Story: Keep Following the Heartlines on Your Hand (all chapters)

Part One

Winter is too cold, too icy for my interests, but I pulled my long, tan coat tighter around my forest green frock and trekked on through the snow; my simple black, leather boots leaving footprints in the white. It made more sense to do this once the weather warmed up, the hangar had been standing there longer than I'd been alive -- before even my grandparents had been born -- but I was impatient when it came to new discoveries. I left my car back at the old chainlink fence, rusted and decrepit from decades of mistreatment and weather. There had been a very wide gap in the fence where scavengers had likely either cut away the metal when it was still good or had simply cut it away to raid the old airport for whatever they could find. There wasn't much there now, only a badly decaying building that had likely been where crowds of people had gathered to grab an airplane ride to some far destination. Beyond the building, some three or four hundred yards, sat an old hangar that once harbored old steampowered airplanes before they fell to waste in favor of slimmer models that held more occupants and moved speedier through the air thanks to the incorporation of fuel.

Although, that was only a brief time in history because all too soon humanity began toying with technology, quickly abandoning fuel in favor of safer alternates like solar power and eventually, nano technology. Nano technology was suffused to solar power, and computers and chips were quickly adapted to power the large machines until eventually they were able to be compressed down to a much smaller, compact size. No one traveled by airplanes anymore now, haven't since 2060 when the first line of operational solar-powered jet packs were made available to the public. Within a few years they were heavily regulated though, the batteries made able to hold shorter charges to prevent individuals from committing crimes and making grand escapes on their jet packs. Nowadays, the only way to get a jet pack was to rent one for a fairly reasonable price from an approved government sanctioned location. They contained triggers in them that could be set off to explode the pack in case one was used to commit a crime instead using it for traveling. You would fly them to a pre-approved destination where you would check your pack in at another government sanctioned location. Failing to do so either meant immediate jail time of several years or extraordinary prices that easily explained why they were so cheap to rent in the first place.

Without the need for these old structures -- the hangars -- however, many airports around the world either fell to abandonment or were torn down to make room for other more useful structures, such as housing and spaceports. So far, I've only been able to find two other abandoned airports, but they didn't contain much more than the bare bones of the structures that once held life so long ago. This place was different. It was far enough in the north that the cold kept most people away, thus allowing this place to be relatively untouched over the decades. I itched to try and get into the terminal building, but the hangar is what held my real interest. For as long as I could remember, I had been fascinated with olden day airplanes and vehicles, making models of them as a child with my older brothers. By the time I was seventeen, I had built my own actual-size, old model car from scraps found at a junkyard. It ran on solar power and worked perfectly, though I could only drive it during the day. Over the years, I built better old model cars, much to the amusement of my neighbors and friends, all whom drove only new technology vehicles like hovercars and energy bikes. However, my real passion was for old planes, and even early steampowered spacecrafts which were all but extinct now. I had tried unsuccessfully to make my own many times, but to no avail. Without plans of a real one, I was lost as to how they were able to move and function, though I had theories but they all seemed to be missing some important component when I tried to put them into play.

So my hope today was the off-chance that perhaps this long forgotten hangar might have the remnants of an old airplane. I had no realistic hopes of finding one in one piece, not after nearly seventy years since they'd last been used, but I figured I could work with the remnants of one. As I drew closer, the cold numbing my face became forgotten as anticipation and excitement took over. From my viewpoint, the hangar, while clearly falling apart, still had at least two good walls and I quickly deduced that for the hole-riddled roof to still be standing, the third wall had to be in reasonable shape. All good factors when exploring old structures. As I came into view of the large entrance and I ran the last few steps, boots slipping on the snow but my resolve kept me upright as I reached my goal. With a deep breath, I stopped in front of the large entrance and peered inside to find...

Nothing.

Perhaps, not nothing completely, but definitely not what I had been hoping to find. Aside from the bits of the roof that had fallen in, snow making sporadic white marks against the dirty floor, there was an old model car, one of the very last fuel ones from before people had switched over to hovercrafts, parked against the far wall. Crestfallen, even though I had expected to not find an airplane, I stared at the car for a moment before peering about for at least something of interest. In the far righthand corner of the hangar sat a small square that I assumed to perhaps have been once an office or some kind of storage room. As I approached, careful to avoid the roof debris, I noted that there were no windows, only a door that seemed very thick and heavy. Likely it was a storage room, the door meant to keep out scavengers or grabby workers. There was a well rusted padlock on a bolt, no handle, meaning it would take some pushing to get it open.

From the small satchel on my bag, I extracted a hammer and brought it down on the lock. It seemed overkill as the thing practically disintegrated from my presence, let alone the heavy hammerhead slamming down upon it. The bolt was easily ripped out of place with a few well placed whacks of the hammerclaw and then I was shoving against the door with all my might. At first, nothing happened, but after a few knocks near where the bolt had held the door shut, the door groaned as if dying. Standing back, I kicked at the side of the door where I had weaken it until, with a mighty defeated roar, it pushed open enough for me to squeeze my head through to see inside. Pitch blackness and swirlings of dust were my only greetings as I replaced my hammer in my satchel and removed a clean air breather from inside, along with a flashlight. Tools wellworthy of an experienced explorer - something I hoped never to have to jokingly tell a government officer of the law if I were ever caught at one of my explorations spots.

Pushing the door open some more was still a chore, but a much more doable one now that I had won the war with it. Illuminating the space I had opened between door and wall, I was surprised to find that it wasn't a storage room. Peeking my head in and shining the light around some more confirmed that this was actually an office, which was odd. I expected an office to have some kind of telltale sign of an office on the outside - a simple wooden door, one or two glass windows to watch the workers or marvel at the airplanes -- a sign over the door that read 'OFFICE' at the very least -- but this place had none of those features. It seemed almost as though this had been built to fortify against something, but what? There had been no wars or battles in this region for hundreds of years, so with a scowl, I pushed my way in and began exploring.

Apparently, the door had been the perfect seal against the elements all these years as most of the furniture inside was still in one piece, not that it would be ideal to lean on any of them for too long. A deep layer of dust suggested it had been years, if not decades, since anyone had last been in here. The wooden floor beneath my feet sagged and sighed pitifully beneath my feet, making my steps all the more careful and slow as I moved about the room. The room was furnished sparsely with a desk made of fake wood resting against the wall opposite the door. A large, blue chair sat before it, waiting for its occupant as time slowly eroded its' threadings. Beside the door were two simple seats with wooden arms and legs, the cushions once white, now dirty gray and brown with age and dust. There were several file cabinets beside one wall, a coat hanger hook behind the door, and an ugly rug that I think may have been burgundy once, laid across the center of the floor.

It was actually kind of fascinating despite it's simplicity. So few things had survived the test of the time, and while the furniture was clearly in a slow state of decay, what remained gave me an insight to a place time had forgotten, or had tried to. I crossed carefully to the desk, skirting around the edge of the room to keep from the sagging center. A small fan sat to the left of it, pointed up as if just waiting to be switched on. A lamp sat to the far right corner of the desk, it's glass bulbs dirty. Carefully, I brushed aside dust from the desktop and found papers trapped beneath a glass - or possibly plastic - panel. The papers at the very edge were brown and somewhat illegible, but the ones closer to the center were pretty clear for their age, once I had scratched away enough dust to read see them that was. A calendar sat in the center of the display, the year atop claimed it was still October of 2065. Frowning, I tried to remember why that seemed familiar until I remember that was the year the government had begun to regulate the use of jet packs because... Because...

I couldn't remember off the top of my mind why exactly so I brushed aside the thought and reached for a round drawer knob. Unsurprisingly, it broke off as soon as I pulled it. As I reached for something in my satchel to pry it open with, a vibration in my coat's breast pocket caught my attention. Hesitant, I debated whether or not I was more interested in what lied within the drawer or whom was calling me, but the vibration was a nuisance so I dug out my cellphone and glanced at the caller ID. It wasn't a number I saw very often so I flipped open my phone and pressed it to my ear as I reached again for my satchel.

"Hello there. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Azura? Are you wearing your dust mask?"

"Indeed," I smiled, pulling free my crowbar.

"You sound weird like that, just so you know. Did you find another place to trespass at?"

"There were no trespassing signs that I could see." The crowbar slid between desk and drawer and with some force, popped it open. "Damn, nothing," I groaned upon seeing there was nothing but old writing supplies within.

A laugh in my ear made me frown as I set the crowbar in place for the next drawer. "Shut up, Jett. What do you want anyway? You never call me willingly."

"Truthfully? I was just bored. Thought I might invite you over for dinner or something, but I guess you're a bit busy today."

I could hear the genuine disappointment in her voice as I hefted the next drawer open. This time I found two useless notepads and several manuals about aerodynamics and regulations. They were in fair enough condition that I slid them in plastic bags and placed them in my satchel as I continued talking to Jett.

"I am a bit busy right now, but I doubt I'll be here much longer. This office doesn't have much but dust and rot. Maybe the old terminal building will be a bit more interesting. but I doubt it since it's pretty dilapadated. Maybe I can make it to your place for a late dinner instead?"

"Or dessert?" I couldn't see her face, but I knew she was smirking as I flushed a little.

"Maybe."

The next desk drawer yielded nothing of interest except for an untouched bottle of wine, perhaps a farewell gift that was forgotten or never returned for? I inspected it carefully with my flashlight, pleased by it's condition. The seal around the cork was untouched and the liquor looked to be in good condition. Possibly a good thing this region didn't suffered from high temperatures during the summer months.

"2052," I said into the phone with a grin as I finally found the year on it.

"What?"

"Looks like I'll be bringing the liquor tonight," I laughed, gently setting the bottle on the desktop.

The rest of the drawer, and the fourth, and final drawer, yielded little else of interest, until I pushed aside an old nudie magazine, Jett declaring quite loudly that she wanted it, and struck gold. A blue laminated binder beneath the magazine revealed designs for the engine of a steampowered airplane. I won't lie, I came at that moment, moaning my exhilarated joy into the phone.

"Find something good?" Jett asked, her voice both jovial and huskier than normal.

"Only the best thing ever! Blueprints for a steampowered engine! I... I..." I couldn't find the words to describe my joy.

"Take a deep breath, Azura, before you give yourself an aneurysm."

Unable to resist, I danced a little embarrassing jig, my joy overwhelming my commonsense as I stepped too far back. It was the sound of wood that caught my attention as I realized my mistake and with a loud curse, I held the binder tightly to my body as I felt gravity shift violently. The wood gave beneath my stupidity and I was tumbling into darkness, holding onto the binder as if it would somehow cushion my landing. It didn't as I fell heavy on my shoulder, quickly curling up around my treasure to keep it safe instead of trying to save my own ass. Lucky for me, only the wood where I had been standing had given way, the rest kept so the furniture didn't tumble down on me. Also lucky for me, it hadn't been a far drop, possibly fifteen feet at the most. Unfortunately, I had left my flashlight on top of the desk and squinted into the darkness in hopes of being able to see something. It was Jett's frantic shouting that caught my attention, which I followed to find my cellphone laying beneath some bits of wood. Once I reclaimed it, I pressed it to my ear and felt relief in hearing Jett's cursing.

"Are you fucking okay? Dammit, Azura, if you managed to get yourself killed while talking to me on the phone, I'll--"

"I'm alive, calm down," I said, ignoring the throbbing in my shoulder.

"What the fuck happened?"

"I fell through the floor, but I'm okay. Didn't fall far enough to do any serious damage."

"You shouldn't be damaged at all," Jett growled.

