by Loki Renard
I like the orbiting stalls.
I do not like the planet beneath.
“It’s green.”
“A lot of planets are green. Green and blue. Your own native planet was green and blue during its heyday.”
“I don’t like it. It looks weird.”
“You’re used to space stations and dust planets. Trust me, you’ll like green places.”
I don’t think I will. Even at a great distance, they look suspicious. Big, green, weird shapes against a mass of general blueness with no rhyme or reason, simply squidged at random. If it were a face, it would be ugly, but it thinks it is okay just because it is a planet.
“What’s the blue?”
“Water. Deep water.”
“Oh, gross.”
“Gross?”
“I don't like oceans. So many things hide in them.”
“I suppose that’s true, but we have other things to worry about. Like the hostile corporate state we’re about to infiltrate for the purpose of becoming very rich.”
I open my mouth to reply, but whatever sound I would have made is drowned out as a loud voice comes over the speakers of the ship, apparently overriding the existing controls.
WELCOME TO GALACTOR PLANET ZOMBO, ESTEEMED GUESTS!
I turn to John. “They know we’re here?”
“Oh yes, they’ve known we were approaching for a good day now.”
“What the fuck is Planet Zombo?”
“The name of the planet.”
“It’s a silly name.”
“Yes. It is. But the universe ran out of serious combinations of sounds thousands of years ago. Everything since then has been at least somewhat silly. The further out you go, the sillier it gets. The most distant reaches are outright ridiculous.”
He says all of this with that inimitable scythkin deadpan which makes it impossible to tell if he’s messing with me or not.
“Sometimes I think you’re lying to me.”
“I have no need to lie to you. There is more than enough strangeness to go around without making it up.”
Again, whatever I was about to say is lost in another assault of very loud words.
WELCOME! WE HOPE YOU’RE HAVING THE BEST DAY. IF YOU HAVEN’T HAD THE BEST DAY BY 12 PM TONIGHT GALACTOR TIME, YOU’RE ENTITLED TO A COMPLETE REFUND OF YOUR DAY.
The voice lowers and speaks much more quickly. (Refunds are available from the ticket desk at the event horizon of the nearest black hole. Present your receipt to the unseen ticket taker at the verge of the void. Please be careful not to fall into the anomaly.)
“None of this gives me a good feeling,” I mumble. I don’t like anything about this place. I don’t like the blue ocean, or the green land masses. I don’t like the overly friendly shouting voice which is still blaring through the ship and refuses to be turned down.
WELCOME! The voice begins to repeat itself, spewing out a slight variation on its first message. WE HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR STAY! ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE HERE! THE ONLY LIMIT IS YOUR OWN IMAGINATION! WELCOME TO GALACTOR! SPEND YOUR INTERSTELLAR CREDITS FOR HAPPINESS!
“Can we not turn that off?”
REMEMBER! THE UNATTAINABLE IS UNKNOWN AT PLANET ZOMBO. THE INFINITE IS POSSIBLE. WELCOME TO YOU WHO HAVE COME TO PLANET ZOMBO.
“Please, please turn that off!”
He reaches across to the control panel and shuts it down. Silence floods in, beautiful, perfect silence.
John
I can’t help but find her reactions to the Galactor planet adorable. I have never, in all my years, heard someone call an ocean gross. But Itch has a very specific frame of reference. Her life has been a series of interiors briefly punctuated by built-up spaces. She’s been a station rat for as long as she can remember. I can’t wait to get her down to this Galactor outpost and let her loose among the fields. A human needs open spaces in order to be truly human. Those who remain indoors become neurotic, temperamental, and more than a little frustrated. This should be good for her.
But it will not all be long walks in the park and maybe on the beach.
This, at its core, is a mission of vengeance. My broodkin are gone because of one or more Q’Ren. I have some difficulty coming to terms with that fact. I keep thinking that we will join up with my broodkin again sometime.
We will. But not in this life.
I have had everything taken from me. All the riches in the universe are useless to me — though they do not appear to be useless to my little pet. Humans cannot help but be impressed by the gathering of wealth and resources. It is encoded into their DNA, just as destroying entire civilizations is encoded into mine.
I will take the riches of my brood and I will use it to defeat the Q’Ren. Their alliance will be wiped from existence. Nothing will stand in the way of scythkin domination. This, I swear. I swear it to my slaughtered brood and all those who are yet to hatch. I swear it by the matriarchs and by the…
“Are you alright?”
“Hm? Yes. Why?”
“You were staring into the distance and growling and you’ve gotten all pointy.”
“Sorry,” I say, retracting my blades. I am trying not to burden Itch with the brutal intricacies of my plans for vengeance, but I have many. Retrieving the riches is merely the first of a thousand steps toward a dark destiny. Scythkin do not destroy planets simply for our own pleasure. We do so because that is how our species reproduces. We have the same right to exist as any other being, and we claim that right in the same way all species have from the beginning of time.
We fight for it.
