by Tristan Vick
“Hey!” Ishtar shouted, looking over her shoulder at Danica. “Snap out of it.” But it was no use. The poison had already taken effect.
Danica stood inert in the middle of the arena, the blank expression on her face unmoving. She seemed stuck in an emotionless stupor, staring at some unremarkable patch of dirt in the distance. But, like a robot programmed for a very specific mission, she blinked twice, looked up, and then promptly reached down and tore the arrow out of her leg without so much as a whimper.
Blood spurted as the arrow tore free of her blue flesh, but the pain didn’t seem to register. Unfazed, she merely turned to face Jegra, her eyes somehow entirely vacant. Her sunken eyelids and detached gaze were evidence enough that the toxin surging through her system had altered her in some terrible way. It seemed as though her soul had been swallowed up by a great dark void along with any compassion she might have once had. All that remained was a stone-cold viciousness.
With the arrow clutched in her hand, she charged forward with a single-minded goal. Kill the empress. Kill Jegra.
34
Raw, throbbing pain swept through every inch of Dakroth’s body. Jegra’s sucker punch not only fractured his jaw but left his entire body in shock. His whole body felt as though it had just survived a stampede of Angorian bison. “She’ll pay for this,” he grumbled, rubbing his jaw.
“Try not to speak,” a nurse said as she administered a painkiller using a hyper-air-spray-injector. She mashed the device into the side of his neck and it went off with a hiss. Dakroth groaned and clutched the nurse by her slender, indigo arm. She flinched from the pain of his grip. But as Dakroth’s eyes glossed over with the soothing balm of the drugs, he slowly relinquished his hold.
As the nurse packed her first-aid kit, Dakroth’s roving eyes followed her indigo legs up to the white miniskirt she wore. Of course, she was dressed according to how he liked his medical staff to dress. Both the women and men nurses wore short tops and miniskirts. Perhaps a little sexist, but he felt that as long as the dress code was gender mutual, there wasn’t any inequality going on. So what if there was an occasion nip-slip or a bit of plum-peekaboo?
He also couldn’t help but admire her darker indigo skin. Like many species, Dagons were made up of a variety of races. There were fair skinned lineages, who had lavender skin or baby blue skin, and there were those who had deep rich blue tones of indigo and cobalt to their skin. In his estimation, this nurse was a real beauty. One of the prettiest he’d seen in months. Her dark indigo skin and full, black painted lips drove him wild with lust and he knew that he had to have her, right here and now.
After she finished putting away her things, the exotic-looking nurse put the strap of the first-aid kit over her shoulder and helped Emperor Dakroth to his feet. Bracing him up, she threw his arm over her shoulder and helped steady him. “Let’s get you to your quarters so you can rest a bit.”
“You read my mind,” he said in a slurred, yet distinctly orgiastic manner. “And I can think of ten ways right now on how you can help me rest.” He leaned in to her and whispered something into her ear which prompted her eyes to widen as her cheeks flushed with shock.
“My lord,” the nurse gasped, taken aback by his brazenness. “With all due respect, it wouldn’t be proper.”
“Proper?” he laughed drunkenly, “I wouldn’t dream of it. I simply want you to try and relax.”
“Relax?” she asked in a seductive voice, playing along with him as was expected. “Tell me, my lord, how do you want me to relax?”
Dakroth paused and eyed the nurse up and down, admiring her cleavage. “You know. Just let down your hair, relax, be open with me. Let’s get to know each other better.”
“Be open with you?” she teased. “How open?”
“I want you to be as open with me as you can be,” he said in a salacious tone. She smiled at him, ignoring his lewd innuendo, and bit her bottom lip in a flirtatious manner. “What’s your name?” he asked, rubbing his hand along her arm, letting his fingers dance across her indigo skin.
“Callestra Van Morgan,” she replied.
“You wouldn’t happen to be related to Targon Van Morgan by any chance, would you?”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “Senator Targon is my father. How’d you know?”
