Space Girl Claire – Eye of the Master Prologue

The Master rested fitfully within his fortified citadel burrowed into the rock of asteroid NC7-382. No, rested was not the right word, but dreamt, his mind reaching out to touch every single one of the minions under his control, stretching out across planets and star systems and entire clusters, grabbing hold of the telepathic bonds that kept them in thrall and letting them know that the Master was with them. From the lowest spoo-peddler to the highest crime boss and slave trader, the Master dominated all, saw all. His psychic influence had established an empire of crime, corruption and decay across much of the known galaxy, a thousand spores of evil all rooted in the same source; the Master. Millions of credits flowed into his accounts daily, and his reach was nearly limitless in this sector. But why then was his sleep troubled? What could the most powerful crime lord in the known galaxy be anxious or worried about? Perhaps it was the centuries-old pain of his exile from Vree, a splinter that haunted him ever since the Vreenan government allied with the Space Girls to end his brutal reign. Perhaps it was his limitless greed, that overwhelming avarice that had led him to establish his empire of crime across the stars and obliterate the Space Girls and their temple-fortress.

Perhaps it was the overwhelming knowledge that one of their number still lived, and their eternal secret lay beyond his grasp.

The Master hissed in rage, sending gun-runners and the heads of drug cartels from dozens of light years away pitching to the floor in a collective fit of agony. The destruction of the Space Girls and their temple had been a masterpiece of planning, a symphony of annihilation composed by a master strategist. While the Space Girls had proven resistant to his telepathic domination, they fell easily enough to bullets, plasma weapons and mass drivers. Thousands of his hired thugs and mercenaries, along with his mind-controlled puppets, died in the siege, but eventually they were successful. The Order of the Space Girls was wiped out, and the few that survived went to his torture chambers to be broken and probed for their secret. The Master growled as he remembered the captive’s defiance, how each of the dozen prisoners had died rather than betray the secret they had been entrusted. It was lost to him, lost forever, and not a moment went by when he did not burn at the thought.

But then rumours started circulating that one Space Girl had survived the attack, an apprentice by the name of Claire, a vagabond who travelled the stars with a few select companions, continuing the work of her Order in a galaxy that had fallen into a dark age of chaos and corruption. In his feverish, power-mad dreams, the Master hoped that this girl held the key to the secret he had long desired. Time and again, she had slipped through his fingers or those of his agents, but no longer. He would bend every back he controlled and user each and every single one of his considerable assets to find and secure the last Space Girl and her team, and he would not relent until the secret of their Order was his and his alone. He had been too cautious, too subtle in the past, but this time, there would be no mercy or respite for the Space Girl and her comrades. He would either acquire the secret or die in the attempt; there would be no middle ground.

Rousing himself from his massive bed adorned with the finest in Alderbareen silks and Hitheru concubines, the Master strode out into the nearest barracks, a scaly green fist hammering on the door. “Mardian!” he boomed, striking the door a further three times. “Mardian! Present yourself!”

Hydraulics squealed, and the door opened to reveal the grey-skinned bounty hunter’s powerful, supple form. Anyone else who saw he might think that she had been caught sleeping given her relative state of undress, but the armoured halter top and flimsy black leather jeans were her standard attire, along with the belt of knives, darts and other death-dealing implements that hung from her leather belt. Shockingly blue hair was bound in an elegant braid that extended down to her tailbone, while wide, vivid green eyes stared outwards with malice. Mardian of the Lost Ones was the Master’s most effective and ruthless bounty hunter, a beautiful terror that blazed an endless trail of death and sorrow throughout the galaxy. It was by her hand that the Abbess of the Space Girls had been captured, and a dozen of her finest warriors cut down by the fearsome black Wraithsword slung across her back. Now, she would hunt another. “What is your will, Master?” she asked, blood-red lips turned up in a vicious yet sultry smile. “I have languished here for too long, and desire another trophy to add to my collection. Have you another prey for me to find?”

