Garm could feel her dread and shame welling up. It oozed from her pores and pervaded the room, a dank cloud of utter misery. He wanted to say something, to reach out and comfort her, but he could tell if he so much as twitched she would explode.
Natalya hesitated. She closed her mouth and started breathing through her nostrils, her breath coming in quick pants.
“He stank of stale beer and feesh and rotten onions. I could not breathe. He put the knife to my throat and push the point in far enough to make me bleed,” she managed. “He tell me, ‘If you move or make sound, I keel you.’ Then, he pulled down his filthy trousers and start to rape me.”
Garm felt a murderous rage spring up within him. His own breathing became slow and labored and he saw a trip to Kaliningrad in his immediate future.
“I feel thees burning pain and wetness as he force himself een me,” Natalya said. Her voice and body both started shaking, but to her credit, her eyes remained dry. “I couldn’t move. The pain, the stench, the humiliation . . . and the knife stuck een the side of my neck. I was powerless.”
She stopped talking and stared sorrowfully downward, studying her calloused hands. She grasped the edges of the comforter tightly, hugging herself with it.
“I was virgin . . . I not even had my first period yet.”
Garm didn’t know what to say or do. His hands trembled as he started to reach for her, but he hesitated. “Nat . . . I . . .”
“He make beeg mistake, Wolfie,” Natalya said icily, her head snapping upright. Her forlorn eyes were now as cold and hard as agates, and the unexpected transformation froze him where he sat.
“I suffer much as he rape me, but I wait for heem to feenish.”
“W-what do you mean?” Garm asked, shaken and confused.
“As he orgasm, hees body start to convulse, shooting hees deesgusting semen een me,” Natalya said. Her lips curled back, exposing her canines. “I waited and watched for hees greep on the fillet knife to relax . . .”
“And then?”
“I snatch eet from hees hand and bury eet in his ear.”
Garm jolted upright. “Holy shit! Are you serious?”
“Da.”
“You . . . you killed him?”
“Oh, not right away,” Natalya said with a grim smile. “I had no experience weeth keeling men then, only feesh. But I must have damaged something een hees tiny brain. He was steel alive, but could not move. He was, how you say . . . paralyze?”
Garm nodded. “Paralyzed.”
“Da. So I went to work.”
“I-I don’t--”
“First, I get up and make sure store was locked. Then I clean myself up,” she said. “I take shower in back, change my clothes, throw old stuff een furnace, and take all money from register and safe.”
Garm was astonished. “Wow. And the fishmonger?”
“I deal with heem last,” Natalya stated.
“What did you do?”
“What you theenk I do?”
“I’m afraid to ask,” Garm admitted. “But whatever it was, he deserved it.”
“I like the way you theenk,” she said with a wan smile. “I pulled the knife out of hees head and cut hees balls off, one by one. Then I make heem chew and swallow them.”
“How?”
“I stuff each one een hees mouth, peench nose closed, and put hand over mouth,” she said, matter-of-factly. “To breathe, he have no choice but to eat hees own nuts.”
“Ah . . .”
“I save penis for beeg finale,” Natalya said, relishing the memory of what she’d done. “Eet was pathetic leetle theeng, but symbolic. I push in mouth and smother heem while he choke on eet.”
“Wow, good for you,” Garm said. He exhaled some of the tension he was feeling, glad that the girl had avenged herself.
“The last theeng that peeg saw before he die was my face,” she announced. She shrugged and sighed simultaneously. “Eet was better than he deserve.”
“Then what?” Garm asked.
“Then I leave country,” Natalya replied. “I make my way to Europe. Eventually, I track down my uncle here working in Naval Intelligence, of all places, and come to United States. The rest, you more or less know . . .”
Garm nodded. “Wow. I-I’m really sorry you went through that. Not to mention, losing the baby, years later.”
“Spasiba.” She raised the water to her lips, took a long draught, then got up and placed it back on the nightstand. She stood up straight with the comforter draped down like a cape and cricked her neck from side to side.
“So, now you know why I not like meessionary.”
“Uh, yeah,” Garm said. “Don’t worry. I . . . I won’t ask again.”
