Fierce Enchantments

by Janine Ashbless

  —THIS WILL HURT REAL BAD. ARE YOU AFRAID?

  Yes. She didn’t try to hide it from him. How could she hide, when they were in such intimate proximity? He wanted her to hurt. Just the thought of her pain was enough to nearly send him over the edge. She was shaking now.

  —YOU CAN SCREAM. I’D LIKE THAT.

  “Come here,” he said in a low gruff tone, and used the crab claws to pull her close. His mouth moved over hers. Then he pressed the triggers.

  White light arced across her breasts. She gave him what he wanted, and screamed. But she didn’t have time to feel real pain, because a split second later his orgasm hit her like a volcanic eruption, and then they were burning together, locked in a private inferno.

  When she came round his arms were about her, holding her upright in his lap. Her tits felt like they were on fire, but Brannon was slippery with sweat and clammy-cold and quaking with aftershocks.

  OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK Brannon’s voice gabbled. OH FUCK OH FUCK.

  And she could feel his gratitude.

  ♦♦♦

  The capsule is a sealed gray box which it takes two men to carry. Peyton doesn’t recognize any of the ID numbers printed on the side and registers no stab of recognition from the marines, but then it isn’t like any of them are valued for the depth of their technical know-how. Eighteen Spiders have fried in unwitting defense of a box they’ve no conceptual grasp of either.

  As far as anyone knows, the Spiders are individually non-sentient. True to their invertebrate form, they function like a swarm of insects, crossing the vacuum of space in cocoons. Peyton has heard it postulated that they possessed a hive mind, diffused across the mass.

  She feels now that the Spiders might not be the only ones. Lammergeier Squad move, fight and function like a gestalt entity. Psliding from head to head, she finds it hard to distinguish between the individual men, so focused are they on their task. Hayes isn’t joking any more, and Eriksen isn’t grieving. Rialto is no less ruthless than Brannon. Only the sergeant stands out, because she can taste his sense of responsibility—for the mission, and for his men.

  ♦♦♦

  Brannon lifted her from his lap at last and plopped her down on her knees in front of him. Peyton found herself eye-to-eye with his slick, lolling cock. The thing flopped about like a drunk and she wondered if she should lick it clean of her pussy juices. Then Brannon stood up, patted her on the head and wandered away, taking his tackle with him. She watched him saunter over to where a tin of the usual weak military beer awaited him in Hayes’ hand. He cracked it and took a swig, glanced back idly at her, smirked to see her watching, then turned his shoulder.

  Hayes slapped him on the arm, congratulating him on his work.

  “You okay, Corporal?”

  That was the sergeant, still sitting in his plastic chair with his knees spread insouciantly. Still wearing T-shirt and shorts, the last person in the room with any clothes left on, although his cock was standing clear from the fly of his khakis, caressed lazily in one big hand. He looked like a god, she thought; a huge bronze idol, impossibly broad-shouldered.

  “Yes Sergeant,” whispered Peyton, not daring to wonder whether she was in fact okay. She looked down at herself—at her delicate breasts now tattooed with the signs of her captivity, and at the twin steel horizontals through her nipples that the sketched chains seemed anchored to. Her orbs quivered as she fought to control her breath and hold back sobs. Her face burned with shame and shock.

  She could feel them all, massed at the borders of her mind, their inner voices loud and raucous. All but one. She bowed her head.

  Then, on hands and knees, she crawled away from the bed until she had a clear line to Sergeant Jomoa. He crooked a finger, beckoning her to pay homage at the altar of his crotch. Instead, she turned her back, bowed her forehead to the floor and lifted her ass high. The invitation could not have been clearer if she had had it announced over the Base P.A.

  The sergeant chuckled. Someone whistled, low and mockingly appreciative.

  Peyton pressed her hot forehead to the tiles, glad of the cool there. Her aching breasts hung, their tips heavy with the new metal but not quite brushing the scuffed surface. She could feel the first seep of Brannon’s spilt cream from her well-used sex, the puffiness of her labia, the slippery clench of the rear passage that had been opened but not filled by Hayes. Her clit throbbed with need. The hormones of arousal flowed through her bloodstream, making nerve-endings blossom like flowers begging to be pollinated. Making her cunt pulse and dilate hungrily.

