by Renee Bond
“Captain, we’re receiving a message from the Trinity,” reported my communications officer. The Trinity was another Destroyer class warship, the other Domann vessel assigned to police the city of Atlanta.
“I’ll bet a thousand credits that it’s another request to join our operation,” said Lenth.
“I wouldn’t take that action with a million-to-one odds,” said Sandora.
“Not even at a billion-to-one,” I agreed.
Receiving a request like this was unusual at this late stage - our raid was literally minutes away from commencing. But, it really wasn’t that surprising. Captured resistance fighters were actually quite valuable. My ship, and the two dozen Domann who served on it, would collectively own the captives we took from this raid. We could choose to sell them to the labor camps, or to simply lease them, earning the right to ongoing labor payments as our captives worked off their sentences.
And, of course, there was always the possibility that we would capture the ultimate prize: a human woman with the genes to mate successfully with Domann men.
Such mates were painfully rare. Estimates were that there were less than ten thousand women on the entire planet who were both genetically compatible, of childbearing age and healthy. That meant that, even though the genetic plague had reduced the population of the Domann race to less than half a million men, there were still not nearly enough human mates to go around.
I had never lain with a human woman. Nor had my honor guard. Some among my race chose to lie with genetically incompatible humans, if only to satisfy their ever-present, never-satisfied carnal desires, the bane of my cursed generation. It was an act pursued mainly by those Domann whose low station in our society meant that it would be nearly impossible for them to ever procreate.
But I was not one of those Domann. I was Captain of the mighty warship Dominion.
I would find my human mate. I would capture her. I would own her.
Only once I attained this most sought after prize would I permit myself to experience the pleasures of the flesh.
I would share my mate with my honor guard, of course. They had earned as much with their loyal service, and it was written into Domann law that no man may keep a human mate to themselves. There were simply too many of us, and not enough mates. By law, every human mate must be shared among no less than three Domann men. Some were shared with many more, of course. Those human mates who found an affinity for being shared were often sampled by many hundreds of Domann men, those who won the monthly lotteries and earned a shot at procreation.
But it would never do for a man of my stature to join the desperate multitudes.
I was a decorated Captain, a serviceman of high rank and even higher reputation, as were Lenth and Sandora. We had both the social standing, and the discipline, to wait until we captured a mate of our own.
A human woman who would carry our children. A woman from whom we would take all the pleasures we had yearned for our entire lives.
Over. And over. And over.
The mere thought of taking our long-awaited mate, of training her to obey us and pleasure us, made my cock stiffen painfully against the inside of my armor.
I forced my mind back to the operation.
“Should I open a channel to the Trinity?” the communications officer asked.
“No,” I said. “This is our mission. And those people down there are our humans. They just don’t know it yet.” Lenth and Sandora chuckled. “Open a ship-wide channel instead. I will address my crew before battle is joined.”
After a moment, a small click from my combat suit’s auditory suite let me know that the channel was open.
“Men,” I began, “we are about to embark on an opportunity we have spent a very long time pursuing.” It was true. My intelligence officer and his team had spent many months tracking human resistors, approaching them, and flipping them for yet more intel. Intel which had finally led us to this base. “Now is when we reach out to show the city of Atlanta what we’re made of. We will take what is ours: every last human who dares resist us. And we will own them unconditionally.”
I paused, savoring the moment before issuing the order to begin the operation. The order that would send Domann soldiers down into the human base, to demolish any opposition they encountered.
If there was one thing my people were good at, it was invasion.
But before I gave the order, my communication officer spoke again.
“Sir!” he said excitedly. “I’ve just received a signal message from a drone - from inside the human base!”
“It’s irrelevant at this point,” I said, annoyed at the interruption.
“But sir, it’s from a mate-scanner. And it’s a positive scan result!”
Hearing those words, time seemed, very suddenly, to stop.
A positive result from a mate-scanner.
From the base I was about to raid.
Mere seconds before I launched said raid.
My heart started beating faster. My breathing deepened.
“By the stars!” exclaimed Lenth.
“She’s down there,” said Sandora, his voice intense. “Our mate. She’s right in front of us!”
I couldn’t believe it.
But I sure as hell wasn’t going to let this opportunity - the opportunity of a lifetime - slip through my grasp.
There were no more Domann women. The last of them had died the previous generation.
That meant that the only opportunity for me - and my honor guard - to ever bear children, was in the base directly below my ship.
I’d never felt more ready for anything in my entire life.
But this information changed things.
“Order all the invasion squads to stand down,” I breathed. “My honor guard and I will be the only ones to enter the human base!”
“Sir?” said Lenth.
“You two will stay behind me at all times,” I continued. “I will be the one to take this fight to the humans. You two will only act if I am in real and immediate danger.”
