Tiny and Fierce

by Margo Bond Collins

  “What do you mean?” He acknowledged me but kept his attention on the space around the ship. Morph was always a warrior, no matter the situation. I bet he even had his stoic attitude in bed during intercourse. His inner soldier would stand at attention, and so would his little soldier… so to speak. Though, there was nothing little about his species’ sexual organ. Damn thing was insane looking. I avoided showering with him nowadays. It could give a guy a complex.

  “The empress getting attacked at the same time we’re trying to escape. Looks like the universe is working in our favor for once, partner!” I smiled wider at him and he shot me a confused glance.

  “Blue orchestrated the faux attack in conjunction with the empress’s AI mainframe. A coincidence,” Morph scoffed. “One would have to be as empty-headed as a molted exoskeleton to believe such a thing.”

  “It could happen,” I sputtered out, grin fading.

  Evik slunk past us on all fours, clicking away joyously as he excreted a sweet-smelling odor. You underestimate our egg sac and chitin sharing warrior as one, Alder.

  “Shut up, Evik,” I grumbled, turning to follow him up the ladder. The various female species were all inside Blue now. Only Morph stayed on the tarmac as Evik and I climbed upwards.

  Morpheus didn’t react to our exchange, the totality of his focus on ensuring that no Bufo soldiers reentered the hanger. It wouldn’t take them long to figure out the deception, though having the empress’s personal AI involved might prolong things. They wouldn’t suspect that their own royal complex was working against them.

  When I entered the ship, I looked back down the ladder. Morpheus was backing towards the hatch slowly, weapon held steady in his grip, the business end roving back and forth. He never missed. If he aimed and fired, you better believe he’d sized up the shot in his head multiple times before squeezing the blaster trigger.

  Sometimes, I thought he seemed disappointed when there was nothing to shoot.

  Maybe it was because his life was so different now, post-experiments. So was his body. He couldn’t take to the skies for a pleasure flight. He didn’t have a wife and chrysalis to come home to anymore on his planet.

  So he became good at what he could be inside the scope of his alterations.

  A fighter. A leader. Primed for war when war was necessary.

  He was, without a doubt, the muscle of our con operation. And now the muscle of the human woman’s crew. I thought, more than anything, that Morph needed to relax. Have a little roll in the hay, so to say in Old Earth speak. I didn’t think he’d been with anyone since escaping the labs. I doubted he even pleasured himself.

  Mother of stars, if I had his appendage? I’d be working it like it was my damn job! No more prince of the planet. Alder, sex god for hire. Let’s just put it this way—I’d be perpetually sore between the legs. Not that my own exterior sex organ was anything to laugh at. I’d read about condoms in Old Earth history. I’d have needed an extra, extra-large… or bigger. The thought made me smirk.

  I flexed my fingers as I strode down the dimly lit corridors of Lise’s ship. A pitiful display of pale blue sparks sprayed from the tips of my digits. If I didn’t go home soon, I’d be completely depleted of my own natural abilities. I needed to touch the soil. Breathe the air. Eat a few jazamenth blossoms. Or, hell, eat a hundred until I was sick with power.

  I was behind the last of the women now. A particularly androgynous female swayed in front of me. Beside her was the polar opposite. All curves and six breasts.

  What in the hell were we going to do with a ship full of various species? We didn’t have the fuel, or the capital to refuel, to take them all back to their home planets. If all of them even had home planets. So many species were left homeless after the intergalactic war of 3050.

  You really outdid yourself, Alder boy. In over your head, and dragging everyone with you per usual, I berated myself, sighing as I watched the liberated breeding stock filter into the north cargo bay. When I entered, I realized Evik had deviated from the path and left me. I wasn’t sure where he’d gone. He wasn’t one to take the lead, preferring to be a follower. I think it had something to do with his species’ natural tendencies. They hived together, and given a choice, would share everything, all the time, with zero personal space. So it was strange for him to go off on his own during this somewhat tumultuous situation.

  Lise stood on a large shipping container, her eyes roving over the crowd. I leaned against the hard wall, crossing my arms and gazing up at her. Again, even in the oversized pajamas that hid the body underneath, she was sexy.

  “I’m going to be honest with you,” Lise’s voice was loud, commanding the attention of everyone in the cargo hold, “I have absolutely no idea how to help you beyond facilitating your escape from the empress. You range in home systems from Canis Major to Centaurus A. If we’re lucky, we can find suitable nearby planets that will support your environmental needs. In the meantime, Blue has regulated this bay to accommodate most of you. Those who need more specialized care will be taken to medical and placed in workable groups within calibrated healing chambers.”

  I liked listening to her, I realized. The cadence of her voice, and the way she moved her lips when she spoke.

  She had beautiful damn lips.

  I licked my own, imagining how silky her mouth would feel against mine. For Jupiter’s sake, every inch of her skin looked like heaven.

  Someone asked a question, and Lise responded, but I was too damn wrapped up in my own imagination to pay attention to what she said. Removing her clothes, pulsing power through the pale blue-green aphrodisiac chemical coating my skin and teasing her body with small energy bursts that would make her two human nipples rock-hard in anticipation of more. I’d slide into her, and we’d both be wet and ready. It would take seconds for my excretions to enter her bloodstream and send her into a state of utter, unshakeable euphoria.