I brushed off her concern as I used the light emanating from my cellphone to illuminate some of the darkness around me. I couldn't tell much, but I had a sense that I was standing in a large, spacious area. The floor beneath my feet felt metal, a few test kicks with my heel confirmed this. In my satchel, I managed to find my spare flashlight, which wasn't much of a flashlight to begin with, more like a glow stick that I could turn on and off. It didn't give off a whole lot of light, which is why I kept it in case of emergencies, but it gave enough light for me to explore my new surroundings in a pink glow.

"Jett, can I call you back?" I asked as I began navigating my way through the dark, finding metal steps and following them down to a cement floor.

"No. I'm not going to sit here while you get yourself killed. Better I stay on and keep an ear on you in case you need help."

With a defeated sigh, I told Jett she could stay on the line. There was no way to get her to change her mind once she had decided on something. I walked only a few feet from the stairs before I found a wall in front of me. It seemed pretty ordinary so I followed it in hopes of finding a doorway somewhere. Instead, I found a lightswitch a short distance away. Jett chuckled in my ear when I told her and suggested that I switch it on for the hell of it, so I did. There was a hum somewhere far off in the opposite direction and then, to my surprise, one by one, overhead lights began to flicker on. That was definitely unexpected, but nowhere near as unexpected as what I realized was standing in the room with me.

"Holy shit," I babbled in disbelief.

"What?"

"I think I'm hallucinating."

As if caught in a trance, I stretched out my hand and took several steps forward, unable to believe what I was seeing. There was no way this could be real, and yet as my fingers touched sturdy metal, there was no way to deny it. This was real - holy shit.

"It's real," I whispered.

"What is?" Jett asked, confused. "Your hallucination?"

"Yes." I laid my gloved hand flat against the metal, pushing at it ever so softly, afraid it could fall apart or perhaps be a hallucination after all. It held against my touch, strong as I pushed lightly forward. "Christ, it's real."

"What the hell is it?"

"It's an old spacecraft. Looks like an old steampowered spacecraft!"

"No kidding?" Jett sounded just as shocked as I felt.

"No kidding. Jett, you need to get your ass here and check this out."

"Where are you?"

This question broke me out of my awe as I arched an eyebrow. "Like you don't know?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, no."

"Oh, so you don't know anything about the tracking system you keep tabs on me with? The one stitched into the bottom of my satchel? If I was another person, I may find that kind of stuff creepy for someone who's just my friend."

"First off, we're friends-with-benefits, and secondly, you're too free-spirited and spontaneous for someone not to keep tabs on your whereabouts at all times. What if you fell through a rotten floor and got badly hurt? How would anyone know when you never tell anyone your plans? Also, how did you know about the tracking system?"

"I just fell through a rotten floor, and I am fine. Plus, I have a cellphone. You're just trying to justify your stalker ways," I grinned. "Also, the tracking system? I know you like to do sneaky, hacker stuff like that."

"I am not a stalker! And shut up! I do not!"

"So you're not halfway here already, right?"

Jett didn't sound too happy when she spoke again. "No, but I did hop on my solarcycle as soon as I heard you fall through the floor. How did you know?"

"Because you were freaking out before, and when you freak out, you make rash decisions and rush into things headfirst."

"Well, you could've been dead! Or badly hurt!"

"Stalker! See you soon," I said with a chuckle, snapping my cellphone shut.

I could've spent the time before Jett got here, teasing and arguing with her on the phone, but I had something much more interesting to do right now, and it involved this beautiful discovery before me. Space exploration was a thing of the past, a past where humanity relied on steampower to cross long distances in a short time. Nowadays, we simply hopped a ride on one of the space shuttles at a spaceport and traveled to work on one of the colonies on Mars or the Moon. People with a little extra cash to spare had spacecrafts, which were smaller and generally could hold anywhere from one to four, tightly squeezed, occupants. The modern space shuttles and crafts moved much, much faster than their ancestral counterparts, taking moments to get from here on Earth to the next nearby destination in space. The older ones took hours to do the same thing, which is why they fell out of favor as technology evolved. And if it wasn't clear yet, steampower anything was pretty much an extinct art, sadly. There was something beautiful about intricate levers and pulleys and steam all working together in one place. Trust me when I say I'm probably one of a handful people alive today that thinks this way.

Never had I believed I would come across something like this. This spacecraft could be no less than eighty years old, which I noted was roughly about the same timeframe as the bottle of wine in the office above and the year on the calendar. I was beginning to think that wasn't a coincidence and the fact that the office had been concealed behind such a heavy door made it clear this spacecraft was meant for something special - but what? I paced around the machine, taking my time to study every detail of it with hungry eyes, the information overload a drug to me. I guessed it to be somewhere between twenty to thirty feet in length, fifteen to twenty-five feet in width, and ten to fifteen in height. It had been carefully crafted of a combination of copper and a special treated metal that kept it from disintegrating when it reentered the atmosphere of Earth. Rivets as thick as my thumbnail trailed up and down it's sides, keeping large panels in place. Hefting myself up, I wiped away the thick layer of grime and dust covering glass so I could peer into the cockpit area. I noted two seats lined up, one behind the other, and a large area behind the second seat where a third person could hunker down in or something large could be placed.

Everything looked in perfect order on the craft, though I was certain the years of dust and abandonment had somehow effected parts of the controls and the engine. There were blueprints framed beneath the same type of glass/plastic as the calendar on the desk had been, but because of the framework, the blueprints had survived the years in nearly perfect condition. As I studied one frame of blueprints, I caught this tickle of excitement begin to creep up on me as a crazy idea came to mind. Clearing off a spot on a workbench, I lovingly placed the blue binder still clutched in my hands down and began to examine the blueprints closer, growing more certain of my crazy idea.

I could restore this spacecraft. Even though I had only minor experience working on large machinery like this, I reasoned how different could building a running car from old and spare parts could this be? And here, I literally had everything spread out before me - the plans and tools laid out naked and bare, waiting for someone like me to come along and tend to it. This was fate at work.

Jett found her way to the old hangar two hours later. By then, I had long since figured out that there was a small lift beneath the office. There was a long lever on it that when pulled rose the lift up to the office, where a section of floor in one of the corners of the room sprung -- well, I had to push on it the first time to get it to move -- open and allowed a single rider to come up and down. I found the office's counterpart to the lever was the coat hanger hook, which acted like a lever to summon up the lift. When Jett arrived, I pulled the lever on the lift and let it rise up to the office above while I went back to the arduous task of cleaning off the spacecraft. I had found some old cloth sheets in a bundle beneath one of the several workbenches in the room and had cut up what was still usuable so I could rub away the years of dust and grime that had accumulated over the craft.

"Wow, I really thought you may have been hallucinating," Jett said as the lift whirred loudly down from the office.

"I've never hallucinated on such a grand scale before," I said, shaking the cloth in my black gloved hands before passing it over the back tail of the craft.

Quiet now, I could see Jett move uncertainly toward the spacecraft, her green eyes dark as she took in my supposed hallucination. The dark blue, purposely smeared, tattoo on the left side of her face complimented her tan complexion, the crummy lighting overhead making it pop out more than it usually did somehow. She trailed her bare fingertips over the metal hull in much the same fashion I had done earlier, a small grin tugging at her lips.

"You going to gawk all day at it or are you going to help me figure a way into the cockpit?" I asked, stepping back from the tail and dusting off my gloves.

She looked at me surprised. "You haven't gone in yet?"

"Since I knew you were coming, I thought I would wait."

"You couldn't figure out how to get in, huh?" Jett crossed her arms.

"Old airplanes are more my forte, so no," I sighed.

"Well, come on. If I'm going to have to be teaching you shit, you might as well get your pretty ass up here," Jett snickered as she climbed up onto one of the wings.

Rolling my eyes, I climbed up next to her, pausing long enough to feel so many unspoken words between us. Friends-with-benefits, yeah, it was something like that but definitely not the full story. I perched myself next to her on the wing without a word and watched as her fingers slid against the junction where the cockpit's glass dome and the craft's metal hull met. Jett slid her fingers backward against the seal until she made a click with her tongue and quickly pushed inward, then forward. With a hiss, the glass dome opened up and with a joyous whoop, I grabbed Jett's face in my hands and kissed her hard on the mouth. Maybe the kiss lingered a little longer than necessary, her tongue slipping into my mouth for a moment, but I pushed her away and shook my head.

"We have much more delicious things to attend to," I said, slipping into the driver's seat and groaning in rapture.

"I beg to differ. From where I'm looking, I see the most delicious thing."

"What's that?"

"You sitting in an old steampowered spacecraft. Shit doesn't get much hotter and more delicious than this," Jett growled huskily before sliding into the second seat behind me.

"Do you ever think about anything than sex?" I laughed, running my hands over the control panel before me.

"Sometimes I stop long enough to ruminate about which tea flavor would make the perfect after-sex drink."

Looking over my shoulder, I quirked my eyebrow. "And which one would that be?"

Jett smirked. "Depends on the meal."

We laughed, the laughter of two women tickled pink by the discovery of something so incredible that it shouldn't exist - like an eigthy percent off sale of shoes, or an eighty-year-old extinct spacecraft. As Jett said, the tea depended on the meal.

"What are we going to do with this thing?" Jett asked, studying the controls over my shoulder. Every now and then she would reach over and flick a switch or turn a knob out of curiosity.

"Aside from definitely restoring it? I don't know, to be honest. I still haven't really gotten past the giddy joy of discovery to really think about it," I frowned.

"Hey, check out what I found."

Turning, I got a nice shot of Jett's ass as she leaned over the back of her seat. When she turned around and slid back into place, she was holding an old leather bound book in her hands.

"I think it's a journal," she said, flipping it open without thought. "'I cannot believe I have spent my time believing in a family history that I cannot verify. Yet here I am, another late night in my false office above ground while I crave to get back to work on her in my real office below. It is either madness or the urge to break free of the monotony of my life that drives me forth.'"

"It must've belonged to whoever built this spacecraft," I said excitedly, grabbing for the journal. Jett knew better than to get between me and a new discovery and relinquished her hold on it so that I could flip open to a random earlier page. Yes, we both had similar qualities when it came to stubborness. "'My late uncle's will came with a map, or so they claimed. It was coded, obviously to protect its' secrets. I'm certain, though, that he knew I would be able to decode it with ease. Now I finally understand why he spent so much time giving me those puzzles as a child.'"

"There's a map too?" Jett said, slowly putting things together. "So a coded map and a spacecraft clearly meant for a special kind of voyage. Does this mean what I think it does?"

Silent for a long time, I tried to read the rest of the page but my mind was spinning so fast I felt a headache beginning to form. "Treasure," I finally whispered.

Unable to react fast enough, or perhaps deciding not to, Jett watched me scramble over my seat and plop into her lap. The space was somewhat cramped, but maneuverable enough.

"We found ourselves the jackpot of all jackpots," Jett said, feeding off my high energy.

"No, not yet, but we will," I assured before devouring Jett's mouth with mine.

Okay, I should be ashamed of myself, but I was too overjoyed to resist my actions. All this sudden excess energy was spilling over and what better place to burn some of it? Jett didn't exactly resist me either as her hands fllew to my front, unbuttoning my bodice and burying her face in the curve of my breasts as soon as she revealed it. She pawed the rest of my bodice off my shoulders, hungry to get to my bra clasp, and paused when I yelped as her hands brushed against my earlier injured shoulder. Narrowing her eyes, she moved me just enough so she could get a better look and cursed at whatever she saw.

"Fuck, Az! You said you didn't get hurt when you fell!"

"Oh, it's nothing major..."