“The aquiline nose gave it away,” he said suavely, rubbing the arc of her nose and then playfully bopping it with his finger. A trait all Morgans shared. He winked at her and then added, “A truer sign of pedigree there’s none.”
Callestra blushed and looked away when, all of a sudden, the emperor pressed her firmly into the wall. Leaning up against her, he reached down and felt up her skirt. “Ah,” he said with a pleased, smile, “Just the way I like it. Ready and willing.”
Callestra let the first-aid kit slip off her shoulder and fall to the metal floor plating. As it landed with a clink, she clutched Dakroth’s wrist, holding his hand in place, right between her thighs. Then, swiveling her hips, she slid down onto his fingers and back up. “I always want to be open with you,” she said, throwing his same innuendo back at him.
There was a brief pause as they stared at each other with a burning intensity, and then, as if the start of a race had sounded, Callestra threw her leg up for Dakroth to catch and she clutched the emperor by the nape of his neck and drew him into her.
As their lips came together hungrily and their tongues danced a sultry tango between each other’s open mouths, they shared a sensual moan. Hands ran up and down one another’s bodies as they quickly began undressing each other in a lust driven haste. The quicker they could get down to business, the better.
Once Dakroth had stripped off Callestra’s white nurse’s uniform only to reveal a classy set of mango colored lingerie that complimented her indigo skin, he buried his face in between her breasts, dabbling them with hot kisses, and running his fingers up the curve of her back, he paused midway to unfasten her bra. His fingers fumbled to unhook the brassiere and his face buried in the soft mounds of her breasts, he never even saw the second NeedleAir jet injector spray she drew up.
A loud, menacing hiss stung Dakroth’s arm and he shot a sharp glance to where the pain came from, only to find Callestra jamming the medical device into his shoulder. Dakroth winced from the pain and looked back at the dark painted eyes gazing at him with a gleeful kind of rebelliousness. He wasn’t certain if this was some kind of kinky foreplay or something else. But, either way, he didn’t much care for unexpected surprises.
“Hey, what did you do that for?” Barely able to finish the sentence before blacking out, he buckled under the heavy weight of the drugs and slumped to the ground.
Not wanting to harm the emperor visibly, Callestra caught him under his arms and set him down gently.
After dressing, she reached up and touched her ear. A faint digital tone chimed and her entire visage rippled with a digital distortion and then the holographic image turned off revealing Raven Nightguard, wearing only a skimpy nurse’s uniform.
“Jegra warned me you were all hands,” she said, in a disgusted tone. Shuddering as she made a sour face, she knew she’d need to take a long hot shower in order to get the Dakroth off her. Tucking the medical injector into a side pocket on her tight-fitting, white vest, she turned and scooped Dakroth up in her arms and hauled him back over to the transportation pad.
She quickly proceeded to fold his arms across his chest and then rearranged the rest of him into a fetal position. Once she’d finished placing him in the exact position she needed, she marched back over to the control panel and typed in a set of coordinates.
The computer chimed, signaling the coordinates were imputed, and she rushed back to the transportation pad. climbing on, Raven knelt down by the sleeping emperor and waited as the transportation pad hummed to life. A few seconds later they were both engulfed in a yellow light.
Gradually, their very matter began to dissolve into tiny hexagonal packets of light, the particles swirling about in a count
erclockwise fashion and then rising into the ceiling only to be projected to some distant location where they’d be reassembled again.
No sooner had they transported away when the doors slid open with a whisper. A cute, petite nurse wearing the same skimpy nurse’s outfit that Raven had worn earlier stepped into the room. She looked around only to find an abandoned first-aid kit sitting in the middle of the floor by itself.
“That’s odd,” she said, scratching her chin as she scanned the room for the emperor. Assuming he must have gotten tired of waiting and left, she shrugged, picked up the extra first-aid kit, and left to return to her regular duties.
Part of her was glad the emperor wasn’t there, because she knew his penchant for having his way with cute nurses and, although she’d never admit it publicly, she didn’t really like the emperor. He was a womanizing brute and a power-hungry dictator. Among the Dagon citizenry, there were just about as many people fed up with Dakroth’s arrogance and failed policies as those who still supported him. But with the rise of Jegra, it seemed a new dawn was approaching.
