Flaunting like her…? Impossible. She enjoyed showing off her glossy fur, stripes of bronze through a sea of jade that rippled as she moved. It wasn’t just that she wore less clothing than a late-night service worker in a Militia garrison town. She moved with a slinky grace and carried herself as if every eye in the place should damned well be on her.
“If you displease the Nyluga,” she told him, “she won’t be putting you into one of those glass jars. She’ll have you decapitated and mount your head on the wall of her intimate chamber, along with the rest of her favorite erotica.”
She prodded him with the power lance. It wasn’t active, but it was enough to persuade him through the kneeling crowd peppered with guards and other attendants until they reached the front rank.
From there he had a perfect view of the Ellondyte dancers as they changed mode, stretching themselves into graceful poses with arms and fingers outstretched. Brief flurries of gyrations shook their hips, which rippled buttocks, beards, and breasts.
Vetch wasn’t sure where to look.
Oh, what the hell am I thinking? These could be my last moments of existence.
He took his time to enjoy the sight of the girl dancers. So what if they had beards and manes? Those weren’t the bits he was staring at.
In a whisper, Vetch asked Maycey whether Ree spent all her time in the throne room, enjoying the entertainment.
“Not normally,” she replied, not bothering to lower her voice. “But more often of late, because she’s been looking for distraction since losing contact with one of her wives. Perhaps you will be the distraction she craves, Arunsen.”
Vetch pointed at the two empty thrones. “Those for the two wives?”
“Correct. Do you understand how Glaenwi trios function?”
“Nope.”
“You need to. The trio is the heart of the Sanctuary’s power dynamics. Understand it and you may yet live.”
“Don’t you want me to die so you can win your wager?”
She blinked at him with huge green eyes. “You have a death wish, Arunsen.”
“Not really. I just enjoy pissing you off.”
She seemed to like that for some reason.
“Brood, Shield, and Nurt,” she said. “These are the three marital roles. For successful breeding, harmony between all three are required. Each wife cycles through the roles in turn over a period of around ten standard Terran years.”
“What about Glaenwi men?”
She shrugged. “You may call them husbands rather than wives if you prefer. Glaenwi individuals unable or unwilling to be in a trio are of necessity sexless.”
“What about you, Maycey? Are you sexless?”
She peered at him a moment. Then she answered his jibe with a gyration of hips and a flutter of her upper thighs in perfect counterpoint to the music.
Vetch felt a sudden heat in his face.
“We’re not discussing me, human.”
“Umm…children?” he asked. “Old Earth history was full of dynastic struggles around children. What’s the setup here?”
“There isn’t one.”
The music changed, picking up a fast, thumping beat. The dance became a furious sequence of flips, springs, and tumbles. It looked as if each Ellondyte was picking a random path through the maelstrom of the dance and yet, somehow, none collided.
Ree was transfixed by the performance. Vetch couldn’t blame her.
“The Brood of the trio births the youngsters,” said Maycey. “Then she nurtures them in her brood sacs through the first stages of infancy. After that, they are offered to a communal creche. There is never any direct familial connection. The trios, and Broods in particular, take great status from the quantity of their offspring. Khyz-Ree, to use her original name, is proud to take the title of a Nyluga, but she is honored above all as a prodigious mother.”
The Kayrissan was having a conversation with him almost as if they were friends.
The truth was that Vetch would have liked to shove the power lance up Maycey’s butt and watch it come out of her whiskered mouth. See if that made her blink those big green eyes. On the other hand, whatever her reasons might be, she was giving him valuable intel.
“The wife who’s missing?” he asked. “Does that mean I’m a rebound?”
“In all seriousness, it might come to that. She finds hirsute races attractive. Did I mention that already?”
“Like…like poor Tchon and Kzeddiy?”
“Yes.” She flattened her ears and bared her fangs. “Das-Zee was jealous of them. Shields tend to be like that.”
“Are you saying she had them murdered because Ree and the other wife were turned on by their beards?”
