by M. E. Thorne
My erection grew even harder as she continued to whisper filthy vulgarities.
Grabbing her hips, I lifted her up before depositing her right on the crown of my cock. She quietly squealed in bliss as she sunk down slowly. I felt every centimeter of her pussy rub against me as her pussy lips sank and drew around the base of my balls.
Drawing up my legs, I began to slowly bounce her up and down. Any pain I felt from my injuries was washed away by waves of bliss.
She planted her knees along my hips and went along with the ride. Every time her hips came down I felt a jolt of red-hot pleasure rip through me, as I dug deeper and deeper into her pussy.
I moved my hands next to her ribs, and she wrapped her hands over my own. Her hair flew wildly around her head as her breathing became more uneven.
The pressing confines of her snatch felt amazing. I could feel the delightful bumpiness of her G-spot each time my cockhead ran over it, the rough patch massaging my glands. Her juices were flowing freely, soaking my crotch in fragrant nectar.
“I’ve never been this wet,” she said, panting into my shoulder for a momentary rest. “I don’t fully understand what’s happening, but your cock is hitting all the right spots. I think I could grow addicted to this.”
Grinning and moving my hips, I slowly twisting my dick inside her. She stifled a scream by biting into my shoulder. I didn’t even feel the pain.
There was no stopping us after that.
I resumed my efforts with increased vigor, sending her up in the air before she came crashing down on my shaft. She leaned back against my legs, her chest heaving. Our fingers braided together between us, her grip painfully tight.
I could feel a massive wave of cum building at the base of my cock, boiling out of my balls and surging outward. With one last thrust, I brought her down, fully transfixing her on my dick.
She bit my shoulder again as we both came, our bodies heaving and shivering as we lost ourselves in the euphoria.
We collapsed onto our sides, still wrapped around one another.
I could feel a second, smaller orgasm shudder through me as I finished painting her insides completely white.
“World record,” Gnasher joked weakly as I slid free.
My dick definitely looked a bit different, I swore I saw rows of soft barbs near the head. As I watched, they seemingly retreated and my member went back to its normal appearance.
I put an arm under her and rolled onto my back, pulling her with me. She curled up against my side, her head resting on my chest.
“I love you,” I breathed.
“Love you too,” she immediately responded, her fingers gracefully charting whirls across my skin. “I’m sorry I bit you.”
“It’s okay, you didn’t break the skin,” I answered. “I’m not even mad.”
“I dunno, I’m kind of pissed,” came Gloria’s sleepy voice. “Some of us are trying to sleep around here.”
“Hush,” said Spinny from her web. “Let them have their fun.”
“I got dibs on the next ride,” the bat-girl sulkily responded.
“Third,” Marcella chimed in.
Sabra snored before rolling over, evidently sleeping through our performance.
“Maybe we should start selling tickets,” Gnasher laughed as we all fell back asleep.
Once we were sure the coast was clear, we left our makeshift camp the next morning. Gnasher led the way, and I hobbled along in the rear.
I felt a bit uncomfortable wearing the bloodstained jumpsuit and boots again, but it was better than nothing.
As Marcella had said, we were in a skirmish zone, a battlefield from the Corporation Wars. Many of the passages were blocked, the upper layers of The Stacks having collapsed down into piles of rubble and shattered concrete. We often had to squeeze through narrow openings or crawl over mounds of wreckage.
My leg ached, but I didn’t let it slow me down. Marcella helped me frequently, either supporting me as we moved through particularly difficult areas or by administering small doses of medicine to help me keep up when my strength flagged.
Scorch marks, graying bloodstains, and desiccated skeletons still in their uniforms were everywhere. The air faintly smelled of decay and sulfur.
Gloria seemed desensitized to the sight of corpses by that point, but she still gave them a wide berth, covering her mouth with her neckerchief. Sabra stopped every once in a while to inspect a specific body or to look over scenes of forgotten carnage.
“Mostly Honormark and Tsar Shang troops,” she said, wiping her fingers clean after checking out the body of a dead officer. “Though interestingly, there are some Alvarez Collective soldiers as well as support staff from a dozen minor corporations. I believe this was a large-scale conflict for control of this region of The Stacks.”
“Isn’t poking corpses gross?” Gloria looked a bit faint.
Sabra laughed. “Half of being a field historian is poking gross stuff. The other half is running for your life when things are trying to kill you.”
Spinny asked, “Have you been posted on other worlds?”
“Several, including an internship on Primordial Galileo, a toxic death world perched just beyond the event horizon of a black hole.”
