines — but they're deliberate in a way that makes the hair on my arms stand up.

Nobody fiddles with sensors unless they want a better look at something.

And that something is us.

We came out here to investigate whatever lay beyond the frontier. It never occurred to me that the frontier might be investigating us right back.

But somewhere aboard that silent ship, someone is watching my course corrections, measuring my engine output, cataloguing my capabilities. Doing exactly what I've been doing to them, except they started first and they haven't blinked once.

Two versions of the smart decision fight it out in my head. The careful version says: maintain distance, gather data, go home, let somebody with more guns make the next move. Space Force would love that. Nobody sent me out here to start an interstellar incident.

But nobody sent me out here to flinch, either.

The contact sits directly between us and the region we came to survey, the same stretch of darkness the refugee reports came from.

It may belong to the people who are running. It may also belong to whatever made them run. That second thought keeps circling back, patient and persistent, like something that already knows the answer and is just waiting for me to catch up.

"Captain," Lucius says quietly, "I suspect you are contemplating something inadvisable."