The Master ignored her superior tone. Like the greatest of his servants, Mardian was permitted to keep her mind intact, and his psychic control over her was relatively limited. After all, the more of their will he consumed, the less effective his servants were. Thus, the Master’s domination over the seductive bounty hunter was relatively limited; it did not interfere with her abilities and left her free will largely intact, but at any sign of treason, the Master could put the screws on. “I have found you prey, my dear, more worthy prey than you have hunted in some time. How would you like to hunt a Space Girl again?”

Her green eyes bored into him, and a wretched purple tongue slid out from between her lips. “Impossible. The Space Girls are all dead. You saw to that.”

“It seems that one has slipped through my grasp,” the Master replied. “An oversight that I shall allow you to rectify. Find the Space Girl and bring her to me, alive and unharmed. As for any companions she might have, do with them what you will.” His voice grew in strength and Mardian stiffened up, his psychic control drilling his orders into her mind, and knew that there would be no escape for the Space Girl and no pity within his savage torture chambers. “Bring me Claire!”

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“You’re in my chair!” the brutal, thuggish-looking mercenary said, arms as thick as tree limbs, his ham-sized hands curling into fists. The normally-noisy and boisterous atmosphere of the Endless Void saloon went deathly quiet as the mercenary approached the two beautiful young women at the bar, strutting towards them with considerable self-confidence. “You ladies seem to be in the wrong place, so I’ll ask polite-like; get out of my chair.” A fat finger pointed at the apparent leader of the group, a stately redhead clad in a scarlet spacer’s jumpsuit and old-fashioned pilot goggles mounted on her head. “You, you can stay. Drinkin’s no fun without a tasty girl like you beside me.”

Claire, last of the Space Girls, gulped nervously at the leering face of the mercenary. She and her two companions had arrived on Epsilon Erandi Station only last night, seeking work and information on an old outpost of the Space Girls that was supposedly abandoned centuries ago, but already, they had received plenty of trouble from the locals. Cursing herself for not bring her favourite pulse-pistol to the bar, Claire grimaced as the thug ran his hand up along her bare arm, the contact making her feel queasy. Oh, why does this always happen to us?

“Leave her alone, you meanie!” came the shrill, tremulous cry of the young Hitheru sitting next to Claire. The blue-skinned alien was dressed in a rather provocative fashion, as was usual for her people, with a considerable amount of her smooth, exotic flesh exposed to the curious and aroused glances of the other patrons. The thug glared at her menacingly, but Aki stood her ground, her loyalty to Claire and hereditary predisposition of obedience to her mistress leaving her with no other alternative. “Why don’t you pick on someone else, you big brute?”

“Shut up, blue, or I’ll bring you along as well!” the mercenary growled, grabbing Claire’s wrist as if to drag her along. “Come on, sweetheart; don’t make it hard on yourself...”

Claire resisted weakly for a moment, then kicked out with her powerful legs, catching the foe in the midsection. The thug stumbled, and Claire followed up with a vicious strike to the throat using the blade of her hand, leaving him gasping for breath. In the same instant, all five feet and six inches of Aki’s heartbreakingly-beautiful body slammed into the mercenary’s side, sending him to the floor. Dainty hands grabbed his pulse-pistol, and the thug soon found himself staring up the barrel of his own weapon. “Don’t touch my Claire ever again!” Aki snapped.  

Chair legs squealed on the linoleum and metal floor, as three of the mercenary’s companions rose out of their seats. Aki suddenly looked very nervous at the swift change in fortunes, and instinctively moved to shield Claire from their wrath. Readying herself in a loose fighting stance taught to her as part of her Space Girl training, Claire prepared to defend herself, in the event that things should escalate out of hand.

And then their saviour waltzed into the saloon, the sound of her heels clacking drowned out by the scream of plasma fire that left a mid-sized scorch mark upon the ceiling. The mercenaries halted dead in their tracks, glaring hatefully at the hard-edged woman who stood in the doorway, a smoking plasma rifle in hand. “The first person to touch them dies fast,” Leena the Merc stated to the assembled crowd, her tone remorseless and without pity. “The second one, I take my time over.”

