by Lula Monk
Clea scoffed. She knew it. She knew the red-eyed bitch in that tiny room had been on the wrong side all along.
‘Just sleep with the scary fire alien, Clea.’
‘All will be well, Clea.’
‘I have a plan, Clea.’
What a load of horse shit.
“Regardless of the Chief Officer’s directives, I would prefer if medicinal applications associated with my account were passed by me first,” said Ignis.
The Quadra hesitated. “The directive was mandatory, Commander, and Chief Office Slep’s rules are ones we must all follow.”
“I am a king in my own right!” thundered the fire alien. “I will not have that cockroach or any other being tell me how and when or how high I must jump.”
The Quadra quivered, shrinking back from the alien’s flaming tendrils that snaked around the room, curling between pieces of medical equipment and making the metal turn white hot.
“Is that understood,” asked ignis again this time quieter, softer. More villainous.
“It is as you would wish it, Commander,” said the Quadra.
“Good.”
Ignis grabbed Clea by the hand. She fought the urge to shrink away from his touch. As soon as he pulled her through the portal and out into the hallway of the medical bay, the Quadra scurried behind them and sealed the portal wall, creating a barrier between itself and the fiery alien whose flames still sparked around his head.
“Are you ok?” she asked tentatively. Not that she gave a shit how this thing gripping her hand in his felt. But it would be nice to know what degree of danger he presented to her at present. From her experience, pissed off men were dangerous men.
“I’m fine,” grumbled ignis. “There is something so detestable about a man being told what to do with his own property, and for someone to shamble along and demand that something happen to you? It nearly sets my blood to boiling.”
Clea tugged her hand free, her own blood bubbling at the creature’s words. It proved to be a useless gesture, though. Ignis grabbed her again, this time his thick, strong fingers clamping down on the tender flesh of her wrist.
“You’re hurting me,” Clea protested.
The alien eased his grip, but just slightly.
“Move,” he commanded.
Sullen, Clea did as she was told. Everything in her demanded that she fight back, that she attempt to break free from this creature’s hold and make a run for it. But experience had taught her how stupid of a move that would be.
They crossed the large open space in what she had to assume was the center of the space station. ‘The Hub,’ the Quadra had called it. The space was massive and perfectly round. No corners in sight.
Across the wide expanse of empty space where she’d been auctioned away who-knows-how-long ago, stood two great, gapping entryways. The first was one she had traversed twice now: the Transportation and Administration Sector. The other, harrowingly enough, was labeled simply ‘Breeding Sector.’
“Please tell me we’re not going down there,” she said pointedly, jerking her head in the direction of the Breeding Sector.
Ignis grunted and pulled her along, his grip tightening around her wrist. Thin flames peeked past the neck of the leather coat he wore, drifting through his rich brown hair like fingers, lovingly stroking his scalp.
Weird.
“So, uh...,” Clea began, wanting to make some conversation. Perhaps if she could get this guy to talking, she could stop seeing him as this imminent presence, this frightening “other.”
Fat chance.
“...where are you from?” she decided on at long last.
He yanked her through the entryway for the Breeding Sector. For a long moment, she thought he was just going to ignore her question. Finally, he said, “My home planet is Incenda.”
“And you are the king there?”
The alien grunted and nodded his head.
“And your people,” continued Clea, trying to coax more from him. “They are the...?”
“We are the Arda,” her said tersely.
“Are all of the Arda… like you?” Clea couldn’t think of a better way to phrase the question. She didn’t want to outright ask him if all the creature on his planet where made of fire, with thick flames coming from their bodies like him. It almost felt like it would be rude to ask, like someone back on Earth asking her why her skin was so dark or if everyone in her family was black.
“We are all of the Arda,” he said in reply, as though that was supposed to explain all she needed to know.
But it didn’t.
She went out on a limb. “And are all Arda...like you?” she asked again awkwardly. “With the fire and stuff?”
Ignis stopped short, his massive body looming over Clea’s. She had to keep herself from flinching at the stillness of his commanding presence. She would be an idiot to not to be afraid of the creature, no matter how much she wanted to kick his ass. Or attempt to kick his ass, anyway.
She glanced up at him from beneath her lashes. He wasn’t even looking at her. He was staring at the plain metal wall to their right.
“Is this our room?” she asked, assessing the sheet of metal. “Are you going to make a door open?”
“A portal,” corrected Ignis. “On space craft, such passageways are called portals.”
“Right…”
Not that terminology should matter overmuch, but hey? Who was she to think anything differently, right? She was just property.
“Yes,” he said suddenly. “This is our room.”
Clea gulped.
Somehow, hearing the words ‘our room’ come from his mouth made the phrase seem ominous and threatening.
The fire alien placed his palm on the metal, thin tendrils of flame coursing around his wrist and fingers. As his palm activated the surface – or at least Clea guessed that is what it was doing, for she didn’t know what other purpose placing his hand on the wall could serve nor did she know how the tech worked – the thin tongues of flame licked at the metal of the wall, causing soot to mar the metal. The surface beneath his hand shone green, and a portal opened.