  I was growing hard, and I had to shift my body to keep the pants from pinching as my dick lengthened, filling the material next to my right leg.

  I’d take her right here, and right now, even with all the witnesses.

  If the ship hadn’t suddenly rocked from an explosion.

  Blue shouted a warning through the system speakers. Alarms blared to life. And Lise jumped down from the container, falling to her knees as yet another explosion sent the cargo bay sideways.

  15

  Evik

  “All hands, prepare for immediate hyperspace transition.”

  I dropped to the floor as Blue’s warning came through the ship’s com system, pausing long enough to determine whether I should retrace my steps to the bridge to assist.

  Within seconds, the abdomen-dropping, time-stretching sensation of sliding into hyperspace spun through me. The explosion had come from somewhere outside the ship, and Blue’s decision to transition to hyperspace suggested she remained undamaged—though her swift exit might very well have done some damage to the empress’s compound. After a moment, I continued on my path to the medical bay.

  I wouldn’t be much additional use in the bridge, I reasoned. With Morpheus, Alder, and Lise, not to mention the ship herself, we had plenty of pilots aboard.

  Medics, however, were less plentiful.

  Not that I was trained in mammal biology. But I could at least help any females who might be in distress.

  Besides, I had seen the red tentacled female head out when Lise instructed those with non- Standard-Galactic breathing requirements to report to medical.

  I still could not entirely believe that Alder had managed to rescue a ship full of the Bufo Alvarius Empress’s breeding slaves.

  It had all the makings of what Alder himself would have called a “clusterfuck.” He used the term negatively—though given the working, living, and breeding habits of my own people, I thought it sounded rather cozy. One queen, many lovers, all writhing together…

  I scuttled away from the thought. It was getting close to breeding season, and my thoughts often grew unru
ly this time of year, no matter how far I journeyed from the Chilchek sun. Soon, I would have to find a willing partner. Either that or lock myself away to endure the pain of another mateless cycle.

  Like most successful sentients, the Chilchek had developed the ability to breed at will. But our biology still pushed us to follow the cycles of the seasons on our home planet.

  The last season had been especially harsh, as I had been alone on a ship with Alder and Morpheus, and they had not appreciated my advances. It had almost driven a wedge between us until I had shown them a vid of a Chilchek mating ceremony, the males all driving one another higher and higher as they waited their turn to mate with their queen. That helped them understand, although they did not warm to the idea of our own variation of the ritual. The pain of being without a mate…

  I shuddered at the thought, my mandibles clicking in anxiety.

  If Alder had been here now, he would have complained about my emissions, the scent of longing and nostalgia, with a hint of sexual frustration.

  From behind me, footsteps reminded me that there were others aboard the ship who might need my help, even more immediately than I needed to decide what to do about my mating urge. I slid up the wall and waited on the ceiling as a group of females passed beneath me. I clicked a greeting, and one of the mammals glanced upward, then shuddered as she quickly looked away.

  And that was why I had such difficulties finding partners in this quadrant.

  I slipped back to the floor when they had passed and followed them into the medical bay.

  There, the chatter of feminine voices rose to a din as they attempted to sort out where to go. Standing on my back legs, I raised up and scraped my mandibles together. The screech brought the room to complete silence.

  Blue, I said, setting my translator to broadcast so everyone could hear, please help me sort these females into appropriate healing chambers.

  “Of course,” the ship’s AI replied aloud. As she began issuing directions based on what they breathed, I plucked a tablet from its docking station and began helping to determine the best mixture of gases for the ones who didn’t breathe a Standard Galactic Mix.

  As I worked, I watched for the tentacled female.

  Not until most of the other females had been sorted did I find her sitting on a bench next to an empty chamber, her features drained and pale, leaving her a shade of pink that I did not believe to be healthy for her. I quickly moved the other females to their pods, closing the doors and setting them to private.

  Are you well? I asked the tentacled female, even though I was certain I knew the answer. Do you need a specific atmospheric mix?

  “No.” Her voice emerged strained and almost too quiet to hear, even with the help of the translator. “I breathe Standard Galactic Mix. But I think there’s something else wrong with me.”

  Blue, I called out, I am moving this female into the chamber. Please scan her.

  She needed my help moving, and in the end, she could not stand without aid, so I held her upright with the chamber door open as Blue completed the scans.

  You may sit here now, I offered afterward.

  “Thank you.” She ran her tentacles over my carapace as she had earlier, her light, not-quite-touch sensitizing my stelae and sending a shiver through my body.

  A message flashed onto the tablet I held, and I transferred it through to my translator so no one else could hear it.

  This female is dying, Blue told me.

  No. She cannot. What can we do? My mandibular palps gnashed in frustration.

  Nothing. She suffered internal damage.

  From the explosion?

  No. Blue’s tone turned gentle. From something the empress’s people did to her.

  “You don’t have to try to hide anything from me,” the female said. “I know I can’t be saved.”

  I sank down to my lower four appendages. I am so sorry.

