Taken Liberty v5

by Steven H. Wilson

  "I... I pretend it's you, doing those things to me. I pretend it's your dick inside me. Even when it hurts. It makes it a little better."

  "But I wouldn't hurt you," he said.

  "I know. That's what makes it better."

  He kissed me again. He ran his little hands over my naked back. I felt the tingling warmth that came at night, when I touched myself, come over me now. He shifted, pressing his body against me, and I felt the hardness between his legs. I reached down and took hold of it, gently. He moaned against my lips.

  Laying my hand against his ear, I drew his face back a little, so I could look into his emerald eyes. "Could you put it inside me now?"

  * * *

  Druberj and I saw each other whenever we could. It wasn't every day, 'cause I wasn't in the garden every day, and I wasn't always alone. It was only ever for a few minutes at a time. We didn't have sex every time, either, but most times.

  When Druberj would come and wait for me in the hedge, he'd bring a book, 'cause he'd often have a long wait. He was the kind of person whose mind had to always be doing something, so he'd read. Times we didn't have sex, for whatever reason, or, after we did, if I just didn't want to leave him yet, I'd ask him to read to me.

  I think I even liked the reading better than the sex, and I really liked the sex. Just hearing his voice, soft and gentle, and speaking only for me. Only to tell me whatever stories there were to be told from his books. He'd found one book of stories called "Fairy Tales." They had the funniest people in them, doing the strangest things. They climbed magic beanstalks, and killed giants. They met talking animals, and changed into other kinds of people. Some of them were talking animals. Some of them were only as big as your thumb. Some of them lived cruel lives, like we did; but a lot of them found a way out. An escape. I started to think maybe I had found an escape, right here among the Inihu. I'd found an escape in Druberj, and in the incredible stories he read to me.

  I wanted to ask him to teach me to read. I planned to. I never got the chance.

  * * *

  It was the middle of the night, and I was in the barracks, sound asleep. At first, when a pair of hands yanked me bodily to a standing position, I didn't know where I was, or what was happening. As I came around, I realized that two of the teachers had me in their grasp. One held both my arms. The other had hold of my hair, and used it to yank my head back, so I could look up at her.

  "Don't make a sound," she spat at me. They dragged me from the room. I was taken to the teachers' room – a little, windowless closet just outside the barracks. My blood ran cold when they led me into the room. It wasn't empty. Jin was there, for one. She wouldn't look at me. The other person in the room had no trouble looking me in the eye. It was him that made my blood run cold: the man with the scar over his eye. The scar I could never forget, or keep out of my nightmares. The scar that had loomed over me as this man had raped me for the first time.

  "They call you Aer'La?" he asked.

  I nodded. The teacher who had had me by the hair slapped me hard.

  "Speak when you're spoken to, bitch!"

  I swallowed blood and said, "Yes, Master."

  "I'm Master Harl, girl. I'm in charge, here. Do you know why you're here?"

  I looked at Jin, wondering why she was here. Were we both in trouble, or – ?

  Master Harl slapped the cheek the teacher had left untouched.

  "Look at me, girl! Not at anything else!"

  "I haven't done anything..." I muttered.

  The teacher raised her arm to cuff me again, but Master Harl stopped her. "Never mind that. We're going to whip her thoroughly enough later." He put his face in mine. His breath stank as much as I remembered it had years before. It mixed with my own stink of fear. "And we'll add extra for lying."

  "Please... " I whispered.

  "Please?" Master Harl demanded. "Please what? Please don't whip you? Be glad you're getting a whipping, girl. Be thankful you're about to receive the worst whipping of your life. A whipping means we're going to let you live."

  He looked at me, waiting for an answer. I said nothing. A sick feeling was overtaking me. There was only one thing that they could have found out to make them this mad.

  He paced a few steps back and forth in front of me. "You're very lucky, really, that I found out first." He gestured at Jin. "That your sister wanted t'be good to ya, and let us handle this... in the family."

  I looked to Jin, whose dead eyes wouldn't meet mine. "What did you tell them?" I pleaded.

  "It was wrong what you did," she said coldly.

