by Darcy Town
Rake rolled up on his arm and smiled. He rested his nose and lips on her arm; he wanted to make her feel better. He took a deep breath. “What does it mean?”
“For you? Nothing, you should feel no differently. You have no ties.”
He spoke softly, “I meant for you, Bebette.”
“It does not mean that I must like you, or even tolerate you, but I do,” she added quickly. “I cannot be physically very far apart from you, to do so causes me pain. That’s why earlier when you ordered me away—”
Rake cringed. “Add that to my list of things to make up to you. What else does it mean?”
“I cannot live past you.”
He frowned. “Live past me?”
“I die when you do.”
Rake’s intake of air was audible. “Jesus H. Christ! That’s retarded!”
Ravil took his hand. “Don’t worry. You don’t die if I die.”
“Don’t worry?” Rake glared at her. “Fuck Ravil, what else is there?”
“I must obey your orders in regards to movement, position, and place. You can order me to go or stay at your will.”
“I can?”
“Yes, and I cannot disobey.” She winced. “So if you order me to stay and you leave, then I won’t be able to follow you.”
“Oh.” Rake frowned.
“I’ll understand if you do. You never asked to be drawn into this. So if you wish to sunder the bond by splitting us, you can send me away.”
“Yeah, cause I need to give you anymore agony.”
She shrugged. “It wouldn’t last long, the separation would kill me.”
He jerked. “Well I’d never do that anyways!”
“I would un—”
Rake covered her mouth with his hand. “I’m not going to do that, and no more order taking. You’re my friend Ravil, my partner in crime. And it seems I am your pilot.”
Ravil looked up at him as he removed his hand. “I don’t want to die that way, Rake.”
“You’re not going to. I’m not going anywhere. We’re sticking together from now on.”
“Thank you.”
Rake rolled onto his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows. “Before we get into this other stuff too deeply, Navi, give me the big picture rundown, the war, and the history.”
Ravil rubbed her eyes. “You’re not being serious.”
“Oh, deadly serious.”
“It’s going to take awhile.”
Rake shrugged. “Are we on a schedule? Do we have to be somewhere for lunch?”
“No.” She smiled and her red eyes grew brighter. “I don’t know everything though. I really have been on the run most of my life. I never went to a school.”
Rake poked her. “Lucky bitch.”
She kicked him in the shin. “You can’t appreciate a normal life until you don’t have one anymore.”
“Normal is boring and dull.” He grinned. “I want to know everything you do, and then we can get into the nitty-gritty of you and me and what’s next for us both.” He cocked his head, he was all ears.
Ravil took a deep breath and jumped into what she did know.
***
Tasanee stared at her four friends in muted horror. Marx rocked her and sang in a language she did not understand. She elbowed him in the stomach with both arms. “What are you singing?”
Marx appreciated her jabs; they were signs of affection he was sure. “We sing to those we court.”
“Court?” She dug her nails into his arm and pushed against him. “You are not courting me!”
Marx grinned at her fighting spirit. “But I am, little rat. I have decided this is so.”
Tasanee leaned into him and whispered out of the side of her mouth, “I’m pretty sure the whole different subspecies thing is a problem. So, how about you just hold me prisoner and leave it at that? Courting is not necessary.”
Marx ran his Velcro-textured tongue across her cheek. “No, I have already spawned. I do not need a mate for children. Although I think perhaps you and I could have cubs.”
“Eww! Why me?” Tasanee squirmed in his arms.
“You taste compatible.” Marx purred. “We would have much pleasure in carnal relations. I would have you singing your own songs.”
Tasanee held in a gag. “Dude, I said I did chicks, not dicks. Is that not clear enough for you?”
Marx smiled. “I know what you said.”
Tasanee glared at the others and raised her voice, “Having fun over there?”
Evgeniy frowned. “No.” He’d had to tie the others to their chairs to keep them from helping Tasanee or fleeing. He was the only one unbound. He held up a drink to Danny’s lips. “Not fun.”