“Good. Eet would take great trust on my part to let man get on top of me again. You understand?”
Garm said nothing.
“Deed you know female pliosaurs are very jealous?” she asked.
“What? They are?”
“Da,” Natalya said. “During courtship and even after mating, eef male Kronosaurus even looks at another cow, she bite hees genitals off and eats them!”
She smiled, but her eyes had a feral glow.
Garm shook his head. “That’s bullshit. You forget who you’re talking to.”
“You’re right,” she admitted. She rolled her shoulders back and allowed the comforter to cascade down to the carpet, exposing the splendor of her physique. “Now, I tell you some theeng that is not.”
“Okay,” he said, unabashedly ogling her.
“Up here,” Natalya said, moving closer and snapping her fingers to draw his eyes up from her breasts. “I am not pliosaur. And I am not stupid.”
“What do you mean?”
“Although we are just ‘fuck buddies,’ I do not theenk you would be foolish enough to screw another woman behind my back.”
“Go on,” Garm drawled.
“Eef you do, eet shall be your loss,” she said, flipping her hair to the side and allowing her tawny locks to drape fetchingly down over one toned shoulder. Then, her head came back up and her eyes locked onto his like iron-gray rifle sights.
“But eef I find out you ever breathe a word of what I told you about my past to anyone, the next time your beeg, beautiful cock ees in my mouth I weel bite it off and swallow it, right in front of you.”
Garm shook his head vehemently. “There’s no need for that. You know I would never.”
She leaned close and kissed him wetly, then whispered in his ear. “I know, Wolfie. I know.”
Then she sauntered over to the nearby dresser and bent over it, her round ass sticking invitingly out and legs spread wide.
“Now . . . who wants to fuck?”
CHAPTER
20
It was one of those sounds you never forget, Dirk realized. Around him, the roar of the pliosaur known as Tiamat boomed like a thunderclap through Tartarus’s huge amphitheater, reverberating off its iron walls. Even with his hands clamped tightly over his ears there was no escape; the beast’s bellow was so deep and powerful it shook the marrow in one’s bones.
Dirk wasn’t the only one affected. Across the 1,400-foot chamber’s stadium-style seats, the majority of the four hundred spectators gathered together for GDT’s presentation covered their eyes and ears and screamed like children hiding from an imaginary monster. But there was nothing make-believe about Tiamat. Even those who dared behold the Kronosaurus queen’s terrifying visage cringed and cowered, from the toughest submarine gunner to the surliest of guards. Only Dr. Grayson, who sat staring at a shrieking Rear Admiral Callahan with a mixture of bemusement and disdain, appeared unaffected by the behemoth’s appearance and subsequent roar.
Dirk chuckled. He figured it was a mixture of the elderly CEO anticipating what was to come, and having wisely turned down the volume on his hearing aid.
Focusing hard, Dirk bolstered his mental control over the monstrous predator. The latest innovations in GDT’s cortical controllers were light years ahead of their previous models and en
abled the wielder to not only physically control the implanted subject, but utilize its myriad senses as well.
Of course, with the queen, the young scientist realized he was hitting a few speed bumps. All Thalassophoneans had a rudimentary intellect of sorts, honed by 65 million years of incarceration. Tiamat’s mind, however, was superior to that of her brethren. She was capable of basic problem solving and he could tell she was actively, albeit clumsily, searching for loopholes in her implant’s control factors. She was trying to resist the program, if not shake it off altogether.
It was impossible, of course. The cortex-based implant’s neural filaments were integrated into both her parietal and occipital lobes. Resistance was, as they say, futile. Still, it was disturbing.
In an effort to give his audience a brief respite, Dirk had the giant cow submerge and back away from the aquarium’s protective Celazole wall. Trailing bubbles, she sank to a depth of one hundred feet and withdrew until she occupied the center of the one-thousand foot pool.
Dirk raised his hands for calm and spoke with authority.
“People . . . please, calm yourselves.” He indicated the shadowy form submerged at his feet then tapped his skull cap with one index finger. “There is absolutely no danger. I promise you, the queen is under my complete control.”
