by Renard, Loki
Turning my thoughts back to One, and getting her clean, I consider my options. I could put her in the sonic cleaner again, but I think the physical sensation of liquid on her skin will be more suitable. Sometimes it is about the process, not just the end result.
One
The alien is running water, lovely clear water. It is shallow, but he allows me to slide into it and splash about as the bloody mess washes clear of my skin. The feeling of washing is amazing, but it gets even better when he brings me something that smells of meat. Food. It is food. And not rat brains or charred rodent fur. It is much more pure, like thigh meat or breast meat from a large animal. I grasp it with both hands and sink my teeth into it, sighing as my mouth is filled with a rich, delicious flavor.
I have not eaten this well in years, perhaps ever. I think I love him, just for being the creature which brought me this incredible food. I feel a rush of gratitude, excitement, bonding. It doesn’t matter that he is a massive beast of an alien who has abducted me from my home and destroyed any vestige of innocence I might have had. He feeds me. And that is all that matters.
Fresh warm water filters into the tub in which I sit, so very blissfully happy in this world which floats above my own. I should be afraid. Maybe I am afraid. I have been afraid most of my life. It’s normal to be terrified. It’s not normal to be warm and clean and wet all over
Should I question it? Maybe.
I still don’t understand this creature’s motives. I might never understand.
He is gesturing at me, making a clicking noise. I suppose I understand that. He wants me out of the water. I don’t want to be out of the water. I love water. There is never enough of it, and it’s usually inhabited by something that could kill me. This bath is safe, and warm. I slide down into the water and let it lap against me while Boss stands over me making motions with his massive clawed hands.
“No,” I tell him. “I’m staying in the wa…”
The words aren’t done leaving my mouth before massive clawed hands pluck me from the water’s embrace. I let out a whine of fear and annoyance. This isn’t fair. All I want is a bath, and I am continually foiled by these creatures who don’t know what I want, because they can’t understand a single word I say.
He carries me out of the bathing room and into another one where a large bed takes up much of the space. It is big, even considering how large he is. I can only think that it must have been made with two in mind. Wait. Do he and the other creature… do they sleep together? And why is that image so adorable in my mind? Two muscular, horned, ridged and befanged beasts curling up like a pair of snuggly puppies.
Boss puts me down on the bed and crouches down in front of me, one very large hand on my naked knee. He points to himself and makes a sound.
“RE-PER”
He says it slowly enough that I get the idea he wants me to repeat it.
“Reaper?”
He points to himself again. “RE-PER.”
“Reaper?”
“Reaper,” he nods in agreement. He points to me. “WON.”
“Won?”
He points to himself and says Reaper, then back to me and says WON. He appears to have named me. I had a name once, a very long time ago, but I forgot it when my mother died.
“WON!” I say, nodding. He smiles, all vicious teeth and fangs and that wicked tongue which is so much more agile than any part of my own body. It flickers for a second between those sharp fangs, then lays still once more, leaving my pussy clenching at the memory.
He reaches out, touches me and then points to himself. This time there are no words, but I think I understand his meaning. He’s saying that I am his.
Can I argue with that? He has captured me. According to all the laws of wild nature, I am his to do with as he pleases. He could devour me as a source of protein and calcium, or he could do what he has done twice now and turn my sexual cavities into his personal playground. I can still feel him inside me, the memory of being stretched wide and filled over and over is utterly indelible.
His eyes are locked on mine with an intensity I don’t understand. It is as if he is studying me. But I don’t know what it is supposed to be like to be looked at by a man of any species. Boss’ gaze makes me feel all hot on the inside, melty and silly, nervous and excited, and alive.
BAM!
A slamming sound all too nearby makes me jump. The other one is back. I can hear his feet heavy, stamping along the floor in the hall. Boss looks up, and tenses, the ridges of his shoulders rising sharp and dangerous.
The immediate tension is obvious, even if I can’t understand a word that is being said. On the planet’s surface, they seemed to have come to an accord, but apparently Bad has been angered again on his journey here. I get the feeling that it doesn’t take much to make him angry.
Bad slams the door open and enters, growling and snarling and making quick chattering noises. Boss makes similar noises in return, standing up to face his counterpart. I sit on the bed, squirming back over the covers until I am pushed up against the far wall.
Reaper
“What is your problem now?”
Tarkan better have a damn good reason for interrupting me and One. He should know better than to have returned to the ship so soon. Maybe I should have hung a sock on the door so he would know to give us some privacy.
“I don’t have a problem. Yet. I want to know what you’re planning on doing with her, now you’ve claimed her twice. And what that means for us, once Scythkin command works out that we’ve taken a human from Earth.”
He is still jealous. And he’s wrong about not having a problem. He has a big problem. A me sized problem. I know this is difficult for him to accept. It would be better if we could find another human female for him, but until we do that, I will not tolerate him frightening One with his sudden outbursts of temper.