"Not nothing...?! You have a bruise the size of a grapefruit on your shoulder!"

Leaning my forehead against Jett's, I sighed. "Do you want to fuck me, or would you rather fret over a superficial injury? I told you it was nothing and it really is. Kind of unavoidable to get hurt when you fall fifteen feet, you know?"

Not pleased, but also seeing the point to my words, Jett moved her hands slower against me, the previous fervor of her movements gone and replaced by the need to heal. Her fingers undid my bra clasp and carefully slid the straps off my shoulders, her lips warm and gentle against my skin. I suspected she didn't believe that was my only injury and decided to touch me as if I would break. I hated it, to be treated so gently, but gentleness wasn't a common trait in Jett, at all, so I enjoyed it. I enjoyed seeing this hidden side of my friend and sometimes lover.

Lips kissed the space between my breasts before latching onto a nipple, moving her tongue around it as her mouth sucked. She buried fingers in my long red hair, purposely getting tangled up and tugging each time I gasped or moaned. I wanted to run my fingers through her dark brown hair, but that provided I would have to remove my gloves, something I hated to do, and almost never did. So I settled for laying my hand against the back of her head and digging my gloved fingers into ther scalp each time she grazed one of my nipples with her teeth or played the tip of her tongue over the sensitive buds.

Leather slid against my bare back, exposed fingertips dragging blunt nails against my skin. The different textures brought a moan from my lips. Unlike me though, Jett couldn't stand too many layers of clothing between her skin and someone else's, and moved her hands away long enough to unstrap and pull off her fingerless gloves. When her skin touched mine, I groaned as her heat made me wetter than I already was. It seemed so illogical to be doing this right now, but Jett's hands moved down the rest of my frock, tugging up my skirt so she could run her bare hands up and down my legs, and it was hard to care over the whole illogical thing. Her tan fingers splayed out against my thighs, hands moving back to cup my ass.

"You're wearing too many clothes," I managed to moan out.

"We're not exactly in an ideal space to get too freaky, you know?"

With a small sigh, Jett reluctantly pulled away and with some help from me, we got off first her brown leather jacket and then her long sleeved pale blue shirt. My hands found her breasts, not bothering to try and remove her bra as I pushed the bra up and rolled brown nipples between my fingers. She cursed at the action, biting her lip as she leaned back, allowing me to have some fun with her breasts. I couldn't exactly bend down to run my tongue where I wanted to, but I could nibble her lips as I twisted one nipple and then the other before sliding a hand down between the tight space between us. The dark blue denim of her jeans scrapped against the side of my forearm as I slipped my hand past them, hand cupping her mound through her panties before moving against her slit, pushing in. Hissing when I found what I was looking for, Jett cursed from the friction of her panties against her clit as my fingers rubbed against it. She pushed herself up slightly, balancing me somehow on her legs despite her shorter frame, and allowing me a better chance to move my hand against her.

"I want you in me," Jett grunted. Upon seeing the look of hesitance on my face, she growled and nipped sharply at one of my nipples causing me to cry out. "Just do it," she said, her green eyes gentle beneath her frown.

Retracting my hand, I pulled off the black glove on my right hand and quickly shoved it back down her pants, slipping beneath her panties this time as she fumbled with her jeans' button and zipper. I caressed her clit, pinching it between my thumb and index finger and squeezing lightly before sliding up and down the small nub. Jett cried out and grabbed my shoulder, the uninjured one, digging her fingers into my flesh in surprise. Chuckling lightly, I slipped my index and middle fingers down, wiggling my way inside her and drawing a sigh of joy from coral colored lips. Thrust once, Jett's breath hitched. Thrust twice, her fingers somehow buried themselves deeper into my flesh without breaking through. Thrust thrice, green eyes fluttered before me, Jett's breath now a steady pant. There it was again, with each new thrust, I could see her lips tremble with words she wanted to say but knew she couldn't. We had a complicated relationship and maybe it was better she didn't say what it was she wanted, but that didn't mean I didn't long to hear what it was.

But things were complicated, as I said.

"Harder," Jett pleaded so softly that I immediately picked up my pace, curling my fingers as I moved them. Her mouth fell open as her eyes squeezed shut, body rocking against my thrusts, pulling me in deeper. With a long, drawn out curse, I felt her clench against around my fingers as her head fell back and I couldn't resist the urge to swoop down and attack her exposed throat with my teeth and lips.

"If you keep this up, we're not going have time to realize something important," Jett said, her tone amused yet mournful.

"What's that?" I asked, looking up.

"Where's the map?"

Where's the map? I repeated the question in my head and slowly my eyes widened at the realization. In our excitement, we completely overlooked the most important part of a good treasure hunt - the map! Groaning loudly, I leaned back and looked around the underground cavern in exasperation. Wiping my hand on my frock's skirt, I pulled my bodice back on, forgetting my bra, and climbed out of the spacecraft, ignoring Jett's disgruntled gripes as she sorted herself out and likely mentally kicked herself for pointing out our error, or more importantly, my error. I tried not to stew over the fact that Jett probably had realized the missing component right away and had simply went along with my excitement just to get a little 'fun' out of it. There would be hell to pay for her doing that, but later, not now -- I had to find that map.

A map that likely decayed years ago. Or was burned. Or went wherever the person that had built the spacecraft had went. In other words, the chances of it being here were slim to none, and yet I began searching every scrap of paper I came across. I pulled the framed blueprints from the wall in hopes of discovering false backs, but the backs were glass, showing nothing of interest. Workbench after workbench, I picked up everything, looked beneath everything, in-between everything. Again and again, I came up empty-handed until I finally leaned against the spacecraft and sighed in defeat. Okay, so I still had a really awesome spacecraft, I reasoned silently, and that was enough for me forty-five minutes ago. Making a fist, I nodded. Yes, that was still enough for me.

"What's this thing?" Jett asked, holding up the blue binder I had found in the office above.

"Um, I found it in the office you came in through. It contains plans and blueprints for the old airplanes."

"How well did you look through it?"

"I glanced at a few of the sheets but it was kind of dark so I didn't see much. Why does any of that matter?"

Flipping open the book, I guess while I had been scurrying about she must've picked it up to check it out, Jett flipped aside a few sheets before looking up at me. Holding the book firmly in two hands, she turned it so I could see, flipping it upside down in the process. At first I thought it was just some circular drawings that someone had dripped ink onto, and then I got a closer look. What I thought was ink drippings turned out to be constellations. The circles were planets with dotted lines revealing paths that lapped over the planets in the solar system. On one, the far side of Mars, was a large black X. My hazel eyes shot up to meet green ones and I exhaled long and slow before speaking.

"Do you think...?"

"Possibly. The binder is incredibly orderly and detailed. Whoever this guy, or gal, was, leaving this like this was not an accident in the least."

My fingers trembled as I reached out to take the binder, feeling so incredibly vindicated in having protected it the way I had when I had fallen earlier. I had to turn it over to see that if someone had been carelessly flipping through, they wouldn't have thought much of this particular section, not until they really looked at it and flipped it upside down. But yes, it was a map. There were no visible notes on the page, just the drawing.

"I bet that journal has the key to the map," Jett said.

"I don't think you could be more incredible than you currently are," I smiled.

"Chill with that or I'll get an ego, then what would you do with me?"

I laughed and kissed her.

Chapter 2

Eight months - that's how long it took Jett and myself to first clean and restore the spacecraft, and then another two months for me to reassemble the engine for it according to blueprints I found three months into restoration behind one of the framed blueprints on the wall -- it had been taped onto the wall backwards and painted carefully over. I still had no clue who this person was, but I deeply admired their ingenuity. The good thing about the whole process was that the parts were pretty much top of line from the time period, but that meant if anything broke, I would have a hard time locating a replacement piece at a scrapyard. Not that that stopped me. I was sure from the moment I laid eyes on the spacecraft that it would work with no problems, once everything was in place.

During this time, I read the journal, along with all and any notes lying around. The thing of most interest was of course the journal, though it never mentioned to whom it belonged to, Jett had been right about the coordinates and such for the map being in the journal. Also, according to the journal, it seemed that the last few entries alluded to the author's growing unease with not only new government policies at the time, but with his or hers growing insecurities about what they were doing, likely this was why there was no name to be found anywhere. The very last entry in the journal was rather interesting though and it gave a lot of insight to not only the kind of person this had been, but what possibly happened to them.

'I do not believe I'll be able to make my journey. Blackstill and Johanson have been shadowing my every move now for several weeks. I feel that either they are secret government workers or they somehow found out about my connection to my late uncle, a secret I have kept as deathly silent about as possible. After his crimes, I think anyone related to him is an immediate character of suspicion, or source of wealth. It's for the best they aren't many of us alive still.

I do not feel disappointed about not being able to go though. Not completely. What on earth would I truly do with this supposed treasure Uncle Wallace left behind? Not only that, but how would I explain my sudden wealth to my neighbors or co-workers? It's too risky and I fear that whatever reason Blackstill and Johanson are tailing me likely will not end well for me. I'm relieved I had that heavy door installed on my office some time ago for I imagine they would have ransacked my office by now. But I won't go down without a fight. Here I will take a page out of Uncle's book and go down fighting.

Tomorrow I will get in my car and lead them away from here, far away. With the closing of the airport within the next three days, I feel confident that they will never be able to return here and discover my secrets, but just in case, I'm going to dismantle the engine aboard Isis and hide the map in my papers as I doubt those thugs would be so thorough to search through them. They will likely think I have it with me, so I will burn a bunch of books and papers in my yard tonight and set off early in the morning tomorrow. My journal will remain in the only safe place I could think of for it, here aboard my spacecraft.

I hope to see you someday again my lovely Isis.'

***

"Are we really going to do this then?" Jett asked.

Looking up from the public news terminal, I nodded at her. "Yes, we are."

"But do really need to bring her?"

I could tell from the flicker in her eyes how she meant that to sound despite the calmness of her tone. Turning so I could lean against the wall beside Jett, our elbows touching, I looked out at the crowd of people going about their lives. Sometimes I felt so alien to this world where people relied on computers to make a living, where books and newspapers were replaced one by one with touch screens on walls, and where people modified their bodies with nano technology through tattoos. The large majority of people nowadays had at least one tattoo, each design referencing a specific nano-infused ability the ink had been suffused with prior to application. The nano upgrades were much the same as the tattoos, permanent, so one had to be careful and absolutely positive of what they were getting. Some unfortunate others aren't given an option about whether or not to get a tattoo.

Tucking my gloved hands into my long coat's pockets, I sighed. "Neither one of us has ever actually piloted a spacecraft. Leanna is a mercenary and has that kind of knowledge."

"Keyword here, for your information, is 'mercenary'. You can't trust any of them." Jett paused and shot me a side glance. "Even if you did use to fuck one."

Shooting my own side glance back at her, I frowned. "We didn't just fuck, might I remind you. We were in a serious relationship for five years."

"Yeah, and then she left you to rot the first chance she got!"

Clenching my jaw, I tried not to remember that. It was painful enough having to be reminded of it without actually having to remember it. Still, I liked to think with three years since that day, Leanna and I had both matured as adults and could put things like that behind us. Did I feel like I was selling my soul to the devil a little just by suggesting the idea of Leanna coming along though? Possibly. Still, I trusted Leanna, always had, and maybe that was my own special defect - trusting where I should be wary.