The first thug came to his feet unsteadily, breath wheezing. “Back off, Leena, you bloody skank! You and your girls are outnumbered and outgunned, so don’t start a fight you can’t win.”

“Oh, Hastings, you block-headed oaf, always thinking about your guns. The Magistrate of this station doesn’t take too kindly to armed shoot-outs, and considering that he and I served in the Alliance Militia together, he definitely won’t appreciate it my friends and I are harmed. Bugger off.”

Hastings knew he was beaten, and the thug skulked away with his fellow soldiers of fortune in tow. “One of these days, Leena...”

“One of these days, you might grow the balls needed to follow through on your threats, Hastings. Piss off,” Leena retorted acidly before making her way to the bar. “We’ve been in this rathole of a port less than twenty-four hours, and already you two have gotten yourselves into trouble. Can’t I leave you alone for an hour without some near-disaster breaking out.”

Aki huffed at the mercenary’s tone. “We had things perfectly under control when you showed up.”

“I’ll be,” Leena sneered back, before turning to Claire. “It wasn’t easy, Claire, but I found the man you were looking for, and he’s agreed to help you. Had to call in a bunch of favours and muscle in on some goons, but it happened.”

Hope flickered at Claire’s breast, and excitement grew within her. Leena had been a good companion to her; tough, resourceful and experienced, the latter quality Claire knew she did not possess. In a galaxy that had descended into what some were describing as a new Dark Age, the mercenary’s skills and contacts had been invaluable in Claire’s quest to uncover the lost secrets of the Space Girls, and now it seemed that it had paid dividends. “He’s willing to show us where the old outpost is?” she asked with an air of optimism.

“Keep your voice down!” Leena hissed, and the Space Girl fell silent. “Yeah, he thinks he knows where it is. He’ll meet us in Cargo Bay 13-B in one hour, and he’ll come alone. I hope you’ve got the cash with you.”

“Yes. We had to sell off some of the artefacts we recovered on our last adventure, but it we managed to get the money. Leena, what do you think about this man? Is he trustworthy?” Claire asked, as the trio left the saloon to enter the bustling bazaars and merchant wards of the station. Epsilon Erandi was situated on several major interstellar trade routes, and a hundred species from a thousand worlds all congregated there to engage in the game of free enterprise. Thousands of vessels, large and small, were docked on the station’s rotating outer rings, among them the sloop Benedictine, Claire’s own vessel that she had rescued from the chaos of the Space Girl’s annihilation. She was a fast ship, nimble and elegant, and they would need her speed to outrun the trouble that always seemed to follow in her wake.

Leena shrugged. “He’s a looter and a scrap merchant. He’s as loyal as his next payment, but I think we can trust him far enough to show us to the old outpost.”

“What’s so special about this place, Claire?” Aki asked curiously. The hitheru had been genetically engineered to act as an assistant for Claire and had been present when the fortress-monastery of the Space Girls had fallen, but she was still unfamiliar with many aspects of the now-destroyed organization.

“It’s an old outpost of the Space Girls, long decommissioned, on the borders of Alliance space. It was abandoned and forgotten centuries ago, but some of its records might still remain. It might be useful in helping us to restore the Space Girls, and bring back justice and order to the galaxy.”

Leena shook her head, doubtful. “This is the fifth such lead we’ve found, Claire, and all the others were dead ends. Are you sure this place really exists?”

“It exists, all right. When I was an acolyte of the Space Girls, I learned about many such outposts, watchtowers on the frontiers of civilized space, designed to monitor the activity of hostile species and pirates. If the information your contact will give us is accurate, then we might be able to find it and retrieve its data.” At this, Claire gave a weary sigh. “Like it or not, I am the last Space Girl, and I don’t know enough about the Order to bring it back to life, especially not the most secret information only know by the high-level members of the group. If we’re to bring order back to the galaxy, we need to bring the Space Girls back, and I can’t do that on my own.”

