Imperatrix of the Galaxy

by Tristan Vick

  “I’ve got you, Your Majesty,” Brei’alas said, hefting the empress back to her feet.

  “Thank you,” Jegra said. Then, looking down at the Bre’lal woman, she added, “That woman is relentless. You can’t turn your back on her for an instant.”

  Brei simply nodded and glanced over at the unconscious Bre’lal woman.

  Standing up straight, Jegra held Brei’s shoulder with one hand and got her bearings. Once she was oriented, she thanked the lieutenant. “I’m fine, now. Thanks to you.”

  The empress hurried over to where Lianica lay on the floor curled into a tight ball, clutching her singed abdomen. Jegra glanced back to ask for the med-kit but Brei’alas was already standing beside her, offering it to her.

  She smiled and took the med-kit and set it down next to Lianica. “Hang on, my friend,” she said opening the box. “You saved me, now let me save you.”

  Lianica grinned painfully through gritted teeth. “I’m not dead yet,” she said.

  “That’s the Dagon spirit,” Jegra said, smiling as she worked to mend Lianica’s wounds.

  While the empress attended to the commander, Brei wandered over to where Dree’alek lay. She crouched down and checked for any signs of a pulse. Nothing. She gently ran her fingers across his face and closed his eyes. “I’m so sorry, my friend,” she whispered.

  A single tear trickled down the side of her face as she realized it was her fault he was dead. She had put him in this position, suspecting what was about to happen; even if she hadn’t known for certain, the vague recollection of events, a kind of premonition if you will, made her aware enough to strategically sidestep her own death.

  If it hadn’t been for the strange time jump, she would have been the one lying dead on the floor. Instead, ensign Dree’alek paid the ultimate price while Brei had narrowly escaped, and saved the empress.

  She didn’t know how or why she was the only one experiencing the strange time shifts, just that she was. Regardless, she decided to keep it to herself until such information absolutely needed to be conveyed.

  23

  In the dark barracks beneath the arena, a mysterious figure crept through the shadows and stepped cautiously between the piles of sleeping gladiators all sprawled about the shared communal room. Creeping daintily across the sandstone floor with bare feet, moving as stealthily as a Lafor’allenthal indigo panther, the prowling shadow came to a standstill above the sleeping red-skin, Ishtar Bantu, who lay sound asleep on a cement shelf against the farthest back wall.

  A pair of hands reached down and carefully coiled their way around Ishtar’s throat, slowly tightening like the giant boa constrictor of Thermicron 5–the moon of the Snake King, Niddak Najara. Delicate hands squeezed tighter and tighter, clamping down with white-knuckled determination. Almost instantaneously, Ishtar’s golden eyes snapped wide open and her hands flew to the wrists of her attacker.

  When she saw Danica’s hate-filled eyes staring down at her, she mustered a hoarse growl from her clamped air pipes. “Do it,” she wheezed. To test Danica’s resolve, she let go of her wrists and gave no further protest.

  Danica’s amber eyes glowed hot with rage and her clasp tightened, her slender blue fingers sinking into the red flesh of Ishtar’s neck. On the battlefield, she’d killed lots of enemy soldiers. This would be no different, she told herself.

  “Kill…me…” Ishtar managed to say with whatever remaining breath she had left, then, unable to get her breath back, her eyelids began to flutter and her eyes rolled back in her head.

  Just to be sure the deceitful wench wasn’t playing tricks on her, Danica leaned forward, applying her full weight on Ishtar’s throat, and snarled, “Die you unholy succubus.”

  From behind her, a vicious shock hit Danica between the shoulder blades and she stiffened into a board and, motor functions completely frozen by the immobilizing bite of raw electricity, she tottered to one side and fell to the floor beside Ishtar’s unconscious body.

  The blue sparking tip of the stun-rod crackled and hissed like an angry electric knifefish from the sulfuric swamps of Skallek. It hovered above her menacingly, warning her to stay still. When she tried to move, the stun-rod rammed her squarely in the lower back, directly above her right kidney, hitting her a second time with another paralyzing volt. She groaned from the burning, pain-laced current that surged through her and convulsed on the floor.

