Chapter 5

In the dark history of the galaxy, there had been a great war. Suns had been used as weapons, while the younger races had been grabbed and thrown into the crucible of battle by the Great Ones and the Veil Keepers alike. Among them had been the Huntresses. Great legends of that time remained, even now into the modern era. Legends of Lin’zet and the spear of eternity, lancing down one of the Veil Keeper’s great ships from the surface of the Moon of Rexor. Legends of H’nor Qezlot and her great warhammer of computronium, granted to him by the Great Ones. She had shattered chains of the ringworlds and sent a dozen of the Vree plunging into the darkness of space.

X’Chur tried to remember those legends and feel no fear.

It was hard, though.

She wasn’t some great warrior. She wasn’t even a particularly skilled special forces operative, or galaxy traveling adventurer. She was a science fiction novelist, and currently, a very angry looking human was glaring at her while holding a gun.

“Can someone tell me why, instead of a decorated combat officer who has already saved the Earth once, I have instead found a tourist and a goddamn Miami fisherman,” the less angry looking human asked, kneeling down as he looked at Xee, then at Skylar. Skylar – still dazed and injured by the bombs the mercs had dropped on them – groaned. He sounded like he was trying to speak, but something had broken inside of him when he was dragged roughly onto the USAF needlejet.

“What’s wrong with him?” the less angry human asked.

“We were bombed,” Xee said.

“Ah shit – being on dry land is putting pressure on some pulped lung tissue,” the angry looking human with the gun looked at the less angry human. His face was now contrite – at least, that was what Xee’s suit computer said.

“Get him into the med station then,” the less angry human said.

Skylar was picked up gingerly by the other humans, and the less angry human gave Xee a name, and title. That was nice of him.

“Major Moon Two,” he said, his hands resting on his knees as he knelt down and looked into Xee’s faceplate. “What is going on.”

Xee gulped. Her facial emoticon – the only thing that humans could see on her faceplate – shifted to a neutral :|, since it was amazingly hard to depict nervousness using nothing but semi-colons and parenthesis. She found her voice a moment later. “We were on a hunt for the Titanic 2.”

Moon Two nodded.

“Well, they were,” Xee said. “Dey ran into me at Guyana. I was on vacation.”

“You were on vacation in Guyana?” Moon Two’s impassive face showed a slight sign of shock.

“It was inexpensive!” Xee said, her voice defensive. “I didn’t know that Earth had so much cultural variation. I read that the United States and Russia and China were safe, so I just kind of assumed that Guyana would be like that. But. You know.” She coughed. “Cheaper. It’s hard to go on vacation when you’re only supported by a SubSpot!”

“ ... SubSpot?”

“I’m an author,” Xee said. “I write science fiction.”

Moon shook his head. “Okay. How did a science fiction author get caught up in this?”

“Well, um, my suit seemed to be of interest for some local mercenaries,” Xee said, rubbing her hand along her shoulder. She felt a faint shift in the momentum of the needlejet. They were underway. She wondered where they were going. She hoped they were heading after Dey. Those bastards had captured her – she didn’t know how, considering how deadly the woman seemed to be. But she was sure that these humans would be able to deal with them.

“It is fantastically advanced in some ways,” Moon Two said, quietly. “How cold does it keep you?”

“By your measurements, my body temperature is negative two hundred and fifty degrees,” she said, nodding. “Celsius!”

Moon nodded. “So, you ran into Captain Gallagher while these mercenaries hunted you. She adopted you because Gallagher hasn’t run into a civilian without dragging them into a top secret mission yet.” He sighed. “Then you were captured again. How?”

“Well, somehow,” Xee said. “The bad guys were able to track radio waves. My heat radiators dump the radiation into radar via some doppler shifting-”

Moon’s eyes widened. He turned around and screamed. “Evasive-”

And then the world exploded. The side of the needle jet tore off with a screech of metal and air ripped at Moon and Xee. Moon was yanked off his feet, but something shot from his palm and hit the wall. He braced his feet against a jagged spar of metal as yawning blackness howled below Xee’s feet. She grabbed onto a chair with her arms, her legs lifting up. The whole world seemed to be spinning. One of the other humans went screaming past, cartwheeling towards the hole. Somehow, their course through the air bent and they slammed into Moon, who caught them and shoved them against the floor, which was now more like a wall – the spinning and howling, screaming air currents made the hole the new floor.

Skylar was gurgling something.

“We’re going down!”

