by Tristan Vick
The crowd erupted with applause and screams of elation. One woman’s squeal was so piercing it cut through the white noise and made it to Danica’s ears, causing her to cringe. She looked over in time to see a topless Bre’lal woman swoon and faint. Nobody seemed to care though, as they let her fall at their feet while they all continued cheering for Ishtar Bantu.
Danica spun around, gazing at the exit she’d just come out of, only to find two Dragonian lizard guards, wearing their trademark red and black IGS armor, watching her from afar. She frowned, realizing she wouldn’t be getting out of this any time soon, and then turned back again only to find Ishtar Bantu standing fifty meters off, staring at her with a sinister look on her face.
Her left arm was a slightly paler red than the rest of her body, suggesting she had it replaced with a synthetic. A thin, purplish scar, where her shoulder met her sternum, was evidence of the procedure. As the new skin of the synthetic arm grew thicker, it would eventually darken to match the surrounding color, since synthetic parts were always grown from one’s own stem cells.
The young boy raced out and handed Ishtar two scimitar blades and then disappeared again. Once he was gone, she held the swords high above her and crossed them over her head. The crowd went wild.
Ishtar was wearing an armor-plated leather bikini, not so dissimilar from the kind Jegra was fond of wearing. She sauntered over to where Danica stood.
“Did you miss me?” Ishtar asked, shooting Danica a wink and a taunting kiss.
Danica realized she was trembling and, her nostrils flaring with rage, gripped her shield and spear tightly in her hands, clamping down on her jittery nerves.
“Spare me the small talk, assassin. Let’s just get this over with.”
Ishtar smiled and then cracked her neck. She hopped a few times, pumping blood into her meaty thighs, and then rotated her shoulders and stretched each arm behind her back as she limbered herself up.
Danica just stood poised, trying her best to hold it together. In her current condition, she was no match for Ishtar. In fact, she was positive the woman would make quick work of her. Most likely carve her up like one of Jegra’s famed roasted beef turkey things she was so fond of reminiscing about.
Before the bout could begin, though, the announcer unexpectedly made a surprise announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this just in. Today’s revenge bout has been changed.”
A flurry of boos and hisses made their way down the rows of the disappointed throng.
“Hear me out!” the announcer cried out over the din. “This revenge battle has turned into a survival match. In order to live to fight another day, mortal enemies must team up to face a powerful enemy.”
“Wait, what?” Ishtar said, lowering her blades as she turned to the announcer’s booth, a look of bewilderment settling across her face.
“You’re shitting on me,” Danica said, trying to use one of Jegra’s phrases she’d heard her say a thousand times before but feeling, somehow, she hadn’t quite gotten it right. She shrugged it off and looked up at the televid drone that buzzed noisily above their heads. Its myriad of cameras zoomed in on their terrified faces, plastering their dread across millions of televid monitors in every system from here to the Outer Rim of the Empire.
Ishtar shot Danica a disgusted and slightly perplexed look out of the corner of her eye, but for the most part did her best to ignore her.
The thunderous clank and rumble of the heavy gate being ratcheted upward filled their ears and they turned, along with several televid drones, toward the monster’s pen. They watched in silence as the steel toothed portcullis slowly climbed upward revealing a dark, gaping hole filled with unfathomable terrors.
Emerging from the dark holding cell came a massive insect-like machine with six legs, and a full battery of weapons, including a saw blade arm attachment, and a shoulder mounted laser canon. Alongside this armament was a Heliosfire missiles mount, each containing five hundred micro-darts equipped with high yield explosives. Upon recognizing the machine, the pits of their stomachs sank; a sense of dread slowly coiled around each of them, making their chests grow tight and their breathing difficult as it seized them.
It was a Seyferrian Centurion. A deadly war robot designed to kill any living thing standing in its path. A war machine that had long since been outlawed, and which was banned and ordered dismantled after the joint peace treaty between the Seyferrian Republic and the Dagon Empire was signed.