  “You are so beautiful,” she whispered, gazing up at me as she sank lower on the bench. “I wish I had time with you.”

  Sorrow wafted from me, and she smiled gently. “I don’t want to die alone.”

  You won’t. I reached out and rested my upper appendages on her, one curling around her hand and the other stroking her tentacles delicately.

  Then she closed her eyes.

  I was still sitting there moments later, holding her cooling body, when Lise stepped into the medical bay.

  She took in the situation with a single glance, then moved over to touch the female’s body. “What happened, Blue?”

  Internal damage from the Bufo Alvarius.

  Lise let out a low curse, then wrapped her arms around me, willing to offer comfort where it was most needed. She did not shy away from the feel of me, which was more than most mammals could manage.

  I leaned against the human woman, my sorrow surrounding us with its notes of misery and anger.

  “Oh, Evik. I am so, so sorry.” She slid down to the floor, still holding me, as I leaned into her, wishing for once that I could release my sadness from my eyes in a flood of fluid remorse as so many mammals did.

  I did not even know her name.

  “You did everything you could.”

  We were too late from the first moment.

  Lise rose to her knees, grasping my head in her minuscule hands and turning it from side to side to make sure she could be seen in all my fields of vision at once. “You are not to blame.” When I did not respond, she asked, “Was there something special about her? To you, I mean?”

  Only that she knew Chilchek physiology. Knew how to touch me. It suggested she might make a good sexual partner. I gave a small sound of defeat, only barely managing to repress my scent reflection of it. It has been a long time since I met a female like that.

  “Come. Let’s move her body into medical storage. I’ll see if Blue can learn the death traditions of her people so she can be handled with respect.”

  I could have moved the body myself, but it seemed Lise wished to be part of the disposal, so I allowed her to help, sadness weighing down my body with every motion.

  When the female’s body had been stored, Lise sat on the bench and motioned for me to join her. “What do your people do with your dead?”

  We feed our bodies to the larval young. We provide nourishment to the next generation, helping them grow strong and healthy. What do you do?

  She waved a hand. “Oh, it varies. Some bury bodies in the dirt. Others burn them.”

  What do you want done with your remains should you die?

  “I don’t care. Once I’m gone, this is just a carcass. But if I had to choose? Shoot me out into space. Let me fly through the universe forever.”

  That seemed reasonable. Though if everyone had Lise’s philosophy, the skies might soon grow crowded with corpses.

  I realized that Lise had begun stroking my carapace absently with one hand. It wasn’t the gentle touch of the dead female, but it was nice, nonetheless. Comforting. And soon, my body began to react to it. Despite my best attempts at control, pheromones began to scent the air.

  Not all of them were mine, I realized.

  “Hey, Evik?” Lise asked after a moment.

  Yes?

  “You said she knew how to touch you. Will you tell me what she did?”

  With one appendage, I lifted her hand so it glided just above my carapace, brushing the stelae.

  Lise continued moving her hand. “Like this?”

  I hissed my appreciation. Yes.

  Carefully, she leaned forward and gently flicked her tongue out, licking my mandibular palps, one after the other.

  My entire body came alive for the first time in ages. Inside its pouch, my flagellum stirred to life. I wanted more than anything to make Lise feel the same way. I had seen enough mammal pornography to know their mammary glands were often sensitive, so I flicked across the tips of Lise’s, over her clothes, with my second appendages, even as I used my upper appendages to hold her face to mine, silently begging her to continue her
delicate licking.

  Lise moaned, and I instantly let go of her. Did I hurt you?

  “Not at all. I liked it.” Her breath brushed against me as she spoke. “However, I need to check in with the bridge.” She paused, pulling back to tilt her head from side to side, once again making sure I saw her completely. “I would like to continue this later, if you agree?”

  I do agree. Very much so.

  She smiled and leaned in to lick me again.

  As Lise’s lips slowly pulled away from me, I heard the scrape of a footfall in the hallway outside the medbay.

  And then Alder’s voice floated back to me as he stormed away. “Godsdammit!”

  16

  Morpheus

  “Are all the female-gendered species safe and secured, Blue?” I sat in Lise’s too-small chair, working the controls like mad. We’d cleared the empress’s compound and jumped into hyperspace at the bare minimum of a safe distance outside the planet’s atmosphere.

  “Yes, Morpheus,” Blue chimed, “All are accounted for, except for one female who is unwell. I fear that her biology is too damaged. She is joined by your egg sac and chitin sharing warrior as one.”

  “My what?” I asked, curiously, staring up at the low-profile speaker through which the AI’s voice was pouring into the space.

  “It is what the Chilchek calls you and the humanoid one.” Blue’s programmed voice was even, with little inflection.

  “Warriors made one through adversity,” I corrected, shaking my head slightly as I adjusted our trajectory. Evik had always used those words to describe our relationship with him. We were his… collective. His de facto family. Of course, that one mating season, he wanted a bit more than monogamy. On my planet, though we would take a new mate if our original died, we adhered to the constructs of male and female relations. On Evik’s planet, they were more fluid, more codependent on one another. The sexual rituals were a group performance, the males interacting as much as the queen.