Still, the empress, not being of pure Dagon blood, faced a lot of opposition. Although she may have secured the people’s confidence, her political sway was minimal at best. In fact, the entire senate was only lukewarm when it came to their appreciation of their new imperatrix and what she represented. And she still had a lot to prove. Most of all to Senator Targon Van Morgan, who was the longest sitting senator on the Dagon council and who closely allied himself with Dakroth’s political interests. He was Jegra’s most vocal detractor.
Nearly all his televid tirades were admonitions against the empress. She could never do any right in his eyes. Which was funny, considering that Dakroth was the one who had made her Imperatrix in the first place.
The nurse cleared her mind as she walked along the ship’s corridor back to sickbay. As she passed a portal, she glanced out at the beautiful starscape. Dagon Prime hung in the sky like a blue and green opal, while Thessalonica glowed hot orange as its orbit brought it into the evening eclipse behind the glorious planet.
There was a brief glimmer just beyond the window and for an instant, she thought she had seen the form of a ship. But the moment she blinked it was gone again. She blinked a couple more times for good measure, just to be sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. This was her first time stationed aboard a starship, let alone a battlecruiser, so she was still all nerves. But she took a deep breath and calmed herself. It was nothing, she assured herself.
“Amora Van Gogh!” a voice called out.
She spun to find Doctor Darius Ebbedon waving to her from the four-way junction up ahead. She smiled and waved back as she continued along at her brisk pace.
“I heard you treated the Lord Emperor. How was your first time?” the doctor asked, pulling up alongside her and matching her brisk pace.
There was a subtle implication that she didn’t appreciate, but she felt she had a responsibility to relay the truth. Pausing in the middle of the corridor, she turned to the doctor and relayed her account of what had transpired. “That’s the thing. You see, I went to treat the emperor,” she said timidly, “but when I arrived on the scene he was simply gone.”
“But the emergency medical call came from the Lord Emperor personally,” Dr. Ebbedon said, scowling at Amora. “Did you even try looking for him or are you telling me that you failed to treat your patient and left it at that?”
Amora turned her head and looked back over her shoulder the way she’d come. “I’m sorry, doctor. I can go back if—”
“No, that won’t be necessary, Amora,” Dr. Ebbedon reassured her. If the emperor really had gone missing, he’d be as much at fault as she was. And he didn’t want to be the one to incur Dakroth’s wrath, so he promptly went over to the glossy black wall panel and touched it with the palm of his hand. A sudden flurry of activity lit up around the pane where his hand was pressed, showing all kinds of displays related to the activity of the ship. “Computer, locate the Lord Emperor for me.”
[*The Lord Emperor is not currently on board,*] replied the ship’s computer.
Dr. Ebbedon shot Amora a confused look. Keeping his hand on the touch-panel display, he frowned, and said, “Explain.”
[*The Lord Emperor is logged as transporting off the ship seven minutes ago.*]
“That’s a couple minutes before I arrived,” Amora informed the doctor.
He nodded, taking in Amora’s information, and then formulated a new question for the computer. “Computer, what was the Emperor’s destination?”
The was a brief pause, unusual for a state-of-the-art quantum computer and fully functional A.I. Then, the female Dagon voice of the ship’s computer replied, [*Unknown.*]
Upset, Dr. Ebbedon pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a moment as he gathered himself. Opening them again, he turned to the black panel on the wall and said, “Computer, playback the last known video footage of Lord Emperor Dakroth.
A digital televid box lit up on the screen and Amora and the doctor watched as Dakroth finger-banged an incredibly sexy, yet unfamiliar nurse.
“Do you recognize this nurse?” asked Amora.
“No, I haven’t seen a nurse with legs like that,” Ebbedon said in all seriousness. Amora shot him a curt look but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Maybe she’s new.”
