Dead Space: Kendra

Dead Space: Kendra

Author's Note: This story takes place in the Dead Space universe, before the events depicted in the first game, but it is not a horror story. Familiarity with the game, its setting, or its characters is not necessary to understand what you're about to read; at best it will help you catch an occasional reference and know there are no happy endings in that universe.

Even if science fiction and video games aren't your usual jam, if you've enjoyed my previous work I hope you'll trust me enough to give this one a chance in the name of the 2024 Literotica Geek Pride Story Event!

I owe an impossible debt of gratitude to several people who helped shape this story into what it eventually became, offered valuable advice and seemingly-infinite patience, and did everything I could have asked of beta readers and then some. So, in no particular order, thanks from the bottom of my heart to Carla, Eric, and Rose for seeing me through this project. The words might be mine, but your spirits infuse them.

* * * * *

I can see the stars

No matter how hard I try

They will not see me

-- Sasha Prescott, "Untitled Haiku #14"

* * * * *

For the space of a few minutes, my eyes are closed. Bereft of one sense, I use my others to attenuate to my surroundings. There are dozens of subtle noises you gradually learn to filter out after you've been on board a ship for a few days, but they're all coming back to me now in the darkness. There are pulses when the USG Fincher's gravity drive shifts the ship a degree or two in order to avoid some piece of space junk. The lights in the corridors hum constantly, with the occasional flicker from a power fluctuation. No matter how many credits you threw into the Network to buy the most comfortable mattress for your quarters, the insistent, ceaseless vibrations which have accompanied humanity's vehicular travels regardless of the terrain or means of locomotion cannot be escaped. At first, I hated them. Now, though, they're a constant reassurance that I'm alive: as familiar and inescapable to me as my own heartbeat. I've heard some of the Engineers talk about the Fincher as though it's alive; even though it was named for a man, they always refer to her as 'she'. Her heartbeat.

And I can feel her heartbeat. There's a moist feeling on my lips, the tender brushing sensation of being kissed, the panting gasps of a woman trying to catch her breath. She's on top of me, the way it usually is. Her chin rests lightly on my shoulder, a familiar sensation that feels so right. I gather my strength and slowly open my eyes, looking over at the face which has so enchanted me for the last few days as she raises her head. Her hair, long, dark, glistening with moisture, shrouds me. Sweat sticks her bangs to her forehead, leaving them parted in the middle like curtains tied open from the sides. She's still breathing on top of me, her mouth inches from my nose. But the feature I can't get away from are her eyes: beautiful, exotic, twin pools of the same shade of brown as the teddy bear I snuggled with as a child to take away the terrors of the night. Even now they entrance me, though I've stared deeply into them from this distance dozens of times. The heat from her bronzed skin carries an intoxicating perfume that would be worth billions to the first chemist who could successfully distill it.

Slowly she rises, her muscles quivering in the aftermath of their earlier exertion. I want to tell her something, say something, but I feel numb, so I'm happy when I see her tongue moisten her lips, the way it always does before she starts talking.

"We're coming up on my stop, Sasha. I wish things didn't have to end like this."

She runs her hand through her hair, turning to shake it out, and in her profile I see a hundred generations of Native ancestry in her proud cheekbones, her forehead, the slope and angle of her eyebrows, going all the way back to the Tongva peoples of old California back on Earth.

I nod with slow acceptance.

"But you knew I couldn't stick around forever. My employer has a list of wants I'll never come close to fulfilling." She picks her jacket up off the floor, shakes it once, and slides her arms into it with the grace of a dancer.

"We were just... prolonging the inevitable." Every movement, even now, is so precise. There's no wasted energy as she pivots to stare down at me again, her fingers emerging from the sleeves like a flower opening in the morning sun.

I can't speak. There are things I would tell her if I could. Things I've already told her before, but want to say again. It's too painful. I want her to stay, because despite the hurt, feeling her lips on mine again could erase it in an instant. But all I can do is watch through half-lidded eyes as she opens the door and steps slowly into the corridor.

Another meter and she'll be gone.

She hesitates. "I'm awful at goodbyes. Still..."

Hope rises.

