Spaceport: The Cannis Affair
Mikala Ash

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Copyright ©2009 Mikala Ash

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Spaceport: The Cannis Affair

Mikala Ash

When Peri Barberossa, award-winning sex reporter for the sealed section of the immensely popular guide The Galactic Tourist, flees in order to avoid becoming the newest addition to General R’nok’s harem she encounters two military fighters in the intergalactic void. Peri watches in horror as the two duke it out with quantum torpedoes, and she rescues the unconscious pilots as their ships disintegrate.

What can a dedicated sex reporter do with two gorgeous hunks in her power? The fact that Laz and Rendido are sworn enemies bent on each other’s destruction only adds spice to the heady mix, and Peri studies their sexual mores in an atmosphere brimming with tension… sexual and otherwise.

Chapter One

Naked and at ease in the feather soft bed, I was completely at one with the universe, when reality slapped me across the face.

At first I thought I simply misheard General R’nok’s solemn commitment to have me locked up in his harem. He’d said something about customary law and me being his property for life. Experience has often shown me that post coital bliss can play havoc with one’s perception, so I sought clarification. I propped myself up on trembling elbows, acutely aware of my erratically beating heart, the result of five gut-wrenching orgasms in ten minutes.

“What, darling?” I asked.

The general paused, balanced on one leg, the other tangled up inside the kilt of his kaleidoscopic uniform. “You are now mine.”

“I’m sorry?”

He cast a steely Etile glance toward me, his dark eye ridges folding slightly. “Are you deaf?”

Uh-oh. His gruff manner was so different from the smooth wooing of last night. “No, I just didn’t understand what you said.”

“You have had both orifices filled by my flesh,” he said.

“And you filled them so well,” I purred, trying to recapture the moment, remembering his two cocks driving into my pussy and ass at the same time, but I should have known that when it comes to men, there’s always a catch.

“When you give both holes to an Etile warrior you have given your soul,” he said as if he were explaining to me the intricacies of a paperclip. “You belong to me now, my concubine. We are bound for life.”

“I didn’t realize that was the custom,” I explained, attempting to keep my voice level, though inside I was in an acute state of panic.

“It is not a custom. It is the law.”

“Oh.”

“Wait here. My aide will show you to your cot in the harem.”

Cot? Harem?

He turned away from me and stretched an arm out to grasp the bedpost while he untangled his foot. The thing that jumped into my field of vision, apart from the erratically bobbing dual phalluses, both cocks still erect despite our recent exertions, was the stainless steel codpiece which had given me so much amusement at the embassy ball.

I remembered how heavy it felt in my palm when I’d disrobed him prior to our session of athletic passion and as I contemplated a lifetime spent in his harem, instinct took over.

The codpiece made a satisfying clunk as it impacted the side of his head. I use the passive voice when I describe the assault on the general’s high-ranking skull. It seemed like I’d been possessed and not in conscious control of my actions.

Had this been a consciously deliberate attack, I would have said the codpiece felt heavy and cold in my hand as I raised it shoulder high and, after taking careful aim and with all my might, swung at his right temple, feeling the skin split as I struck.

You’ll note the difference between acting instinctually, out of fear, versus deliberately striking the most powerful man on the planet. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

In any case, the general grunted appropriately and toppled over onto the floor. I jumped off the bed, pulled on my evening gown, transparent silken web from the Spider House on Gaskolin IX, slipped into my pumps, the latest Jess Boscolon creations, and raced to the door to listen for any activity.

From what I remembered of last night, when the general had so smoothly extricated me from the boring embassy party and lustily thrown me onto his bed, his chambers were in the east wing of the sprawling palace and conveniently close to the spaceport.

I found my handbag, a snappy little sequined number from the exclusive Balinese Collection, and rummaged about until I found my diamond encrusted Joclyn communicator. I called Fyche, my ship’s AI, and asked him to order a spaceport taxi to meet me outside the general’s door in five minutes flat.

“Oh, and power up Jalapeño’s converters,” I added somewhat breathlessly. “We need to leave.”

“Again?”

I didn’t have time to respond to his petulant whine because behind me the general gave a long, burbling groan. That wouldn’t do. I needed more time. I returned to his prostrate body and tied him up with the exquisitely fine deshlen bed sheets. The silky fabric, soiled by our sweat and his copious spending, was super strong and made a good binding. Once I had him secured I stuffed his mouth with my Gaskolin Haute Couture scarf and rolled him under the bed.

Then I fled the chamber, immediately tripping over a startled aide who was inconveniently sitting on the threshold. I stopped midstride to explain that the general was resting and didn’t want to be disturbed. The aide nodded sleepily and resumed his position on the tiny stool. Had he been there all night listening to my moans of passion and screams of ecstasy? I suppressed the moment of embarrassment and calmly asked for directions to the palace’s front gate.

A dull thud sounded from inside the room signifying the general had regained consciousness and was no doubt surprised to find himself under the bed with what I hoped was an enormous headache. The aide reacted, and to distract him, I expressed confusion at his surprisingly clear and succinct directions and asked him to show me out himself. A smile, a wink and a flash of my right boob did the trick.

I endured his roving hand for fifty-two floors during the elevator’s lazy descent and was very grateful when I found the taxi waiting at the palace gate; Fung knows what Fyche had paid to have it there so quickly. I gave the aide a peck on the cheek and a quick rub of his erect and very impressive dual phalluses. He was rewarded with a messy ejaculation inside his dress kilt and I left him swooning against the granite pillars. That good deed, I hoped, would buy me another chunk of precious time.

Twenty minutes later, Fyche had us in orbit and we were away.

Chapter Two

From my vantage point, perched high above the galactic center, the Milky Way is an exquisite arrangement of gemstones set in an elliptical filigree of white gold. I imagined something of equal beauty adorning my décolletage, given to me by some alien potentate following a night of sexual abandon.

My sex pulsed in desire and I lowered my fingers to satisfy its demand for attention.

“You have a deadline,” Fyche reminded me.

“I was thinking,” I protested.

“Daydreaming, more like it.”

“You sound more like my mother every day.”

“She sounds like a remarkable woman. I would like to meet her some time.”

“Very funny.” Reluctantly I removed my fingers from the folds of my pussy and for the benefit of Fyche’s many cameras, gave them a petulant lick. “Did you access the Etile library while I was at the party?”

“Affirmative. You’ll find the complete compendium of sexual mores of the Etile Hierarchy in the culture file.”

I speed read the relevant section. It was immediately apparent that sexual and marriage customs on the planet Et were inextricably linked. So, when I had pushed the good general’s top cock into my pussy and then nudged the second one into my ass -- notice I’m using the active voice here -- and by ignoring his hesitation, slight as it was I might add, I’d actually been expressing my willingness to be his forever. Then, when he allowed both his organs to be simultaneously taken into my welcoming body, he’d accepted my offer of lifelong servitude. The penalty for breaking the bond, which was sealed when he ejaculated in both my willing orifices, was death by slow dismemberment.

I shivered. “I wish I’d read this before I went to the ball.”

“I don’t want to say I told you so…”

“Consider it said.”

Really, Fyche can be an old woman sometimes.

Well, no harm done. I was now well beyond the general’s reach; Fyche had done a great job of quantum celestial navigation by jumping in and out of both normal and quantum space to disguise our tracks. He’d even followed a couple of well-used trade routes to bury our tachyon signature with those of a thousand other ships. So no matter how peeved the general could be, I was sure he’d never find us.

“I better write this article under a pseudonym,” I said, just to be sure. I’d hate R’nok to track me down through the widely read articles which document my sensual sojourn through the space ways.

“Good idea.”

“I’ll write it as a warning to those who follow in my wake: don’t jump into an Etile bed until you know the customs.”

“Wasn’t that your first rule for sex tourists you posted in issue seventeen of the Galactic Tourist?”

He was right, as usual. As obnoxious as he could be, I am blessed to have Fyche watching me, really. He picks up on these little tidbits, ensuring I don’t make a complete ass of myself by not remembering what I’d written before.

“Good point. I’ll refer to Peri Barberossa’s rules in the body of the piece.”

“Who will you be this time?”

Okay, so this wasn’t the first time I’d broken my own rules and needed to write under a pen name to disguise my true identity. But hey, how can you get the best stories if you’re playing safe all the time? Besides, you could say that safety was my middle name. I’d already had my body genetically re-programmed to reject any disease, so getting down and dirty was never going to be a problem, and I’d been taught by one of the best hand-to-hand combat exponents in the galaxy, so if an overzealous lover got a bit too physical he was in for a big surprise.

I had a flash memory of letting Master Hinko throw me to the mat so I could pull him down and fuck his taut, athletic body. Ah, those were the days.

“I think I’ll be Petal Rose again.”

“Good choice, she got good reviews.”

“She did, didn’t she?” I agreed in a self-congratulating tone. The article Fyche referred to had been a piece about the erogenous zones of the Mendovian male. I’d discovered, quite by accident, that caressing the eyestalks while simultaneously pinching the third of their six nipples turns them into a quivering mass of jelly and sends them over the orgasmic edge, but ladies, look out for the fire hose ejaculation. You could drown in that stuff.

“So, how about Two Etile cocks are fine, but not at the same time by Petal Rose?”

“Catchy,” he said with a slight but distinct pause.

He did this often, and I ignored him as I usually did when he commented poorly, no matter how subtly, on my writing. What did Fyche know about titles? The editors at the Galactic Tourist loved my titles.

“What’s the best way to describe their cocks?” I asked him. “They have a cock in the normal place you’d expect to find them, with a slightly shorter and thinner second cock sprouting from between the first one’s root and the start of the ball sac. Dual phalluses or should it be phalli? Is there such a word?”

“You were right the first time, phallus; late Latin from the Greek phallus.”

“So, does dual phalluses mean there were four of them?”

“Why not stick to ‘his two cocks’?”

“You’re right. The KISF principle. Keep it simple, Fyche.”

He didn’t laugh at my jibe. “You might consider anterior for the top organ and posterior for the bottom one.”

I laughed at his unintended pun; juvenile of me, I know, but who cares? I was in a good mood. Narrowly escaping sexual servitude for life has that effect on me.

“They were nice, though,” I muttered as another flash memory of the general’s pulsing organs entered my mind as devastatingly as they had entered my body. His anterior cock, the one on top, was so thick and swollen with lust I had trouble getting my mouth around the glans. I was lucky to even get my lips around it, let alone get it inside my mouth. I remember I switched to the posterior cock; it was easier to suck, though I had to watch that I didn’t poke my eye out with the top one as I deep throated him. When I had him deeply embedded in my throat my nostrils were pressed against his hard flesh. He had a pleasant, nutty sort of scent that certainly got my hormones racing.

I reached once again for my pussy and found it exceedingly sultry. I wished I had a man with me to help me get over the disappointing general. As suave as R’nok had been at the ball, after he had me every which way, he’d turned into the typical male of my recent acquaintance, showing me scant regard and contempt. The tone of his voice when he announced I’d be taken to his harem had shown him to be a misogynist to the core.

I hated him!

But his two cocks… mmmm. I loved those.

He had been very slow and deliberate when he fucked me with his posterior cock, letting the top one slide along my belly with each thrust, and the dual pressure from within and without was unexpectedly erotic. As sensuous as that was, I’d been impatient to have the big brother in my pussy and had tilted my hips accordingly so it nudged my lips apart and stretched my pussy to the limit. The little brother missed the mark, however, and I had to guide it into the puckered flesh of my ass. I needed little lubrication; I was sopping wet down there already as my pussy had been overflowing with juice.

The general held back for a moment but I slapped his ass to urge him inside and he complied with gusto. The dual invasion of my body lifted me to a series of mind-numbing climaxes. Like a machine gun they ripped through me one after the other, making me scream in delight. The walls of my pussy clenched around his anterior shaft and my sphincter squeezed his posterior cock (how aptly named that is, now that I think about it) and the come just gushed out of him. He filled me to overflowing with his hot misogynist spending.

Breathless with all my screaming, I expected him to be tired as well and in need of a rest, but no. Despite his prodigious ejaculation he started fucking me again, and he continued on in that vein all night.

He came at least five times with each cock, and I lost count of how many ripping climaxes sliced through me. If only he hadn’t ruined the occasion in the morning I think I could have spent some quality time with General R’nok.

Sense-typing one-handed on my faux-antique Delosian keyboard while the fingers of my other hand played deep inside my pussy, churning the hot juices that the memories of R’nok’s twin cocks had stirred up, was devilishly difficult. I kept losing focus, but after an hour of solid work I had a rough draft of a good article, and I figured I could polish it later.

Work finished for the day, I concentrated on my tingling clit. Despite his misogynist attitudes, the general knew his way around a woman’s body. While he fucked me, his lips and tongue were in business sucking and licking my nipples, playing with my earlobes (that alone sends shivers of delight cascading across my skin) and holding my hips with just enough pressure to imprison me beneath him without hurting. He was an expert, that’s for sure. The one failing was that he didn’t go down on me. I so much enjoy a tongue licking and lapping at my clit while a finger caresses those little spots deep inside me that…

I was on the brink of a great self-induced orgasm when out of empty space just outside my viewport, a small military fighter burst out of a quantum portal. In a flash it passed me at an unbelievable rate. “What the hell was that?”

Then a second fighter appeared out of quantum space and likewise zipped past my viewport. A streak of light projected from the first to be met by another multi-colored streak from the second. The two beams collided and flashed into a ball of incandescence before fading into black.

“Are they fighting?”

“Affirmative. They are firing quantum torpedoes. I recommend we leave the area immediately.”

It made good sense but my skin was buzzing with excitement. “Get us somewhere safe but where I can still watch.”

“This is not wise.”

“I’m a reporter, remember.”

“For a sex guide,” Fyche reminded me unnecessarily.

“Still a reporter,” I asserted. “It’s in my blood.” It’s a family tradition; my father was a reporter and my sister’s a reporter, though she leans more to the political stuff despite what happened to Dad.

“As you wish.”

Fyche took us out of the battle zone on reaction motors, so as not to attract too much attention. He explained that quantum torpedoes might mistake us for a belligerent if he used anything more powerful. He nagged me again about leaving completely but I was adamant. I’m a reporter, damn it!

Quantum torpedoes are, as you’d expect, packets of fundamental particles wrapped up in a tight electromagnetic field. The field interacts with the few molecules of dust and gas you find everywhere in space, creating a rainbow wake that shimmers magically against the velvet black and is soon gone. They are quite beautiful if you forget their deadly purpose. Traveling at a fair chunk of the speed of light these pretty little things pack a wallop.

The two ships, the first a compact one-man job and the second a slightly larger escort fighter, traded torpedo after torpedo while they maneuvered crazily about the little sphere of intergalactic space they’d made their combat zone.

A torpedo flashed uncomfortably close and without asking, Fyche quantum jumped us a good ten light minutes out of range. The battle raged for a long while, both ships showing remarkable agility, twisting and turning at impossible angles. The pilots, champions of their chosen art, were at the top of their game, but it couldn’t go on. Sooner or later one would succumb.

Unexpectedly, both fighters momentarily flared incandescently and the battle was over. They’d simultaneously disabled each other. Somehow escaping total destruction, the two fighters had gone dark, all power lost due to the quantum torpedo frying their electronics. If the fundamental particles held inside the torpedo interacted with the particles in the ship’s metal shell then the hull would be breached, placing the pilots in great difficulty.

“Any life signs?” I asked Fyche.

“Both show organic life.”

“Are the hulls breached?”

“Both ships have been holed.”

