by Stephan Knox
The lieutenant brought her fingers delicately to the unit in her ear and spoke as clearly as the threatening hand on her throat allowed. “Stew. Get your ass back here, will ya? I’m ready to have him moved.”
As soon as Tannin heard the cell block gates open, he snatched the lieutenant’s head and spun it around with a snap, dropping her body to the floor. He rushed for the threshold, side stepping to place his back to the wall and just out of view. Once Stew stepped inside, Tannin twisted out in front of him, his hand shooting out, slamming the giant man directly in the Adam’s apple, silencing any verbal alarms while Tannin moved to disable him completely. An upper cut to the gut instantly had Stew folded over. In the next move, Tannin brought his knee up, and crushed the man’s face in, sending Stew crashing down hard on his back on the floor— out cold.
There was no time to waste, he dragged Stew’s body away from the gateway and quickly stripped the man’s clothes off, trading them for his own. Next, he ripped a strip of cloth from the lieutenant’s t-shirt and used it for a gag. He grabbed the restraint coils from the wall. The same coils they’d used on him when bringing him in, only he didn’t think Stew here was going to be able to give as much of a fight as Tannin had, but Stew needed to be handled as if he were him. Thus, Tannin fastened all three rings over his hostage just as the guards had restrained him. The final touch was a black bag. He pulled it over the man’s head, locked it into place with an iron collar, and then shackled Stew’s ankles.
Having his prisoner bound and ready for transport, Tannin dragged the lieutenant’s body into his cell for good keeping. He entered the code in the touch pad, watching as both the outer bars and the inner wall of steel lowered into place. With his transportation, no one would be looking in his cell for at least a few hours if not days. But enough time for him to be well underway with his breeder. Now, he just had to find her. Perhaps his best chance was to leave then slip back in to find her. As he dressed in Stew’s clothes, his mind was never ending in the race to calculate and weigh the odds of every detail and possibility as they came.
Time to go.
A few slaps to his hostage’s bagged face had him awake. “Let’s go, big boy. We got a long journey ahead of us. Be a good prisoner and I might let you live.” Tannin gave the man some false hope and pulled him to his feet.
Taking the tuareg scarf Stew had been wearing, Tannin made a few last adjustments, securing the wraps around his head and neck, using part of the cloth to cover the lower half of his face, just in case Stew wasn’t as new as the lieutenant claimed he was. He tucked the long braid of his hair down in his shirt and out of view while sending a mental -thanks be- to the Keepers of Destiny for the desert attire the man had come in wearing.
A quick check about the room told him there was no evidence of the struggle, only the lingering smell of sex, but nothing that would raise an alarm right away. Not until they began questioning the disappearance of their lieutenant and opened his cell.
Tannin grabbed his hostage, entered the code to open the gate, and headed out to report to the hangar bay.
Out the first of three gates, they passed several containment rooms, his sym’s senses were wide open, reaching out in search. Scanning each using their heightened senses for any notable prisoners of interest. “We haven’t time for rescue operations, old man. Only the breeder is of concern for us,” he muttered under his breath and passed through the automated gates.
He nodded to the one guard on duty just on the other side of the last gate.
The check guard hardly glanced their way when he tapped a screen on his desk and the locks released.
Tannin shoved his prisoner to move forward steering him ahead without a word otherwise. Down each corridor, he mentally counted his steps, along with noting the sounds and smells of each passage. Calculating each step, in reverse, following the same path he had been taken along during his last transport trip. While he had been the one blindfolded at the time, he’d still been able to map out his turns and the smells he encountered along the way. The last hall took them outside to a small foyer that opened out to a courtyard. From there he could see the large towers of the twin power stations on the far end of the Skaddary Base. It was a shame he didn’t have time for sightseeing, he’d never seen the insides of a working power grid.
He crossed the yard through a set of double doors followed by a turn to the right, taking them down a long corridor that linked the first set of hangars.
