by Dante King
I set the cloth on her leg to keep it out of the dirt and pulled at the robe near her shoulders. I hadn’t known there were so few bindings. When I let go, the rags fell to her waist, revealing a perfect set of breasts, with pink, erect nipples, and the body of an athlete. I gasped. I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t even realized I’d done it until one corner of her perfect lips turned up. She’d noticed, and she was pleased.
I couldn’t stand it any longer. I ran a finger from her cheek, between her breasts, down her stomach, and stopped when I found another knot. I made like I wanted to untie it. Instead, she grabbed both sides of her robe and broke the last two strings holding her robe together.
“I want you,” she whispered. “Now.”
She tugged at my uniform, trying to figure out how to undo my belt. With one hand, I unbuckled it and removed everything beneath it. With the other, I explored her body. I started with her breasts, which were round, full, and silky-soft. I ran my hand down her muscled stomach and discovered that it was unlikely she’d ever shaved anything. When I found her folds, she thrust her pelvis against my hand, gasping in pleasure.
That settled it, then. I picked her up, carried her to the cave, and we lost ourselves in a primal, instinctual kind of comfort.
Afterward, I lay on my back, and Enra had one leg straddled over me.
“Will you take me back to my people, the Ish-Nul?” she asked. “I miss them. They are probably looking for me.”
“Yes, of course,” I whispered. I wondered if this was her way of saying goodbye.
“And maybe you can stay for a while? Or visit? Often?”
I smiled into the darkness. “And what would I do if I stayed or visited?”
“Me,” she purred.
The bush concealing the cave entrance moved aside, and we both jumped a little. A vrak-shaped silhouette filled the mouth of the cave, and Skrew’s whiny voice filled my ears.
“Skrew brought—what are you doing?” he hissed. “No, please tell Jacob didn’t—” He couldn’t finish his thought because he started gagging. I heard him stagger a short distance away. Between gags, he managed to squeak out words like “gross,” “disgusting,” and “horrifying.”
“Thanks, Skrew,” I growled.
Enra giggled, nuzzled my neck, and whispered, “Maybe he will stay away longer if you take me again.”
She didn’t need to tell me twice.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning, I was woken by the sound of bird-like creatures fluttering and skittering through the trees outside the cave. I took a deep breath and noticed the sweet scent of Enra’s hair as she curled up in front of me between the blankets. In the late hours of the night, she’d shown me to a nearby natural pool to bathe in, and she’d gathered flowers to scent her hair. Now, her body radiated warmth as she clutched my hand between hers and pressed my fingers against her soft breasts.
As much as I enjoyed the moment, something was wrong. I felt another presence in the cave as well. It was warm. And it had its hand around my waist.
“Skrew?” I said through gritted teeth.
“Hmm?” he responded.
“If you don’t get out of this cave in two seconds, I’m going to rip your arm off and beat you to death with it.”
Skrew yawned and stretched. “How long is two seconds?”
I rolled over as fast as I could, meaning to strangle him until he was half dead. Then I meant to allow him to recover before doing it again. Corporal punishment was something I was familiar with. Skrew vanished in an instant, and it turned out a scared vrak was even faster than an angry—
I paused in the middle of the thought. An angry what? Was I still human? Was I an alien? Something in-between? Was there even a word for it yet?
I left the questions aside as I searched for my clothes. I found them just outside the cave entrance. It had rained during the night, so they were cold and wet. Enra joined me outside, still naked, and stretched both arms toward the sky.
Damn, she looks even better in the daylight.
She caught me looking, put her hands on her waist, and gave me a shy smile. She pulled her robe over her shoulders and worked at the short strings to get the rags tied again. She tugged gently at the edges a moment later and nodded in satisfaction.
In the meantime, I’d also dressed and was grateful for the cold clothes against my body. The temperature was already beginning to rise, and the evaporating water would help keep me cool for a while.
