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There are few things on Terra that Captain Alex Danvers hates more than slave auctions.
She’s hated them since she went to one, once, as a kid. The sobbing. The leers. The wails of separated families. The relentless calls of the auctioneer, the crude jokes, the sight of people—and Alex has never been able to see them as anything less, xeno or Terran Sub-Optimal that the State classifies them as—having their lives destroyed for the sake of a few credits.
But she has to be here, for this one, odious auction. Because Kara needs her.
Alex sets her jaw and makes eye contact with Lieutenant Maggie Sawyer, sitting awkwardly across the gallery next to a couple of French nobles with obnoxiously small dogs. She can’t make her purchase in person. The Optimal Hierarchy Assurance Bureau would be interested, and with a father liquidated for political unreliability and herself and her mother still quietly active in the liberationist movement, Alex can’t afford OHAB’s prying eyes. So it’s Maggie making the buy, with the credits Alex won during their service on the Dominator during the Conquest of Vega and Lane’s coup. Blood money. At least it’s being used well.
Maggie’s reliable. She and Alex used to fuck, back when they were both third-grade Betters of Humanity, before Alex broke it off when she got the promotion for Commander (for knifing Captain Delgado when he made his move against Grand Admiral Lane) and got kicked up to second-grade Better on the bargain. She understood. Still understood when she got to second-grade Better and Alex still didn’t want to go back to fucking, with the excuse that Alex was a Captain and an Optimal now (because she knifed Grand Admiral Lane when he took a shot at a coup against the Empress, and got his ship and citizenship status for it).
And she’s a Liberationist, too. So her ass is on the line if they get found out, too.
Alex glances up two rungs above Maggie to the competition. Lena Luthor, daughter of the oligarch family, sits with a bodyguard and a pair of decoratively chained Vulcan slaves in a private box, surveying the auction with mild disinterest that belies the bids she’s placed. Ideally, Alex and Maggie would’ve walked out of here with a few families of xenos as well as Kara. But Lena’s been bidding heavily—beating out the usual cheap scum a bit more than two-thirds of the time, paying above market rates, as much as double for some of the kids. Alex would think that she was trying to keep them out of the hands of perverts, but it’s a Luthor. She probably wants them for some experiments too horrifying to contemplate.
So Alex and Maggie, with a substantial but limited pool of funds, can’t compete for the other victims of this disgusting show. Not if they want to get Kara out.
Alex told Kara to be careful. Moved Heaven and Terra to make sure she got conscripted in Kara’s place. Swallowed her pride and knifed her way up the ranks and participated in crime after crime in the Imperial Starfleet, spreading the sword of the Terran Empire across the stars to keep Kara safe. Sacrificed her soul for her sister, her sister the extremely rare Kryptonian who would definitely be sent to one of Luthor’s labs if she ever got found out.
And Kara, poor dear Kara with her burning unconditional altruism and naïve optimism, got found out.
Better status gone, just like that. Taken down by OHAB with radioactive rounds and locked in a collar of poisonous mineral, like they were hunting some kind of animal. Shoved in a cage as a Sub-Optimal, and now…
The auctioneer has her brought out naked, of course. Alex forces her fury away from her face. Another atrocity in the Empire’s blood-soaked ledger.
“Our next two items are something special,” the auctioneer says with a wicked grin, and Alex is jolted out of her rage. “They look Terran, but they’re not! An endangered species, ladies and gentlemen! These are two rare Kryptonians—their planet destroyed, the few survivors scattered across space. A dangerous servus, keep that collar on or they become incredibly powerful under a yellow sun—lethally so! But the pleasure of owning one…ah, dominating such power is a sublime joy indeed. Believe me, I’m speaking from experience, or my name isn’t Veronica Sinclair!”
The women are forced out onto the stage. Kara tries to cover herself, until the overseers hit her with an agonizer pulse and force her limbs behind her while she screams. She’s battered, bruises barely covered with makeup, hair done up quickly and messily. Alex feels a bit of pride under her blind screaming fury—at least she made it hard for them.
The other Kryptonian…Alex does a double-take. A brunette, compact and muscular, she stands there unafraid, eyes blazing with rage as she stands tall and proud, refusing to bow even as the agonizer makes her eyes water until the overseers kick her knees out from under her and club her down into a submissive posture. Her hands are tight fists, and Alex realizes that she’s been looking at this woman so long she’s forgotten to breathe.
Alex tears her eyes away from the spectacle as the audience oohs and aahs, and catches Maggie’s eye. Her accomplice blinks in acknowledgement. This is their shot—their one shot.
“First, we have Lot 99,” the auctioneer says in a sultry tone. “This little sub-Optimal infiltrated our glorious Empire in the guise of a Terran of third-grade Better status! Like all xeno filth, it sought to pollute the racially pure fluids of the highest echelons of our glorious Terran race with the miscegenated blood of its despicable sub-Optimal race. Fortunately, our great Optimal Hierarchy Assurance Bureau acted swiftly on a tip-off received from a loyal citizen, and exposed this hateful infiltrator in short order! It was soon captured by heroic efforts on the part of noble OHAB heroes, though it managed to seriously injure several noble warriors of Mother Terra in its attempted escape.” The auctioneer gropes Kara with a predatory leer, and Alex bites back a shout of rage. “That said, if you can overlook the racial pollution, the creature is quite…delectable, if you have that sort of taste!” A ripple of laughter from the fat pigs that fill the seats. “She’s trained in secretarial work, and was educated in the Imperial academy system as a third-grade Better. So if you have work needing done outside the bedroom…a little extra value!”
More laughs. Alex grits her teeth. Maggie catches her eye with a warning look. Control. For Kara. Got to stay calm.
“We’ll start the bidding at rock bottom, per tradition with these pathetic refugees! Do I hear a thousand credits!”
“A thousand!” cries a LordTech exec from the third row.
“Two thousand!” shouts a sweating American Optimal being fanned by two naked Terran Sub-Optimals. Alex bites her tongue so hard she tastes her own blood.
