The Last Frontier
by: Marina Twelve and Thomas R.

Retribution, part I

 

Captain Hashim Thorn ordered his navigator to plot a course to intercept the unidentified starship that the sensors had detected entering the outer fringes of the Epslon Irindi system. It was not transmitting the proper codes that authorized it to pass through Syndicate controlled territory.

As his ship, "Enforcer seven" closed in on the somewhat smaller vessel, Thorn noticed that it bore no markings and was of a very unusual configuration. It looked, for the most part, like a long flattened cylinder, but with sloping, streamlined ends. Its armaments, so far as he could tell, consisted of two, turret mounted, standard .5 meter photon cannons on the top and bottom, weapons that could play hell with fighter craft, but were no match for his well-protected star cruiser. The 1.5 meter photon cannon mounted in a fixed, foreword facing position, next to which looked like a large Sensor reflector antenna, was considerably more formidable, but the Enforcer’s level five force field shields would be sufficient protection, provided, of course, he stayed sufficiently downrange.

Thorn transmitted his demands to the ship on the universal hailing frequency. "Heave to!, Identify your self and await further instructions"

As the craft began to decelerate, Thorn maneuvered the Enforcer directly into its path. He turned his ship to face the interloper "head on" and trained his entire weapon array on it, all six of his own "point fives".---Of course he was careful to keep some distance between them. The 1.5 cannon could be devastating at close range.

Thorn did not expect the Captain of the other craft to be so stupid as to fire on him though. He could survive several such hits at this distance, but HE was capable of eradicating the other ship, less than one-third the Enforcer’s size, with a single blast.

As both ships slowed to zero relative speed, Thorn repeated the order. "Identify yourself!"

His com screen sputtered to life. Immediately he recognized the beautiful red haired woman, with the self-confident, smirking smile that appeared on his viewer.

"Captain Leslie Webber!" he exclaimed. " And may I say that you look particularly lovely today?"

"So do you, Thorn," she replied sarcastically

"I see that you have finally made your way back to the stars", Thorn remarked, "albeit under considerably less advantageous circumstances. Let me guess, you have returned to pay back Konstantin for what he did to you."

"How insightful!" the woman replied. " But not for what he did to me so much. He signed his own death warrant when he enslaved my crew---and for what he did to poor Melissa."

"Ah, but as you can see, I am about to abort your ill conceived mission and YOU along with it. I am going to do to you what Konstantin SHOULD have done when he had you last time. Kill you once and for all! I so disapprove of his annoying habit of playing games with his enemies."

"Yes, THIS time it has backfired on him!" Leslie replied. " He never expected that I would return to finish the game. Tell him that I am ready to play."

"You do not appear to be in a position to make any demands, MISS Webber, I. . .

"It is YOU who had best listen, Thorn, and open your eyes! Does the word "Quell" mean anything to you?"

"Quell? That doesn’t make any sense at all" He thought. "An obsolete, planet-based power station?" Quells or "Quark Accelerators" could generate immense power, but were so dangerous the technology had been banned a decade ago. What the blazes does a "QUELL" have to do with a star ship?" He contemplated, as he examined the image of Webber’s ship on the forward viewing screen.

Then he saw it! The object that looked like a dish reflector, that circular shape that filled the entire right side of the front of Webber’s ship, like some offset cycloptic eye, was not a reflector at all! Indeed, It was the opening to the tunnel of what appeared to be a large Quell tube!-- that ran, perhaps, down the entire length of the interior of her ship.

Thorn’s eyes grew wide, and the hair began to stand up on the back of his neck as he realized that he might not have the advantage after all.

"Yes Thorn, That is the barrel a fifteen meter Quark Accelerator" the smiling woman said. "It can take out a small planet--- and you are looking right down its throat. I have always wondered what one of these things would do to a starship. . ."

"Do you want to find out, Thorn?"

Thorn suddenly felt like the proverbial fly that was about to be "swatted" by a Howitzer!

"ENGAGE WEAPONS NOW!" he screamed in near panic. "Fire! Fi. . ."

There was no time for his men to react!. With a quick blue flash, , the QUELL ejected a slug of subatomic particles, that at light speed, were capable of shredding even the very nuclei of hydrogen atoms.

For a split second, a noiseless flash of light lit up half the sky, as virtually every atom of Thorn’s craft underwent its own fission event.

Webber’s ship was rocked by the shock wave, but remained intact.

Thorn, his crew and his "Enforcer Seven" had been immediately reduced to literal "space dust", perhaps spread out across some 300 Thousand Clicks of space. Yes, there was some debris, but an electron scanner would be needed to find the largest fragment.

"Now we know" commented Webber to herself. She was quite satisfied with her work.

She glanced over at an attractive, shorthaired brunette at the weapons station and said "Daddy always told me that when you go after big fish, always bring a big gun!---

"Shouldn’t that be POLE?" the woman replied, "bring a big pole?"