I get up from the bed and stride past Tarkan. “Come with me,” I snarl. “We will talk about this in the control room.”
As he follows me I hear him snarling and snorting behind me, working himself up into one of the combat rages which always ends in his defeat.
“She is precious,” I say when we are safely sealed away behind the control room door.
“Agreed.”
“And she appears to be the last of her kind, though there is no way of truly telling. Which means there is only one thing to do with her.”
“And that is?”
“Protect her, and have her serve a reproductive function.”
“How?”
“There are many ways. We could harvest her eggs and clone her…”
“Clones can’t reproduce on their own. They will all be female…”
“No. But they’re a start. We will at the very least have a greater number of humans to breed from.”
“But they’ll all have the same genetic profile.”
“There are deceased bodies, old tombs down there on the planet. We could extract a series of genes and create a human being with the most diverse genetics possible. We could develop a series of external wombs, and grow her eggs mixed with the DNA of deceased humans into new humans. There is no reason to let this species die.”
Tarkan stares at me, the anger in his eyes melting away into something more like disbelief.
“What?”
“It’s not…. right.”
“What do you mean, it’s not right? It will work.”
“I’m not saying it won’t work. I’m saying taking her eggs and forcing dozens of new people into existence is wrong. It’s against our code. It’s against the law. Have you asked if she even wants to bear young?”
“Since when do you care about laws and codes?”
“Since you stopped caring,” he snaps. “Since you stopped being a leader and started being nothing more than a lust driven breeding obsessed psychopath. We came here for a fun weekend, and instead we’re breaking every code we’ve ever lived by just to try to undo something we don’t even understand.”
�
��We understand this species has been obliterated.”
“That happens all the time. At any given moment, hundreds of species across the universe breathe their last. We know that better than anyone.”
“This isn’t just any species. This isn’t a salamander, or a moth. This is humanity.”
“So?”
It is my turn to be overwhelmed with disbelief. “Humanity. The source of universal intelligence.”
“Not the source. Just the first.”
“Tarkan! You know they’re special.”
“Everything is special. We are bound to follow Scythkin law, and you know what it says. We’ve already put ourselves at risk of death by taking One, and now you want to breed her artificially? Create some kind of unnatural version?”
“It would be natural. We would use preserved DNA, I just told you that.”
“It wouldn’t be from a natural process, and there’s every chance we would be caught and every single human we created that way would be culled.”
“If we don’t, Scythkin command will turn this planet into a brood site.”
Maybe the human race doesn’t deserve to be brought back from extinction.”
“I think it does,” I say. “I think whatever they did, we came here for a reason. Not our petty reason, a cosmic one. We got here just in time to save the species. We can do this.”
“Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.”
I am done discussing this matter. I am the commander of this clutch. I have full authority over what we do, and over One.
“This conversation is over,” I say tersely. “I’m going to go back to One. You go down to the surface and start collecting genetic material.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You need me to choke you out again?”
Tarkan seethes, but he does not say another word.
Chapter Eleven - Oops
Tarkan
I don’t know who Reaper is anymore. He used to be the most honorable of us, fully adherent to the law. Now he’s talking about making some genetic mish-mash of vaguely human DNA because he wants to reproduce with One.
We don’t have the resources or materials to carry out even half of his plan. Even if we did, we’d have to take One and whatever samples we had gathered to a back-stellar laboratory and do the work there, and we’d going to have to do it inside a time loop so nobody notices that Earth is uninhabited for several dozen years. Even if what he wants to do could be successful, we are going to have to break every single law we have to do this, and even then we may still fail. It’s not that easy to recolonize a planet. Species must arise from the worlds from which they come. They cannot be transplanted into it. Life isn’t that simple. Reaper used to know that.
It’s a tragedy that humanity has died out, but that is no reason to abandon every single principal and law we live by. Reaper put his cock in One and lost his mind. He would never have done this before meeting her. He would have followed the guidelines to the letter. He would have already reported the situation on Earth down to Scythkin command and they would have taken control of the situation.
I am a rebel, but I am not lawless, and I can see how much danger is being created here. It’s one thing to take One for our own. It’s something else to try to found the entire species based on her DNA.
We don’t know what happened to humanity. It could be a virus. It could be the result of an accident. It could be simple destruction of environment caused by excess population. We know literally nothing, but Reaper has already decided what he wants to do - a course of action that is more likely to end in disaster than not.
I do not like having to be the rational one. I do not like having to make decisions of this weight. This is Reaper’s role, but he is too busy wrapping his cock in One’s cunt to think about this clearly.
So I have done what I had to do.
* * *
“What are you doing up here?” Reaper asks the question in short, harsh tones. He has just emerged from what sounded like a passionate and aggressive lovemaking session with One, who has no doubt been left awash with his seed.