"For what it's worth..."

She turns.

"We made a great team. I won't forget that."

The corner of her mouth stretches into the half-smile which, even now, elevates my shattered spirit. "See you around, Sasha. Maybe... maybe sooner than you think."

The door closes behind her.

My eyes, pressing out a final tear, follow suit.

* * * * *

"I'm sorry, is this seat taken?"

The Fincher is a working ship, and the mess hall is no exception, with seating forever at a premium. The booth I have acquired is a luxury which comes at the price of over an hour's worth of my off-shift time, as I arrived early enough to ensure I could eat without my knees pressed into my spleen. I'm convinced the Concordance Extraction Corporation built this ship on the assumption everyone in it would be exactly five feet and seven inches tall, and at five-ten, I fall just enough outside specs to be uncomfortable almost everywhere.

I look up at the voice and nearly inhale the mouthful of what passes for coffee I'm drinking, because for a split-second, I'm convinced I'm looking at an angel. I know, I know, that's the most cliched thing since lab-grown meat. I'm a Tech Specialist (Second Class), not a writer. Fortunately I swallow the lukewarm liquid before it goes down the wrong way while gesturing to the other side of the booth in a manner I hope conveys, 'By all means, help yourself.'

"Oh, thank God."

She sets down her tray and slides into the booth seat opposite me with an economy of movement that reminds me of an android, as though her brain calculated all the possibilities for how she could sit down and selected the optimal choice in a fraction of a second. But the woman across from me is no artificial person. The security badge on her white jacket, which she has somehow managed to keep pristine despite the grime always threatening to take over the ship, reads, 'Daniels, K.' It's marked with a red stamp, meaning the Fincher is a temporary assignment for her. No rank insignia, so she's not military. No Divet pistol on her hip, so she isn't part of Security. Her jumpsuit and jacket aren't standard reg either, so she must be a civilian. Probably a contractor or analyst of some sort.

Too beautiful to be an executive, I think, before mentally slapping myself for assuming she's either available or interested. I can't help but notice she's perfectly tailored to the Fincher's specs, though. Perfectly tailored to mine too.

"Sorry to intrude. The only other seat I saw is with those guys over there." She waves vaguely in the direction of a gaggle of ore processing specialists taking up the entire opposite corner of the cafeteria. "While I don't have anything against eating with grunts, I am tired of all the innuendos around who's drilling whom."

Be still my heart. Her voice is like strings on a harp being plucked by a silken-gloved hand. I replay it in my head several times until the noise of the cafeteria fades away and all I'm left with is the gentle caresses of her words across my inner ear. Then I realize I need to say something in return as she peers at me like I might be a headcase, and oh, Altman, do I feel like one, so I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. "I promise I won't ask you to drill me."

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck me.

She arches an eyebrow, blinks, then a half-smile spreads across the right side of her face. "Can't drill a girl until I know her name."

To avoid a repetition of past mistakes involving ravioli, marinara sauce, and a fine for neglecting CEC property, I keep my identification badge in my pants pocket while I'm eating, which is why she can't just look at my chest the way she could just about anyone else. I'm suddenly aware of the warmth spreading across my body as blood rushes to my face in the hardest blush I've done since I tripped and fell flat on my ass in front of Mandy Harding in the ninth grade. "I'm so sorry! Sasha. Sasha Prescott, Tech Spec two."

I lurch upward before considering my spatial awareness. The backs of my calves catch on the seat, forcing my pelvis into the side of the table, sending the arm I was reaching out with for a handshake careening into my coffee mug, which tilts and spills, in accordance with the laws of calamity physics, directly into the lap of 'Daniels, K.'

Or at least it would have, if her lap had been there. With the reflexes of a gymnast, she's up and out of her seat before the coffee mug's even halfway tilted.

Embarrassment in front of Mandy Harding has officially been eclipsed. I want to throw myself into the ShockPoint Drive and be done with it. But instead of judging me, instead of laughing at me, instead of doing anything I expect thanks to years of prior experience with my clumsiness, the angel I still know only as 'Daniels, K.' extends her hand and takes mine with a firm grip. "Nice to meet you, Sasha Prescott. I'm Kendra Daniels. And while that coffee's one step up from industrial lubricant, you should let me buy you a refill anyway."