  “Save it for the arena, sweetheart,” a large Dragonian said, his forked tongue flicking on the air as he gauged her resolve to continue on with this misconduct.

  Danica rolled onto her side and gazed up at the guard who held the flickering baton at his side. She recognized the lizard man as the same one who’d given her a vote of confidence before ushering her out onto the battlefield early yesterday.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” she grunted through the pain. The sharp twinge of clamped muscles now began to burn as though scorched by fire. Electrocution sucked.

  “Double shift,” he said with a friendly nod. “Now am I going to have to tase you again and drag your sorry ass to a detention cell, or are you going to behave?”

  Danica nodded. “I’ll behave,” she grumbled defiantly. The Dragonian grinned at her and then sauntered off, twirling the stun-baton as he went.

  Every muscle ached and Danica let out a heavy groan as she sat up. She rolled her neck across her stiff shoulders and tried to loosen up. But it was like trying to bend planks of oak. Groaning again, she gave up and just lay back on the cool cement wall.

  “You should have slit my throat with a knife,” Ishtar said, her voice rougher than gravel. She reached up and massaged her bruised neck. “It would have been quicker and quieter.”

  Danica scowled at Ishtar, her hate still burning intensely behind the veil of her amber eyes. “I didn’t have a knife,” she informed acerbically. “Otherwise I would have.”

  Ishtar stared at her for a moment and then let out a quaint chuckle.

  “What?” Danica snapped.

  “We make a good team, you and I,” Ishtar finally said with a raspy voice, and gave Danica a half smile.

  Danica shot her a disgusted look and smacked her teeth in annoyance at even the mere suggestion. Then, refusing even to entertain the idea, she rose to her feet and stalked off.

  Ishtar couldn’t help but smile to herself. Reaching down to her loincloth, she slid her hand across her left thigh and the brought up a small shank she’d crafted from some twine and a piece of broken glass from one of the beer bottles she had found at the dining hall earlier. It was curved like an eagle’s talon and gleamed in the dim rays of light that came from the edges of the room.

  She twirled the makeshift blade in her hands and then lay back down. Sure, she could have taken Danica out at any moment. But she was more than a little bit curious to see if the blue-skin had what it took to kill her. More importantly, however, she knew that tomorrow’s match would be even tougher than the one they had faced today. And that meant she would have to rely on the banjax for a little while longer, whether she liked it or not.

  When Danica returned to her quarters, she found an unfamiliar green-skin sleeping on her cot. The woman’s avocado colored leg hung limply off the bed, poking out from a heather brown cotton blanket, as she snored lightly.

  Danica nudge the woman’s leg with her foot to jostle her awake, but she was a sound sleeper. So, Danica kicked her. Hard.

  “Ow!” the woman yelped, recoiling her leg and sitting up. She rubbed her bleary eyes and let out a tired yawn, which she proceeded to speak through groggily. “What was that for?”

  “Because…you’re in my space, stranger,” Danica informed the squatter.

  “Then how come you ain’t sleepin’ in it?”

  “I had some affairs to settle.” Danica stopped herself as she realized she didn’t owe this woman an explanation. Growing terse, she barked, “It’s none of your business. Now move it, sister.”

  The Bre’lal woman sat up and threw off the blanket and stret
ched her arms behind her head, locking her elbows and staring back at Danica with a seductive smile. “You sure? After all, nights are cold in this Helios hole.”

  Diverting her gaze, Danica looked away. “My Gilded God, you’re not wearing any clothes.”

  “I never do when I sleep,” said the girl as if sleeping in the nude was a requisite for a good slumber. “Except, you know, when there’s a dozen raunchy gladiators who’d gladly take advantage of you while you slept. But sometimes a girl just needs a break from it all, you know?”

  Danica slowly craned her neck back around and met the girl’s gaze. “So, let me guess, you’re the hired comfort woman.”

  “One of about a dozen full-time sex workers who work in the hypogeum under the amphitheater. Mostly we attend to the victors’ needs, and are paid handsomely for it. But sometimes we will steal away to other contestants…the ones who catch our fancy…if you get my meaning.”