“Glad to know I suffer in company.” She glowered.
Marx purred. “How may I make this fun for you, little rat?”
“You can’t.” Tasanee grimaced. “Unless you let me go.”
Marx kneaded her thighs with his free hand. “I cannot do that, but I can pleasure you.”
“Fucking gross!” Tasanee squirmed. “Fuck off! You creep me out! And stop touching me with your gimp hand!”
Marx grinned at her struggles. “How cute you are.”
Katarina shouted at Marx, “She is mine you know!”
Marx smiled at Katarina and rubbed a claw along Tasanee’s arm. “Shall we fight for her now?”
Tasanee hissed at Katarina. “No! Don’t egg him on, Kat!”
“You may refer to me as it.” Marx licked her cheek. “I am only a ‘him’ when I prefer to be and now I no longer prefer to be that since you do not fancy males. Hunters can be male or female at will. This should be a welcome surprise to you I am sure.”
Tasanee’s look of horror, if anything, got worse. “Fuck! Let go of me.” She grabbed at Marx’s hands and tried to pry his fingers away from her body. “Let go!”
Marx smiled and sniffed up the side of her face. “It is the way for mates to fight before pairing, to establish dominance, but now is not the time, little rat. Later, I promise we will wrestle.”
Danny eyed Marx. “You still haven’t told us what you want. You’ve asked about Rake, about the girl, but what do you want?”
“To find them.” Marx yawned. “That is all a Hunter ever wants, to find and catch prey.” He purred into Tasanee’s neck. “And sex. We love sex.”
Tasanee groaned. “Fuck.”
Oro hopped his chair closer. “What if we just gave Rake and Ravil to you?”
Marx frowned. “Not as fun, but due to the necessity of this mission, it would be an acceptable, although not agreeable, outcome.”
Danny frowned. “But you only seek Rake to get her, right?”
“Correct.”
“So if we gave you her, would you let Rake go?”
Marx nodded. “I would, however my partner Lincoln would not. Rake represents a bit of a medical oddity to him. He has requested Rake to study.”
“Would that end in his death?”
“Uncertain.” Marx rested his chin on the top of Tasanee’s head. “I am not a scientist. Is death common in species collection?” No one answered. Marx drew Tasanee’s blood and sucked on his claw. He smacked his lips. “Delectable.”
Tasanee twisted and scratched Marx’s cheek. “Stop doing that!”
Marx sealed her wound and touched his bleeding face. “Would you like some of my blood in return? That would be fair, yes?”
“Fuck no!” Tasanee leaned away from Marx. “Everything about you is disgusting! I’m going to need to bathe for three days straight after this!”
Marx leaned forward and pulled her back into his embrace. He nuzzled her neck. “May I bathe you?”
Tasanee closed her eyes. “That involves your fucking tongue doesn’t it?”
“Yes! You would be very clean after, very satisfied.” He licked her ear.
Tasanee pinched Marx’s tongue between her fingernails, she looked him in the eye. “Stop fucking licking my face, drawing my blood, and petting me. Not cool,
none of it, got it?”
Marx found this display of dominance arousing. The Hunter grinned. “I have not had a dominant partner before, this is far more enjoyable than I ever imagined.”
Tasanee closed her eyes and leaned her chin on her chest. “Nightmares, this is going to give me years of fucking nightmares.”
***
Rake and Ravil examined a scene built from rocks. A rock the size of a bowling ball sat in the middle with other smaller rocks strewn around it. Rake concentrated, utterly focused. He pointed at the big rock. “First Planet.”
Ravil nodded. “Right.”
He counted off three fingers. “Home to Ampyr, Rexos, and Jungays, the First Planet races. Those three don’t really like each other very much so they went to war a hell of a long time ago. Ampyr and Jungays grouped up against Rexos cause those guys sound pretty badass and were kicking some serious alien ass.”
Ravil nodded.
