The ship groaned and creaked. Empty corridors yawning over the incessant humming of pipes filled with freezing gases and the beeping of monitoring systems.

He felt unsteady. There was no real motion, just the knowledge that the vessel was moving at an incredible pace was enough to turn his stomach. He would need time to find his equilibrium and had expected that time to be spent in med lab, not staggering through empty rooms and down long, winding passages in a gown.

Not another soul could be seen on board. He wondered how large the crew was. Where he ranked among them. Those memories would come in time. His name, too. Waking from cryosleep was always like this, though usually not as confusing with someone outside the pod to assist.

Still, he was awake, and that was because he heard her. It was a surprise to hear her on the ship, but her voice was unmistakable. Years passed but he could never forget her voice. He heard it as the pod hissed open, beckoning him. To where, he had no clue; the layout of the ship was as alien as his own identity, but that was all temporary.

Legs shaking, body still cold, he shuffled along another corridor in the massive ship. Above him pipes whispered and whistled, cooling the other passengers. Thousands, he knew there were thousands aboard. Some must be awake, because a few pods were open already near his. The rest in the room where he woke were still shut, glowing an iridescent blue in the darkness.

The corridor he stumbled down had a red glow from emergency beacons, only low-level power was used for the long journey through voidspace. He found it coldly amusing that the technical elements of interstellar travel came back to him before his own name, but the brain is a complex machine.

Her voice called again. A sliver of a thing, the faintest of whispers urging him to come closer. He followed, grasping the handrail for support as his legs regressed and then regained their strength. This part was always difficult. He should be lying down, drinking warm liquids.

The absence of other passengers was not too surprising. If only a few pods had opened, they would be the officer class waking to steer out of voidspace and to their arrival port. Wherever that was.

Where he was began to make more sense now. He was making his way to the rear of the ship. The engine room and storage areas for everything they would need out in the frontier, or that they were bringing back. He was not far away, and now her voice came again; louder, more insistent.

She loved him. Missed him. Adored him. He felt the same way for her. Arianna, though she always made him call her Ari. Never Anna. Funny the details that come back.

Why was she on the ship, he wondered. They hadn’t been together since they were teenagers. The image filled his mind as if nothing else existed.

Smiling, resplendent in the golden glow of the summer sun, she reaches out a hand to his. Her tiny hand, nails painted pink. Long, slender arms. Tanned. She was beautiful. Her eyes he couldn’t quite make out, her face almost a blur, but her slender body and the soft rise of her chest was unmistakable in a cropped blue top. Ari, his first and perhaps only love.

Memories flooded his mind now, the wrong ones. Not his name, rank, serial and purpose on waking. Soft sepia-toned sweetness instead. A stolen kiss on the beach in front of a roaring campfire. Hands interlocked and skin pressed against skin. They were kids. Just kids having fun and finding themselves and feeling the world anew as the saccharine warmth of first love pushed logic aside.

Then nothing but the cramped corridor and slate grey walls. The beeping of the machines and the low red glow. He marched onward, wishing for another taste of those memories. Those perfect moments shared in the arms of his beloved Arianna.

How had she ended up here? Was she awake first? He wondered if she was calling him on the intercom system or was her voice carrying so well in the empty space. She felt so close, he could almost touch her, taste her.

Another memory. The taste of her lips, sticky with gloss and smelling of raspberries. Her tongue sliding between his lips, urging his mouth to open as they clumsily explored each other. Hands pushing up fabric. Her nails gently scraping his chest and then her mouth on his neck making him gasp. She was precious and perfect but temptation too.

He could feel her on him and feel himself pressing back against her, pushing her back onto her bed and trying to be quiet to avoid rousing her parents. Her skirt hitched up around her waist and tiny red panties pulled down to her ankles. Their first time.

It was short, and she gasped in pain, but he had never felt so close to someone. Never felt so intimately connected if even for a moment, even not knowing truly what he was supposed to do to make her feel good or to make her feel anything.

He would get better at it all, but that moment would never fade. The scent of the room, the lingering perfume on his skin mixed with his own cheap cologne. Her pink skirt and clashing red underwear. Her white t-shirt. Her tiny waist and pouting pink raspberry flavoured lips.

The ship smelled foul, and worse the closer her got to the cavernous storage area. Red stains, maybe rust, covered parts of the floor. The old rig slowly dying after years of shuttling people across the galaxy. Time and distance were not kind to these things and voidspace tore at them hard enough the engineers had to almost rebuild the hull each journey.

Ari’s voice was louder now. Its pitch seeming to be higher, almost doubled as it bounced around the metallic corridor. He would be with her soon, could ask her what brought her here. Maybe she could remind him why he was here too. That still hadn’t come back. It would in time, always did, but not yet. That helped him focus on the only thing that made sense, finding her.