The vehicle hit water. The sudden end of the spinning sent Xee flying out of the hole. She flew out and smashed face first into water. Her head bounced back against her helmet and she blacked out for a few moments. When she came too, she was sinking – fast. She writhed around, kicking and looking around. Her head pounded, but a rush of drugs filled her system as the suit’s auto doctor kicked on. Her eyes focused and she looked up.

Hissing, bubbling wreckage sank past her. It was the angular hull of part of the needlejet. She saw a nasty looking missile pod, still attached to the wing, the rockets within unfired. She kicked her legs, remembering how Dey had moved through the undercity of Georgetown. She started to float upwards through the water. Her head broke the surface and she snapped it around – ignoring the faint dizziness that the drugs didn’t manage to keep at bay.

“Major!” she shouted. “Sky!? Angry humans!”

Then she saw the boat approaching.

Xee breathed out a sigh of relief, her facial emoticon shifting. ^_^

She was saved!

The boat turned to the side and the door opened and she saw Kuz the Shockpod. He was holding a smoking gun that looked like it used magnetic rails to accelerate projectiles at incredible speeds. An aiming monocle connected his eye to the camera mounted on the back of the rifle, a fiber thin wire drawn between the two of them. He looked grim and unsmiling, a completely different Kuz from the last time she had seen him.

“Hi Kuz!” she said. “We have to rescue the others, they might have-”

He aimed the railgun at her. Behind him a massively obese alien that Xee’s suit computer identified as a Yahaag stepped into view. The Yahaag gave Kuz an order in his language.

“Throw her in the cell with the other one. We might as well double the profits.”

Dey looked up at the door to the cell opening. A figure was dumped into the cell and the door slammed shut before Dey could even move. She didn’t even bother to stand, watching as the form writhed on the floor, trying to get their arms and legs under them.

Xee groaned as she pushed herself up. The Huntress looked like a cat after a hurricane – her body hugging environmental suit dripped with water, some of it hissing and bubbling off her spined radiators. Her facial emoticon was fury incarnate. Well, as furious as a D:< could look.

“That kin-betraying black hole!” she spat.

“Kuz?” Dey asked, sighing quietly. “It’s not his fault, Xee. How’d you survive?”

“Not his fault!?” Xee flung out her arms. “He shot down a-”

Dey held up her hand. [Loki, connect me to her suit, ] she said. A moment later, a click sounded in her head and Loki squeezed her shoulder. Dey closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the gently rocking wall. The boat was underway once more, and she was pretty sure that the last chance she had for escape had gone down in a hail of railgun slugs. At the very least, Kuz was a good goddamn shot.

“Can you hear me?” Dey said – her voice simulated in her ear, her mouth not moving.

“I can,” Xee said. Then, growling. “Kuz shot down our ship! There was a Major on it, Moon Two?”

“Ah shit,” Dey said, pounding her fist into her knee. “If Moon Two was coming to grab me, there was a break in the case he warned me about. Fuck.”

“Well, he didn’t have much time beyond asking me some questions,” Xee said, her voice soft. “He was in the ship when it went down – I got flung out.” She sighed. “I don’t know if he’s okay.”

“He has Anubis,” Dey said. “That’s his AI. He’ll keep him safe. What about Skylar?”

“He was hurt pretty bad before the crash,” Xee said, her voice hollow. “I...” she shook her head, her emoticon becoming ;_;. “I didn’t know adventures would be this scary.”

“Heyyyy,” Dey shifted forward. She slid her arm around Xee’s shoulder, drawing the Huntress into a hug. Xee was shockingly human feeling, for someone who evolved on a planet whose only ocean had been made of Helium-III. Her suit felt the same temperature as Dey’s skin, and it was soft and plaint as Dey stroked her back, careful to avoid the spines of her radiators. Xee sniffled quietly – the sound remarkably human. Dey wondered, though. Was that a trick of her vocal translator, turning the sound of a Huntress’ grief into a human sniffle?

Then she put it out of her mind. She pushed Xee backwards and grinned at her.

“Don’t worry,” Dey said. “I got a plan.”

“You do?” Xee gasped, then sat up, her emoticon shifting. ^_^

“Yeah,” Dey said. “Kuz is-”

“A traitor!”

“No,” Dey said. “The Shockpods were made by the Yahaag. He’s basically got God telling him to do his bidding.”

“So?” Xee asked, cocking her head, her emoticon quizzical. :

“So, I told him to research some human historical documents,” Dey said, grinning as she leaned backwards. “Specifically the exploits of one Colonel O’Neill.”

Xee was silent.

“Should I know him?”

“I’d have been shocked, Huntress. I’d have been shocked.”

