No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t sleep knowing he was wandering around without a weapon of any kind. I let the minutes and the hours slip by without closing my eyes at all. By the time he returned, looking grim, I could tell that it must have been bad news. I sat up in my bed and waited for him to speak.
“We have been ordered to stay here and conduct more tests and human observations,” he said, shaking his head. I clasped my hands and tried to kill a squeal in my throat.
“That's good news, isn’t it?”
“I was hoping to avoid a confrontation,” he said, taking a deep breath.
“What do we do?” I said, getting up from my bed. Despite not sleeping at all I didn’t feel tired. I guessed the nanites didn’t need me to achieve REM in order to work their magic. Just a little physical rest was good enough. That was a fact that was good to know.
“You will do nothing. Train. Learn. Survive.” He put a large hand on my head and pulled me into an embrace. I wasn’t expecting it and I still had no idea why he was being affectionate towards me.
“Don’t worry, I will keep my head down,” I said, trying to reassure him despite not being entirely sure what it was that worried him.
“I am sure you will, Diem,” he said with a chuckle.
“Rakesh, about the perfume,” I began.
“There is no need to bring it up. It was disrespectful to imply that you needed help to arouse a male,” he said by way of an apology.
“It was a test, right?”
He looked at me again, reading my eyes and searching for any sign of falsehood.
“It was. Rather than resort to dubious means to gain an advantage you left me to make up my own mind. You are truly worthy of your name and your title Diem,” he said, leaning in and sniffing my skin.
My nipples tightened once again under my shirt. Only this time he didn’t pretend that he didn’t see them. This time, he dipped his head and took long, deep, drags of my scent, licking the skin along my collarbone.
This time I allowed myself to bury my hands in his wild mane and arch into his seductive warmth. All of the reasons why this was a bad and dangerous move kept running through my head, even as my body began to crave more. This was taboo. In his culture, it was like fucking your poodle. This was dangerous. My emotions were obviously involved and that meant I was far from objective. And yet, he seemed like the best male I ever met. He was hard and violent and honorable and strong.
He pulled my body closer to his in one smooth jerk. With one hand he robbed me of the soft clothing that had been torturing my heightened senses. I felt the sting of his barb in my thigh and I knew I was lost. Any hope I had of extracting myself from this situation disappeared as the poison from his barb rocketed through my blood stream and turned me into a mound of desperation and desire.
“I like this bonding,” he growled, sweeping me up in his arms and walking back into his private chamber. As we entered I was once again acutely aware of the glowing figurine on the altar and his nudity. For a moment it seemed as though the deity slithered beneath his skin and peered out at me from behind his eyes. I was alarmed and exhilarated all at once.
He walked through the curtain the divided the room into two and dumped me onto what I assumed was his bed. It felt like a giant bean bag, only the granules heated and cooled upon contact. Rakesh grabbed my ankle roughly and pulled my foot up to his mouth, licking my toes with his rough tongue, twirling it between them and then drawing them into his mouth. Feet were never my thing but he was obviously enjoying it and watching him become aroused honestly made me hot.
I watched through the sex-induced haze as his skin began to glisten. What was soft flesh was becoming hard and shiny like the exoskeleton of an ant. His head dipped as he licked my leg, his tongue elongating and flicking in the air as he made his way between my thighs. His wicked tongue crept up my thigh. I knew where he was going but hadn’t yet figured out why. Was oral sex unknown to his race? I would have to ask just as soon as I could remember my first name.
His lips roamed freely all over my body, pausing only momentarily to mumble “delicious” several times. My womb clenched tight as his tongue made contact with the soft rose petal folds of my womanhood. I cried out as he lapped at my entrance, pushing the tip of the long, thick tongue deeper into my love each time.
I threw my head back and abandoned all of my senses, giving in to the pleasure. I hardly recognized myself as I moaned while he tortured my clitoris. I writhed in pleasure as his strong hands bit into my flesh and drew small beads of blood. I climaxed twice as he invaded my body with his engorged member and fucked me brutally. Each thrust pushed me deeper and deeper into oblivion as his cock stretched my walls and embedded itself in my soft folds. It was the kind of pleasure that bordered on pain, making my voice hoarse as I moaned and begged him to drive me harder, push deeper, and consume me.
Tears filled my eyes as he roared with his release, his head thrown back and the sinews in his neck and chest straining. I watched as he looked down at me, his body slick with sweat and his eyes ablaze with passion. His breathing was ragged and irregular and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t the Commander I knew. He was more. Regardless of his hidden depths, as the effects of his sting wore off it was very clear to me that I truly belonged to him.
I couldn’t change that even if I wanted to.
ELEVEN
“More strenuous activity before sleep? You are keeping my nanites busy,” P’tah said with a smile. I decided not to respond.
I woke up in a world of hurt, every muscle in my body felt as though it’d been pushed to the limit. I was sore in places I didn’t realize you could damage.
“You look rested. Did you manage to reprogram my implant?”