The stakes were simply too high, now that there was probably a woman who could be our mate in the base. The rank and file Domann soldier was good. Perhaps a little too good. Even though standing orders were not to kill human resistors, there were at least a few casualties on every mission, adrenaline being what it is.
“Understood,” said Sandora. “We take this one slow.” Lenth nodded in agreement.
Taking on the entire base myself would extend the length of this operation by hours.
But it was worth it to ensure the safety of our mate.
Of course, the mate scanners weren’t foolproof. False positives did happen.
But, they were rare.
“This is it, gentlemen,” I said with a smile, turning away from the observation dome and striding towards the nearest launch tube. “Today is the day we claim our mate.”
“I can picture her now,” said Lenth excitedly. “I’ve got a feeling she’s a really pretty one too!”
“With long legs, and a great ass,” Sandora agreed.
“And a tight little pussy,” I said. “I can almost feel it wrapped around my cock already.
Lenth and Sandora laughed.
“And she’s sitting right in the palm of our hand,” I added. “All we have to do is wrap our fingers around her.”
“We’re going to be doing a lot more than that with her,” said Sandora.
“Damn right,” said Lenth “Our mate is going to please us in every way imaginable. And even a few ways nobody’s thought of yet!”
“And the best part,” I added, “is that she’s going to love every second of it.”
Chapter 6
Liza
We knew what to expect if the Domann ever found our base.
A full invasion force.
Hundreds of drones swarming from every conceivable direction.
Unstoppable Domann warriors bristling with weapons.
Precisely none of which showed up.
> Trying my very best to put the mate-sensor drone out of my mind - and only partially succeeding - I escorted my mom to the nearest safe room, locked the thick metal door behind her, and sprinted to the nearest arms locker. Men and women wearing what armor they had, mostly light vests and helmets, sprinted around me in every direction, carrying automatic weapons and ultra-heavy caliber rifles. The autos were just to try to wear down Domann shields. The heavy's were to punch through their armor. It was the only system we’d come up with that stood a chance of actually taking down a fully armored Domann.
I linked up with my squad, then we found our unit. Twenty-eight of us took up positions guarding the basement exit of one of the outer buildings the Atlanta resistance owned, taking cover behind old industrial machinery and armored bulkheads.
Twenty-eight weapons were soon trained on the basement door.
Ready for the drones.
As ready as you can get for the Domann.
But… nothing.
Five minutes.
Then ten.
Then twenty.
And still, nothing came at us.
No drones.
No soldiers.
We were left with just waiting. It was the moment everyone in the base had been hoping would never come, and all we were doing was sitting on our asses, pointing our guns at the doors of an elevator that never opened.
And the whole fucking time, my mind was trying to scare the shit out of me.
It kept reminding me of what had just happened, back in mom’s lab. Reminding me that every resistance woman’s nightmare had just turned into my reality.
That a fucking mate-sensor had just scanned me. And turned green. Reminding me that, if I was captured… I would probably become a Domann mate. Would have strong, rugged, dominant alien soldiers use me for their pleasure, seeking to impregnate me as often as possible, sharing me freely among themselves. Over and over.
A lifetime of humiliation.
I’d seen the broadcasts. Had seen them break their women. Fuck them unmercifully.
That. Could. Not. Happen.
I was nobody’s mate. Nobody’s god-damn fuck-toy. Certainly not one for the alien bastards who were subjugating my entire species.
No matter what, I was not getting captured today.
No matter what.
Our unit received a steady drip of reports. Domann commandos had breached the base, and were taking prisoners. Our soldiers were moving in to oppose them. Our soldiers had failed to slow them down. Evacuation efforts that ran into ambush after ambush after ambush.
“They’ve got us surrounded,” Kara said at one point, her voice a tense, low whisper.
“Looks like it,” I responded.
Most of us had radios. We were all listening to the evacuation reports. Domann procedure was to try to wait at the exits of a base whenever they found one. To capture whoever tried to escape. We’d learned that the best way to get people out of a base was to send a few people through only one exit at a time, to see which ones got away and which ones had drones lying in wait.
There had been no reports of successful escapes.
That could only mean one thing.
The Domann had known about our base for long enough to map it out. To discover every entry and exit point.
We all knew the odds of breaking through a Domann line. Terrifyingly slim.
Thirty minutes went by.
Then forty.
Still, nothing tried to get in through the egress we’d been assigned to guard.
Then, finally, we got the call.
“Fall in!” ordered our Lieutenant. “We’re heading back towards the center of the base!”
“About fucking time!” said Damien. “We should have gone back twenty minutes ago!”
“Couldn’t agree more,” I said. If we were being recalled into the base, it meant that our forces there had been overrun. Which may not have happened if we’d concentrated our firepower from the beginning, instead of trying to hold as many entry points as possible.
Our unit began to head back towards the interior of the base.
But Kara pulled on my arm. We lagged behind.
“Don’t let them take me,” she said. “I need you to promise that you won't let that happen.”