I have to pick a disguise for the Galactor planet. Having ripped through my last suit in the pound, I have to replicate one, which is going to be difficult without scythkin technology. Difficult, but not impossible. The replicator is more suited to making food than it is to complex clothing illusions. I should start with something simple. Itch’s costume, perhaps.
Itch is still looking at me curiously. She is exceptionally intelligent and very perceptive. Sometimes I think she knows what is going through my very mind, though that could not be possible.
“What color do you want your collar to be?”
She gives me a withering stare. “I really don’t want a collar.”
“You can wear a collar or stay on the shuttle. Staying on the shuttle may be better. You’ll be safer here.”
Creating a collar will give me the chance to calibrate the machine.
Itch
I really hate collars. I mean, I really, really hate collars.
“What color?”
“What color what?”
“What color collar?”
“Fuck you color?”
“Itch,” he growls. “If you don’t tell me what color collar you want, I’ll make it pink.”
“Fine. Make it pink. And put pretty jewels on it. And make me a matching lead, with my name on it in sparkling rhinestones.”
And he does.
He makes me the prettiest collar and leash I’ve ever worn, and I find myself actually liking it in the strangest way, because I hate collars and leashes, symbols of my oppression. But this one is pretty. I’m torn.
I hold my hand out for it, but he doesn’t give it to me. He points to the ground at his feet.
“On your knees.”
“On my what?”
“I want you in the right frame of mind,” he says. “I want you knowing that you are mine, and acting like it.”
I hate the way heat flashes through me at his command. Sometimes, John lets me feel as though we are equals. Other times, it is made sternly apparent that he owns me. My natural rebellious streak doesn’t want me to capitulate to his will, but there is another part of me, a part which craves his approval and is making my knees sink toward the floor.
“Good girl,” he growls, his words running through me with heady fire.
I feel the smooth material slipping around my throat, put there by his strong hands. His claws scratch lightly over my neck, taking complete control of me.
The clasp closes and I am trapped in a collar again. This time it is different. This time it is his collar. For reasons I don’t fully understand, that matters.
“You look good down there,” he says, keeping me in position. “I want you to suck me.”
What a wanton, filthy, carnal…
“Mnnghhh…”
He uses the collar and pulls me closer, my lips grazing his exposed cock then parting to allow his alien rod to slide into my mouth, thrusting deep all the way to my throat.
Sex with John is always about domination. Possibly because he is an alien hell-bent on control, and possibly because I need this. Crave this. Everything I have ever hated from everyone else, I need from him.
He keeps his powerful grasp on the collar, not allowing me to move an inch as he plunges that controlling cock deep inside my mouth, wet sounds filling the ship as he fucks me, reminding me of my place, and giving me something to hold on to. His dominance is a solid pillar in a universe which makes literally no sense.
I still struggle with the desire to run away from him. I don’t know if I will ever be free of the need to be free, but now, in this moment of carnal possession, I don’t have to worry about it.
I am his.
My mouth is his.
My whole body is his.
I kneel for him because he will accept nothing else, and that makes everything simple, even if just for a moment.
John roars in his inimitable scythkin way as he climaxes, flooding me with his seed, filling my belly with his need. I feel my body taken over by his, my will subjugated to his. I would fiercely defy anybody who dared say I enjoy this, but I adore it. If I could stay in this state of sexual nonexistence, I would. If I could feel his pleasure coursing through me forever, be caught in the wave of his need for me, feel myself flushed with his desire, have his chemistry mix with mine until I do not know where he ends and I begin, then I would.
But it ends, and we become separate again. I don't even get to orgasm. I know why, too. He wants me to behave myself before I am rewarded with pleasure. That is how John thinks.
“Good girl,” he praises me as he draws his cock slowly out from between my lips and leaves me bereft of everything besides his taste. “Be that good while we are down on the planet, and I will reward you with more pleasure than you have ever experienced.”
“And If I am bad?”
“I will whip you harder and longer than you imagine you can bear.”
He means both his promise and his threat, I know that.
“The collar is beautiful on you,” he adds. “Now, go and review the information I pulled upon Galactor while I make my suit. I want you to be well-studied and understand why you have to behave yourself, no matter what happens.”
Suits
John
It takes me longer to make my suit than I thought it would. It also proves to be harder to get into my suit than I planned. It takes so long that Itch stops pretending to study and comes back to check on me.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I hop around on one foot and discover that she is laughing. I have never seen her laugh before. The longer I look at her, the more she laughs, until there are tears running down her face and she is clutching at her stomach almost as if she is in pain. I never realized how much human amusement looks like misery.
“You… you…” she is gasping for breath. “You look so fucking stupid.”
She is supposed to be studying, not standing here mocking me. Apparently, I have yet to make a sufficient impression on her irrepressible human temperament.
Itch
He’s half in/half out of an illusion like none I have ever seen before. The lower part of his body is small and strange, and the upper half emerges from it in a strange explosion, like a flower made of knives.
“Is that any way to speak to your master?”
“I’m not speaking, I’m losing my mind,” I giggle, trying to get myself under control, then giving up almost immediately.
