Tiny and Fierce

by Margo Bond Collins

  Lise was talking with Blue, devising some stratagem for escaping right under the nose of the Bufo Alvarius scout ship.

  “That won’t work, Lise.” Lights flashed on the control panel, a sequence of greens, reds, and blues.

  “Something has to work, Blue. We can’t be out of options.” Lise ran a hand through her hair, the loose curls bouncing against her back.

  Morph and Evik weren’t the only ones getting worked up now.

  Waves of adrenaline were floating from the human girl. And they smelled… delicious.

  Get ahold of yourself, you damn Dasnek fool. If the empress seizes the ship, she’ll find Morph aboard. And we’ll be more screwed than the time I skipped my mother’s royal birthday to flirt in the alien sex district.

  But I couldn’t help myself. I leaned forward in the chair, closer to Lise.

  Floral. Salt. Soap.

  Warmness began to rise inside me, an aphrodisiac chemical I produced when I was attracted by something. It seeped from my pores, making my skin begin to look sleek with a pale blue-green excretion. It was oily, like damp satin to the touch.

  It made for wonderful lubrication.

  “What is that?” The human girl who was making my pulse race shifted to look behind her. She glanced at Morph and Evik, but they were both looking at me.

  Evik clicked sharply, gnashing and reprimanding me for my loss of control.

  “Hypocrite,” I choked out around a wave of euphoria as more of the aphrodisiac added to the sheen across my body, “you smell like fear right now.”

  “Alder,” Morph warned.

  But it was too late. I’d grown hard in my pants, my dick lengthening to such an extent that it had no rival on Old Earth. It pressed against the thick material imprisoning it, throbbing and wanting to escape.

  Lise, confusion across her face, unclipped her restraints and stood up. She staggered towards me, her eyes growing wide as she realized that she didn’t have complete control over her body right now.

  I tried to stop it, tried to swallow down the desire that caused my powers to rise. Humans weren’t used to the abilities of the fae. Those came from breeding with the natives of our colony planet.

  “What the hell are you doing to me?” The human girl, with her nebula eyes and golden hair flowing wildly around her body, lifted by the waves of erotic stimulation emanating from me, stuttered out the question. She was visibly trying to keep from walking closer to me. “Stop it. Whatever it is.”

  “He’s fae,” Morpheus said.

  It is what his people do when they lose control, Evik added.

  “Alder, we’re facing the Bufo Empress and you’re losing control.” Morph stalked towards me, his wings fluttering in a metallic rainbow. There was only one way to pull me out of it when I fell this far down the sexual cliff.

  My much larger—and stronger, though I hated to admit it—companion punched me in the face.

  And I passed out.

  When I came to, I was shivering and the chemical across my skin had dried into a crusty layer that itched like hell.

  I was no longer sitting in one of the crew auxiliary seats on the bridge either. I had slipped to the floor somehow.

  “Son of a…” I looked around me and found Lise, Morph, and Evik all prone against the metal floor unconscious. “Blue, Blue do you read me?” I coughed out the AI’s name, realizing my lungs felt strange and so did my throat. Coated with something foul, something that made it hard to draw in a full breath.

  I heard a beep and crackle. “I’m here, Alder Regulus. Your vitals are normal, as are Lise’s and your men. The scout ship engaged, boring into our hull and flooding the ship with anesthetic gas. You are only awake, I believe, because of your unique biological makeup.”

  “Where is the ship now, Blue?” I tried to sit up, but my head spun and I blinked away stars.

  “We are inside the cargo hold of the scout ship, Alder Regulus.”

  “Headed where?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

  “The Bufo Alvarius planet.”

  My hearts beat wildly, and my dual-channel pulse quickened. A hiss drew my attention overhead, to a hole. A fresh wave of noxious fog was flooding the cabin, and even with my resistance to it, I was overwhelmed.

  The world went dark.

  7

  Evik

  I came out of my deep torpor state slowly, only gradually realizing that I could not move any of my appendages. Even my antennae drooped against the ground.