“I thought those things had all been destroyed,” Ishtar said under her breath.
“Apparently, not,” Danica muttered in response.
They hadn’t ever faced off against one of the machines themselves, seeing as they’d been decommissioned more than six hundred years ago, but they’d both seen the war footage during their school and military training. Entire battalions of Dagon soldiers, the fiercest warriors in the galaxy, single-handedly obliterated by just one of these machines. It was because of this advanced and undefeatable technology that Emperor Loki’Alloran Dakroth had agreed to the peace accords. The ferocity of this machine had given rise to the Commonwealth, and led to an era of never before seen peace among the alien worlds brought into the fold by two great warring empires.
And although tensions continued to run high, and there was a general distrust amongst most species of anything outside their own race, it was the first time in history that the galaxy had grown stable.
It was the Seyfferian Republic, which held independent treaties with both Nyctan and Dagon Prime, that provided the basis for the Commonwealth and the great trade route. Although three independently governed empires, each realm agreed not to encroach upon the other’s territory. Any territorial disputes were to be taken up by the High Council, which resided at Correll, the only neutral planet in the entire Commonwealth.
The war machine buzzed and hummed as it scuttled onto the field. It flared its metal plating and showed off its menacing weaponry, a display that sent the throng of spectators into a frenzy. Its three red eyes, contained beneath an insect-like hood, swiveled around and locked onto the two women standing mere meters away. Its whining buzz grew louder and louder until the sound became unbearable.
Without warning, the painful sound ceased and the war machine reared up on its hind legs and let out a mechanical growl, its chainsaw buzzing wildly and its metal pinchers opening and clamping shut with bone-crushing force.
Rattled by the startling appearance of a Centurion war machine, both women glanced at each other and then gulped nervously. And as much as they despised one another, the announcer hadn’t been wrong. There was no way either of them could single handedly take down a Centurion. Even with all the luck in the world, it was still going to be an uphill battle every step of the way. And that’s assuming they figured out how to put their grudges aside and join forces.
If they wanted to come out of this with their tits intact, they’d have to learn how to work together–and fast–or they would both surely pay the ultimate price.
18
“Take my hand!” Onelle Ta’Legra shouted as she lunged for Jegra. A split second later, she would have missed her chance to rescue the empress completely.
Jegra’s fingers brushed Onelle’s but came up empty. She quickly flattened her palms and flipped herself onto her back, the soles of her boots scraping as she dug her heels in.
Unable to get a good foothold, slowing down wasn’t exactly easy, and as she skidded down the side of the vessel’s hull, the edge was careening toward her fast. Beyond that, there was nothing but a thousand foot drop all the way down to the bottom of a very rocky crag.
Time running out, she quickly gauged whether she could leap across the divide and latch on to the distant cliff face, but it was seemingly impossible. This side of the ship was the end that jutted out into open air, and the cliff’s edges were too far away to make it in one jump. She’d only end up plummeting to her death.
“Gradack!” Jegra grumbled as she came quickly up to the cusp o
f the ship. Nearly out of time, she noticed a sharp groove at the edge of the ship that faded into the hull further up. The sharpness of the edge stuck out just enough for her to grip a split second before she slipped over the edge.
Onelle’s heart pounded in her chest as she witnessed Jegra disappear over the edge of the ship. Quickly, she loosened her harness and rappelled down to where she saw Jegra go over. Easing up to the ledge, she looked over, dreading the sight of Jegra’s body crushed to pulp against the jagged rocks below.
“Just figured I’d hang out here for a while,” Jegra jested, looking up at Onelle’s panicked face as she hung onto the edge of the ship by one arm. Onelle let out a huge sigh of relief and then bent down and clasped Jegra’s forearm with both hands and began to hoist her up.
“Thank the Gilded One you’re all right!”