Enra worked the edge of her hood, lifted it halfway onto her head, paused, and looked at me. “I don’t care if Skrew says I am ugly. I know you do not think I am ugly.” She smiled, revealing her perfect, white teeth, and my heart melted again.
“Which way to your people?” I asked.
Enra was the first human I’d met on this alien planet. A village or tribe would provide a good temporary base of operations and an opportunity to gain more intel. I’d discover more about this planet by taking Enra back to the Ish-Nul and have a far better chance of finding the lost crew members under my command.
Although I’d assumed the temperature would continue to rise, the further we traveled, the colder the air became. As the jungle gave way to forest, the sky took on the color of steel. Gone were the tropical leaves and drooping branches. They were replaced by tall, straight conifers a hundred meters high—some taller than that. It was a marked difference from the jungle I’d first appeared in.
Some of the trees were 30 feet wide. I guessed the biggest could have been a few thousand years old—maybe older. None of the species looked familiar to me, but they all resembled the trees in the domed greenhouses on Mars. The major difference besides their size was their color. Where evergreens still had green needles, brown trunks, and colorful lichen attached here and there, the forest I found myself in was devoid of all color except black, white, and various shades of gray. This planet’s flora and fauna was truly a patchwork of different ecologies and species.
Enra seemed to be in her element. Her steps were light on the leaf-covered ground, and she held out her hands for balance when jumping from rock to rock when we had to cross icy-cold streams. I wasn’t tired from the climbing, the walking, or the cold, but I was surprised that she wasn’t either. She was energized by it. She was heading home.
Skrew, on the other hand, kept his distance and complained the whole time. He’d brought several of the blankets with him and had them wrapped around his body so many times, I doubted he could touch any two of his hands together or turn his head. As the walk grew longer, he left them behind to free up his load, and the loss of each individual item seemed to upset him, as though the scraps of material were his most prized possessions.
He was still refusing to make eye contact with me, but at least he wasn’t antagonizing anyone. And he was still sticking to his word to stay with me.
I thought about the phylac and what it meant. I was now, according to Enra, his master. The subject weighed heavily on me.
“Skrew,” Enra said after we’d stopped for a moment.
“What?” he spat back.
“Stay here. Do not approach my people.”
The nearby conifers looked much the same as all the others we’d passed, so I wasn’t sure where the Ish-Nul lived exactly.
“Skrew is curious,” he countered.
“They do not care for your kind. They will kill you. They know some of your kind are slavers and have no tolerance for such things.”
“Skrew is no slaver!” he said, puffing out his skinny chest.
“She knows,” I interrupted. “But not everyone knows. Just stay here, okay? I’ll return as soon as I can.” He’d already proven himself capable of not getting killed by the local plants and animals, so I figured he’d be safe here by himself. Not only that, but he’d proven himself to be loyal. Maybe it was because of the phylac, or maybe he knew his best chance of a new life was by following along with me.
Skrew slouched and made sad eyes at me before looking around for a place
to hide. The ground was rocky, and the sparse vegetation grew close to the ground. My guide settled on a pile of leaves propped against a tree and climbed into the middle of it, leaving only his eyes showing.
Enra nodded and turned to me. “Let’s go. My people will be happy to see me. And they will be happy to see you.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but when we reached the top of the next hill, a small valley opened before us. Smoke from a half-dozen fires disappeared into the air from as many shacks. Another 10 appeared to be more utilitarian, as they were smaller and did not seem to have chimneys at all. The buildings appeared to be constructed of a darkly colored wood, parts of them covered in animal skins, irregular-shaped plates of metal, and bright banners of red cloth. The largest, the ones with chimneys, had wood roofs. The rest were thatched.
What caught my attention the most was beyond the right edge of the village. Ocean waves crashed against against a rocky shoreline and hurled gray water into an equally gray sky.
“Do not move!” a male voice growled from somewhere to my right.
