Twinks in Space: Fantastic Voyage - Part Two - 59. Chapter 59 - Memory

“How are all three ships in hyperspace?” Phentrom asked from the airlock of the Galaxy Surfer as Lyoth climbed back out of the police cruiser.

“The cavitation engine is recognizing the three connected ships as a single vessel, and it’s providing propulsion to the whole thing. As long as no other engine is working against the cavitation drive on the police ship, it will keep us in hyperspace and take us all the way to the capital. We should also register on any local scanners now as only a police cruiser and not a Sunship.”

Captain Suoki put an arm around Phentrom. “Lyoth and I did this move once before. Where were we for that one?”

Lyoth snickered. “You don’t remember? That was Ouslin Beach.”

Captain Suoki let out a boisterous peal of laughter. “Ouslin Beach!”

Lyoth leaned toward Stawren and said, “Everything was Suoki’s fault.”

The captain was aghast. “Was not!”

Phentrom gave him an inquisitive look.

“Well, it might’ve been a bit my fault,” Captain Suoki admitted. He turned to Lyoth with a beaming smile. “Do you remember his name? Oh, what was his name?”

Lyoth replied in a sultry voice. “Voolig.”

“Voolig!” Captain Suoki repeated with relish.

Lyoth chuckled.

“Phentrom,” Captain Suoki said to the mandroid, “Voolig was gorgeous. He was big and dumb and pretty, and you know how I like ’em big and dumb and pretty.”

Phentrom giggled.

Captain Suoki exaggerated poetically, “Voolig was maybe the biggest and dumbest and prettiest man I had ever lain mine eyes on.” He stroked his luxuriant beard. “And he was my big, dumb, and pretty; I mean, for like three hours he was mine.” He snorted a laugh.

“Suoki sent me a message that he needed a quick escape from an awkward love triangle,” Lyoth explained. He was wearing a mischievous smile.

“Love triangle with who?” Phentrom asked.

Lyoth shot Captain Suoki a psudo-confused look. “Who was it again? Was it the archduke of a rival planetary system to the one you were sworn to at the time? Wasn’t it the duke and his beefy beautiful husband?”

“Oooh, gurl, you better spill that tea!” Phentrom demanded playfully.

“Lyoth might be into twinks,” Captain Suoki replied, slapping the mandroid’s backside, “but you know how I like my men. Give ’em to me manly!”

“Voolig was very manly,” Lyoth confirmed, “and this loverboi,” he continued, waving a hand at Captain Suoki, “was on the archduke’s pleasure barge with Voolig in view of the Meadow Nebula.” Lyoth added aside to Stawren, “It’s beautiful.”

“Gods,” Captain Suoki mused, “do you remember the Meadow Nebula?”

“Of course I…” Lyoth tried to reply.

“It was like a billion-billion blossoms blooming all at once that lasted forever!” the captain continued. “I was in love, or at least in lust, and that’s just as good in its own way.”

Phentrom slapped the big man’s hand. “Suoki, you’re terrible!”

“Well,” Lyoth mumbled with a guilty expression on his face, “it gets worse.”

“Yeah, we dumped the two of them on an uninhabited rock,” Captain Suoki declared with a cackle.

“Don’t worry,” Lyoth added quickly, “we sent out a distress call for them, and they were picked up in less than eight hours.”

Stawren and Phentrom were waiting for more details.

“I had a ship,” Lyoth continued. “Suoki called and told me where he was, and I met him. I docked with the duke’s barge, but my ship wasn’t the only one docked. The duke himself was also there. He had found out about Suoki and Voolig, and he confronted them. When I arrived, the archduke was unconscious and Voolig was sobbing.”

“We put them both into one of the barge’s escape pods and ejected it,” Captain Suoki concluded. “Gods, Voolig was gorgeous.”

Lyoth looked toward the Galaxy Surfer’s airlock. “Like right now, we had no way to disconnect the ships without being aboard them, so instead, we kept all three together and left the region of the Meadow Nebula.”

“Why didn’t you just leave the duke and his husband on their other ships?” Phentrom asked.

“What,” Captain Suoki replied, “so they could follow us?”

