Scene 10 – Enduron

Since leaving Tittitueene, Daniel has been transformed into a brawny sex god. Dark hair curls behind his ears and mottles his chest and arms. He wears only a tunic skirt tied around his waist – when the women leave him even that. That each woman lusts for him in her own way is evident in their eyes as he strides into the sitting room after a shower. Pussy’s ears stand up and her tail flicks. Bella wets her lips. Lola blushes like a maiden. Even the bots have been completely feminized; MI2-6e leans wistfully against a bulkhead with no trace of her mannish amazon stance, and 80-08s whistles a merry tune. Daniel crosses to stand beside Bella, who slides a hand up under his skirt to caress his ass.

He is a master of the positions now – a sure hand at his own tiller. He is confident. He is sexy. There is little more that I can or should teach him – he’s not yet old or wise enough to understand the power he has. For now I am content that he broadcast his seed.

He steps away from Bella’s hand to stand by a viewing panel and watch the stars streak by once more.

“What you did with the Jumm was remarkable, Daniel, but I’m especially pleased by how well you’ve adapted to Captain Hand and Pussy, and to the new fixtures on the bots.” He smiles at the use of his name, but doesn’t turn back to face Bella, so she continues. “When we reach the harem on Enduron, other women of the Resistance will take you from my hands. There will be Fertiles of every imaginable species waiting for you. You will need the experience and adaptability you’ve practiced here as you learn how to fuck them all.”

Pussy purrs.

Lola laughs. “She’s not complaining, she says.”

Daniel turns back. “Other women like Princess Jade?” His eyes flash with excitement.

I am surprised at how he clings to her name, to that single memory of her picture in my home. A fire burns in his eyes when he says her name. I can smell him, but it’s not lust that incites him. He’s infatuated. That is fine – he may do well to bond to her, so long as it does not come between him and the rest of the harem.

Bella smiles gently. “Certainly Princess Jade waits for you – with the rest. The Librarians of the Resistance will be able to teach you things lost to the rest of the galaxy – things unknown even to me.” Daniel scoffs, but Bella cuts him off with a squeeze. “I am a Witch, Daniel, and I am old and wise, but my greatest knowledge lies in how to be a woman. There are other women – scholars – who can teach you better than I how to be a man.” She beckons with a bent finger as she puts her feet up on the table. “Now come kneel before me, Boy. It’s been at least an hour since you’ve made me moan, and I want to feel like a girl again.”

Lola and Pussy take that as their cue and saunter off to the bridge.

As they slip into their worn leather pilot chairs on the bridge and Bella’s first groans echo up the hallway behind them, Lola glances over her shoulder. “So… Pussy.”

The massive Kitty glances over her shoulder, too. “Hmm?”

“Have you ever heard the saying, “Don’t settle for the milk when you can have the bull?”

Pussy furrows her brows, then arches one.

“Be that as it may, my friend, I have this terrible feeling that our good Witch means to lead our Bull into some very dirty Empire business.”

 

Pussy responds with a, “Mrowl?”

 

“Even worse than the Jumm. The old woman means well, but the odds say the two of them’ll find themselves full of more blaster holes than are good for anyone. Do you get my drift?”

Pussy grins.

“Exactly. We’d be doing the universe a proper favor to take him off her hands before she does anything really stupid, wouldn’t we? Or took her hands off him, rather; we’d have to space her. When she’s asleep and all – I don’t have anything against her. We’d take Daniel under our collective wings, so to speak.”

Pussy raises a brow.

“Alright, fine – beneath our legs. But still-”

Lola stops mid-sentence as a plasma whip winds around her neck. Bella appears from behind their chair and hisses angrily. “I don’t want to hear another word like that from either of you. I’ve waited for his birth since before your grandmothers were a splatter in a birthing tank – too long for a couple of cunt-heads like you to piss in my plans. You’ve underestimated my Intuition; this once I’ll let it slide. Next time I will not be so forgiving. Do you hear me?”

Lola nods.