'Kendra.' But of course that's what the 'K' stood for. It couldn't have been anything else.

Her hand isn't warm like I expect. Most of the Fincher's interior areas are temperature-regulated for relative comfort. Obviously that's impossible in places like the smelting deck, and I can make my quarters a bit warmer or cooler to suit my preference, but the ship more or less maintains a constant 20 degrees Celsius ambient. Kendra's hand feels like she held it in the breeze of one of the condensing units just before touching me. It isn't ice cold, more a welcoming, non-humid kind of cool. In the crush of bodies in the mess hall, I'm dumping sweat despite wearing the lightest jumpsuit in my wardrobe.

It feels good.

My mouth catches up with the display of reflexes I just witnessed, and before my brain can tell me to put a rivet in it, I blurt, "You a ninja or something?"

She laughs, the judder carrying into my palm. "No, this is just my favorite jacket, and I'm tired of being gouged by Cleaning Services every time I want the coke dust off it."

She does a small 'on the catwalk' half-turn and curtsy to show it off, and as soon as I see the label on the back, I understand. "That's a Jurgensen's 2499 limited!" I've never seen one up close before, which is why I didn't recognize it at first. But I've spent hours some nights flipping through HoloBay listings, dreaming about the day I might have one of my own.

The 2499 wasn't meant to be a limited edition. Jurgensen's made just as many of them as they did the 2498 from the year prior. But according to reports, the container ship carrying the full inventory off the factory world suffered a navigational error, steered its way into an asteroid field, and got pulverized. So instead of several hundred thousand flooding the market, the only 2499s which survived were samples sent out via shuttle couriers to various models, designers, and high-tier donors. Being the final edition of the 25^th century lineup, demand was already higher than normal. Now, nine years later in 2508, fewer than fifty are known to exist. Yet here in front of me stands an angel wearing one of them.

"Well, aren't you full of surprises? You're the first person I've met on this ship who knows anything about fashion."

I've done the math: if I saved literally every credit of my paychecks, and assuming my performance merited the industry-standard annual raises, I could afford a previously-owned one in seven years and eight months. I'd have moved like lightning to keep coffee off it too.

"So, Sasha Prescott," she says, still holding my hand and moving closer to my cheek so the words she's about to say won't be overheard, "now that I know your name, we can move on to the drilling part."

My mouth goes dry because this is the sort of thing that only happens on those trashy HoloRotica story sites (or so I'm given to understand), and I cannot believe this woman is at all interested in me. My brain instinctively starts hunting for ways to sabotage this gift, so I look at the table, at the tray of cornbread, potatoes, and green bean casserole slowly cooling to room-temperature that she set down only a minute ago. "What, uh, about your food?"

"Sasha." A seductive purr pushes its way out of her throat with my name. "I'm hungry for something else now."

* * * * *

I think we decide on my quarters because they're closer, but honestly I'm just floating on a cloud of utter disbelief. I open the door with my ID and grimace in the sudden reminder that I never clean things up because I never have visitors. I have an entire bin's worth of clothes which need to be washed, but of course, they're scattered all over the floor. My bed is unmade, the pillow still carrying the indent of my head from when I rolled out of it this morning. Utensils and dishes clog the single sink. I count three mostly-eaten containers of 'Spicee Chikin' instant noodles on the counter.

"Oh, shit, I'm so sorry! I never have guests! Let me just get this—"

I'm halfway to the recycler with last night's cans of Fizz! soda when she takes them out of my hands, sets them back on the table, steps directly into my personal space, and presses her lips to mine.

People on the HoloRotica forums always talk about kisses being 'electric' (or at least, you know, so I've heard), but in this case, I think they're one hundred percent right. And despite my defenses constantly sitting at hyper-vigilance levels, nothing about her indicates she's doing this for any reason other than because she wants to. It's not a trick, this isn't something someone put her up to, it isn't fake. It sounds so boastful, but this sable-haired, high-cheekboned angel honestly wants me.