  Harl reached out and cupped the back of her head with his hand, fondly stroking her pale hair. "That's right. Little Jin saw wrongdoing happening in our house. She did what any good girl would do. She told her teachers." He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a white glob. It had been a cube once. I recognized it. It had been a sugar cube. The teachers gave them to us as special rewards. I'd had one in my life. I wouldn't have wanted this one. It looked like it had been in his pocket since the coat was made. Its corners had worn down, and it was dirty and wrapped in lint.

  He held it out to Jin. "There's your reward, my good girl."

  She clawed it greedily from his hand and shoved it into her mouth. Then she looked at me and smiled in a way that made me wish I could rip her face from her skull.

  "If you had been found out by others, I couldn't have kept you safe, my girl," Master Harl went on. "Not given what damage you've done. You see, a girl who commits perversion... she can be salvaged. With enough whippings and grog, a girl whose sinful nature leads her to want to choose her own partners for sexual deviance can be made to behave herself again. But a boy..." His face darkened. He turned murderous eyes on me. "A boy cannot be fixed. His nature is changed. Once he's had a girl, or a boy he's picked himself, he can never be brought back to the same desirable level of compliance." He shook his head, mockingly. "It's very sad. If Master Hix had discovered you, ruining his prize boy, he'd have killed you outright."

  Master Hix! My worst fears were confirmed. They knew. But did Master Hix know? Had he been told that...? But Harl wasn't shutting up.

  "For you see, little Aer'La, a boy in such a state is no use to anyone. A boy who's worth five of your miserable kind, once ruined, must be disposed of...

  Master Harl opened the door. Someone was standing just outside. "Come in," Harl said. "Come in, and show her."

  Master Hix entered, carrying something draped in a stained sheet. Something about the size of a small human body. I shook my head violently. I knew what was under the sheet, but I didn't want it to be true. Somehow, I had to be wrong...

  Tears were running down the fat old man's face as he held the body in his arms, cradling it. "You filthy little bitch," he sobbed. "You filthy..." He buried his head against the covered bundle.

  Harl clapped Hix on the shoulder. "Steady now, Master," he said. "You know how I regret your loss, but the law is the law. And the law says that a ruined boy must be destroyed."

  He ripped away the sheet. I screamed and dropped to my knees. The purple blood which had stained the sheet was all over the naked chest and arms, all over the perfect face. The perfect, dead face, with its emerald eyes still open, wide in shock. Blood trickled from the lips that had kissed every inch of my body.

  I screamed and screamed. Vomit rose in my throat, and I choked it out on the floor, and over my legs. All the while I told myself I was wrong. They were just trying to scare me. This was some other boy they'd butchered. My Druberj wasn't dead!

  My eyes met those of Master Hix, both flooded with tears. "You killed him," I sobbed. "He never was anything but good to you, and –"

  Harl grabbed the back of my neck. "The law is the law!" he roared. Then he made his voice gentle again. "And don't insult good Master Hix, girl. He loved his boy. He'd never have harmed him. It was I who was forced to do what needed doing."

  He smiled. He'd killed Druberj. He'd slit that perfect throat, and he smiled.

  I c
an't tell you exactly what happened next. It happened fast, and, for me, the world seemed to be spinning at lightning speed. I do know that, as I lowered my head, as the horror in front of me sank in, my eyes locked on Harl, on the bit of him that was directly in front of my face as I knelt. My eyes locked on his crotch, covered in rough fabric in front of me.

  I hurled myself forward and bit, snapping like a wild animal. I grabbed his legs and dug my nails in, raking through the fabric to tear the skin underneath. I sank my teeth in hard and butted my head forward. If the cloth kept me from biting off his dick or balls, I'd sure as hell smash them with my skull.

  Harl screamed. The teachers both scrambled to tear me from him. I splayed my arms and legs out and spun my body. I'd lost my mind entirely. I wanted to kill everything in sight. I wanted to rip out their souls and stuff them into Druberj's dead body, to trade with the gods for his life. I wanted, more than anything, to kill as many of them as I could, before they killed me.