“Let’s just all stick to the original plan then, and nobody will get hurt.”

 

* * *
A greenish modern art blob has exploded to fill the forward viewing. A subdued Lola adjusts the controls and the planet clarifies into what it is – a marble of forests, grasslands, and oceans. The planet is lush. The disk continues to expand in the screen as they approach through true space.

Lola frowns.

I can feel their hesitance, and through the Intuition I know what concerns them before they even say it. It’s not the little ‘talk’ we had, either.

Pussy hisses.

“I know, I know. I don’t see anything either.”

Daniel steps forward, brows furrowed. “What’s going on?”

Lola leans back to pat the bulge in his crotch. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, Boy. You just let the women do the thinking.”

There’s no sign of sapient life on the visible side of the planet. The cities are there, as are the forests and the beasts. The beacons for the landing columns are still sounding, but there’s no chatter, no moving vehicles, no response when I send my coded ReqAcks to the Resistance.

“I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.” Lola glances over at Pussy, who tousles the captain’s hair and gives her breast a comforting squeeze.

Bella steps forward coolly. “Of course you do. But we didn’t hire the best smuggling ship in the galaxy because we expected a pleasure trip. These are the coordinates polar of our destination. Take us in and find us a place to hide.”

* * *
Bella, whip out and ready, slips into the colonnades of a palatial entryway. When she stops to lean against a column, we see that she’s gasping for breath. Lola and Pussy, blasters ready, burst in behind her and take cover. Daniel walks in casually.
I am overwhelmed with the latent emotions of this planet. It’s as if millions of voices have cried out in despair, only to disappear. Just like everything else we’ve seen – the Resistance headquarters are deserted. Food lies half-eaten on a table. The residue of drink has dried where cups were overturned. The evening lights burn in the midday and the security systems are off. Yet nothing has been ransacked. I don’t-

“Was the princess among those voices?” Daniel asks. Bella eyes him oddly.

 

“Enough with your damned princess!” Lola hisses. “She’s gone! They’re all gone, all dead! It’s time to face the future and get back on our ship.”

 

“I hope not, Boy.” Bella makes a point both of keeping the calm in her voice and ignoring the captain.

An overhead hum loudens to a buzz, then to a noise that vibrates the surface of the narrow pool running between the columns. Lola and Pussy flatten themselves against the columns before glancing up and out from under the roof. The palace is on a hill overlooking a wide expanse of city, but aside from the occasional columns of smoke and circling birds, there is no movement in the city. Daniel seems not to realize the danger and walks boldly down the colonnade; Pussy grabs him and yanks him to the ground between her legs.

Above and closer to the city mound, where spirals rise toward the sky, a massive command ship inserts itself into the atmosphere. Dozens of greatships poke into the space behind it.

 

Inside, Bella stands in the shadows, glowing eyes rolled back.

I don’t need to look – I know what ship floats above us. It’s the Snatch. Lady Vain’s own ship. I can feel her presence, and… and someone more. The Empress!

A whine joins the rumble of the command ship, and a pale red beam of light stabs down into the nearby city streets. The haze bleed casts the columns in a pink glow.  More beams join the first, until there are dozens of them making a pincushion of the city.

The White Thighs are coming.

Outside the window, hundreds – maybe thousands – of People Eaters descend the red beams from the ships; the sky is filled with them.

“Aww, bloody cunt,” Lola says, though she doesn’t seem visibly distressed. “They’ve put one down right in the middle of the landing lot.”

 

Bella approaches, threading between the columns, and hisses at Lola. “I told you parking in the open lot was a bad idea. They’ll find your ship.”

 

Lola’s eyes roll more than is strictly necessary. “I’m no fool, Witch. The Beaver looks like a wart from the outside. She’ll blend right in with the rest of the trash. We only have to worry about getting back without being seen.”

 

“They’ll find your ship,” Bella insists, “and they’ll tear her apart.  They’ll find the bots then, smuggling compartments or no. They’ll know about him. She‘ll know. I’ve intuited it.” She peers out through the columns. “Blind fortune will lead them right to it. Look!”