Gradually, the cries of alarm ceased and people regained enough composure to return to their seats. Dirk spotted Security Chief Dwyer and Sergeant Wurmer on their feet and adjusting their uniforms, and all the while trying to act as if they’d been unfazed by Tiamat. Admiral Callahan, on the other hand, had no problem admitting he’d been scared to death. Dirk saw him jabbering in Grayson’s ear, one hand on his heart and laughing good-naturedly. It was a good omen.
“My apologies for alarming you,” Dirk continued. He nodded sagaciously. “We were going to pass out adult diapers to everyone on the way in, but we felt people would interpret it as some sort of publicity stunt.” He grinned as nervous laughter rippled through the crowd. “Still, if anyone feels the need to get up and use the restroom, now’s the time.”
Glancing down, Dirk keyed a quick code into his board, allowing Tartarus’s internal media system to tap directly into Tiamat’s neural interface program and linking it to her optical outputs. He hit a key and looked up. Instantly, the twin monitors above his platform shimmered. The one on his right continued to show what the queen perceived – mainly her nervous audience, huddled behind ten to fifteen feet of indestructible thermoplastic.
The one on Dirk’s left, however, went dark. Not black, as if the power had been cut, but amorphous shades of black and gray, like the waters of a pond on a moonless night.
“Now, for you Navy types,” he resumed. “Our recent advances in cybernetic implants put GDT’s biologic controllers so far ahead of any so-called ‘competition’ it’s no longer funny; it’s ridiculous.” He plucked the microphone from its stand, stepped forward and walked to the edge of the dais’s platform. “With our previous technology, using pliosaurs for coastal sentry duty or fleet defense consisted primarily of maneuvering the creature into a set course of action, i.e. patrolling a designated waterway or engaging a target. But beyond that, the animal was more or less left to its own devices. And the controller – the one pulling the strings – was unable to discern the fine points of what was actually happening, beyond their mother vessel’s sonar readings.”
Dirk paused as he saw Admiral Callahan stand up and raise a hand. “I’m sorry admiral,” he said. “But we’re not set up for Q&A. That will be at the post-demo briefing. However, odds are I know what’s on your mind, so let’s keep going. Anything I miss we can cover later.”
As Grayson coaxed Callahan back into his seat, Dirk wandered the platform. “In order for the navy to appreciate the capabilities of these new--” and many times more expensive “--units, it’s imperative for you to appreciate the advanced degree of management you will have over your subjects. We’re talking mind-to-mind communication, people. If I wanted to,” he gestured at the giant form lurking below. “I could bring Tiamat to the surface and have her lay on her side, doing the ‘Hi there!’ flipper-waving routine they used to have killer whales do, back in the day.”
He stopped at the center of the oval-shaped concrete platform, less than a foot from the edge. “But I don’t think you came here to see the world’s mightiest predator acting like some stir-crazy dolphin, now did you?”
As the now-enthusiastic crowd responded with a resounding chorus of “No!” Dirk nodded. “I didn’t think so.” He gestured upward as Stacy stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight, fifty feet up. “Then, at the risk of sounding like some magician in a traveling circus, allow me to draw your attention to my lovely assistant, perched high above us.”
Dirk paused, allowing the crowd to make whatever mental leaps they might as to what would happen next. Meanwhile, Stacy adjusted her CCUBA mask and moved to the edge of her platform, one hand grasping a bolted-on steel handle as she waved. “For the record,” Dirk announced. “Dr. Daniels is far from just an ‘assistant.’ She is a leading expert in the fields of neural and maritime robotics, as well as the premier authority on Pliosauridae.” He turned to face the audience. “That said, she is far more than just a pretty face.”
On cue, Stacy pretended she’d lost her grip and her balance and, backed by a chorus of alarmed cries, tumbled from her perch. In mid-fall, she twisted her body head-down and interlocked her hands, performing a near-perfect rip-entry and cutting into the water with hardly a splash. She surfaced a few seconds later, powerfully free-styling her way away from the wall and moving purposefully toward the podium platform, some seventy-five yards away.