“But there is someone alive in both?”

“It appears so.”

“Then we should rescue them,” I said decisively. I know my “Law of Space” as well as anyone. If you come across a stranded vessel where life is extant then you must render aid.

“This is clearly a war zone,” Fyche said. “As a civilian craft we are not bound to intervene.”

“There’s always a catch with you, Fyche. You know that?” I said in frustration. “The battle’s over and there is no one else to help. We have to assist.”

“You intend to bring both belligerents aboard?”

Fyche had a good point. These two jokers just tried to kill each other when they had a million clicks between them. What they would try to do to each other with only little old me to stand between them I couldn’t imagine.

But I wanted to find out. I’m a reporter, remember.

Chapter Three

The smaller of the fighters was the most damaged, with a jagged hole in the portside where the anti-particles of the torpedo had annihilated themselves in the ship’s hull.

Strapped into his acceleration couch was a space-suited figure. There was too much blood splattered on the inside of his helmet for me to get a look at him, just enough to ascertain he was male. Despite the quantity of blood in his helmet, his life signs seemed to indicate he was okay.

Fyche hadn’t been able to identify the insignia on the fighter’s tail from the registry, and thus what kind of creatures we were dealing with, but my little handheld med-sensor told me he was breathing oxygen. I unbuckled him from his couch, pulled him free of the cabin, and propelled him easily into the airlock of the Jalapeño.

“You better hurry,” Fyche said. “The reactor coil of the other fighter is about to go critical.”

“Well, get us over there.”

“Hold on.”

I gripped the handrail outside the Jalapeño’s airlock door, and Fyche maneuvered us toward the second fighter.

The second ship was a nice piece of work with smooth lines and graceful curves. It was obviously built as a dual-purpose shuttle and escort vehicle, not simply as a fighter. But it had matched guns with the little sprite so the owners of this craft, equally anonymous in the galactic registry, were technologically pretty crafty.

There was a ragged blast hole amidships. A body, horribly dismembered and vaguely humanoid, floated in the main deck area and I knew I was nightmare bound with that one.

On the flight deck an unconscious space-suited figure was strapped into an acceleration couch. The control panel in front of him was still functioning; lights blinked and unfamiliar text flashed across screens.

I looked into his faceplate. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way, about my age. He looked as if he’d been in a scrape or two; his nose was bent to the left and a thin scar ran down his right cheek. That and the cleft chin lent him a bit of character. I felt a stirring between my thighs, and my heart began to race beyond my currently high arousal.

“Sensors indicate detonation in thirty seconds,” Fyche reported.

Fuck me dead!

I grabbed the pilot’s buckles and released them with fumbling fingers.

Suddenly his eyes opened, dark pits inside the shadowy helmet, and he pushed my hands away. I grappled with him for a second, but it was clear I was not the object of his struggles. I let him have his way, and he reached over to the control panel and pressed a few buttons in rapid sequence. Then his eyes rolled back into his head and he was out again.

“Change that,” Fyche said. “You now have two minutes.”

“The pilot altered something in the controls.”

“One minute fifty seconds.”

“I know, I know.”

I hastily pulled him free and dragged him out of his ship, across the few meters that separated it from the Jalapeño and got him into the airlock.

No sooner had the airlock door slammed shut than I felt the sudden acceleration as Fyche took us away from the derelict as fast as he could. My stomach lurched as we punched into quantum space and lurched back again as we popped out a moment later. As I shucked off my slinky Helena Rubens designed environmental suit, the airlock viewport flared into brilliance as the normal blackness of space was lit by what appeared to be the light of a small star that dimmed quickly and was soon lost.

“That was close,” I muttered.

“Too close,” Fyche said. “Any closer and we would have had a bad dose of gamma radiation.”

“Well, we better see what we can do for these two.”

I decided to help the one with the blood in his helmet first. His helmet latch and lock design resembled a standard issue suit so I had no trouble opening it and exposing the pilot’s blood-covered face. I wiped the blood away with a medical cloth and realized with a rush of relief that the full extent of his wounds was a bleeding nose.

“He’s breathing normally,” I muttered as I stripped him of the rest of his environmental suit and his blue flight suit beneath. I gasped in surprise. His skin was blindingly white, like polished marble. His alabaster flesh shone with a strange ethereal glow, and I wondered if he was an albino or had had his complexion purposely altered.

As far as I could tell he was perfectly well. And perfect in more ways than one. Though he was small of stature, maybe six centimeters shorter than me, he had the body of an athlete. A swimmer, I’d say, with broad shoulders, narrow waist and hips and muscular legs. His blond hair was long, tied at the back with a blue ribbon.

His face was finely boned and ivory white with full sensuous lips that were striking, in a pink sort of way. He was probably a half dozen years younger than me, but looks meant nothing when comparing the almost infinite varieties of humanity.

I resisted the urge to look at his manly equipment as long as I could, but when I finally succumbed I was not disappointed. It was a nicely shaped cock, large relative to his body size but would be a nice easy fit in my… I squeezed my thighs together at the thought of how grateful he’d be when he woke up. Maybe he’d reward me with a little…

“I suggest you secure him in the sickbay. He may have a concussion, and I can monitor him better from there.”

“Roger dodger,” I said, and after checking that the other pilot’s vital signs were still green, I dragged my marble swimmer to the sickbay.

Thankfully, he was reasonably light, and I didn’t have to struggle to get him up on the examination bed. I connected him up to the medical sensor array, and Fyche secured the door behind me as I returned to the airlock.

I repeated the process with the second pilot. Naked, he was tall, half a head taller than me. Though not an athlete, he was well built and fit. I’d say he was used to hard work because his broad chest was hard and firm with muscle but not sculpted as the albino had been. He was well endowed; his flaccid penis was long and thick, the head resting on his thigh, the single eye staring at me inquiringly.

“I’ll put him in my cabin,” I said, my voice husky. “You can lock the door and monitor him. I’ll sleep in my study for the time being.”

Hopefully that arrangement wouldn’t last too long, and I’d be fucking one or the other, or both of them, in my own bed. My pussy gave a pulse of anticipation and my nipples hardened agreeably. The notion of entertaining both their cocks at the same time, just as I had with the general, made the apex of my sex tingle and I warmed all over, inside and out.

I had to struggle a bit to get him into my cabin. He was too heavy to carry so I grasped him under his armpits and dragged him the short distance. His scent was a little heavier than the blond pilot’s, which had been virtually nonexistent, but very alluring just the same.

I got him under the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. I had worked up quite a sweat myself, what with a hair-raising EVA and the chore of lugging these two hunks about the ship. I decided a shower was in order and went to the bathroom.

“Is this wise, given you have a strange man in your bed?”

Fyche was right. “I’ll tie him down.”

I turned back to the bed. The pilot was snoring peacefully, and his fine body showed its commanding form under the coverlet. I could clearly see the outline of his cock, and I gave a petulant sigh. I could do with that between my legs right about now. Despite my best efforts I didn’t disturb him as I rummaged through my bedside table. It’s surprising how noisy a couple of accidentally activated vibrators can be in a drawer. At last I found what I was looking for; velvet-lined sonic manacles. I slipped one around his wrist and the other around the bed stanchion.

That’ll hold him.

I gave the outline of his cock a thoughtful gaze before dragging myself to the bathroom. I shucked off the loose-fitting coveralls I wore under my environmental suit and dropped them into the UV cleaner. It gave a flash and they appeared a moment later on the out-tray nicely pressed and clean.

I turned on the tap and stepped into the cubicle. Before the Plexiglas steamed up I considered the handsome face of my patient. I went all gooey inside at the prospect of fucking his brains out, but I resisted succumbing to the desire beating through my pussy lips in time with my accelerated pulse.

“Any luck identifying them?” I asked Fyche, more to divert my amorous thoughts than a desire for factual details.

“Their ships are not on any registry. They are obviously at war and keeping their spacecraft a secret from each other as well as everyone else. The insignias on their hulls also didn’t match anything in my records; however…”

I hate it when he does that. We play this game a lot, him keeping me in suspense, showing off how superior he is. Just because he has a gargantuan memory core and a prodigious computational matrix and all I have is, well, a lump of wet, grey stuff that when seen in isolation doesn’t inspire confidence.

“And?”

“The design of spacesuit belonging to the pilot in sickbay is reminiscent of an exhibit held in the Central Galactic Museum of Technology on Halcyon IV.”

“It looked pretty ordinary to me.”

“Be that as it may, the latch configuration is old fashioned. About five hundred years out of date.”

“Suggesting?”

“Just when that particular design was popular a colony ship departed from the central systems for the closest of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, now known as Cannis. The ship was not heard from again and believed lost. The colonists were members of a purity cult, called the Ethicists, which eschewed pleasure of any form, believing in…”

“You have to be kidding me.”

“What purpose would I have in kidding you?”

I could think of a dozen but asked instead, “So, he’s a goody two shoes. What about the other one?”

“Both fighter craft bore structural similarities. I believe they may both be warring factions descended from the original cultists.”

I paused in my soaping activities. “So they both could be… what’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Non-hedonistic?”

“Puritans!”

“Historically, you’d be incorrect in terming them Pu --”

“Cut it out,” I shouted into the stream of water. He can be just too pedantic sometimes. “What about language?”

“They made no communications during the battle so until one speaks I cannot say. The text I saw displayed inside their respective ships is unknown to me, but resembled each other in certain respects confirming my suspicion they are descendants from common stock.”

I cut the water and, closing my eyes, activated the blow drier. The simple pleasures are somehow best, and I enjoyed the warm caress of perfumed air as it dried my rosy flesh.

I waved the blower off and stepped out of the cubicle. A glance at the mirror showed me to be a total wreck so I spent five minutes frizzing up my strawberry blonde curls and doing something about my false and shamefully askew eyelashes.

“Peri,” Fyche whispered. “Body temperature and heart rate signify the pilot is regaining consciousness.”

At last!

I pinched both nipples to make them harder and grabbed a sheer Sylvan wrap. It came to mid thigh, and I belted it loosely so that it didn’t pull too tightly across my breasts. They’d then be free to jiggle in what had once been described to me by an appreciative lover as a thoroughly mesmerizing spectacle.

I bounced into my bedroom and sat on the edge of my oval bed level with his waist. “You can open your eyes now,” I said. “I know you’re awake.”

Indeed, the evidence was clear. The bedclothes were raised to a pinnacle by a significant and obviously healthy erection.

Chapter Four

His eyes were the deepest brown I’d ever seen, almost black, and shining with a deep intensity as if he held inside him some amusing secret. His gaze fixed first on my cleavage, which was always a good sign of male mental health, and then traveled up to my eyes.

“Hello,” I said. “My name is Peri. Do you speak Galactic Standard?” He gave me a quizzical look. “I guess not.”

His gaze slid back down to my cleavage and then further down to my bare thighs. I gave his cock a gentle pat through the bedclothes. “Settle down. We need to establish the basics before moving on to advanced communication.”

“Brain activity suggests he has returned to normal functioning,” Fyche said.

“His erection already told me that,” I replied.

“I prefer empirical data rather than jumping to conclusions.”

Brown eyes listened to this exchange with curiosity etched on his face. He sat up further and the bedclothes fell away from his broad chest. His skin was tanned a deep gold and glowed under my cabin lights. He looked just perfect next to the pale lilac of my Nell Pozniac sheets.

I dragged my eyes back to his craggily sculpted face. I’d better focus on communicating rather than acting on my impulse to expose his cock and communicate in the old-fashioned way. I pointed to my lips. “Say something so Fyche can identify your language.”

He cocked his head as if he didn’t understand, but the twinkle in his eye made me slightly suspicious that he was enjoying my attempt to communicate. I pointed to my chest. “Peri.”

He moved his hand as if to respond, noticed the handcuffs, gave them a couple of tugs to test their strength, then used his free hand to point to the nearest of my breasts.

“Peri,” he said, his voice deep and accented.

I pointed to his chest and cocked my head as a prompt.

He smiled, showing a set of perfectly straight white teeth, and pointed to himself. “Laz.”

Progress at last. “Hello, Laz. I’m Peri.”

He repeated his name and then pointed at my breast again, this time lightly touching the material stretched across my tingling nipple, and smiled. He was cheeky, this one.

It was all I could do not to pull down the bedclothes and straddle what must be a painful erection, what with tenting the bedclothes the way he was, but I resisted. Solid diplomatic relationships between people of different worlds were not made that way, though I suspect things might be going a whole lot better if they were.

I asked Fyche to replay my dramatic rescue on the bedside monitor. When the show was over, culminating in the destruction of his ship, he nodded in what I took to be understanding and gave me a long speech in his native tongue which I’m sure was solemn and meaningful.

I just hoped it wasn’t a proposal of marriage or some such nonsense. I remember reading that in some cultures if you save someone’s life you are responsible for whatever they do from then on.

Shivers, what a burden that could be.

I’m glad I don’t subscribe to that particular custom, or many customs at all, come to think of it. In my view, culture and customs are just collective habits of no particular significance when seen from outside, except that they tend to be outdated, nonsensical and mostly bad. I pointed to the handcuffs and mimed releasing him.

He nodded solemnly and before Fyche could finish his predictable objection I’d snapped them open. Laz smiled and lightly rubbed his wrist in the time-honored fashion of the newly freed. He then gave me what I took to be his thanks, again in his own tongue.

“Any luck translating that?” I asked Fyche.

“Not yet. I’m still cross checking it against the five million languages and dialects I have in my records.”

Laz’s keen gaze traversed my body unashamedly, and he made effusive comments which I gathered were about my physical attributes.

I thought it curious that so soon after being rescued from certain death his main preoccupation was with my breasts and what lay within the darkened apex of my thighs. Not even the death of his co-pilot, whose mutilated body he saw on the monitor, had fazed him beyond a flicker of surprise. I tempered my disapproval at the coldness of his reaction knowing that different cultures, particularly warrior societies, express grief in a host of ways from scant regard to paroxysms of despair. His was obviously of the more taciturn kind.

His preoccupation with my breasts suggested he was of the hot-blooded variety and my own temperature had risen a thousand degrees I must admit. My aching nipples were tenting my wrap and I knew the dark areolas were visible to him. The pit of my belly was quivering with anticipation, and my pussy was as wet as Nyceum Thule during the monsoon years.

His hungry gaze was caressing every centimeter of my exposed flesh, and beneath that relentless scrutiny my skin had flushed red and my mouth had gone very dry. I licked my lips and swallowed loudly. Laz blatantly slipped a hand under the bedclothes and the movements therein indicated he was unashamedly touching his cock.

Oh, to hell with it!

I threw back the bedclothes with one hand and simultaneously undid the belt of my wrap with the other. My breasts jiggled free just as his stiff cock bobbled into sight.

Fully exposed, it was an impressive sight. The top of his phallus had become a swollen red helmet, and the shaft was so thick I wondered if I’d be able to get my fist around it. Reading my intentions for what they were, Laz followed my lead and reached for my breasts, cupping them gently as if weighing fruit. Obviously satisfied with their not insignificant mass and firmness he tweaked each nipple between forefinger and thumb.

“I’ve confirmed his language roots,” Fyche announced, oblivious to what we were doing. “Laz belongs to the Ethicist cult that departed Runcion, a small planet in the central systems, five hundred years ago. His dialect has undergone some evolution from the records; however, I can put together some translation tapes for you.”

“Uh-ah,” I moaned. Laz had sat up and nuzzled my cleavage, his mouth sliding over to my left nipple. He tongued gently around the areola and then teased the erect nub before his tongue flicked the quivering point, sending electric shivers cascading across my flesh.