Leslie smiled. "Not the way MY daddy fished!"

"What is the primary weapon status, Melissa?"

"Recharging normally, Captain. It may be fired again in 53.24 minutes." The woman replied coolly.

Leslie Webber lay back in her chair and savored the moment. She was home again, back in her element, and had already put "another notch", so to speak, in her gun.

This time, however, she was not fighting "Reptoids" from the Antaries system, or the "Raider ships", but was taking "The Syndicate" head on.

The criminal organization had cursed this part of the Galaxy for nearly twenty years. It victimized honest, hard working colonists with its demands for "protection" money and special "taxes", while it trafficked in illegal goods and technologies and supported various bands of "raiders" who preyed on interstellar shipping.

The tendrils of the Syndicate were everywhere, reaching even into the halls of government itself. It was a fact that Leslie Webber had learned the hard way.

 

Only two years before, she was a starship captain in the Terran Confederation Space Command. She was also, then, a MAN.

Leslie Webber had once commanded the Proteus, a Cruiser class jumpship with a crew of nearly 200. The TC forces were spread out fairly thin, but Webber was able to keep his district relatively safe from the Syndicate raiders, but alas, someone had thought that he was doing his job much too well.

Leslie knew something was up when he was suddenly ordered to fill in for another district patrol, just before the Mine transport, carrying its load of refined platinum was due to cross Sirian Ord Belt on its way to Indihar. In retrospect, Webber, NOW knew that she should have followed the orders immediately, and not have stayed on the Mine transport's tail.

As expected, the syndicate raider ships struck! Leslie joined in the fray, destroying two of them, before he discovered that he had flown into a trap.

Leslie hadn’t known that Three, heavily armed, Syndicate enforcer ships, had accompanied the raiders, and were hiding, in the distance, out of scanner range.

It wasn’t until one took out his reaction engines and fire control system, did he realize that he was in trouble.

The ships closed in, but instead of blasting the helpless Proteus to fragments, they landed a boarding party instead. In the hand to fight which followed, Leslie, was able to kill six of the intruders with his sidearm, before it ran out of projectiles. He finished off two more attackers with his combat knife before he was finally overpowered and captured.

 

What had become of his crew, he did not know. He stood silently in his restraints, and otherwise naked, as he faced the dark, silhouetted image on the view screen in the syndicate office. The faceless image was that of "Konstantin" the leader of the "Syndicate".

"Welcome, Captain Webber!" said an electronically distorted voice. "You have been a vexation to our operations in the Irindi district for quite some time. Unfortunately for you, your life, as you have known it, is over."

"My crew! What have you done with my crew?" Leslie shouted in desperation.

"Most have been put to work at tasks more useful to our organization. A few, like you, have been selected for "special treatment".

"You Bastard! If I ever. . ."

"Silence! By all rights I should have had you killed. But then you would become "a martyr, a H E R O." No, I want you to serve me as an EXAMPLE, a warning to others who would dare interfere with Syndicate business."

"You are to be my "Guinea Pig" so to speak," Konstantin continued. "A subject is needed to test a new item of alien technology that I have recently acquired. Some of my scientists tell me that it will not work with humans, while others have a different opinion."

"If it fails, then you indeed WILL be DEAD. If it works, wellll. . . in either case you will never Captain a Starship again. TAKE HIM AWAY!"

Two burly guards dragged Webber from the room and into a side chamber, where sat what looked like a cylindrical glass tank, just large enough to hold a human. It was attached to a silvery looking box, covered with myriads of blinking multicolored lights. The cylinder itself was filled with a greenish, glowing liquid.

"Drop Him in!" a voice on the com system commanded.

Webber, in his restraints, was helpless to resist the guards as they hoisted him up and dropped him into the tank. It was like drowning in syrup. The thick fluid filled Webber’s lungs and he lost consciousness.

 

"Leslie Webber!, your name was chosen well." Leslie was awoken by the electronically distorted voice of Konstantin. The room was dark, save for the dim light of the com screen. The shadowy figure upon it, once again, was that of the "faceless" head of the Syndicate.

Leslie’s head pounded like a hammer. His body felt as it had been "asleep" as the pain of thousands of "needles" coursed through his limbs. He couldn’t discern much about what, if anything had been done to him. From what he had been able to ascertain, from the sensations in his arms and legs, he was apparently strapped to some kind of ‘X" shaped, padded cross or table that was in an upright position and facing the screen.

As the pain and numbness in his body began to dissipate, Leslie began to notice the tickling of what felt like a fibrous substance hanging along the sides of his head and rubbing on his shoulders. There was also an unfamiliar, peculiar weight pulling at the skin on his chest and a strange "tightness" in his crotch.

He had little time to ponder upon the meanings of these strange sensations. The lights in the room suddenly came on, momentarily blinding him, when he could see again, what had happened to him became readily apparent.

