by Jaid Black
Marty’s lips pinched together in a frown. She harrumphed as she walked away, deciding that some comments didn’t deserve a reply. Especially when the one doing the commenting had smoked so much marijuana she doubted he’d remember their conversation an hour from now.
Well, she thought with a sniff, at least something had come of this day. A man had told her she had a great set of tits.
—Arrg! What a damn day!
* * * * *
For the next forty-five minutes, Marty ambled about the forested commune grounds aimlessly, her only objective to take a brisk walk—alone. Campfires were lit up all over the place, the smell of burning incense and marijuana so overwhelming that her eyes began to water.
She could hear guitars being strummed around campfires in every direction, the other hippies who’d sojourned to the capitol mellowing out after today’s Independence Day protest and in preparation for tomorrow’s trek back to their various homes.
“Peace.”
Marty nodded at a fellow protestor and exchanged the peace sign with her as she continued walking through the communal grounds without stopping to chat. She was, quite simply, in no mood to be around other people.
A few minutes later, her pace slowed as she found herself next to a narrow riverbed she hadn’t noticed before. But then again, she’d never ventured this far toward the commune’s periphery either.
The sound of something whizzing by and landing with a dull thud jarred the ground, shaking it for a solid mile in either direction. Marty gasped, coming to a dead halt at the edge of the river.
Her eyes narrowed in confusion. She waved her hands agitatedly about to clear the air of marijuana smoke, trying her best to get a good look at whatever it was that had just landed a foot away from her.
There it was.
“A meteorite,” she murmured, kneeling down beside it at the river’s edge, “groovy”.
The misshapen chunk of charred mass looked scalding hot to the touch, so she didn’t put her hand anywhere near it. A bizarre atmosphere seemed to surround the piece of rock, warping the air all around it.
Marty shook her head to clear it, deciding she’d inhaled too much second-hand marijuana smoke. The air surrounding the meteorite was filled with static and nonsense, much the way a television looked when no programs were airing on a particular channel.
“I’m losing it,” she said dully, clamping a hand to her forehead, “this is too weird.”
A whizzing sound pierced the air again, causing Marty to gasp and look up. Her clear gray eyes barely had time to register the fact that a second and much larger meteorite was catapulting down from the heavens before it fell, a broken off chunk of it striking just inches from her body.
“Shiiiit!”
Marty screamed as the larger chunk of solid mass struck the river with such force that she was lifted off of her feet and hurled into the water with a strength that should have broken every bone in her body but didn’t.
She broke the surface of the cold river and plummeted under, the shock of the icy temperature a sharp contrast to the humid nighttime air above. She was moving fast, so incredibly fast that—
Her eyes jolted opened and widened.
Marty realized with an acute sense of panic that not only was she underneath the river’s surface, but that she was also hurling at an astounding speed straight toward the chunk of rock whose landing had thrown her here to begin with. She mentally screamed, knowing she would die when she struck it.
But no, she didn’t die. She—
Oh god, what was happening!
Marty saw a flash of light and then suddenly her entire world twisted and skewed. She kept moving and moving—so fast—faster than a bullet—faster than what was possible.
Her entire body catapulted through the fuzzy atmosphere surrounding the meteorite and then surpassed it. She kept going and going and going—faster and faster, further and further.
But to where? What was happening!
She shot out of the fuzzy air and everything around her seemed surreal, as if she was floating at a warped speed in some sort of purple void. She fought with herself to keep from screaming, to keep from sucking in lungfuls of frigid water that would drown her, her entire body in fight or flight mode.
She was going too fast—she could make sense of nothing.
Marty continued to hold her breath lest she drown. Her eyes darted to the left of her—and did a double take. What she saw damn near frightened her enough to cause her to release her breath and scream.
She saw herself.
And then she was in front of herself, traveling at such intense speed she had left herself behind.
Left herself behind?