"We don't really have any other choices unless you want to wait a couple of years for you or I to acquire another spacecraft and learn how to pilot it? Because it's been nearly a year now since we found Isis and the time it's taken to get her up to a running state has been frustrating when we have a map we can't follow."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it." Jett pushed away from the wall, crossing her arms. The action pulled her leather sleeves away from her wrists, revealing part of the black and yellow arrow-like tattoos on her forearms. "Know that I'm still against this idea, but I'm just as impatient as you are so give her a call already."

"Where are you going?" I asked as she turned away.

"I'm going to get a new tattoo as a safety precaution," Jett called over her shoulder.

For a moment, I watched her go. As she disappeared into the crowd, I pushed away from the wall and headed the other way, pulling out my cellphone. I'm ashamed to admit that while Leanna's number was no longer in my contact list I hadn't forgotten it. Three years and I still remembered my ex's phone number, I'm a sorry sort. Of course, she probably had changed it by now, but I somehow doubted it. It wasn't in her nature to be unreachable because the more former contacts she had, the more likely she was to get hired for jobs that paid a very pretty penny. Dialing her number, I actually held my breath when it started ringing unsure how to feel as my emotions bounced from wary to anticipated to nervous.

"Whoever this is, you have thirty seconds to tell me why you're interrupting my nap," a groggy voice said.

"Um, hey there, Lea," I said immediately, my tongue taking over for my shutdown brain. "It's, uh, me."

There was a long moment of pause before Leanna spoke again. "Azura?"

"Yeah."

"Wow, it's been a while now. Couple of years, yeah? How are you?"

"I'm fine. Things are pretty much the same, more or less, for me. Listen, I know you rather I just get to the point so do you think I could meet up with you somewhere? After your nap?"

"I don't think I can fall back to sleep now that a lovely voice from the past has called upon me. I'll see you in an hour at the usual spot," Leanna said, blowing a kiss into the phone.

Agreeing, I hung up the phone and mentally scolded myself for blushing. There shouldn't have been any residue feelings left but that was the thing about Leanna, she just had this way of turning my insides into mush. After our break-up three years ago, I was certain I would never have anything to do with her again, ever, but things change. Hopefully for the better.

The usual spot had once been a cafe near the outskirts of the city, but about two years ago, there was a spree of arsons in the area and the cafe fell victim to the pyromaniac. At the time, I had thought it a cleansing, a way of burning out that part of my life. Standing on the sidewalk before the now empty lot where the cafe had once stood, I began questioning if this had been a good idea or not. There was a reason people broke up and moved on with their lives. It was why places like this burned down - it was the universe's way of saying that it was time to sever those old broken bonds and move on with your life.

"Jeeze, did you even age these last three years or did you get a rejuvenation tat?"

I spun around, frowning. "You know how I feel about tattoos," I said harshly.

Putting her dark brown hands up, Leanna shot me an apologetic smile. "Sorry. I got caught up in the moment. I'm just really surprised by how much you still look the same."

"Even though you were looking at my behind?"

"What else would I be talking about?"

Dammit, that smile of hers, and her flirty way with words. I couldn't help myself as I threw my arms around her shoulders, feeling a knot in my throat. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how much I missed her and feeling her in my arms again felt something akin to home. Stupid cliche emotions and feelings. When I pulled away I could see she looked surprised but with another flash of a smile, the look was gone and she was nodding her head at the empty lot.

"What happened here?"

"Burnt down."

"A pity," she said, combing back some black curls from her neck. "We use to have a lot of fun here."

I smiled. "No we didn't. We just ate here because this was the only place in the whole city that still played music on a jukebox."

"It was cute!"

"Yeah, it was," I laughed, then sobering up from the glee in my chest, I added, "But it's gone now."

Leanna stared at the lot for a long moment before slowly nodding in agreement. Digging a cigarette out from her pocket, she clicked her lighter on and lit it before offering me another one of her trademark smiles.

"So what can I help you with?" she asked, her eyes twinkling in an all-knowing way.

"I'm not really sure how to even go about telling you this, and it sounds completely far-fetched, trust me," I started, pausing with a frown.

"I'm already intrigued, girly. Do tell."

So I did. I told her everything about the old hangar, the spacecraft, the blueprints and restoration, and with some hesitance, I told her about the map. Purposely, I left out the stuff about the journal, saying I only found a note in some papers referring to the map and a possible treasure left behind in outer space. As much as I missed her and all, I knew I had to take a small precaution here, knowing that the journal contained important information that would likely not work out well in my favor if Leanna knew about it. Jett might have been pleased by that if she were here.

Chocolate eyes lit up at the mention of a map and a potential treasure. I knew even before she spoke that she was going to help me. "What's in it for me though?" she asked.

"You get a third of the share."

"Only a third?"

"I thought it would be fair to split in evenly three ways between you, me, and Jett."

"Jett...?" Leanna scowled at the name. "Jett Duran? The same woman that killed your father? That Jett?"

"She didn't kill him," I said, feeling my insides knot in an unpleasant way.

"Oh right, she just left him to die. In the mercenary world, that's the same thing as killing him you know." Leanna threw her cigarette on the ground and snuffed it out with a black boot. "Why is she involved in any of this?"

"Because when I had no one else, she was there."

This shut Leanna up as she stared out at the empty lot again. I knew what she was thinking of in that moment. Three years ago, I woke up one morning to find Leanna gone, and all her things too, and a note left behind on her side of the bed. It didn't say a whole lot but the bare bones was that she was tired of playing house with me. That she had met someone else a little while back and they were going off together to the other side of the Earth to do some mercenary work for the chick's father who was some rich and important guy. I fell apart for awhile after that, but Jett had been the one to step out of the dark and come to me and hold me while I sobbed and asked her why would the woman I loved so dearly do this to me. When I had passed out from crying, Jett would stay holding me until I awoke, or she would get me comfortable and go about doing whatever household chores that needed to be done. She encouraged me to shower, eat, and get dressed everyday, and after a month, she was dragging me out of my apartment, taking me for rides on her solarcycle to anywhere she thought would cheer me up.

Yeah, there had been an incident before that, right near the beginning of my relationship with Leanna. I had met Jett through my father when I was about twenty, Jett was only nineteen at the time, they worked on repairing solarcycles, nanobikes, and any hovercar that came their way. They were a pretty amazing team actually and after a few years, my father had made it clear that when he died, his business would go to Jett, which was fine with me and my brothers as none of us had a real passion for modern technology vehicles. One night, probably two or three months after I had begun dating Leanna, there was an explosion at my father's repair shop. One of the nanobikes malfunctioned and slammed into my father, running him over before it made a header at roughly seventy miles per hour into another nanobike. I wasn't too clear on what happened next, but that collision set off a chain reaction throughout the shop and before too long, the place was going up in a fiery ball of hell. Jett claimed she had tried to get my father out but his leg had gotten crushed when the nanobike rolled over him and when she tried to help him -- finding it nearly impossible because of her five foot two frame compared to my father's six foot two and three hundred and something pounds frame -- all he could do was scream for her to get out of there. After two or three failed attempts to help him, she finally jumped out of a window just before the whole place blew up.

We didn't really talk after that, because it was too painful to do so. For both of us. So it was with great surprise that Jett had been the one from everybody in my life to come and hold my hand during my moment of need after Leanna's departure. I think she was just as lonely as I was feeling at the time. Either way, she stuck by my side after that, always finding a way to keep an eye on me. While she wasn't big on calling me up on the phone, she usually just showed up at my doorstep, always checking up on me. Once I started pulling myself back together, our friendly relationship became a bit more intimate from there on out, but we never could bring ourselves to become more than just fuck buddies because there was still too much guilt and pain left over from our pasts to allow anything more to grow between us.

Of course, that wasn't what Leanna was thinking right now in the present, but I'm sure she was recalling that last night before she left. It was clear from her expression that she wasn't completely ready to speak about it yet, which was fine. I wasn't either.

"So, you want me to pilot this spacecraft for you?" she finally said after a long stretch of silence.

"Yes, if you don't mind?"

"I don't. I think I owe you as much after what I did."

In my head, I agreed, but I said nothing.

"So let's go treasure hunting!" Leanna smiled.

All too soon, Leanna and I were pulling up to the old hangar on her steamcycle. I was surprised she still had it to be honest. Back when we first began dating, Leanna hadn't been too keen of my love of old technology, but still humored me enough to allow me to build her a state-of-the-art steamcycle, circa 2045. As an added bonus, and a reward for her humoring me, I made the engine a modern, nano tech infused one -- though you could flip a switch and smoke would pour out of the back like the old steamcycles use to do. So not only did it have the vintage look I loved so much, but it tore through the streets better than most of the newer cycle models could. I was under the impression that when she left me, she had sold it.

Directing her into the hangar, I dismounted and took a moment to fix my old fashioned trousers, glad I had worn them. When I looked up, Leanna was watching me from where she still sat on the steamcycle making me fidget slightly. While I hadn't caught her checking me out earlier in the day, I could definitely see her doing it now.

"Stop that," I said, pulling my long coat closed.

"Sorry, old habits die hard."

Now dismounting, she removed her helmet as I tried to brush it off before we headed inside the office. In the past eight months, I had dusted the place and made some minor repairs to the hole in the floor, mostly to appreciate the space for how it use to look. Jett had teased me about it, but one day I had come in and found that she had set up a light so that I could better see the place. I didn't flip it on now as I pulled on the lift lever and stepped with Leanna onto the corner floor piece just as it began to descend. The lift was built for one person so we had to squeeze together as it went down, but it was clear from Leanna's smile when light welcomed us from below that she was pleased with the arrangement. The area below ground, what Jett and I had dubbed the Underground Hangar of Mystery, was well lit and much cleaner than what I had found eight months ago. Together, Jett and I had did a major clean up of the place before we even went about touching Isis for a full maintenance. The lift didn't whir anymore either now that it had been probably oiled, instead opting now for a gentle hum that was barely audible.

Despite her disposition toward old technology, Leanna went wide eyed at the sight of Isis and I couldn't help but take pride in that. Before, Isis had been covered in dust and grime, looking dark and old, but now she was a bright copper color. Restored to her former glory, she looked dynamic and I imagined the author of the journal probably felt the same twitch of pride every time he or she came down here and looked at it. Leanna stepped forward a few steps, gawking at it, before descending the small staircase by the wall and slowly circling around the spacecraft.

"You think it can really fly?" Leanna finally asked, looking over at me for the first time.

"It depends on how well you can fly."

Snapping our heads to the side, we both noticed for the first time that we were not alone, and hadn't been the whole time since we entered the Underground Hangar. Standing up from the workbench we had converted into a desk, Jett stepped near Isis, her gaze never leaving Leanna. The air of excitement went out of the room and was quickly replaced with murderous tension as my ex and my fuck buddy stared each other down.

"You must be Jett," Leanna finally said, squaring up her shoulders.

"You must be that chick that broke Azura's heart," Jett shot back.

"Guys, please," I pleaded, my voice sounding lost in the midst of their tension. "I know you both have apprehensions about each other but can't you both put that aside for this treasure hunt? Or at least for me?"

Leanna was the first one to hold up her hands in surrender. "I can do it, for you, Azura. I'm an adult like that."

"I am too," Jett said, scowling still but going back to the desk. That was her own way of surrendering and I accepted it, though Leanna still seemed on guard as she looked back up at Isis. Nimbly, Leanna climbed up to Isis's cockpit and opened up the glass dome to get a better look at what she would be dealing with. Letting her figure it out, I went over to check on Jett who was still watching Leanna.

"Did you get the tattoo you wanted?" I asked.

"No. Decided against it at the last minute." Finally turning her green eyes to me, Jett smiled softly as she added, "I know how much you hate them."