“No. It was Lyi-Niah, the Nurt of the trio. After they lost contact with Das-Zee, Lyi-Niah had them killed for displeasing her beloved Shield. It sickens me, but to her it was a demonstration of loyalty.”
Vetch shut his mouth. Maycey’s breathing was silent, but her chest was pulsing hard and fast with angry breaths. He tried purging the snark from his tone and asked for more intel. “One of the Ellondytes, Roogyin, told me that it was the Nyluga who had ordered their deaths.”
“She did. As was her prerogative and duty. The Nyluga was very reluctant to order the executions, but her Nurt pressed her with an ultimatum. Them or me.”
Vetch didn’t have the words. Those poor Ellondytes had died just to make a point about how much the two wives here in the Sanctuary missed the absent one. And the Zhoogenes who’d killed them had propped him up in his paralyzed state so he could watch them die. Murdering skangats.
“As I said,” Maycey explained, “trio emotional dynamics are at the heart of everything that happens here. You would do well to remember that.”
“Anything that will keep me alive until my friends rescue me.”
She laughed.
“I don’t know why you think that’s funny.”
That only encouraged her laughter.
He hesitated before saying the next thing in his head. She was beautiful in a weird way that wasn’t at all sexual. And they had some weird kind of banter going on, which was far better than the endless hours locked alone in his cell, but she wasn’t doing any of this for his benefit.
“I think it’s funny,” he explained, “because when they come for me—and they will—I expect you will die.”
Her mouth elongated and her fangs bared. She looked a little like a Kurlei. And like Vol Zavage’s race, Kayrissans were predators. Nature had made them killers.
She had sleek fur he itched to stroke and curves that had pretty much the same effect on him, but she was not his friend.
For him to escape this place, he would have to kill her.
* * * * *
Chapter 18: Vetch Arunsen
The music stopped. The dancers held their pose. Then they bowed to their mistress, giving Vetch a broadside moon of sweaty buttocks.
Cupping the tips of their beards in their hands, they shimmied off to either side where they sat cross-legged facing the stage. They looked as if they were well behaved kindergarten kids, not butt-naked servants who had just danced for the depraved pleasure of the sector’s crime boss.
Propelling the weirdness deep into the red zone, Vetch admitted to himself that he had beard envy for some of the Ellondyte dancing girls while simultaneously finding them damned hot.
First, the svelte cat woman. Now the Ellondytes! He knew it had been far too long since he’d enjoyed the company of a human girl, but this was ridiculous.
He blamed his genes.
The ancient titan marines of the Orion Era were supposed to have been reengineered by their alien commanders to breed at every opportunity to boost their numbers. Vetch was a big man. Titan blood ran strong in him. He had titan appetites to match, but they were not being satisfied.
Speaking of appetites, Fitz and Izza often described Nyluga-Ree as playful. The way they told it, being chased around the sector by the Kayrissans and Ree’s other hired killers sounde
d like an exquisite game for both hunter and hunted. They had failed to mention that Ree’s favored games were sex games. Games that were loaded so she would always win.
Maycey gave a sharp hiss, and Vetch stumbled out of his dark musings and looked directly up into the face of Nyluga-Ree.
The crime boss was a pink ball of flesh clad only in a chainmail loincloth. Her soft meat oozed through gaps in the sides of her throne.
Vetch knew the Glaenwi had evolved on a frigid, heavy gravity world. When he’d met her last, on the red desert sand of Milsung-Amka, Ree had been suited up and ready for action. She was a bell-shaped humanoid with stubby limbs.
Here, in her lair, she was practically naked in a throne room that felt cool to Vetch’s flesh, but sweat dripped freely from Ree’s nose.
Couldn’t she simply turn up the damned AC?
Vetch decided to keep his big mouth shut and not ask any dumb questions, allowing the mistress of this place to sweep her gaze across him in a way that was positively creepy.