Long, wavy, reddish blonde hair hung, in a disorganized mass from his head and fell into his face and across his shoulders.

His upper body, now much smaller, now sported a set of fair sized woman’s breasts. He couldn’t move his head down far enough to properly examine his crotch area, but he didn’t have to see to know. Leslie had the body of a woman!

"Yes Leslie", said the voice on the com screen. "You have been turned, both physically and genetically into a female. And quite an attractive specimen at that."

"No. . . This can’t. . . " Leslie began to speak, but she was again shocked by the higher pitched sound of her voice. "What IS this?!" She shouted after momentarily regaining her composure. "What did you do to me you bastard?!"

"You are quite a lucky woman MISS Webber. From what we can tell, there is a two out of three chance that the genetic converter will kill rather than reconstruct a human subject. You have beaten the odds."

"Now what?!" Leslie spat back, sensing that her ordeal was not yet over.

"We will release you. But not before I allow a selected few of my officers to extract a bit of pleasure from your personal misfortune. For all the problems you have caused, you owe them at least that much."

"NOOO!" Leslie screamed as she struggled to no effect, against the straps holding her on to the table. Konstantin’s statement needed no further clarification.

 

At the "ranch" on Barne’s star Four, Adrienne Webber had received the news that her husband, Leslie, had either been killed or captured in an encounter with Syndicate and Raider ships three days previously. She was still struggling with how to break the news to their nine-year-old son, Justin.

She knew that Leslie had probably been killed. The Syndicate did not have a reputation for mercy. She knew that if he hadn’t been executed outright, he likely might have been sent to work in the mines or some other place, without hope of rescue where his remaining life expectancy would be very short indeed.

As she pondered what to tell Justin, she heard the engines of a ship’s shuttle approach their landing pad.

She felt a mixture of both relief and trepidation. "Perhaps Leslie has come home?" she thought, but it also could have been a Government official who was bearing bad news.

She ran outside, to see in the distance, a small black shuttlecraft land on the pad. A man emerged, threw something out onto the tarmac and climbed back inside the vessel. The craft quickly took off and vanished into the night sky.

Adrienne ran out to see what the man had left on the landing pad. She stopped and gasped in horror at what she saw.

A naked woman, covered with bruises, was lying face down in a puddle of blood!

The woman moaned in pain, She was still alive! Adrienne pulled out her com-phone and informed the local emergency services of her find. An ambulance ship would be on the way.

Carefully she turned the woman on her back. The blood appeared to be stemming from the groin area. It was obvious now that she was dealing with the victim of a brutal rape.

Adrienne tore some fabric from the hem of her skirt and stuffed it into the bleeding orifice to stanch the flow of blood. It seemed to work. The lady opened her eyes and moaned the word "Adrienne!" before loosing consciousness.

"How did she know my name?"

Dr. Merrit soon drove up in his ATV. "The ambulance ship would be delayed." He informed Adrienne. She helped the Doctor put the woman in the vehicle and they took her to the house. They laid her on a bed in the spare bedroom and covered her with a sheet.

After thoroughly examining the woman, as far as the equipment that he had with him would allow, He confirmed Adrienne’s suspicions.

"The woman has definitely been raped. And by multiple assailants, as far as I can tell." The doctor stated, mater-of-factly. "Fortunately, there are no broken bones or internal injuries. She does have several severe contusions and some vaginal tearing. She has lost a lot of blood. You probably saved her life."

"Thank God! Do you know who she is?

The doctor checked the screen of his medical computer. "That’s odd !" he said. "Her DNA matches one Kora Horst. A prostitute who last lived on Efra Two." The only problem with that is that Kora Horst died over three years ago."

"Apparently she didn’t."

"Don’t be too sure," said the doctor as he looked at the screen again. "According to the records, her body was identified and doubly DNA verified by the local coroner and the T.C.P.S. This lady could possibly be a twin or clone, although no records exist of either."

The woman began to stir and moan again. Her eyes fluttered open and fixed themselves on Adrienne.

" Adrienne! Is it you? Is it really you!"

Adrienne, looked at the doctor and then back at the woman. "Yes my name is Adrienne." She replied, "Adrienne Webber."

The woman looked up and smiled painfully. "It’s ME, Adrienne, Its Leslie!"

Adrienne listened incredulously as the woman moaned a delirious story about how she WAS Leslie Webber and that she had been captured and changed into a woman.

"Was this some kind of sick hoax?" she thought, yet the woman appeared to be sincere. Adrienne had to think about it.

About that time the ambulance ship had landed. Two paramedics carried the woman out. They were taking her to the hospital at Sandersville. Adrienne gave her name and address as a "contact person". She would be keeping close tabs on this case, which still made little sense to her. She WAS sure, however, that Leslie was connected with it somehow.

 

END OF PART ONE.

 

 

 

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© 2001 by Marina Twelve. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.