  And, oh, I wanted them to kill me. Yes, I wanted to die. I wanted to go wherever they'd sent my Druberj. If that was hell, I'd march in, singing.

  I broke one teacher's nose with the back of my hand. The other got hold of my ankle, but I pulled her off balance and her head cracked on the stone floor. I saw blood ooze out, but I didn't hold still to see more. Shoving aside the woman with the broken nose, I hurled myself across the room, ducking low to avoid Harl's arms as they grabbed for me.

  Frantically, I looked around for a weapon. Something light enough to swing but heavy enough to break bones. Instead, I saw Jin, huddled in the corner, the sugar still caked around the edges of her mouth and trickling down her chin in a stream of drool. She wasn't smiling anymore. She was babbling in terror. She was terrified. Of me.

  I pounced, landing on top of her, our naked bodies tangling up in a heap on the floor. She didn't even scream. She just moaned stupidly. No words came out. She didn't even really fight back. When I grabbed her head in my hands, she just sobbed; and when I twisted her neck, and it snapped like a twig, she didn't even give a cry of surprise.

  Killing Jin drained a little of my anger, and it slowed me down. I wasted a second looking at the first person I'd ever killed. It was a second too long. Harl had me. He wrapped his hands around my throat and catapulted me to the floor, landing on top of me and bringing a heavy knee down hard against my pelvis. I didn't have enough breath to scream in pain.

  "Kill her!" shrieked Master Hix.

  Harl looked down at me, still gasping out his breaths. His eyes, again, were black and murderous. "You deserve to die, bitch," he said. He spat, hitting me in the face. I shut my eyes. I was ready. Please, I begged whatever god would listen, just let me die. Let it only hurt a little. Harl tightened his grip around my throat.

  Then he sighed. "No. No, Master Hix, I shan't kill her. You may, if you like. I won't stop you."

  There was silence. Hix was thinking about it. Good! Let him kill me! Let someone else who'd touched Druberj, someone who, in his own twisted way, also mourned, let him kill me! That was right.

  "But," Harl cautioned him, "I will take her price out of what I owe you."

  Hix sobbed again. "You're right. I can't afford the loss."

  "Good," said Harl gently. "I do regret what my house has cost you, good Master Hix. We'll sell this animal off planet, and that will help me pay you the price of the boy."

  I opened my eyes. I was not to die, then.

  "When you awaken," Harl said to me, "I believe I'll whip you myself. Yes. I'll enjoy doing that, in return for all you've cost me. But that will come when you awaken."

  He tightened his grip on my throat again, until I couldn't breathe in or out at all. Everything went black.

  * * *

  The naked girl on the bed hugged her knees and sobbed as the memories overwhelmed her. Atal kept silent, allowing her a moment with her feelings. When she lifted her head again, she brushed the hair from her eyes and said, "I'm sorry, Captain. It's just hard to remember it all. A-after that –"

  "Aer'La," Atal said quietly, "that's enough."

  "I'm telling you the truth!" she protested.

  "Yes," he agreed, "I think you are. He stood, and, fighting his own reaction to the pheromone which had only intensified with the telling of her emotional tale, he crossed to lift her off the bed and into his arms. She melted into him, sobbing hard.

  "I don't need to hear anymore. I hadn't meant to bring back painful memories."

  "But now you know. I'm an animal. A killer."

  "Welcome to the human race," he said. She looked up, bewilderment showing through the tears. "No offense meant. I mean, 'welcome to the race of sentient beings.' We all strike out when we've been hurt. You've been hurt more than most."

  "If you let me stay, Captain, I promise I won't hurt anyone... much. I'm good at my job."

  "I'll be the judge of that," he said gently.

  This time, her eyes clouded over with fear. Not the fear of a creature who recognizes a more powerful force, but the fear of someone who stands to lose something precious. Atal brushed the hair from her eyes and rocked her gently.

  "But I'll give you time to let me be the judge of that," he said gently. "And I promise you, Aer'La, that I won't send you away. If you can't be part of my crew, you won't have to leave this ship until we find a safe place for you to go."