He recognized something in her eyes. It was always fascinating when different species momentarily shared physical mannerisms. He could see her pain. The kind of deep emotional wounds that would eventually scab over if you were lucky, or fester until you died if you weren’t.
Lily looked like that sometimes. When she thought Vetch couldn’t see.
A change came over the smuggler queen. The hurt subsided, and she smiled at him, licking her lips. Drooling. The way Darant did at the girls in the kind of dance club you could always find near a Militia base.
“Welcome to my home, Vetch Arunsen.”
She spoke such perfect Human Standard that Vetch automatically opened his mouth to reply. He hesitated. The situation looked dicey. Speaking the words that came to his lips first would likely see him stuffed and then mounted. Or possibly, the other way around. Instead, he allowed a few potential replies to cycle through his mind first.
Welcome? I’ve been locked up here a month already, you sweaty pink dough ball. No, that could be a bit risky.
Thank you. May I compliment you on your interestingly shaped head, Nyluga-Ree. It will look good on a spike. No, too crude. He didn’t want to sound like Darant.
You’re messing with forces you don’t understand. Forces that will kick your swollen pink butt. That was highly unlikely. It wasn’t as if that jack, Sybutu, would be anything but happy now that Vetch was out the way.
By now, his mouth had been hanging open for so long, it was starting to cramp. Come on, let’s think of something that won’t get me immediately tortured to death.
He was about to go for a general purpose ‘Thank you, ma’am’, but at the last moment, a devilish impulse seized him and led him somewhere else entirely.
“Seriously?” he told the crime boss. “You’ve got the hots on, haven’t you? For me, I mean.”
The Glaenwi stopped licking her lips. “For a human, you possess a pleasing shape and coverings. My Kayrissans were supposed to bring me one of your womenfolk as hostage. Instead, serendipity brought me you. Come closer, so I may enjoy the sight of you.”
“Okay, but no touching.”
Vetch shuffled over to the steps at the base of the dais.
Ree beckoned him to ascend until he was one step below the level of the platform. This brought his head level with her row of brood pouches. He’d been warned not to stare at them.
He lowered his gaze.
Yeah, like that helped.
Now he was looking at the metal loincloth that fell between her stubby thighs. It was clear to him the designer of the ring mail underwear had not considered modesty a priority.
“Arunsen, lift your gaze from my crotch.”
He coughed nervously. “Sorry, Nyluga-Ree.”
They locked gazes once more.
“You’ll do,” she said and gestured to the cat woman behind him. “This one shall assist you. Tasks of Level III clearance or below.”
“As you wish, Nyluga-Ree.” Maycey sounded full-on pissed, which was something, at least.
If the white shirt and pants Vetch had been given to wear were barely enough to ward off the Hearth Room chill, they were totally inadequate to protect against Nyluga-Ree’s roving gaze, which swept over him like penetrating sex radar.
Don’t do it! he willed her. If you ask me to remove a stitch of clothing, I’m gonna make my final exit with my fists flying at your leering pink face.
“Would you like me to send some of the Ellondytes to your chambers tonight?” Ree enquired.
“I…Err…What?”
“I saw the way you looked at some of them,” she explained.
“Yes,” he replied. “Please.”
She chuckled. Vetch was looking for answers from these Ellondytes. Maybe allies. Ultimately, a way out. Not what was in Ree’s mind.
Dear God, he prayed, please don’t let Darant ever hear of my night with the bearded dancing girls.
“I shall grant you this boon, Arunsen. I hope your stay here will provide exquisite pleasure. For me.”
Ree threw him a flicking gesture. He had been dismissed.
He walked back to the irritated Kayrissan.
“Oh, Arunsen,” said Ree from her throne. “I’m aware of a wager on your survival. The entire Sanctuary is. I have myself placed eight hundred credits on the matter.”
Maycey hissed. Her ears sank into the top of her head. Even though her hands were delicately furred, her knuckles showed white where they gripped the haft of her power lance.
Vetch winked at the cat woman. “Which way did you bet, Nyluga-Ree?”