 

She points down to a spot in the landing lot which, for a moment, seems like nothing. Then there’s movement. Though, as Lola has said, the lot is filled with ships, refugees sneak through the shadows directly toward the Beaver. They carry rifles like trained jungle fighters as they creep between a pair of abandoned vehicles, but the People Eaters still in the landing beam spot them from the air just as they reach the Beaver and descend like wasps, dropping the resistance fighters with their stun rays. And like wasps, the People Eaters are quick and methodical as they strip their captives naked, molest them only a little, and toss them into the red beam. The rebels begin to snap out of their daze and squirm with awareness a few meters above the ground. No matter how they kick and scream, they’re unable to free themselves from the beam, and are slowly, inexorably, drawn upward toward the Snatch.
The People Eaters fan out through the lot, as do the squads descending in the dozens of other touch-down points around the city. In each patrol one of the White Thighs holds out a sensor.

“See!” Lola sneers at Bella. “Security by obscurity. We need to make our run now. We can’t just wait here until they find us. They will find us if we stay – how hard can it be to pick up life signs on a dead planet? We can blast our way back to the Beaver and free-jump to hyperspace before they know what’s happened, just like Tittitueene. Try our luck elsewhere with the boy.”

Bella nods sagely. “We board the Snatch.”

Lola was nodding with her until the final word. Then, “Not on your fucking life.” Lola’s hand hovers above her blaster. “And if you’re thinking about taking the galaxy’s only man right up to the Empress’ fetid snatch, you’re crazier than I thought, Witch! I think we’d better alter our arrangement.”

Bella flicks out her plasma whip – but flings it past Lola just as a blaster fires and White Thighs burst into the colonnade.

* * *

 

From outside the palace, the sounds of blaster shots and the slice of Bella’s whip mingle with mangled cries. A final hoarse cry echoes as everything goes still.

 

A long moment passes, then two White Thighs (one with muscled, but hairless legs, one with tattoos focused on her chakras) emerge from the palace’s entryway to ascend the nearest red beam.

 

 

 

Riel strummed the virtual threads on his practice guitar; in his headphones the chord rang until his fingers rested on the touchpad again. His surveillance post was a good place to compose – his eyes welcomed a distraction from staring for endless hours at the laptop screen. The audio from his laser mic had been doubled and routed through his headphones so he wouldn’t miss anything while he played, but nothing interesting had happened in the building across Columbia Road for hours.  Nothing he hadn’t seen before, anyway – what the deadgirls did with their clients across the way was interesting enough in its own way, but he tried not to let it capture his attention while he was on the roof and needed to remain alert.  Better to give it a closer watch in the privacy of his own bedroom.

A cold wind buffeted against the plastic sheets behind Riel. Even after a year on the open floor, the tarps were still intact enough to envelop a pocket of warmth around the stairwell, where it wasn’t really that useful for his surveillance. Riel had a thermos of coffee tucked inside the plastic, near the stairwell, but to climb out of his chair to get it would rouse him from the cozy nest he’d made in his blanket. He tugged down on his hat and flipped the collar up on his coat, but icy fingers still found their way past the blanket and down to the nape of his neck.

No, real icy fingers.

He jumped from his chair, sending it clattering to the plywood, and spun with his practice guitar held like a spear. His utility belt hung on the knob of the tripod three meters away, so he swung his blanket wide like a gladiator’s net.

It was Jacquie, still standing back by the plastic sheets. She smirked the way she always did when she pulled one of her deadgirl pranks.

It was Jacquie, but different. She was taller than usual, and not just because she was wearing heels. She was lean instead of voluptuous – the polka-dotted summer dress she wore couldn’t have been more than a size 1.  It barely covered the tops of her thighs; if she’d still been warm-blooded, she would have been covered in goosebumps. Pert, apple-sized breasts hid completely beneath the fabric where Jacquie would have usually been oozing cleavage above the square-cut neckline. Her skin was still pale-white, but her features were subtly different – her lips pouty and cherry-red, her lashes long and black, her expression that of the doe instead of the huntress. Her red hair was frizzy now, and piled on top of her head. Her giggle faded, and she took a few gliding steps toward him, as graceful as Ginger Rogers.