He sighs and steps out of the suit completely, emerging into his own natural form.
“What are you doing?”
“Dealing with you,” he growls. Naughty pets get spanked for disrespect.”
Naughty pets also try to escape, but it doesn’t work out for them. Or me, as I am the pet in this case. I find myself tumbling over his thighs, gripped by his massive hand, and punished, just as he promised.
Growling and snarling, John whips his hand against my ass, not hard enough to hurt terribly, but hard enough to get my attention.
I usually hate to be punished, but he’s not being cruel. He’s not even being stern. He knows I couldn’t handle being lectured or dominated harshly just for laughing. I don’t know how this alien from the great beyond seems to know me so well, or understand me so completely, but I feel lucky that he does.
An alien with thinner skin or meaner temperament could destroy me for laughing at him. I have learned one thing about males of all species, and that is that they truly hate to be laughed at.
“Brat,” he lectures fondly, his massive hand making full contact with my bottom. “You will find some semblance of respect in that body of yours, or my hand is going to find your ass.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so... ow... funny!” I’m squirming, but not that much. Not enough to actually get away, that’s for sure. I don’t want him to stop spanking me. I want to keep feeling this tingling sting, the heat flushing through my ass, the effect he’s having on my whole body.
“Let me go!” I cry out dramatically, but not actually seriously.
“Never,” he says with an intensity which is absolutely serious. He’s still holding onto the idea of owning me. Possessing me. His hand grips my inner thigh to keep me in place and I feel the tips of his blades extended enough to just graze my skin. He’s not leaving a mark, but he is letting me feel his danger and his power. And I fucking love it.
I could so easily feel threatened, but I don’t. I feel excited, and any fear residing in me turns into a flood of arousal which completely undercuts any disciplinary intent that might have been there.
I love this.
“Behave for me,” he says gently. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” I tell him the truth.
I am done with, well, all my objections. At least the ones I can remember.
“Now,” he says, releasing me with a hard slap to my ass to remind me to behave. “I’m going to put this on, and we’re going to go down to the Galactor outpost, make a withdrawal…”
“Get rich and go party?”
“Outfit the shuttle with proper technology. Once we have the funds, we will be in a far better position to handle the Q’Ren. We may even be able to make tactical incursions against them…” he trails off and looks at me. “You,” he declares suddenly, “are female.”
“That is true.”
“You could infiltrate the Q’Ren. Become one of them. Work from the inside to destroy them.”
“I… er… I mean, I could?”
The idea does not fill me with glee.
I know John does not want to hear this, but I don’t think the Q’Ren are doing anything wrong. Blowing up everybody he loved was harsh, but I know that John and his kin probably murdered tens of thousands of sentient beings in their time. It doesn’t stop me from loving him, but it does make me reluctant to leap into the politics of who is most allowed to slaughter whom.
“You do not want to,” he says. “It is not your fight. I should not have asked. Forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” I say. “I guess I owe you my life. If you want me to pay you back by hanging out with a bunch of scythkin-hating ladies, then…”
“I don’t want that,” he says swiftly. “It was just an idea. A passing one, one I should never have given voice to.”
Now I feel bad. My internal glow of glee of humor is dimmed by guilt, an emotion which squelches everything good. I want to help him avenge his family, I do. But I wish I could do it
without hurting anybody. It’s not that I don’t believe some people deserve death, it’s just that I’m more thinking it’s these Galactor assholes who should die, not the Q’Ren.
“Why do you keep your money with Galactor?” I change the subject with an artful, but valid question.
“Scythkin sects are hardly stable. Galactor offers a safe location for our funds. We simply have to keep the true beneficiaries of the funds a secret. Usually we would enlist a third party to make withdrawals, but we don’t have anybody.”
“So, you kill the Galactor people and then you give them your money.”
“We have had some battles with Galactor, but we don’t go out of our way to destroy them.”
I have heard otherwise. I heard that the explosion which destroyed Earth, shattered it right down at the temporal level, and sent bits of it spiraling throughout the universe, was created in a fight between scythkin forces and Galactor.
“You have a really complex approach to things for a species hell bent on total domination and destruction.”
“The universe requires a certain adaptation to complexity for any species to be able to survive,” he says, slipping into his suit.
Those suits are so damn weird, but damn if they're not effective.
He is now six feet tall. I have no idea how a costume can manipulate height, and I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t understand the physics if it were explained to me. At any rate, he’s six feet tall and a deep gray hue. His legs are where his arms should be, which is to say he appears to be walking on his hands. His butt is in the air, and his face is between his arm thighs. It’s a very weird configuration, and I have no idea how such a creature would toilet itself, let alone have a meal.
“You decided to go as a bastardi?”
“Yes,” he says, his voice emerging from the place I’m used to seeing his cock come from. “Bastardi are hard for Galactor to get a read on. It’s the safest disguise. It’s also the species we decided to open the account under, so I have little choice. Today, my name is Saucepan Flannel.”