I don't know what this feels like. Or rather, I don't know what it's supposed to feel like. Mandy Harding sure as hell never wanted me like this. No one else ever has either, at least as far as I'm aware. I know from looking in the mirror every day for the last twenty-five years that I'm nobody special: an awkward, gangly blonde-haired, blue-eyed nerd who prefers the company of fictional characters over real people, and who happens to be competent with computers. At least the laser surgery took care of the glasses which plagued me all through school. What a catch, right?

But in this kiss, this moment, all of that falls away. Because I know, for the first time, what it truly feels like to be wanted. And, Altman be praised, it feels fucking incredible! Her hand curls around the back of my head, fingers pushing through my hair, and I feel like I'm unwrapping my favorite Christmas present from when I was a kid. My hands go to her back, pressing me against her as her other arm starts working my shoulder out of my jumpsuit, and I feel like I'm unwrapping my two favorite Christmas presents from when I was a kid.

There's a structured order I follow when disrobing for the evening, and she violates it in every way imaginable. My jumpsuit top is off, but my boots are still on. I fumble with her jacket, feeling it catch on the RIG unit I didn't realize it was covering until just now, but she twists in just the right way, sliding it off her back and down her arms until it flops on the counter behind her.

I bend down to unlace my boots, and she pulls me back up, pushing her tongue between my lips to wrestle with mine. It takes me four tries to hold the heel of one with the toe of the other and yank my just-slightly-too-big-for-the-Fincher foot out of it. My sock stays behind, and the cold floor sends a shock up my spine which is immediately intercepted and overloaded by the one which comes as her hands grab the front of my bra and tear it apart at the center seam in a calculated, violent burst of motion.

I break our kiss momentarily at the shock, and she smiles back like she knew that was exactly what I'd do. "Don't tell me you work on an ore processor and never had your planets cracked before."

I laugh at the absurdity of the situation, at the tastelessness of the joke which has no doubt been made by every miner in the galaxy at one time or another, at how unbelievably sexy it sounds coming out of her mouth, and look down. I wouldn't call them 'planets'. More like small moons if anything. But I can't observe them for too long, because now that we've broken the kiss, she's taken a step back and begun a cracking operation of her own. Her RIG clanks to the ground when she releases the clamps, and I watch in rapt fascination as those delicate fingers reach into her pants, grab the bottom of her shirt, and sweep it up her body and over her head in a smooth, arcing motion which deposits it on the floor beside her, as though her arm created a rainbow with her shirt as the proverbial pot of gold.

I stare in disbelief as the angel in front of me pinches the fabric of her bra between her thumb and middle finger, makes a snapping motion, and somehow unfastens every latch of the front-hook underwear in that split-second movement. Freed from the confines of the tightly-banded blackness, her breasts, pert and tight, bronzed to perfection with nipples like raspberry-flavoured candy, are suddenly the focus of every millimeter of my optic nerves. With a shrug, the bra glides off her shoulders and settles on her RIG with a flutter.

I feel like I just opened every fucking Christmas gift I ever wanted from the time I was two until the time I was twenty-four. My gaze wanders down her torso, and I see the light definition of abs across her stomach. At some point, she must have stepped out of her shoes, and she makes a slow production of unfastening her cargo pants, bending forward, pushing them off her hips, down her thighs, maintaining eye contact with me the whole time until she releases them to plop in a small pool on the floor, which she exits with a dainty, economical, barefoot double-step.

"Am I the only one getting naked here?"

Snapped back to reality, I fumble with my other boot, but I can't seem to kick it off the way I did the first. She walks towards me, and I'm reminded for some reason of a panther stalking its prey. She stops just short, looks me over for a second, and pounces.

First to my RIG: her fingers slide into my sides, release the catches, and it tilts back from my spine to crash on the floor with a metallic bang that sounds so loud in the confines of my room. Then she's down on one knee. One hand pulls the laces on my boot, the other raises my calf and tugs, freeing my foot. She sets the boot beside its brother almost reverently, turns her attention to my waist, and in a second she's got the bottom half of my jumpsuit unfastened. It coils down my legs, and I feel an appreciative finger slide its way up to caress me through the front of my charcoal gray panties.