  Looking down between her splayed thighs, she saw a long slow drip of viscid moisture appear at the curve of her mons and hang, stretching. Brannon’s cum. Or Hayes’; or Rialto’s. She was so full of their semen that she was overflowing. She whimpered; she did not feel full, she felt horribly empty.

  “What d’you want, Corporal?” Sergeant Jomoa rumbled.

  She wanted his cock.

  Slowly, ass high and thighs wide apart and head still low, she began to creep backward toward his voice. It was a long way on cold tiles; every shift of her hips an offering to him of shameless naked need. Her bum swayed. Her nipples burned. The iris of her rear felt like a hypnotic eye straining to open and stare him down. He was huge, and his cock was huge, and she wanted that.

  Touch me, she told him, though he couldn’t hear her. Touch that, the deepest part of me. Fuck me.

  It was her job to open them up to psi-comms. But all she wanted was for big Sergeant Jomoa to open her.

  “Oh fuck, man,” Hayes groaned. “Look at that.”

  “That is fucking sweet.”

  “Go on Sarge. Fuck’s sake. Take it.”

  She was, she thought, a meter or so from his chair. She stopped there and writhed her ass from side to side. “Please,” she whispered to the tiles, reaching behind her with both hands and pulling her cheeks apart.

  Sergeant Jomoa grunted. She saw his flicked cigarette land and bounce on the tile almost at her nose. It lay there, the smoke wreathing up in a gray line from the tip. Then the chair creaked. Peyton looked over her shoulder then—she couldn’t help herself. She saw the big man hunker down behind her, his knees splayed so he could straddle her ass. The male musk of his body reached her even through the cigarette smoke, and she could feel the warmth radiating from his flesh. He moved silently, without haste or effort; laid one hand across the small of her back as if measuring its span, prodded his monstrous cock to her whorl and pushed. Even untrained and unlubricated she would not have been able to resist anything that hard. And Peyton was slither-slippery and very well trained indeed: the gate of her ass stood no chance against the invader, despite its prodigious girth. She cried out as she yielded to him.

  The sergeant took her by the hips and pulled her right onto the length of his cock.

  “Shiiiiiiiit,” said Hayes, wincing theatrically.

  Oh god that felt good. The stretching, and the pain, and the way the pain dissolved into pleasure, and the way the hunger flared in her ass so that it felt like she was sucking him in, deeper and deeper, pulling him inside. It felt good to be sodomized, good to be split in half by that massive tool, good to be watched as she panted and writhed and submitted. It wasn’t just the NCO with his cock in her ass; it was the whole of Lammergeier Squad. She was giving it up to all of them.

  She began to cry, not holding back her wails.

  “Oh man,” Hayes said. His cock was already hard again and he was holding it like a weapon. Brannon, eyes narrowed, ran his tongue across his lips. Rialto was touching himself, squeezing his balls gently, stroking a semi that was filling out with every second. Even Eriksen, lurking at the back of the pack, was moving round to get a better view of the action. And Sergeant Jomoa fucked her slowly and very thoroughly, which was just what she needed. It allowed her to come time after time, one hand stretched back between her legs to play frantically with her clit.
It allowed her to sob out all her anxiety and her pain and her confusion between orgasms. And when he finally quickened, hands gripping her hips like he would crack her pelvic girdle, his huge cock powering deep and hard into her ass and flooding her with his spunk, she made her gratitude very vocal.

  Only when she’d stopped making her own noises did she hear his, inside her head.

  —WELL FUCK SHE MIGHT DO YOU NEVER KNOW SHE MIGHT HAVE MORE SURPRISES SHE MIGHT DO.

  ♦♦♦

  They run the last few hundred yards to the drop capsule. She can see through Brannon’s eyes the bulking metallic haven. And she can see that there are Spiders all over it. Dozens and dozens, scratching and rapping at the panels, trying to pick their way in as if it’s the carcass of some huge beetle.

  —BURN THEM!!

  They close, fanning out with their flamethrowers. Even enclosed as she is, she hears the roar, faintly. Spiders dance and explode, soft interiors boiling to steam.

  —MORE COMING UP BEHIND US

  That’s Eriksen. She sees a blue mass swarming out of the doorway they’ve just escaped from, even as she relays the warning to everyone in the squad.

