“Where were you?” called down Crazy Larry.
“Killing the queen,” I snapped back. “You know you left me for dead out there with that column of shyzoks.”
“We did not know if you would die,” called down Uprakon Ninth Son. He climbed down to get level with me. “But since you didn’t, you’re entitled to a full share.” He held up the sack of black eggs triumphantly.
“That’s not good enough,” I said. “I want something else from you.”
“Everyone gets the same share. We found it is better to split everything evenly. Not so many deaths that way.”
“It’s not that. I want a real chance to prove myself as a pilot. You don’t want to let me fly with you as part of your team? Fine. But I want to earn a place in the Wings of Dawn. Not get left out in the cold. I challenge you to a dogfight.”
“You want for us to fight?”
“No live ammunition. Simulated fire. No electronic guidance systems. Just pure flying. I start in one location; you start in another. The first one to get a good clean shot at the other wins. If you win, you can keep my full share.”
“No. That is not enough,” said Uprakon.
“Then, what’s worth risking your pride for?”
“The loser must never fly again. He must remain forever in Dawn living with the shame of his defeat.” Suddenly, I wondered if I had made a mistake. These were higher stakes than I had anticipated. Was it worth risking the chance of reuniting with Celeste someday?
“How will I know that it will be a fair competition?” I asked.
“You will choose my ship and I will choose yours,” Uprakon responded.
“Fine, I accept your terms.”
“Wonderful,” smirked Sladurr, “now that you two have the details of your little pissing contest straightened out, let’s all enjoy being filthy rich!”
I sat up that night wondering if I had made a mistake. In the morning, I’d have to win a contest to decide whether or not I’d be allowed to do the one thing I was bred for. And for what? Because I had my pride wounded. It was a stupid risk, and I was trained never to take unecessary, stupid risks. But this was my kind of fight. I’d performed countless thousands of combat simulations. There’s no way that Uprakon could have done the same, no matter how many raids he’d flown on. I knew I could beat him. I had to.
Come to the door. I rose from my bed and obeyed the voice in my head, finding Drasheel just as I had expected. She entered without asking.
“I guess you want to know why I did that today.”
No, was her answer.
“You understand why I did it? Because if you do, could you please tell me?”
You are proud.
“And stupid.”
You are a warrior. Success is meaningless without victory.
“And you think I have enough in me to defeat Uprakon tomorrow?” I asked. She drew closer to me. My body tensed. It wasn’t that she wasn’t sexy. I’d noticed many times since that first moment on the transport leaving the reprogramming center how her taut little body was somehow accentuated, even by the masculine clothes she wore. But there, was also something—
‘Gaagh!” I looked down. There was tincture of some kind being injected through a needle in my side.
You take your victory. You need it to survive.
“Why? What have you done to me?”
I have seen inside your mind. I know your inhibitions. You would not mate without me unless it was the only way to save your life.
My mind was reeling. How the hell had I misjudged this crazy alien shrew so badly? She looked visibly hurt.
Do not think like that.
“So, what?” I said, grunting. Whatever toxin she had hit me with was starting to take hold. “This is...another test?”
The antidote is within me. Do you want to live?
I had a decision to make. And though it violated every code I had ever agreed to in my old life. I seized her. She lilted in my arms. Somehow the rage I felt fueled her lust for me. She got off on it. I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder, tossing her roughly onto the bed. I pounced on her, tearing off her shirt without even bothering to first take off her jacket first. There was nothing gentle about this. This was punishment just as much as it was pleasure. I wrapped the palm of my hand around her breast, her tiny nipples rising as I stroked. Both.
“No,” I said, grabbing her neck roughly just behind the ear. “I’m in control. I decide what I do to you.” She squealed, a strange kind of moan but there was no mistaking what it meant. She touched me with her tendril and a wave of pleasure mixed with an incredible lust washed through me. It was like I was experiencing sex as both of us. Me, stroking her and her desire to be stroked by me. It was like a synaptic feedback loop that made my cock as hard as a diamond.
“Fuck, yes!” I yelled, thrusting a finger into her pants, penetrating the wet folds of her sex. I rubbed up and down, fast, slow, then fast again. The urgency in our mind-body connection was building with every inward thrust. Then, with my other hand I unfastened her tight black pants. Her kind had use for panties, I discovered. She was perfectly hairless. I pulled the pants down to just above her knees. I grabbed her hips and thrust myself into her like a man with his hair on fire thrusts his head into a bucket of water. The exhilaration, the relief. Every sensation was in stereo. She quivered and shook, begging me to ride her with everything that I had, to send her into the stratosphere. We rocked furiously. I felt like I suddenly had the strength of five men. I reached under me and tore her pants apart with my bare hands.
“Yeeeeessssss!” she screamed.