Stawren furrowed her brow. “Wait a second, the Cometskipper was able to detach that stolen shuttle after we saved those imprisoned kids. Is that another special thing about Fonith’s ship?”

“I suspect so,” Lyoth replied. “We can’t disengage the Galaxy Surfer from the police cruisers unless someone is on them. We’re stuck with the three ships together, for now.”

“But if the Galaxy Surfer can’t detach from these police ships,” Stawren continued, “how are we supposed to get free?”

Captain Suoki was enthusiastic to relive more of the adventure. “After dropping off the dukelkins and his hunky hubby, Lyoth and I found ourselves on the combined ships of the duke’s barge, his personal ship, and whatever ship Lyoth had at the time. What was it called again?”

“You don’t remember much from that trip, do you?”

“All I remember is my loverrr!” Captain Suoki growled with a sigh.

Stawren put her hands on her hips. “So how do we free the Galaxy Surfer?”

Captain Suoki turned to Lyoth. “Will we do something like last time?”

“What’d you do last time?” Phentrom asked.

“I think I remember most of this part,” the captain stated, and he dove into the tale. “When we arrived, Lyoth was piloting the archduke’s private ship, and the other two were still attached, like the predicament we’re in right now.”

“Wait, where did you arrive?” Stawren asked.

“Papa Zed’s,” Lyoth answered.

Phentrom gasped. “That’s one of the largest all-male brothels in the universe!”

“Yes,” Captain Suoki confirmed, and the big man let out a surprisingly giddy giggle, “but we didn’t get to enjoy it. Lyoth flew the duke’s ship right into one of Papa Zed’s zero-gravity hangars with the other two vessels still attached. While it was auto-docking in one of the electromagnetic wave ports, Lyoth headed back through the pleasure barge and onto his own ship. Once the duke’s ship was secure, the other ships were able to be detached.”

“Suoki was at the barge’s controls,” Lyoth continued, “and the instant it was free, he flew us out of the hangar and around to another docking port on the other side of Papa Zed’s. You should have seen the speed and agility he pulled off with that move.”

Captain Suoki waved away the compliment with a beaming smile. “We repeated the process with Lyoth on his ship. As soon as the barge was locked and I was off it, we launched and took off!” He let out another laugh.

Stawren looked at the three men. “But what are we going to do with these police cruisers?”

Lyoth smirked. “We’re gonna keep ’em.” He pulled the active cruiser’s handheld device out of his pocket. “The downside is, with only the single police cruiser’s engine, the trip to the capital is going to take longer than it would using the Galaxy Surfer’s engine. We’ve got thirteen and a half hours.”

Captain Suoki spoke up, “Well I’m ready for a snack. Phentrom, want to help me prep a meal?”

“Food sounds good,” Stawren added. “And I’m gonna try and find any information about the three godstrolls we’re hunting on the police cruiser’s computer.”

Lyoth joined the other two men in the kitchen, but Stawren came in before they had even started preparing anything.

“The godstrolls have indeed been apprehended,” she informed them. “I found the details immediately; it’s all over the imperial media. They’ve been taken to an orbital prison station above the planet Waelyen. It’s only about two hours from where we are.”

“Did you change our course?” Lyoth asked.

“I did.”

Two hours later, the trio of attached vessels exited hyperspace, and the four onboard could see the prison station orbiting above the planet’s far horizon.

Phentrom stepped up and took his lover’s hand. “Lyoth, I’m scared. Are you really planning on attacking a prison?”

Lyoth turned and gave the mandroid his full attention. “Phentrom, I can’t stop picturing our friends who are trapped on the Ulaa-Lah. I want to find them and bring them home.”

“Like Thrad,” Phentrom whispered.

“Exactly, Thrad and everyone else who was loyal to the captain, and even those who weren’t, we spent a few years with them, and they all deserve to be found and returned home.”

“Oi! Gents!” Stawren called to the three of them. “I’ve got an update. Good news, Phentrom. Looks like we’re not going to that prison station after all. Apparently it couldn’t accommodate the godstrolls, and they’re being transported to a more secure facility on the ground.”

The portable device in Lyoth’s hand started beeping. “Someone’s accessing the cruiser’s communicator.”