Maggie keeps quiet until it hits nine thousand, then enters with ten. She’s following the plan…
“Miss Luthor bids fifty thousand,” comes the announcement from the top box.
Silence. Alex risks a glance up. Lena Luthor looks unruffled, still outwardly bored and disinterested as her Vulcan slave speaks for her, but her bodyguard has shifted slightly, and Alex hasn’t gotten as far as she has without knowing when a woman is faking disinterest.
No!
Alex looks frantically to Maggie, and they have a quick, silent conversation by eye, before Maggie risks more of their credits. “Sixty thousand.”
“Miss Luthor bids one hundred thousand credits,” says the Vulcan from the top box at a gesture from the Luthor.
No. No, no, no! They only have…
“Two hundred thousand,” Maggie shouts, going all in.
“Miss Luthor tires of this game, and bids one million credits with buyout stipulation.”
It’s more than a hundred times what a xeno slave usually goes for. Even a rare one like Kara wouldn’t go for more than a hundred thousand in most sales. The auctioneer is momentarily stunned, but soon gets back to herself with a clear of her throat. “Sold, to Miss Lena Luthor, for one million credits.”
Kara, stunned, is dragged to her feet, and begins to weep as she’s hauled away, limp and unresisting.
Alex’s heart drops through her stomach.
It’s over. Kara’s gone. Doubtless to be experimented on in the Luthor’s twisted schemes.
She’s failed.
Everything she’s done. All the sacrifices. The compromises. The men she’s betrayed and knifed and spaced, for all that they deserved it.
For nothing.
She barely hears the auctioneer continue with the last slave.
“And now we come to our special treat—Lot 100! This rebel scum dared to take up arms with a gang of guerilla bandits against our glorious Imperial order. Captured after multiple losses of life, this racial inferior is still unbroken, presenting an exciting opportunity for those of you who enjoy…that sort of thing. It claims to have been a military leader in its filthy sub-Optimal society…”
A military leader.
Unbroken.
Alex meets the brunette Kryptonian’s eyes. Sees the fire in them.
The genesis of a plan—insane, absurdly risky, madness itself—begins to assemble in her mind.
She raises her hand. “Fifty thousand.”
The auctioneer is momentarily stunned again. Alex has drawn eyes with this, and Maggie is giving her a Look of mixed shock and warning.
But something inside her needs this Kryptonian. Needs her in her arms, that wretched collar gone, that slender neck free, those blazing eyes across a table as equals. It’s less a plan than an idea forged of incoherent instincts, but something in Alex is fully committed.
Alex glances up to the real competition. Luthor is leaving, her bodyguard at her sides and her Vulcans leading the way with clasped hands. She looks flustered. Flushed.
But she’s leaving. She’s not competition, now.
And that means Alex can buy her chance.
“Going once,” the announcer says. Alex snaps her attention back to the auction. “Going twice…and sold, to the lady in the fifth row, for fifty thousand credits. Good luck breaking in your new toy, madam, because you’re going to need it!”
Alex meets Maggie’s eyes again.
She knows the look in them.
I hope I know what you’re doing, Maggie is thinking.
Alex, currently seat-of-her-pantsing like she was the day she murdered Sam Lane and got Optimal status for it, seriously hopes the same.
***
Astra is going to kill all of these Terrans.
Once she gets the collar off, gets the green poison out of her veins, she will wreak a trail of bloody vengeance across worlds and systems that will make this wretched Empire tremble. They will pay for what they have done to her, to Kara (so recently found, so brave and strong in her mother’s image, how dare they enslave her, how dare they…), to all of the people locked in those cages.
The Terran who dared to buy her affects disinterest as she takes Astra from the slavers, walks her out of the auditorium with a surprisingly gentle hand, then escorts Astra to a hovercar. “In here,” the woman says. There’s little bite to it.
Astra gets into the offered front seat. She will burn the leather to ash later, when she is free.
The woman slides into the driver’s seat, then reaches into the back and pulls out a blanket. It’s soft as she shoves it into Astra’s arms, embroidered with a name in Terran script. “Here,” the woman says, almost softly, tucking it gently around Astra’s shoulders. “This was supposed to be for my sister. I’m sorry I don’t have a change of clothes, but I couldn’t exactly bring cutters for the cuffs and collar to the auction. Too obvious.”
Odd behavior, for a slaver, but Astra just waits for the other shoe to drop as the woman silently pilots them to her estate with a white-knuckled grip.
It’s a modest place, for a Terran villa. No slaves at work as they descend. Sparsely decorated, as the Terran helps Astra out of the seat, carefully re-wraps the blanket around her, and escorts her in to a Spartan kitchen.
“Hold on just a minute,” the Terran says. “Let me get you out of that filthy collar.”
Surely she isn’t so stupid?
But no, the woman comes back moments after Astra has seated herself defiantly at the head of the kitchen table, a toolbox in hand. Astra hears the door open, then close.
“What the Hell were you thinking, Danvers?” Another Terran. Also female, darker-skinned and petite.
“I’ve got a plan,” Danvers replies. She’s pretty, for a Terran, and Astra briefly regrets that she’ll have to rend those fine features in twain. “She’s got military training. At full power, she gives us a shot at breaking Luthor’s security.”
“Are you fucking nuts? You want to bust into an oligarch’s compound on the off chance she hasn’t already had your sister dissected? Do you have any idea what OHAB will do to you, even as an Optimal, for attacking a fucking Luthor like that? They already know your sister’s a xeno passer!”
The Terran pauses, tools at the collar around Astra’s neck, and half-turns. “This is Kara we’re talking about,” she snaps. “Besides. Where we’re going after this, we won’t have to worry about OHAB.”
“The Hell are you—” The other Terran pauses. “You’re talking about that transporter accident you had.”
“Yep.”
“You want to flee to, what, another fuckin’ universe?”
“You haven’t seen it. It’s…it’s perfect, Mags.” Desperation and hope war in the Terran’s voice. Astra sits with careful placidity, her hands itching to choke, to tear, to maim.
“This is bullshit. You’re cutting and running? You?”
“I don’t have much of a choice.”