As Onelle pulled her up, Jegra looked down at the unfathomably long drop and the narrowly escaped fate of having to relive another terrible plummet. The first one she had experienced, crashing on the far mountain range, had caused her more than enough pain. Even with her hyper-active healing factor, it had taken her three agonizing days to mend–something she wasn’t looking forward to experiencing again anytime soon.
A green sky stretched into the distance above the canopy of rainforest down below. According to the ship’s scanners, there were only five oases left on the entire planet. Everything else had burned up in a nuclear fallout roughly a thousand years ago.
With nowhere to go, it was imperative that they got the ship up and running again. And it had taken a little over three months of working together to get it to the point where it could run under its own power. Now, all they had to do was free it from the crevice that it was currently wedged within, which was proving easier said than done.
“You need to be more careful!” Onelle chastised, her heart still racing in her chest and her face turning dark green with frustration.
She wasn’t wrong, of course. It was a stupid mistake and one Jegra didn’t intend to make again.
Reaching out, Jegra reeled Onelle into her arms and squeezed her tight, picking her up off the ground in the process. “Thanks,” she said, “I owe you one.”
Barely able to breathe, Onelle wheezed, “No problem.”
Jegra finally let go of the Bre’lal woman and gently set her back on her feet. Then, she glanced one more time over the edge and shook her head in disbelief at the thought of how narrow her escape had truly been. Turning around, she followed Onelle back up to a more secure section of the ship’s outer hull and then raced forward when she saw Onelle sink to her knees.
“Onelle!” Jegra shouted. She raced over to the woman and knelt down beside her, one hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Out of breath, Onelle fanned herself to keep cool. “After all this excitement, I think maybe we should take a break. Besides, we’ve been working non-stop since dawn.” She then slid off her heels and sat down on the ship. Throwing out an arm, she leaned back and unzipped her yellow laborer’s coveralls with the orange-red stripe down the side, exposing her green cleavage.
The cool breeze lapped at her glistening chest, and she took in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. The thought of losing Jegra and being alone again, stranded on this nightmare world, was too much to bear.
“Nice idea,” Jegra said, taking a seat next to her. She, too, wore coveralls, but hers were army green with a gray stripe. Copying Onelle’s methods of free air conditioning, she, too, unzipped her jumpsuit, but the zipper got jammed up less than halfway as it reached the bulge of her giant chest. “Not again,” she lamented, puffing out a blast of air disappointedly.
“Happens a lot does it?” Onelle asked, a thin black eyebrow rising to the top of her forehead. She watched with great amusement as Jegra struggled to get the zipper free.
“More than you could possibly imagine,” Jegra lamented, fiddling with the zipper, but it wouldn’t budge.
“I can imagine it happens quite a lot, actually.”
“Every damn time,” Jegra immediately responded.
“Here…” Onelle said, reaching over and taking the zipper in between her index finger and thumb. “Let me try.” She gave a vigorous jiggle, then, another. But it was no use. The zipper was beyond stuck. “Maybe if I…” she tried another strategy and gripped the opening near Jegra’s neck with one hand and pressed against Jegra’s right breast with the palm of her other hand, trying to squeeze the massive boob back into the outfit, perchance to free up some room.
Jegra looked down and just watched Onelle grope and squeeze her in multiple ways as she struggled epically against physics to try and help fix the wardrobe malfunction. Unable to get it to budge, Onelle paused, her hands mid-squeeze, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth in deep concentration, as she weighed an alternative course of action.
In the midst of deliberating on the situation, however, she suddenly realized what her hands were doing. Her cheeks flushing with embarrassment, she quickly withdrew her hands and apologized. “I’m so sorry,” she said, abruptly looking away. All of a sudden, she felt flustered. “I didn’t realize I was…”
“Here,” Jegra said, grabbing the neckline and tearing it apart as though she were Supergirl ripping open a pristine blouse top in a back alleyway somewhere. The metal zipper pull flew off from the work clothes and shot out into the air. It pinged vigorously off the hull of the ship and then deflected overboard. Just before it vanished out of sight, it glinted in the dimming sunlight as if winking goodbye, and then it was gone.