He gently pushed me back onto the bed and, kneeling beside me, bestowed my body with a thousand butterfly kisses that raised my arousal to the limit of endurance. I couldn’t bear it any longer. I’m not one to remain the passive recipient of so much pleasure. I had to do something. I had to reciprocate. Reaching into his lap, I found his hard cock and, resisting the urge to wrap my fist around it and start pumping, I stroked it softly, luxuriating in the hard warmth beneath the tight film of flesh.

I urged him to straddle my face so I could lick and suck him. The head of his cock filled my mouth, and I swooned at the manly scent that enveloped me. Yummy!

He groaned at the pressure of my lips around his shaft and the action of my tongue around his glans. His butterfly kisses became heavier, and he left my belly button to brush his lips past my sex on their way to my thighs and the legs beyond. Not a centimeter of my flesh was left unkissed, and when he lifted my leg and kissed behind the knee my whole body turned to jelly. For some reason no one had ever before kissed or licked there, and the unexpected and delightful sensation turned me into a quivering mass.

I gobbled as much of his cock as I could, licking up and down his shaft and nuzzling his balls, taking each egg into my mouth and sucking it deep, rolling the firm ovals around my mouth as if they were oversized marbles.

Returning to my pussy lips, he brushed them open to give his tongue access to my boiling depths. His tongue delved deep and I groaned in absolute ecstasy as he lapped at my copious juices. When he introduced a finger to massage the inside of my pussy walls, I came, my body suddenly tensing and then exploding in a burst of mind-numbing pleasure.

Enough foreplay! I had to have this glorious cock inside me!

I maneuvered my body away from him and twisted him onto his back. I straddled his hips and fed his raging cock into my pussy, then lowered myself slowly onto his shaft till my pubic bone rested on his. At the same time he grasped me by the hips and thrust powerfully upwards. The violence of his piston-like thrusts was in stark contrast to the gentle caresses he had stirred my body with and I loved it. He must have sensed I was a woman who enjoyed the full spectrum of pleasure.

“Wow!”

He grinned triumphantly at my appreciation of his talents. The loud wet slapping of our flesh and the internal stimulation of his cock, not to mention his sucking at my nipples, was speedily taking me to another series of climaxes.

“Peri, I hate to interrupt,” Fyche said, his voice raised a decibel or two to gain my attention. “Our other guest needs your assistance.”

I was so close to another climax. “What?”

“Immediately!”

Damn! I was tempted to continue gyrating on Laz’s lap, at least bring him to climax. He certainly deserved it, but I decided duty came first. I climbed off him and stood by the bed to rearrange my wrap. Laz gazed up at me in bewilderment.

“Sorry,” I said and kissed him firmly on the lips. “Duty calls, but I’ll be back. You can count on it!”

Chapter Five

To my chagrin, Fyche’s summons need not have been so urgent. My marble athlete was evidently well, and I found him sitting up on the sickbay examination table.

I stood outside the closed door, watching him through the viewing panel. His pale skin glowed ethereally in the harsh light of the overheads. He’d stripped off the med sensors and was gazing at one of the monitors on which Fyche was playing the vision of my daring rescue which showed an unflattering view of me climbing into my environmental suit, gracefully propelling myself into space and hauling him aboard the Jalapeño. Fyche, I noted, had edited out the rescue of his enemy, no doubt to avoid arousing any misconceptions about whose side I might be on. I hoped this was enough to make it plain that I was friend and not foe.

I straightened my wrap, ensuring my cleavage was showing, and frizzed up my hair. “Well, here goes,” I muttered and pressed the door stud.

The blond pilot glanced up suddenly, not in alarm but keen interest, as the door slid aside.

“Hello,” I said cheerfully.

His eyes, as I hoped they would, were fixed on my breasts as they danced beneath the sheer fabric of the wrap. My nipples were still erect from my unfinished dalliance with Laz and my skin was hot and flushed, so I’m sure I looked pretty damn enticing.

The elegantly shaped cock sitting in his lap stiffened in a moment, evidence that he liked what he saw. Laz had demonstrated a very healthy attitude toward sex, and I hoped this young warrior would be likewise inclined.

Unexpectedly, his eyes were the most iridescent of blues. I thought albinos always had pink eyes, and I suspected these were artificial. In any case they were simply captivating. I could in a single glance tell that these were not the eyes of a young boy but an experienced man. The way his gaze caressed my rosy flesh told me he was someone who appreciated a woman’s body as a thing of beauty. My nipples tingled and my pussy gave a pulse of wanton desire. We stood gazing at each other for a few long moments, his slow appraisal traversing my whole body, caressing my flesh with mature consideration.

I marveled at the contrast between the reality and my expectations. I had prepared myself to face a brash, naïve young warrior, a typical lusty youth full of bluff and bravado, perhaps even one embroiled in the angst of struggling against his puritanical upbringing. But no, this was a man who had no doubts about who he was or what he wanted. He was someone who knew women, and appreciated them.

Laz, I’d sensed, was a lot like me, appreciating the opposite sex in a carnal sense, enjoying the physical pleasure they can give, but this albino pilot seemed to appreciate women in their totality. His pale face was that of a young man, but his expression was that of an experienced lover, one who was commanding and dominant. How could I tell all this, standing exposed to his relentless gaze, my breasts quivering with each breath? I don’t know. I was simply certain of my impression.

He spoke at last, breaking the pregnant silence. His voice was deep and resonant, and he used words reminiscent of Laz’s.

I listened until he paused and then went through the charade of naming myself and eventually learned that his name was Rendido.

He pointed to the video of his rescue and took a step toward me, hands outstretched. He seemed undaunted by the fact that he was naked and that his aggressively erect cock pointed straight at me like Cupid’s arrow, its swollen head making a beeline for my sex.

His handshake was firm and lingering. He spoke to me throughout, expressing, I believe, his thanks and admiration for my actions.

I matched his genuine smile. “He’s a friendly one,” I said to Fyche.

Rendido cocked his head in that universal expression of non-comprehension.

“I should have a workable translation available very soon.”

“Uh oh,” I mumbled, distracted by the fact that the head of Rendido’s cock was pressing lightly against the flesh of my upper thigh, just below the wet and swollen lips of my pussy.

His crystal blue gaze held my eyes captive. He had ignored Fyche’s voice, being entirely focused on me. Under his steady consideration I felt as if I was the center of his universe.

I did a quick reality check. I had the suspicion that I was being hypnotized, that Rendido was using some sort of mind manipulation technique on me. But that was ridiculous. I asked Fyche to check that there wasn’t any unusual brain activity going on inside Rendido’s beautiful skull.

“Apart from the normal spikes of carnal lust, no, his brain activity appears normal.”

“Then it’s just me.”

“Your ECG is all over the place. Are you feeling unwell?”

“Very funny.”

Rendido’s gaze did not falter. Then unexpectedly and with a brazen light in his eyes, he took my hand down to his cock and rested it on the pulsing shaft. Even aroused as I was, this was way too quick. Caution speared its way through the pink cloud of lust and I pulled away. “Not so fast,” I said huskily. My mouth was dry and my throat constricted. “You’re a warrior and a stranger on my ship. In your place, sex would be way down on the list of things I’d be concerning myself with.”

“You weren’t so critical of Laz,” Fyche said and allowed himself a quiet chuckle, reminiscent of the chortling chulminks of Epsilon Eridne VII.

“This doesn’t feel right.”

“He may be expressing his thanks the only way he knows how.”

“But his people are Puritans.”

“They were five hundred years ago. Perhaps they have changed; he may be a renegade, a free thinker.”

“What are the odds that the one I rescue would be a free thinking sex maniac?”

“From his point of view, what are the odds he’d be rescued by a free thinking sex maniac?”

Touché.

Rendido’s knowing expression was complemented by a self-confident smile, a slight curling of the lips that I knew would be firm and gentle under mine. He found my hand and replaced it on the shaft of his cock.

This time I did not withdraw.

Unlike Laz’s monster cock, Rendido’s organ was slim and elegant. I could fit my fist around its modest girth with ease. The shaft itself was firm beneath the thin layer of warm skin, and I could feel the blood pulsing beneath. His heated flesh soon had my pussy liquefying and a hot flush suffused my body.

His hands were now free, and he employed them by gently cupping my breasts. He leaned toward me; his hot, sweet breath caressed my cheek as his lips closed in on mine. I’d been right. They were firm and gentle. With only the slightest urging I opened my lips, and his tongue lightly licked the inside of my lower lip before venturing further inside.

Oh my!

I fell against him and he enveloped me in his arms. With a single step and a gentle lift he had my ass sitting on the examination table with my thighs spread wide. Rendido left my mouth and in a moment his head was between my legs.

He slid the flat of his tongue up my already moist slit till he found the hood of my clit. He nudged the thin fragile covering aside and gently caressed my burning nub with skillful precision.

Shivers of delight coursed through me and I threw my head back in a paroxysm of ecstasy. My belly was afire and with surprising suddenness Rendido brought me to a powerful orgasm. Locking my thighs around his head I urged him to keep licking as another orgasm built inexorably within my belly. It hit me with the force of a Gaskoyne tsunami and I cried out loud with the exquisite agony.

There was nowhere his knowledgeable tongue didn’t find. After my fourth gut-wrenching orgasm he gave me a welcome respite by tracing his lips down my thighs and legs and, oh, to my feet where he kissed, sucked and gently bit each toe.

This unfamiliar pleasure shook me to the center and, when his fingers found my clit as he bit my little toe, a series of explosive climaxes overcame me once again.

“Fuck me,” I begged when my breath returned. I lay back. Rendido climbed up onto the table and, finding my legs conveniently spread, fed his long thin cock into my welcoming body.

He was a gentle lover, thrusting ever so slowly, twisting his hips to subtly change the angle of attack so that with each entry of my pussy the ridge of his swollen head would touch different spots.

He was divine!

As his cock caressed me inside, his lips and tongue were busy outside. He hungrily kissed my breasts, teasing the engorged nipples by circling the areola before gently kissing the tip and drawing the nub into his mouth. Meanwhile his fingers toyed with my other nipple, and all the while he moved his cock inside me with gentle but penetrating twists and thrusts.

With each entry his fucking increased in frequency and depth. He propped himself up on his hands to give his hips more leverage and looked down at me with those glowing azure eyes. He drove himself into me, grunting with effort, and I returned each thrust with my own, my hands on his hips, pulling him into me.

I came again, my eyes tight and my mouth contorted with pleasure.

Rendido’s body became tense in that tell-tale way. Inside me his cock swelled to what seemed twice its previous proportions. The anticipation of his climax brought on yet another one of my own and my pussy walls tightly gripped his swelling shaft. I opened my eyes between orgasms in time to see his own face twist in a grimace of ecstasy and, groaning like a wounded animal, he threw his head back and drove himself one final time deep into me where his cock pumped hot gluts of come deep inside me.

Finally, when the last of his spasms erupted inside my pussy and his cock began to subside, he laid himself lightly on top of me, the heat of his body, the scent of his sweat enveloping me in a miasma of sated lust.

“I’m famished!” I said when I regained my breath.

“I’ll have dinner ready in ten minutes,” Fyche replied.

“You’re a doll,” I replied, happy and at one with the universe.

Rendido had propped himself on one elbow to look into my face. I pantomimed eating, and he nodded, though the mischievous smile should have told me he interpreted that in another, more carnal way.

He kissed the nearest of my nipples and slid his tongue down to my stomach and then once more to the juncture of my thighs, still slick with sweat and our mingled juices. His tongue nudged aside my pussy lips and delved inside.

Before I collapsed back onto the examination bed, I had the presence of mind to tell Fyche to hold dinner for another twenty minutes.

Chapter Six

The sickbay had a shower and I quickly cleaned myself up. My hair was an absolute mess. I left a very attentive Rendido at the door. He wanted to follow me out, but I held him back with a palm against his hard white chest.

“Wait, just a little while,” I said and planted a kiss on his lips.

He tasted of me.

I pointed to the shower cubicle and he nodded in understanding. With difficulty I convinced him I didn’t need another shower, and finally I was able to shut the door behind me.

I strolled in a sort of daze to my study, a transparent plas-steel blister on the Jalapeño hull, and fell into my leather couch. I spent the next half hour gazing at the glowing cartwheel of the galaxy, my mind in a whirl.

I tried to count the number of orgasms I’d had in the course of the last couple of hours. The number was unknowable because after the first ten in any series of multiples, quite frankly I’m not counting the damn things. I’m off with the angels, so to speak, and cavorting in the land of bliss.

I daresay if I asked Fyche he could tell me how many spasms my pussy walls gave, that would give me a reliable figure, as my idiosyncratic pussy gives a definite pulse with each climax. Perhaps I would ask him one day, but felt, somehow, it would be rubbing it in his face just a tad too brutally, because I was sure that secretly, he harbored a desire to make love to me himself, and for want of a body, could only observe my amorous encounters and enjoy me vicariously.

I pushed these unproductive thoughts of Fyche out of my head and concentrated on my two new lovers. What was I to make of them? I couldn’t have found a greater contrast if I’d tried.

Laz was a Casanova, used to women certainly and interested in his own pleasure certainly but along the way handed out plenty to his partner with that knowing tongue and thrusting cock. We were, in a way, kindred spirits. The memory of his hard masculine body, glowing with that dark golden tan, filled my head and I gave a long contented sigh.

Then there was Rendido. What a surprise my albino faux youth had been. How could he look so young and yet be so sexually aware? He too knew his way around a woman’s body, and showed no hesitation as he explored every erogenous zone I possessed. He had even found some that I’d not been aware of before. Case in point, my left little toe. Why on earth would that be wired up to my clit in such a bizarre way, the link only activated by the simultaneous tonguing and biting?

“When would you like dinner?” Fyche prompted.

My forgotten stomach gave a pang of hunger. “Oh, now, I guess.”

“Are you okay?”

“I guess. I feel… I don’t know…”

“Tired?”

“I guess.”

“Not surprising after sixty-two orgasms.”

So he does count them after all. “That’s not possible,” I said.

“Your vaginal contractions, heart rate fluctuations and spikes in your frontal cortex tell a different story.”

“Fyche, do you monitor everything about me?”

“What would you like to know?”

“Nothing. It’s just… creepy.”

“Peri, I’m sorry that you find my monitoring disturbing. You know I am totally responsible for your well-being and the safe operation of this ship.”

“Yeah, yeah. But it’s a little intimate, you know what I mean?” A thought struck me. “Hey, did you know that if my left little toe is sucked and bit at the same time, I come?”

“I noted that.”

“Are there any other quirky places I don’t know about?”

“You’re asking me for a map of your erogenous zones, aren’t you?”

He sees through me every time. I must be transparent in his eyes. “You do know me extremely well, don’t you?”

“Every micrometer.”

“Then I bet you’ve made me a scrumptious meal of roast sildabird with hot chilli sauce with a bottle of huss wine.”

“On the contrary, I’ve prepared a selection of small dishes and beverages designed to replace your electrolytes and carbohydrates as I anticipate more strenuous activity over the next few hours.”

“Bah! You don’t know me at all.”

“I’ve also prepared a dish of old-fashioned vanilla ice cream with caramel topping.”

“Damn you!”

He chuckled in triumph. “My preliminary analysis of our guests suggests they can eat whatever you eat without damage.”

“Good old Terran stock, huh?”

“Basically. They have mutated little in the five hundred years they have been separated from our galactic community.”