Biting my lip, I reached out and cradled her left cheek in my gloved hand. Sliding my thumb over the Smeared Paint tattoo on the space just beneath her eye and across her cheekbone, I followed it down to where it ended in a point against her cheek. I had my reasons for not liking tattoos, but I did appreciate the atheistic appeal of them against human flesh. Jett only had the three, this one, and the Broken Arrows, one on each forearm. They looked amazing to me against her natural light caramel colored skin, besides, I understood why she had hers and I accepted that. The Smeared Paint enhanced her sense of sight, hearing, smell, and taste. She didn't like to talk about it much, but there had been an incident when she was a teen where someone attacked her with a knife, sneaking up behind her to try and get the drop on her. There was still a scar running down her left shoulder where the knife had managed to dig in before she was able to get away. The Broken Arrows enhanced her arm strength, allowing her to lift heavy items with relative ease and letting her hit hard too. She got them after my father's death.

Those were tattoos I could appreciate, could respect. She had done them to keep herself safe and to help others. Pressing a kiss to her tattoo, I rested my forehead against hers, gazing into her eyes.

"They're pretty on you," I whispered.

There was a flash of surprise in her eyes because I never said anything about her tattoos before. Usually I just skirted around the issue, evading it with such precision that it always seemed like the subject hadn't even come up. She began saying something but a loud beep made us look back at Isis. Leanna was sitting in the pilot seat, looking triumphant.

"I can fly this thing! I wasn't sure at first but the controls are like that of a VZM-994 spacecraft. You remember that one, don't you Azura?"

Nodding, I moved toward Isis as I began recounting the day Leanna and I stumbled across the cockpit-only portion in a junkyard. It was some time before I realized Jett had wandered off, the now nearly quiet lift going unnoticed in Leanna and I's recounts of our past ventures together.

Chapter 3

The day of take off finally arrives and things will not go as planned. Not in the least.

The night before take off I had the hottest, and most bizarre dream I ever had.

I dreamt I was in bed with Leanna and Jett, at the same time and they weren't fighting with each other. Instead, Leanna was seated behind me, her naked breasts pressed against my naked back and her dark arms were wrapped around me, holding me close as her hands kneaded my breasts. Jett was on her knees before me, kissing my pale thighs up to my crotch, where she took my clit in between her teeth delicately, tongue lashing out against the small bundle of nerves over and over. As I withered beneath their combined touching, Leanna kissed my shoulders, trailing up my neck before retracing her steps with small bites. Looking down, my body was so pale, paler than usual, in contrast to the dark and caramel skins pressed against me, and I absolutely loved it. Green eyes peered up at me from between my legs, the look so familiar and so much more beautiful in that moment. Then Leanna was whispering things in my ear, dirty, filthy things that brought me over the edge in a cry of ecstasy.

I woke up with my bedsheets twisted around my body as if I had been trying to escape from them, or withering around in pleasure. My red hair was matted to my forehead and neck as I tried to fix myself and go back to sleep, but I couldn't get rid of the remnants of the dream that still clung to my consciousness. Rolling to the side, I reached for my side-table drawer, pulling my hand back when it had wrapped around the vibrator I kept in there. Surprisingly, I didn't actually use it all that often, partially because I tended to be so busy building something or exploring that I was usually exhausted by the time I laid down for the night. Also partially because Jett tended to be readily at hand when I was in the mood. Since she wasn't around now, I got rid of my nightshirt and cranked the handle at the base of the vibrator. I had to slap the side twice before the gears inside caught and it began to vibrate in my hand. No, it wasn't steampowered, more like my own mad science creation based upon old steampowered sex toys. Those were too clunky though, and were likely very uncomfortable unless you got used to them, supposedly. So I had taken some basic designs from those and combined them with just some simple old clockwork ingenuity. Talk about a risk! Clockwork was way older than steampower in the twenty-second century, not a very common practice at all anymore. Still, it had worked quite perfectly.

My thighs were already moist when I reached between them, allowing me to slip the vibrator into myself with little resistance. Leaning back, I carefully held the toy so my hand didn't stop the crank from turning which would basically shut off the whole thing off. Leaning back on my elbow, I moved the toy in and out, closing my eyes and imaging Leanna's fingers pumping into me, then imagining Jett taking over and slipping into me with the strap-on she wore beneath her clothes sometimes. I don't know what possessed my mind to dance these images around in my head, but the more I imagined, the more aroused I grew. Sweat slid down my spine and my limbs trembled as I finally cried out, a name on my lips that I couldn't hear over the din of pleasure rippling through my body. Removing the vibrator, I stopped the crank and set the toy aside and flopped onto my back. This probably hadn't been a good idea, my dream and then this display of private debauchery, but what was done was done and I didn't really regret it.

I just felt conflicted about the name I had cried out.

***

"Are you sure you're okay traveling like this?" I asked for the fifth time.

Jett smirked up at me from where she sat in the cockpit. We all had agreed that in order to survive this expedition, I would have to sit in the middle seat, which left Jett to sit in the weird space behind the second seat. She had rigged it with a seatbelt though, something that held her in place without taking up any unnecessary room.

"I'm perfectly comfortable here, Az. Chill."

"If you say so..." I finally sighed. This drew Jett from her seat and she pressed a soft kiss to my cheek before sitting back down.

As she buckled up, I looked around the Underground Hangar for a final time. It was odd how in the last nine months, this had become something akin to a home for me. Eight of those months I spent them nearly everyday with Jett, and the last one had been spent trying to keep her and Leanna from coming to blows as Leanna tweaked the control panel so she could fly it without a hitch. Even now I could sense an uneasy tension between the two whenever they so much glanced in the other's direction. Still, Leanna had estimated our journey should take no more than a couple of hours both ways, not counting the time we'll spend actually searching for the mythical treasure, if it still existed.

Climbing into my seat, I buckled in and pressed the button on the small remote in my hand. Ahead, the wall began to violently tremble as it slowly pushed outward and then slid open into the backside of a cliff some yards away from the airport overhead. It had taken some doing to find the opening, but when I stumbled across the remote hiding beneath the old cloth sheets beneath the workbench, I knew it had to be important. Unfortunately, it had been broken, as if someone in a hurry had stomped on it before throwing the sheets on it, but it wasn't that hard to fix. Setting it in the indent beside my seat, I watched Leanna finish off the last of her routine maintenance checks on the control panel before she turned around.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Very."

"Hold tight then."

And with that, the glass dome closed, control panels around us flickered on, and we rolling forward, our breaths held. Perhaps it would have been ideal to test out whether Isis would fly or not beforehand but that had seemed risky, especially before Leanna had joined our crew. The gears in the engine could be heard pulling themselves into place, igniting a fire within the engine's very center that began pushing out billows of white smoke out the sides of the spacecraft's hull. Then with a literal spark in the rear, large flames erupting from the backside and we were thrown back into our seats as Isis sped forward into the open air. Clearing the ground, there was a tense moment as Isis went low, the fear of dying rapidly spreading through my mind, before Leanna turned a crank by her hip and Isis was arching upward into the sky. Higher and higher we went - my knuckles were white as I clenched my hands in tight fists. Behind me, Jett let out a curse and lapsed into a barely audible prayer. We were smashing now through clouds, the atmosphere bleeding into the black of space and then...

"Whoa!"

That was the only word uttered as the sky gave way to space and we were left with nothing but stars and black over our heads. It had been a few years since I last visited space, not since my years with Leanna, unsurprisingly. It still took my breath away though and judging from Jett's silence behind me, it took hers away too. Further helping the experience was that Isis seemed to hold together well as Leanna turned several more cranks and sighed a breath of relief as she pulled a lever and turned Isis toward Mars.

Believe it or not, once the awe passed, space was a little on the boring side. Please don't misjudge what I'm saying. I love space! It's wonderful to be able to see the stars and planets like this, but there was only so much you could do once you were out here in a spacecraft or a shuttle. It was the same as being in a car on a long road trip, only there was no radio to distract you, at least not aboard Isis. There wasn't much to say to each other that hadn't been said already, or that wouldn't start an argument between Jett and Leanna. So we mostly stared at Mars as we drew closer to it. The Red Planet was primarily settled upon in an attempt to end Earth's problem with overpopulation, but humanity found special resources on it that turned out to be more valuable and so now the several sprawled out colonies over the planet held less than half of the population they were meant to hold as the other half traveled back and forth everyday to mine the special resources or work at any number of factories on Mars that broke down the special resources so we could use them on Earth. Overpopulation on Earth is unsurprisingly still a problem.

There was one thing good about the small population on Mars, at least for us - it was less likely someone had accidentally stumbled across the treasure. Which was good because it's supposed location wasn't all that far from one of the of colonies and I wondered if that was a poor coincidence or purposely planned that way. It was hard to tell and the journal held no notes or theories about it because obviously, how would the author had known? When we finally entered Mars' atmosphere, Jett let out a breath.

"I thought we would never make it this far."

"Is this your first time out to space?" Leanna asked.

"Yeah. Problem?"

"Oh, no. No problem. Just asking."

I could hear the teasing tone in Leanna's voice. She was well accustomed to these long, solitary flights, but Jett was not and it was likely she was cagey. I'm positive Leanna knew this too as she chuckled just loud enough for Jett to hear. Before they could get into it, and I was literally caught in the middle of their arguing, I cleared my throat and prayed to distract them just long enough for us to get there.

"How much further, Lea?" I asked. Behind me, Jett huffed, clearly peeved about being cut off before she could rip into the pilot.

"Actually, not too much longer," Leanna answered. "You know, I've been meaning to ask you something, Azura. Why was it so important that we used this spacecraft and not something newer? We could already be heading back with our jackpot by now."

"You knew me so well for five years. Why do you think?"

Leanna turned her head so I could see her scrunch up her nose. "Please tell me it's not because you just liked how it look?"

"Mostly because of that, yeah, but also because it felt... Important to do so."

"How so?"

"Someone went through all the trouble of building this craft but left behind the map for it. That tells me one of two things: Either the person died before they could set off, or they chickened out at the last minute. So it feels right to take their craft and complete their goal."

Leanna laughed. "And what if they already went and found the treasure? What if they just left the craft and the map behind just because they didn't need them anymore?"

"No," I quickly said. "I'm positive that isn't what happened."

"How could you know?"

I opened my mouth but Jett jabbed me with the tips of her fingers. The tattoos on her arms made it hurt pretty badly, but that pain was welcomed as it reminded me to watch my tongue. "You didn't see how we found the papers about it. It was too well hidden for it to be have just tossed aside."

There was a tingle in the back of my throat though as I realized that my hesitance and argument over a moot point made me suspicious. Leanna did not like suspicious and she defintiely didn't trust suspicious people, even if she did use to fuck them. I shot Jett an apologetic look before explaining myself.

"Actually, I know because..."

As I began to tell Leanna about the journal, I could hear Jett curse in spanish and slap her forehead, the sound ringing in the cockpit around my words. I knew I was doing something stupid but if Leanna didn't trust us, it could easily end badly for Jett and I. Because I wasn't a good liar, especially not to someone that once had been pretty acutely tuned into my emotions, it was better to tell the truth for me. I did try to keep the details about what was in the journal to a minimal, but some things did accidentally slip.

"Wallace, eh? Now that's a name that sounds familiar."

"Really?" Jett asked, both disbelieving, yet curious all the same.

"Wasn't there a Wallace Marigold that robbed over twenty banks in the early 2060's? They called him 'Jetset Wally' after it came out that he was the one behind the crimes," Leanna said seriously. "He supposedly got close to a billion dollars through his many heists."