If Marty had known the first thing about traveling faster than the speed of light, she would have known why she’d seen and then surpassed herself. She would have known that she was hurling through the dimensions of time and space faster than the eye’s retina could catch and hold onto an image.
Oh god! her mind screamed out in agony, what is happening!
Her face began to turn as purple as the void she traveled in when the need for air grew paramount. She was going to die, she thought hysterically. She was going to—
Her body catapulted through a fuzzy atmosphere, leaving the purple behind. She glanced upward as the static began to clear and realized she was about to break through a surface of water. She willed herself to make it, to hold her breath for just a few seconds more…
She came up gasping for air, sucking it in by the lungful. She closed her eyes briefly while she continued to tug in the air, drinking in the nourishment of oxygen as her cells stabilized and calmed. She remained that way until her lungs quit burning and she was able to breathe semi-normally.
Marty opened her eyes slowly—and whimpered.
“Where in the hell am I?” she murmured.
Her eyes wide with disbelief, Marty swam slowly towards shore, noting simultaneously that the water she was submerged in was as silver and gleaming as a mirror. When she reached the bank of the shore, she slowly climbed out and stood there as if paralyzed. Nothing was as it should be.
Four full moons hung down from the black sky, each of them a dull blue. For as far as the eye could see in what was presumably nighttime wherever it was she had been catapulted to, the majority of the ground was made of a glistening, rock-hard gemstone of some sort. The gemstone was a pearly bluish color, seemingly translucent yet opaque at the same time.
The pearly blue ground was broken up by occasional patches of florescent shrubbery, neon-like plant life which came in about three or four different hues of blue. Marty bent down to run a hand over it, snatching it back with a yelp when it bit her.
Swallowing roughly, she stood up and got as far away from the carnivorous shrubbery as was possible. She glanced down at her hand, ascertaining at once that the bite was deep and she needed help.
“Oh god,” she breathed out, “where am I?”
Marty stepped onto the next thatch of pearly gemstone ground, careful to hop over the blue shrubbery positioned in between gemstone patches. A sickening wave of nausea and dizziness overwhelmed her, inducing her to clutch her heart and gasp for breaths of air.
“H-Help m-me,” she panted out, stumbling aimlessly backwards. Unthinkingly she stepped into a patch of shrubbery, garnering herself a few sharp nicks on the ankle.
“Oh no. Oh g-god no.”
Marty’s eyes widened in horror when she realized that the plants were killing her. They had bit her and pumped poison into her—now they merely waited for her to collapse of heart failure so that when her body fell limp, they could dine on her at their leisure.
Sucking in huge gasps of air, she stumbled back towards the bank of mirror-silver water, as far away from the plants as was possible. Her lungs burning, she came down onto her hands and knees before the water and absently glanced into it.
“Oh Jesus,” she whispered.
Marty’s heart rate soared and her clear gray eyes wid
ened into the shape of silver pools when she caught sight of her own reflection. She did a double take. The reflection was mirror-clear—and horrifically confusing.
Her blonde hair, once short, had grown out as if it hadn’t been cut in over a decade. Her face, once chubby and rounded like that of most girls in their early twenties was now contoured and matured with sleek lines and sculpturing.
“What is happening!” she cried out, her confusion and fright multiplying in leaps and bounds.
Another wave of dizziness and nausea assailed her, causing Marty to clutch her heart and gasp. So many questions reeled through her mind as she collapsed onto her side and panted for air.
Where was she? What was happening to her? Why did she look as though she’d aged ten years? Why did she feel as though she’d aged ten years?
“I w-want to go h-home.”
There was no home to go to, only Marty didn’t yet realize that. As she fell limp onto the water bank from the poison that the plants had injected into her, she had no way of knowing that home as she knew it was no more.
In what had amounted to a mere minute of high-speed travel to Marty, ten Yessat years had passed by. Back on earth, her friends had married, bore children, their children had bore children, and then they had died.