A perverse thought coalesced in my brain. As both Laz and Rendido had pleased me so well independently, I wondered what they could do with me if I had them both in the same bed at once. “Then they shall dine with me.”

“Is that wise?”

“Nothing I do is wise, Fyche. You know that.”

“I’m computing the probabilities for several disasters as we speak.”

“That’s very comforting. I’ll fetch Laz and take him to the galley.”

“I recommend you restrain him with the sonic cuffs, and, when you fetch Rendido, restrain him as well. I anticipate violence.”

“With a woman present?”

“I believe that with you present, the probability of violence goes from one hundred percent to two hundred percent in less than two minutes.”

The notion that my two lovers would fight for me gave me a jolt of perverse pleasure. It wouldn’t be the first time that two amours had crossed swords over me. “Would you fight for me, Fyche?”

“Peri,” he said in a weary tone, “I do it every day.”

Chapter Seven

Laz was pleased to see me, as was his cock. When the door to my cabin slid aside he was sitting on the bed watching a Galactic Standard language education presentation Fyche had provided, and he was practicing some basic words.

He stood up at my entrance, his cock poking out from the open zipper of the flight suit he was wearing. When I had left him to tend to Rendido, several hours ago now, I had indicated he should watch the video screen on which Fyche depicted the operation of the bathroom, the shower and which of my flight suits he might want to wear.

Fyche had, quite maliciously I felt, chosen a pink one for him, and Laz looked… somewhat anomalous.

It was also a little tight, and so he had left it unbuttoned all the way down. His erect cock, which seemed never to go down, waved at me provocatively. “Hello,” he said in hesitant Standard.

“Hello, Laz.”

“Hello, Peri.” His genuine smile melted my heart, not to mention the warm feeling he prompted between my legs.

“Oh, no, not again,” I muttered and took my eyes off his cock. “Are you hungry?”

He cocked his head and I pantomimed eating.

He finally nodded in comprehension.

“Then come with me.”

I disengaged the sonic cuffs from the bed rail and grabbed another pair from the drawer. I took Laz by the hand and led him down the short corridor to the galley. His other hand he rested at the small of my back, just above my ass. His fingers caressed me softly through my wrap. I just wanted to push him down on the corridor floor and ride him into oblivion again, but I resisted, barely.

In the galley I pushed him back into a seat and cuffed him to the railing. The dumbwaiter chimed and I lifted the lid and extricated a plate of breads, fruits and dips as well as an energy drink, a concoction of pleasant-tasting electrolytes that Fyche had made for me before.

I placed the meal and a spoon before him. “Enjoy!” I said. “I’ll be back.”

Rendido had showered and was dressed in a white examination robe. He too was glad to see me when the door slid open. He’d been examining the contents of one of the wall lockers when I came in. He looked unabashed at being discovered prying and smiled at me broadly.

His cock tented the gown unashamedly, and I again fought down the urge to throw him back onto the examination table to have him again.

After gaining his understanding that we were going to actually eat food -- by this time I was getting good at this pantomime routine -- he walked with me the short distance to the galley.

Anticipating an adverse reaction when he saw Laz, I snapped the sonic cuffs onto his wrist before we entered the galley. He started in surprise but I gripped him on the shoulder and tried to convince him with my earnest expression that everything was okay.

Fyche opened the door for us and we stepped into the galley.

On seeing his adversary Laz launched himself to his feet, sending his plate and glass shooting into the air and crashing onto the galley floor. Rendido lurched forward and would have physically attacked his foe had I not held him back by a firm grip on the sonic cuff.

With great vehemence, the two warriors traded incomprehensible insults across the room.

“Settle down!” I yelled and wrestled Rendido to a seat at the opposite corner of the galley. I closed the other cuff onto a table support and told him to sit down and shut up.

I cleaned up the mess Laz had made and went to the dumbwaiter. Fyche sent up some more meals and I dropped the mess into the recycling vent. I gave Laz a replacement meal along with a baleful glare and then served one up to Rendido, a similar glare included.

Laz’s black eyes were pits of smoldering hatred. Rendido’s were ice-cold shards of blue. Their jaws were set hard, their fists clenched. I got a meal for myself and sat between them, acutely aware of their hateful stares. “Well, this is just dandy,” I said to no one in particular.

Fyche thoughtfully played the video of my dual rescue on the galley viewscreen just to remind them who I was and who they owed their existence to. At this point I don’t think they cared. The atmosphere in the galley was so thick with tension that a laser welder couldn’t have cut through it.

With spoon poised before his mouth Laz hissed something at Rendido, who replied with a violent discourse, the subject of which I could only guess concerned Laz’s parentage. “Shut up and eat!” I yelled, sending my voice hoarse.

They both stopped mid-invective and gazed at me in surprise.

“Eat up,” I ordered, doing my pantomime again.

“I’ve managed to create a dynamic translation subroutine for you,” Fyche said.

“Which means?”

“I’ll be able to translate what you say into their common language. They have their own dialects, of course, but most of the common stuff I was able to glean from their last outbursts and compared it to the records of their spoken language at the time of their departure.”

“Eat,” I repeated in Standard and Fyche translated in a perfect rendition of my voice and it sounded as if I could actually speak their language.

Both pilots gaped at me in surprise.

“Your voice is like an angel’s,” Laz said and Fyche translated his supreme admiration into Galactic Standard.

“Like a summer’s breeze,” Rendido said, his praise more secular in tone. His religious roots no doubt hampered his choice of hyperbole, leaving heaven to his gods.

“Shut your stinking asshole mouth, you dead piece of shit.” That was Laz.

Rendido’s reply was swift and just as eloquent. “Fuck off, you fucking turd!”

“I’ll kill you, you moron!”

“You’ll die trying!”

How adolescent. How male. “Shut up, the both of you!”

Dreams of my beautiful ménage quickly dissipated. I suddenly remembered why I’d never settled down with one man and had chosen instead a life between the stars, taking my pleasure wherever I could find it and moving on. In my experience, men are just too stupid to keep around.

“Such an animal should not be in your presence,” Rendido said to me.

“At least I’m an animal,” Laz countered. “Not a piece of excrement!”

I slammed down my glass. “That’s it!” I yelled. “This is my ship, my galley. I rescued you both. You both owe me your lives. You owe me the respect that I deserve. That means following rules.”

This left me nowhere to go as I’ve never had rules on the Jalapeño before; never needed them.

They stared at me with expectant expressions and thankfully my voice suddenly filled the galley. Fyche was telling them something in their own language. There was a fair bit to it, so I continued eating dinner while they listened attentively.

When Fyche finished they both looked to me.

“These are harsh rules,” Laz said, his black eyes glistening. “But fair. I swear to abide by them.”

Rendido nodded gravely. “I too owe you a debt of gratitude I cannot possibly repay. Thus, I will abide by them as well.”

I couldn’t answer straight away, as I was choking on my jenka bread. I took a sip of electrolytes and considered my two newly compliant guests. “Good. I’m glad. Now eat.”

“Yes, Peri,” they chorused.

“Fyche,” I muttered with a hint of dread in my voice. “This better be good.”

Chapter Eight

I had to wait till after dinner for enlightenment. The two boys ate quietly though I was aware of the palpable tension that remained between them.

When they were done I took both of them back to their respective beds, one at a time, and gave them a kiss on the cheek and left them. It wasn’t easy and I was proud of myself. I’d never demonstrated such willpower before.

I fell onto the couch in my study and stared out into space, slurping up my melting vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce. When I was a child, my mother had a fish tank and I’d spend hours watching the school of Lapfins be chased by Jin and Jan, our pair of predatory Gungoes. It was mesmerizing, as was the galaxy floating in the void before me like some discarded toy.

“So what are my rules that they are following so solemnly?” I asked finally.

“They are to behave themselves. Not to fight each other, swear at each other, or indulge in any way their mutual hatred. Instead they are to conduct themselves as crewmembers of the Jalapeño, and work together for it and your safety and security, until we can work out a safe way to get them both returned to their home worlds.”

“Sounds fair,” I muttered, sensing Fyche was holding something back. “And?”

“Oh,” Fyche said. “You’re curious about their duties as crewmembers.”

I hadn’t thought about duties, I’d been wondering instead what the harsh aspects of my rules they had alluded to. “What duties could we possibly trust them with?”

“I told them that you were a renowned galactic scientist, an anthropologist, studying the sexual mores of new cultures.”

This was true, except for the renowned scientist bit. “And?”

“They could partially repay their debt to you by divulging all they knew about their cultures’ sexual habits and demonstrating their sexual technique.”

I could have kissed him, had he a body, but I tamped down my enthusiasm because I was sure there was something else. “And?”

“You know me so well, don’t you?”

As gratifying as that admission was to my ego, I wasn’t going to let him divert me so easily. “And?”

“To avoid any misunderstanding of the General R’nok kind, I explained that you are also a warrior and in your culture women do not take males as husbands. They mate and have children, but have nothing to do with the men. You are, as is required of your warrior status, seeking a father of your first child and the most co-operative of the pair may, indeed, have that honor.”

“Why, in the name of the stars, would you say that?”

“To ensure their cooperation. I’ve been picking up some subspace chatter,” Fyche explained.

I suspected he was trying to divert my attention again but I played along. “And?”

“Mostly mining settlement reports, but in only two languages. It seems there are only two space-faring civilizations in Cannis.”

“Laz and Rendido’s cousins?”

“I believe so. They are implacable enemies. I picked up an educational broadcast sent to the children of a family on one of Rendido’s settlements. According to the history module, five hundred years ago a colonist starship comprised of religious fundamentalists, the Ethicists, left the Milky Way and traveled to the satellite galaxy called Cannis. They found the galaxy relatively uninhabited by sentient beings. Certainly no space-faring civilizations existed.

“After a protracted search they found a suitable system in which to settle. Philosophical differences erupted soon after planet fall. It seems that Laz’s people actually ran off with the starship shortly after the settlement became viable, leaving the other group to their own devices. Laz’s people found another suitable planet at the far end of Cannis. The two colonies prospered and became fierce rivals in exploiting the millions of star systems open to the taking.

“War is a constant as the two empires send hundreds of scout ships to find and claim planetary systems. Both appear to be ruthless and merciless with atrocities the norm rather than the exception. Both have become very militaristic in outlook, and because they are of equal strength neither has gained the ascendency. As a result of their rush to claim as much of the galaxy as they can, they are both thinly spread across the light years, living in small settlements, fiercely independent and savagely belligerent.”

“That explains why they hate each other, but what should we do with them?”

“Surely you haven’t tired of them already?”

I hate it when he’s sarcastic. “Despite your so-called rules, if we keep them both on board they’ll kill each other and us along with them.”

“I hate to say…”

I cut him off. “I know, I know.” I had an idea. “Maybe we could drop one of them off on one of their own planets a short walk from a settlement?”

“I wouldn’t like to risk their defenses. We’ve already witnessed how liberally they use quantum torpedoes. They are more likely to launch first and ask questions later.”

“Well, should we take them to one of our galactic authorities and let them sort them out?”

“That would seem the wisest course of action.”

“Then at least our authorities can negotiate a peace settlement.”

“History would suggest otherwise.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our authorities have a history of imposing peace, the cost of which is enslavement, both economically and politically.”

Fyche was right, as usual. Exploitation had always been the driving force behind the so-called “benevolent spreading of civilization to the savages.”

“Though the cost may be high, the benefits to the average people of both cultures as a result of their history are evident. You may be interested to know that Laz’s people have become hedonistic within the parameters of their military necessity. In their philosophy, sex is to be enjoyed.”

“So I noticed. I saw a kindred spirit the moment I laid eyes on him.”

“You may want to retract that sentiment. In order to build up their population they resorted to cloning and production line reproduction. The resulting class of people, and we are talking billions here, are not classed as full citizens and have no rights. They are slaves in every respect, sent to work in mines and settle the most inhospitable planets.”

The reason Laz had showed no remorse for the death of his co-pilot suddenly made horrible sense. That person, whoever it was, was just a slave to him.

“Apparently they have a thriving slave sex industry as well.”

I shuddered. I didn’t want to believe that Laz was a man who could have come from such a society.

“Rendido’s people are scarcely better.”

This was getting more depressing by the minute.

“They believe sex is for procreation only. They have a gender specific cloned population of females who are, effectively, breeding machines. The cloned breeders have no rights. Their children eventually become a tier of second-class citizens after three generations, but the mothers remain breeding machines with no actual rights. It is a male dominated society. The marriage union is paramount, but obviously focused on property and power rather than sex. Sex is restricted to the cloned females. History, however, shows that illicit sex in cultures which repress sex is as high as anywhere else.”

“They just don’t talk about it.”

“That’s about it. It also explains why the war carries on with such losses in human life. The lives of the cloned populations on both sides are valued less than the conventionally born.”

What a horrendous situation. “This may sound simplistic, but if our government got involved here, we could be liberating billions of people from servitude.”

“At the cost, remember, of future exploitation by our culture. One can argue that will be far worse.”

“Damn it! What to do?” I groaned. “It’s Hobson’s choice, isn’t it?”

“More accurately Morton’s Fork.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Hobson’s choice refers to a choice between one thing or nothing. Morton’s Fork is a choice between two equally bad alternatives named after Earthman John Morton, Lord Chancellor of England under Henry the Seventh.”

“I thought that was Catch-22.”

“No, that’s something different again. You could say that is where there is no real choice at all, just the illusion of choice.”

“Well, whoever’s choice it is, it’s put me on the eyestalks of a dilemma.”

“In that you are correct.”

But on the bright side, until I worked out what to do with them, I would have the pleasure of encouraging Laz and Rendido to divulge their sexual habits. It became clear to me why Fyche had concocted that outrageous story about me wanting to choose a father for my child. “You’re a devious one, aren’t you?”

“I try my best, though I’m not sure what you’re alluding to.”

“You’re hoping that Laz and Rendido will play ball and behave themselves while we figure out what to do with them. With their energies diverted by my bodily charms, their compliance assured because they like sex, and if they believe it is for procreation purposes all the better, they’ll focus on impregnating me and not killing each other.”

“Something like that.”

“I feel I should resent the cavalier fashion you’re using my body,” I said grumpily.

“I have only your interests at heart,” he replied. “The idea creates some interesting possibilities.”

“Such as?”

“A bestseller, for one. You’ll be the first anthropologist to study the customs of two hitherto unknown galactic societies. You’ll become famous.”

“But only if we decide to take them to our authorities. If we don’t, I can never reveal their existence.”

“Back to your dilemma.”

“But at least if we do turn them in, I get something tangible out of it in addition to the thought I might save people from a life of slavery.”

“Something like that.”

That was the thing about Fyche. He liked to pose me a lot of questions, give me options, scenarios and possible consequences and watch me get tangled up in Gordian knots as I tried to figure out what choice I should make. I think it’s a form of passive aggression.

Chapter Nine

As difficult as this may be to believe, I tired of the view of the Milky Way and asked Fyche to take me to a vantage point just outside the Cannis galaxy so I could contemplate it in the hope it might help me off the pointy end of Morton’s Fork.

The Cannis galaxy was a diffuse collection of a few hundred million stars, a pale pearl circling the Milky Way. It was a little disappointing, I must say, and hardly inspiring. There was nothing special about its appearance at all and was in all respects unremarkable, which probably explained why it had been ignored by most everybody for so long except by the Ethicists who apparently favored minimalism. What better place to escape to than a nondescript piece of celestial real estate that no one would ever want?