“Sounds lovely,” Gnasher said with a perfectly straight face.
“Considering where you live, I wouldn’t throw stones,” Sabra responded humorously. “El Finito is considered the most dangerous posting for the SADB, and it is generally rated a threat level nine planet in the wider galaxy.”
“Threat level nine?” I was puzzled.
“A rating system that describes how dangerous a region of space is for outsiders. Nine is basically the highest. The only ten is a star system called Infinite Graves. It’s ruled by a berserk AI that lobs nukes and shoots rail guns at anyone stupid enough to try and approach its territory.”
“For some toughened adventurer, you still seemed plenty scared when we first met,” Gnasher said.
“I’m used to running from mindless mutants and cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers, not my own people,” she sighed.
Gnasher stopped and put a hand on her arm. “Sorry, I was out of line again.”
“Under her harsh, sarcastic exterior lies a warm, beating heart,” Spinny assured Sabra. “After a while, you don’t even hear the harsh quips, but only the sweet emotions underneath.”
Gnasher blushed furiously. “Spinny!”
“We need to stop,” Marcella announced. “Sabra needs an immunization booster, and I need to check Locke’s leg for any sign of infection.”
“Sounds good,” Gnasher said, clearly relieved at the change in topic. With a wave, she took off to check the path ahead.
“She’s a good person,” Sabra said as we sat down to be treated.
“The best,” Spinny grinned.
Gnasher came back a few minutes later, just as we were preparing to leave. “Locke, are you good to go? Looks like we’ll need your help up ahead.”
The hallway terminated at a small, metal door. Many bodies were piled up around the base. There were signs Gnasher had been forced to shove them out of her way.
I hobbled forward. “Locked, I assume?”
“Unfortunately,” Gnasher confirmed. “I tried kicking it down, but that didn’t work.”
I looked at her and the others. “Any other way around?”
Gnasher and Gloria took off to check, but they came back empty-handed.
“Looks like a lot of recent collapses,” Gnasher said. “Maybe the Syndicate explosions triggered some kind of chain reaction in The Stacks?”
“Unless you're a ghost and can move through walls, this is our only option,” Gloria unfurled her wings, shaking off a cloud of dust and dirt. “The first thing I’m doing when I get home is taking a month-long shower.”
Inching closer to the door, I ran a tentative hand over its surface, then rapped it with my knuckles. “Marcella,” I looked back at her, “how strong is the acid you can produce?”
She p
ressed a hand against the metal door. “Nothing acidic enough to melt through this material.”
“We’re going to have to do this the hard way." I eyed the lock, glad to see it was mechanical and not electronic. I pulled out a bit of spare wire and one of the screwdrivers Marcella’s colony had lent me.
It took me a good part of an hour to pick the lock. The tumbler wasn’t rusted, but the pins kept getting stuck, and I didn’t have any graphite to help loosen them up. I constantly had to withdraw the wire and bend it back into shape before poking at the mechanism.
Eventually, I got everything lined up and twisted the screwdriver with satisfaction, hearing everything clicking into place. The group gave me a small cheer as the door swung open, and I gave them a stiff-legged bow.
“It’s good to feel useful,” I joked.
Gnasher gave me a peck on the cheek as she passed. “You’re always useful, honey. Who else here comes up with all the terrifyingly simple but effective plans?”
Gloria surprised me with a kiss of her own. “Plus you have a Rosetta Stone Penis now.”
Spinny gave her a soft smack across the back of her head. “Thank you, Locke.”
“I am never going to get used to this,” mumbled Sabra. “I feel like I grew up in a puritan cult compared to all of you.”
Beyond the door was a massive machine room, the ceiling a barely visible grid of bare metal beams and industrial cranes. Hundreds of tramcars were lined up in maintenance and repair bays while above them were suspended huge engine blocks and body panels. Scrap metal, electrical cabling, dried grease, and garbage was all over the floor.
“Must be close to the tram station,” Gloria observed.
I limped to an overturned tool chest, retrieving a few items that could be handy if we encountered any more locked doors. “No machetes, sadly.”
Sabra looked confused. “Machetes?”
“Standard tool of the Delvers’ Guild,” I explained. “Great for hacking away vines or vegetation, chopping through weaker doors, and generally discouraging anyone from giving you a hard time.”
“You run into a lot of vines and plants down here?” Gloria inquired.
“You’d be surprised,” Gnasher said. “A lot of corporations were researching botany and genetically engineered plants. Whole regions of The Stacks have been taken over by hostile vegetation.”