  —OH FUCK HERE WE GO

  —MOTHERFUCKERS MUST HAVE HEARD

  —SHIT THOUGHT WE’D GET AWAY CLEAN THIS TIME

  —HURRY THIS UP MEN!!

  Peyton plunges for the wheel that manually operates the exterior doors. Her heart is banging in her breastbone. Flamethrowers don’t make quick clean kills; enough Spiders and her squad will be overwhelmed.

  —PEYTON WE’RE CLEAR OPEN NOW!! GET A MOVE ON BEFORE THE REST GET HERE!!!

  She pumps the rotating handle wildly, feeling the grip slip in her wet hands. The doors are huge and respond slowly, with a noise of squealing metal. Her arms are aching. She can hear shouts from outside now. She can’t register any words. She’s not out there with the men any more, she’s in here with the wheel and the effort and the pain, her muscles straining.

  The hydraulics reach the trip point and snap the catch open. She hears the sprung door bounce.

  —IN IN INSIDE EVERYBODY INSIDE HOLD THE LOCK GET IT SHUT NOW!!!

  Peyton sags. There’s a twin wheel inside the airlock: the men will be able to shut the outer door from there. She leans against a panel, trying to get her breath back. The acrid taint of their stress is overwhelming, drowning everything else—even her precog alarm.

  —OKAY PEYTON WE’RE IN OPEN THE INTERIOR DOOR

  She hits the button.

  —WAIT!! WAIT!!! THERE’S SPIDERS IN HERE WITH US SONOFABITCH!!

  It’s too late. The interior door hisses open and something blue and long-legged, as big as she is, scuttles in onto the roof. She can hear everybody shouting, all at once, but she can’t see jack because all the interior lights have gone out, all the monitors and the LEDs too. All she can make out is the faint blue glow of splayed Spider legs, and it’s getting closer.

  She throws herself backward down the interior, falling over seats, scrabbling wildly toward the front bulkhead. The Spider sparks miniature lightning like a Van de Graaff generator as it moves. It illuminates the dead instrument panels as it passes across them, jerkily. It’s seen her.

  Shit! she thinks, in pure panic. She can hear the men shouting and crashing about, but she can’t see them and they can’t see her. And they can’t use flame in here without killing everyone.

  The spider gathers itself, hunching. She pulls the bolt gun from her hip-holster and slaps the safety off, her hands feeling as slow and clumsy as lead mittens. It seems to weigh a ton as she lifts the muzzle. One shot, captive bolt. She has to have it pressed to the Spider’s body before she pulls the trigger.

  It leaps, knocking her backward. Electricity bites her flesh. She has no choice about pulling the trigger: her hand spasms and the bolt goes off. Everything is pure white pain.

  And then dark.

  ♦♦♦

  When she comes round she is looking straight up at Eriksen, who has his hand on her throat.

  “She’s alive,” he grunts—and then snatches her up bodily, crushing her against his armored chest. She doesn’t want to pslide into his head, not now, but she can’t help hearing the leakage from his inner thoughts:

  —ALIVE ALIVE NOT THIS TIME ALIVE OH THANK GOD

  “Ow,” she says weakly, and they laugh, their voices booming over her head. Eriksen stops crushing her ribcage and pushes her to arm’s length so he can look her over. She realizes the whole cabin is lit by chemical glowbags.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Sore,” she says, amazed as much by the way he’s looking at her as by her own survival. Her whole body aches. “But okay.”

  “Doing better than that fucking Spider anyway,” says Hayes, kicking the curled alien corpse.

  “You sure made a mess of that one,” Brannon agrees, pointing to a plume of blue innards splattered over a seat.

  “Not bad, Corporal,” says Sergeant Jomoa.

  Rialto leans over. “Come here, lucky girl,” he says, hooking Peyton out of Eriksen’s arms and pulling her to her feet. He kisses her, hard and warm. In his plasteel armor he feels like some sort of cyborg. She winces as her breasts, still tender from their piercings, are squashed against his breastplate.