That would change, however, when I brought them to the attention of the Milky Way authorities. As soon as they realized there was a civilization already in place, then the commercial potential would raise its insatiable head. An untapped market would draw the galactic wheeler dealers in no time flat. It would be a free-for-all, and whatever culture the people of Cannis called their own would cease, swamped beneath the creamy blanket of Milky Way greed.

Not that this would be any different to the multitude of cultures which had fallen prey to more aggressive civilizations throughout the history of humanity, not to mention the countless alien species now absorbed into galactic mediocrity.

The cultures of Laz and Rendido were no more special than those others who had fallen before them. The only difference would be that I was the one who had the power to destroy their civilization. As abhorrent as I found their societies to be, it would be I, Peri Barberossa, who would have pulled the plug on them.

That made it a very personal decision and I wanted to be sure I was doing the right thing. I needed more information.

Laz was, as usual, glad to see me, as was his ever-erect cock.

“Thank you for saving my life,” Fyche translated when I entered my cabin. “Tell me how I may serve you.”

I was still uneasy about him. From what Fyche had told me, I must admit my appreciation of Laz’s character had changed a little. I had no real desire to have sex with a man who used his slaves as if they were things and not people, but my undoubted attraction to him forced me to consider all possibilities and not to jump to conclusions. Fyche would be proud of me.

I sat on the end of my bed, as far from him as possible. “Tell me about home.”

His dark eyes clouded over. “Ananda. It is a beautiful place.”

“You were born there?”

He nodded enthusiastically. “I was raised in the palace.”

So, he was one of the aristocracy.

“From the high towers atop the walls I remember watching the hograns fly in search of prey.”

I asked him what a hogran was and he described a gigantic flying lizard. “You wanted to be like them?”

“Oh yes. They were my rison.”

“I’m sorry? What does rison mean?”

He thought for a moment. “My symbol?”

I could imagine how the soaring hunting bird could become the talisman of a young boy. “I understand. Is that why you became a pilot?”

He laughed. “No, I was destined for a life on the ground.”

His eyes wandered to my cleavage. I was still wearing the transparent wrap, lightly belted, which came to just below my hips. It left nothing to the imagination, of course, but was what I normally wore when alone onboard, and I wasn’t going to make myself uncomfortable for anyone. Besides, I was captain of the Jalapeño and Laz and Rendido were my crew. They could put up with my semi-nakedness or step out the airlock, a clear case of Hobson’s choice.

Not that Laz minded my state of near undress. His erection stuck proudly from the front of the pink flight suit.

This, at least, had to end. “First, let’s fix your clothes,” I said and in my closet I found an old martial arts tunic I hadn’t worn for ages. I gave it to him and watched him undress and put it on.

He was completely uninhibited with the way he displayed his body. It was, after all, magnificent. His golden tanned skin glowed with health and vitality. His muscles rippled as he stretched to hand the discarded flight suit, warm with his body heat, to me.

He was a perfect specimen except for a livid six-inch scar that ran down his left side just below the armpit. I hadn’t noticed it when we were making love earlier, which was not surprising because I was focused on other parts of his anatomy.

I pointed to it. “What happened there?”

“The claw of a bathor caught me.” He described what I took to be an initiation ceremony on his home world where he was left overnight in an isolated canyon where a bathor, a six-legged carnivore, had its lair. If he survived the night he was accepted into some sort of brotherhood.

“Did you have to fight it?”

He laughed again. “You cannot fight the bathor. It is invincible. You have to keep moving. You can’t hide because it will sniff you out.” He made some snuffling noises that made me laugh.

“Would it have eaten you?”

“We are its favorite food,” he said. “They love to chew on our bones and suck out our marrow.”

Which reminded me of a children’s tale my mother used to read to me. I began to doubt Laz’s tale. It had too much of the fairy story in it. “What happened next morning?”

“They came for me expecting to find only my shit and blood,” he said grimly. “But I surprised them.”

“I bet. Was there a big celebration?”

“Hardly. They sent me to school.”

I was a bit deflated. I expected a tale of drunken celebration and women falling at the conquering hero’s feet. Watching him dress, his erect cock bouncing around, got my mind back onto sex. “Tell me about the first time you made love to a girl.”

Laz sat next to me on my bed. His body radiated waves of pulsating warmth that enveloped me with an aura of lust. He wanted me badly, I could tell. He had purposely sat close with his knee touching mine. Raw heat washed between us. My pussy gave a warm, wet pulse. Inside my wrap my nipples hardened.

His coal black eyes gazed into mine and I saw them glisten. “Her name was Lila,” he began, his voice husky. “She was the daughter of the Janga, the House Lord’s wife. She was not as beautiful as you, Peri. Her breasts were small, and perfectly round, her nipples dark, whereas yours are pink and long. Lila’s were barely nubs.”

He’d reached out with his forefinger and caressed my nearest nipple through the gossamer thin material of my wrap. “How old were you?”

“She was eighteen summers, too young to be sent away to school. I was younger, destined to the mines. She took pity on me.”

“The mines?”

“I was a low born. Sent to the house from the factory to serve the House Lord.”

“You were a slave?”

He nodded, his expression suddenly ashamed. Relief swept through me. His scant regard for his shipmate was now explained. The situation had been the reverse of what I had assumed. Laz was the slave and the dead pilot his master. No wonder he felt no sadness at his death. I reached out to him, grasped his hand. “Go on. Tell me about Lila.”

“She was kind to me once and I took every chance to get a glimpse of her as she went about the house with her tutors. Sometimes a glimpse of thigh would make me dream of holding her in my arms.” He laughed. “The problem was I was too young to know what to do with her once I had her there.”

I giggled along with him. “You do now,” I said.

“One day she noticed me staring at her. Instead of telling her fussy old tutor to have me whipped for insolence, she smiled at me.”

“She wanted you,” I muttered, knowing how the young girl must have felt, seeing a beautiful young man lusting after her. How her heart would have thudded in her breast. How her breath would catch in her throat…

Laz’s hand had strayed to my thigh and he caressed the quivering flesh as he spoke. My thighs parted spontaneously and his fingers dipped into the sultry heat between.

“She sent her tutor away and when she was alone she drew me closer with a gesture, so slight, so subtle, and despite the distance between us in station, I crossed the gulf in a moment.”

His fingers had separated the lips of my pussy and were gently sliding along my slit, not entering me, but caressing the flesh now slick with the juice of my desire.

“What did she do?” My voice quivered.

“She held my hand with one hand and with the other…”

“Show me.”

He withdrew his fingers from my sex and put them to his lips. His tongue delicately licked my juices off his fingers. My heart lost itself in a sudden gallop. After cleaning his fingers he took my hand and placed it on his throbbing cock.

“I was wearing a loincloth and she pressed on my cock, kneading it like it was dough.”

“You were her first lover,” I said, pressing on his cock. “She would be clumsy.”

“She ordered me to take it off so she could see it.”

“Was she nervous?”

“She said she had seen her father’s security men working out in the yard. They practice hand-to-hand combat wearing only cloths around their waist. She said she’d seen them slip off as they fell to the ground. She wanted to see the long thing close up.”

“How sweet,” I said. “The long thing.”

“She didn’t know what it was called.”

“But you told her.”

“It is called my lon, my sword.”

“Lon,” I repeated as I kneaded his cock. “She was close. Long is not far from lon.” Imagining myself as Lila I pretended I was watching him take off his loincloth, his cock thick and hard after her clumsy ministrations bobbing up to meet her gaze, the single eye at the peak of the engorged head glistening with pre-come, as Laz’s cock was now.

“She touched it gently. Her breathing had become fast, and my heart was beating so hard in my chest it was as if I’d been running from a bathor.”

“Is your heart beating fast now?” I asked, gently stroking the shaft from the base to the tip. It throbbed beneath my fingertips in time with his pulse, which was, I could feel, going very fast indeed.

“Yes,” he muttered.

“And what were you doing while she stroked your lon?”

“Lila ordered me to open her gown and touch her breasts.”

“How did they feel?”

“Warm and soft. I traced the curve of them with my fingertip. They were not big enough to hold, as yours are.”

He was touching me as he spoke, his fingers faithfully following the outline of my full breasts. My flesh quivered beneath his knowing touch. “Her nipples were just small brown nubs, the dark halo wrinkled, unlike yours which are soft, pink, and long, the halo smooth.”

I’d been holding my breath as he gently took my nipple between thumb and forefinger and rolled it between the two. “Did she like your touch?” I finally asked, my body leaning into his.

“She said she’d seen her pets fornicating and wanted me to do the same to her.”

Not the most romantic come hither I’d ever heard, but inexperience can excuse many things.

“I undressed her,” he said and proceeded to unwrap me, first untying the loose belt and then lifting the wrap away from my body. “Her grip on my lon got tighter, and she said that her friends had said that sometimes women take the long thing in their mouths.”

I remembered how my young friends would discuss the shadowy world of sex: lurid rumors, unlikely half-truths and wild imaginings would fill our young minds. It wasn’t until I’d been introduced to the hedonistic universe of sex did I realize I didn’t know the half of it.

I began stroking his lon harder and faster while Laz bent his head to my breast and took my nipple between his lips. Inside his hot mouth his tongue flicked my tingling nub, sending spikes of pleasure spearing into my brain. I wondered if Fyche was recording my frontal cortex’s reaction to Laz’s persistent ministrations as he set the nerve endings in my nipple alight with a burning need.

Usually I’m the initiator when it comes to fucking, but this time I held myself back as Laz continued his tale of his seduction of Lila or, more to the point as she was ordering this virgin slave, his willing rape by Lila. “She laid her head in my lap and started licking the head of my lon.”

I did the same. The swollen head filled my mouth with raw heat and his salty pre-come set off a chain reaction of tingles down my spine. He gasped as I took him deeper into my mouth. “Her dan was in the air, and I reached behind her and stroked her lish.”

If Lila had been in the same position as I was then that meant that dan referred to her ass and lish must be the delicious name for pussy, because he was doing to me what he said he’d been doing to Lila, stroking the wet lips of my pussy from the top to the bottom, one finger straying to play with my puckered asshole.

I moaned around his cock, which was a fair way down my throat. I’d long mastered the art of deep-throat. Using a meditation technique I was able to cancel my gag reflex, so as long as I timed my breathing just right, I could take any cock as deep as I wanted. That particular skill made me popular at college, let me tell you.

He was silent for a few moments. I was enjoying what he was doing to my pussy and how his steel hard shaft felt in my mouth too much to stop and ask him to continue. Eventually he plunged his thumb and forefinger deep into my pussy, then withdrew the thumb now slick with my juices and gently probed my asshole.

How did he know I liked that?

I groaned and pushed my ass back onto his hand so that the thumb went past the temporary resistance of my sphincter and into my tight hot ass. His finger also went deeper into my pussy and began a gentle fucking movement and my ass quivered and shook with pleasure.

“I’d never had my lon inside anyone’s mouth before,” he continued. “And I felt like I was going to explode. I’d played with myself, of course. Every boy I knew did that. We’d have competitions to see how far we could shoot our jets of kod over the edge of the dormitory balcony, but we never touched each other. That was forbidden. This was nothing like touching myself. I knew I would shoot kod if she didn’t stop.”

I withdrew my mouth from his swelling cock. “What did you do?”

“Lila lay down and told me to fornicate with her.”

“We’ve used the word fuck for several millennia to describe fornication. What word do you use?”

“Only lash. It means to make babies.”

Of course, his forebears would have long ago removed all words from their vocabulary referring to sex for anything other than procreation. The only other word they used was fornication, which, if my memory of history served, was a pejorative meaning indiscriminate sex with immoral people.

“How did she lie down?”

“She lay on her back and opened her legs for me.”

I did so in the traditional manner, lying there gripping my ankles, my swollen pussy wide open to his appreciative gaze. He positioned himself between my legs, gripped his lon by the shaft, and maneuvered the engorged head to within a millimeter of my opening.

“She ordered me to lash her, so I put my lon like this.” He touched my inflamed lips with the head of his cock. I gasped at the surge of sensation that ripped up my spine from this single brush. I could not remember being so aroused, wanting a cock inside me so badly. Laz stroked the outside of my pussy slowly with the head of his lon, pushing slightly deeper each time.

It was all I could do not to push myself onto his shaft and fuck him myself, I wanted it so badly. Instead I lay there, gasping as the head of his cock nudged the hood of my tingling clit then slid back down my oh so wet lips to the entrance of my cunt.

He caressed me to the edge of orgasm then without warning he plunged his full length into me. I grunted in surprise and no sooner registered the fact that he was fucking me at last than I came, and came again, swept away on a wave of orgasms as he fucked me, relentlessly withdrawing his cock then plunging all the way back in.

I cried out as another series of climaxes ripped through my belly. He grasped my thighs and held them high, putting both ankles over his left shoulder, twisting me slightly and closing the juncture of my thighs tight around his cock.

He drove into me, grunting with the effort. He filled me completely and each thrust sent a jolt coursing through my body. Then, as I came down from one high roller of an orgasm, his cock swelled within me and exploded with liquid heat and shot into me spurt after powerful spurt of thick kod as hot as molten lead.

“Did you and Lila become lovers?” I asked after I caught my breath.

Laz had collapsed over me and when his lon gave its final spasm he slid off to the side. “She had screamed out in climax, as you had done, unable to keep silent. Her tutor rushed into the room and found me there, rutting between her legs like a ganth. He hit me and Lila said I had attacked her.”

The bitch! Suddenly his fairy tale became a horror story. “That’s why they left you overnight with the bathor.”

“It was to be my execution.”

“So, because you lived, they freed you and made you a pilot?”

“Tradition says he who survives the bathor is a warrior and must go to war.”

“You didn’t want to, did you?”

“Not until we were attacked. The House was destroyed, my friends killed.”

“And Lila?”

“She survived. She became the wife of our Grand Admiral’s son.”

“Difficult for you, I bet.”

“We are given the suicide missions,” he said wryly.

“Such as chasing Rendido by yourself.”

He nodded. “I am honor bound to kill all his kind for what they did to my friends.”

I noticed he didn’t say family. Of course, as a clone, most of those around him would be copies of himself. In effect the attack on the house had killed parts of himself. No wonder his hatred ran so deep.

“Well, remember, as long as you are on my ship, you’ll behave yourself.”

“I promise, Peri. I will do anything you ask of me. I am in your debt.”

“Remember that,” I said. “I may hold you to it one day.”

Chapter Ten

“What do you think of his story?” Fyche asked me later.

I was in my study writing up another article for the Galactic Tourist. I was devoting the whole thing to Laz’s story and his sexual technique. The words, like his kod, had come pouring out of me.

Fyche’s hesitation spoke volumes. “You don’t believe him, do you?”

“Granted I have not studied anyone from his culture before, but given that his physiology is virtually the same as any galactic, his respiration, heart rate and cognitive activity all suggested he was lying.”

“You’re saying he raped Lila?”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” he said. “That part of his story was true. The bit about him being a slave, the bathor scar and how he came to be a pilot were, I suspect, given his physiological responses, all hokum.”

“Now there’s a word you don’t hear very often.”

“It means false sentiment, sentimental or melodramatic nonsense.”

“I gathered it meant something like that.”

“I suspect he is a member of the ruling elite and is pretending to be a slave in order not to expose himself to the prospect of becoming an important hostage to Rendido if things go badly for him.”

“He’s playing us then.”

“I believe so. His motivations are entirely sound, but I thought you should be aware of his ability to be duplicitous.”

“I suspected there was something in his eyes that was more mature than his naïve motivation to please. That he wasn’t a simple slave.”