The scientist hopped up happily and scampered over to my side.
“It’s already done. When you want to mute the translator simply say ‘mute Diem’,” she said.
“What about if I just need a little help?”
“That’s the best part,” she said, spinning in her chair. “I am working on a program to make the nanites and the implant interface so that as new words are added to your vocabulary you will hear fewer translated words. Until then you are limited to simply on or off,” she said.
I took her hand in mine and bowed my head, a sign of respect and gratitude between equals. It was a risk. She could have taken offense, but instead, she smiled awkwardly and picked up her tablet.
“Are you okay to train today?”
I stretched gingerly. I wasn’t in as much pain as I had been a few hours ago. Common sense said to give my body time to recover, but I was driven by a sense of urgency. I could feel the energy among the crew changing. During my daily walk to the lab, I caught several crew members watching me as I passed. Where I was once invisible, I was now the hottest topic. I caught snippets of the hushed conversations.
“He named her…”
“He gave her a name?”
“He killed Olnek over her.”
“Why is she allowed to wear clothes?”
“He is going to get us all killed.”
“…kill her and save our necks.”
It wouldn’t take much for Oda to exploit this sense of uncertainty and she most likely wouldn’t wait long. The problem was that I was trapped. I only knew a few phrases in the Troitek language and I was in no position to defend myself if I accidentally offended anybody. I felt like an eleven-year-old girl again, knowing what it was that I wanted to accomplish but ill-equipped to do anything about it.
P’tah took me through a stringent series of tests. They were both mentally and physically draining and I was hating myself for volunteering for this torture from the first minute. I was halfway through the tensile strength diagnostic before I realized that it was her nanites that she was testing, not me.
“Can I ask you something?” I said as I mopped the sweat off of my face.
“What would you like to know?”
“Your tongues, are they
longer than human tongues?”
“A bit,” she said, lolling hers out to demonstrate. It was definitely longer than mine. It looked like she could easily lick her own nose, although I wasn't sure why anybody would want to do that.
“It looks like mine,” I said.
“Of course it does. It serves a similar function. Though we don’t perceive sweet tastes very well and the texture is a bit rougher than yours,” she said proudly.
“I know I was shot full of neurotoxin last night –”
“You don’t have to tell me such things,” she said, covering her ears and turning away from me.
“…But I could’ve sworn his tongue was much longer.”
P’tah froze, the way she did when there was danger afoot.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I know I was a little loopy because he stung me, but I was sure that his tongue was long, like a snake’s tongue,” I said.
“What else?”
I shrugged my shoulders and immediately regretted it. Sore muscles were a pain in the ass.
“His skin seemed a little, I don’t know, shiny.”
“Are you sure? He was like that when you were mating?”
“Yeah?”
“And he didn’t hurt you?”
“Of course not. Why would he hurt me?”
P’tah looked panicked. Her eyes shifted back and forth in her head repeatedly as she began to mentally assemble pieces of a puzzle.
“I knew it! I knew there was a reason why he wouldn’t mate with Oda.” She jumped to her feet and pumped her fist in the air.
“Okay, you’re scaring me,” I said, watching her dance around the examining table like a mad scientist. In this case, I guessed it probably applied. She was a scientist after all. After a few minutes, she slammed her hands down on the table and leaned over to look at me.
“Diem, what do you know about your name?”
I shook my head. “Nothing much.”
She nodded once and then walked over to a console panel on the wall. After pressing a series of buttons, the lights in the lab went dark, and I found myself sitting in the darkness.
“Is that really necessary?”
“Remember, Diem, everything on this ship is recorded. And this is a conversation that we never had.” Her disembodied voice floated through the room.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“What did the Commander tell you about your name?”
“He said it was some sort of rite of passage for your people.”
P’tah snorted derisively.
“Of course he would say that. Listen to me, Diem. That rite of passage is the highest state of being that any of my people can achieve. We can literally lose our forms and fly. There are few of us who can experience it more than once in a lifetime.”
“So?”
“There are some of us, however, who can achieve that state almost at will. Or rather, the goddess can overtake us at any time and we can take her form.”
“Like shapeshifting?”
“Something like that. But those who can do that are extremely rare. They are the kinds of being you hear about in myths and legends,” she whispered back.
“So?”
“So, Diem, I believe our Commander might be one of those people. It makes so much sense to me now,” she said. “But why would he hide that from everybody? Especially me!”
“Maybe he didn’t want to be a myth or a legend.”
P’tah was silent for a few moments while she contemplated that thought. I had no other choice but to sit silently and wait in the dark until she remembered my presence.
“In any case,” she continued. “When he is like that, he is not himself. Not completely. He could hurt you or kill you. He could become a danger to you and others.”
“But he wasn’t. I mean, he seemed off, but not out of his head. He was rough but not cruel.”
“Are you sure?” She sounded close to me. I instinctively turned my head in the direction of the sound even though I couldn’t see a thing.