“Holy shit, Jacquie! I can’t believe you- How did- Wait, what did you do to get up here?”

“What do you think, sweetie?” She took another skating step forward, then another, until she was close enough to walk her fingers up the zipper on his jacket.

“You didn’t kill Eddie, did you?”

She tittered like a saucy 30′s studio girl.”No, silly. I don’t do things like that anymore. I’m reformed. Thanks to you.” She kissed the air between them and blew it toward him. “I just bribed the nice man, like you do. Well, not quite like you do. By the way, he says you’re paid up until the next whenever.”

Riel gave her a suspicious once-over. “What are you doing here?”

Jacquie leaned up against him and grinned. Her fangs were hidden in a row of perfectly straight, white teeth. She pinched his chin, batted her lashes, and brushed his leg with her thigh, which for Jacquie was downright coy. She led him back to his chair, set it upright, and sat him down in it. His practice guitar she set gently against the tripod. “I talked to Jonas today. He says I should be nice to you. He says if I treat you well, you’ll just give me what I want instead of me having to take it every night.”

Riel was still suspicious, but he nodded for her to continue while she strolled around him, her fingers tracing over his shoulder.

“I went on your computer – it wasn’t hard to find your porn stash. I have to say, Jacko, I was kind of surprised. I thought you were the ‘T&A, wham-bam, slam ‘em in the rear, fraternity-boy’ type, but I can see now that I misread you. You have more interesting tastes, don’t you?” She spread her arms and twirled. “Pretty good baseline, right? Wholesome… even procreative? I can do Lucy and Ricky, as long as we don’t have to have separate beds. I could even do her face, if you want. Even in black and white, if you say it for me. Just once, c’mon.”

He blinked at her, not trying to hide his confusion.

She frowned, and murmured, “Loooo-cy, I’m hooo-ome.” She shook the missed opportunity away. “But that was just one folder, right? What if you’re in the mood for something more modern…”

Riel watched while Jacquie concentrated, or focused, or something. Her lean shape tightened to athletic muscle, and tiger stripe tattoos boiled to the surface of her skin, like spider veins forming in seconds and coalescing to solid shapes. Stubby fangs reappeared in her smile. Her dress went loose at the waist but strained at her bust as her figure traded realism for hourglass proportions. Something subtle happened in her face – he couldn’t place it – but in another moment she was the exact image of Bethany Jones from “The Hero of Ohio” series. Or, ‘Tiggrr’, as most fanboys knew her.

Jacquie’s eyes flashed when he breathed the character’s name. “So this you respond to?” She bent low until her fingers touched the ground, until she was on all fours, then crawled into his lap, causing the folding chair to creak its protests. “Fine,” she grinned. “Let’s work with this. What comes next? Want a massage? No ambush sex, right? That’s what Jonas said. So how about a blowjob? No teeth, I promise.” She pressed her cheek against his and whispered into her ear. “Wanna play a character with me, big guy? Are you a baddie – some bank robber I catch in the act? I can wrestle you into submission, “punish” you until you forswear your life of crime?” She searched his eyes. “No… You want to be David?” She watched his reaction, and must have felt his hesitation. “Is that who you want to be? David Masters, right? My husband? My lover.”

Riel bit his lip, wondering if he should tell her that Katherine had already bled him today and he needed to recover. He imagined the dozen ways that could play out and which one of those would end with her hurting him the least, but after a pregnant pause he only shook his head. “No, no games. Just talk to me.” He took her by the shoulders and sat her back on his knee where he could see her properly.

“About what?”

“Anything. Or nothing. Look, just sit still and listen.”

Jacquie DBA Tiggrr purred, then snuggled into his lap as he wrapped the blanket around them both. He pulled out Jonas’ rolled-up script and flipped to the next scene.