  She winked and tossed her wavy forest green hair over her avocado colored shoulder and then leaned back onto the cool wall of the cell. Her dark green nipples stood erect on her ample breasts and her teal eyes seemed to have an unnatural depth to them.

  “You seem uncommonly comfortable for a slave girl,” Danica said, putting one hand on her tilted hip as she studied the Bre’lal woman.

  The girl laughed and sat up. Leaning forward she gave Danica a peculiar look, one eye squinting at her with scrutiny. “I’m no slave. This is my profession. Like all sex workers, I’m contracted by IGS to work the arenas. The better you do your job, the better the arena you're assigned. Unlike you, however, gladiatrix, I can come and go as I please.”

  All of a sudden Danica’s interest piqued and she took a step closer. If what the green-skin was saying was true, then she might just have her key out of this place.

  The Bre’lal girl smiled, batted her teal eyes, and spread her bare legs apart, inviting Danica to come closer.

  “I know this is a lot to ask, but can you get a message out for me? I’ll pay you handsomely, of course.”

  “Well, that sort of depends,” she replied, cocking her chin as she looked vacantly up at the corner of the room mulling it over. “I might be able to help you…under one condition.”

  “Anything. Just name it,” Danica said, her eyes wide with anticipation. For the first time in what seemed like ages, she felt things were going her way. If she could get a message to Lianica, she’d be saved.

  The green-skin slid to the edge of the cot and arched her pelvis forward. At the same time, she grabbed her knees and pulled them apart even more, spreading her nether regions as far as she could as she put herself on full display. Sliding her hand across her thigh, she reached between her legs and spread the tender folds of her labia to show Danica how wet she already was.

  Danica had heard that Bre’lal women had exceptional control over their libido. Not only could they turn it on and off at will, but they could dial it up to eleven in less time than it took for a crooked senator to get it up. Which made them the perfect species to monopolize the sex trade in the galaxy. Which they did. There wasn’t a planet, moon, or backwater asteroid mining belt that didn’t employ Bre’lal women. And they weren’t just a part of the empire, they were a necessary part of it.

  Without their services, violence and chaos would run rampant. They served a vital function in society, and although some condemned them as wanton whores and unclean harlots, Danica knew there was more to them than that. Like her, they were people. And like her, they were just doing what they needed to get by in this harsh end of the galaxy.

  “You get me to orgasm and I’ll gladly help you out,” she answered, a faint smile forming on her lips. “But, if you don’t get me off, then I’m afraid the deal will also be off.”

  Danica raised an eyebrow. “Let me get this straight. All you want is to have an orgasm?”

  “Look, lady,” the Bre’lal woman said in an exasperated tone, she clamped her legs shut and raised a finger as though she were making an important point, “I work all day and sometimes all night long and it’s all the same thing. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am. It’s fun, sure. Rough and tumble. Sometimes even pleasurable. But I can’t even remember the last time I came. So, help me to help you. I think that’s only fair, don’t you?”

  Danica didn’t need to think twice. She got down on her knees and scooted up to the edge. Resting her hands on the Bre’lal woman’s soft thighs, she got into position. “You have yourself a deal,” Danica mumbled.

  The Bre’lal woman smiled and then reached down and grabbed the back of Danica’s head and guided the Dagon’s blue lips to her labia. She moaned as she felt the spongey softness of Danica’s pink tongue slip inside her and slide up through the folds of her labia until it found the small nub of her clitoris.

  “By the way,” the green skinned woman said in a haughty voice, “my name is Algaia Octavia Zhan.”

  Danica attempted to pull away to introduce herself, as awkward as the timing was, but Algaia merely reeled her back in and forced her to keep going down on her.

  “No, don’t stop,” she said between pants. “Everyone…knows…who…you are.”

  Danica ran two fingers up under her moist chin and then shoved them into Algaia with extreme force. She let out a surprised chirp and clamped her thighs together tightly around Danica’s face. Massaging with both her fingers and tongue, Danica licked and fingered her partner for several minutes. Unable to it hold back any longer, Algaia gasped loudly and orgasmed.