Here, it was busy as workers, and enlisted alike, were in a constant flow in and out of the large roll up doors on the backsides of each hangar, connected with the shared intersecting corridor. Inside each hanger, vehicles were either coming in to offload, loading to go out through mirrored roll doors on the far opposite sides. That or they were in a state of repairs to get back into service.
There was a line of eight hangars in all. Too many to play lucky guess of which one he was supposed to go to.
Up ahead an older man only half in uniform sat at a desk outside one of them reading a book rather than paying attention to anyone passing by. Tannin kept a tight hold on his prisoner as he approached, “Book any good? Don’t see too many of those around these days, at least none that aren’t thrown in with the fire logs,” he rattled out an uninvited conversation.
The old man glanced up with a look that clearly told Tannin he didn’t appreciate him interrupting his read with such idle chatter. “You need something?”
“Looking for Transport Gunner Aari.”
He hitched a thumb to his left, “Last one down.”
Still impressed with the man’s possession of the book, Tannin paused to read the title of the literary wonder: Three Men in a Boat: to say nothing of the dog. What a strange name for a book. The book’s owner didn’t take too kindly to Tannin’s snooping either and twisted, tucking the book out of sight with an obvious display that he had no intentions of sharing it.
Tannin let out a lighthearted chuckle to himself and headed off for his destination. Passing the remaining six hangars before reaching the last one on the end.
By Destiny, of all the luck on Terra, he could not believe his.
Tannin caught her scent the second he stepped inside the massive enclosure. Instantly his eyes raced over one female form after another, looking for the body that went with the scent. His blood raced through his veins with the urgency to identify her location, both that of his own and of his Symbiotai; knowing full well, he had precious few to devise a plan based on her location to the scamper.
There were a couple of women gathered over in the far corner, working alongside two guys on a large forty-foot amphibian type vehicle. Two of the women had blond hair and while the third had dark hair, it was shaved down to almost nothing.
He spotted another walking around with a clipboard, her near black hair pulled back tight into a braid. Tannin inhaled deeply, but his nose was already dialed in on the breeder’s scent, so he was having trouble asserting if it was the braided hair woman was his breeder or not. She appeared bigger than he expected, but perhaps it was only because right now she wasn’t traveling in an air duct. Or maybe their ducts were bigger here at the base.
He watched as she walked towards the front of the hangar, pausing at various scampers and trucks. He need only locate his own, wait for her to come close enough, and he’d snatch her and run hard. So much for leaving quietly, but he wasn’t about to pass up the chance to take her now. A necessary risk.
“Hey! YOU!” someone called out. “Let’s get a move on. Your transport is waiting!”
Tannin’s attention panned finding a man waving him over from across the hangar next to a large all-terrain vehicle loaded down with more than a few days’ worth of gear on top of its roof rack, along with a mounted fifty caliber machine gun. Time to go into action, old man. Tannin shoved the bound hostage towards the scamper along with the guard detail standing at the ready next to it and waiting on him. He didn’t like the looks of that. He hadn’t
planned on company this trip. Wasn’t like the Skaddary to send out too many guys on a run. Anything over two was considered a waste of man power.
He looked about, relocating the braided hair woman, now moving away from him, but still considerably closer to the front of the hangar. He measured her pace with every step he took. But there was something else, something drawing his attention back to the scamper. More exact, the breeder’s scent was getting stronger as he drew nearer to it. He glanced back to the woman with the clipboard, vexed as she turned and was heading out of the hangar. He turned back to the scamper and tested the air. Whoever the breeder was, she was still inside the hangar and seemingly near the vehicle he was being called over to. With that, Tannin’s hopes that he’d managed to find her before leaving were driving sky high. Every cell in his body seemed to sizzle with the anticipation of locating her; even his lust was renewed by the closing-in of her scent. Despite the risk to his overall plans, by Destiny, if she was within snatching distance he would certainly do so. Tossing her into the scamper and hauling ass might be as good a plan as he was going to get.