I turned and saw a large man pointing a long spear in my direction. It was difficult to tell how large he was because he was covered in a patchwork of furs. His blond beard was so long that, even braided, it almost touched the ground as he crouched in a fighting stance.
Two other men emerged from behind him, each holding double-bladed battle axes. They also had long beards but not nearly as long as the man I assumed was their leader. I didn’t see any advanced weapons, but lack of tech didn’t make them any less dangerous. Primitive people survived and knew how to use the land and their surroundings to their advantage.
They almost reminded me of vikings from Ancient Earth.
I took a deep breath and prepared to charge, but I paused when Enra touched my arm.
“Do you not remember me?” she asked.
The man was speechless for a moment before the tip of his spear started to sag closer to the ground.
“Well, do you?” Enra asked. “Or should I remind you? Perhaps I’ll break your nose again like I did last summer when you wouldn’t share your salted fish?”
A barking laugh ripped from the leader’s throat as the two in the back lowered their spears and smiled. The man in front tossed his spear to the ground where it bounced and clattered out of his reach.
“I told you it was mine!” he roared. “You had no right to take it from me!”
I blinked at the exchange.
Enra took two steps toward the man, lifted her sleeves, and raised her fists like she was going to go box with him. My eyes flickered to the leader’s rearguard, and I waited for them to move in. Enra seemed to know what she was doing, so I didn’t want to intervene—at least, not yet.
I had to hold my breath when the bear-like man crouched into a wrestling stance, arms out wide, one leg forward. Enra charged. The other two men watched impassively as if I wasn’t even there.
She hit him full speed, went low, and caught him around the leg. My eyes widened as Enra swept out the man’s leg in a textbook takedown and knocked him on his back. A moment later, they were both laughing and one of the men with a spear approached, dropped his weapon while he was still a dozen feet away, and held out a hand to me.
“I am called Cais-du,” he said in the same rolling accent as Enra, “and you are welcome here, friend. Thank you for bringing our cousin home.”
I relaxed a bit and tried to shake his hand, but he grabbed my forearm and wrapped his other arm around me in a tight embrace. The smell of woodsmoke and fish wafted off him as he held me for a moment. I returned the gesture as I watched Enra stand and help the bear-man she’d tackled back to his feet.
“Who is this you’ve brought?” the bear-man asked as he stood, still laughing.
Enra took her kinsman by the forearm and led him to me. From what I could see, the two resembled each other. It was difficult to tell, but it didn’t appear that he had enough gray in his beard to be her father. I offered my hand, and we grasped each other’s forearms.
“I am called Jacob,” I said.
“Jacob,” he repeated, “you are welcome here. You have brought Enra back to her family. Now, you are family. I am her cousin and am called Timo-ran. Where did you find her?”
“It was near a village, I suppose you would call it. By a building with billowing smokestacks.”
Timo-ran’s brow furrowed at my words.
“At the refinery,” Enra interjected.
Timo-ran nodded solemnly. “We thought she might be there. But there are too many vrak in the area. We could not rescue her. We have scouted, but we found no sign of her. We thought her dead. Were you captured? Were you a slave?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not a slave. I heard her getting beaten and dealt with her captor.”
Several curses were expressed by the men, and each spat on the ground. “All the vrak will pay,” Timo-ran hissed. “When we are stronger, we will drive them from our lands. We will destroy their profane buildings and burn their bodies as an offering to the Lakunae.”
I tried not to show any shock, but the mention of the Void Gods surprised me. “The Lakunae?” I asked.
“Yes,” the man said. “You know of our gods?”
“I do,” I replied.
I knew them a lot better than I suspected Timo-ran, or anyone else in their village, did. If pressed, I’d explain what the big squid gods had done to me, but I wasn’t sure if the Ish-Nul would believe me or if they’d think I was insane.
“Good!” Timo-ran slapped me hard on the back. “Come with me. Cais-du and Neb-ka, another cousin, will continue the patrol. I will introduce you to the rest of the family.”
