#this is how bulkhead lovers can win

[bioticgoddess]

Of The Voide (#2 - an original work)

Here ya go. The next installment of the Of the Voide Story. Like I said, it’s an original work. So don’t steal my stuff but you’re welcome to share. :)

Please enjoy!

The Seti’Veth System: Cor’seti Station

The space station orbiting the planet Cor’seti was always a questionable decision. It wasn’t really neutral territory, being well within the jurisdiction of the Coalition, but they didn’t exactly police it. Meant that people like the crew of the Ashewake could dock and resupply. Right now, they needed the rest. The Krimmoran contract had been a bust and then they’d had to deposit the younger Voidekeine girl back with the flotilla. Her field tour ended early, much to her temporary shipmate’s relief.

Seated at the bar, black and blue hair pulled off her face in a series of braids, Zaffre Branwen took another swig from the mug. At least they’d had Corinthian Red Tea - most folks mistook it for brandy or some kind of whiskey until they tried to steal a swig, then they got trouble. Which was exactly the last thing she needed. Her base tint alabaster-gray skin was covered in what looked like paint splatter marks of black and a darker blue-gray. Terrans might have said she looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. Others would have wondered when last she’d bathed. It was the usual variance of bullshit levied at all  Voidekeine. They were all as spotted and splattered as she was, though that alabaster base color could be as black as ebony - like her co-pilot and engineer Tagetes. His spotting was mostly shades of lighter grays.

He’d known the woman for decades, since they were kids using repair mechs to sneak from their assigned frigates to the Ag-ships to beg for cocoa pods so they could harvest the chocolate from within the fruit. He’d stowed away on her little transport ship one year when she’d swung through the Flotilla to drop off some supplies she’d been asked to ferry home between Contracts. Had they not been acquainted all those years, it was a near guarantee she’d have wasted the ammunition and escape pod necessary to send his ass right back home.  

“Alright Boss,” he stood behind the black and blue-haired woman. “We got watchers,” he whispered, the blue portion of her long hair brushing his hand as he put it against her back.  It was well rehearsed theater to make onlookers believe they were about to flit off for a lover’s tryst. 

He stood a full foot taller than she was and his proportions were emphasized by his armored vacsuit. He wasn’t comically large - though on the taler and broader side for their species, he couldn’t compare to the Krimmora or the Omari (an amphibious, crocodilian  race) or any of the other more massive denizens of the galaxy.  But he had a winning smile that, despite being a Voidekeine, disarmed everyone. Casually he raked a hand through his short mop of silver and pink  curls. The turn of his head towards the corner table indicated the direction of their new admirers. 

Sighing, she downed the remaining tea in one long slow draw and signaled the bartender to come over. “Vaun, can I get a couple canisters to go,” she pointed to her now empty drink, “And wrap up those meals too?”

Behind the bar, a tall red-skinned Corinthian gave a subtle nod, the same one he gave when a customer entered or paid their tab or tipped well. It was neutral but the affirming wink he tossed to the woman was emphatic. Vaun himself rose a full head taller than Tagetes when he rolled his shoulder and spine up and revealed his full stature. But he was spindly, the result of spending his youth in Corinthus-3’s low gravity. Like it’s sibling moons, Corinthus-3 was a mining concern and major source of metals and metalloids. Corinthus Rex, the heavy-gravity world around which the lunar system orbited, gave rise to a much stockier offshoot of their species and was, by all accounts, a more diverse and lush ecosystem. 

Most only bothered to visit the moons as they lacked the bone density, muscle, and cardiovascular development necessary to handle the central world’s gravity. Much like the Security vacsuit wearing group watching the two Voidekeine. 

Though to call the organization “security” on Cor’Seti Station was a joke. At best, they were thugs pretending they had the authority of the system behind them. At worst a cartel that the Coalition - who’s giant war ships were currently in orbit around the station - ignored because it meant that they didn’t have to actually police the station. They could focus on the parliamentary conquest and assimilation of the Seti’Veth System. 

“Auck’ver’im,” Vaun’s lips barely moved as he set the pack insert filled with her requisition down on the counter. “Crell’mey’rah.”