“Christ.” Mags the Terran runs a hand through dark hair with a sigh. “Why do I go along with your crazy plans?”
“Because we’re still friends?”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m taking you with me, Maggie. It’s paradise over there. You won’t have to hide anymore—they don’t care who you love, and they only have one class of citizenship. No gradients of Better, just all equals.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’ll prove it to you.” The collar comes off, and Astra feels fire rush through her veins, but not yet, not yet, let her get the cuffs off first, in case she or Mags has a weapon that can harm Astra in this still-vulnerable state. “Get her a change of clothes, will you?”
“She looks more my size than yours, Danvers, you want me to run home?”
“Nah, mine will do for now.” A hand rests on Astra’s shoulder. “Hey. Sorry for talking like you’re not here. We’re just a little, you know. Frazzled.” The hand squeezes, gently. “I need your help, OK? You help me, I take you with me to the Federation.” Federation? What’s a Federation? “It’s paradise. I promise. I know this sounds insane, but they’ll take us in, they’ll protect us, I swear.”
Like such a place exists anymore.
Mags has left, muttering about Danvers being crazy. Danvers gently tugs on Astra’s cuffs. “Can you put these on the table, please?” she asks. “I need a good angle to get them off.”
Hardly believing her good fortune, Astra complies. Danvers’s hands are soft and gentle as she separates the cuffs from Astra’s wrists as best she can, then deftly unlocks them.
This has to be a trap. Or something. Terrans this naïve do not exist. Their foolishness is born of racism, not suicidality.
“Alright,” Danvers says, taking off the cuffs. “I’ll get your legs uncuffed next, then I have a proposal. Obviously you can say no, but I really, really want your help.”
Astra moves.
She’s built up enough power for a moment of flight, and some super-strength, and her fingers cut off the Terran’s shocked gasp with a bruising grip around the woman’s neck, and she slams Danvers’s back into a convenient wall in one fluid movement, Astra’s body uncurling like a whip as the blanket falls away to display her whole, tautly muscled form. Maximum intimidation. Just the way to deal with a Terran.
Danvers’s eyes are blown wide, her breath coming in choked wheezes, her hands at Astra’s grip on her throat, the tools discarded in favor of a desperate, fruitless groping, and her gaze is pleading. “Wait…on same side…Kara…”
That is odd, yes. “What business have you with Kara Zor-El?” Astra hisses.
“My…sister,” the Terran croaks. “Adopted. Found…my job…protect her.”
Astra relaxes her grip by the tiniest bit. Something about the Terran’s words rings impossibly true. “Who are you?” she murmurs.
“Alex,” wheezes the Terran. “Captain Alexandra Danvers. Dissident.”
Astra glares at her, wishing she wasn’t so very frustratingly pretty. “You expect me to believe this?”
“No,” Alexandra croaks. “My actions.”
Which are, Astra realizes, less suicidally insane and more a reasonable attempt to gain trust, now that she thinks about it.
“…you claim she is your sister?” Astra asks, relaxing her grip so that it’s little more than a firm pin.
Alexandra nods, sucking in a huge breath. “Adopted. You?”
“Her aunt. Her mother, Alura In-Ze, was my twin.” She lets Alexandra breathe, notes that the woman hasn’t called for help, her hands still resting on Astra’s gripping one. “If you are her sister, and I am her aunt, what does that make us?”
“I don’t know,” Alexandra manages. “Partners in rescuing her, I hope.”
Which makes a frustrating amount of sense.
Reluctantly, Astra lets the woman go, just as Mags returns with clothes.
“Danvers? Oh, shit—”
“It’s fine,” Alexandra croaks. “Misunderstanding. We’re good.”
Mags clearly does not believe this, but goes along with it for now. Astra does her part to show good faith by stepping away from Alexandra with her hands clearly in the air.
“You wish to rescue Kara Zor-El,” Astra states as she dresses, Mags—Maggie Sawyer, as Alexandra has introduced her—running a scanner over Alexandra’s throat.
“Yes,” Alexandra says, still hoarse. “I have an exit strategy. Fleeing to another universe.”
Which is insane, but Astra has heard more insane things.
“Let us propose that such an escape is possible. Why not remain and organize rebellion?”
“Against the Empire?” Alexandra scoffs. “Who would back us? The Alliance can barely hold their borders against the Imperial Starfleet. The Rommies’ entire war plan is scorched earth, they can’t project power when their trump card is rigging their own planets to blow to spite the Empire. Besides, every power-mad asshole with a halfway loyal crew’s taken a stab at a coup in populist clothes at this point. Nobody would buy it.”
“You must have somewhere that you normally send people.”
“Normally we send them to the Alliance, if they’re not Terran. Obsidian Order has a guy, he vets them. But Kara’s too obvious, and too Terran-looking. If she were Terran, we can get a few sub-Optimals fake documentation as third-class Betters, it’s not a lot but it can get them by if they keep their heads down on a remote world somewhere on the quieter parts of the Imperial fringe. But we’re already pushing our luck with that this year and she’s way too big a prize to just cover up and smuggle off to a backwater. And since she’s Kryptonian like you are, we’re not just looking at OHAB hunting her, we’re looking at the Erinyes.”
Astra doesn’t wince at the thought, but it’s close. Terra’s most secretive state security force is best known for deeds bordering on unspeakable even by the gleefully sadistic standards of the Terran Empire.
“OHAB’s going to be looking into us now, too,” Maggie cuts in. “You weren’t supposed to make a buy, Alex.”
“Luthor threw me off my game,” Alexandra snaps hoarsely. “We were supposed to be able to save a couple of kids, too.”
“You really want to do this, Alex?”
Alexandra’s glare could melt transparisteel. “She’s my sister.”
“I know,” Maggie says, raising placating hands. “But this is going to burn our whole cell.”
“I know,” Alexandra rasps. “But she’s worth it.”
“What do you need for your escape route?” Astra asks. She has decided that she trusts this woman, or at least her care for Kara. And besides, Alexandra interests her.