He grinned. “The Rexos got fed up and left the planet for space figuring that the war was tied to the planet, but the other two followed them because they’re dicks.”
Ravil snorted. “Acceptable.”
“Space fighting and colonies commenced over a long period of time. Ampyr got control and screwed their Jungay partners over, taking control of both Jungay and Rexos.” He watched her to make sure he was getting this right. “And they can do that because they refined their talent of smooth talking voice control. But, uh, a little colony of Rexos and Jungays went into deep space and hid the fuck out. Those guys became the Resistance you keep referring to.”
“Right.” Ravil grinned at his choice of words. “Hid the fuck out, indeed.”
He stared at the little rocks. “In the war, the Ampyr had already started fucking around with genetics, creating the py, py—”
“Pyros.”
“And the Fix-Its.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe there’s an entire subspecies named Fix-It, poor bastards.”
She shrugged. “It’s not the worst in my opinion.”
“Anyways, so Ampyr used the first overrun Rexos colonies as Seed Planets.” Rake frowned. “So, what, they just dropped groups off and said have fun? Survive! We’ll see you in a few hundred?”
Ravil nodded. “Each of the three First Planet Races had survived on their portion of the home world due to their gifts, talents which were highly adaptable. They reasoned, correctly, that given enough time in extreme climates those deposited elsewhere would develop new talents to survive.”
Rake frowned. “Then they harvested the useful ones for slave labor. They swept in and named and classified the newbie subspecies, got their planet under control, and put them into breeding colonies. They maintained that network through your people.”
Ravil nodded. “Once Navigators were harvested the Ampyr could go anywhere. They sent ships out to any habitable planet; mixes of First Race and subspecies were placed on the far planets to develop. They figured the more environments the better and the more varied the tools they would produce.”
“Earth is one of those, right? So who’d we get?” He grinned. “What are we built from?”
Ravil shrugged. “I don’t know anything about your planet. There’d be evidence far enough back of your ancestral nature, but my guardians and I didn’t have time or access to the information.” She frowned. “You’re all so different here, it is weird. The rest of the subspecies are uniform in appearance, but you have so many colors and shades here. Calpsan was always confused by it.”
Rake smiled. “We’re the kitchen sink of the universe!”
“I…guess…whatever that means.”
Rake looked at the small rocks. “Didn’t any of these cooler subspecies put up a fight when the Empire swarmed in to collect the goodies?”
“Mostly no. Well, the Hunters fought, they have the quick reflexes of the Ampyr with the healing and blood attunement of Rexos. The Ampyr almost obliterated the entire planet from orbit until they realized they could use Hunters for tracking purposes.”
“Those are the cat hermaphrodites?”
Ravil nodded. “Yes and the ones that seek me out.”
He pointed to a tiny pebble. “So the Resistance just stayed on the edges of space and chilled the entire time?”
“Chilled? They fled and tried to find places the Ampyr couldn’t, or wouldn’t want to reach, but with Navigators in place there became no distance too far.”
Rake grimaced. “Is there any particular reason the Ampyr couldn’t leave them alone? You said the places the Resistance fled to were backwater nothings with crap environments and no resources.”
“The Ampyr cannot stand the idea of something moving outside their control and they must have everything pure and unsullied. There must be an order of things.”
“So they’re the OCD aliens of the universe.”
“Uh…yes?” Ravil frowned at the word. “They could have ruled with ease if they had been willing to integrate with the Jungays, but both sides refused to interbreed and Ampyr in the end couldn’t stand Jungays having control either.”
“But you, uh we, we’re all one people originally.”
“So the Resistance thinks. Say that around an Ampyr and you can expect a death sentence.” She sighed. “The Ampyr believe they are perfect. They have their own religion, placing them at the top of course and all others in positions of servitude.”
“Do you have one?”
“A religion?” She shook her head. “We were raised to believe theirs, but I don’t.”
“What happened when they came to your planet? It seems like Navigators could have teleported away.”
“We’re docile.”
