We visited a dozen star systems as we made our way farther and farther out into the galaxy. Each one had some kind of Order Presence in it and they had congregated together, thanks to the fake message that Simone and I had sent out of The Wise One to all of The Order's followers. It made wiping them all out so much easier... especially since they would transmit their locations when they gathered somewhere that wasn't an official Order compound or temple.

I almost started feeling bad about it. Almost. I only had to remember that the woman sitting beside me wasn't the woman I had given my eternal heart to, and pushing the button became an act of vengeance each and every time. I didn't let my anger take control until I stopped once every two weeks and took out my anger on some of the devastated worlds. I made sure to not be near a populated area when I let lose and I always stopped myself before I went blind with rage.

I always returned to the ship calm and collected and Kara always gave me an angry look, because I had to lock her in the spare room when I left. I had tried to explain once and she didn't understand, so I just did it silently and left it at that.

Lashina on the other hand, completely understood and she cried every time I left the ship. When I returned, she always tried to comfort me and tried to use her Presence to touch mine. Unlike the way it used to be during all the other times we shared, I wouldn't open it for her. That made her cry, and I felt bad for her, then I reminded her that we couldn't do that until she wore pants and kept them on.

I felt her resolve to try harder to conform to my unreasonable demand and I took her into my arms and kissed her. I let her feel my love and my desire for her to let me make love to her, because I really, really needed it, and she cried harder. She knew her inability to do what I wanted was hurting me as well as herself.

After devastating another six systems and removing The Order from them, Hela exited into another brown dwarf system. Thankfully, I had prepared the ships after Gleas' last encounter with it and was well suited to deal with it. I felt my Presence start to be siphoned off and fought the feeling as I quickly shot twenty-four expanding black barrier machines at the star. I turned the ship around and dropped a satellite as I poured power into Hela's engines, then turned on the black barrier emitter that was hooked into one of the secondary reactors.

The entire ship was covered in the large circular barrier and my Presence stopped being siphoned off immediately. The only bad part was that I couldn't drop the barrier until the computer gave me coordinates to jump away... and it couldn't do that until it had the navigation data from the current system. Since the barrier stopped all transmissions in and out through it, I would have to turn it off to get the computer to work.

“What just happened?” Kara asked. “Why did you turn around?”

“You didn't feel that?” I asked and she shook her head. “It's something we've encountered before while on Relique. I think these are the worlds that were on the other side of the portals that appeared.”

Kara gave me a disbelieving look. “Hunter, do you know what the odds are that we would encounter them on this side?”

“I'm just telling you what I encountered. I don't know why my Presence is being absorbed by it this time, though.” I quickly checked on Lashina with both my mind and my eyes. She looked and felt fine, which meant she hadn't felt anything, either.

I let the ship fly an hour or so away from the contact point and then briefly dropped the barrier. I felt my Presence be pulled slightly, so I put it back up and let the ship keep flying. Luckily, space was huge and mostly empty, so there was no worry about running into something outside of a star system. After another hour, I dropped the barrier again and didn't feel anything. I was sure I wasn't completely in the clear, so I turned it back on and flew for another hour.

Three hours in normal space at Hela's top speed was a significant distance, so when I dropped the barrier again, we were well away from the danger of the star. At least I hoped we were. I left the barrier down and let the navigation computer do its work and it spat out jump coordinates to take us out of there. I pulled as much info from the satellite I left in the system and then jumped into hyperspace.

“Hela, any damage?” I asked when we were safely away.

“None, Grandpa.” Hela said.

“Anything interesting from the satellite?”

“The satellite telemetry from our launched offensive barriers was quite spectacular.” Hela responded.

“In what way?” I asked and the main display changed to show me the chain of black barrier machines as they approached the brown dwarf star. You could see waves of... something... try to intercept them.

It was interesting to see, especially since the waves increased in frequency as the barriers expanded one by one and grew exponentially as they absorbed the energy and sent it to the next one. It was a sight to see, especially when the first one touched the star.

“Okay, that was neat.” I said as all of the barriers expanded to the size of planets and then disappeared on the surface of the star. As a dwarf star, it was fairly small to begin with. When a dozen planet sized chunks were removed from it, it looked like a cookie that had a small bite taken out of it. The mass of the star moved almost like a wave as it shifted and filled in the missing parts to even its surface out, thanks to its massive gravity.