Jeannie’s body, a body that had belonged to a woman who had been a great-grandmother to a brood of seventeen, lie six feet below the surface of the earth in a steel coffin, the headmarker protruding from the soil above it proclaiming her to have died thirty years past.
Chapter 2
Palace of Mirrors, Dominant Red Moon of Morak
Trek Mi Q’an Galaxy, Seventh Dimension
6040 Y.Y. (Yessat Years)
Kil Q’an Tal, the King of Tryston’s red moon Morak, High Lord of the Kyyto Sectors, and the newly crowned King of planet Tron, ran a large hand through his midnight-black hair and sighed. “I ask that you speak not of this to Rem.” His fingers fell atop the red crystal table he was seated at and drummed out an absent beat. “’Twould do no good and mayhap a lot of bad.”
Death, High Lord of the Jioti Sector, inclined his head in agreement. “’Tis true, your words.”
Kil grunted as he telekinetically summoned himself a goblet of matpow. “In less than two Yessat months time we are slated to go questing yet again for my brother’s Sacred Mate.” He waved a hand about dismissively. “I shall look into the matter and deal with it before we leave for the first dimension.”
“’Twas my belief you would wish it this way,” Death grumbled.
“Aye.” Kil took a large swallow of matpow before setting down his goblet. “For seventeen Yessat years Rem has actively searched the galaxies for whatever wench was born to be nee’ka to him. Let us pray to the goddess that he finds this nameless female before devolution finds him.”
Death nodded, his expression grim. “It grows worse.”
“’Tis true.” Kil sighed. “And ‘tis why I want him absent from anywhere that bloodshed might result.”
Death raised one dark eyebrow, inducing the tattooed skull on his forehead to crinkle a tad. “Are you in need of aide on Tron?”
“Nay.” He waved that away. “If ‘tis true an insurrectionist party has infiltrated the planet, I am rest assured it could have happened in but one sector.” At Death’s furrowed brow Kil explained, “On the far side of the planet lies the blue-rock sector of Wani. ‘Tis the only of the planet’s six hundred sectors that has yet to be conquered and forcibly brought to heel.” His grim smile was arrogant. “’Tis time to conquer...and bring to heel.”
Death grunted in such a way that Kil knew the High Lord was questioning why he hadn’t conquered Wani at the same time he’d brought the rest of Tron under his dominion. The answer was simple. “When my hunters first invaded Tron ‘twas during one of Rem’s...spells.” He shrugged unapologetically. “I was more concerned with getting Rem to Ari for spiritual cleansing than with winning bedamned Tron.”
“And after?”
“By then insurrectionists had invaded another Border World and my hunters and I were busy putting down the rebellion.”
“Ah. So this is the first opportunity you have had to deal with the Wani.”
“Aye.” Kil’s glowing blue gaze narrowed. “But deal with them I shall.”
Death’s lips curled wryly. “I never doubted you.”
Just then a lushly curved bound servant adorned in a costly qi’ka skirt strode up to the raised red table bearing a tray of fruits and sweets. Death could surmise by her finery that she held a place of honor in the king’s harem, which could only mean that she was lusty in the vesha hides. His manhood hardened just looking at her, her dark-haired beauty and firm breasts desirous to gaze upon.
Kil took note of Death’s glazed over expression and had to stifle a grin. “Aye,” he said dryly, “she’s a lusty fuck. Say the word and Typpa is yours for the moon-rising.”
“Aye,” he grumbled, “I want her.”
Typpa strolled over to Death and smiled coyly as she offered him a fire-berry from the tray she carried. The eight-foot giant leaned in closer to her chest and, forgetting about the piece of fruit, slurped a nipple into his mouth instead. One of his large hands wandered up the servant’s thigh and parted her qi’ka skirt, his fingers running through the black curls of her mons until he found her clit to fondle it.
Typpa shuddered, her eyes closing as she leaned in closer for more stimulation.