Finding her for their anniversary. One year together. He saved up to take her to a fancy restaurant serving the finest Gamordican cuisine. Her favourite. But she didn’t come, and she didn’t call, and he was scared.

He drove to her house but her parents told him she had left, excited to see him, to come to the restaurant in her new black dress. He remembered her buying it, trying it on. The way it pushed her breasts up and cinched in her waist, showing a figure she so rarely revealed. That was just for him.

But now he panicked. He drove the route from her parent’s house to the restaurant and finally found her sitting at a bus stop with a broken heel, a twisted ankle, and mascara streaming down her cheeks.

They didn’t make it to the restaurant. He lost his deposit while they sat in the emergency department waiting for the robo-doc. And they laughed, and she felt so bad for ruining the night but all her cared about was her being safe. Her in her sexy grown-up dress with matching black, broken heels, sitting in the stark white of the hospital under fluorescent lighting yet still looking every bit as beautiful as they day he met her.

The door to storage was at least ten feet tall and twice as wide. The button to open it a large red one. Her voice called to him through it, she needed him. He wondered if she was in trouble. Something was strange about the way she spoke, a certain tone mixed in that did not belong. Fear, sadness, terror. He could not tell.

With a weary hand and weakened limb he planted his hand on the button and with a deep hiss the doors began to groan open, moving on their mechanical arms to reveal the darkened interior of a storage room as big as two arcball fields. The same red glow permeated this room, but with its huge cathedral-like ceiling high above the floor, he could scarcely see more than a few feet up. The ceiling was a dark mystery unless the main power returned, and that could only happen once the passengers were all safely out of cryosleep.

Hearing her voice once more, he stepped forward. It was so much more immediate now. Right there in the room, at the other side beyond a maze of containers. She sounded different again. Pleading for something, hunger filling her voice. He felt it too, a sudden pang. A longing for what he missed.

It was the night before he was due to leave for his first assignment aboard an interstellar. She was angry. She demanded to know why he had not only taken the post, but why he hadn’t told her sooner. He tried to explain that it would support her, let them get married, buy a house when he came back. It was only a year.

She was inconsolable. He reached out a hand and she slapped it away and he stood holding it against his side pathetically. Why could she not see there was no other option. There was no work for him on Earth and a year on the frontier would be short. He would spend half in cryosleep. Nothing would change her mind; she did not want him to go. She cried and then he held her, felt her warm, damp tears against his cheek and her soft, tender flesh in his hands for the final time.

He left the next morning. She pecked him on the cheek and she cried and he showed no emotion as he stepped out of their apartment and into the bus with the other voidfarers. Her pale blue chiffon dress fluttered in the breeze and she clutched her arms around her chest and sobbed. She didn’t wave or smile, she only sobbed.

The containers were ordered haphazardly and above them some sort of netting covered everything. It must have been bio-organic or leaking because it left large pools of sticky, viscous liquid all over the floors. That triggered no memory but then why would it, if he was not someone who worked down in storage. For all he knew he was the ship’s captain, though he certainly was not when he left Earth the first time.

When he left Ari.

He had to find her. Her voice was clearer now, a singing tone that rung in his ears and reminded him of her wonderful softness. Her calm. Her laughter. How she felt. He missed how she felt. He needed to take her in his arms again more than he needed anything else.

Moving faster, he stomped through the strange liquid, sending it onto his legs and arms in great splashes. It stung his skin but he didn’t care. Ari was there, somewhere. He would find her.

He would find her as soon as he stepped off the ship. She would be waiting in the sea of faces, of wives and husbands and boyfriends and girlfriends standing at the spaceport.

But she wasn’t.

Nor was she at the apartment, it was being rented to someone new, an elderly woman who had no idea who Ari was or where she might have gone. He rushed to her parent’s house, weaving around traffic on the highway, fully manual and dancing between the auto-driving vehicles with no hurry. He was in a hurry. He needed her. No, wanted her. His body craved her touch.

He could tell she was close as the containers began to clear. In the back of the ship, he could see now the lower rafters softly glowing red. The metallic surface covered in something else, the same netting. It was organic. Several large pods hung from it and he wondered what kind of storage that was. He had never seen anything like it in all his time working logistics.

The memory was back. This was his place on the ship, and that meant he probably wasn’t supposed to be awake. Ari must have woken him.

Something moved above him, large and looming in the shadows yet slow and silent. Her voice was ringing in his ears. Calling his name. Alex. He could hear her. Remember her saying his name so many times before. When he kissed her, in surprise. When he hurt her in anger. When they made love, in pleasure. He wanted to feel her like that again. To be embraced in the soft warmth of her tanned skin.

Alex allowed the desire to overcome him, and shut his eyes, wanting her to be there when he next opened them.

Something dropped onto the floor in front of him with a metallic thud. He kept his eyes shut. It was Ari. She would hold him and they would kiss and he wouldn’t need to open his eyes until he was ready to look into hers and tell her he loved her.

