by T. J. Quinn
I loved the way she arched her body to my fingertips as I stroked her from head to toe until she quivered with desire and begged for me to give her release. Then I’d start with her toes and use my lips and tongue to further stoke her arousal, kissing and tasting her up one shapely leg and down the other, then back to the core of her sex. All it took was one kiss and the swipe of my tongue over her clit to make her cum, screaming in ecstasy as she writhed through her orgasm. I kept it going until she let me know she’d had enough.
But we weren’t finished by any means.
The heights of pleasure we shared were well beyond my wildest dreams. When she did the same to me, it was mind-blowing. My cock got so hard before she even touched it. Once she completed her tour of my body, she went back to my cock and worked it with her hands while she licked and sucked the head. It would fit in her mouth no farther.
Sometimes she would take me all the way to release and swallow as much of my seed as she could, or she would crawl on top of me and impale herself on my shaft and ride me while I kneaded her lovely breasts and pinched her nipples. We both came hard together. Then she collapsed on my chest and held me inside her as long as she could.
We were magnificent together---two halves of a whole.
For now, our home would be wherever we could live together. I prayed that the universe would allow us to finally settle on Farseek one day to make a family.
During the time it took Dread One and the others to make their way to Nadoo we had many passionate evenings alone together. We also had some evenings shared with our friends gaming in the recreation room or watching stories. The female population of the dreads had increased a little as more of the mercenaries discovered their solmatu among the new rescues.
Dread Five had the opportunity to scan the slave ship covertly, so they had the complete layout and the location of their landing bay for our shuttles to enter. The ship was called Rered Rauner, and it was in the process of delivering slaves to the outlying farm and mining colonies. When they put into orbit at Nadoo, they would open their landing and launch bay to shuttle down slaves to the planet.
Our shuttles would be waiting to enter and use pirated codes to open the landing bays. The ground teams would secure the ship and subdue the crew. Then the flight team will shuttle in.
There were multiple locations to recover our people on Nadoo. Command would give asylum to any race who requested it even though they were explicitly looking for Uatu people. We would also take Sargan defectors if we had space.
Six of our ten dreadnaughts went ahead to Nadoo to secure the primary locations of Uatu slaves for us to evacuate. Command estimated that it would take days to locate their people complete the evacuation. Dreads One and Five ground teams would maintain security on the Rered Rauner.
I was happy with that because Nora and the other Earth women would be identifying and registering the slaves on the ship and registering incoming slaves from Nadoo. We would only be separated for a few hours on this mission. It made less worry for Nora. We were still newly mated enough that being separated for too many days was stressing and lonely.
Felines’ attachment to their meomee is more intense in the first year than other humanoid races. Scientifically it’s explained as a physical dependence of the pheromones and hormones from the feline. These are not released until the feline is exposed to meomee. Once that has happened, it is almost impossible not to fall in love with one’s fated mate.
Homo sapiens sometimes have difficulty with the dynamics of feline meomee mating practices, especially Earth homo sapiens. They believed that bonding emotionally before bonding sexually was required. I suppose that is workable without the bonding pheromones and hormones of meomee. But their own statistics seemed to indicate a failure rate of sixty-six percent. The percentage of failure in an-meomee matings among felines whether they mate with other felines or homo sapiens is as bad if not worse.
Many felines prefer not to mate at all, or enter into a partnership to procreate and share custody of their offspring. It is not ideal, but a reasonable compromise for those who wish to have heirs. At one time I had considered it---if I didn’t find meomee.
But I did.
CHAPTER TWENTY
NORA
“Have you seen Zoe,” Scarlet asked me as we left the gym and headed for our permission briefing.
“Barely,” I said, “I saw her in the mess hall for second meal yesterday. She was holed up in the back corner with that new guy Argen Trematu. She gave me a little wave, but I could tell she didn’t want company.
“Do you think they are mated?” Scarlet asked.
“I think it’s a pretty good bet. Solmatu is nearly as hard to resist as meomee. I think the feline pheromones are stronger.” I said.
“Considering you were fucking him ten minutes after you met, I would say so,” Scarlet whispered then laughed.
“Are you implying I’m a slut?” I demanded in mock indignation.
“Only for Sahvin,” Scarlet chuckled. “From the way you talked on the ship, you were practically a nun before him.”
“I made a couple painful mistakes. I decided the next guy could have to be goddamned Prince Charming or he was getting none.” I quipped.
“Sahvin sure looks the part, smoking hot, that man is,“ she said. “Almost as good is Pyrr.”
“Of course, you have to say that since he’s your mate. But then most of the guys around here are gorgeous,” I added.
“Pyrr knows people who know Argen he’s kind of a hotshot,” Scarlet said. “What we might call a black sheep. He’s been in some trouble---likes to bend the rules. But if Zoe is solmatu, he will defend her with his life.”
“If she is happy with him, that’s all that matters,” I said. “As we took our seats at the conference table, Zoe walked into the room and sat across from us.”