  And she hadn't left, until Atal had left Arbiter, and brought her with him. And that was how they'd come to this place, this day...

  And this very large problem.

  Chapter Three

  Departure

  At the moment her superior officers were pondering her fate, Aer'La herself was downing her second "Atal's Stout" of the evening.

  The tavern owner had quickly renamed his signature brew upon receiving the news of the famed Captain's return. His place of business, after all, was situated on Quintil L-5, in orbit between Quintil and its moon, Hestia. The station was the jumping-off point for all major military and commercial transport in the Rigel System. Civilian travelers who dined and drank with him would be very cognizant right now of the fact that Titan was docked just beyond the titanium skin of the station, and of the more stirring fact that Atal was her new captain.

  Civilians wanted to feel good. Atal's return made them feel good. Buying a beer named for him would remind them how good they felt, or so the barkeep hoped. The question was, would the tourists have enough money left for his beer, after they'd spent heavily on official Titan pressure suits, Titan zero-grav shoes, and Jan Atal collectible action dolls? (Especially if they bought the good ones, which still walked and talked hours after they'd left the system?)

  Most members of the military weren't impressed by such frippery, but the former crew of the Arbiter had bought the first round of Atal Stouts (not a flattering name, when you thought about it) out of loyalty to their Captain. They'd bought the second round because it was actually damned drinkable.

  "Honey," asked the waitress as she placed mugs before Aer'La's companions, "D'ya mind if I ask where ya got your skin done?"

  Aer'La looked down at the iridescent blue of her flesh, little covered by a brief tunic and shorts. (It was warm on the station, and spacers strove for comfort above all.) "Did it myself," she told the girl. "It's not blotchy, or anything, is it?"

  "No, it's perfect. The color's you. Goes with your hair." The girl gestured to her own much-exposed flesh, a shocking, magenta-and-yellow domino pattern. "I'm just a little tired of mine, is all. Had it for almost two weeks. I don't suppose you work for cash on the side? Only –"

  Across the bar, a customer called gruffly for service, and the girl rushed away. Aer'La returned to her beer.

  "Your heart just skipped two beats," a voice next to her said.

  It was Cernaq, her Phaetonian shipmate. Like all of his people, the young midshipman was of light build, with white-blond hair and eyes strikingly pale – a yellowish green that almost seemed to glow. Aer'La had heard them referred to as "cat's eyes." She had to
take that comparison on faith. She had never seen a cat.

  He was right. Of course he was right. He was a telepath – a telepath so skilled that he could read, in the minds of others, signals their own bodies sent to their brains. Aer'La didn't know her heart had stopped, but some piece of her brain did; so Cernaq did.

  "I thought for a minute she knew what my makeup job was hiding. I guess she was just making small talk." said Aer'La.

  "And there was no hint of suspicion in her mind," Cernaq assured her. "You need to relax."

  "You don't know what it's like, Cernaq. Looking over your shoulder every minute, to see if someone's recognized you. Wondering if every stranger who gives you a passing glance is really a bounty hunter, or someone who's seen your face on a police holo."

  "I know exactly what it's like," he said. "I've been in your head, remember?" He grinned. "Among other places."

  She couldn't help but laugh at his attempt to be suggestive. It was so unlike a Phaetonian, and so new to him.

  "Besides," Cernaq said, "why would you be in a police holo?"

  Aer'La looked away. "You never know what they might try. I can't trust anyone.."

  "You can trust me," he said sincerely. Much of what Cernaq said had a note of sincerity, of course. Coming from a world where spoken language was rarely used, as the natives communicated telepathically, his speaking voice was slow and deliberate, as if he'd only just learned to use it. That quality added to his air of openness. Well, on a world of mind-readers, what would be the point of learning to lie?

  She took his hand across the table. "I do trust you. You're one of the few I trust."

  He didn't respond. He often didn't. Cernaq didn't use excess words.

  Aer'La liked quiet people. She wasn't one herself, particularly, but she enjoyed being in their company. They were less taxing on her mental resources, and they gave her less reason to punch them in the jaw.