When ignis lowered his hand, the soot marks remained.
Holy shit, Clea thought as the fire alien drug her through the portal. In a hall of sameness, the fire alien had just inadvertently made a mark on the wall. A mark she could use as a guide.
As if I’ll ever have a moment alone to need such a landmark, she thought bitterly.
She was prepared to soak in her misery, to wallow in her self-pity, but the sight of the room they stepped into set very different thoughts in her mind.
“Hell no.”
Ignis released her, one brow quirking. A small smile tugged at his lips. “Did you say something?”
“I know you heard me. I said, Hell. No.”
He shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it onto the back of a nearby chair. “I cannot imagine to what you are referring.”
“Oh yes you can,” Clea said saucily, crossing her arms over her chest. She jerked her chin towards the other side of the room. “That’s a bed.”
Ignis glanced to where she gestured, a look of mock shock spreading across his face. “So it is.”
“I’m not sleeping in that thing. Not with you.”
“I dare say its intended purpose is not sleeping.”
A chill crept down Clea’s spine. Her entire body began to shiver, and she jerked her arms and legs about, trying to shake the creeping sensation away.
“Are you having an episode?” Ignis asked. His tone remained aloof, but she could detect the worry beneath it.
For a moment, she thought about feigning a relapse, but the memory of the Quadra somehow detecting her brainwaves from another room shot that plan right out of her mind. If she had the Arda carry her back to the medical bay only to discover nothing was actually wrong with her, she hated to imagine what he might do. She’d seen the way his anger had made the four-armed medic quake in the examination room, and she had no desire to
see the fire alien’s wrath aimed in her direction.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just... Just no.”
“Excuse me?” His aloofness was gone. In its stead surged irritation. “I made it very clear that once I picked you up from the medical bay, you would be required to fulfill your purpose.”
“I have more than one use, you know,” Clea proclaimed, putting her fists on her hips. “I’m not just for breeding.”
“That’s the only purpose you have to me.”
She flexed her fists, curling and uncurling her fingers. She pressed her palms into her the outer bulge of her thighs.
“Can I just have a minute to myself?” she asked. “Like to eat, or just have a second to–”
A loud, booming knock sounded from the portal wall.
“Blazes!” shouted Ignis. He stomped to the wall, hastily pressed his hand against the metal, and all but shouted when the portal finally opened. “What is it?!”
One of those freaky Cephalopod guards stood in the corridor, his phase gun lifted and poised in his hand. “We require the Earth woman.”
“For what?” asked Ignis, outraged. He oriented his body until he stood protectively in front of Clea. “I paid for her. She is mine.”
Clea’s hackles rose again, but seeing another guard appear in the portal opening, she scooted more behind the large alien.
“We are required to take her,” said the second guard.
“On whose orders?” demanded Ignis.
Without realizing it, Clea had been pressing her cheek to the alien’s broad back. Her flesh began to warm, and she jumped back, rubbing at her cheek frantically. She looked on in awe as thick, bright flames bloomed from Ignis’s back.
A third guard appeared in the doorway. “We were told she might be combative, and we have orders to contain her as necessary.”
The first guard extracted a set of shackles from one of the pockets of his suit.
Clea’s eyes widened in horror. “No.”
As if suddenly remembering her presence, Ignis whirled on her. Flames blazed in the sockets of his eyes.
A vision from her childhood, of the thick acrid smoke rolling out of her sister’s bedroom windows, invaded Clea’s memory.
Anywhere was better than being cooped up in this metal box with that thing who now called himself her master.
“Alright,” she said fleeing out the door, her wrists raised and ready to be shackled. “I’ll go.”
Ignis clamped his hand down on her shoulder. Addressing the three Ceph guards, he asked, “Where are you taking her?”
“It is time for the second excursion to the Rim for this rotation. She has already missed two. Chief Officer Slep is eager to get her back on schedule.”
“What the hell is an excursion?” asked Clea. “And what’s the Rim?”
A wild array of awful, sexual things assaulted Clea’s mind, and she began to lower her wrists. But the Ceph guard shackled her before she could back into the room and the safety of Ignis’s side. It yanked on the chain roughly, causing her to stumble down the corridor.
“Be careful!” roared Ignis, one of his flames darting out to singe the tentacle of the guard holding her chain.
Clea watched the alien’s pink flesh sizzle and pop, pleased that it was cradling the limb to its chest, no doubt in pain.
“How long will she be gone?” queried Ignis.
“As long as it takes,” replied a guard.
“That is not an acceptable answer.”
“It will have to do,” said the other guard.
“It will be what it will,” said the third.
The alien bearing Clea’s chain yanked it once more, and she shambled along after it, her gaze fixed on Ignis.
Disgust distorted his features, and she watched on in horror as he sealed the portal, his flames raging, blazing out to burst into the corridor.
Chapter 6
Ignis
Dark thoughts clouded his mind. He briefly considered taking another cleanse in the hydro chamber, but his muscles protested such an exercise. His body needed movement, true exertion.