Fyche was silent.

“I did,” I said sternly. “It’s the truth!”

“If you say so.”

“Now don’t start with me.”

“I suggest you drink some electrolytes,” Fyche said. “Before you see Rendido.”

It had been five hours since Laz had taken me to a breathtaking eighty-five orgasms, and I was starting to feel recovered. As I’d been writing my article that familiar buzz around the clit area and the hollowness in my belly signaled that my desire was building up again. Fyche had correctly read the signs.

“What is with you and electrolytes?”

“They are essential to maximal neural functioning.”

I must admit, though he goes on like my mother sometimes, it’s kinda sweet how much concern he has over my well-being. “I’m on my way down to the galley,” I said, closing my article. “Have one ready for me. Orange flavor this time.”

“Your wish is my command.”

“I haven’t figured out who is commanding who yet, but I will.”

Fyche didn’t reply.

With the refreshing flood of electrolytes energizing my body I went to the sickbay and found Rendido studying a history tutorial on one of the screens. Fyche was evidently educating him on the Milky Way’s history.

Rendido looked up and smiled. “Hello, Peri,” he said good-naturedly. “I have been examining your history,” he said. “It is very bloody.”

“It is that,” I agreed. “No doubt as steeped in blood as yours.”

“It is our nature to fight, to kill.”

“Not necessarily.”

“But you are a warrior,” he protested.

“A scientist first,” I said, trying to be consistent with the bogus biography Fyche had created for me. “I’d like you to tell me about your customs, if you feel up to it.”

He smiled guardedly. “Our sex customs?”

“That is my field of expertise.”

“What is it you wish to know?”

“All that you wish to tell me.”

“Sex is for procreation. Its only purpose is to have children.”

“Do you have any children?”

“One hundred and ten,” he said blandly.

I swallowed my surprise. No wonder he knew his way around a woman’s body. “Impressive. You must be very proud. In my culture, and most of the cultures in the galaxy, a man has only one or a few wives and so his children are fewer in number.”

“We are constantly at war and so need to replenish our population from the genocidal attacks of the enemy.” His albino face had flushed a livid pink.

“I want to discuss the politics at another date,” I said smoothly. “Tell me more about your wives.”

“I have no wife,” he said, a hint of derision in his tone.

“What relationship do you have with these women, if not marriage?”

“They are cherls, breeders.”

“I see.”

“As a warrior I am allowed a cherl every off duty day and a grade bonus point for every child I sire.”

I pitied the poor cherls, women committed to a lifetime of childbearing. “You’re on an incentive scheme to father children.”

He pointed to the juncture of my thighs. “You are ready to have my baby?”

I held back my laughter. “Maybe later,” I said. “Your mother, was she a cherl?”

He shrugged. “Of course.”

“And your father?”

“A warrior. He sired one thousand and seven children.”

“And your brothers and sisters, they are free citizens?”

“Only warriors become citizens. Others work.”

“Where do the cherls come from?”

“The vats.”

I shivered at the cold thoughtless way he said it. “They are clones?”

He shrugged dismissively. “Bred for breeding purposes.”

“Do you have a special cherl? One you like above all others?”

He nodded. “Sri,” he said. “She has given me five sons.”

“Is that why you like her, because she’s productive?”

I guess, as it had been with Laz, I needed to find something about Rendido that I could like. I wanted some spark of romantic passion, some sense of feeling toward those women who spread their legs to satisfy his culture’s obsession with children. Something that would redeem him so that I could think well of having fucked him, and perhaps think it was okay to fuck him again.

“She has hair as golden as yours,” he said softly, reaching out and grasping my hair. “Her eyes are green, and they shine when she laughs.”

My heart caught. This was what I wanted to hear. “You like her, don’t you?”

“I had her every night she was not with others for a year before she bore me a son.”

“You kept asking for her,” I prompted. “Do you see a future for you and Sri to be together, just the two of you?”

“I have deposited my bonus to buy her from the vats when I am too old to be a warrior.”

Well, that was something, I guess. “Tell me, Rendido, when you make love to Sri, do you only do it to make babies?”

His face suddenly became boyish, as if he had a secret.

“You can tell me.”

“Sometimes,” he said. “Sri was already with child from another warrior, and so could not become pregnant to me, but she wouldn’t tell them so she could have a last night with me before she went to the nursery.”

A coldness swept through me. The poor girl was in love with him. “And you were pleased that she wanted to spend time with you?”

“Very happy.” His hand grasped mine. “Peri, I know my culture is not your culture. My people are at war. We have to procreate to survive.”

I dampened my rising anger. He was only defending his way of life, I told myself. One he had not devised for himself. It was the only way he knew, yet, there was a spark of romance within him and it was that which I warmed to. Perhaps Sri and he would have a happy life.

He laughed suddenly. “You explode like Sri.”

“I do?”

“Your little toe. She too loves me to bite it.”

That’s how he won me back. A simple comparison to probably the only female he had ever had feelings for.

Truth be told, I’d been leaning toward him for a few moments before I made the conscious decision that he was not a complete misogynist, that he had the capacity for empathy and romantic feelings toward females beyond that which his repressive culture dictated.

I am realist enough to accept that my conscious decision had been, of course, preceded by a host of unconscious processes; elevated arousal, his masculine body, his sexual pheromones, my desire for him to redeem himself and thus remove the disquiet I felt about already having sex with him.

The debate on the existence or not of free will in the human brain was still raging between philosophers. It’s an academic debate with little relevance to my world. For me, as soon as you ascribe the existence of personality, you condemn people to acting within the boundaries of that personality and then, by definition, the concept of absolute free will disappears. I’m happy to go along with my unconscious choices, as long as I can rationalize them in the end, and in the meantime I have as much fun as I can.

He kissed me then, interrupting my philosophical ranting. His lips were insistent and, as they worked against mine, his hands were inside my wrap, cupping my breasts, his thigh pressing against my knee.

Our coupling was quick and furtive. I pushed him back onto the examination bed and pulled open his flight suit to free his alabaster cock turned pink with blood. My pussy was already wet and open and I fed him easily into my warm depths.

Sinking down onto his length I ground my pelvis into his, savoring the sensation of his light pubic hair rubbing against my clit and the swollen head of his cock touching those spots inside my pussy that took me toward the edge and then shoved me over the precipice.

My first orgasm was upon me before I suspected it was even coming. An intense rush of warmth flooded my belly and swept through me with the force of a tornado. Rendido grunted as my pussy firmly clenched the shaft of his cock and as each orgasm took me, my pussy milked him as the muscles went into spasm. I cried out with the sheer force of the explosions that were ripping through me.

My alabaster lover grunted in satisfaction, his hands firmly on my waist as he guided my grinding motions. Inside me his cock swelled and then pumped a glut of hot come deep inside me. The fierce heat of his essence took me over the edge for one final orgasm and I fell over him, my chest heaving as I searched for breath.

We clung to each other, our hearts beating against each other in mad synchronicity.

Rendido kissed me gently on the lips and began a delightful caress of the outside of my lips with the tip of his tongue. My lower lip was slightly more sensitive than the upper, and as he repeated the circuit, concentrating on the little dimples I have at the corners, he then proceeded to my philtrum, running his tongue lightly up and down that deep groove. My whole body came alive at this gentle knowing caress.

Then, unexpectedly, the tip of his tongue entered the delicate flesh inside my nostril. I jumped, but quickly settled and allowed him to continue his exploration. As weird as this was I quickly gave myself over to the amazing sensations that cascaded through my body. It seemed my body was just one vast erogenous zone and no matter where his lips and tongue touched, a flood of sensation would carry me away.

My pussy gave a pulse and inside me Rendido’s cock swelled in response. Needing no more encouragement, he flipped me over on the bed, raised me to my knees and reintroduced his cock to my pussy, driving deep into me, thrusting as if his life depended on it. His firm grip around my waist was one thing I always found enormously arousing, and I rocked back and forth to meet his powerful thrusts.

Wave after wave of pleasure flooded through me. I collapsed onto my forearms, crying out as each orgasm hit me. Rendido didn’t last long this time. His cock soon swelled inside me and his copious ejaculation filled me to overflowing. He collapsed onto my back and for a long while we lay quietly, our bodies firmly locked together, our mutual warmth enveloping us like a blanket. Just before my eyes closed and I fell into a dreamless sleep, I noted how pleased I was that he had redeemed himself and shown himself to be a romantic at heart.

Chapter Eleven

“You believed him, didn’t you?”

I’d showered, changed, had another glass of one of Fyche’s electrolytic concoctions, and was writing up my experiences with Rendido.

“What wasn’t to believe?”

“He clearly sensed your growing displeasure with him and his society, your withdrawal from him, and he correctly began speaking of feelings for this Sri character.”

“You don’t believe she exists?”

“His brain activity suggests otherwise.”

He wouldn’t be the first man to have ever lied to me, but I was sure I sensed sincerity in Rendido’s tone. “Perhaps he lied about her name, or something inconsequential like that, and it’s that that is giving you spurious signals.”

“That is possible. I’m just letting you know he is being duplicitous.”

“I appreciate it, I do. Now, have you any ideas about what I should do with them?”

“For your own security I encourage you to take them to the nearest diplomatic center of our government and let them handle the return. We can be at Phi Bastion in six hours.”

I hesitated to make a decision. I knew Fyche was right. Blundering about in a war zone didn’t sound like a good idea to me either. I was certainly conflicted. Did I want the demise of the Cannis culture, as repugnant as I found it to be, to rest on my conscience? That was what held me up.

As appealing as it would be to free the slaves such as Laz, or allow the cloned sex slaves like Sri to escape their bondage, could I live with the exploitation that would surely come? The reality was I feared that even if our culture did intercede, nothing much would change. We were not paragons of virtue; sex slavery and bonded employment was still rife in the Milky Way, even today.

Was I taking myself too seriously? I feared my ego and inflated notion of self-importance was once again clouding my perception of what surely was a simple matter.

I should just hand them over to the authorities and let the politicians handle it. After all, that’s why they get paid the big credits.

And what if I did take Laz and Rendido to their homes and not mention it to anyone? Life would go on there as if I had never witnessed their battle to the death. What if I had left them to die? I wouldn’t have known they even existed, and the culture of Cannis would continue for another hundred years until someone else stumbled upon them like I had. The absorption of Cannis into the sprawling society of the Milky Way was just a matter of time. That thought opened the door to a way out for me. Not a brave or courageous decision I grant you, but it was inevitable.

“I want to speak to both Laz and Rendido before I make a decision.”

“Be careful. They have both shown themselves to be duplicitous.”

The gravity of his warning gave me a chill. “Yes, Mother.”

The boys behaved themselves and didn’t need to be cuffed. I hoped their admiration and desire for me would prevent them from blotting their copybook, so to speak. “I’m about to make a choice about what to do with you guys.”

They gazed intently back at me. Laz’s black eyes were inscrutable, but his expression positive. Rendido’s pale countenance was wary.

“I want you both to consider the following options. One, I take you both to a neutral area where you can both be safe, and you both figure out how to get home. Two, I take you one by one to a safe location inside your own people’s controlled space with a promise that you will let me leave unhindered with the other one. Three, I take you to a diplomatic center in my galaxy who will then negotiate your safe return.” Both made motions to speak but I silenced them with my hand.

“These are the problems as I see them. I am doubtful my safety and the safety of the Jalapeño can be guaranteed. Your two peoples are in a constant state of war. I’m concerned I will be shot out of hand. Second, if I bring your existence to the attention of my authorities, an end to your culture is assured as the history of small civilizations being overrun by larger ones is not pleasant. I’m caught between two unpleasant choices. What are your thoughts?”

Laz raised his hand. “I can guarantee your safety in my space. I can communicate with the border patrols at a…” he gave Rendido a suspicious glance, “…a certain system.”

“I can do that also,” Rendido said.

“You’re asking me to trust both of you that you will not take advantage of the situation and betray me in order to capture the other.” I gave each of them a penetrating, evaluative stare. “I trust you to honor that pledge.”

They both nodded and repeated their assurances that I was making the right decision, that I could trust them. Despite Fyche’s warning, I believed I could.

“However, can I trust your superiors? Faced with an opportunity of capturing an enemy pilot, would they honor your pledge to an outsider like me? I don’t know your superiors as I know you, so I cannot trust them as much. I doubt if you can vouch for your superiors either.”

Laz’s expression was one of resignation. He didn’t trust the people that enslaved him to honor any promise he made. Rendido, however, his expression was of fierce determination. He did believe his superiors would let me and Laz go free. Just as suddenly his self-assurance was clouded and he too adopted a look of shameful resignation as if he too suspected his superiors of going against his wishes.

He was not that good an actor. I surmised that Rendido was indeed a high-ranking officer and that whatever he promised would be honored. Of course he wouldn’t admit that in the presence of Laz, who would, if he suspected, make every attempt to capture such an important ranking enemy officer. Who knows what reward Laz would be given -- his freedom perhaps?

All this was guesswork on my part for I knew nothing for certain.

“A third option exists,” I said. “You can direct me to an uninhabited world close to your borders. I set you down in an environmental suit with a good supply of air. I send a subspace SOS to your people and then leave. I won’t do that because of the uncertainty of your people getting the SOS in time. I’d hate for you to die accidentally.”

“Then your choice is clear,” Laz said. “You must take us to your galaxy. It is the only sensible choice.”

“It could mean you being stuck as a prisoner for a long time, while negotiations are carried out.”

Laz shrugged.

“The thing that worries me is that once my government knows you are here, they will come: first the diplomats, then the traders, then the criminals looking to exploit your peoples. It has happened countless times in the past. It will sit heavily on my conscience.”

“I do not want to cause you pain, Peri,” Laz said. “Perhaps we should stay as your crew and leave our galaxy forever.”

The idea of these two sex machines being at my beck and call was certainly a tantalizing one, but I quickly discounted it. They didn’t like each other, and sometime, somewhere, their old hatred would boil over.

“That’s not fair to either of you,” I said. “As much as I enjoy your company, my conscience won’t allow that either.”

“But I thought you wanted a child.”

I’d forgotten Fyche’s mad story. It had worked to keep them distracted with trying to get me pregnant; now it just made me feel awkward.

“We’ll continue with that goal in mind,” I said as convincingly as possible. “But I do intend getting a good solution for both of you. It is against our customs to keep men permanently.”

“I’ll be the one,” Laz said confidently, a self-satisfied smirk on his rugged face.

Rendido shot him a poisonous glare. “She’ll bear my son, you…” He caught himself and stopped short of an insult.

That settled it for me. As good as they were for my galloping libido, they had to go if they were going to carry on like this.

Fyche took the opportunity to ease the tension by announcing dinner was served. Laz was instantly on his feet and he quickly handed me my meal and pointedly picked up Rendido’s. I half expected him to drop it into his lap but he didn’t. Rendido watched him suspiciously but nothing untoward occurred.

We ate in companionable silence for a while before Laz asked me about my family. I’d just launched into an amusing story about my younger sister’s exploits as a journalist when my stomach gave a lurch, and the ship was buffeted as if it were a boat caught out at sea in a storm.

“What the hell is that?”

“Sorry, Peri,” Fyche said. “I’ve jumped us into quantum space, a random program.”

“Why, may I ask?”

“A rather large battle cruiser and five destroyers materialized beside us and launched an EM torpedo in our direction.”

“Good enough.” An EM torpedo is designed to disable electronics, not destroy life, which was something, I guess. “Who was it?” I asked, wondering if they belonged to Laz’s people or Rendido’s.