Jegra stood up and tied the coveralls around her waist, her bikini clad top finally free of its oppressive confinement.
She reached down and offered a hand to Onelle who smiled up at her and took it. Helping her to her feet, Jegra said, “I’ll finish fastening the vines and then we can hoist the ship onto the grooves we carved into the rockface.”
“I’ll double check the rollers we welded to the hull to make sure they’re all in working order. With any luck, we’ll get off this sorry excuse for a planet sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
A series of faint pops sounded as Jegra arched her back and cracked her spine. She then turned, hands on her hips, and looked out at the setting sun. Even though this barren planet was a veritable death trap, it sure did present a beautiful sunset.
Onelle drew up beside Jegra and watched it along with her. After another moment, she finally said, “Come, we’d better finish up before we lose the light.”
Jegra nodded then fetched the nearest vine and began threading it through a series of already linked vines which she then proceeded to tie off. At the same time, Onelle ran her final checks on the rollers which would, if their measurements were correct, allow the hull to settle onto the grooves they’d carved into the cliff. Momentum would then drop the ship at a forty-five-degree angle before curving back up and launching the vessel into the air at the precise trajectory then all they had to do was ignite a thruster burn and hightail it off this accursed rock.
Of course, the ship only had enough thruster fuel to get one pass at it. So, should they be off by even one micron in their calculations, they’d be doomed to die and rot on this miserable planet.
“There,” Jegra said, dusting off her hands and standing upright. She’d completed tying the harness to the shuttle and fastened it to the pulley system that they’d rigged up. They used giant bamboo stalks, as thick as her body, and massive vines to hold everything together.
The shuttle craft was about the size of a large fishing trawler, eighty feet long and half as wide. The vines were thick enough and strong enough to lift twice that weight. And the alien stalk was like bamboo on steroids. Back on earth, bamboo bridges had been known to take the weight of fully loaded lorry trucks. So, really, what it came down to was their engineering skills; success hinged on them.
Jegra hopped off the shuttle and onto the cliff’s edge, a length of vine tied around her waist. She then scaled the wall for about thirty feet and pulled
herself up onto the bluff. Heading over to a massive boulder on the top of the cliff, she undid the vine and then secured it to the rock.
The vine was tethered to a larger strand of woven vines which formed a kind of knitted elastic. This elastic quality was vital in ensuring the vines didn’t just snap with the weight or force of the tension. They only had one boulder to use, after all, and there was no other way to hoist a rock that size up to the top of a thousand-foot cliff.
It just happened to be serendipity that Onelle, having trained as a professional courtesan, knew how to weave as well as she did. With Jegra’s help, they’d spent the nights weaving and talking and getting to know one another. And over the course of three months, their friendship had blossomed. Which was why when she heard Onelle’s footsteps approaching from behind, she was utterly shocked to turn and find a blaster pointed at her.
“I’m afraid this is where we part ways, empress,” Onelle said, her eyelids hanging heavy as she gazed at Jegra with nothing but malice.
Jegra laughed, thinking Onelle was having her on, then grew deathly silent when it became clear to her that it was no joke. “Et tu, Brute?” Jegra said, her face growing stern.
Onelle raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know that language,” she informed.
“It’s an ancient saying from my world. There’s a story about a great leader who was betrayed by one of his most trusted friends and advisors. After being stabbed in the back by a lethal dagger, he turns to find the one he had trusted most had murdered him.”
Onelle shrugged. “The problem is, Your Majesty,” she snarled. “It was because of you my sister threw away her life. It was because of you she got tangled up in the emperor’s twisted scheming. And it was because of your inability to rein in your emotional feelings for her that in his jealousy, Dakroth sent his assassin to slay Abethca. I’m afraid, Jegra Alakandra, this is goodbye. Who knows?” she shrugged before continuing on. “Maybe in a decade or two I’ll come check on you. See how you’re doing.”