Alexandra looks over to her with her jaw set. It is, Astra finds herself noting, quite a pretty jaw. “I have a fast ship and an unregistered cloaking device. There’s a place called the Badlands, out by the Cardassian border.”
“I know the region. Many spatial anomalies.”
“Exactly. Erinyes used to have a facility in the area, don’t ask how I know. They launched some raids on the other universe a couple of times, until the parallels retaliated and kicked their asses. It’s dangerous, but it’s possible to penetrate the space-time barrier and hop dimensions there with the right tech.”
“That is a considerable risk. Near to Alliance space, in a Terran vessel?”
“I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy, or 100% reliable. I’m saying it’s the best option I have.”
“And these…parallels. They can protect Kara?”
Alexandra nods. “They’ve got their own problems so they can’t really take the fight to the Empire, not with the logistical chokepoint of the inter-universal barrier. But they’re high tech, they’d be well beyond Terra if we didn’t have multiple cases of lucky breaks in temporal—long, irrelevant story. They can’t take out the Empire, but they can protect refugees.”
Astra nods along. “Have you tested this before?”
“No,” Alexandra admits, “but if we make it, we can stay, no questions asked. It’s sort of their thing, and anyway I have a contact over there.”
“Trustworthy?”
Alexandra gives her a wry grin. Astra realizes that she wants to see it again, then kicks the antisocial, un-Kryptonian thought away. Such thoughts did her no favors on Krypton and they will not help her now. “I trust her like I trust myself.”
Astra nods again. “Then we must plan an assault on Luthor’s lair.”
“My thoughts exactly. Mags, can you get people together?”
Maggie is nowhere near convinced of this plan’s workability, that much is clear, but she’s also smart enough to recognize that they’re very short on options. “I’ll get on it. Shouldn’t take me more than two days to get everybody here.”
“That’s more than enough time for us.”
Astra steps over to Alexandra’s side, and helps her up. She reaches out, gently, and lightly brushes the bruises, still there despite Maggie running over them with a medical tricorder. Maggie freezes, and Alexandra sucks in a short, sharp breath.
“I am sorry,” Astra says, oddly transfixed by the now-faint marks. “I…reacted too harshly.”
“You’re forgiven,” Alexandra whispers, and the roughness isn’t just because of her bruised throat.
Astra does something very stupid then, and cups Alexandra’s cheek. “You are brave,” she whispers. “Braver than most of your foul race, Alexandra Danvers, to do this thing for me and my niece.”
Alexandra is flushed, but smiles in response, her cheek pressing ever so slightly deeper into Astra’s palm. “Well. You’ve met Kara. And Hell, I’d do it for you, too. You’re too pretty to be locked in a fucking collar.”
“Oh my God,” Maggie groans. “You won’t fuck me, but you’ll flirt with her? She was choking you out ten minutes ago!”
Alexandra’s blush goes well down her perfect throat. “I guess I’m not as worried about the power difference?” she manages.
“Whatever you want to tell yourself, Danvers.” Maggie shakes her head. “It’s fine. I should’ve realized earlier.”
“Mags—”
“Don’t. We’re still friends. I’m the dumbass here who held a candle that wasn’t lit on the other end. Be your best sapphic self, Danvers. I’ll make my own way. Especially if this other universe is all you promise.”
“It is,” Alexandra says. “Oh, it’s all I’ve said and more.”
***
The actual plan is pretty simple.
Alex has a comp-plague suite that she klepped off of the Feds in her day in another universe, which she’s pretty sure they know she klepped but doesn’t really matter right now. She’s been wary of using it until now because her old tools still worked and rule #1 of being a dissident in the Terran Empire is that you don’t use a flashy new tool (that you almost certainly will rarely see and certainly cannot replace) if there isn’t a sign the old tools aren’t doing their job. But a Luthor’s security merits the fancy tool.
Stage 1: Astra finds one of Luthor’s remoter sensors that can be safely accessed. It’s well-hidden—even a Terran tricorder would have trouble finding it, but Astra’s Kryptonian hearing finds it via its ultrasonic hum. Score one for not treating xenos like shit.
Even without the temporal fuckery the Empire benefits from, Fed tech is good. The comp-plague suite, once physically accessing the sensor, launches a brute-force attack that busts in within three seconds, then quickly sends the sensor’s control system a fake video of a wayward squirrel to justify the brief alert. Alex just needs to watch and occasionally tap a button, and they’re able to spoof most of the external sensors right there.
Luthor’s not stupid, though. There are multiple, individually self-contained sensor networks. Cutting through each one will take forever, and present far too much risk, but now the sky is a way in.
Stage 2: Alex pulls out a stealth field generator she klepped off of a dead Erinyes mook in the Badlands and managed to keep secret long enough to knife her way to Captain and get protection from most suspicion. It won’t last long, but it can keep two Terran-sized beings hidden from State security scans long enough to do what she needs.
Astra blushes as Alex grips her waist, and frankly Alex’s cheeks are burning too at the gorgeous badass’s proximity, but the threat of a Luthor experimenting on Kara is there, and that centers them.
It’s a pretty simple matter of flying up and having Astra use her Kryptonian X-ray vision to scan for Kara.
“She and a Terran are in a room near the center of the compound,” Astra reports, and indicates a room with an open window to a sheltered inner garden. Alex guesses the Luthor likes to vivisect people in an environment with some nice scenery. Go figure. “I count approximately seventy other personnel, mostly non-Terran, I believe. One Terran in the next room, with two that might be Vulcan.”
“Security and her pets,” Alex surmises. “She’s cocky, having only one bodyguard and only in the next room.”
“The Terran that I presume to be Luthor has now left the room,” Astra says.
“Then let’s move.”
Stage 3: Alex and Astra plummet into the garden just as the stealth field overheats and goes into its reset cycle, and both of them draw contraband phaser pistols. The weapons are considered weak by most Terrans, but Alex has never felt the need to carry an agonizer. She can make people hurt with her hands if she really needs to, and at that point, she might as well just space whoever she needs to hurt. Astra shatters the transparisteel window with one punch (hot), and they charge in as Kara…
…Kara, dressed in someone far bustier’s very nice silk blouse and baggy sweatpants, sitting at a homely little table with a giant plate of pancakes in front of her, one half in her mouth, spins wide-eyed, and they all freeze.