The man who’d been waving him over was looking increasingly impatient with him, so Tannin gave his captive another hard shove for show as he approached. Right away, two men wearing the Guillotine emblem on their shirts stepped up, and without any form of ceremony, grabbed his prisoner and proceeded loading him into the transport vehicle. Tannin didn’t need to look to know the guy would get strapped into a bucket seat in the back then enclosed by a cage. He’d had the privilege more than a few times already.
“You the new transfer from the labor section?” the thick hefty guy who’d waved him over started asking.
Tannin nodded, “Yeah, guess you guys are a few men short.”
“He’s the reason.” His head bobbed towards the bound and bagged prisoner being moved into the back cage of the scamper. “I’m Trooper. I run the hangars. It’s Stew, right?”
Tannin nodded again.
“Yeah, alright.” Trooper knocked on the passenger window and from the other side of the vehicle, a fairly short someone stepped out, and began the journey around front.
Tannin turned lightheaded as the scent of her slammed him in the face.
“This here is your transporter, Outland Gunner Aari. She’ll be your transport lead, and if you value your jewels, you’ll keep them to yourself along with everything else. Your job is to make sure that monster doesn’t kill her along the way. Fail and I kill you myself. You got that?”
Tannin didn’t even bother commenting, his attention was locked on the petite woman standing in front of him. Her expression, like a targeted deer trying to play it off, wasn’t getting past him as her eyes shifted between him and the prisoner being loaded up. However, he seemed to be the only one to notice her wide-eyed stare. Surely, she didn’t realize it was him under the layers of gauze cloth covering half his face as if he were expecting a sand storm inside the walls of the base?
Just then a lanky youth came up behind Trooper. His blond dreads tied away from his face revealed his tan was more from mix blood then time spent out in the sun.
Tannin turned his face away to avoid any chance tribal recognition from the man. But the guy never even glanced his way, rather instead held out a set of pulse pistols.
“You’re lucky we’re friends, Kurin. I was beginning to think you were gonna be a no show on these,” Trooper grumbled.
“Would I ever let you down?” the youth who now had a name countered.
Trooper looked the over then held them out to Aari. Backs. In case you need them”
“Hey! What the drenn?” Kurin flipped out a roll of disapproval. His eyes bugging out as Aari was about to reach for them. “You’re giving them to the troll? Man, if I’d known you was giving them to the troll, I would’ve demanded you get me in on the Axey ac—
Before he could finish, Trooper swung, brandishing the guy’s nose with the stock grip of one of the pistols, splattering blood over them both in the process.
“Fuckin’ drenn!” Kurin cursed. His hands snapping up to cover his bloodied nose.
“Oh good,” Trooper said, holding the pistols out to Aari once again. “All that whining I was beginning to worry the guns were useless.”
She took them, then glanced towards Tannin. An unmanicured brow drawing up as if to ask if he was ready or perhaps asking if he wanted a bloodied nose too. He would have laughed had they been at any other time or place because he doubted she could reach his nose if she tried. “Guess I’m riding shotgun,” he suggested, going with the she-was-ready-to-go translation instead.
Her expression hardened like a shell around her and he took the moment to take in every detail, or rather the details she put considerable effort into hiding. Because as he looked at her, every image he’d tried to put to the sweet smell of her feminine body previously disintegrated and slipped through his fingers. She didn’t come close to what he had expected or imagined, though he never did put much value to any expectation. Except, this definitely wasn’t it. Hidden under her frumpy oversized tunic and black fatigues was a body so lost in them he couldn’t begin to describe what she looked like underneath, other than she was very small, barely standing over three cubits. Making the clothes swim on her all the more, not even the slightest protrusion of nipples showed through her clothes. Not that he caught anything resembling arousal from her at the moment. Trepidation perhaps, but the sensual fresh scent he’d caught before was as void as the shape of her body. It was no surprise the other had referred to her as a troll, though the cruelty was over fetched. She wasn’t truly ugly, just not appealing.