He needed to do something that would not allow him to think.
A good fucking would probably work, but again, he encountered the predicament of being unprepared for such a task. He had not lain with another woman since Gylenda, and it was she whose body he wanted now.
His eyes misted, and he swatted away at the moisture, the small droplets of water burning his flesh.
He cried out in pain. Or what he temporarily thought was pain.
He brought his hand closer to his face, examining the flesh there. It was not bubbling and protesting at the water’s presence It was… normal. Everything about his hand looked completely and totally normal.
Ignis sat in one of the room’s two chairs, marveling at his flesh.
In all his life, water had been the great enemy of the Arda, for it was one of the few things that could extinguish one’s flame. Not permanently, of course. But temporarily, water could prove troublesome indeed, causing great injuries and cutting off the afflicted from accessing the powers nature had bestowed upon him.
And yet, his tears did not make his skin boil up, did not make welts appear where the droplets had fallen.
It dawned on him that the sensation he’d experienced when wiping away his tears had not been pain, but coldness.
He’d never been cold a day in his life. Had never even experienced the sensation.
He blinked his eyes, staring out at the starfield.
What was happening to him?
He shook his head, beating his fists against this skull.
This madness had to stop. This pent-up isolation was driving him to the brink of insanity. He needed to tussle. He needed to train, to feel his muscles burn with the glory of raw and primal exertion.
With that thought in mind, he exited the room, journeying back to the core of the Hub. He looked across the pavilion, his eyes falling on the Entertainment Sector. He had heard much and worse about the vile goings on of that sector, but such perversions would not stop him from getting what he needed.
He needed a good fight, and he thought he knew just where he might get one. The Glim had hinted that such a thing might be possible… That Ignis might find an enemy aboard the Hub. And there was only one enemy Ignis craved, and only one place the bastard heir might be.
The cells.
At a sprint, he charged across the pavilion, reveling in the way passersby darted out of his way in fright. Good, let them scatter like vermin. His heart pounded in his chest, and the familiar surge of excitement flowed through him. All that was dashed away, though, when six beefy guards stopped his progression into the Entertainment Sector.
“Halt!” said one.
Ignis grinned. “I’ve already stopped, baca. Or can’t you tell? I’d have to think that giant eye was good for something.”
The Ceph in question lifted his phase gun, pointing directly at Ignis’s forehead.
“You are not permitted to enter. The Earthlings are gone,” it said again, this time more forcefully.
Ignis scoffed. “I’ve not come for human flesh. I’ve come to brawl.”
One of the other Cephs intervened, using one slippery tentacle to forcibly lower its companion’s weapon.
“We are on strict orders from the Chief Officer not to let anyone enter the Entertainment Sector while the Earthlings are engaging in their exertion around the Rim.”
“As I’ve said, I have no interest in human women. I want to see the cells.”
The Cephalopods all looked at one another, shifting awkwardly in their large Galactic Continuity standard-issue boots.
“It is not permitted.”
Ignis lifted an eyebrow. “So, which is it, then? Is the Entertainment Sector locked down, or are the cells?”
“No one’s allowed in the ce–”
“There are no cells,” interrupted another Ceph.
“Of course there are!” exclaimed the first. “We
usually guard them, idiot.”
“No one is supposed to know about the cells, you squish brain,” said the other guard.
Ignis felt his lips stretch into a feral grin. “If there are no express orders from the Slep to prohibit me form going to the cells, I’ll take my leave.”
And with that, he darted between the Cephs and dashed off down the wide corridor.
The oafish guards called after him, but his legs were pumping as fast as they could, and he would soon outrun them. He didn’t think it would be long before they blundered their ways across the core and went straight to Slep. Good. Let the insectoid come find him. It could give him a guided tour of the cells, if it wanted.
The corridor for the Entertainment Sector was poorly lit, the portals to the various ‘secluded rooms’ left open while the inhabitants were getting their exercise with the breeders on the Rim. He poked his head into a few, partly out of morbid curiosity, and partly to see if one might lead to the cells.
The cells were in fact a secret, and he’d not anticipated finding them so easily. But he also hadn’t expected such a task to be so difficult, either.
He reached the end of the corridor, the shining, transparent tube of the Rim visible past the yawning entryway ahead. Two more guards guarded that way as well, their phase guns poised and ready. But they weren’t pointing the guns at Ignis. They were pointing them at the women walking two-by-two on the platform in the Rim, their wrists shackled to one another.
Ignis balked.
This was no way for people to be treated, especially not women who were meant to serve such an integral and fundamental purpose. Suddenly, his dark woman walked past the opening, her chain leading to the wrist of the red-eyed Earth woman that belonged to the Glim.
“Commander!” called a voice at his back.
Clea’s head jerked to stare down the corridor at Ignis. He winked at her – a boyish gesture, and one for which he instantly felt foolish – and then he turned around.
Chief Office Slep skittered rapidly up to him, his mandibles clanking together angrily. “I am displeased to find that you are causing issues again, Commander.”