  “Don’t…stop…” she said, her chest heaving as her heart pounded with ecstasy. This invigorated Danica and she doubled down on pleasing the green-skin whose legs were currently wrapped around her head.

  The fact remained, she needed Algaia’s help. And even though her jaw felt like cramping, she wasn’t going to quit until the girl had made good on her promise.

  It was only another minute or so before Algaia covered her mouth and screamed a muffled cry into her cupped hands. At the same time, a spray of ejaculation erupted from her and soaked Danica quite thoroughly, but she did not shy away from the thick, sweet scented shower. Rather, she realized that she, too, had grown rather excited in the carnal act and wanted to keep going until both participants were completely satisfied.

  “Thanks,” Algaia huffed, gently stroking her own skin in a euphoric daze. She allowed her fingers to fondle her nipples, as though they had a mind of their own, and then glide across her sweat dappled chest from one breast to another. “I needed that more than you’ll ever know.”

  “I think I can imagine,” Danica replied. As she rose to her feet, her carnal excitement growing inside her, she began undressing. Letting her soaked rags fall to a heap on the floor, she stood before Algaia; her male organ having unfurled from its hidden pouch from within her vagina, it now stood fully erect on her feminine body. Its engorged purple tip bobbed softly in the cool air, as if presenting itself for the green-skin to with as she pleased.

  “It appears I’m not the only one in need of relief.”

  Embarrassed by how vulnerable she felt revealing her true nature to a complete stranger, Danica blushed and covered her penis with both hands and looked away. “It’s been a rough few weeks, to say the least. I’d rather not—”

  Before Danica could even finish her sentence Algaia had her lips around Danica’s cock and began giving her the best blowjob she had ever experienced. No more than three minutes had passed when Danica groaned out in pleasure and came inside Algaia’s mouth.

  “Oh my Gilded Lord!” Danica cried out as she came. It was a complete shock to her that she ejaculated at all since the penis of all Dagon women, intersex by nature, was merely a vestigial leftover in their specie’s evolutionary history. It wasn’t supposed to be capable of producing sperm. But in rare cases, something would activate the dormant gonads and the woman’s penis could work.

  She suspected that the doctors had repaired her body more thoroughly than she’d had originally estimated. Running her finger along th
e scar that stretched cross her lower abdomen, she realized that her male organ was now fully functional. She didn’t know quite what to think about that in this moment, so she pinned the thought for later.

  Out of breath and reeling with Bacchic delight, she pushed Algaia back onto the bed and rested her blue face on her sweaty, avocado colored breasts. As they lay there, panting softly, Danica swirled her blue finger around the Bre’lal woman’s forest green nipple and sighed out a satisfactory breath.

  “That was…”

  “Amazing,” Algaia answered, finishing Danica’s sentence for her. Curling up on the bed, Algaia wrapped her legs and arms around Danica and held her. She had a million things she wanted to talk about and about twice as many questions, but Danica was already passed out in her arms and had fallen into a deep sleep. She smiled and then let herself drift off to sleep, too.

  In the morning Danica was pleased to find that Algaia had not slunk off in the middle of the night and left her abandoned with but a fading memory of their prior entanglement. She stayed. She lay on the bed beside her, gazing into Danica’s yellow eyes with her teal ones.

  “You stayed,” she said in a surprised voice.

  “Good morning to you too,” Algaia said. She batted her green eyelashes and leaned in and kissed Danica on her dark purple lips.

  Danica pulled back, taken aback by the candid nature of the Bre’lal woman. Last night was one thing, but acting as though they were old lovers, like it wasn’t just a one-night stand, was, well, she didn’t want Algaia getting the wrong idea.

  They had given each other what they had needed. What their bodies craved. But beyond the physical attraction, the green-skin had nothing to offer her. This wasn’t love. This was just raw, uninhibited, sex. No attachments. No drama.

  “What’s the matter?” Algaia asked.

  “Nothing…it’s just that…”

  “Well, spit it out,” she goaded, trying to get Danica to get whatever was bothering her off her chest.