Surprisingly, it reduced in size slightly. I thought that was odd, considering how large a star was, and I had to assume the barriers had taken a lot more of the star than we could physically see.

“Now I want to go back and check it myself.” I said.

“You are not going back!” Kara said. “If it's as bad as you say, you could die if it takes your Presence!”

I gave her a wide-eyed look and her face flushed red.

“It's just a generic concern, not specific to you.” Kara lied. “Who would fly the ship if you died?”

I didn't respond and just let silence fill the cockpit. She thought it was because I didn't have an answer, when I just wanted her to mull over her concern for me. I also didn't want to make a joke that if I died, I wouldn't care who flew the ship, because that would hurt Hela's feelings.

We exited hyperspace and I immediately called for a full conference. Most of the other ships were either in hyperspace or in the middle of a mission, so we sat there and waited for everyone to join in. I sent along all of the data from the brown dwarf system I had encountered and warned Sheph about not tapping into the satellite directly to confirm the data herself.

“We don't know what kind of thing is going on here, so let's just be on the safe side and leave it to my remote link.” I said.

“Hunter, this is the first time we've had a satellite inside a brown dwarf system.” Sheph said. “You can't just tell me we have this great information resource and then tell me I can't use it.”

I chuckled. “I called so that I could let everyone know how best to deal with encountering brown dwarf stars.” I sent the sequence of what I did and how long it took to do it, then I quickly did up a computer subroutine to have it done automatically and sent it. I looked at Gleas and saw her appreciative nod when she received it. “Hela wasn't damaged and neither were the black barriers I had sent towards the star.”

“You're worried about those energy wave emissions.” Gleas said.

I nodded. “They increased in frequency as the barriers approached the surface, then they absorbed a lot more than I thought was possible before they consumed themselves.”

“Could that be because a star is both matter and energy?” Peggy asked. “The barrier is highly efficient with energy and only moderately successful with matter conversion. If you increased the number of barriers and their internal energy sumps continued to chain together...”

“If twenty four only took a small chunk out of a brown dwarf star... I think even an entire load from a single warship wouldn't be enough to absorb the entire star.”

“You don't have to absorb the whole thing.” Daniel said as Deborah finished her mission and they dropped into the conference. “I'd estimate about half would cause either a catastrophic failure of the star's integrity and it would disperse or it would force it to collapse in on itself as the massive gravity pulled whatever is left in at an accelerated rate.”

“You all realize we're discussing how to kill a star, right?” Monica asked.

“Well, it's just theoretical at this point.” Daniel said.

“No, it's only a matter of how many fully loaded ships we can get into a single system with a brown dwarf star.” Simone said from beside Monica. “We can easily remove the entire star if we had... say... five ships and they all chained their black barrier devices together.”

“Oh, my god.” Beatrice whispered. “We can... kill a star. A star.”

Everyone fell silent for several minutes and we all thought that over.

Jelly and her fiance dropped into the conference. “Hi, everyone. What did we miss?”

“We can kill a star.” Simone said.

“WHAT?!?”

“Under the right circumstances.” Simone finished and Jelly sighed.

“Don't scare me like that.” Jelly said and then received the updates for the ship protocol and the footage from the brown dwarf system I had encountered. “Oh.” She said. “Well, damn.”

“Yeah.” I said. “I actually used up most of my remaining ones with that shot. I have to return home to reload and make more of them.”

“We've still got half of our load.” Jelly said. “We'll be out for another month or so and then we'll be heading back, so another three months.”

“Same here.” Simone said. “Although, we're sweeping smaller systems and it might take longer.”

“I'm already on my way back.” Gleas said and smiled. “I found one of their hidden shipyards.”

“Oho! Nice!” I exclaimed.

“Way to go, Gleas!” Jelly said. “Oh, and Cora, too.”

“Thanks.” Gleas and her ship AI said at the same time.

“I look forward to seeing you in a month and a half.” I said and she nodded, her face slightly red. “Sheph, did you order what I wanted?” I asked and it was her turn for her face to go red.

“I can't believe you want that.” Sheph said.

“Does it come with everything that I need?” I asked.

“Well...”

“I assume you contacted the Bogorim Corporation directly about it.”