  “Hey,” says Eriksen, standing up behind her. “Gently. It’s her first mission.” He slips a hand round her waist to pull her out of Rialto’s embrace, so she ends up with her back to his chest. His other hand cups the mound of her sex as if to protect her chastity. Rialto laughs. Peyton manages her first look around the capsule; the men are unbuckling armor and stowing weapons in lockers. They’re all here. No losses. Sergeant Jomoa looks round from the door in the forward bulkhead.

  “Brannon, get your ass up here and check this thing’s still got fly-by-wire capability.”

  “Can it wait, Sarge?” he grumbles. He’s looking at Peyton in Eriksen’s arms.

  “What, you think she’s going somewhere? Eyes on the mission, Brannon.”

  Brannon curls his lip but obeys, deliberately squeezing between Rialto and Peyton as he passes forward. “You got Spider blood on that nice new uniform, girl,” he points out.

  “He’s right,” Rialto says. “We should do something about that.”

  “How about this?” Eriksen asks, reaching round to hook down the main zipper of her flightsuit. It’s a very tight costume and her breasts spill out luxuriantly. “Any better?” he asks Rialto, and stoops to lick Peyton’s ear. His breath is hot. He smells of sweat. They all do.

  “That is way better,” Hayes concurs from her right, dumping his groin and thigh armor with notable alacrity.

  Rialto grins happily, and flicks both of Peyton’s nipple-bars with the tips of his finger. Her breasts feel huge and hot. “Gotta agree. What do you think, Sarge?”

  Sergeant Jomoa slams a locker shut, his eyes narrowing as he looks her way. “You okay after that Spider, Corporal?”

  “I think so—Oh!” She loses all words as Eriksen has given her mons a good squeeze.

  “We should give her a full medical examination,” Hayes suggests. “Inside and out.” He opens a pocket on his jacket. “I brought lube.”

  The sergeant shakes his head, rueful, and grins. “I guess we got time.”

  “Hear that, lucky girl?” Rialto’s voice is low, his lips close to hers. “You’re just about to get lucky again.” He’s cupping her breasts, vibrating the bars, making her squeak and shiver. But she can’t pull away because Eriksen is embracing her from behind. Then Hayes pushes in.

  “Stand back: I’ve got first aid training.” He’s also got his cock out already, erect and optimistic as ever. “Just open wide and say Ah, Corporal.” With that instruction, he pulls her over from the hips, pressing her face to his groin. Peyton sort of expects Rialto to object, but he steps aside and she finds herself bent double, her mouth
full of Hayes’ cock and her ass planted firmly in Eriksen’s crotch.

  Then Eriksen finds the other end of the long double zipper, at the small of her back, and draws it down—right over the curve of her ass. She’d thought the zip was that long to facilitate her using the toilet in her uniform: it hadn’t occurred to her that it provides excellent access for her fellow squad members. She feels a draft of cooler air as her ass-crack and pussy are bared, but by then she’s concentrating on sucking Hayes’ impatient cock. The smell and taste of him is rich from confinement in his armor.

  Hands—multiple hands—play with her pussy, teasing it open, slapping her gently. She says “Ah” around Hayes’ length, but it’s rather muffled. She can’t see anything beyond his hips. She can’t hear anything except the slurp of her own mouth and the rasp of his hands over her ears. Then without warning someone—and she can’t tell who, most probably Eriksen or Rialto but she doesn’t know—is sliding his cock into her pussy. It’s that sudden. No messing around. They want to fuck her.

  They desperately, urgently, want to fuck her. Because they are still alive, and buzzing with victory.

  So they do it quickly, taking turns, no man finishing before he pauses for breath, pulls out and passes her to the next guy. Brannon comes back in from the forward compartment, says, “We’re good to go,” then sees what’s happening and adds, “But there’s no hurry,” before joining in. They pick her up and turn her round, spreading her wide, doubling her up, stretching her out. She’s surrounded by cock, filled with cock, choked by cock; thick and meaty and hard with the knowledge of mortality. They fuck her on her back, on her front, upside down. They fuck her face and her cunt and her ass—all three, each man in turn, until she understands that this is a ritual. At a couple of points she finds herself with three men in her at once. She has never felt so safe, or so needed. It doesn’t take long before she’s coming, and coming hard. Her screams fill the small chamber. They’re probably attracting more Spiders, but no one cares. They can burn those off at launch.