  All my companions lay where they had fallen as the ship shuddered, metal grinding against metal.

  Within moments, guards dressed in Imperial uniforms moved onto the bridge, their oddly flexible armor allowing for the way they jumped, their strong back limbs bending and pushing off to send them hopping across the ground. Several of them surrounded us, leaning in to peer at us closely and using their forelimbs to poke at us.

  I fought to move when one of the soldiers rolled me onto my back, but nothing happened. Not even my scent gland reflected my sudden fear at having my underside exposed. Whatever they’d hit us with was strong enough to incapacitate me totally.

  One of them spoke in a deep croak, my translation unit rendering it as, “Take the traitor to Her Imperial Highness. The female goes to the medical facility for testing as breeding stock. The others go to the slave pens.”

  I shuddered at the thought. The Bufo Alvarius Empress’s slave auctions were notorious throughout the known universe. We’d be better off dead than being sold off as slaves.

  Of course, there was a good chance Morpheus would end up dead. And if the empress learned that Alder was the wanted fae prince...well, I knew my egg sac and chitin sharing warriors as one mate would rather die than face the fate that awaited him back home.

  Several of the guards slid their forearms under my carapace to lift me. Even their coordinated hops jarred me.

  If I could reach you with my mandibles, I’d bite those overly long legs off.

  I managed to catch glimpses of my companions being carried in a similar manner on either side of me as we were taken off Lise’s ship and into the hold that held it. Apparently, we had made planetside, because the guards continued off the ship and then onto ground transportation. I watched as well as I could until the guards carrying Morpheus and Lise peeled away from our main group, presumably to load them into different carriers.

  By the time we reached the slave pens, I was beginning to be able to control my own body, at least a little. Enough to spray the guards with the acrimonious scent of anger toward a subordinate when they dumped me unceremoniously on the dirt ground of the slave pen.

  Not that they understood what the scent meant.

  Barbarians.

  At least I didn’t land on my back this time. Rolling over was such a pain in the pronotum.

  Anger speared through me and I hissed in frustration, releasing a complementary scent at the same time.

  Beside me, Alder stirred, then sat up. “Oh, by all the hot gods of the stars, would you please stop emitting? You smell foul.”

  I feel foul, I managed to respond, though my clicks were still less vigorous than they ought to be.

  Alder rubbed his eyes with his ten tiny forelimb tentacles. Fingers, I reminded myself. Hands had fingers. “Where are we?” he asked.

  Slave pens. I released an intensifying scent.

  “Would you please stop cursing in bug smell?” Alder demanded. “I can’t think when you do that.”

  You can’t think at the best of times, I said, but softly, not wishing to irritate my companion more.

  The fae prince finally glanced around. “Where are Lise and Morph?”

  I clicked a negative. Taken to the breeding facility and the empress, respectively.

  That made Alder sit up straight. “Breeding facility?”

  His worried expression echoed my own emotions. The thought of Lise being bred like a stock animal made me want to rampage through the camp, destroying everything I came across.
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br />   It had been a long time since a female had elicited such a response in me. Not for the first time, I wondered if perhaps she might be amenable to starting a small colony with my two egg sac and chitin sharing warriors as one and me. Even in my half-drugged state, my flagellum fluttered in response.

  Alder began cursing in several languages. “I swear to all the gods of Mabdavarius Five, if that frog bitch of an empress hurts either of them, I’ll make her wish she’d been born in a pile of dolenatis in a Crobrit-infested swamp.”

  I rubbed my antennae together in a brief song of appreciation for the sentiment but didn’t accompany it with any scent this time. I didn’t want Alder to turn his ire toward me. It was rare for the small fae man to work himself into this kind of anger, but when he did, it was usually followed by bloodshed.

  I liked this side of my egg sac and chitin sharing warriors as one mate.

  What shall we do? I asked once he finished his tirade.

  “We find a way to kill that tralf.”