“You’re docile?” Rake rubbed his neck. “I seem to remember you hitting me, shooting others, and gutting a man with relative ease. Oh and bringing down two helicopters. Nothing about you screams docile, Ravil.”
“Well, if something else happened in the past, I don’t know of it, okay? History isn’t part of our lesson plan.” She frowned. “Why teach a Rexos of its history when all it needs to do is pull something?”
Rake flicked a rock. “When did your Resistance gain other races?”
Ravil frowned. “I don’t know, Rake. I told you, there’s a lot I don’t know.”
“Okay, okay. So you need to get into space and find the Resistance so you can start to pilot fleets and aid the movement.”
“Yes.”
He watched her. “Do you want to?”
Ravil opened her mouth, closed it. She pulled at blades of grass. “Want to?”
“Yeah, you know, you can have wants.”
Ravil frowned. “Not during a war. I’m not supposed to have wants.” She pursed her lips. “I have my purpose, I was made to move things distances. Only after this war is settled can we begin to think about desires, wants. I am not supposed to think on it before that. I’m ready to give my life for the Resistance.”
Rake grabbed her hand. “What’s the point of being in a Resistance movement if you can’t get what you want?”
Ravil blushed at the contact. “In your Star movies, the characters did what they had to. They did not do what they wanted.”
“They did what they wanted, but what they wanted to do and their purpose tended to overlap.”
“Yes, convenient for plot.” Ravil stuck her tongue out at him. “Not the way life works, Rake.”
Rake pushed her shoulder. “Just think on it.”
“Why should I? You’re the pilot, you make the decisions.”
“No, we’re ending that behavior right here.” Rake stabbed the dirt with his finger. “We are a team. You’re giving me the choice to bow out of this war, and I’m giving you the same one. I want to know that you’ve actually thought on it before you answer.”
“Thank you. I will think on it.” Ravil pulled on a piece of grass. “But for now, you and I have to find some way to train together if you’re still serious about it. Are you? After hearing all of that, you still want to be involved?”
> “Hell yes! Only if you do, though. We’ll train, but we’re doing it the Rake and Ravil way.”
She smiled. “The ‘I have no idea what I’m doing’ way? Or do you mean ‘shoot first ask questions later’ way? I think both will get us killed—just my opinion.”
“The training stuff you mentioned earlier sounds boring.” He smirked. “I never really learned to pilot until I got in a damn ship and drove. Book theory only goes so far. We just need to experiment. We’ll be fine, it’s not like you can accidentally kill me by us jumping around.”
“True.” She leaned on him, content. Her future made sense again. She wrapped her arm around his. “You’re the first person to give me a choice, Rake. That means a lot to me, more than you probably know.”
Startled, Rake looked down at her. With danger gone and the excitement of new knowledge on the wane, thoughts of earlier pressed their way back into his mind. Guilt and shame bored holes through his defenses, forcing him to recall in detail what had happened in Tasanee’s workshop. He was mortified and disgusted all over again.
He squeezed his eyes shut and bumped his head on the ground. Why was she acting okay with him? Why hadn’t she spoken up this entire time? Why hadn’t she punched him in the dick? He hadn’t deserved being saved. The only good reason to do it, in his opinion, was that it kept her from dying. That was definitely a good enough reason, but why was she sticking around?
Rake scooted away from her, unable to look up. He couldn’t, for fear the lust would come back. He stabbed his fingernails into his scalp; she couldn’t even flee. No wonder she had been slow to run in the first place. He winced, realizing he could order her to stay to prevent her from leaving. She’d be his possession whether she wanted to be or not.
The power was a rush of its own, but Rake only felt worse at having it. He kept his eyes closed. “Ravil, I need to say one thing before this goes any farther.”
Ravil was at his side instantly, her eyes running up and down his body, trying to figure out what ailed him. She leaned over him. “What is it?”
Rake jumped back and landed on his butt. “God! You’re a little sneaky thing aren’t you?”