“Officer,” said a voice through the speaker, “what is your designation?”

Phentrom, Stawren, Lyoth, and Captain Suoki were silent.

“Officer, are you reading me? Who is controlling your ship?”

Lyoth leaned close to Stawren and whispered, “They’re on to us.”

The voice continued. “Officer, I will be arriving at your position in thirty seconds.”

“Time to go!” Stawren hissed.

Lyoth rushed out of the kitchen with her. At the door, he paused and turned back to Phentrom and Captain Suoki. “Go to the Galaxy Surfer’s bridge!”

“What’s the plan?” Stawren asked Lyoth as they entered the active cruiser.

He switched over to manual controls and accelerated the trio of ships down into the atmosphere. “We need to land.”

Above them, an imperial gunship appeared where they had just been.

“Oh gods…” Stawren breathed.

Lyoth pushed the cruiser, but its engine was at its limit. “Suoki!” he shouted. “Get ready to activate the Galaxy Surfer!”

“Won’t that immediately attract more attention?” Stawren asked.

A blast from the gunship came scorching over the nose of the police cruiser.

“We’ve already attracted the wrong kind of attention,” Lyoth growled. He turned toward the airlock that led to the Galaxy Surfer. “Suoki, turn it on now!” Lyoth killed the police cruiser’s engines, but it lurched forward with the power of the Galaxy Surfer coming to life. “Stawren, we need to disengage the two shuttles.”

She frowned. “How do we do that?”

“The Galaxy Surfer it now picking up that it’s no longer in the vacuum of space, and it’ll let us manually override the airlocks to open the doors and drop the cruisers.” At the door between the two ships, Lyoth said to Stawren, “Grab hold of something.” He turned to the wall, opened a small panel, and pulled a lever.

Hurricane-force winds came ripping into the Galaxy Surfer’s airlock as the cruiser fell away, and the door sealed.

“To the other side!”

The two of them rushed to the second police cruiser and repeated the release. The wind again whipped around them before the door closed.

“Suoki, get us out of here!” Lyoth shouted.

Without the excess weight of the police cruisers, the Galaxy Surfer began to outrun the imperial gunship.

“Too bad,” Captain Suoki commented through his teeth as Lyoth and Stawren entered the ship’s bridge, “we didn’t get to see those police cruisers explode.” He was piloting the ship hard and fast into the lower atmosphere.

Another blast from the gunship sailed over the top of the Galaxy Surfer.

Phentrom looked over the control panel. “Why doesn’t this thing have any weapons?”

The Galaxy Surfer was faster and far more maneuverable than the ship in pursuit.

“We’ve flown a quarter of the way around the planet,” the mandroid added. “We’re nowhere near where the godstrolls are.”

“That’s become less important at the moment,” Captain Suoki grunted.

Lyoth pointed out one of the Galaxy Surfer’s side windows. “Take us toward that mountain range.”

Captain Suoki turned the ship, and almost immediately after he began to weave through the snowy peaks, the scanners blinked clear.

“You lost it, Suoki,” Lyoth stated. “Nice flying.”

“But where’d it go?” Phentrom asked.

Captain Suoki cautiously piloted the ship back to the edge of the mountain range, and the quartet saw the destruction.

The gunship had clipped the side of a rock face, and one of its engines had been ripped off by the impact and was still on the side of the mountain. The ship crashed in the valley below. Trails of smoke streaked toward the sky from the two pieces.

“Do you think anyone was onboard,” Phentrom asked quietly, “or do you think it was remote-piloted?”

No one said anything for a while, but eventually Lyoth spoke. “It was a mistake coming into this empire, and I think it’s going to cost us the ship.”

The other three looked at him.

“What do you mean?” Stawren asked. “Why?”

Lyoth sighed. “We are currently in the heart of the Tonizal Empire. We’ve angered several groups of officials. We haven’t been able to fly the Galaxy Surfer without immediately attracting attention. It’s been a good ship, but I’m afraid we’re stuck here until we can find some other way out of this quadrant of space.”

Phentrom let out an exasperated breath. “How do we do that? How are we supposed to escape these imperials?”

Lyoth looked at the others with a disappointed expression. “I think we need to ditch the Galaxy Surfer.”