  I don’t believe the empress sells her body for money. But I’m willing to destroy her with you.

  “No. She only sells others.” Alder turned his gaze on me, his forward-facing binocular vision focused intently. “And it’s about time someone stopped her.”

  Two hours later, we were still trying to work out a plan.

  The most immediate problem was the plethora of guards surrounding the slave pens. But even that was secondary to not knowing where the empress had taken Morpheus and Lise.

  If this had been a Chilchek colony, I could have sent an inquiry out and had it disseminated through the entire colony within moments. As it was, however, we had to do with inadequate, barbaric vocal communication.

  Luckily, Alder was good at that sort of thing. I watched in amazement as he sidled up to one group after another, befriending them and asking questions. Lucky for him, I was able to simultaneously watch around us. All it took was snipping off the appendage of one would-be attacker, and no one else tried to make any trouble.

  Of course, had I known the attacker would spew bodily fluids until he died, I might have been more circumspect in my appendage-snipping.

  Mammals. So frail.

  “I have the info we need,” Alder said in what I took to be a triumphant tone. “The empress likes to attend the auctions, and the next one is tomorrow night.”

  What about Morpheus and Lise?

  Alder raised the top connective joint of one upper limb—something he called a shoulder, a word I couldn’t come close to reproducing—in what I had learned to interpret as a gesture of uncertainty. “If Lise tests as a breeder, she’ll be auctioned off in one of those lots. Otherwise, she’ll be placed in the females’ lot over there.” He raised an upper limb—arm—and pointed an end-tentacle—finger—at an enclosed space not far from our own.

  And Morpheus? I asked.

  Alder blew out a gust of air. “He’s almost certainly in the empress’s prison. Once we have Lise, we’ll need to break him out.”

  Therefore, we must disrupt the auction, rescue Lise, and break Morpheus out of prison, yes?

  “That’s it.”

  I waved my antennae in my own gesture of uncertainty. I am concerned, my egg sac and chitin sharing warriors as one mate. What if we cannot accomplish our goals?

  Alder flashed his teeth at me in heathenish delight. “Since when have we ever not accomplished our goals?”

  I paused to consider but decided not to list our various failed attempts to convince strangers to unwittingly hand over their treasure. There was no reasoning Alder when he was in this mood. He enjoyed the thrill of battle far too much to let the specter of failure and death dissuade him from what was almost certainly a suicidal plan.

  Very well, then, I finally said. What is our plan of action?

  8

  Morpheus

  They had to incapacitate me; it was the only way to keep me from ripping them all apart.

  Because that was the singular thought in my humming brain as the slimy-skinned minions of the Bufo Alvarius Empress dragged my drugged body from the transport unit. My prosthetic wings scraped sharply against the polymer-metal of the ramp and then were hushed by the plush leaf flooring of the private chambers of the empress herself.

  Alder and Evik’s transport had diverged paths near Blue. Lise’s transport had left my side only a few moments before arriving here.

  That meant she couldn’t be far away.

  My partners in con could take care of themselves, but could the human female? She was so small, slight of build, delicate even. I had thought my wife was the only creature in the known universe who’d elicit the biochemical response that preceded sexual arousal and mating. But this wingless biped called to me louder than the entire chorus of inhabitants on my home planet.

  I was not able to imagine the courtship dance between our two species, end to end and dancing through the sky in a sacred coupling that would bring the next viable generation. Yet, I found myself imagining unfurling my sexual organs and pushing the bristled puffy end into her accepting cavity. The thought made me shudder.

  The empress’s soldiers dropped me unceremoniously to the floor and the rubbery leaf beneath me rippled. My weight with the metal wings nearly exceeded the floating natural platform’s strength.

  “You dare come back to my sector?” My translator was delayed here, interference from the viscous liquid below. Her voice was as deep and raspy as I remembered, croaks rising and falling in a nightmarish way.