“Yeah, I was messed up but he wasn’t. he was a little wilder than before but he was in control.”
P’tah let out a string of expletives that Siri had no Earthly translation for.
“Is that bad?”
“It is very bad. It is good for you, but it is very bad for him,” P’tah said.
“What do we do?” I could feel my heart pounding in my chest and the all-consuming darkness did nothing to set me at ease.
“You will say nothing about this. Do you understand? If you speak a single word, even to Rakesh, even if you think you are alone, I will rip your tongue out of your head,” she said. I’d never heard P’tah use such a serious tone. I didn’t have any intentions of mentioning it to anybody else on board, to begin with, not that anybody really spoke to me.
“You’re scaring me,” I said.
“Good, be scared. Rakesh is playing with fire and Oda has her spies everywhere. You never know who you are dealing with, so it’s best to assume we are all on her side.”
“And what about you? How do I know I can trust you?”
“Idiot,” she smacked the back of my head just as the lights went back on in the lab. “Our markings are so similar, I thought you would have noticed by now and figured it out.”
I took another look at P’tah. The markings along her temple were the only ones visible. Although they resembled Rakesh’s, so did a number of other crew members’. I shook my head in confusion.
“We share the same sire,” she said with a smirk.
“Oh!”
I was genuinely caught off guard. She unbuttoned her uniform and took off her tunic to reveal the same dark striations along her shoulders and the back of her arms as Rakesh. No wonder she knew so much about him and treated me with such warmth. She was his sister, after all.
“Arm yourself, human, I won’t go easy on you just because my brother put you to task,” she said, picking up the traditional blade and striking a fighting stance.
I followed suit, welcoming the simplicity of combat training. The physical meditation of fighting helped me to gain clarity about what I wanted, even if the reasons were becoming more complicated. I wanted to save Rakesh, even if I couldn’t save my planet. But I also wanted to save Earth. And there was a good chance that I could do both at the same time.
After our training session, I cleaned up in the observation room once again and waited for Oda to show up. She never did. Instead, she sent a male whose face I’d never seen before, but whose very presence made P’tah shrink in on herself. I could see by the scars on his body and the way he dressed that he was well respected and a member of the elite class amongst the Troitek. Even if his official rank was beneath that of Commander, he was somebody that even Rakesh would hesitate to anger.
“You are Diem.” It wasn’t a question. I nodded.
“As the Alien Attachment you must become familiar with the ship,” he said again.
I bowed, as was appropriate, avoiding making eye contact because it was our first contact and he had not yet given me his title. I looked over my shoulder at P’tah who sat perfectly still and silent as she watched the exchange. She looked like she was fighting the urge to run, which did not bode well for me.
“I see that the Chief has taught you some manners. I am the Grand Marshall of this ship. You should have been presented to me upon your arrival. It was an oversight on the part of the Commander.”
Behind me, P’tah made a tiny sound. The Grand Marshall’s deep burgundy colored eyes flicked over to where P’tah was sitting and then back to me. Though his face remained impassive, his tone made everything clear. He’d been overlooked somehow and the offense was still bitter in his mouth. I nodded and followed him, careful to stay three steps behind him.
He walked around the decks of the ship with an easy gait. When he walked into a room you could see everybody stand a bit straighter, and the younger, lower-ranking crew members
fought the urge to fidget or run away. His mannerisms and way of speaking were purposeful but unhurried. He was the kind of person who expected others to wait for him and demanded perfection in all things.
He talked more to himself than to me, pointing out the different teams, and explaining their mission. It reminded me of museum tours. What interested me most was getting a feel for the layout of the ship and an idea of how many crew members were assigned to each team. The largest, by far, was the engineering team, with more than a dozen work units, each staffed with four members. They were in charge of everything from daily maintenance to machining new parts for broken equipment. Compared to the tactical team, all of them looked young and much more nervous around the Grand Marshall than any of the others.
Finally, he led me to what he called “the observation deck”. A transparent dome situated at the highest point of the ship. I walked in expecting to be bored as we walked through yet another series of workstations where sour-faced Troiteks would act extra-busy and secretly scowl at me. Instead, we walked into what seemed like a terrarium of sorts. The sky above reflected a million stars that I’d never seen before. Or maybe they were the same stars but from this vantage point they seemed so much more alien. The air smelled like grass right after a rain. Which made sense since the deck was lousy with trees and moss. I’d never seen trees like these before. Instead of thick bark and green leaves, the trunks had the same smooth, rubbery texture as a houseplant. The leaves didn’t sprout from individual limbs but seemed to be limbs themselves, springing out from the tops of the trees. The leaves were long and tightly wound until the end where they flattened and opened into a purple teardrop shaped foliage.
“This is the heart of the ship,” the Grand Marshall announced. “This is where the ship’s air is produced and filtered. It is also where the crew’s waste is extracted, and the ship’s liquid supply is filtered.”
A Pet For The Commander: The Complete Series Page 7