Free KRAKEN by Vivian Vixen Page A

catch and start to spin.  Fuel flooded a chamber beneath her.  The first combustion was enough to wake you up, or send you stumbling up on the main levels, but down here the concussive shock nearly made Aydra black out.
    Almost immediately the heat was unbearable and Aydra slid herself through the chute to the outer-engine compartment as quickly as she could.  She came out on the plastic flooring of a massive room which housed, in close quarters, the four engines and six re-boosters.  This was the largest ship she’d ever worked on, and possibly one of the largest unregistered ships carving out its spot on the edge of space.
    She had to be careful walking there.  There was just barely enough gravity to hold you down and it was common to hear of guys who’d tripped, or stepped too hard, or moved too quick and sent their bodies helplessly crashing into the uninsulated side of a running engine, their bodies an unrecognizable, smoldering pulp once anyone noticed they were gone.
    Aydra tiptoed to the staircase and pulled herself into the second level where the main’s computer was held.  It was a solid square meter of pure power, running every single thing and communicating with ships across lightyears and endless star systems.  Somewhere, the ship was probably running a hack through a bank on Spersta.
    Pirate ships like this one were well known for slipping into a quadrant and stealing billions from planets, then disappearing.  Aydra had thought she would be embroiled in battle when she signed the four year contract as a mechanic on the Kraken, but she quickly learned the work of pirates was often less interesting than reported in the news, or spoken of by the travel-weary in bars.
    The only stories you ever got from pirates were ones that you never cared to share with anyone ever again.

2
    She looked down an aisle of secondary computers to where Erthur was hardwiring a connection to a financial institution somewhere far away. He was kneeling, bent over a mess of wires, wearing just a pair of oil-stained blue jeans. The muscles in his broad back rolled and churned, star-tanned skin glistening with the sweat of his exertion. Aydra had to bite down on her lip to steady herself before she went over to him.
    She and Erthur had a good relationship—his faith in her was the reason she wasn’t chained to a bed; her loyalty was why he wasn’t a frozen corpse floating through space.
    Erthur was the only man on board that Aydra thought about, or even considered having to herself again. He was handsome, with kind eyes despite his circumstances. He seemed like a good man who’d simply fallen in with the wrong crowd.
    They’d run into each other in cramped hallways, forced to press together as they squeezed past. They always moved slowly. They’d talk sometimes, chest to chest. Desire sizzled between them, but they each had their reasons for never taking it further.
    Aydra dreamed about him sometimes, coming into her quarters at night, crawling on top of her, ravishing her until the morning alarm rang.  She dreamed often of tasting him. Any of him, all of him.
    Maybe one day. For now they maintained a charade of platonic friendliness.
    “Erthur!  How’s the work,” Aydra shouted.
    The computer technician leaned back on his heels. “Rough.  Captain wants a crack on a zeta-protected hedge over eighteen lightyears from here.” He sighed, grabbed his stubbled chin in one hand, and cracked his neck loudly. “It’s just not happening.”
    Aydra put her tools down and walked over to look at the problem. “You want to get this done?” She pointed to the computer behind Erthur. “Route the twinning supply from that computer in sequence with the one you’ve got there.  That’ll give the q-spacer enough juice.”
    Erthur took a look and bit his lip, worried.
    “Listen, you get that done and the zeta-crack won’t be too hard.” Aydra broke open a panel and stretched out a translucent wire. “Just make sure nobody