“Hey, Zoe. Where have you been hiding? We’ve barely seen you since Argen got here,” Scarlet asked.
Zoe rolled her eyes. “As if you didn’t know. Wait till Harper gets here---oh here she is.”
Harper strolled in and sat down beside Zoe. “Hi ladies, what’s new?
“That’s what I was just asking Zoe,” said Scarlet.
“Argen and I are officially mated,” Zoe announced. “We have been bonding.”
“Fucking each other senseless, you mean,” Scarlet giggled. She was always straight to the point.
“Scarlet,” Harper said. “Must you be so crass. Of course, she’s fucking him. She’s fallen in love with him.”
“Will you both shut up!” Zoe admonished. “He is solmatu, and we have said the mating vows. It’s way more than fucking, and you know it. So, stop with the slutty girl talk.”
“I’m sorry, Zoe,” Scarlet said. “It still gets me that it’s so simple and straightforward. No guessing whether he loves you and want full spectrum relationship or he just wants to stick his cock in you a few times until someone better comes along.”
“Right, they just know by your scent, then they exude pheromones to make you want them and bam you’re mated for life,” I said. “With felines like Sahvin, it’s even faster.”
“I’ll say,” Scarlet said. “But, I think I knew Pyrr was it when he picked up my hand and kissed it, never taking his eyes from mine. It was like I saw my future there.”
“I will be glad when we can go Farseek for good,” Harper said. “Sometimes, I get scared it’s never going to happen. That we’re going to get in over our heads and either be killed or captured.”
“I think that’s in the back of all our minds,” I said. “But what choice did we have? We could be sex slaves in some brothel to creepy aliens, or forced into hard labor somewhere.”
“Just because bad things could happen, doesn’t mean they will,” Zoe said. “Back on Earth, there were no guarantees that some third world country wouldn’t get nukes and blow us all up.”
“Or we could get run over by a truck crossing the street,” Harper said.
“No, we had
to do it up right,” Scarlet said, “We got kidnapped by alien slavers and taken so far from Earth no one knows how to get there from here.”
We all laughed just as Commander Maktu strode into the room. He frowned slightly. I think he was wondering if the joke was on him.
Harper grinned up at him. “Hey, Zare. We were just laughing about how things could have turned out so much worse than being kidnapped by aliens.”
He gave her a look that said so much more than words. I think we all knew exactly what he meant. What seemed like the worst thing that ever happened to us brought us to them---our soul mates.
A few minutes later several more from the ship’s crew entered. With so many people already on the ship, we needed help getting to everyone before the shuttles started coming up from the planet with more rescues.
The meeting was short. Our duty assignments were the same as with the other rescues, identify them and register them in the AI census with their family lines if they were Uatu. Those who were not would be given a choice to settle on Farseek or be transported to one of the Consortium worlds to settle somewhere else.
First, they had to capture the ship. But we weren’t worried. The Farseek Brigade may have been new to piracy, but they were getting good at it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SAHVIN
During the briefing for boarding, the Rered Rauner Commander Maktu told us they were calling in four more Dreads for the raid on Nadoo. It would take days for us to round up all or the people we wanted to liberate. As I said, earlier the boarding teams from Dread One would remain on the ship.
Dread One went into orbit in a parallel orbit with the slave ship and AI jammed their scanners so they wouldn’t discover us before we could sneak our shuttle aboard. Our pilot slid the shuttle into their shuttle bay as the iris was closing so they could repressurize it.
There was a look of pure horror on the bay technician’s face as we poured from the shuttle in full combat armor with our stun guns drawn. He was a Pican, just like the fish-faced humanoids that Nora and her friends had described on their slave ship. He threw up his arms and surrendered immediately.
Facing armed combat specialists was far different than managing unarmed slaves with pain sticks. They were a cowardly bunch, easily subdued. As we rounded them up, we secured them into an empty barracks compartment until one of our shuttles arrived to take them down to the planet. We had no need to harm them, although I considered it. They were likely associated with the same Picans that kidnapped me from Earth.
They would be marooned on Nadoo until another ship came to collect supplies from the planet. The would survive if they worked for it or they would starve, but we would not harm them.
Rered Rauner was far inferior to the Kurellis. It was divided into numerous large compartments that housed the slaves’ barracks with up to a hundred in each compartment. There was no privacy for anyone. Many of the five hundred modules were empty, and the smell of unwashed bodies hung in the air.
Commander Maktu called for engineers to come look at the air and water purification systems to see if they could improve the efficiency. They only had to last until we got to Farseek.
With the Pican’s secured in three rooms of the slave barracks, Admiral Degatu sent one of our piloting teams to run the ship, while we accompanied the non-combatants to take a complete census of the slaves. Most of the ones left on board the vessel were females and included three from Earth and two from Narova.
The mercenaries were thrilled to find many Uatu female among them. One of them was solmatu to Gerj Victu, a member of my team. The women in her barracks cheered when we came in and announced that we had come to free them take them back to Farseek. It made us feel good.
