Elisa Mackenzie pushed her food cart through the detention halls of the battlecruiser, Final Judgment. She moved the rattling wheeled piece carefully, determined not to spill a crumb of the overflowing dishes. The last hover cart had lost all power three weeks ago, leaving Elisa and the rest of the kitchen staff with seven battered and dented denizens on casters. They didn’t float as the hover carts had. It was yet another reminder of the deprivations on board the renegade starship.

Elisa wheeled the nearly empty cart from the general population brig to the other half of the cruiser’s prisoner containment. She was on her way to the maximum security brig, where the most violent or dangerous prisoners were kept. It was time to feed the Kalquorians.

Her heart drummed in anticipation as it always did when she neared maximum security. It was ridiculous to get so excited. It was stupid, in fact, if Elisa were honest with herself. Her secret fascination with the aliens was reckless to the point of being dangerous. If any of her fellow shipmates knew the thoughts she had, especially about the clan she was about to see…

Elisa set her expression to one of boredom as she entered maximum security’s guard office. She suppressed a groan when she saw the two men in the room—Ensigns Chris Coombs and Don Remington.

Of the two, Coombs was the least offensive, though he smelled like he might have last showered around Armageddon. He did just enough work to avoid getting into too much trouble with everyone else and not one iota more than that. The man took laziness to a near art form. Despite the strict rations of the ship’s dwindling food stores, he managed to look flabby and indulgent.

Better looking and sweeter smelling, Don Remington was still an asshole. There was no getting around that fact. He made rude comments and insinuations in Elisa’s presence when there was no one around to report him for it. She treated him like a nuisance, ignoring him for the most part.

She did her best to hide her fear of being alone with the man. Letting Remington figure out how vulnerable Elisa felt around any of them would be a huge mistake. He was belligerent and bullying when he knew he could get away with it. It wasn’t far-fetched to imagine him taking his ‘flirtations’ too far in the right situation. Thus far, Elisa had managed to make sure that didn’t happen.

She wasn’t surprised to see both men in the room, though there was only one guard assigned per shift. Coombs and Remington often took an hour to play cards as one traded guard duty with the other. They were in the thick of a poker game from the looks of things. Coombs’ shock of dingy blond hair hung to the tip of his nose as he squinted at his hand. The men were supposed to keep their hair regulation short. No one seemed to have reminded the lackadaisical Coombs of that fact in the last several months. For that matter, no one had apparently bothered to tell him to keep up appearances at all. Wearing his uniform jacket open to display a stained T-shirt, as he did now, wasn’t in keeping with military protocol in the slightest.

In contrast, Remington was as official as an ensign in worn clothing and shoes could make himself appear. The man was low in rank, but he carried himself as if he ruled the ship. His hair was always short and clean and his clothes pressed, if becoming a bit threadbare. His shoes shone despite the heel of one coming loose. He was ambitious enough to look the part of an up-and-coming fleet officer. Remington was also mean enough to run over those who didn’t get out of his way. He ached to advance and be important. It had escaped his notice that being in his thirties and having gotten no further than the rank of ensign boded poorly for his future advancement.

Plus, there was that little matter of Earth’s fleet no longer existing. As far as Elisa knew, a few scattered remnants of ships like Last Judgment were all that was left of a force that had been millions of vessels strong.

As Elisa entered the guard office behind her clanking food cart, Remington did his typical perusal of her body. His eyes travelled from the top of her hair-netted brown tresses down to the crotch of the white trousers of her food service uniform. She should have been used to it by now and not just from Remington.

It wasn’t that Elisa thought of herself as a raving beauty. She was sure she’d never come close to that particular description. Moreover, she was no longer young. Seated firmly at middle age, Elisa had left youth and its innocent dreams behind. There was nothing in her appearance to excite any real interest.

At least there wouldn’t have been back on Earth before Armageddon had destroyed that planet and most of its people. Women were a rarity now and Elisa was the only female on board the battlecruiser. Men had thoughts of a less than saintly nature when they saw her, even though she neared fifty.

Remington’s particular leer managed to make her feel filthier than most of them, however. He’d told her more than once, “Girl, if I ever catch you alone, I am going to be a very happy man.” He left no doubt what he intended to do with her to make himself happy. He’d grabbed her a few times. Just a week ago, he’d caught hold of her hand and pressed it to his semi-hard crotch before she could snatch loose.

Elisa hated the man. Passionately.

Coombs wasn’t as bad by a longshot. He was just lazier than most. Even when it came to the easy job of guarding the three men imprisoned in Maximum, he could barely be bothered to put in the bit of effort it required. As Elisa trundled her rattling cart through the room, he never looked up at her. He continued to study his cards, peering at them through slitted eyes in the dim light. Most of the ship was kept at half-illumination as they tried to conserve precious power. Headaches from eyestrain were a common complaint.