Then, I grabbed her by the ankles smacked her ass hard with my right. She did nothing to resist. She knew she deserved far worse. Then, I took each her legs in my hands, pounding her mercilessly. The force of my cock surprised me. But here I was, fucking for my very life. I felt that I could go on for hours, but I willed myself to cum. I didn’t know whether the antidote needed my sperm to initiate a chemical reaction. She mentally begged me to continue, but I couldn’t trust her not to simply let me give myself a heart attack mid-coitus. Not yet. More! More! Maybe it was the rush of adrenaline, or something she did inside of my head, but I couldn’t cum yet. So onward I thrust, me rubbing both of her tits together, biting her neck, alternatingly hard and soft until finally, after what seemed like hours and may have been, I gave her three more furious pumps, her pleasure blooming into an eruption of wetness. I released, and I felt a cleansing relief like nothing I had ever felt. It was more than satisfaction. It was like absolution. Like tension being washed away in a wave that passed through me. I pulled out, finding my cock soaked in translucent effluvia.
“So,” I panted. “Will I live?” She could only nod in assent, her eyes still closed, licking her lips like she’d just devoured something unimaginably delicious. I wanted nothing more than to leave that room and never look at her again after what Drasheel had done to me. But instead I felt myself lie back on the bed. Exhaustion was more powerful than indignation and I knew that she wouldn’t try to harm me in my sleep anyway. Whatever else she might try to throw at me, she definitely wanted me with enough strength to show her another. She rested her head on my chest, sweat gleaning on the two of us. Before I knew it, I had drifted off to sleep.
Hours later, I awoke to find that Drasheel had left me alone in bed. Her torn pants were gone, as was all other trace of her, except for something sitting on the pillow beside me. It was a small totem made of some precious wood. Rock could be mined and jewels could always be manufactured. But wood like this had to have come straight from the soil, so I figured that it must have been valuable. The piece was carved in the shape of a hawk in flight. The detail suggested that it had been handed down from some master craftsman. Was this Drasheel’s way of making peace after trying to kill me, or was it simply a token of affection. I tossed it back on the bed. Just as well that she had left this for me instead of being here when I awoke, I figured. She had betrayed me, and I wasn’t eager
to become a participant in another one of her mind games. Then, it hit me. The challenge! I’d overslept!
I pulled on a pair of pants and a kind of loose-fitting tunic which was the common style in Dawn and unlocked the door. I ran as fast as I could, still groggy and more than a little sore from the night before. All around me were the sights and smells of the station, which I was starting to become accustomed to. But what I found when I finally reached the hangar bay was something I never could have expected.
“There he is!” cried the Charmer as I approached. The Wings of Dawn were sitting around with cups of some sort of fermented rice drink that was common in the station.
“I’m here!” I shouted, hoping that the delay wouldn’t force a disqualification. I hadn’t known these people to be sticklers for rules, but with so much riding on the line I had to be ready for anything. But I wasn’t prepared when Crazy Larry and Throx grabbed me by each arm. “What the hell is going on? I’m a little late, so what? Where’s Uprakon?”
That’s when I noticed Teru sitting atop the wing of a banged-up Legionnaire. He finished his cup with a gulp and turned it over on the wing. Then he hopped down.
“Uprakon was killed last night,” announced the old sage. The shock on my face must have registered something with him, but it was clear I was the prime suspect.
“I didn’t have anything to do with this. Why would I want to kill him when I was the one who challenged him? I wanted to be beat him in a fair combat, not murder him.”
“Maybe you got scared when he raised the stakes on ya,” said Crazy Larry.
“Makes sense to me,” intonned the Charmer. The others muttered in assent.
“Wait a minute! Drasheel was with me last night. She could vouch for me. I couldn’t have done anything to Uprakon. I never had the chance.”
“Do you see her here?” I scanned the assembled crew. No luck. She must have fled. “She tried to poison me,” I said.
“So, which is it? Were you fucking her or did she try to kill you?”
“Well, both,” I said, realizing how insane it sounded given the circumstances. A swift punch met with my gut. “Gggrah” I grunted, spit flying from my throat from the force of the impact. “Wait,” I choked out.
“Hold on,” said Teru to the others, “We do not know the truth. But we soon will.” From the glares I got from the Wings, it was clear that it was only Teru’s intervention that was keeping them from tearing me limb from limb right then and there.
“The First Flame casts no shadow. It illuminates all darkness and reveals everything that can be known.” More mumbo-jumbo, and now it was really getting superstitious. But I guess if it meant living a little longer I didn’t have much room to complain.
“So let’s bring him to the core now,” said the Sphree. Once we know the truth, we toss him into open space and use him for target practice. Before I knew what was happening, a sharp pain burst open the back of my skull and I disappeared into the blackness.
When I woke up, I was lying on my side in total darkness. Some kind of cloth bag had been draped over my head and I could feel by trying to wriggle my wrists that my hands were, predictably, bound. My feet too. I was about as mobile as a side of meat, and something told me that I was on my way straight into the broiler.
“He’s awake,” someone said.
“How can you tell?” asked another voice.
“You don’t see? His breathing’s changed. You really need to learn to pay attention to the little things.”
“My kind, we aren’t built for hearing. It’s smells we do best with. I can smell everything he’s eaten in the last for days. And he pissed himself.”
“Fat load of good that’s going to do you when you realize he’s been listening and probably plotting his escape.”