I felt good that we were helping to free them to go back and rebuild their homeworld, and that Nora and I were going there to make a place for ourselves there.
The AI tech with the pilot team discovered that the names and origin of all the captives on the ship and those that were just shuttled down to the planet were recorded in their AI system along with all of the slaves they had delivered in the last five years.
They also discovered star charts in the system with specific coordinates for Earth, Narova, and the whole Alliance. Both Commander Maktu and Pyrr looked worried as they heard the news. The navigator was quick to add that it was at least six months journey past the far side of the Sargus Empire, farther than anyone from Farseek had ever been.
“It would be wrong not to tell them, sir,” I said respectfully. “I don’t believe they will want to go back. If solmatu is like meomee, only death will break the bond. Now that we have the information, we may be able to get word back to their families. Before I was kidnapped, the Alliance was on the verge of opening relations with Earth. It may have already happened.”
“Not a word to your mates until we figure this out. I need to discuss this with Admiral Degatu and the rest of command before we tell the women anything. Is that clear Lieutenant Mazza?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. Although I didn’t like it, I would comply. I hoped Nora would understand when she learned the truth. I couldn’t help feeling elated that we would finally know where we were in relation to our home world.
It was ironic that I had taken a position at the Alliance Earth base, hoping to find meomee while I was there. I had exhausted my options with the matchmaking service. They had found no mate for me on Narova, and there was no match among those registered for ancestor DNA evaluations.
The odds I would find my mate on Earth by chance were slim. But I was within a hundred-mile radius of people descended from people who had contact with my ancestors. They were among Nora’s ancestors. The odds that I would find Nora as I did were genuinely astronomical.
I believed Nora, and I had made peace with the probability that we would never be able to return to our home worlds. My only wish would be to let our families know that we were alive and happy. I also wanted to let the Alliance know about the Picans preying on pre-space faring races in addition to the Tenzari.
The Picans knew of our race, but we had never captured any of their slavers. I felt avenged for what they did to my life before the Farseek Mercenaries rescued me. Now, these Picans would be marooned on a backwater planet with no way to get back home at least until another Pican ship comes to Nadoo with a new shipment.
There is no sense in telling our mates about this until we figured out the ramifications. Would it even be possible to contact the Alliance? I knew the channels we used, but I had no idea if they were compatible with the Farseek systems.
At that point, it was not that difficult to keep the information to myself. I didn’t just want to blurt it out in passing. We were far too busy with the mission to sit down and discuss it. It would wait.
My perspective on the situation was a bit different than Pyrr’s or the Commander’s. I had spent a couple years on Earth, and I was prepared to go wherever I needed until I found meomee.
But now I had, and we are mated for life. Nora was my home. I had no home without her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
NORA
I found the air aboard the Rered Rauner a bit oppressive as I set up my tablet to record the information of each of the captives in the fourth barracks room that day. I sure hoped that the engineers could service the air purification system to filter out some of the unpleasant smells.
I looked up as the next person in line approached. There was something familiar about the middle-aged woman standing in front of me. “Good day, ma’am. Could you please state your name and place of origin including your homeworld?”
“Asania Maktu. Waysatu Farseek.”
“Did you say Maktu?” I asked as a frisson of excitement shimmered through me.
“Yes, and my daughter Bethar is with me,” she replied.
“Thank you, I am pleased to meet you. There is someone here I believe who will want to see you. Wait right here please.” I touched the comlink in my ear. “Commander, do you have time to com
e up to Room B Eleven. I think I’ve found someone you know.”
“Who is it?” he demanded with a touch of impatience. I didn’t take it personally. I knew he was very busy.
“Asania Maktu and Bethar,” I replied.
“Are you sure?” he asked as though he hardly dared to hope.
“That’s the name she gave, sir,” I assured him.
“I’ll be right there.” He merely closed the connection.
“Do you understand what’s happening here?” I asked Asania.
“Someone said we are going home,” she said. “But our world was destroyed.”
“It was, but it’s being rebuilt. The Farseek Brigade terminated their contract with the Consortium to rescue the Farseekans abducted after the attacks.” I explained. “I am actually from Earth a planet somewhere outside Consortium sectors. I was taken by slavers too, and they rescued me with a bunch of others.”
I saw Commander Maktu as soon as he strode in through the open doorway. He gazed around the room and found the woman standing beside my table right away. He moved quickly until he was a few feet away then stopped.
“Mother?”
The woman turned and gasped, “Zared?”
He took the last two steps to her and swept her into his arms. He held her tight and rested his cheek against the top of her head. Though his eyes were tightly closed, I saw a tear slide down his cheek.
The next thing I knew I was crying, partly from the poignant reunions and because I knew how I would feel if I could hug my mother one more time. Bethar, who I was pretty sure was his sister, stood by for a moment, then went over to be drawn into their embrace.
Once I saw them together, I realized why she looked so familiar---because Zared was a masculine version of her and they shared the same teal colored hair. His sister’s hair was almost a sky blue.