Elisa looked over Coombs’ shoulder to see what he was holding. Three of a kind, deuces. He’d been winning pretty well to judge from the stack of chips in front of him. Too bad for him he wasn’t winning any real money, not when there was no actual income anymore. For those Earthers who hadn’t surrendered following Armageddon, there was only running, surviving and trying not to get caught by the Kalquorian Empire.

Beyond the small table the men sat at, the guard office held little. There was a dusty vid that was supposed to be used only in emergencies. The crew was constantly reminded to conserve power whenever possible. Despite the energy rationing, the guards often played concerts and movies saved in the system. Elisa couldn’t blame them. Besides work, there was damned little to do on the ship.

On the far wall hung a couple of frequency disruptors, five percussion blasters, cuffs and an old black uniform coat turning grey with dust. The recycling unit had quit working some time ago and the bin used for refuse was overflowing. The com system sat silent.

Elisa looked at the door on the other side of the room. Only three men occupied maximum security, all crowded in a single cell at the opposite end of the block. Despite the knowledge that Kalquorians were usually bisexual, an abhorrence to Earth’s former government and state religion, a clan had been placed in containment together. The senior tactical officer, Alec Robards, was a brutal pig of a man in Elisa’s estimation. It had not been kindness he’d had in mind when he’d dictated the Kalquorian captain and his clanmates be sequestered in a single cell. He’d done it to make their lives as uncomfortable as possible. Robards might have thought it would also turn them against one another in claustrophobic fury. So far, he’d been disappointed.

Elisa couldn’t see the Kalquorians from her spot standing behind Coombs. That didn’t stop her gaze from going to the door anyway, eager for that first glimpse. As always, she was impatient to get in the cell block and enjoy the too-few minutes she would have in the prisoners’ company.

Remington’s voice, pitched slightly higher than most men’s, interrupted her nervous thinking. “Time to feed the animals, huh? Go on in. I’ll be in there in a second.”

Elisa schooled her expression to not reveal her delight. She would get a few precious seconds alone with Clan Zemos. It took all she had to not dash with her cart towards the door.

Remington gave her a grin that set her teeth on edge. “You could wait for me to finish this hand, if you’ll miss having me next to you, darlin’.”

Elisa stiffened but she walked through the office without a word. She never encouraged the men she worked with, especially not Remington. In almost four years since Armageddon, it amazed her she hadn’t been raped. Only the kind protection of the captain and the constant threat of execution from the first officer and the ship’s head of security had kept her safe so far. Much like the brute Robards, First Officer Chase was still a devout follower of Earth’s one true religion. Lewd behaviour was grounds for immediate execution as far as those two men were concerned.

Still, Elisa had no illusions that if she didn’t leave the ship at some point in the near future, she would find herself in trouble. Sooner or later, her luck would run out.

Where could she go? She had no funds to start a new life anywhere. Worse still, she was part of a renegade crew that had committed crimes against the Kalquorian Empire. If caught, she could find herself on trial and sent to a Kalquorian prison. No matter what Dramok Zemos and the other two said, Elisa feared what would happen if she left the battlecruiser.

However much Clan Zemos might be lying to her, her heart lifted at the prospect of seeing them alone. She filled with warmth and joy, as she did every day, twice a day. Elisa didn’t pretend that her life revolving around those few moments wasn’t pathetic. It was, but she had come to terms with that. The coming seconds were her reason for rising in the morning and going through the motions of living. When her time with the Kalquorians was over, she would exist on the anticipation of tomorrow.

She entered maximum security and trundled her cart towards the far cell.

The three alien men made Elisa nervous in more than one way. They were dangerous, to be sure, though they’d never threatened her. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Kalquorians, including the walking menace that was Nobek Oret, had been unfailingly kind towards her. They acted as if they liked her. Sometimes Elisa entertained the notion that they even flirted. It was fun to think she could evoke such a response from them, even though she was nothing special.

Of course the prisoners had to be nice. They were stuck in a cell with armed guards only steps away. Elisa was in no danger from the three in maximum security nor the rest of the captured Kalquorian destroyer crew being held in the general population brig. There hadn’t been one single instance of any of the prisoners breaking through the containment fields in the three months they’d been held. They were secure and she was safe, at least from them.

Most of her nervousness had nothing to do with the non-existent threat the aliens posed to her physically. Elisa knew the basis of this other menace, the issue that put her in real peril. It was the one thing that made her life bearable even though she would be executed if anyone knew.

She’d fallen in love with Captain Zemos’ clan.