The pancake, Alex finds herself noting for some reason that probably ties into her current state of sudden near-hysteria, has chocolate chips.
They stay like that for a half-second, then the door opens, and Lena fucking Luthor enters, dressed in a silk blouse, soft fucking sweatpants, and an apron that says ‘KISS THE COOK’, and Lena fucking Luthor says, “I’m not sure how well the replicator handled strawberries but I hope you like—” and freezes in place, a plate of strawberry pancakes in one hand.
“What the fuck?” Alex manages, her voice cracking with the sheer what the fuck of this entire situation.
Kara swallows. “Um. I can explain.”
Luthor hits a big red button by the door before Alex can shoot her or Astra can laser her hand off, and there’s a sudden rush of movement from behind her as alarms begin to sound.
“WAIT!” Kara shouts as two Vulcans (from the slave auction, but now unchained and carrying phaser rifles) and Luthor’s Terran woman bodyguard point phasers at Alex and Astra, the former of whom is about to pull the trigger right back and the latter of whom is already glowing-eyed and ready to kill. “Wait, wait, Alex, Aunt Astra, I can explain!”
“You know these intruders?” the bodyguard asks incredulously.
“Kara, what the fuck?” Alex manages.
“Don’t hurt her!” Luthor shouts from behind the Vulcans and the Terran bodyguard. “Jess, don’t let them hurt Kara!”
Alex decides to be the bigger woman, because fuck it, somebody has to. “OK. I’m gonna lower my gun. And then I want some answers as to what the fuck you’ve been doing with my sister, Luthor!”
“Alex, she’s a dissident!” Kara says. “She can help us! And Aunt Astra, how are you here? I thought you got sold to some monster from the Fleet!”
“What’s she done to you?” Alex asks, risking a glance over. “Has she hurt you?”
There’s an outraged sound from behind Jess the Terran bodyguard, and Jess herself chuckles. “Not unless you count stuffing her face with every sweet treat she could find and giving her some of her most comfortable clothes.”
“She’s been buying people, freeing them, and trying to set them up with nice lives,” Kara explains. “But she saw me and couldn’t let me be sold, so she bought me to rescue me, but we haven’t figured out what to do about me and being outed as Kryptonian yet.”
“I thought you were being tortured!” Alex objects on general principle.
“She’s not evil, I swear! She’s really really nice and pretty and she smells nice and I don’t understand why nobody wants to date her, I’d date her, and she makes really nice pancakes and…” Kara continues rambling about Lena fucking Luthor’s cooking skills, and for some reason, Alex finds herself meeting Jess the bodyguard’s eyes, and in those eyes she sees someone who shares a deep mutual exasperation.
But at least Jess the bodyguard and her Vulcan goons have lowered their rifles, and Astra’s eyes have dimmed, and soon Kara is whining as Astra fusses over her and Lena fucking Luthor pushes past her bodyguards to rush to Kara’s side.
Ten minutes later, Alex is getting drinks with Jess the bodyguard as Lena fucking Luthor hand-feeds Kara a pancake with a sappy expression on her face.
“So,” Alex says.
“So,” Jess replies.
“I don’t really have a leg to stand on, but…what the fuck?”
Jess shrugs. “I’ve seen all sorts of weird shit working for her. This is barely top 10 on the list of craziest shit Lena’s done.”
“Oh.” Alex sips her booze—a nice Aldebaran whisky. Luthor has good taste in booze, it’s a Hell of a vintage. “How long until the wedding?”
“Give it six months after we find some way to do it safe. Yours?”
Alex blushes as she watches Astra update Kara on the last day’s happenings at casa de Alex while braiding the blonde’s hair. “Um. We’ll see.”
Jess hums. “Well, she’s hot, and crazy in a good way. Don’t let that get away.”
“You have experience?”
Jess gives her a Look. “I decided to say fuck it and sub for Su and Les after I realized we were all batshit. The right kind of batshit needs the right kind of batshit.”
Alex looks across Jess to her Vulcan associates, both of whom are quite pretty women in their own right. Su is kinda stoic, but Les raises a glass of moonshine with a wicked grin. “Oh,” Alex manages.
“It’s a fucked-up universe. You have to find your peace where you can.”
Which are wise words. Alex wishes she could come up with shit like that on the fly.
“So,” Lena fucking Luthor says after she’s 100% sure that Kara is both unharmed and stuffed to the gills, and kissed into a blissful half-stupor for good measure. “This isn’t going to remain secret forever.”
“I have an escape route,” Alex reveals. “We flee to another universe without the Terran Empire. I’ve been there once. I can get there again. I have a ship and an unregistered cloaking device.”
Luthor nods along. “I’ve heard worse plans. Kara, she’s really been to…”
“I wasn’t there personally but I trust Alex completely,” Kara says. “She’s my sister. She’d do anything for me and vice versa.”
Luthor looks satisfied at that. “How big is your ship?” is her next question.
“It’s not military, if that’s what you’re asking. Why?”
“Because I have about a hundred people—Terran and otherwise—sold as sub-Optimals who I won’t leave behind.”
Alex feels her eyebrow raise. “…then it’s gonna be pretty cramped. But nobody gets left behind.”
***
‘Nobody gets left behind’ means that Astra In-Ze is currently sitting on Alexandra Danvers’s lap in the pilot’s seat of her craft for lack of more seating options as they race towards the border of the Terran Empire in hope of safety.
It has been sixteen hours of cramped snuggling and occasional awkward shifting as food and water are passed out, and Astra is now intimately familiar with the noises that Alexandra makes when Astra shifts, the heat that bubbles up when those little movements force Alexandra from her focus on the mission and into the real situation that there is a Kryptonian (and quite an attractive one, in Astra’s not very humble opinion of herself) trying to get comfortable in her lap.