"Oh my god! Wasn't it because of him that they ended up regulating jetpacks?" I asked as it all began to dawn on me.

"Yes, because he was in his sixties by the time they found out it was him and realized that if someone at that age could do it so well, then anyone could."

"That was in 2065, right?" I asked.

"Right," Leanna nodded.

Looking back at Jett, my brows were raised in amazement and shock as I pieced together everything. Wallace Marigold, when they finally tracked him down, was a dying man. They arrested him but he never saw trial, dying in his sleep peacefully a week before his trial date. That had been, believe it or not, in my history books as a child. At the same time they were preparing to try him, the government was hard at work trying to figure out ways to keep anymore 'Jetset Wally's from happening every again. That was in 2065, the year on the calendar in the office. Likely, sometime just before he was caught, Wallace left a will to his nephew or niece, leaving them with all they would need to find his loot. Close to a billion dollars was honestly far more than I had hoped to get out of this. I thought maybe there was a few hundred thousand at the most, and maybe some kind of old technology buried with it. It would have been a perfect score like that, but this revelation had changed the game - the rules shifting and changing around the three of us with every breath we took until I wanted to hold my breath to make it stop.

Money was an evil component of man. We lusted for it because it brought our lives ease and carefree thoughts. Almost a billion dollars was enough to kill people for. I wanted to believe I could fully trust both of the women seated with me at that moment, but the truth was, we all had become our own man in this game. The once united team now divided into three separate ones, and it was all because I opened my big mouth. Okay, so yeah, there was a possibility we would have found the treasure and realized we had a shitload of money from it, but by then we would have been back on Earth. A more neutral playing ground for the three of us. Space was no man's land, because after all, in space, no can hear you scream.

Not being able to see either women's face at that moment only made the knot in my throat grow bigger as I tried to pretend that I hadn't just realized what I did. Yet that same tension I felt anytime Leanna and Jett were standing in the same room was now trying to drown me. Maybe it was best that we didn't have weapons with us, just tools to do digging. Okay, tools that could be used as weapons. Fuck, we were all fucked.

The rest of the flight was silent, deathly so. At least before there would be the occasional cough or yawn or even a breath of awe at something that was seen, but there wasn't any of that now. My silence was brought about from the lump in my throat, the other two I could only imagine why they were silent. Thankfully, it wasn't long before Leanna was pushing buttons and levers, turning the crank as she prepared us to land. From beneath our seats, we removed the breathing helmets stored there. There had been old breathing helmets here but no one was willing to take a risk with them so we swapped them out for newer ones. They weren't much different than their ancestors in anything other than new design and the fact that the new ones were more reliable and less likely to fail because of an accidental bump. Before I put mine on though, I looked up at the tawny Martian sky above.

"If this is Wallace Marigold's treasure, there's no way it could be that large, and even if it is, we're all mature adults capable of thinking clearly and splitting a treasure of that size in equal parts, right?" I asked.

Silence for a moment and then Leanna said, "Sure, Azura, we are."

Jett remained silent as she put her helmet in place and gathered the pack with our tools from the hatch beneath her feet. When I met her eyes, she gave me a small nod, perhaps in agreement to what I had asked, or perhaps to merely assure me that she wouldn't kill me. I wasn't comforted by it though. Helmets in place, Leanna opened the glass dome as I turned on the communicator in my helmet. We leapt out and followed Leanna who had a digital version of the map in a handheld device. For awhile we trekked in a straight line, the silence from Isis following us like mourners behind a coffin raised on pallbearers' shoulder. Trailing off to my left side, Jett purposely lagged behind as we walked. I tried to start up a conversation with her but she shook her head and kept her eyes trained on Leanna's back. Jett was prone to being either one of two things: Moody, but reasonable unless angered or silent and angry. It had been a long time since I had seen her this silent, and even still, I had never seen her this distant before. Not since immediately after my father's death.

We came to a large series of rocks, thrown here likely during construction at one of the colonies. A rock dumping ground, if you will. The device in Leanna's hand beeped loudly, flashing a dot on the screen. Looking up, Leanna frowned until she realized where the map was indicating the treasure to be. I followed her to the rocks, watched as she tested the stability of the rocks and then climbed up them. At the top, she checked the device again and sighed when it beeped again.

"Looks like we have to move these rocks to get to it," she said, pocketing the device and grabbing a large rock at her feet.

Looking at the pile before me, Leanna was currently standing at least ten feet off the ground where she stood, I sighed too. "All of these here?"

"Seems so, Azura. I give it to old Wallace, this was a smart place to hide a treasure of that size-"

"Supposedly," I quickly said.

"Right," Leanna said slowly. "Anyway, this is a smart place to hide a treasure. I don't think anyone has come here for anything but to dump more rocks."

This brought a smile to my lips as I felt a surge of energy rush through me. Thanks to the gravity, moving rocks wasn't so hard, but it still took our combined effort a good while to clear enough rocks to not only uncover the red soil but also to feel confident we had enough room to dig. Jett passed out the shovels when we were ready and we set to work, our heavy pants now filling the previous silence. It seemed like forever that we dug, the hole growing wider and deeper, but nothing but red Mars soil, and some ice, appeared. Taking a rest, I leaned against my shovel and watched the other two work, realizing for the first time how hot and sweaty they looked despite the cold tempature, yet so fiercely determined to find the treasure. I imagined the lines of their bodies bunching and stretching as they moved around in the hole we had created. The wind was picking up, not a good sign, sweeping red across their breasts and down their backs. Ordinarily, I would say I wasn't that highly a sexual person, but that was because I tended to be busy with my little projects and explorations. There was something about these two that lit a fire inside me, and even though I knew things were currently toeing the line of danger, I still had faith that neither one would turn on the rest of us.

Just in case though, we all seemed to be working separately, but with plenty of room to see the others as we dug. I wasn't sure whether that was coincidental or accidental, but Jett was still shooting Leanna cold leers every so often so I had a feeling what the answer was. Sighing, I went back to work, hefting another two shovelfuls before clanging down on another layer of ice. We had discovered several small patches already, not unusual considering the environment, but a nuisance nonetheless. I dug around the edges, hoping to find that perhaps this was another random slab of ice, easy to remove with a little effort. Instead, I realized after a minute that this wasn't ice I was scrapping at. It was metal. Growing excited, I quickly worked the shovel around, looking for an edge. When I found one, I followed it around, scooping away soil without realizing that Leanna and Jett had begun to help me, excitement sparkling in their eyes. Beneath the soil was a five-by-five metal box top with probably just as much height going down into the soil. Getting down on our knees, we looked for a latch until we found two on three of the sides of the box. We had to dig out more soil to uncover them fully and when we did, we looked up at each other and reached for the latches on our side of the box at the same time. Because the wind was still growing strong, we could only take a peek in, but that was enough. Enough to confirm we had hit the mother of all payloads.

"Shit," Leanna breathed in awe, "It's filled."

"Filled," I somehow managed to repeat in my awe.

It was the first time since we had left Earth that any of us smiled, really smiled. Even Jett looked overjoyed to the point of tears despite all of her scowling and cold gazes. I leapt up and hugged Leanna, who was the closest to me and then tackled Jett onto her back. It took a moment for us to disentangle long enough to realize that Leanna was frowning as she stared down at the box.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Isis can't haul that thing all the way back to Earth."

Thinking about it for a moment, I began to frown myself, all the excitement draining out of me as quickly as it had came on. Isis was by no means a big spacecraft, barely able to fit all three of us within her cockpit. The rest of her body was bulky, but that was all room for the intricate mechanisms that helped her fly and whatnot. It was going to suck, but we only had two options: Leave the treasure behind and find a bigger spacecraft or bring it back home a bit at a time. Neither option was desirable.

I had become so distracted puzzling this all over that I hadn't realized what was going on around me. I hadn't realized that the wind was now kicking up the soil, a dust storm getting ready to brew. I also failed to realize that Leanna had drawn a gun and was aiming it in my direction. Time slowed down as I finally looked up, finally noticed the gun. The most I could do was gasp before time caught up and to make up for slowing down, it moved quickly to catch up to where it belonged. My eyes squeezed shut as the gun went off, the phaser beam impossibly bright against my closed eyelids as I waited to die. A scream filled my helmet, but it wasn't my own. Opening my eyes, I swung my head around in time to watch Jett finish falling onto her side, the impact of the beam having struck her in the chest and spinning her around as she fell. Screaming her name, Leanna grabbed my bicep to hold me from running to her.

"She was coming at you with the shovel," Leanna said, her voice strained.

That was crazy, but the evidence was right there in front of me. The shovel, the one I hadn't even noticed in my the shock of the moment, was still clenched in Jett's hand. Leanna stepped forward and yanked it away, kicking Jett to see if she would flinch but if the small pool of blood was anything to go by, she wasn't going to flinch ever again. It took all my willpower not to throw up right there in my helmet at this revelation. Jett had become such an integral part of my and now... I didn't want to think about it.

"Don't worry," Leanna cooed to me, hugging me to her. "You're safe now."

Shaking my head in my grief, I couldn't find the words to convey how I felt. I wasn't freaking out because I thought Jett had tried to kill me, I was freaking out because Jett was dead. The digging claws of pain that accompanied grief finally settled in as I sobbed loudly and finally began to scream.

Chapter 4

[Author's notes: Azura is now a prisoner, but she hasn't even begun to fight.]

Time seemed to fail me after Jett's death. The most I remembered was passing out as the dust storm began to darken the air around Leanna and myself, the temperature fluctuating from hot to too cold in seconds. When I awoke, I was naked beneath silk sheets and completely unfamiliar with my surroundings. Confused, I sat up and looked around, waiting for things to look familiar to me, thinking that perhaps this was a symptom of my grief. Perhaps I had died from it. Was I dead? Pinching my hand, I grimaced as pain was my answer. Okay, so I wasn't dead, but where the hell was I and why was I naked? Even my gloves were absent, which was problematic to me.

In a bolted down dresser, I found a pair of beige slacks and a white blouse with wide cuffs. It wasn't my usual style, but it was decent enough to wear. Slipping them on, I pawed through the drawers for gloves or something I could wear over my hands but I found nothing. With a heavy sigh, I slammed the last drawer closed and looked around for some kind of footwear. There was a single pair of dark brown knee-high boots beneath the bed that were a size too large for my feet but with a shrug, I slipped them on and pulled the straps tight through the clasps on the sides to make up for the size difference. When I was done, I found a black ribbon and used it to tie my red hair away from my face. I didn't know where I was, but I was going to make sure I was prepared to make a run for it and it definitely would have been difficult to accomplish that while in the buff. Sparing a glance in a mirror, I couldn't help but notice the dark bags under my hazel eyes. I looked sick, or grief riddled, which I was but it didn't really help to see it reflected back in the mirror.

The door across from the bed was heavy and metal, but it opened with ease, allowing me to step into a metallic corridor. Strangely, this looked familiar, but I couldn't exactly explain why just yet. Closing the door behind me, I turned my head to look down both ends of the corridor but was unable to see anything of interest as both ends curved toward other corridors. This room seemed to be the only one in this particular area as well so I picked a side and followed it around. Now I could see some doors, one to my left, closed tightly, and another a little further down on the same wall, also closed tightly. The corridor ended in a narrow flight of steps heading up so I followed it, the whole time overcome with a sense of deja vu that I couldn't shake. At the top of the steps, the wall to my immediate right opened up to a very spacious area that looked more than just familiar. I knew exactly where I was having been here once before, but before I could collect my wits, there was a gun in my face and a pair of angry blue eyes and blonde hair behind it.