I shook off the tension of meeting the armed villagers as Enra grasped my left arm with both of hers and pulled me toward her village. A bright smile crossed her face as her feet skipped over the ground toward her home.
As we approached, seven women rushed out of one of the larger buildings and squealed excitedly when they saw Enra. Her kinswomen danced around her, hugging her, and they all nearly ended up as a heap on the ground.
One at a time, they began peeling themselves from the group to stare at me. I kept my expression neutral and professional. Their customs were alien to me, and until I knew more of them, I wasn’t about to offer anything that could be considered an insult.
I turned to Timo-ran, who had his arms crossed in front of his chest. I thought he was smiling, but it was difficult to tell through his thick beard.
“Oh, who is this?” asked one of the women, equally blond, older, and dressed in furs.
The few women halted their nonstop stream of conversation with Enra to join in the all-woman staring team. After decades of ignoring the interested gazes of women, I let them enjoy the view. It felt strange, but my time with Reaver had really broken down my walls.
I realized how much I missed the woman who’d been part of my team. She’d come aboard the Revenge only to be attacked by the Xeno when we’d met them in hyperspace. If she was on this planet, or some other planet elsewhere in the galaxy, I would find her.
I was broken from my thoughts when Enra grasped my arm again and leaned into me. “This man,” she said, “is called Jacob.”
The group of women repeated my name, almost in unison, with the same rolling accent.
The first woman, the older one, walked up to me and stopped only when her chest touched my belly. She was nearly a foot shorter, but I sensed the self-confidence of a woman twice her size. The others moved behind her to get a closer look at me as well.
I considered stepping back away from the women, a greeting on the tip of my tongue, and forced back a grunt of surprise when I felt a hand measuring my cock through my pants.
“Ohh,” Enra’s cousin said, “yes, we like this one.”
“I did.” Enra giggled. The rest of the women circled around me and whispered appreciation as I considered the best course of action.
A bellowing laugh from my right told me Ti
mo-ran was in on the joke too. But the hungry eyes of the woman with her hand all over my crotch suggested it wasn’t a joke.
I’d been in more than 50 battles in almost as many systems. I’d personally killed more than 300 Xeno with nothing more than a vibro-blade. I’d helped destroy 16 of their starships. But this one woman had managed to catch me just a little flat-footed. Every one of the Ish-Nul women couldn’t take their eyes off me, and it took serious effort on my behalf to keep things professional.
“Get off him!” Timo-ran growled. He was trying to sound harsh, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “There is time for that later. For now, we must go see the elder, and Enra must get out of her slave-garb. She is free!”
The women cheered, then all tried to kiss me at once. I wasn’t sure how many were successful, but they reluctantly stopped when Timo-ran dragged me away from them by my arm. We left the group of women to huddle together while they whispered excitedly among themselves.
“It seems you will be popular here for a long time,” Timo-ran said as he guided me down a narrow path toward the crashing waves. “We have not had an outsider among us in many moons. And, because we are all family, we have… needs that are not met.”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing over my shoulder, “it sure seems that way.”
The path sloped steadily downward toward the beach, which meant the ladies of the village were out of sight. Enra was safely back with her people—her family—and I knew she’d be safe.
I had a million questions I wanted to ask Timo-ran, but Enra’s burly cousin didn’t strike me as the leader of the village. He was the equivalent of a squad leader, but he wasn’t the guy in charge. The best intel usually came from the higher-ups, so I saved my questions.
As we crested the last small hill, I found an answer to one of my questions about how the Ish-Nul protected their way of life.
Men gathered around a silver creature resembling a cross between the largest alligator I’d ever seen and a prehistoric fish. The men surrounded the dead sea monster, climbed on it, and hacked away with axes and knives. They were all of average height, which meant the fish-thing itself had to be at least 20 yards long and at least six yards tall and broad. Bright teeth as long as a man’s arm protruded from its top and bottom jaws. The pool of dark red surrounding the beast made it clear it was dead.