“You’re the newest member on staff that I’m aware of,” Dr. Ebbedon relayed. They both watched as Dakroth and the sexy nurse sank out of view of the digital camera. Although there wasn’t any further footage, the transporter log registered two bodies. Dr. Ebbedon didn’t need to have a medical degree to know what likely happened next. Dakroth had beamed his little plaything to a secret love den somewhere. In fact, the Imperial code had been used to encrypt the transport site, meaning only another member of the Imperial family could decode it.
Amora and Dr. Ebbedon turned toward each other with confounded looks.
“I know the emperor is famous for his sexual prowess, but logging an official medical request to bang the first nurse he came across seems a little suspect. Doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Ebbedon replied, his tone gravely serious. And, the truth was, he honestly didn’t know. It seemed like something Dakroth might do, but it didn’t seem to be the way he’d go about doing it, especially since the emperor was injured. Also, there was the issue of the mysterious nurse that neither he, the attending, or Amora, another nurse, could recognize. The ship was big, and this sleek and mysterious vixen could be part of the medical staff. But until he was absolutely certain, he didn’t want to risk making any premature assumptions. After thinking it over, he finally sighed and said, “I suppose I’m going to have to report this.”
“Will you have to report me, too?” Amora asked, a twinge of fear in her voice.
“No, no,” Dr. Ebbedon chuckled, waving his hand as though he were shooing away an absurd suggestion. “I’m sure we can work out some other arrangement so that I don’t have to write up a formal reprimand.”
When she caught him eyeing her figure, she rolled her eyes. Of course, by other arrangement, he meant sex. That’s all most Dagon people could think about. Duty, honor, and sex.
Ever since she was a little girl, though, she’d felt different somehow. The lubricious and promiscuous inclination of her species never seemed to interest her much. Sex was not only uninteresting to her but seemed completely unnecessary. If she had to, she’d go through with it. But she’d rather not, if it could be helped. She was rare among the Dagon people, being a virgin and all, especially since virgins were virtually unheard of in this day and age. But her personal life was none of anyone’s business but her own. If she decided to have sex, it would be on her own terms.
“Uh…yes,” she finally replied. “Whatever you think is a fitting punishment for me given the fact I failed to carry out my duties.”
“All right,” the doctor replied in a pleased tone. “We’ll talk more about this la
ter.” With that said, Dr. Ebbedon and she hastily turned and retreated up the corridor. As he hurried along, he glanced off to the side, his eyes fixing themselves on Amora, and added, “I’ll need to take this news to the Sub-Commander. In the meantime, return to your duties.”
“Yes, doctor,” Amora replied, bowing cordially as Dr. Ebbedon disappeared around the bend of the corridor a short distance ahead.
Once he was out of sight she straightened back up and let out a pent-up sigh. At least she wouldn’t need to resort to appeasing her superior’s sexual lust just to get out of a minor incident that wasn’t even her fault. Hopefully by the time he’d finished figuring out where the Lord Emperor had disappeared to, he’d have forgotten all about her role in the matter.
Groggy, Emperor Dakroth tried to sit up, but found himself firmly secured to what appeared to be an automated dental hygiene chair. Even his wrists were strapped down, so he couldn’t very well use his laser finger ability to break free. Which meant, whoever had abducted him knew exactly what they were doing.
Still unable to focus, he scanned the room and examined the blinking lights of a computer console and the faint glow of some red backlighting over the exit. The rest of the room was shrouded in darkness.
With barely enough light to see anything at all, he squinted as he peered into the dimly lit crevices of the chamber. Once his eyes had adjusted enough to see more clearly, he was able to make out the outline of a darkened figure standing off in a corner of the room. It watched him in silence and he felt a small twinge of dread building in the pit of his stomach.
“Who’s there?” he asked in his most authoritative tone which came off sounding more like a demand than an inquiry. The one thing Dakroth couldn’t afford was to appear weak. At the last minute, he added, “I order you to show yourself.”
The mysterious figure slowly stepped forward and into the light to reveal none other than the famous bounty hunter and smuggler, Raven Nightguard.