Ree merely laughed and began discussing matters with her attendants in a language he had never heard before.
* * * * *
Chapter 19: Roogyin
Secret Observation Room, Nyluga-Ree’s Sanctuary, Pleigei
The bearded human sat on a mattress that lay across the far side of his cell, talking with Streiba and Pseunmandel.
The idea of watching the portly alien running his pale, hairless hands over his friends had sickened Roogyin, but he himself had said that Arunsen required watching after what he’d done for Tchon and Kzeddiy. So, he’d felt obliged to be the one to join Oouzo in his secret lair and help him observe the human.
So far, all Arunsen had wanted to do was talk and learn. Most of all, he wanted to know about Tchon and Kzeddiy, and why the Nyluga had ordered their deaths, admittedly with deep reluctance.
From time to time, the human tried to steer the conversation toward escape and rebellion. To raise the idea of arming themselves against the Nyluga and her other servants.
Streiba was wise to this and steered the conversation away from those dangerous lines. Did Arunsen not realize every moment of his existence at the Sanctuary was monitored?
Oouzo could erase or doctor those fragments of conversation, but to do so would risk their operation being discovered. The Nyluga herself might be watching the human’s cell.
The two Ellondyte women had been in the cell for half an hour when Roogyin asked Oouzo to keep an optical pseudopod on the feed. He left his seat and squatted alongside Etryce on the dirty stone floor. His friend had spent all this time sitting on his haunches, refusing to look at the monitor.
Bylzak’s Throne! Roogyin hadn’t wanted Etryce in this dank space cut between blast pods on the underground bunker level. But his friend had insisted, and Roogyin couldn’t refuse. It was Etryce’s sisters whom Nyluga-Ree had offered the human like treats for a favored pet.
“It’s not as bad as you think, Etryce,” he tried to reassure him. “The human is…” He threaded a finger through his beard. The events in the cell were a hundred times better than he’d hoped, but they weren’t good. Etryce was proud of his sisters in so many ways. Perhaps he prized their beauty a little too much. But all the Ellondyte servants here had ugly lives, and anything that seemed fair and good was a distraction to be treasured. Roogyin suspected the human understood that on some level.
“Etryce, I’m telling y
ou, the human’s mating impulse has not been engaged.”
“Are you saying this man considers my sisters to be revolting?”
“Give me strength! How should I know? Maybe he has other priorities. For an alien, he seems surprisingly respectful. You saw how he was with Tchon and Kzeddiy.”
Etryce laughed bitterly. “Sure. He tripped over his own feet in a Golex battlesuit.”
“Yes, he did. And he did that trying to save their lives, which…Damn it! It’s more than any of us did.”
“What are you saying? I should ignore that Streiba and Pseunmandel were offered as entertainment, and the human accepted. Should I ignore the way we are treated?”
“Never.”
“Why not? It’s not as if we’re slaves. We could leave tomorrow.”
“Aren’t we? You know the consequences for our communities if we don’t fulfil the terms of our contract.”
Etryce bunched his fists. “Stop trying to tell me everything’s okay. What’s your agenda with this human?”
“I don’t know. Not yet. But Arunsen is different. He’s a blast of fresh air through this stultifying palace.”
“Really? Can he free us from our obligations?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. But he does have links to those who could.”
“You mean more humans. Militia and Legion. Politicians.”
“No. I mean Fitzwilliam and Del-Saisha Zan Fey.”
Roogyin let his friend digest that in silence, then he gestured to the vacant monitoring station. “Come, watch with me. It is better that you see what is true than imagine what is not.”
Etryce allowed himself to be pulled to his feet and together they joined the Slern at the monitoring stations.
“Hey, man,” said Oouzo, “sorry you have to go through this, buddy. Your siblings are strong women. They’re playing a clever game. Streiba’s pumping Arunsen for information, and Pseunmandel’s pretending not to understand the human’s language. But you know what she’s like.”
“She’s listening carefully and memorizing every word,” Etryce said. “Every gesture.”
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