Chapter 2

The ‘me’ time, as she’d dubbed it, started with a deliberate stretch. Her arms reached for the ceiling, fingers splayed wide, and her back arched, pulling the muscles of her torso taut. The texture of the seat pressed against her spine, a familiar, grounding sensation. She was a pilot in a metal box, a tight and tiny girl in a machine built for her size, as Miller had so crudely put it. The thought of him, and the casual cruelty of his words, sent a fresh wave of heat through her, but this time it wasn’t shame. It was anger. A slow, simmering burn that coiled in her stomach and made her want to hit something.

Instead, she started to pace. The cabin was too small for a proper stride, so she made a circuit, from the pilot’s seat to the back of the cabin, to the storage locker, and back again. The floor was cold against her bare feet, a small, sharp sensation that kept her grounded in the present.

Every so often, the proximity sensor would beep once or twice, and she would have to make a small correction. Which surprised her at how little there was between the Waypoints. An endless, empty void, with no obstacles.

At one point she the object was too big for a mere correction, causing her to take a picture out of curiosity. Which ended up being a giant boulder with no interesting features at all. This repeated again over the course of the 2 hour drive, a few boulders here and there, but nothing more.

She made herself cum once an hour out of boredom, dragging out the process, edging until the sweat beaded on her forehead and her thighs trembled. The orgasms were a necessary evil, a way to pass time in a vehicle where the only thing to play with was her pussy. She tried to feel dirty about it, but the rational part of her mind, the prodigy from the top of her class, knew it was just biology. A simple, efficient way to manage stress in a high-stakes, isolated environment. That and she was also a horny teen who enjoyed making herself orgasm, the stress was a convenient excuse.

Her thoughts, as they tended to do when her body was sated and her mind was adrift, drifted back to the Den-Eve incident. She replayed the scene in her mind, not for the millionth time, but for the billionth. She saw the station’s main console, the one she was supposed to be monitoring. Everything was nominal. She remembered checking the readouts, seeing the green lights, the stable reactor core. She remembered the door to the observation lounge sliding open.

ROUTE DELTA // WAYPOINT 2 // DISTANCE 5 KM // ESTIMATED TIME 10 MINUTES

She shook her head. No. She wouldn’t go there.

She held the gear shift in drive. Her mind needed to be here. Not back there. She was almost at her second destination.

CAMERA ACTIVE. TAKING PICTURE. REMAIN STILL FOR 30 SECONDS.

The screen counted down. Elise leaned her head back, her eyes closed. She was tired in a way that had nothing to do with lack of sleep. Masturbating was a good way to burn off nervous energy and pass the long hours, but it did not offer real rest.

Once the image finished, she turned to look at it. A second structure. This one was different. It was a cluster of spires, thin and delicate, like crystals frozen in mid-burst. They were tall, their surfaces etched with fine, lace-like patterns that seemed to shimmer, even in the reconstructed image. There was something beautiful about them, but also something deeply unsettling. They looked like they could shatter at a whisper, yet they had stood for who knows how long, touched by the eternal [article storm.

“Another one for the queue.” She said to the empty cabin.

She initiated the upload sequence, the screen confirming the data was stored. She was becoming efficient, a good little drone. A tight and tiny girl fitting perfectly in her seat, collecting data on a dead world.

“Upload pending reconnect with orbital station...” She read on the display. “But Anya said they’d talk to me again before I even arrived at the second waypoint...”

She felt a prickle of unease. She should have heard from them by now. The communication window was predictable, a precise calculation of the station’s orbit and the planet’s rotation. The silence stretched on.

She checked the comms panel. Everything was green. Power, transmitter, receiver. No faults detected.

“Maybe they’re just busy.” She said out loud, the words sounding flimsy and unconvincing in the quiet. “I guess I’ll continue then ... alone ... As usual...”

ROUTE DELTA // WAYPOINT 3 // DISTANCE 96.5 KM // ESTIMATED TIME 3 HOURS AND 13 MINUTES

“Fuck...” She sighed. It was the longest distance between Waypoints so far. She would have to do some ‘me’ time three times to pass that much. She thought about the upcoming hours. The endless silence. The rhythmic hum of the crawler. The only thing she could do is pleasure herself, over and over again. The thought was not exciting anymore, it was a chore.

2 and a half hours had passed, and she was in the middle of getting herself off a third time since the last Waypoint. Her legs were shaking as her fingers rubbed circles on her clit.

“H-h-harder...” She moaned out loud to no one but herself.

Her body was slick with sweat, the cabin air warm and thick with the scent of her own arousal. The steady hum of the crawler was a backdrop to the ragged sounds of her breathing.

“Yeah, right there ... right there...” She whispered, her hips bucking against her own hand. “Just like that...”

Talking to herself while doing this had become a new thing for her. In the vast emptiness of her world, the sound of her own voice, even in moments of depravity, was a comfort. It made her feel less alone and made her feel like someone was actually with her. This is where she pictured some random boy with a big cock, just a tool she could use and throw away. No connection, no romance. Just a release.

She pictured him now, nameless and faceless, a disembodied cock and a pair of rough hands that squeezed her small breasts a little too hard. The thought sent a jolt of pleasure through her, her back arching.

“I’m going to cum ... I’m going to cum...” She chanted, her voice a breathy whisper. “Oh god, I’m going to cum...”

“Told you we’d catch her getting off,” Miller’s sudden, booming laugh of a voice cracked through the comms, so loud and unexpected it was like a physical blow. “See, Anya? What did I tell you? A nympho, just like I said.” The sound of it sent a bolt of pure ice through her veins.

Elise’s eyes flew open, the nameless boy vanishing from her mind’s eye. Her body went rigid, her fingers stilling their motion. The pleasure that had been building inside her evaporated, replaced by a cold, creeping dread that washed over her, extinguishing the heat of her arousal in an instant.

“M-Miller?” She stammered, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The comms had been dead for hours. “The comms ... they were...”

“Yeah, little miss calculation on our part ... The station rotated on a different axis for a bit ... Had to re-adjust to align with your coordinates again.” Anya’s voice was a welcome relief, though it still didn’t erase the sting of Miller’s laughter. “But we got a stable connection now. And ... Wow ... You’re either fighting for your life down there, or you’ve been masturbating once an hour ... your vitals read like you’ve been in the middle of a very high intensity work out ... multiple times.” Anya tried her best not to laugh, but there was no hiding the amusement in her voice.