"Stay where you are."

Holding up my hands, I fought the urge to laugh because this was going from bad to surreal really quickly.

"Put down your gun, Sadie," another voice said.

I didn't want to look, but I knew who's voice that was and maybe I wasn't all together in the head at the moment, but I was still able to grasp my situation enough to not want to look at the speaker because it would only confirm things I was not willing to accept. Still, I listened to boots move toward me, and as I placed my hands down, I looked up into familiar chocolate brown eyes.

"What is this, Lea?" I asked.

She seemed honestly sorry as she looked away for a moment before meeting my eyes again with a small fire behind them. "You have to understand," she started, "that things have gotten tough for me lately. I realized you coming back into my life was a blessing in disguise, and when you told me about the treasure, it just seemed to confirm it."

"I thought you were a successful mercenary? What happened to all your connections?"

Leanna looked uncomfortable as she spoke. "That chick I left you for didn't take so kindly to our break-up a year later. She used her father's power and connections to fuck up all my connections, cutting me off from them like a junkie from their fix. I got a bit desperate and turned to the only other thing I knew I could do."

Glancing around the room, I eyed the faces watching us - looked at the guns in their hands - before meeting Leanna's gaze again. "You turned to pirating," I said with disgust. "The most vile occupation anyone can be in. Granted, mercenary work wasn't much better but at least sometimes you got hired to do good things for others."

"Don't try to make it sound like it's worst than your hobby building!" Leanna shouted, anger spreading through her quickly. "That shit isn't even an occupation! It's a miracle people are stupid enough to buy your old bullshit."

"At least it's an honest job. I don't steal from people, only give them things I created with my own two hands."

"And if it wasn't for those tattoos on your hands, you wouldn't be able to do that," Leanna spat.

That was a low blow. Lower than leaving me for another woman or shooting my best friend dead in front of my eyes. I clenched my jaw as I struggled to keep control of my emotions. It hadn't been my decision to get the identical golden striped tattoos on the back of my hands. When I was younger, ten and eager to prove I could build things like my brothers and father did, I crushed my hands in an accident at the junkyard. I had been trying to pull a piece of metal sheeting out from under a pile of spare car parts, thinking I could pull it hard and fast enough to avoid the stuff on top of it from falling on me. It turned out that I couldn't, and the result was a car door coming down on my hands, smashing them badly. I don't know how it didn't crush both my arms as well and even the doctors had been surprised by the fact that my injuries were only below my wrists, but it didn't change the fact of how severe my injuries were. The doctors were geared up to amputate my hands but in a painkiller-induced fog, I begged them to save my hands, anyway they could.

And they did, to the surprise of all, including the doctors themselves, but it was not a flawless victory. Even after the bones healed, the tendons and nerves in my hands had been so severely damaged that my fingers twitched involuntarily all the time. My hands shook as well, unable to control their own impulses. I could still feel things with them, but it was nearly impossible to hold or grab anything, having to suffer the humiliation of my brothers spoon feeding me food and my mother wiping my bottom whenever I went to the bathroom. The doctors made the only suggestion they could: get a tattoo. The nanos in certain designs would heal my hands enough to enable me to use them again, but nothing was guaranteed. While I had admired tattoos on other people, I knew I never wanted one because they seemed wrong to me somehow. Plus, I was happy with myself. But the pain and humiliation was so much that my parents one day put me in our family hovercar and brought me to a tattoo shop. They had already chosen a tattoo for me and while I cried not to let them do this, my father gently held me in his lap and held out my hand as still as possible so they could etch three gold stripes on the back of one hand and then the other.

The Golden Bars, as they were properly called, governed the impulses in my hands. They suppressed the urge to twitch to the point where my hands did nothing but remain perfectly still for a week while the nanos reconfigured the impulses and such in my hands until I was able to move them like normal again. Although, now my hands never flinched or twitched or involuntarily spazzed out on me in any way. If I didn't move them, they made me think of doll hands. I was angry at my parents for a while after that, but in time I learned to appreciate what they had done for me, though I couldn't stand the sight of my tattoos - of my disability - so I took to wearing gloves all the time to hide them. Leanna knew what an impact her words would make on me, and while I knew she was angry, she had crossed dangerous territory. To stoop that low to hurt me was unforgivable, and she knew it as her eyes squeezed shut just before my fist collided with her eye, At least twenty guns came to point at me as I brought my fist back, ready to hit her again.

"Stand down, men," Leanna shouted, wheeling around with her hand pressed to her eye.

Her crew paused, some clearly itching to pull their trigger, but eventually they all lowered their guns.

"You disgust me, Lea!" I cried out, furious now. "And you killed my best friend!"

She glowered at me through her one good eye as two of her crew tended to her hurt eye. "That miscreant didn't deserve the honor of your time, especially not after she killed your father."

"She didn't kill him. It was an accident, and either way, at least she apologized for what happened, unlike some people. At least she was there to hold me after you ran off with that bitch. I'm glad she fucked over your life, by the way. You deserved it."

"I'm only sorry I didn't kill Jett sooner," Leanna hissed.

Thankfully for her good eye, two of her crew members held me back from hitting her again. I screamed in frustration and because I really felt defeated in that moment. Here was someone I had trusted, spitting in my face and taking away everything I had worked hard to get. I felt so foolish in that moment as I remembered the look on Jett's face the day I told her I was going to bring Leanna into this. She had been right, never trust a mercenary, especially a former one.

"Take her back to my quarters," Leanna ordered. "Maybe if she can learn to behave, I'll give her a coin or two of the treasure as a thank you for finding it for us."

There was some laughter in the room, but not much as I was dragged back down the stairs I had come up and back down the corridors to the room I had woken up in. I lashed out at one of the crew members as they tried to put me back in the room, the same one that first put her gun in my face, and clipped her in the jaw with my hand. Blue eyes burned brightly as she brought the butt of her gun up and clocked me first in the cheek and then in the stomach with it. Going down to my knees, she stooped before me and held my chin in-between her fingers so I could look her in the eye.

"I'm only going to tell you this once, firecrotch, and that's only a formality because you're the Captain's prize, though I don't know what she sees in you, especially after that shit you just pulled, but you better listen to me now. If you ever dare to put your hands on me again, I will put a bullet right between those pretty eyes of yours. Do you get me?"

I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything that would help me out of this situation alive. She let me go and wiped her fingers on her pants as she stood up and nodded to her buddy. A boot caught me in the forehead, sending me flying backwards onto my ass. The two broke out into laughter and finally left the room, slamming the door shut behind them. My head spun wildly as the surprise gave way to frustration and then sadness. I laid back and stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore the throbbing headache I had developed. Where did I go from here? It seemed I was my ex's prisoner now, no chance of escaping from a crew of twenty or so people. I only wished Jett was there to help me, and that thought made me sit up straight, slowly, as moving made me dizzy.

If Jett were in this situation, I began to think, then she would fight. Bloody, bruised, and the odds against her, I could easily see her getting to her feet and fighting until she couldn't fight anymore. In her memory, I would find the strength and fight too. Staggering to my feet, my head still spinning, I looked around the room for some kind of a weapon but the room was sparsely decorated and aside from some trinkets here and there, nothing really screamed weapon to me. Fine, I would just have to use my brain.

***

"Yo, firecrotch," Sadie said, entering the Captain's quarters.

The blonde was followed by the same crew member as earlier - a sullen looking woman that had at least ten years on the blonde. In her hands she carried a tray with food, nothing special, just gruel with the nutrients the prisoner would need not to die in it.

"Where is she?" asked the sullen looking woman, setting the tray down on the lone table in the room.

"Dunno. Firecrotch, why are you hiding?"

Getting down on her knees, Sadie peered under the bed, pointing her gun into the darkness. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust enough to see that there wasn't anything of interest beneath the bed. Standing, Sadie sighed and went over to the closet.

"I'm really not in the mood for games right now," she said. "That's enough of acting like a little brat, firecrotch."

Swinging the door open, she frowned when all she found was clothing hanging. It was a small closet on top of that, barely enough room for the clothes, much less an adult woman. After searching, Sadie growled loudly and cocked her gun.

"Where did that bitch go?"

"Out."

From the doorway, Azura smiled at them as she slammed the door shut and jammed it so Sadie and the sullen looking woman couldn't get out. She smirked as they swore loudly and banged against the metal door. Rubbing her wrists and stretching her back, Azura groaned as the muscles in her body ached from holding on so long to the back of the door. The idea had been simple enough but the actual strain had been torturous. Still, at least she was out now.

"Time to fight," she whispered and turned toward the opposite corridor from the last time.

***

I had never really explored Leanna's spaceship before. She had acquired it near the end of our relationship and she took me aboard it once, the day after she got it. The Blue Sky was a special type of spacecraft, the kind only merchants, mercenaries, and yes, space pirates, used. They tended to be larger than space shuttles as the people that used them often lived most of their lives on them, and because of their size, they needed a reasonable size crew that also lived aboard. Mainly, the crew consisted of mechanics and hired help, rarely were there any family members unless it was a merchant ship. At the time, when I first had saw her, the Blue Sky was a fix-it up type of project, but now, clearly, she was in fine running condition, with a crew big enough to help run her and give me plenty of trouble as I attempted to escape.

Since I hadn't explored much of the place, I wasn't familiar with it all that well, still, I only needed to find a weapon and a way off. The weapon should be easy on a ship full of pirates, but escaping was a problem I was doing my damnedest not to think about too much right now. Surviving came first, of course. The corridor, opposite of the one I had followed earlier, was pretty much the same as the other, only now there were two doors to my right. What was new was that there was a staircase that headed up, presumably back to the spacious room I had been in earlier, and stairs that went down. It wasn't too hard to figure which route I took. Descending, I only allowed myself a moment to marvel at the lights decorating both the walls of the new corridor and the ceiling. Nano technology at it's finest, I mused. This corridor was straightforward, turning to the right after a few feet and opening into a room I was certain was the engine room. There were no motors here though, only large computer monitors hooked together and to the control panels in the ceiling and walls by wires. It looked like some kind of science fiction experiment gone wrong.

Knowing enough not to touch anything lest I sent the spaceship on a collision course with the sun or something, I moved carefully by the monitors. This was actually one of the few places I remembered visiting on the ship the last time, only there had been old hardware and motors in here back then. At the other end of the room, I found what I was looking for, a door that led to the cargo bay area. It seemed to be sectioned off now - a place to store food goods, equipment for various things, and even a vehicle or three for traveling about once one were back on Earth. No weapons though, which I hadn't really expected to find, but I did find a nano-infused knife, likely used by one of the crew members to cut heavy cables or ropes. I would have preferred a blowtorch or a hammer, but I wasn't about to complain. Especially not when I picked it up in my bare hands and the knife began to glow, reacting to the nanos in my hands. My knowledge of weapons was admittedly limited, but this may have been the first time in twenty years that I was actually happy to have tattoos.

Looking for the other door that led back into the ship, my eyes fell upon a five-by-five black, metal box. "My treasure chest," I breathed in a low voice. In that moment, I relived the feeling of finding Isis almost a year ago, my fingers reaching out to touch my treasure. This was mine, by rights, not by theft, and I knew I couldn't escape without it. But since there was no way I could plausibly do that short of taking over the ship and beating over twenty armed people with just one knife, I decided I would make sure Leanna couldn't have it either.