“What were you doing in there? Telling her that you intend to use her as a brood matriarch whether she likes it or not? No?”
“That’s not your business, Tarkan.”
“It is my business when everything you do is fundamentally wrong.”
“Fundamentally wrong?” He lets out a short barking sound. “Get down to the planet. We’re not going to create human sperm by sitting up in orbit hoping for it.”
“We’re not going to create human sperm at all, Reaper. This has gotten out of hand. We’re going to follow protocol and call this in.”
His expression transforms to one of pure anger.
“You don’t get to make that decision.”
“I do. I called Scythkin command seven hours ago, right after you ordered me to break the law. Again.”
The timing of this is all too sweet. While he’s been copulating like a proverbial Earth rabbit, the Scythkin command fleet has been sliding into position. I smile and nod toward the console so he can see for himself.
He slams his fist down on the controls, which brings up the sensors which show that the Scythkin command ship is in high orbit above us. They’ve sent a big one.
“You couldn’t have her for yourself, so you stopped me?” Reaper snarls the question at me. He is furious, but I do not care. There has never been any pleasing him, not since we cracked out way out of our eggs and found ourselves in the midst of destruction for the first of many times.
“You weren’t going to do anything besides create an inbred fuck harem.”
“They’re going to take One from us, you idiot! They’re going to make her their toy. We will never see her again.”
“No, they’re not. I didn’t tell them about One. I told them that the planet seemed to have undergone a major extinction event, with no sentient life being found.”
“Tarkan! You know they’re not going to…” Reaper takes a deep breath. “Once sentient life is gone from a planet, anything can be done to it.”
“So they might lay a few clutches. So what? There’s worse roaming the planet’s surface anyway.”
“That’s not the only potential outcome. Anything could happen.”
“I’m supposed to worry about some vague idea of “anything?”
“You’re supposed to follow orders that I give. You’re supposed to trust me. You’re supposed to be loyal. You’ve just fucked us both, and the whole entire planet with it.”
“I haven’t fucked anything…”
FWOMP!
In the midst of our argument, the blue and green planet below us suddenly disappears. In the place where it once existed is a sign written in letters eight thousand miles high:
COMING SOON
Reaper turns to me, his expression fraught with a deep horror which is reflected in my own body.
“What have you done, Tarkan? What have you done?”
Reaper
“I didn’t think they’d destroy Earth entirely!” Tarkan’s usually resonant voice reaches a pitch which would put earth glassware in danger of shattering - if there were any earth glass left - if it hadn’t just been replaced by a void in which a large flashing sign now orbits the Earth, rotating with mocking slowness.
“That’s right. You didn’t think. You were so jealous that you hadn’t mated with One, you decided to have her taken away from both of us. And in the process, you’ve destroyed any hope the human race ever had of restoring itself.”
“I didn’t obliterate Earth!”
BEEP BEEP BOOP, BOOP BEEP BOOP, BOOP BEEP BOOP
Our audio communicator begins to chime, heralding communication from the council. I swallow my anger and compose my features. I still have responsibilities, even if my small clutch is completely out of control.
The second I see who is on screen, I know that all is lost. It is none other than High Councillor Flurg himself. Flurg hasn’t been seen ou
tside his pleasure palace for the last thousand years. There are conspiracy theories which say he died at least seven hundred of them ago. Apparently, he didn’t. Apparently, he got out of bed when he got the opportunity to destroy Earth.
Councillor Flurg is old. His ridges have eroded and become blunt, his fangs have fallen out. His claws are more like short nubs. To make up for it he wears a great bejeweled helmet replete with cosmic stones. I used to respect him. He is the dominant Scythkin in the council clutch, the alpha Scythkin brood. They make decisions for the thousands of broods spread across the universe. I knew that Tarkan and I were unlikely to ever rise to his rank, but I had hoped we would begin to gain influence over time. A seat on the council has always been my dream, overtly at least. Privately, I would like to slaughter every single one of the council and take their place with Tarkan as my second in command, but that’s the sort of aspiration one keeps to oneself unless one wants to be wiped out of existence.
Having seen the wanton destruction of one of the most important planets in the universe, I am no longer sure I want anything to do with the council, or perhaps even our species as a whole. I am disgusted to the core of my very being. I am furious to the point of feeling my body preparing for battle, my ridges releasing a biological oil which makes them so sharp they can slice through any armored flesh.
There was still life down there. These monsters have destroyed the last remnants of the human race with callous carelessness, and I have to pretend that I still respect them.
“Scythkin Reaper,” Councillor Flurg says. “You have done well. Very well. It could have been hundreds of years before we realized that humanity had finally straggled into non-existence. Nasty little things. Did you know they consumed one another’s semen for personal enjoyment?”
That’s how he confesses to destroying one of the oldest and most original habitats in the universe, with a throwaway comment about cum.