“Universal translator seems broken,” Zaffre tapped the small, hexagonal chip icon painted on her suit’s armored breast-plate. “But I got ya.” Index and forefinger pressed together, she saluted him with her left hand. 

Tagetes had taken the moment to put the oddly heavy pack in his rucksack. He knew they were lying about the translation device being offline. Despite his accent, when both Zaffre and he spoke he’d heard Universal Common and not Flotillaspeka. The Corinthian’s change to his native tongue had been deliberate. “You get enough tea,” he chided, his glance at Zaffre a cover to watch as the men sitting at the shadowed table rose to follow them. They certainly weren’t being subtle. “Wanna help me carry this stuff?”

Hands on her hips, close to the blaster pistols and the clip keeping her helmet in place, she shrugged. “Nah, you got this Tag,” rolling her head and stretching her neck, she took advantage of the reflection off one of the other shop windows to get a better look at their new friends. One was tall, full gear, possibly a Coalitioner. He didn’t look like he’d come off some broken down frigate or was born on a station. Nope, shoulders were too square and he moved through the crowd like he everyone owed him. The two on his flanks she wasn’t sure about. They could have been Coalition or natives, if the latter was true then they’d been hired. Probably sold out to one of the big Capital ships monitoring the station approach. “Any ideas why we’re so popular?”

“You did snipe that last target,” her silver and pink haired companion suggested. His free hand absently coming to rest on his own blaster as they took the turn leading to the docs. It would be longer this way; going through the slums meant they’d be more likely to disappear in the crowd. Their gear was carbon-scorred and pock marked with years of fire fights and falling from too-high up when a jetpack’s booster failed.

It was a slow trek.

The pair took turns taking covert glances in reflective surfaces to track their shadows, going down a dozen alley-like maintenance corridors, or through doors between bulkheads that shouldn’t have existed. They managed to lose their unexpected attachments as a result of going through the twist and turns of the station’s slum. They cut down through the old maintenance shafts and ladders instead of hopping on the lifts. It was like being home in the Flotilla, the way the station creaked and groaned with the artificial gravity generators and the air cyclers. If it was quiet, they knew something could be catastrophically wrong. The Voidekeine had grown accustomed to living in an environment that hummed with the lives of people and machines. To ask them, either might have said that ships and space stations had souls of their own because of the care put into building and maintaining them. 

Their peaceful walk didn’t last long. 

The three thugs, the likely Coalitioner at the forefront, barred their access to the Ashewake. Zaffre grumbled under her breath, “Fuck.” 

“Zaffre Branwen, Tagetes Patch, you’re a long way from the Flotilla.” Definitely Coalition. His accent was sterile and his words clipped short like the hair he probably had shaved stupidly close to his head under the polished helmet. Neither of them had clocked how clean he looked. 

Brow cocked, she asked in her own clipped speech, “We are on business. My logs are in order.”

“It’s Coalition Senior Inspector or Sir to you, and I do see that,” He grinned slightly, withdrawing a data pad from behind him. One of the hunched shouldered men behind him had had it. “Do you know why I wished to speak with you,” he asked, his tone making the hackles on her black and gray freckled neck stand up.

Shaking her head, Zaffre answered carefully, taking a step forward so she was between Tagetes and the Coaltion man. “‘Fraid I don’t. Sir.” There was no difference in her voice but the man couldn’t say she was being sarcastic. Not that he probably even knew what sarcasm was. 

“Your impulse thrusters,” he grinned like he’d caught her in a trap.

“You mean the one that’s been sputtering? Sir? Yes. Got the credits needed to pay for repairs on my last job...sir,” she nodded, moving her hands like she was doing the math on her fingers. 

Behind his helmet, it was a certainty the Coalitioner was seething. It bled into his careful words, “Good. You’ll be taking it to the ship yards then.” It was an instruction not a question and an assumption she was going to be using Galactic Coalition shipyard The sharpness of his words and precision of his posture broadcast that opinion.

“Yes. Sir,” carefully she moved her hands from near her blasters, last thing they needed was a firefight so near an airlock. Not that she wouldn’t put the lot of them down if they drew on her and Tagetes. Would be the principle and within her rights by every regulation and law she could think of for more than one system and the Flotilla. But this stop wasn’t actually about a busted up and overused thruster. No. This was about making sure they knew that he knew who they were and that the Coalition likely knew too.  “We were going to head for there at 0800 local time. Sir.”