“We’re going to make it through this,” I said. Not believing a word of it.
“No we’re not,” said Kara, her voice rising in barely-contained panic. “You know damn well that nobody is getting out of here! If none of our evacuation teams have made it out by now, chances are nobody is getting out. Those fucking Domann have gotten pretty damn good at this. But I’m not going to some fucking labor camp. And I’m NOT becoming some fucking alien’s baby-mama. So you need to fucking promise me that they don’t get me.”
“What do you expect-”
“You damn well know what I’m saying here Liza!” Kara insisted. Her dark eyes bored into mine with a piercing intensity. “There’s always a way out. One that no Domann can take away from us.”
As if for emphasis, she patted the small-caliber pistol at her side.
I stared at it.
I didn’t like it.
But, deep down, I knew that it did not matter one damn little bit what I liked.
“Ok,” I whispered, finding resignation within myself. “But you have to promise me the same thing.”
“OK,” Kara said.
Neither of us said any more on the matter. It wasn’t exactly something we were eager to discuss.
Less than a minute later, our unit hit a Domann contact.
We weren’t in position.
We never even saw it coming.
Chapter 7
Liza
One minute we were running through the tunnels under our base, leapfrogging from doorway to doorway, scouting for the enemy.
The next minute, the enemy was among us.
From thin air, three Domann soldiers materialized. Their rank and file soldiers don’t have cloaking technology, but their officers and elite warriors do.
My heart leapt into my throat as I stared, as though through a tunnel, at three tall, heavily armored techno-gods of destruction. Their helmets were a mean looking oval of black glass. They carried no visible weapons, but that didn’t matter.
They were weapons.
The Domann raised their hands.
A split second later, bodies were flying through the air, blasted backwards by a gravity field generated by the Domann suites.
I hit the wall behind me. Luckily - for Kara - I was between her and the same wall, cushioning her impact. My helmeted head bounced off the cement behind me.
The world swam.
A few people in our unit fired from the floor. A few, already through the next doorway, managed to avoid the blast, and fired from their forward position.
Then those guns lept from their owners hands, snatched away by powerful magnetic fields, clattering uselessly to the floor, out of reach.
The Domann moved with terrifying speed. Faster than anyone had any right to. Almost faster than I could watch. I’d heard that those suits they wore made them fast. But I’d never realized how fast.
In seconds, our entire unit was incapacitated, either by the impact of the initial blast, or by jets of foam the Domann suits sprayed us down with. That foam expanded, then hardened within seconds, encasing limbs and torsos in a gluey, crusty substance that held us down fast.
That was the moment I started to truly panic.
I’d heard about the gluey foam. It contained a mild sedative. Get exposed to enough of it, and it would put you to sleep, or at least make you drowsy enough that you could never free yourself from it.
And I was fucking covered in it.
Kara, somehow knocked unconscious, was pinned down on top of me. The gluey foam held us both against a wall.
Somehow, I managed to free my right arm.
It found my heavy pistol. Holstered it.
Held it up.
I had just one shot in the cha
mber - the bullets were too big for any kind of magazine.
Blearily, I looked down at Kara.
I’d promised that she wouldn’t get captured.
But I didn’t have enough bullets for both of us. If I made sure they couldn’t capture her… who would do the same for me?
The pistol trembled in my fingers.
The Domann soldiers were walking up and down the corridor, making sure that everybody was immobilized and unarmed.
Very soon, they would find me.
I had to make a decision before they did.
Would I use that pistol on my friend, like I’d promised?
Shit.
Shit!
Fuck, I was the one who’d made a damn mate-sensor turn green! If either of us was going to take the easy way out, it should be me!
Fuck it. Hopefully, one day, Kara could forgive me.
I put the barrel to my head.
Closed my eyes.
Took a deep breath.
Felt sad that I wouldn’t see my mom again.
Then, for some reason, I opened my eyes.
A Domann soldier was standing over me. Staring down at me, like a god staring down from Mt. Olympus. In that moment, he was all powerful. And I had nothing left that I could resist with.
Except for the pistol in my hand.
“Don’t,” the Domann said.
Just that.
But fuck, just hearing that pissed me the fuck off.
Who was this fucking alien piece of shit to tell me what to do? His species was going to turn me into a captive. A prisoner. A slave. Who the fuck did he think he was, to tell me what to do in my position? How could he possibly know what I was thinking, or feeling? What I was terrified of?
He couldn’t.
And he had the fucking balls to give me an order anyways.
Just like his whole fucking species thought they could order around my species. Could enslave us, force us to labor for them, to mate with them.
My fear evaporated.
I saw red.
With a snarl, I pointed my heavy pistol at the fucker’s head and pulled the trigger as hard as I could.
He didn’t even move.
A blue flash of energy leapt up from his combat suit, deflecting my bullet, causing it to rip by his head a millimeter too high.