It was a while before I could locate the weapons bay. It was small, but well equipped to take over other spaceships, or a small town. I kept the knife because it had proven to be a useful prying device, but I also took the one weapon I actually knew how to use - a phaser gun. The same kind that Leanna had used to kill Jett with. It was her signature weapon, even over newer types of guns and other weapons. She told me once it was the only gun her father had taught her to use before he went off on a journey and never returned, and it was the only gun she ever taught me how to use. I knew I didn't have the capacity to kill someone, but I was willing to defend myself and if that meant putting a hole in someone's foot so I could get by, then so be it.

After taking some items back to the cargo bay, I knew I had to face Leanna. I couldn't escape anyway, the escape pods were heavily guarded by crew members with twitchy trigger fingers, but maybe if I reasoned with her for a while, I could get by. If not, then I'd use a distraction to do so, if the option was possible. Going back through the engine room, I carefully hoofed it back up the stairs, not stopping until I was stepping out into the spacious room from earlier. It wasn't empty, of course not, but at least the entire crew wasn't in here like the last time. Instead, Leanna sat with her legs propped up on the end of a couch as three crew members hovered around her. She sat up when she saw me, smiling even though I had my stolen gun pointed at her.

"Got tired of playing Hide-and-Seek?"

"A bit. Thought we could play a game of Tag instead," I replied coolly.

"No, we already played that. See?" she asked pointing at her eye.

She wore a black eyepatch over the eye I had punched, drawing a smile across my lips.

"Well at least now you look like a legit pirate now."

"You know, I get that we use to fuck, a lot too and very well, but you're really pushing it with insulting me so freely in front of my crew," Leanna said in dark tone. "You're going to make them think that it's okay to disrespect me and that will cause insubordination and mutiny. Then, I will be forced to remind them who's in charge around here."

Without warning, she quickly drew a gun from inside her coat and shot the nearest crew member in the leg - her eyes never left my face once the whole time. The two remaining crew members shouldered their guns and picked up the now crying man and moved past me through a door. I did my best not to let my eyes linger on the small pool of blood or trail of it left behind. Self-assured, Leanna leaned back, now pointing the gun at me. This wasn't really going according to plan so far.

"Why are you keeping me here?" I finally asked, the question only just occuring to me.

"I'll admit, the smartest thing was probably to leave you abandoned in that hole beside that miscreant, but I couldn't. There's just something about you that makes it hard for me to consider hurting you."

"That didn't stop you from doing it to me three years ago."

Sighing, Leanna nodded. "Okay, I'll admit, that was wrong of me. I am sorry about that. I wasn't thinking right back then and it took me to find myself alone with nothing to realize how much I loved you."

I wanted to cock the gun right then but I didn't trust her finger on the trigger of her gun. "You're incredible. So you have been trying to get back into my pants this past month."

"I really meant it when I said you haven't aged in all this time. You're still beautiful and I have been looking forward to a run in the sack with you. Pretty sure if that miscreant hadn't been in the way, I would have bagged you a long time ago."

"Stop calling her a miscreant! Her name was Jett!" I shouted suddenly, seething.

"Look, I was hoping that if I brought you along with me that in time you would take me back. That's all I want," Leanna said, ignoring my outburst. "A second chance."

Now I really cocked my gun because I couldn't bear to hear another word from Leanna's mouth. If she was going to kill me, then so be it, but I wasn't going out alone. Only, as my finger began to squeeze on the trigger, someone hit me in the head from behind, forcing me to go down, the gun sliding across the floor. Wincing, and pissed to have been once again hit in the head, I looked up to see the culprit. Sadie was smiling down at me, her gun aimed square at my forehead. Her smile dripped menace as she cocked her gun.

"Got any last words for the Captain?" she asked.

Shooting Leanna a dark scowl, the dark skinned woman looking regretful yet completely nonplussed, I looked back up at Sadie. "Yeah, fuck you. Both of you."

For the second time in a very short amount of time, I closed my eyes to wait for a bullet to hit me, this one definitely having my name written on it. And for a second time, I heard a blast, but nothing hit me. How was that possible anymore at this point?

"I have some last words for the Captain," someone said, making my eyes fly open. "If you move bitch, I won't hesitate to kill you on the spot. You either, Goldilocks."

Turning, I found Sadie holding onto her shoulder, blood seeping from a bullet wound. She held onto her gun but it was clear she couldn't pick up her arm to take aim. I could also see Leanna's face had gone pale despite her dark complexion and tears filled my eyes as I finally spied my savior -- Jett. She was standing against a wall with two guns in her hands, one aimed at Sadie and the other at Leanna. I wanted to rush to my feet and kiss her so hard that our lips would be bloody and bruised, but because of the new blow to the head, it took all I had in me to get up to my feet, woozier than I had been after the kick to my forehead. Swaying, I recovered my gun and pointed it at Leanna, though my arm couldn't take proper aim at her. I couldn't turn my eyes away from Jett anyway because fuck me, she was alive! Really alive!

"How?" That was all I could choke out past my tearful joy and wooziness.

Smirking, Jett kept a glare on Sadie but put her gun down long enough to pull down the collar of her long sleeved shirt. There, dead center of her chest, was a pale green tattoo. The Wilted Star looked just like that, a star wilting apart. I remember seeing it in a tattoo book Jett had showed me once but I couldn't remember it's function.

"Remember when I said I didn't get that new tattoo? I lied. Figured this bitch could hear us talking about it with that Hearing Stripe tat beside her ear, so I lied so she wouldn't know. This baby lets me take a shot to the chest area, front, side, or back, and survive. Thought it might come in handy if she turned on us."

"But there was all that blood," I frowned. "And you came at me with a shovel!"

"Well, I can take a shot and survive, didn't say I couldn't get hurt. Got a pretty ugly burn over my heart but that's nothing that can't be fixed. And seriously, you think I would come at you with a shovel? I grabbed onto as I was falling, you didn't see the whole thing."

"I may have underestimated you after all," Leanna finally said, finding her tongue. "Now how do you propose to get out of here alive?"

"Same way I got this far - dumb luck and a promise to Azura's father before he died."

"My father?"

Jett looked sad as she nodded. "He made me promise to protect you from harm. That was his final wish and I'm a woman that honors things like that. It was why I came to you after Leanna left and why I've stayed by your side ever since. It's why I got my tattoos, not for me, but for you. To protect you, Az."

"And the rest?" I asked, even though I knew this wasn't the time to ask about things like that.

"It started off as a promise to protect you, but Azura, I really fell for you. Hard. The kind of hard that brings a 'dead' woman back from the grave just to tell the one she cares the most that she loves them. I love you, Az," Jett said.

Pain momentarily forgotten, I felt blood rush to my face as a warm feeling melted the pain away. This was.... Exactly what I had hoped would happen some day, minus the betrayal and all the blows to my head. Boots could be heard pounding against the metallic steps outside the room, snapping us out of our moment. Jett fired her guns, a bullet hitting Sadie in her other shoulder and one going through Leanna's forearm to prevent her from shooting at us as we left. Dropping one of the guns, Jett rushed forward and grabbed my hand.

"Let's get out of here!" she said, gun held high in front of her as she pulled me along. We burst through the door the injured man had been previously carried through. It opened into a white corridor, doors marking small rooms on our left and right as we dashed forward. Further along, there was a ladder off to the right which Jett pushed me down. It wasn't easy navigating down the ladder with a possible concussion but I scrambled down as quickly as I could as Jett stood guard overhead to keep any pursuers at bay. When she saw me almost at the bottom, she slipped the gun into her waistband and slid down the ladder, squeezing her feet onto the sides of it so she could literally slide down. I moved just as she reached the bottom, only taking a second to admire Jett in action, something I hadn't really seen before, only heard of. My head was woozy still, but less so now as I realized we were in the cargo bay. How did I miss the ladder earlier, I wondered. Possibly because it was hidden by a column from where I had been poking about before.

Looking around a second time, I realized Isis was parked in the cargo bay. That definitely hadn't been there earlier. Looking at Jett, she caught the surprised expression on my face and beamed at me.

"So a few months ago I started reading up on how to pilot a spacecraft. Thought I could surprise you, but it took me a little too long to get the gist of it, you know, without any actual experience. I had maybe another couple months of study ahead of me when you said you were going to bring Leanna into the mix to pilot Isis," she admitted, looking sheepish when she got to the end. "I didn't think you wanted to wait another few months so that's why I didn't say anything before."

"You idiot," I said, smiling. "I would've waited."

People were coming down the ladder but I still took the time to press into Jett and kiss her lips, finding the taste of them a breath of life as I took her hand.

"I'm sorry for being so blinded by my thirst for adventure that I ignored what was right in front of me," I said as we began to run toward Isis.

"Don't sweat it. It's part of your spontaneity, I'm use to it," Jett chuckled as we quickly climbed aboard Isis.

"What about the treasure?" I asked, looking at the metal box.

"Don't worry," Jett said, sliding into the pilot seat. "We don't need it."

Smiling, I slid into the passenger seat behind her and strapped in as the glass dome came down. Shots were being fired at us now, crew members filtering in from the ladder and the doors at either end of the cargo bay, but Isis was already gearing up and in a moment, we were out of there, crashing a hole through the cargo door and into space. I removed the remote I had been hiding in my pocket and leaned forward to show it to Jett.

"I did something bad," I said.

"What did you do? What's that remote for?"

Pressing the button, I smiled at the sound of a second explosion coming from the cargo bay. Jett raised her eyebrows in shock.

"You didn't!"

"If I couldn't have it, then Leanna sure as hell wasn't going to have it. Not after all the shit she put me through," I sighed.

"Damn, I knew there was a reason I fell so hard for you," Jett laughed. "By the way, I got a surprise for you. If you can, try to check behind you."

Confused, I looked over my shoulder and noticed a large green tarp that hadn't been there when we set off from the Underground Hangar, nor had it been in our supplies. With a little effort, I pulled up the corner closest to me and nearly screamed when I saw what was beneath. Money spilled out from under the tarp, gems and gold sparkled as I reached out to grab a handful of it.

"Holy hell, Jett! What is this?!"

"Sorry I didn't help you out sooner but I knew once I got you, we would probably be running for our lives so I made a little withdrawal from our metal box. Dunno how much I took but I think we're set for the rest of our lives."

Smiling now, I held up an emerald that made me think of Jett's green eyes. "I thought we didn't need it?"

"We didn't need what was left behind. There's more than enough here for us."

"For us, huh?" I giggled.

"Yep. You, me, and any little terrors we decide to have in the future. We will all be well taken care for the rest of our lives. You can keep building old machines and I can open up a new garage in honor of your father, and we can do it without worry of bills or anything."

Tears spilled from my eyes, a combination of joy and having just survived near-death situations several times too many in a small span of time. Maybe even part of my tears was because of my possible concussion. The tears came freely though as I threw my arms around the seat in front of me and Jett's shoulders.

"You're amazing, Jett. Thank you."

Touching my hand gently, I knew Jett was probably smiling when she said, "No need to thank me."

"I will though, for the rest of my life. I'll thank you for being so goddamn amazing to me. For being so incredible."

She squeezed my hand but remained silent.

"By the way, what's this about having kids some day?" I asked, smiling through my tears.

"Oh... It's just a thought," she said, embarrassed. "I always thought it would be nice to have some little monsters running around."

"We better get start fucking right away then," I laughed.

"Wait until we land, babe, because I have a feeling we won't be getting out of bed for a week after this debacle."

"Sounds good to me."

End

[End notes: I'm pleased with myself for sticking with this story, though ultimately it was rushed and I apologize for that. Feel free to leave me a comment and critique me. I'd greatly appreciate it.

And thank you for reading!]

Story: Keep Following the Heartlines on Your Hand (all chapters)

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4