Despite the impressiveness of Stacy’s stunt dive, the pensive crowd, fully cognizant of what was in there with her, was on its feet, pointing and crying out. Seemingly oblivious, she continued to swim, her strokes smooth and steady as she made for the safety of the nearby dock.
All of a sudden, Stacy stopped and started treading water. Like a giant cauldron coming to a boil, the pool’s surface around her began to swirl across an area over one hundred feet across. Her head swung back and forth, the mirrored lenses of her Thunnus rebreather reflecting her frightened audience as she peered anxiously about. Then she dove underwater and disappeared. The water around the spot where she was last seen churned violently and went deathly still. Soon, panicked murmurs began propagating throughout the stands.
Moments later, Tiamat breached the surface like a scaly battlecruiser, twin columns of compressed water vapor exploding whale-like from her blowholes. And clinging tightly to the gnarled skin of her ten-foot thick nape was Stacy, alive and unharmed.
The crowd cheered wildly. Adding fuel to the fervor, Dirk directed the giant pliosaur to perform a slow oval around the edges of the amphitheater, giving his audience an appreciation of the captive behemoth’s true size, compared to the tiny life form affixed to it. For her part, Stacy primarily focused on maintaining her grip, but she managed a quick wave at one point, generating an additional round of applause.
Dirk touched a tab on his keyboard and focused hard into his skullcap. It was time to move to the highlight of their performance. On command, Tiamat swung obediently toward him, her speed gradually increasing. As she reached the center of the pool, still two hundred feet from the dock’s terminus, she sounded, washing Stacy off her back and vanishing into the depths with a violent splash.
Stacy flailed as she bobbed to the surface. Her alarmed audience uniformly relaxed when they saw she was okay. With the CCUBA on, she wasn’t at risk for drowning, but Dirk could tell the strain of being dragged under had left her disoriented. She took a moment to get her bearings before beginning a slow crawl stroke toward the podium.
On the monitor above, her tiny form could be seen flailing on the surface. The viewpoint was from directly below, transmitted via Tiamat’s binocular vision as she eyed Stacy hungrily.
“You’ve seen the degree of control we exert over earth’s
mightiest predator,” Dirk announced. “However, in order to appreciate the impact of the military applications for the more advanced GDT-ADCAP implants, I believe a different type of demonstration is in order.”
He gave Stacy the go-ahead and, with a tiny salute, she dove underwater and began to power steadily downward, her arms pumping and legs kicking until she reached the fifty-foot mark. She remained there, breathing easily through her CCUBA. Tiamat had retreated into the shadows by the aquarium’s far wall, but on the monitor, the crowd could see she remained fixated on the miniscule mammal that had invaded her territory.
Dirk drew in a breath and brought the giant saurian’s hunting instincts to life. A deep, ratcheting sound, like a rusted portcullis being raised, echoed throughout the amphitheater, as the queen focused her powerful sonar on Stacy. It blasted forth, a giant cone of fast-cycling broadband clicks that enveloped not just the suspended scientist, but the entire thousand-foot aquarium.
The potent sound waves bounced off its stony depths and thick polybenzimidazole walls and reverberated beyond, spreading ever wider until they encompassed the entire coliseum, blanketing everyone and everything. The sonar was like a CT scan; you could feel it penetrating your flesh, your bones, even your teeth.
High above, the amphitheater’s second screen suddenly came to life. On it, Stacy appeared as a tiny, illuminated figure. She was a glowing target in the crosshairs, her entire body flickering against a background of purest black.
Dirk spoke into the mike. “Any naval vessel utilizing our system has full access to anything the host unit detects. This includes echolocation, visual, audio . . . even olfactory components.” He stepped away from the podium and indicated the first screen. “The monitor on your left is, as you’ve undoubtedly realized, the view from Tiamat’s eyes. This is how she sees her underwater world, in color and with a hint of thermal overlay. Her sub-surface eyesight is phenomenal, as one would expect from a pelagic huntress. She can see in all but complete darkness.” He moved along the podium platform, indicating the remaining LCD screen.
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