In truth, Astra wriggles a little more than is necessary, despite knowing that it’s probably a bad idea and that if she were strictly mission-focused she wouldn’t tease. Alexandra’s blush and the way her breathing hitches are a drug whose grips Astra will never be able to escape.
Alexandra, for her part, figured out what Astra was doing about six hours in, and threatened in an undertone to spank her. Astra found herself hot and flustered from the thought, which quickly resulted in a similar response from Alexandra, mutual clearing of throats and stammering, and Maggie evicting the two of them to the copilot’s seat for another six hours in the interests of safety.
Behind them, Lena Luthor, who seems trustworthy so far despite her suspect ancestry, is curled up asleep in Kara’s lap, her head on Kara’s collarbone and arms wrapped loosely around Kara’s shoulders, as Kara leans back against a convenient wall with a soft smile and closed eyes. Kara is stroking Lena’s hair while Jess the bodyguard sleeps next to them, her Vulcan companions sprawled messily atop her. Astra is reminded of her own desire to stroke Alexandra’s lustrous locks, and forces the urge down. She really needs to control herself until they get to safety, but with emotions running high and the quiet, invisible threat of the Empire possibly around every corner, everybody’s hormones are out of control.
“It’ll be about another half a day,” Alexandra murmurs as they look out into the flickering lights of stars, warped into streaks by their speed and warp field. “It would’ve been nice if the slipstream drive held up, but it got us most of the way there. Coaxial warp manifold should hold long enough.”
Astra hums. Engine trouble struck as they passed into the Imperial Police Zones—less secure territory out near the Bajoran-Cardassian border. Fortunately the cloaking device held, but Astra was treated to the delightful visual of a shirtless Alexandra sweating and swearing as she tried to fix the steaming-hot drive core before switching from the slipstream drive to more traditional warp. “I didn’t know the Empire had such technology.”
“They don’t. Mags was doing state-sponsored relic hunts for any precursor tech or time-travelling garbage the State could use. She found a wreck covered in creepy nanites, tugged it through a star’s corona with a tractor beam, and found the drive was still usable, and super advanced. Took her, Mom, and Kara three months just to get it into this state, even with what they gleaned from the alien computers.”
“So this was your test run?”
“Well, we couldn’t risk exposure just for a test drive.”
“And this coaxial manifold? This is a remarkably high cruising speed.”
“Experimental tech. Klepped it from Grand Admiral Lane’s personal files after I knifed him. State probably knows I have it, so we tried to get the parts on the down-low.”
“It is reliable?”
“Enough to get us to our destination. Once we cross over, all bets are off. I don’t know how it’ll take the spacetime rift, and we need to have it on to maintain the hole.”
Astra hums, and turns her head, shifting so she can nuzzle Alexandra’s cheek. “You are very brave,” she murmurs.
“Not in front of Kara,” Alexandra rasps, her voice thick with want. Astra preens under the attention, but that brings her to another important discussion point.
“We are attracted to each other.”
“Yes. But we—”
“Yes, yes, we must wait to indulge. I merely seek to discuss what we are, what we wish to be, and what our societies consider acceptable affection.”
Alexandra snorts. “Fuck what the State considers acceptable. There’s a whole bunch of bullshit where being queer is technically banned but if you’re a higher-tier citizen you can get away with it. But I don’t give a fuck, especially seeing as I’m fleeing the Terran Empire. You?”
Astra clears her throat softly. “Well. Affection beyond a certain level of collegial or familial care was considered antisocial on Krypton.”
“Oh.” Alexandra tries to pull back, and fails miserably because Astra is sitting on her. “I’m sorry.”
“You have no need to be.” Astra shifts again, trying to find a more comfortable way to rest her head on Alexandra. “I have never been a very good Kryptonian.”
“So…” Alexandra whispers.
“I am attracted to you,” Astra admits. “I would like to…see where this goes.”
“I’d like that, too,” Alexandra murmurs.
“Do you have longer-term goals?”
“I…” Alexandra hesitates. “Never really thought I’d have a long term. But over there…well. I always wanted a family.”
Astra hums her agreement. “That would be nice. I was denied reproductive rights as a twin, but Alura kindly let me help care for Kara when she was small. To see a smile like that again…I would do a great deal.”
“So we have compatible life goals, at least,” Alexandra says. Astra chuckles softly.
“Indeed.”
“How about interests? Hobbies?”
“When I was in social readjustment treatment as a youth, I discovered that I enjoyed small animals,” Astra offers.
“We’ll get you a cat, then,” Alexandra decides. “Social readjustment?”
“Mandatory all-day study of scientific and logical arguments against socially unacceptable intimate conduct.” Astra coughs. “It was not particularly effective. The Lady Heiress Tol-Var and I engaged in a great deal of unacceptable mouth to mouth contact on most nights. But then she engaged in the same contact with another young woman and my heart ached so much that I could not bear the sight of her.”
Alexandra clasps one hand over Astra’s heart—only one, because she needs the other to handle the monitor and make sure they don’t hit a star or other random cosmic object. “I’m sorry to hear that. She sounds like a bitch.”
Astra can’t help but laugh at that, and enjoys the way it flows through herself and Alexandra both. “Oh, she was. What are your interests?”
“I mean, I’ve never had much time for hobbies, either.” They share a chuckle at their mutual pathetic personal lives. “I don’t know. Would you be willing to help me find out?”
Astra hums happily. “Yes,” she murmurs, because she wants to know what Alexandra loves, and she wants to spend time with Alexandra, and the idea of building a life with her…well, it is appealing. The Terran is brave, and selfless, and intelligent, and passionate. And she see something that she likes in Astra, as well.
Yes, Astra wants to help Alexandra find her passions. Hopefully, Astra will be one of Alexandra’s greatest ones.
***
Alex has had some torrid affairs before. Her and Maggie started out that way, and that didn’t go too badly. But with this one, she’s kinda adrift, and it’s scary, but she realized she stopped caring back in the Trill sector.