That was what he would do once he saw her, she had to be at her parent’s house. He rushed to the door and rapped on it three times. No answer. He tried again. Finally, her father opened it and shook his head. Alex did not leave and Ari’s father showed him inside. They sat together on the couch and he placed a hand on Alex’s shoulder and began to cry.

Alex felt something above his head, could sense the gravity of it. Something cold and damp and solid gripped the top of his skull and his eyes opened.

The darkness concealed most of it besides the probiscis above him, reaching out from what was shaped vaguely like a moth, but much larger than any he had seen, even on Kepler. He was frozen.

Ari’s father explained everything. How she cried every day for a month. How she refused to leave the house. How badly she missed him. How she decided to go to college and find a job so he wouldn’t have to ever go back to space. That was when the accident happened.

The pinch was painful but then Alex felt a warm, wonderful sensation. Liquid memory poured into his mind. His pleasure centres came alive. He was happy and aroused and any fear he had dissipated in a haze of lust and longing.

Ari came down the stairs in her black dress, looking perfect and beautiful and sexy. Her father was gone, Alex didn’t know or care where or why. She sat next to him and said nothing, just threw herself into his arms and he was happy and he was finally home. Her body was so tight, limber and lithe. Her form a perfect hourglass of a waist widening into hips and tapering down into long, strong legs. Her skin brushing against his was the most incredible thing he had ever felt. A ripple of electricity jolted him with every aching caress.

The liquid pumped slowly into his skull and spread through his body. His brain flooded with a mindless bliss that he never wanted to stop. He could feel himself react, even now seeing this monster before him, it didn’t matter. He was erect, the body of his lover was next to him. Another limb emerged from the creature, whatever this thing was that stood enormous in the dark, in front of the red glowing lights. This one reached down and lifted the cryo-gown up and latched onto his penis.

Ari felt so good, he didn’t remember her being this sexual but now she was on top of him, on the couch in her parent’s living room. She felt so tight, so hot. He grabbed her ass and pulled her closer, pumping and bucking.

“I love you,” he grunted.

She smiled down at him and took her hair from its ponytail, shaking it out and planting a firm hand on his chest as she continued to grind against him. Her legs tightened around his waist, a firm clamp that locked him in place, as if he would ever want to be anywhere else. Pleasure flooded his body, a growing flame of desire within. This was arousal unbound, and Ari was gleefully guiding him deeper. She pressed her chest against his face, smothering him in the creamy softness of her breasts. Alex felt himself quivering in delight, absolutely lost to her. She was his everything, the only body he wanted to feel, the only woman who’s touch he desired.

He felt so close to her. Her voice was on top of him, whispering in both ears. Bringing back his memories, all of them, everything they had ever done together. Every romantic, sexual moment. Every conversation. Everything she told him she was afraid of in space. The darkness of the void between systems, the strange things discovered there, creatures beyond all reason and logic.

She was insatiable, he felt her pulling at him with her tightness, gripping him and milking his seed from his body. She would make him orgasm too fast at this rate but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He only wanted to feel her, to be hers. He was hers. He always had been and now they would be together forever, it was all he really wanted. All he had ever wanted.

The pumping, pulsing feel of her was unlike anything he remembered, she had never been so powerful but this was right. Her body held his down and he had no hope of resistance. She grabbed his wrists and pinned them behind his head and rode him, rolling her hips and making him groan with sheer ecstasy. The feeling of her, of this tight, insistent pull on his cock, he didn’t remember that. Whatever she had learned to do, it was better than any sensation he had ever felt and his mind was awash in a sepia-toned haze of delicious sexual memory. He could feel everything at once, their first kiss, their hands intertwined, the first time he awkwardly pawed at her chest, the taste of her on his tongue as she pushed him between her legs, the feeling of him pumping inside her as she bent over a table. Every moment playing out at once in a perfect cacophony of erotic delight.

But most of all that singular moment. Fully giving in to her control, her power, something she never showed before but it felt so very right. Her on top of him, her fucking him, making him orgasm for her, in her.

She leaned down, there in her parent’s house, in her black dress with the shoe fixed. With her chest heaving, her skin sheened with sweat and she whispered simply, “give in to me, lover.”

Alex complied. His orgasm was an unearthly pleasure so sweet it delivered an almost immediate longing for more. He felt every bit of his seed drained, pulled and sucked from him by Ari’s eager body. She was so tight, like her hand and her mouth and that precious place between her legs all at the same time. No pleasure had ever come close to the experience. He had no idea she could do such a thing, could make him feel so good. He wanted to return the favour. Needed to.

He would do anything.

She had a simple command for him, though her voice was deeper, raspier now.

“Return to the pod bay. One of your crewmates would like to meet their lover too.”