  “Miss the neighborhood, what can I say?” I could move my mouth, but not much else. I focused, trying to lift my wings slightly in an approximation of one of Alder’s nonchalant fae motions. Though I found his mode of language limited, often his body movements got his intentions across better than words.

  “I have been humiliated by you, experiment. It is time for retribution.” The pitch of her croaks lowered, her anger flowing uninhibited.

  She was stalking towards me, but I couldn’t shift my head to see more than the empress’s bent back limbs, the skin of them a dark earthy hue, pockmarked and blistered.

  I closed my eyes, letting the buzz come to life that helped me isolate external stimuli and think my way out of tight spots.

  “Planning to kill me, Empress?” Buzz. Hum. Focus. I could feel agency returning to my limbs. It took every ounce of effort, but I felt my iridescent wings move a fraction. When I reopened my eyes, I knew it would only be a short while before I could make my getaway. The drugs were strong, but I’d been through worse.

  Years spent being poked, prodded, and injected with all manner of substance had made me resistant to many things.

  “I will do worse than kill you, betrayer. I will destroy you. Piece by piece.” She leaned down, legs bending and popping in the way only particular species could, and her bulbous acid eyes with the black slit iris stared at me menacingly. Membrane lids flashed over the sticky orbs. “We’ll invade your mind with the very thing you stole from us.”

  She stood back up out of view, and moments later one of her minions hopped forward. He leaned down, cocking his head back, and then thrusting forward to lick me slowly across the face with his rough tongue that tried to suction against my exoskeleton.

  Immediately, my vision began to go fuzzy. The Bufo Alvarius excretions were strong.

  Buzz. Hum. Focus.

  I jerked, rolling away from the soldier, extending my wings sharply to pull me up off the floor. I slammed my jointed legs down, feet smashing against the pool leaf, sending violent vibrations to rock the empress and her men. Their legs adjusted, hopping upwards and landing back down easily.

  “Do you remember, betrayer, our night of love? Was it worth going against me and losing all of that?” She leaped into the air, thumping down hard only a wing’s length in front of me. Her tongue unrolled quickly, flashing out to trace up my neck. I could fight the sensations, fight the hallucinations, but only for so long.

  If they kept dosing me, I’d be at their merc
y. No amount of buzzing in my brain would resurrect me.

  “You still don’t realize,” I murmured, swaying against the unstable leaf beneath me, my vision blacking out. One more dose, I realized. That’s all it would take.

  And then they could convince me of anything.

  They could make me lose myself within my own mind.

  Yes, I’d been through torture at the hands of the scientists. Caged. Beaten. Injected.

  But, through all of that, I’d kept command of my own mind.

  I had not realized my greater fear until these moments.

  As my vision blinked and threatened to extinguish.

  “What? What don’t I realize, betrayer?” she croaked, amused and hungry for my submission.

  “We didn’t have a night of passion, Empress. I dosed you,” I paused, my approximation of Alder’s thing called laughter bubbling beneath my exoskeleton, “with your own hallucinogen. I wouldn’t touch you, even if the survival of the known universe depended on it. You kissed and had sexual intercourse with your own hand.”

  She sputtered, hopping up and down and croaking nonsensical violence. “You’ll pay for that, betrayer.”

  “Sure I will.” I slammed the point of my wings down, cutting into the curved leafy floor. I opened them wide, slicing through the rubbery surface with ease. And then I gave my own little hop, shooting down into the thick liquid below, and hoping to hell it was something survivable.

  The Bufo Alvarius Empress croaked a scream, and two of her soldiers followed me down below the surface. But my metal wings were just as useful at cleaving through liquid as their powerful legs, and I raced ahead of them towards the exit.

  I needed to find Lise first.

  No, I wanted to find her first.

  The way I wished to find my wife when my day as a healer in our colony was over. I would fly, far above the city, against the lavender sky, over the gold forests, looking for her. She was a grower, cultivating the many plant varieties in the hidden groves within the woods. She was always pursuing the sweetest nectar that would provide our people with the most energy, and stronger offspring.