“The ships belong to General R’nok’s navy.”

“Fuck me each way to Sunday!”

“I think that is his intention.”

I turned to Laz and Rendido, who were looking at me for an explanation. “I am being pursued by a man with two cocks,” I said.

They nodded as if that made perfect sense.

“I’ve programmed a series of random jumps,” Fyche reported as my stomach gave another lurch. A moment later he said, “I’ve received a subspace message from General R’nok.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Dressed in full regalia, the general sat at his cruiser’s command chair, his stainless steel codpiece sitting upright in his lap like a double flagpole. “You cannot escape me.” Then the screen went blank.

“Is that all?”

“Affirmative.”

Short and sweet, a man of few words. “Reply with something to the effect that I am not bound by actions done in ignorance of local customs.”

“Done.”

“Can he track us?”

“He can only follow, but constant jumps like this will drain our converters in six hours. Then we will be at his mercy.”

“Any suggestions?”

“We are one ship against a well-equipped navy. The only possible escape is to go to the middle of our government’s protected space and let our navy dissuade him.”

I glanced at Laz and Rendido. Morton’s Fork had raised its pointy prongs again. To do as Fyche suggested would drop my boys immediately into the hands of the Milky Way officials. The alternative was to give up and spread my legs for R’nok for the rest of my life.

“Who is this turd?” Laz asked.

“A general who believes one night with me gives him the right to own me.”

“I’ll kill the shit.”

“And I will help.”

Laz looked at Rendido in surprise.

“He will be no match for us if we fight together,” Rendido added.

On screen Fyche played a short history of General R’nok to Laz and Rendido, showing the size of his navy and the nature of his weaponry.

My stomach gave another lurch, then another as Fyche jumped in and out of quantum space. A massive dark star appeared off our port beam, surrounded by a malignant red glow. Occasionally huge prominences jetted into space as some hapless planet fell into its huge gravitational field. The star field beyond was distorted, stars stretched into streaks of multi-colored light as the fabric of space was twisted and torn.

“Where are we?”

“I’ve selected some random coordinates in the Cannis galaxy,” Fyche reported. “I’m hoping that the uncharted space will confuse them. Also the distortion provided by this black hole may afford us some time.”

We sat just outside the black hole for some minutes before I let myself breathe again. Sitting this close to such a malignant body made me uneasy.

“It seems to be working,” Fyche said eventually. “The distortion to the quantum field this close has wiped out our tachyon trail.”

“A bit of a risk popping out this close, wasn’t it?”

“I believe it was an acceptable risk considering the alternative.”

Fyche had risked our destruction to prevent me falling into R’nok’s hands. “Thanks,” I said.

“My pleasure,” he said, and I believed him, because I was pretty certain he wouldn’t lie to me, though his bias against my boys’ truthfulness screamed jealousy.

I gazed adoringly at Laz and Rendido, who were sitting close together watching Fyche’s documentary on R’nok as if they were merely competitive brothers. They asked Fyche dozens of questions about the general’s naval assets, and showed great interest in the specifications of the general’s weapons technology. Then they went quiet and after exchanging suspicious glances they spoke together in hushed tones, but I saw their body language quickly change guarded trust as they seemed to come to a decision.

“Peri,” Rendido said. “We must speak to you. We have an idea.”

Marveling at their sudden accord I sat back. “I’m all earstalks.”

“Though bitter enemies, Laz and I are not foolish enough to carry on fighting when a greater enemy threatens both of us.”

“I understand, go on.”

“We have long feared the eventual discovery of our existence by your people. Few come to Cannis, as you call our galaxy. Those who do, stray traders and explorers, do not stay long. There are few inhabited worlds on the nearside to keep their interest. Besides, three quarters of your galaxy still lies undisturbed. Why cross the void to plunder when you have enough at home?”

He was right. The Milky Way was still mostly unexplored, despite the thousands of years of frenetic exploration and conquest since humans first left old Earth. The added strain on quantum converters to travel all these light years cut into the bottom line of the big cargo ships.

“But we knew eventually someone would come, and we have feared it.”

“I’m sorry to be the one to have caused it,” I said, and meant it.

“We can hardly complain,” Laz said. “We owe our lives to you. But it would have happened eventually. Now is as good a time as any.”

“Still, I feel very guilty.”

In unison Rendido and Laz stretched out their hands and grasped mine. They recoiled at seeing the other do it, but reclaimed my hands immediately.

“I have seen the anguish you have put yourself through, trying to decide the best and safest way to return us to our respective peoples,” Rendido said.

“At first I loved you because you saved my life,” Laz said. “Now I love you for the person you are. No one has showed me so much compassion, except one.”

That could only be Lila, but hadn’t she denounced him?

“I knew I could never repay my debt, but now the opportunity arises.”

Rendido squeezed my hand to claim my attention. “I too have loved you simply because you are a brave warrior who saved me. I owed you a debt of honor that I simply could not repay, until now.”

I looked from one to the other. “You seem to have reached some accord.”

Rendido and Laz exchanged glances. They gave each other a slight nod, perhaps confirming their decision.

“This is what Laz and I have decided.”

“I’m all ears.”

Chapter Twelve

I’ve never been the most patient of people.

As a child I drove my mother to distraction, always wishing to be where we were going as soon as we left our apartment. As a teenager the classroom drove me mad and after I graduated, the world of work was a complete mystery. How anyone can stand the mind-numbing tedium of a normal job beats me. But nothing frustrates me more than waiting. Waiting plays on my nerves as if they were the strings of a kendo sphere, each one being plucked to mark out the slow passage of time signified by a dripping tap.

We’d made three jumps since Laz and Rendido had put their proposition to me. Fyche was his cautious self, giving me the probability of success versus disaster after the passing of each hour. The odds weren’t encouraging, but I’ve never been one to be daunted by probability.

Making the decision that could directly lead to the deaths of not only myself and everyone aboard the Jalapeño, but potentially millions of other unsuspecting people was surprisingly easy to make. Now I understood how the great leaders of history had consigned billions of people to slaughter. You just didn’t think about that bit of the equation. You focus on the immediate demands of the situation, and calamitous consequences can be dealt with later, when and if you survive.

Distilled down to the essential facts, I needed to escape R’nok, and the boys, my darling boys, were willing to do anything to save me from him. “So, let me get this straight,” I’d said to Rendido when he outlined the plan. “You are a high ranking officer in your government?”

“That is correct. I won’t disclose my actual position.” He glanced at Laz. “No offense intended, Laz.”

“I understand,” Laz said. “But I assure you, I am doing this for Peri, not for our respective governments.”

“But will they listen to you?” I asked.

“Assuredly.”

“And Laz, your old flame, Lila. She was married to your Grand Admiral’s son, but even though her husband is dead you believe she’ll convince her father-in-law to help you?”

“She will because, how do I say it… they are very close. Her feelings for me are unchanged. She only denounced me to her tutor because I told her to, to save her the embarrassment of being caught lying with a slave.”

That had sounded flimsy to me, but Fyche confirmed that he believed Laz was now telling the truth and sincerely believed his first lover would come to his aid. His earlier subterfuge was the result of him not wanting to divulge, even with a stranger to his customs, that he had broken all sorts of social taboos to stay in regular contact with his high-born love.

“Let’s do it then,” I’d said, decisive at last.

Laz and Rendido furnished Fyche with coordinates where we would be safe from military intervention and they could send subspace messages. First stop was a location in Rendido’s sphere of influence where he sent a coded message to his High Command. We then went to a space deep inside Laz’s people’s empire and he put in a personal communication to the Admiral’s daughter-in-law. They spoke for several minutes and my glimpse of her alabaster countenance showed her to be an absolute beauty. I could well understand Laz being besotted with her.

Then Fyche took us to another black hole to lay low.

Ten hours was a long time to wait.

It had only been twenty minutes and I was going crazy. We were in my study, gazing out the blister toward a supermassive black hole. The darkness within the event horizon was hidden from us by the bright incandescent halo of the photon sphere where, Fyche explained, captured light, traveling just fast enough to escape the event horizon but not fast enough to continue on its way, remained stuck in orbit.

We had so far eluded R’nok, and Fyche was happy that we should be able to wait as long as we needed in the quantum space-time disruption field provided by the black hole. I hoped he was right.

Usually when I’m bored, my mind drifts off into the world of sexual fantasy, and despite the gravity of the situation, now was no exception. The closeness of my two lovers, who had, during the last few hours, built upon their initial agreement and who were now chatting away incessantly, was playing havoc with my self-control. They were now comparing notes on their respective roles in several military engagements, discovering they had been in the same battle, but had been in different dogfights.

I was glad, to say the least, they hadn’t killed each other before I met them. They were so beautiful together, contrasts in style and tone. Laz with his tanned roughness, his low-born ways, and Rendido, his pure, almost regal demeanor now unfettered and ascendant.

My body warmed as carnal thoughts filtered through my anxiety about what was to come. My first signals of arousal are general warmth, then a sort of emptiness in my belly, then a tingling in my nipples as they harden and then sultry warmth radiating from my pussy. Along with those come the dry mouth and the general agitation that I was experiencing right now.

I became aware of having sore fingertips, from drumming my fingers on the countertop, when I noticed that both Laz and Rendido were gazing at me with adoration in their eyes.

I’d been remembering how each had made love to me, how they had independently found new erogenous zones in my more than willing body. I was wondering how they’d work in concert. The idea of both of them unleashing their erotic knowledge on my body at the same time sent a shiver of hopeful anticipation rushing through me.

My arousal must have been obvious. Perhaps it was the way I squeezed my thighs together in a vain attempt at controlling the boiling desire growing there, or the way my nipples pushed against the gossamer thin material of my wrap, or maybe it was the way I fixed each of them with what I hoped was a “come get me” look.

There was a moment of unspoken communication between them and then they came and got me.

Laz immediately claimed my mouth with a deep, deep kiss, his hands molding themselves around my face as he drew me to my feet. Rendido’s hands were caressing my thighs, his fingers inexorably moving upwards to the warm juncture. I parted my legs, wanting him to explore between but he slid his hands higher to my hips and then across my belly.

I swooned against Laz as his tongue and mine wrestled in desperation inside my mouth. Rendido’s fingers traced the line of my hipbone then down to my belly button and then back down to the hood of my clit. His fingers circled my aching nub, teasing me, making me squeeze my thighs together in anticipation.

Laz’s hands cupped my breasts and his fingers caressed my hard nipples, making them burn. At last Rendido peeled open my wet pussy lips and traced the inner flesh with his fingertip before delving deeper.

I groaned into Laz’s mouth as Rendido brought his lips to my sex and his tongue stroked my pussy while his fingers delved inside. I so wanted to take out a cock and stroke it, but with four hands and two tongues working me over, it was all I could do to remain standing.

The sensual energy that had been building up during the last few tense hours found its release and in a wild frenzy I wrestled Laz out of his tunic and raked my fingers down his back.

I fought to remain standing as Rendido’s tonguing of my clit and the action of his fingers working inside my pussy made my flesh quiver, and when he introduced his little finger to the tight flesh of my asshole I cried out with the first of my orgasms. I lost all sense of where I was or what was happening and one glorious sensation blurred into the next.

The next thing I became aware of was the two boys laying me gently to the floor; the swollen head of Laz’s lon was in my mouth and Rendido’s cock nudged apart my pussy lips before sliding home.

Another powerful orgasm rocked me as he thrust into me, his balls making a wet slapping sound against my ass as he drove deep. Meanwhile I sucked hungrily at Laz’s engorged cock. I love the sense of having the cocks of two lusty men at the same time, yet I craved the ultimate, I wanted them in my pussy and ass.

I came again and I withdrew Laz’s cock from my mouth lest I bite his shaft.

“Fuck me,” I cried after the spasms had subsided. “Both of you fuck me!”

Laz needed no prompting. He sank onto the floor beside me, and Rendido, seeing how it was to be, withdrew his glistening cock from my pussy and helped Laz roll me over so that I lay on top of my suntanned warrior.

I gathered myself up and fed Laz’s cock into my pussy where Rendido had been but a moment before. Laz’s thick cock spread my pussy wide as I sank down onto it. I kissed him full on the mouth and raised my cunt up and down on his shaft. Behind me Rendido gripped my hips and held me still as his cock sought out my asshole like a homing torpedo.

He spat into my tight asshole and the head of his cock pushed through my tight sphincter, spearing into me like a quantum warhead and setting off a chain reaction of sharp, biting sensations. The hot, tight walls of my ass gripped him as he fed the remaining length of his shaft into me and he moaned in appreciation.

Oh, how good that felt.

My two warriors lashed me in concert, quickly achieving a natural rhythm as if they’d been fucking together like this for years. I, too, quickly fell into the rhythm, meeting Rendido’s thrusts with my own which impaled me deeper onto Laz’s swelling cock. We were slick with sweat and slid together in a frictionless frenzy of lust.

A sudden mind-numbing orgasm took my breath away and I groaned into Laz’s neck. Above me Rendido thrust into my ass and nibbled my earlobe, his hot breath burning my neck.

I came again.

My sex and ass conspired to milk their cocks, my pussy clenching around Laz’s shaft, and the tensing of my sphincter did the same to Rendido. They kept thrusting stolidly until suddenly, both men’s bodies tensed and their cocks began contracting, the mighty pulses shooting jets of searing hot come into me.

Another orgasm ripped through me. I collapsed onto Laz, and Rendido fell onto my back. Warmly cocooned between my two lovers, their cocks embedded in my flesh, I listened to our synchronized breathing. The combined heat of our bodies put me into a satiated stupor and I lost track of time. Sometime, much later, I was mightily annoyed when Fyche disturbed this idyllic state with a terse announcement.

“It’s time.”

Chapter Thirteen

Rendido read the coded subspace signal from his High Command. “All is in readiness. They have given me permission to proceed.”

I glanced at Laz. “It’s up to your Admiral now,” I said.

“They will agree. They’d be foolish not to.”

“Here’s another signal,” Fyche said.

It was from Laz’s old flame, the Admiral’s daughter-in-law. “My father commands that you come to our Hall when this forthcoming engagement is concluded.”

She was a beauty, no doubt about it, but her tone was arrogant, commanding and lacked any semblance of warmth. Laz replied with a curt “I obey.”

Hardly brimming with love but from Laz’s reaction when the signal faded it was enough. A flutter of disappointment filled my breast. I somehow hoped that our beautiful ménage could continue once all this was over, but now, seeing the joy in his face, I felt like a second pivot on a seesaw, totally ruining the concept.

We buckled ourselves in and, holding each other’s hands for luck, I commanded Fyche to take us away from our safe haven around the black hole.

First he took us to a point in empty intergalactic space where I sent a prerecorded article to the Galactic Tourist. It wasn’t because I’m so professional that I couldn’t let a deadline pass; it was to let R’nok know where I was.

As expected, one of his scout ships dropped out of space to check us out and before it could launch an EM torpedo Fyche immediately punched us into quantum space. He purposely left a tachyon trail, simulating a converter malfunction, so the general and his fleet could follow us easily and without suspicion.

This time we dropped into empty space inside the Cannis galaxy and broadcast a fake SOS, claiming to be totally disabled.

And there we waited, silent and seemingly adrift.

As a precaution, Fyche had backed up his entire memory core in a shielded matrix, so that if R’nok hit us with an EM torpedo, at least Fyche wouldn’t die, though he would cease to be, as it were. To all intents he would be dead until I “resurrected” him. It wasn’t foolproof. EM torpedoes pack a punch even a shielded matrix might not withstand. With tears pricking my eyes I promised him I would reboot him after it was all over.