Astra’s hot, sure. That’s undeniable. Alex is stumbling repeatedly into double entendres and flirting because she is, objectively, hot. But nobody’s ever tried to preempt a relationship with a “hey, where are we going with this?” talk before. That’s usually a prelude to a breakup. Once, it was prelude to a messy breakup, that eventually involved knives (to be fair, Gayle was a bad decision from Day 1). This time, though, the woman is preempting the relationship with the talk.
Alex finds she kinda likes that. It gives her a sense of stability, which is a rare enough thing in the Empire.
“Where to from here?” Maggie asks from the copilot’s seat.
“Down by that accretion disk.” Alex angles her ship in the direction she indicated. “There’s a dwarf planet there. Old Erinyes base. Start a subspace scan.”
“That’ll light us up like a Conquest Day tree.”
“Yep. But it’s how we find a weak point.”
Maggie nods and complies.
“There we go,” Alex murmurs. “Can you go down to the deflector control and set up?”
“Sure. Who’s on weapons and sensors?”
“Astra, can you handle it?”
“Of course,” the Kryptonian says with mild affront. “It is not that unintuitive of a system.”
Maggie rolls her eyes at that, but Alex finds her lips quirking up. Astra is cute when she’s being a bit of a snob. Or maybe that’s just Alex.
“Incoming contact,” Astra reports as Maggie sends the all-clear from the lower deck. “Terran Monitor-class cruiser, IFF still unclear. Accompanied by escorts.”
“Are they moving our way?”
“Quite directly so.”
“Then run an active scan their way.” Alex runs the subspace scan on a narrower band, and grins. “Gotcha.”
“IFF on the cruiser coming back as ISS Bismarck. Accompanied by two Adamant-class frigates, ISS Berlin and ISS Putin, and one Hydra-class destroyer, IFF coming back blank.”
Alex looks up briefly as she modulates the warp field with her stolen Erinyes data. “Erinyes vessel. They love Hydras without IFF. ETA?”
“Sixty seconds.”
“We got time.” She presses the commo button as she feels Kara float up behind them. “Hit it, Mags.”
“Hitting the button.”
The warp nacelles complain, and stress indicators quickly light up on Alex’s console, but on the viewscreen space itself ripples near the accretion disk, and she puts one hand on the impulse drive. “There we go.”
“Danvers, your ship is creaking. That’s not a good thing.”
“Just give it a sec.” She diverts power to the deflector, forcing the rift open from the inside, and eases the ship forwards at low impulse.
“ETA thirty seconds,” Astra says.
“We got time.” If she fucks this up, they don’t, and will shortly be space dust—Alex’s civilian vessel is a glorified pleasure yacht with a popgun for shooting asteroids. Even a single Adamant-class frigate would be more than a match in a straight fight. A Monitor? And escorts? Well, the backup plan is the selfdestruct for a reason.
“And we’re open,” Alex murmurs as the rift stabilizes wide enough for ten meters’ clearance. It’ll be threading a needle, but she’s pulled stunts like this before.
“You are off-center,” Astra notes.
“Yep. Bit of a drift from the accretion disk.”
“Fifteen seconds.”
“I got it.” She ups the impulse to one-quarter.
“We are rapidly losing time.” The ship creaks again as Astra speaks.
“Let me work!” Alex snaps. She doesn’t want them to be stuck half-through the damn spacetime rift.
The copilot’s console blares. Alex spares a glance. The destroyer’s dropped out of warp and is closing at high impulse.
Fine.
Alex gives up on care and just rams the impulse engines to maximum.
They make contact.
There’s a pop.
For a moment, there’s a sense of stretching into infinity.
And then something cracks and they’re through, the rift starting to shrink behind them as the console blares damage warnings.
“What the FUCK was that?” Maggie shouts over the com.
“We’re through!” Alex calls back, already jumping into Astra’s lap to get on the external comms and damage report. “Kara, can you pilot?”
“Um…in a pinch?”
“I can do it,” Lena fucking Luthor says, and slides elegantly into the pilot’s seat as Astra grumbles and forces Alex into a more comfortable position. Kara sighs. Sighs, the lovestruck dolt.
Not that Alex is one to talk.
“Fuck,” Alex mutters as she sees the damage readout. “Warp nacelles are busted.”
“I hope you have a plan,” Lena says.
“Get us out of the accretion disk and over to that dwarf planet. We’ll hide there and wait for rescue.” The colors that are the viewscreen’s rendering of the Badlands wheel, and…
Alarms, again. Alex glances away from her half-constructed encrypted comm, and swears. The Erinyes vessel has followed them through, the rift shrinking behind it just enough to rip the nacelles and most of the sides off of the frigate that tries to follow. “Faster!” Alex shouts, and turns the comms on broad-spectrum, with the power at max. “Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is SS Spartacus requesting assistance, coordinates attached, we are under attack by a Terran vessel, we are a civilian ship without defensive armament, we need immediate assistance! Mayday, mayday, mayday!” She sets it to repeat as the ship shudders with phaser fire. Screams reverberate through the ship from the passengers.
God damn it. Alex hasn’t gotten this far just to fuck it up for them all.
“Aft shields at 10%!” Luthor snaps. “Another hit like that and we’re eating hard vac!”
“You know the Kerensky feint pattern?”
“I know better,” Luthor responds, and Alex tries not to roll her eyes. But at least the woman can pilot.
“Do you have an oxygen mask?” Astra asks. “I should be able to survive the pressure differential of hard vacuum long enough to inflict damage.”
“We don’t have a proper airlock,” Alex counters.
“Why on…why would you buy a yacht without an airlock?”
“It’s considered redundant what with the transporter unit! Look, I had limited choices.” Alex shakes her head, and…
There. A response. She flicks it to broadcast for the passengers’ sake.
“SS Spartacus, this is USS Defender. We are sixty seconds out with our patrol. Stay strong, we’re on our way.”
It’s a garbled voice. But Alex recognizes it, even if Astra and Kara are merely frowning at the speaker. “USS Defender, this is Spartacus—” Another shudder, and Lena screams that rear shields are down and flings them into a spiral, “—we are taking heavy fire, shields can’t take much more of this!”