Claire suddenly froze as Aki embraced her warmly, more surprised than anything. “Don’t worry, Claire, I’ll help you!” she cried out exuberantly, drawing no few interested eyes, as well as Leena’s annoyed look.

The hour passed swiftly. Aki went off to the Benedictine to make some minor adjustments to the navigational array, while Claire and Leena stopped by a noodle shop for a quick bite to eat. “It’s just about time to meet him. Aki should be back right now!” Claire exclaimed, searching the wandering crowds for her companion.

“Well, we can’t sit here all day, Claire,” Leena stated gruffly. “Aki knows better than to be late, especially with stuff like this. Let’s just go without her.”

“Half a moment. Let me hail her, figure out what’s going on,” Claire replied, activating her com-link. “Aki, are you there?”

Aki’s voice sounded on the link immediately. “Hello, Claire! What’s up?”

“We were just wondering where you were. It’s about time to meet our contact. Have you gotten lost?”

A pause, then Aki replied, “Sorry, Claire, but I found some damage to the navigational system on the ship, and it’s taking me longer than I thought to fix it. Go ahead without me, I’ll fix it and wait for you here.”

Claire frowned. In the past, Aki had often been insistent on being with Claire whenever she was meeting someone or travelling on a planet, even going so far as to ignore her other responsibilities on the ship. This was not like her. “Are you alright, Aki?”

“Don’t worry, Claire, I’m fine. I just want to make you happy, and getting you to this outpost quickly is the best way to do that. Go ahead. I’ll be ready to launch when you get back.”

The last Space Girl blushed, gratified at her companion’s answer. “Thank you, Aki. We’ll be back soon.”

At the same moment, the user of the com-link turned the device off with a sudden snap, turning to her restrained captive lying unconscious on the command deck of the Benedictine. Aki had not even seen the intruder, camouflaged with the bulkhead as she had been, nor had she noticed that the hatch had been broken into, so keen was the intruder’s infiltration skills. These errors had cost her dearly, and now she was bound with strong nano-weave fibres that secured her wrists, ankles, thighs, torso and chest, while a dense ball of foam occupied her full mouth, the gag completed with a bit of heavy tape. The intruder strode over to her helpless captive, a grey-skinned hand running through her hair. “Don’t worry, Aki,” Mardian said in a perfect imitation of Aki’s own voice. “They’ll be joining you soon...”

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“You got the credits?” the scrap-merchant asked, eyeing the two women greedily as they entered the cargo bay. His brown overcoat was tattered and stained, and his oral hygiene had definitely seen better days, but his eyes were sharp and quick, and a worn hand reached out for the money. “Give them to me now, or I walk away.”

“Hold your horses, you dirty bugger,” Leena replied, thrusting a datapad into his hand. “There. Fifty thousand credits transferred into your account. Now what about the coordinates?”

Silence persisted for a moment, as the scrap-merchant seemed to slink down, almost curl up as if he feared being hit. “Excuse me, sir, but what about the location of the outpost?” Claire asked. A gloved hand touched his shoulder, and Claire knelt down to observe him more closely. “Sir.”

And then he spoke. “The Master wills it.”

“What?” Leena asked.

With unearthly speed, the scrap-merchant reached into his coat, and suddenly Claire was choking and hacking on the speed-inducing mist projected from the aerosol can he produced. “The MASTER WILLS IT!”

“Bastard!” Leena shouted, drawing her plasma rifle and lining a bead on the possessed merchant, but not before the dart struck her in the neck, pumping the drug into her system almost instantly. Leena tottered on her feet for a moment, before succumbing to the paralysing compound, her brown eyes glassy and unfocused as Mardian decloaked, detaching from the cargo bay ceiling like some daemonic arachnid. Activating her com-link, the Lost One gave a simple message to the entity she had come to serve: “We have them.”

The Master smiled.