The next several minutes were long. He stared them down, probably taking an inventory of their weapons and both were sure he was about to ask them to strip off the armor plating from their vacsuits and relinquish their weapons for inspection. That he’d detain them for long enough to put them behind whatever schedule her answer put in his head. “Good evening then,” he said suddenly, marching past and making sure to shove Zaffre with his shoulder on the way. 

The two men who shadowed him slinked behind, both keeping distance from the Voidekeine who watched until they were out of sight and the airlock door hissed closed behind them. Like a pair of synchronized binary stars, they slammed their helmets on as a precaution. 

First rule of dealing with an self important prick like the Coalitioner - always presume being spaced or left in a depressurized hold is possible. A glance at the computer interface mounted on her left gauntlet confirmed the ship was still there. The Ashewake hadn’t been impounded or vaporized - thank the Makers. It didn’t mean, however, that they could relax.

Tagetes punched in the command and security codes that opened the airlocks leading to their ship and brought her to life. Voice like rocks through a tumbler, he warned, “We better get the hells out of here.”

“I want this to be a speck on radar in the next thirty minutes,” she concurred, her own voice modulated through the helmet. “We can inventory Vaun’s things in FTL. I don’t wanna be around when The Inspector,” her turned mocking for just a moment before she continued towards the cockpit, “gets that Capital ship or the Seti’Veth Primus to authorize a search and seizure warrant.”

“Agreed,” he was through the doors and hooking the duffel to a wall. In the low gravity, it was easy to put it in the netting with another half dozen or so similar black and gray bags. All but one was marked with the symbol for P3Y-722; the Eck’Ra Home world. 

Over the ship’s intercom, she smiled, “Next stop on our grand galactic cruise, the sunny breaches of P3Y-722. Or as the locals call it Ori Velar.”

[petitelepus]

Bond Over Sparks

This is a commission requested by @fyrestrike, my most dedicated follower. I’m honestly sorry if this story doesn’t match your requirement but I tried my best darling! This story is a continuation from the earlier story!

"Ah!" Fyrestrike gasped feeling Megatron thurst into her multiple times. The femme was over her sensors, feeling the extra charge in her frame that made it at a similar time so sensitive. The warlord kept pounding into her like he was trying to put a sparkling into her that he might have just done that during their last period.

The idea crossed Fyrestrike's mind. Having Megatron's sparkling. The one and only feared warlord's baby sparkling...! It would be magnificent...! Better than any other sparkling ever born after AllSpark...!

With the thought of carrying Megatron's child was almost enough to send her over to the overload. But no, they were the Megatron's words that made her overload all over that spike, "Overload for me my Queen...!" And she did.

And she overloaded and so hard she saw stars behind her optics. Fyrestrike panted hard against Megatron's chassis as she tried to recover from her string of overloads. Round two had turned into a round three and she was beyond exhausted while Megatron had barely broken a sweat. That's a warlord for you.

Warlord. Her warlord. It took a moment to settle in her mind that she was sparkmated now for the rest of her life to Megatron until one or another would die. Megatron reached over her back for something and when his hand returned to her sight he was holding a goblet filled with oil.

"Drink my Queen. You will need strength if you're going to fetch me those pieces." He ordered and Fyrestike nodded and moved to take the goblet but her lover moved the goblet out of her reach. She was confused and attempted to try again, but Megatron wouldn't give it to her.

"Umm...?" She started uncertainly. "Should I fetch them, myself my own?"

"Nonsense, you're not going anywhere just yet," Megatron said and moved the goblet towards her. She raised her hands, ready to take it, but instead of giving it to her the warlord pushed the edge of the goblet between her lips and tilted forward. He was making her drink it. Something in it was awfully submitting to Fyrestrike and she moaned slightly as the delicious oil run down her intake into her tank.

Once the goblet was empty Megatron pulled it away and put it down. He smiled down at his beloved and graced her servos against her cheek. "My Queen, I saw in your memories as you did mine. Tell me, what did the Autobots do to you?"