“You can use the transporter,” Astra says. “Send me out there!”
“In the Badlands? Under fire? You could be left subatomic soup!”
“We must do something!” The ship shakes again, sending Maggie, who’s just made it back to the command room, sprawling onto Jess the bodyguard and her partners. “It may be worth the risk!”
“I’ve had enough of spending lives for chances!” Which is hypocritical as fuck, but Alex was really hoping that last risk would be the last, period. “We just gotta hold out a little longer!” God, she’s hot when she’s mad, and this close, Alex just wants to kiss her and hold her and…
“The needs of the many—”
“Fuck the needs of the many!” Alex shouts, and grabs Astra’s face in both hands before kissing her so hard Alex is pretty sure she’s just bruised herself on the Kryptonian’s invincible skull.
They last about three seconds and another glancing phaser shot before they split. “We just started this, let’s not fucking end it before we find out where we’re going,” Alex rasps.
“Alright,” Astra murmurs.
Then the computer pings a warning, and a Cygnus-class battleship (or, a Galaxy-class, as they call it on this side) drops out of warp almost directly on top of the Hydra, sending the smaller vessel skittering on the subspace wake, and phaser fire lashes out from a half-dozen emitters. The Terran ship fires back, but the battleship has them beat on tonnage and firepower, and the fun thing about big ships is they can pack much more power and shield generation.
A pack of Adamants, or Defiant-class as they call them over here, have only just dropped out of warp when the Hydra’s warp nacelles are sheared off by phaser fire and a direct hit to the main hull forces them to scram their power core mere seconds before it explodes.
Kara is gaping. Astra is holding her breath. Dimly, Alex realizes that she’s grinning.
“Spartacus, this is USS Defender. Sorry we’re late. Tractoring you into our shuttlebay now, you should just about fit.”
Alex grabs the com. “Defender, this is Spartacus. Very glad for the save. We probably have a few injuries, and everybody’s a refugee from the Terran Empire. We’re requesting asylum in the Federation.”
“Granted. I’ll meet you in the shuttlebay. Defender out.”
Alex turns back to grin madly at Astra. “See? What’d I tell you?”
The Kryptonian swallows her pride and likely quite a few criticisms, and gives Alex a genuine smile. “I admit it. You were correct. This was a good decision.”
Alex kisses her. Astra grumbles in protest, but melts into it. Kara, over Astra’s shoulder, visibly has trouble deciding between glee and disgust before her own Human grabs her and pulls her down into a passionate kiss of her own.
***
Alexandra is first out the boarding door after they are set down in the ‘Federation’ shuttlebay.
“I had a feeling it would be you,” grins an exact duplicate of Alexandra, down to the scent, her hair cut a little shorter, styled into an attractive faux-hawk, clad in an alien uniform with white shoulders, a thick red stripe, and a black body and limbs. “Welcome to the United Federation of Planets, Commander Danvers.”
“It’s Captain, now,” Alexandra chuckles, and gives her duplicate a friendly hug. “We match.”
“Hey, congratulations! Do I want to know what happened?”
“Grand Admiral Lane thought he should be Emperor. I knifed him and got the Dominator for it. You probably don’t want the gory details.”
“Fair enough.” The other Alexandra’s eyes track to the next group of people, and her eyes widen. “Holy shit. Astra’s gonna flip.”
“What?” Astra asks.
“Sorry, not you, your duplicate from this universe. We’re, uh. It’s complicated.”
“Same here,” Alexandra admits. The two Terrans share a look, then burst out laughing.
“I guess we both have good taste,” the other Alexandra laughs, and Astra preens. “Nice to meet you, Astra In-Ze of the other universe. I’m Alex Danvers, Captain of the USS Defender, United Federation of Planets Starfleet.” She offers a hand. Astra accepts.
“A pleasure, I suppose.”
Alternate Alexandra giggles. “Not so different from mine, really. Hey, Huang,” and a duplicate of Jess the bodyguard trots up, “get everybody processed, will you? This one and the blonde are dupes of me and my sister, I’ll handle them and their family, OK?”
“Sure thing, sir,” alternate Jess the bodyguard replies with a nod, and then Alexandra is taking Astra’s hand, and Astra is all too happy to be led along to a frankly palatial set of quarters (“we’re sorry,” alternate Alexandra says, “it’s a little cramped and sparse, we haven’t had guests in a while”), invited to dinner in the forward lounge with alternate Alexandra (Astra spends most of the time stuffing her face with impressively tasty replicated food, and the rest leaning on Alexandra as the Terran duplicates discuss universal minutiae, intermittently chipping in her thoughts on her Alexandra’s vague plans of returning to the Empire to launch liberation raids, which alternate Alexandra clearly likes on principle but is wary of for fear of inciting a war), and finally settled back in the new quarters on a massive bed covered in silks and a down comforter.
“I’m gonna get a shower,” Alexandra says. “So. Now that we’re here. I know you were thinking about joining me on launching some guerilla raids. But you can also just…figure things out.”
“I do think,” Astra notes, “that things have moved quite quickly since we entered this universe.”
“Fair,” Alexandra admits. Her fingers play idly with the buttons of her top. “So. What do you think?”
“Have you considered taking time to think?”
Alexandra grimaces. “Not as much as I should.”
“How about this,” Astra says, rising with some regret from the plush bed. “We take our time. Get a ‘cat’. Find your passions. Then we take the fight to the Empire.”
“I can’t help but think of the people back there, who might need us,” Alexandra says.
“You cannot take every person’s pain on yourself,” Astra counters. “We will need to find a new center. A new strength. Only then will we be useful to those who need us.”
“God, of course you’re wise, too,” Alexandra mutters, but she’s smiling as Astra takes her hands. “Alright. Let’s give it…six months. Maybe a year. Figure our stuff out.”
“An excellent plan,” Astra murmurs. “And when you are ready, I will be there by your side to fight the Empire.”
She kisses Alexandra. And Alexandra kisses back.
It is an ending to one story, perhaps. But it is also a very promising beginning.
Srattan Thu 25 Dec 2025 01:11PM UTC
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