The bag was yanked off my head, catching on the hair and dried blood from the wound in the back of my skull. My eyes squinted at the harsh glare from the overhead lights. We were in a transport, probably the same one that I had been rescued from the reprogramming center in. Now it was a prison transport.
“Might as well let him up,” said Crazy Larry.
“What for?” asked Throx.
“I want to have a chat with him. Found out what he planned to do with the totem.” A thick, hair arm yanked me up so that I was sitting up straight. I surreptitiously stole a glance out the porthole window. We were passing through the metal lattices that surrounded Dawn’s metallic moon.
“You know, there was a little item that ol’ Uprakon was missing when they found his body splayed out on that floor with a dagger in his back. It had a kind of sentimental value, you might say. But then again, it was a lot more than that. It was the totem held by the Alpha Wing.”
Without even waiting for him to finish, I knew in an instant what he meant. It had to be the little wooden hawk I had found in my bed after Drasheel disappeared. Was that her sign that she called him? Like an inside joke?
“I know it,” They were clearly surprised. “About the size of my palmed, carved out of wood, shaped like a hawk, right?” No sense in lying. If they tossed my room, hell, if they even peeked their heads in they would see the hawk and they would have all the evidence they needed. Assuming that the Big Flame didn’t find me guilty first.
“So you killed him for it.”
“No, truly I didn’t. Drasheel must have done it. When I woke up this morning, she had left it for me to find, like a parting gift or maybe a final insult. I didn’t know what it meant until just now.”
“So you just happened to trust the wrong woman, huh? I guess you’re not the first shitkicker whose used that defense.” said Larry.
“You trusted her too. She was one of you. Now where is she?” RRRRNN! RRRRNN! RRRRNN! A klaxon sounded throughout the cabin.
“This is where you get off.” said Larry. A cold sweat gathered at the base of my neck.
“I thought there was gonna be some kind of trial. You’re just going to throw me out into empty space?” The Wings laughed at this.
“Charmer! Bring him the suit,” called Throx.
“Fuck you! Bring it yourself,”Charmer called back.
“Okay, so yeah. Looks like you’re going out in just what you’ve got on,” said Larry.
Throx pulled me to my feet and cut my restraints. Then he stuck the knife in my back and started leading me toward the airlock. Shit. Something told me this was another prank. Teru didn’t save me just to let them kill me without so much as bothering with the First Flame, whatever that was. But as he reminded me, he wasn’t their leader. And they did think that I killed the Alpha Wing just so I could steal his little wooden trinket. The airlock door opened and I was pushed inside. The doors whooshed closed behind me. I turned around. Sure enough, there was a suit. An ancient one. Not the hexagon that could conform to the shape of your body in seconds. No. This was one was pure analogue, just a big (hopefully) airtight pair of long underwear with a fishbowl for a helmet.
Depressurization in twenty seconds said a computer voice in the airlock. “Fuck!” I scrambled to throw on the helmet, pulled the space suit off the hook and fumbled for how to throw it on. Fifteen seconds. There were sections fastened together and I had to unscrew them to step inside. I tossed the thing into pieces. 10 seconds. I tore off the helmet and pulled the top segment on, then I started on the pants. If I didn’t have every part secured, my entire body was about to crumble and collapse in the vacuum of space. I had the boots on, just had to secure the helmet. 4 seconds. I fumbled around, touching every piece of my suit to make sure it was accounted for, then whoosh the air lock doors split open and all the air was sucked out. I checked myself. No tears in the suit, no ruptures. My brain was not reduced to a frozen ball of crud in an instant. Okay, so what now? I was without a tether, so where was I supposed to go?
Then, I saw a red fleck approaching out of the black oblivion and coming in fast. As it moved closer, I could hear Teru’s voice crackling through on this old-fashioned comm. “How do you feel?”
<
br /> What kind of a question was that? I felt like I almost died in an airlock. The red fleck became a toy soldier and gradually grew to the size of Teru. He reached out his hand.
“My trial is in the vacuum of space?”
“Your trial began long before you ever came here. But this is the way to the First Flame,” said Teru. I took his hand.
8
I heaved as I thrust myself forward, straight at a thin piece of steel so long that it seemed to bend thousands of square miles around the metallic moon of Dawn. I drifted until I was near enough to the beam to reach out and repel against it, sending me sailing toward another. I’d been leap-frogging like this for hours, not even sure anymore that I was making even incremental progress. We climbed along the latticework that surrounded the metal planetary core of Dawn. Navigating in open space with no form of propulsion meant that there was always the chance that I could miss my intended target and go sailing off into the vast expanse alone. Teru insisted this was part of the ‘spirit quest,’ a necessary part of the exercise. He too had restrained himself from using any form of propulsion, although unlike me he had a safety line in case he suddenly went pitching off into the void.
I had to turn my body carefully, conserving every movement as I went, somersaulting and diving in near zero gravity. I could feel only the gentlest pull from the planetoid, which helped orient me at least a little. No up, no down. Just forward. I hoped.
Apparently, this is how the workers who had constructed Dawn, a largely synthetic moon, had operated while working on the project. I just hoped I didn’t have to hop and jump the whole way down to the planet’s core, but where else could a mystical fire that dispensed judgement and wisdom be located?
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