Fyrestrike went silent as she turned to look at the ground and Megatron let her. This was a show of trust and wanted Fyrestrike to trust him. So when she frowned and looked at him in a mixture of sadness and rage he knew it would be good.

"They tested it on me...!"

"What did they test?"

"The Flier-code, they tested it on me but they deemed me as a failure and ordered me to be offlined so I wouldn't even in an accident end up in enemy's hands..." She grew quiet, understanding probably that it had just happened like the Autobots have feared might happen. Megatron saw through her and with a hand under her chin made her look at him.

"You are not a failure, my Queen. You're a success, but they didn't count on it that you had your own will and you wouldn't just blindly follow them like rest of their soldiers do. A success that they wanted to destroy..."

Fyrestrike frowned sadly, but Megatron smiled at her and gently held her helm in his hands. One move and he could easily crush her helm...! But he didn't want that.

"So, you were their mistake, but you are our success. The Decepticon cause will get to its rightful glory with you by my side as my rightfully bonded Queen...!" Megatron made clear that he wasn't having any insecurities in his Queen. Fyrestrike looked baffled but was also amazed at how Megatron spoke about her. Like she mattered and his speech felt overpowering and encouraging in her audios. She found herself quickly pumped up and Megatron saw this.

"Now... My little Decepticon Queen... Will you fetch me the pieces?"

"Yes... Yes, my King." Fyrestrike agreed and jumped on her pedes. Megatron grinned harder and took her outside. As they walked they passed by Blitzwing and Lugnut who knew to stay away. Megatron's orders were in action until he said otherwise. The warlord leads the peach-colored femme outside the mines, trusting in it that he had her full loyalty.

He told her which way the city of Detroit was and Fyrestrike nodded before transforming and taking off. Megatron smirked with success and returned to the mines. Little did Fyrestrike know, he had plans.

On her way to Autobot's headquarters, the femme pondered if she was really going to do this. Was he really going to betray Optimus and others? The only good Autobots who had taken her under their wing when she had barely managed to escape from the Elite Guards? The more she thought about it the sicker feeling she got in her fuel tank and she almost felt like purging the rich oil Megatron had fed to her.

Megatron. Her bonded and partner for life. If she did was he told her to do now Megatron would no doubt win the war. Then, there would be a place where she could be without fear and feel accepted. But what about Optimus and others? What would happen to them if the Decepticons won the war?

Megatron did promise her that her friends would be safe, that they would have their own places in their Decepticon kingdom. That encouraged her to actually betray them. It would be for their own good. The war was ruthless and if the Decepticons won without her by their side who knows what would happen to Optimus and others?

That in mind, she continued forward. She made it into the center of the city to the factory that Autobots had claimed as their own. One she was outside she transformed and entered the building.

The surprise was very evident on Autobots' faces. Like they thought she was a goner. But when they saw her she felt sickly. Like what she was doing was wrong, but she pushed herself forward. It was her new mission after all.

"Fyrestrike, are you alright?!" Bumblebee asked as she walked by him and followed behind her. Ratchet, Prowl, Optimus and rest of the team were close by.

"What happened? Did you manage to escape?" Bulkhead asked and Fyrestrike snapped, "Everything is fine!" She yelled and mechs stared in shock. Fyrestrike never snapped at anyone, never at Bulkhead out of all the bots. When she put in the code to open the chamber where they held the pieces of AllSpark, Optimus spoke out. "Fyrestrike, what's wrong, you're acting out of your character....!"

Little did he know when she pulled out her guns on everyone. "Stand back and don't move unless you want holes in you!" She screamed and backed away with the shards. The Autobots held their hands and servos to themselves, but when Ratchet made a move to lift his servos Fyrestrike shot a warning shot at his pedes. "None of that Ratchet!" She warned him, very familiar with the Autobot doctor's gun-power.

The medic grumbled but lifted his arms in the air in surrender and everyone else followed him. Fyrestrike backed away until she was at the edge of the factory area and was just about to transform and take off when Optimus shouted at her, "Why Fyrestrike!? I thought you were one of us!"