Her black waves of hair had definitely seen better days, and perhaps more disturbing was the unexplainable matching brown eyes. One should have been blue. But despite all her forced hardness, the emotions that stirred in her eyes gave her away. There lay the innocence the lieutenant mentioned, though he doubted much that the woman saw what he was seeing that very moment. There was something extraordinary hiding under those rags and the breeder would be his very soon.
“Prisoner is secured, sir,” one of the hunters stepped up, reporting to both Aari and Trooper.
Trooper waved to dismiss them, which was good news for Tannin, but he didn’t much like the hint of personal involvement as the man turned to the little woman and spoke without all the -following orders- tone. “Aari, ride hard and be careful.”
She shrugged as if it were nothing to her to make the dangerous run.
“I wouldn’t send you, but we’re short manned as it is.”
Again, she disregarded the comment and glanced up at Tannin. “You’re late. I’d like to get going.”
Tannin nodded and jumped in the passenger side, eager to get going himself. Every click longer they stayed the higher the risk of getting found out. He kept his eyes locked, following the breeder intently as she walked around the front of the vehicle and climbed in behind the wheel. “You, uh, looked a little nervous there a moment. Everything alright?” he did his best to disguise his voice.
“I wasn’t expecting someone your size,” she commented, seemingly nonchalant.
“Problem?”
Aari flipped several switches overhead, her face bearing more of the -I’m unaffected- look. “Not at all. You’ll still go down if you so much as try anything.” She averted her eyes to the gauges on the control panel.
He could tell she wasn’t feeling as confident as she came across. He was after all, an immensely large man. “The commander informed me you know the route to delta-nine?”
“Yeah, and the commander told me you’ve never been off base but to scavenge. So now that we know each other, I see no point in more talking,” she answered dryly.
“I’ve been off base before.”
“Working in the labor fields is not off base,” she retorted with a roll of her eyes, though strangely it was more a ploy to keep them diverted.
Something was off.
She even app
eared nervous. He could hear the vibration in her breathing, but he played his part for now, not certain that revealing himself was a good option for her either. “You know nine days out is a long boring run, so if you wanna make a few stops and you know— relieve—”
She snapped her head around, targeting him under a hard glare, “Don’t even think about it or I’ll just shoot you, and say he did it.” She indicated to the secured lump of man heaped in the back.
“Yep, you’re gonna be loads of fun,” Tannin remarked with wry sarcasm as she gunned the accelerator and they shot out the hangar doors into the night.
The tension ebbed off once they rode out through the gates unobstructed. No stops. No checks. Just wide-open release and then turned off onto the road that heads east then would eventually bring them to their northern route.
Aari was no easy-going transporter either. From the moment she gunned the scamper into motion, her foot was peeled to the floor and never eased up. Not even for the sharp turn to get on the road.
They were free now.
He dropped his seat back, stretching his legs out in front of him as far as the vehicle allowed, and closed his eyes, grinning to himself. Not even sparing a glance her way. He didn’t need to. Aari— he rolled her name in his head several times, loving how it danced on his tongue. Aari, his transport gunner was none other than the breeder he was here for. It just didn’t get any easier than this. It only proved Destiny had wanted this for him and that he had not gotten diverted from his path.
Aari—
Now he knew what destiny tasted like on his tongue.
YOU’RE AWAKE NOW
Aari kept her eyes on the red holographic image of the road and surrounding terrain displayed across her windshield while her shotgun-passenger dozed. She really hadn’t expected her second to be such a large man. The commander didn’t usually pair her up with them due to her too well-known unwillingness to mess around with any of the men. Keeping them size proportionate gave her a fighting chance to keep her dignity. But it wasn’t rape she was worried about on this run. It was about how the drenn she was going to put him down, so she could set her prisoner loose.