“There’s a planet at the edge of Syndicate space,” Sabra looked thoughtful. “It’s been completely overgrown by an intelligent, but incredibly hostile, form of kudzu vine. The planet is under permanent quarantine.”
Looking back at the door we’d come through, an idea struck me. I re-engaged the locking mechanism, jammed a screwdriver into the lock, and then snapped off the handle. Gesturing for the others, I had them help me shove a piece of industrial equipment over the door.
“If that’s the only way to the tram tunnels, I don’t want the Syndicate following us,” I rubbed my injured leg.
We weaved through the machine room, ducking through abandoned tramcars and over assembly lines. I felt like we were crawling through the bones of long-extinct behemoths, reduced to nothing but gaping maws and skeletal ribs. Everything creaked and moaned under our weight, and the air reeked of rust and moldy seat stuffing.
Gnasher said giant cockroaches were scurrying around in the shadows.
“This place is spooky,” Gloria complained, as we took turns jumping between gutted cars.
“Can’t help but agree,” Spinny said as she skittered across the gap. “When venturing through places like this, it’s hard to forget that a majority of this planet is empty and lifeless.”
“At its height, El Finito’s population was estimated to be over five trillion, not counting chimerics,” Sabra said from the other side, Gnasher having lent her a hand in crossing. “As far as we know, none of them survived the wars.”
“I have another question.”
Sabra grunted and pulled herself up after us. “What can I help you with?”
Spinny and Gnasher were searching ahead while the rest of us waited in a ruined tramcar. There wasn’t enough airspace for Gloria to fly safely.
“How come there were so many different corporations on El Finito?” I asked. “Based on your story earlier, it sounded like they owned most planets wholesale.”
“That’s true. The corporations claimed entire star systems at a time and brooked no rivals in their territory. This planet was an anomaly,” she answered, “which is why it's so valuable today. All the major corporations and their subsidiaries had a presence here due to its strategic location. At the time of its founding, over a century before the wars began, this planet was located at the boundary of all four major corporate territories. That’s how it earned its nickname, El Finito.”
Gloria pipped in, “Nickname?”
“The registered name for this planet is Concordia of Grand Peace and Prosperity,” Sabra laughed mirthlessly. “Obviously a bit of corporate jingoism. Once the wars broke out, nobody called it that. El Finito sounded much more appropriate. It means The End in ancient earth slang.”
“Regardless, each of the primary corporations staked a claim to this planet, carving up its surface and building what would eventually become The Stacks. As they became more antagonistic towards each other, the borders between their claims shifted and moved.”
“What had once been an orderly, arranged set of boundaries became a swirling mess of skirmish zones, invasion points, and liberated territory. Unless you can read the signs and know the imagery, rules, regulations, and pageantry of each corporation, it’s almost impossible to tell who owned what anymore.”
“She’s not kidding,” I added. “Most of the time, delvers have no clue who originally owned the areas we explore. We just grab everything we can and let the clerks at the guildhall sort it out.”
Gnasher landed on the roof of the car. “Follow me, Spinny found the exit.”
As she led us through a series of suspended cars, the far wall of the machine hall came into view. Spinny was waiting by a door, a dim emergency exit sign overhead.
The door was locked just like the one we had used before. Thanks to the tools I had grabbed, it was easy to pick open. Beyond was a rail yard and the yawning mouth of a tram tunnel.
“One sec,” I requested. I jammed the lock again, but I couldn’t spot any nearby machinery or wreckage to block the door with. “Paranoia is just another name for a healthy sense of survival.”
The tunnel was massive, large enough for three different tramlines to run. There weren’t any service paths or walkways, forcing us to walk along the rails.
“How do we know they’re not electrified?” Gloria hesitated at the mouth of the tunnel.
Gnasher grabbed a nearby piece of metal rebar and threw it onto the rails. Nothing happened.
“No sparks, no power,” she said, walking nonchalantly between the rails.
Traveling in the tram tunnel was a relief after spending the previous hours crawling and climbing through ruins. There were occasional cave-ins, but the passage was wide enough that we could simply walk around any obstacles.
“Who used these things?” Gloria asked, landing on top of a tramcar.
“Automobiles and private transports were expensive, only the richest individuals or corporations could afford them,” Sabra leaned up against the tramcar, resting and catching her breath. “Almost all citizen-employees depended on public transportation. Once, this planet was covered by tramlines and high-speed trains. You could move from the north pole to the south pole in less than a day.”