"But I'm not! I never truly was!" She shouted back and became mournful and she cast her optics down in a mixture of fury and sadness. Ratchet made his move and attempted to cast Firestryke into the air where she would be useless but the femme saw past this and shot the medic in the leg. Ratchet cried out in pain and fell on his knees.

"Ratchet!" Everybody called out, but Firestryke's order halted them all from approaching their fallen comrade, "Stay away from him or I shoot!"

The bots did as they were told and reluctantly lifted their arms in the air, but they never stepped away from their medic, shielding him from any more harm. Fyrestrike began to panic. Her former friend was hurt by her. "I never wanted this...! This was supposed to go with ease...!"

"What was supposed to be an easy job!? Betraying us!?" Bumblebee shouted and yelped as the guns were pointed at him. "To repay for my sparkmate!" Fyrestrike shouted and they were baffled. That was obvious from their looks, but Prowl was the first one to realize it. "Megatron sparkmated you...!"

Firestryke didn't even bat an optic. "So what about it?!"

Ratchet groaned, but the mechs didn't make anyway for him to speak, determined to protect their friend. "Kid... It can be canceled...!" Ratchet groaned out but Firetrike shook her helm, "No, I don't want it canceled!"

Everybody looked at her in shock. "What?!"

"You heard me!" She cried out, coolant dripping from her optics, "Megatron gave me a chance to be what I am and I am fairly certain that I'm not an Autobot anymore!"

"B- but we took you in with us! You got our symbol!" Bumblebee yelled and Firestryke shouted, "Don't you think I know that!?" Silencing the smaller Autobot.

Firestryke huffed and continued. "I was deemed as a failure by Ultra Magnus...! Too much of my self-esteem and worth...! So he commanded me to be offlined, but no, I escaped! And now I have a place amongst the Decepticons!"

"They will offline you once you get the pieces to them, you know that right!?" Optimus called out and Firestryke holds in tears as she backed away from the factory. "Everything is better than betraying my sparkmate...!" Fyrestrike cast a sad look at her former partners and muttered single words out of her mouth. "Once the Decepticons win you know I was just thinking what was best of you."

She transformed and took off. The Autobots, expect from Ratchet, were quick to transform and follow her and they were doing a good job keeping up with her even though the city's streets were busy with life and traffic. But then there were lasers shot and Fyrestrike almost stopped midair in her confusion.

Little did she know, Megatron had sent Blitzwing and Lugnut to follow her and trail after her as she retrieved the pieces of AllSpark. The Decepticon duo shot lasers and flames at the Autobots and she felt distressed. She felt like begging them to stop, but what would that have looked before her new leader. So she kept going. Towards her sparkmate.

[gibsongirlselections]

A Time to Fight

Donald Trump, his supporters say, is a man who fights. Yet that supposed fighting can sometimes feel more like Punch and Judy-style slapstick theater. In the Trump era, only the thinnest membrane separates politics from televisual spectacle, which can make it difficult to gauge how effective the president really is. Is he beating back the left? Or is he just calling them names on Twitter while they pound the pavement to replace him?

Whatever the answers to those questions, one thing is now abundantly clear: the vacancy of a Supreme Court seat has given Trump an opportunity to fight, really fight.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a titan of the law, a woman of deep culture and learning whose mind you had to respect even if you were at odds with it. My condolences go out to her family. But her formidable accomplishments make no more claim on her empty Supreme Court seat than Ted Kennedy’s work on health care did on his Senate desk. The people of Massachusetts deserved full congressional representation and the people of America deserve a full Supreme Court. That’s all the more true as we approach what could be a tight and contested election, when judicial deliberation might unfortunately prove necessary. The lawsuits fly…multiple lower courts declare multiple effective winners…for the sake of the republic, the Supreme Court can’t have an even number of justices.

So far, Trump has seemed to relish this fight. He’s pledged to fill Ginsburg’s seat “without delay” and is expected to announce a nominee by week’s end. He’ll likely name Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic who’s expressed some skepticism over Roe v. Wade and who generally takes a Scalia-esque textualist approach to the law. For all the fluff about how Trump was going to nominate Tom Cotton or Jeanine Pirro or the judge from My Cousin Vinny, he appears to be doing exactly as he should. Barrett is careful, unflappable, and deeply professional. She’s a native of New Orleans and a lover of Truman Capote. A former professor and frequent tailgater at Notre Dame Law School, her prior nomination to an appellate court was unanimously supported by her faculty colleagues.