“Yes, and they said it's proprietary information.” Sheph said with a sigh. “Even for high priority clients like us, they said they can't relax the company's strict policies on ingrained standard technology.”

I sighed as well. “They own all the patents, don't they?”

Sheph nodded. “They own both the asteroid smelter and the automated standard parts factory. If you try to copy anything or alter it beyond its intended purpose, they can... legally... seize everything you own until the infringement is resolved.”

“I think I'm going to have a talk with a certain owner of that corporation.” I said. “Please make an appointment for three months from now.”

“All right. I'll try.” Sheph said.

“Thank you.” I said. “Is the next parts shipment on its way?”

“It should be here by the time you arrive.” Peggy said and checked her datapad. “After that, it'll be five months before the next one will be available and then another two months for it to be shipped.”

“Which is why I wanted my own factory.” I said. “Well, there's nothing to do but accept it for now.”

“We could order from one of the smaller parts firms.” Peggy suggested.

“I thought about that; but, they can't handle the sheer volume of parts we need.” I chuckled. “The only reason the Bogorim Corporation can handle our orders is because they have a much wider distribution network for their standard parts.”

“And we burn through them in two months.” Sheph said with a laugh. “Imagine! An entire long haul transport worth of standard parts being used up so quickly!”

I laughed, too. “Well, I work fast and we need those parts to remain effective.” I said. “I'll try and convince the little alien that what I need is better and more versatile components, and to do that, I need to have the plans he has.”

“You know bribing him with money won't work.” Jelly said with a grin.

Sheph laughed. “He has an entire planetary economy as pocket change!”

That made nearly everyone laugh.

“Don't worry about it. I'll think of something.” I said.

“As long as it's not handing over the barrier technology.” Daniel said. “It's bad enough that we have it.”

“Agreed.” I said. “Plus, there's no way to counter it when its deployed. I did my work too well.”

“At least they won't activate until they are deployed.” Daniel said. “I'm glad you put that feature in it.”

“We all are.” Deborah said from beside her husband.

“So, is everyone up to speed now?” I asked and they all nodded. “Then I'll call an end to this conference and I hope to see you all again very soon.”

“That's a little dramatic.” Simone said with a chuckle. “You can call us whenever you want.”

“That's beside the point.” I said. “How can I have sex with you when you're all the way over there?”

“I'm dumping my ammo and I'm on my way back!” Simone said excitedly and everyone laughed.

“You better dump it where it's supposed to go!” I said.

Simone rolled her eyes. “Oh, all right. I'll stick to the schedule.”

“I'll be there when you get back home. I promise.” I formed a Presence Hand by her and cupped the side of her face.

Simone leaned into it and nodded. “I'll see you then.”

“Do me, too!” Noma said suddenly from behind Sheph and jumped towards the screen.

I chuckled. “I was going to call you privately, Noma.”

“No no, do it now.” Noma said. “Please.”

I formed a Presence Hand by her and made it solid.

“Ooo, thank you!” Noma almost moaned as she grabbed the hand and started sucking on the fingers.

“...and that's the end of this call.” Sheph said with a laugh. “Goodbye, all.”

We all laughed and ended the conference call with the sound of Noma moaning as she absorbed the finger in her mouth.

I arrived back in the Dizahl System a month and a half later and docked Hela to the space habitat. I took both Kara and Lashina to their rooms and got them settled.

Lashina was getting better and was up to four minutes with pants on before she tore them. It was almost enough time to get from her room up to mine, and she struggled hard with it. She knew she was very close to having me and she fought her body's movements as much as she could. We both hoped that she would be able to manage it soon.

Noma practically dragged me to her room and had her way with me. I gladly let her. She hadn't seen me physically in quite a long time and I hadn't knocked her out since we had been on vacation together. It took her an hour before she started to beg me to give her what she really wanted and then she kissed me long and hard as I slowly eased my Presence into her mouth.

Noma absolutely loved it when I was inside of her on both ends at the same time like that. Her brain shut down as she had both a physical and a mental orgasm, then she sucked my Presence in and fell unconscious.

I eased her off of me and held her to my side as I tried not to laugh at her euphoric expression. “I still can't break you of this habit, dammit.” I said, then gave in and laughed at how stubborn she was.