“I was thinking,” Fyche said, no doubt taking advantage of my emotional state. “There’s a new synthetic body on the market. Perfect neural feedback loops and overlapping perceptual/cognitive neural nets.”

“What are they for?”

“They allow an android to feel like a human.”

“What do you want one of them for?” I chided.

“I can’t imagine,” he said wryly. “I thought it might be fun for you.”

“Oh, it’s for me, is it? Then in that case, why not?”

The EM blast came out of nowhere. They must have launched the torpedo from subspace, homing in on a micro-homing device sent in moments before it. The cockpit went dead, Fyche’s shout of warning cruelly truncated.

Then, in the blackness surrounding us, the Etile fleet, with R’nok’s flagship at the point, materialized.

“Here goes,” I said to no one in particular.

In days of old, to lure a tiger or other such carnivore out of the jungle, a goat was staked out in the middle of a clearing and the hunter, gun or net in hand, would lay in wait. I now knew what those goats felt when staring into the eyes of the slavering beast, wondering why the hunter was taking so long.

I glanced nervously at Rendido. “Well, where are they?”

“Shortly,” he said. “They are sizing up the opposition before striking.”

“One has to independently target each battleship with enough EM torpedoes to ensure they are disabled,” Laz added.

“No one said this before. I thought your boys would rush in and knock them over in no time.”

“We face a great battle fleet,” Rendido said patiently. “This will be the first and last battle in the war between our two galaxies. We cannot afford to make a mistake.”

“To lose today will mean our complete destruction,” Laz added, stroking my cheek reassuringly.

His touch did nothing to placate my anxiety. I had a vision of Rendido’s High Command and Laz’s Admiral debating whether or not to retreat. That R’nok’s forces were too strong and that it was better to run and fight another day while we were left here chewing our knuckles.

A shuttle detached itself from the flagship and sped toward us.

“That will be R’nok,” I said resignedly. “Come to take me back to his harem.”

“We must do nothing to rouse his suspicions,” Rendido cautioned me.

Without Fyche to guide me I suddenly felt very alone, and I promised that if I got out of this I’d seriously consider getting him that synthetic body.

The Jalapeño gave a jolt as the shuttle docked. There was much clanking as R’nok’s men manually opened the outer hatch. I heard the inner hatch slide open and the sound of steel-booted steps in the corridor. We placed our hands upon our heads in surrender and faced the door.

I was not surprised to see R’nok standing between two armed Etile marines, his enormous codpiece gleaming. His ego guaranteed he would be here at the moment of my humiliating capture, and he was enjoying every moment. “I have you now,” he gloated.

“How’s the head?” I asked. I couldn’t help it.

He shot me a baleful glare. “I will punish you for that, as is my right as your master,” he said between clenched teeth.

So apparently he’d decided not to dismember me. “I am a citizen of Anjourina. You cannot imprison me.”

“When you landed on Et you signed a document to gain your entry permit. Did you not?”

He had me there. “What of it?”

“You really should read things before you sign them,” he said. “The document is your agreement to abide by all local laws and customs.”

I could imagine Fyche, if he heard that from his place in purgatory, saying “I told you so.”

“So,” R’nok continued. “I can do whatever I want with you.”

“What of my friends?” I said. “They joined my ship after I left Et.”

“I care not for them,” R’nok said. “After they prove their innocence of involvement in your illegally leaving Etile-controlled space, they will be free to go.”

“Is that one of your customs?” I scoffed. “The guiltless must prove their innocence, rather than you proving their guilt?”

R’nok shrugged. “Such customs and laws, who knows where they come from, eh?”

“Your pernicious mind, I bet.”

His face hardened. “Enough. I’m eager to get you to my harem to teach you Et manners.”

“You take a harem around with you in your flagship, I suppose.”

“Of course.”

I needed to buy some time while the Cannis military made up their minds to fight. But I was all out of smart talk. So I had to think dirty.

“Can I get some of my favorite clothes?” I asked meekly.

R’nok guffawed. “Of course. I’m not a barbarian.”

I let that one slide. “I don’t know what’s appropriate. You’d better help me choose,” I said. “The closet is in my bedroom.”

That revelation had the desired effect. A gleam filled his green-tinted eyes, and with a grandiose sweep of the arm, he ushered me past his heavily armed marines. I gave Laz and Rendido a final and forlorn glance and left the bridge.

R’nok laid a meaty hand on my shoulder. “No tricks,” he growled into my ear.

“You’ve got me cold,” I said. “What could I possibly do now?”

“I’m glad you’ve accepted your fate.”

“I’m not an idiot,” I said. “I daresay, once I get used to it, life in your harem could be pretty agreeable.”

“For my favorites, it can be.”

I shuddered to think what he did to those who displeased him, the ones who may have, perhaps, in the past, and in a moment of panic, hit him on the head with his own codpiece.

My cabin was a bit untidy. Clothes were scattered on the floor and the sheets were tussled, evidence of my recent activities.

“I’ve had a lot of fun in this bed,” I said mischievously, opening the drawer of the bedside table and rummaging around for some jewelry and assorted accessories.

“I’m not interested in your previous sexual experiences.”

“Think I could have it carted over to your flagship?”

“I don’t think so,” he said derisively.

“A shame. Oh well, but I would like to make a good entrance on your ship,” I said, opening the closet. “What do you think of this one?”

I pulled out a diaphanous evening gown. “This is a silk web design from the Spider House on Gaskolin IX. It’s similar to the one I wore to the embassy ball when we first met.”

I slipped out of my flight suit, and R’nok nodded approvingly when I held the gown up against my body. I angled myself so the light allowed him to see me naked beneath.

I glanced to the bed again. “A shame to leave it without one last…”

“I have a fleet waiting,” he interrupted me, though his tone was uncertain.

“Well, I’m naked, there’s a bed and you know where all my orifices are.”

I could see I’d hung him on the eyestalks of a dilemma. To rejoin his fleet and leave this sphere of unknown space or spend ten minutes fucking me. I stepped backwards until my calves hit the edge of the bed and I toppled over.

I smiled lasciviously at him through my raised knees. “Well?”

He gave my exposed slit a single glance and was out of his kilt in a flash. The codpiece he safely put out of reach, hanging it on the closet door. He was not silly. His twin cocks were rampant, pulsing impatiently with his heartbeat, and drops of pre-come glistened on the heads.

I know this is perverse of me, but I was very, very wet, and I smeared my juices over my asshole to provide adequate lubrication. As they say on Regolas, I might as well be dismembered for purloining a golden Gritto as for stealing its chrysalis. I was already bound to R’nok, another filling of the orifices wasn’t going to make things any worse.

He climbed between my open thighs without further hesitation. Both cock heads found my waiting orifices and he thrust into me with sudden ferocity. Though I was aroused I was nowhere near reaching an orgasm. Though fear may have lent to my initial arousal, it did nothing for my achievement of climax. R’nok was not so inhibited. He grunted and gave a long low groan and came. He was about to dismount when I clutched him to me.

“Don’t stop,” I said. “I haven’t come yet.”

“So?”

“You utter bastard!”

“In time you will grow to adore me,” he said smugly.

There was a muffled shout from the bridge. At last! Something was happening!

R’nok stiffened and disengaged my arms from around his chest. As he struggled with me I deftly snapped on the velvet-lined sonic manacles I’d cunningly left within easy reach.

R’nok roared in anger as I rolled away from under his flailing bulk.

I grabbed his codpiece and before he saw it coming I hit him across the temple. You notice that I’m using the active voice here. This time, my assault on the general was entirely deliberate.

I met Laz in the companionway. He was carrying a pulse rifle and much relieved to see me alive and unharmed, though intrigued by my nakedness. I explained the general was inconvenienced at the moment and he told me that he and Rendido had likewise secured the marines. He gave me a quick kiss and led me back to the bridge.

The view from out the windows was astounding. Hundreds of ships similar to the ones flown by Laz and Rendido buzzed around the Etile fleet which, from the lack of lights, appeared to be completely disabled. The occasional flash signified the launching of another EM torpedo and the lack of general destruction told me the ambush had been a complete success.

Rendido and Laz cheered and showered me with kisses and, with my encouragement, gave each other a hug to seal their newfound relationship.

We were still disabled ourselves and had a few hours before we could arrange a pickup and tow back to a civilized planet, so the three of us filled in the time the best way we knew how.

Epilogue

Witnessing the birth of a new alliance, charged with the responsibility of defending a whole galaxy, was not only mind blowing but humbling as well, given the preeminence both sides gave to my role in its delivery. That was a PR thing, I knew, neither side wanting to praise the other side too much as old animosities take a while to die. I was the lucky girl in the middle of the sandwich and received most of the kudos, though Laz and Rendido got their fair share.

There was a great ceremony and I even received a medal. Standing beside Rendido and Laz in front of an immense crowd was daunting, and when we held each other’s hands up in triumph the cheers from the assembled multitude made me go all misty.

The inauguration of the Cannis Confederacy ushered in a new era in social, political and economic reform that would, I hoped, transform Cannis civilization into a more peaceful and empathetic society.

Laz had been welcomed by his people, Lila included, as a conquering hero. With the death of her husband a year earlier, the widow was now free to choose her own husband, and who better than the hero of their people? She was a haughty little bitch, in my opinion, but Laz seemed happy enough. I was pleased for him, I really was, even though I was losing a lover of magnificent skill.

Rendido was already a hero to his people and his part in the defeat of General R’nok made his election as the first Co-Consul of the new Confederacy inevitable. He freed his lifelong love Sri, and she became his consort. To be called wife was just too big a step. His society was not yet liberal enough to recognize a marriage to a clone but this was the next best thing. Things would change, in time.

Sogulum IV was, as they say, not built in a day.

I said goodbye to him at a state reception during one of the few moments he had to spare from his official duties. Being observed by courtiers and news cameras, he could only give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek while he reaffirmed his debt to me, which he said could never be repaid. Sri, a doe-eyed beauty, thanked me too, holding my hand tight and explaining she was pregnant once again to Rendido, and that she could never repay me for returning the father of her children to her.

“We will meet again,” Rendido said forcefully, gripping my hand tightly. “Believe me.”

Laz’s farewell was no less public. Being betrothed to such a highborn woman such as Lila left him little room for intimacy with me, no matter how much esteem the populace held me in. Months later, when all the hullabaloo had died down, it was time for me to leave. I was at the spaceport terminal, sorting out my flight plan when he found me and, noting the dozens of inquisitive eyes, ushered me into a deserted customs office.

“I have only a few moments,” he said and took me into his arms and claimed my lips.

The ferocity of his kiss left me breathless and I allowed myself to dissolve into his warm embrace. I squeezed him tight, not wanting to let him go. Unaccountably, my eyes stung and he brushed something cold from my cheek. “I understand your warrior ways,” he whispered. “That you must be free and travel the stars alone.”

“I must,” I agreed, for the first time in my life doubting my chosen lifestyle.

“I have to go now,” he said, releasing me. “I am to be shown my new job in the government.”

“What is it?” I asked, trying to keep myself under control.

He shrugged. “I know not. Something suitable Lila and the Admiral have arranged.”

An aide, breathless and red-faced, blundered into the office and respectfully requested Laz’s attendance on her ladyship, who was waiting for him in the air-car.

Laz rolled his eyes and, grasping my hands tightly in his, stared deeply into my eyes. The silence was pregnant with possibility and he appeared to be on the verge of saying something profound. Instead, he kissed my hand and rushed from the room, leaving me completely bereft.

No experience in my life had ever prepared me for the void that expanded in my chest and threatened, like the black hole that had once given us shelter, to suck me into oblivion. Eventually I left that empty office and returned to my only home, the Jalapeño, and to Fyche, my only friend.

We left Cannis and I had Fyche drop us into clear space between the galaxies. I curled up in my couch and gazed at both for a long time trying to figure out where my adventure had led me.

After R’nok’s humiliating defeat -- by a mere female yet -- his overthrow was a foregone conclusion and he had slunk back home with his two cocks firmly wedged between his legs. I doubted he’d ever again be allowed out of the palace. So I was certain he wouldn’t be able to pester me in the foreseeable future. Not wishing to court disaster though, I resolved never ever to return to Et.

The account of my adventures, The Rise of the Cannis Confederacy and My Part In It, by Peri Barberossa, has already been optioned by a major publishing house and will be available at a reputable book site near you. The holo-vid will be out soon after with Jessica Lamblasta playing yours truly.

So, all was not lost despite the ringing emptiness in my chest. The Galactic Tourist still needed my articles, and there were a great many cultures and bedchambers to explore. As soon as I rebooted Fyche he reminded me of my promise to let him try out one of those ultra-synthetic android bodies that had just hit the market. He quite astutely argued that his intimate knowledge of my body would make him an excellent lover with the staying power of a machine.

Fyche is a dear companion. I missed him deeply after the EM attack, and I cried with joy when I heard his familiar voice. But the question was did I want him walking beside me as well as watching over me? Would he cramp my style with his constant nagging or will he add something to my adventures, like an extra cock?

Once again I was hoisted on one of those eyestalks of a dilemma, be it Hobson’s Choice or Morton’s Fork, it doesn’t matter. The decision was going to be tough, and there’s certain to be a catch.

Fyche could see me weakening and his cajoling had become quite insistent. “I’ll be a kind of sex slave,” he was saying, “ready, willing and able to satisfy your every desire whenever you wanted me. And remember, I know every one of your unique erogenous zones.”

A compelling argument indeed.

Not five minutes after speaking those words Fyche advised me that a battle cruiser under the new Cannis Confederacy flag had materialized alongside. An unidentified guest requested permission to come aboard.

As the mystery guest’s shuttle docked with the Jalapeño, Fyche asked me if I’d correctly declared the cute jade-like gemstone that nestled in my cleavage to their customs people and had I paid the export tax before I left? I rolled my eyes and said I had, of course, while wondering if I had indeed made another blunder due to a cultural misunderstanding.

The airlock door slid aside and my heart gave a jump. It was Laz and I went all misty again. I was surprised at how good it felt that he had come to see me off. He carried a suitcase with him, which was curious, to say the least.

“I’ve been appointed military attaché to our new embassy in the Milky Way,” he announced after giving me one of his trademark deep kisses.

“I’m very happy for you,” I said, recovering from the lift to my libido his arrival had given me. “Won’t Lila be disappointed?”

He shrugged and gave me a wry grin. “She decided my boorish ways weren’t as endearing as she remembered from our childhood.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m not. You know, when you and I said goodbye I had a bad feeling, that it wasn’t what I wanted.”

“Me either,” I heard myself mutter.

He hefted the suitcase for me to see, in case I’d missed it. “I need a lift to the Milky Way,” he said, his face breaking into a mischievous grin. “Going my way?”

I was speechless for half a minute, which, as Fyche can attest, is a lifetime in the Peri universe.

“And I need someone to introduce me to the vagaries of your civilization.”

“I think I can do that,” I mumbled huskily, barely able to hear my voice over the pounding of my heart.

“I knew it,” I heard Fyche say, no doubt realizing the chances for getting a new android body any time soon had dropped to zero. “There’s always a catch, isn’t there?”

Mikala Ash

Mikala Ash says, “I love science fiction and sex, paranormal and sex, adventure and sex, romance and sex, and oh, did I mention sex? It’s the most powerful motivator of them all and it certainly drives my characters.” From her beachside retreat Mikala lives in the future and the dark side of human nature, fertile ground for studying the great motivator.