Yet despite all that, she’s probably best known for sending Dianne Feinstein into a fit of ecclesiophobia. After Trump nominated Barrett to serve on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Senator Feinstein grilled her about her Catholic beliefs and whether “the dogma lives loudly within you.” At issue was a law article Barrett had co-authored in 1998 with John Garvey, now the president of my alma mater, the Catholic University of America. The essay is cozily familiar to us Cardinals, an Aristotelian consideration of how Catholic judges should handle capital punishment cases. Barrett and Garvey distinguish between formal and material cooperation with evil. The first is analogous to actually signing an execution order, while the second is more indirect and less clear, akin to sitting on a habeas corpus case that involves the death penalty, for example. They recommend that Catholic judges always recuse themselves in cases of formal cooperation and apply a “moral balancing test” in cases of material cooperation.

The essay is cautious and analytical, a good-faith attempt to work through a conundrum faced by many judges, and not just Catholics. What do you do when the law conflicts with your deeply held beliefs? Even Vox.com took it seriously. Yet the article is also notable for what it doesn’t do. According to Barrett and Garvey, “Judges cannot — nor should they try to — align our legal system with the Church’s moral teaching whenever the two diverge.” Clearly Barrett is no Catholic integralist; if she were, she’d be far more insufferable on Twitter.

Yet that didn’t stop progressives from trying to portray her as some kind of chanting theocrat. And it’s here that political considerations enter the fight. If Barrett is nominated, Democrats are going to spend the next month and a half saying stupid things about Catholics, a demographic they badly need to win on Election Day. That doesn’t guarantee that a nomination battle won’t also hurt Republicans—polls find that Americans prefer that the election winner appoint the next justice—but it does provide a plausible method for piecing back together the Trump coalition of yore. Trump’s method has always been to crash down hard on one side of the culture war. I’m not sure that can get you to 270 twice, but if you’re going to try, then a Barrett pick is as good a weapon as any. Some Rust Belt Catholics might very well be lured back; Trump’s conservative base will certainly be turbocharged.

Progressives do make one convincing argument here, not against Barrett per se but against any Trump nomination at all. They say that for Republicans to ram through a justice would be hypocritical, since Mitch McConnell blocked Barack Obama’s elevation of Merrick Garland back in 2016 on the grounds that any confirmation should wait until after the election. McConnell, they say, must now do the same thing. If he doesn’t, he’ll erode our norms of governance, subordinating them to base partisanship.

The left has lately fallen in love with that word, “norms,” which they constantly accuse Trump of violating. And they have a point. Politics is circumscribed not just by promulgated laws but by unwritten codes and traditions—norms—that govern public servants’ behavior. Burke’s words, as always, haunt the air: “Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.”

Yet who’s really trampling on our norms here? Which party is now threatening to use court packing as a political weapon? Which party scarcely bothered to veil their application of a religious test against Barrett? Which party threatened riots, arson, even civil war mere hours after Ginsburg had passed? Which party turned Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings into a sub-Oscar Wilde kangaroo court? And while we’re on the subject of norms, what in the world is “normal” about Roe v. Wade? Where is it inscribed that abortion is a constitutional right while things actually mentioned in the Constitution like hate speech and bearing arms are not? Who thinks a magical legal penumbra conjured up by the Court ought to be able to bulldoze countless state abortion laws? Who really believes that nine ex-lawyers should decide the contours of such a controversial and extraconstitutional issue, rather than the states and the people themselves?

None of this is remotely “normal.” So while I too worry about a culture war so violent it cracks the institutions around it, there will be other times to register those concerns. On abortion, the pro-choicers fired first. Trump ought to join their fight, appoint Barrett, and fasten the bulkhead doors. And if Democrats threaten to pack the court, fine. Write that into every campaign commercial. Mention it on every doorstep.

This is the most important fight of Trump’s presidency. Fortunately for once Republicans seem up to the challenge.

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