Kil chuckled as he rose to his feet, deciding ‘twas time to ready his hunters. “I grant you the use of all of my bound servants and Kefas whilst I am gone.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Enjoy.”
Chapter 3
Village of Wani, Far Sector of Planet Tron
Marty came to slowly, her eyes blinking a few times in rapid succession as they adjusted to the bluish lighting in the room she was inhabiting. An attractive dark-haired woman who looked to be no more than twenty-five stood above her, smiling down to her from next to the bed where she lay.
Marty blinked rapidly a few times more, the blinks coming further and further apart as her eyes fully adjusted to the blue light and she got her first good look at the brunette. Her gray eyes widened as her jaw dropped open, and she stared unblinking at the seven foot tall female looming over her—a seven foot tall female with neon-pink eyes.
Shit!
Marty swallowed a bit roughly as her eyes flicked over the brunette. If she had thought that the neon blue predator plants were the most frightening specimens in existence, that call had clearly been made before she’d had a gander at the hulking woman standing before her.
The brunette was not only tall, but she was also fiercely muscled. Her body was firm and powerful, the muscles ripped into a steely perfection. Yet her curves were soft and feminine, proof positive beyond her beautiful face that she was indeed all woman.
The brunette’s clothing—if one could call it that!—was odd, to say the least. It consisted of only a black leather-like bra and a black leather-like gee-string, both of which had been strategically cut into thin leather straps so that the woman’s private parts were completely exposed. Other than that the woman wore nothing save a shimmering blue ring around her left nipple, a tiny blue navel ring that tinkled ever so slightly when she moved, and a pair of black leather-like combat boots that ran up to her mid-thighs.
Her gray eyes narrowed. She really must have inhaled too much marijuana smoke.
“Gjykka tipa frek?”
Marty’s gaze flicked about warily for the first time. Her tongue darted out to wet suddenly parched lips. Not only were the stranger’s words definitely not English, but they had also been rumbled out in the deepest, manliest voice she’d ever heard.
Well, she thought grimly, the hulking brunette was definitely not an American women’s rights protestor. If she was, she decided on a sudden pang of female camaraderie, the demonstrators would have won the Battle of the Sexes using only Attila the Huntress here as their weapon. One look at her and the opposition w
ould have went running for the hills. “Um...huh?”
The gigantic woman cocked her head to study Marty. She repeated her question loudly enough—and manly enough—to wake the dead. “Gjykka tipa frek?”
Marty flinched. Uncertain what to do or say, she slowly shrugged her shoulders to indicate as much as she met the brunette’s neon—pink!—gaze.
Neon pink? Arrg!
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” she said slowly and distinctly. Her gaze flicked down and she noticed for the first time that her golden-honey hair had indeed grown down to her butt. She hadn’t been dreaming up that bit after all.
Wearily, Marty clapped a hand to her forehead and sighed. Whatever was happening to her was weirdness incarnate. Her honey-gold hair had grown down to her butt, she’d aged ten years outside of a minute, she’d been attacked my killer neon-blue plants, only to wake up and find that she’d been rescued by a nearly naked seven foot tall woman with neon-pink eyes who could beat any man Marty had ever seen to a bloody pulp with one swoop.
This, she decided, was definitely not groovy.
—Arrg!
The brunette’s brow furrowed as she regarded Marty. The gigantic woman slowly nodded her comprehension as it apparently dawned on her that the wee woman she’d rescued couldn’t understand a word that was being asked of her.
The Amazonian-esque brunette held up a finger, indicating she would be back. Marty inclined her head in understanding, then watched as the woman’s leather gee-string clad buttocks wore a path from the room.
The door slid closed behind her with a whizzing sound, locking.
Marty gulped.
Marty’s eyes flicked nervously about the room as she threw aside the exquisitely soft animal pelt that covered her, preparing to find a way out of her predicament. She had no idea why the woman had locked her inside, but she mentally supposed that such an action didn’t bode well.