Kuz stood in the doorway leading to the nerve center of the ship – to the nerve center of these villain’s operation. He listened to what Paul, the human, said with only one ear. The rest of his body, from his brain to his toes to his tail, screamed a single thing.

MATE.

There was a Shockpod female on the ship. He could scent it in the air, the Yahaag had made sure of that. Every time Kuz’s mind turned to breaking his wife from prison, to ripping Paul’s spine from his fleshy human back, and then strangling the Yahaag to death with it ... every organ screamed at once.

MATE.

It was a need as intense as breathing. Not merely to have sex and feel pleasure, but to know that a child was growing. The Gods had said that only the most precious, the most special of the Shockpods would ever have children. And now that the tribes were freed from the Yahaag Corporatocracy, the number of children grew but slowly. And Shockpods died in combat more often than he liked to think. He shook his great head slowly.

“We’ve scooped up the transie and a Huntress,” Paul said. “Gunny, I think that’s the people who were heading for the base taken care of, save for some of the other treasure hunters. But if we can’t handle some Miami civilians, what the fuck are we doing?”

Gunny – the other man on the line – laughed.

“How’s the orbital surveillance?”

“They’ve got replacements for all the Q-keys lined up, but they’re still too pissant to launch,” Paul said. He picked up a small sphere of plastic from his counter and started to toss it between his palms. “We’ll be there before the sun’s up. And then the fireworks start, Gunny.”

“That they do. Make sure to handle the transie’s little demon before you drop anchor.”

“I will,” Paul said. He tapped the computer.

Kuz shook his head again. Dey had asked him to do one thing. It would not be something that would prevent him from mating. The idea of getting a mate and doing something that Dey asked him to do filled Kuz with a deep pleasure. He nodded and stepped forward.

“Paul,” he said.

“Yes?” Paul turned to face him. “I didn’t know you Shockpods could use names.”

Kuz snorted. “It is hard to differentiate between enemies if you cannot name them. Not that you are an enemy, Paul. I was given orders to not rip your spine from your back and strangle you to death with it.”

Paul looked amused. “Good to know. How can I help you, big guy?”

“I wish to peruse the internet,” Kuz said. “Do you have a laptop I can borrow?”

“Sure, but it’s keylogged,” Paul said, holding it out. “If you try and send any messages that I don’t like? Zzzt.” He made a gesture across his throat. “Your woman gets it.”

Kuz felt his blood boil with rage. For a moment, he didn’t know what he was more furious about – the idea of a Shockpod woman being hurt or damaged. Or the idea that this pathetic weakling would hurt Dey now that she had been disarmed and defanged. Something he felt must have shown on his face as Paul held up his other hand in a calming gesture, waggling his laptop with the other.

“Whoa, just telling you. Don’t get cute.”

“I have it on good authority,” Kuz said, grabbing the laptop. “I am always cute.”

He found a cabin and crunched himself down to fit inside. Then he tapped it on. Dey had told him to search for the air force exploits of Richard Dean Anderson. He tapped in the words: Airforce, Richard, Dean and Anderson into the first search engine that came up on the laptop’s internet service. The search came up with a great deal of results, most of them historical. His brow furrowed and he clicked around. Confusion mounted.

Richard Dean Anderson had never been in the air force.

Was Dey mistaken?

He clicked onto the great encyclopedia that humans had collected. He read.

“Stargate?” he asked.

A shadow fell across the door leading into the corridor. Kuz looked upwards.

“What are you doing?” the Yahaag asked him. Kuz sprang to his feet, filling the chamber with his bulk. His head almost slammed into the ceiling as he tried to look as attentive as possible, not wanting to give the Yahaag any reason to deny him what he would promise.

“I am researching human history, to better understand them,” Kuz said.

The Yahaag chuckled. The sound was like boulders grinding together – and from all Kuz knew about Yahaag physiology, there could have been boulders there. He was sure if there were boulders there, there was a good reason for it. Yahaag had been perfect beings since they had evolved. If they weren’t perfect, how could they have created Shockpods? So the text of the Corporatocracy said, so it was true. The Yahaag thrust out a single jiggling arm at Kuz.

“Report to me everything you learn.”

“Yes,” Kuz said.

The Yahaag turned and walked off.

Kuz frowned.

In battle, sometimes, one had to approach something from an oblique angle. And so, rather than continue to comb through the Air Force’s records – those that were public at least – he would investigate this Stargate. Soon, he found the first video file. He clicked it on and had to wait through an insipid advertisement for a film called At the Bottom of A Well. Even while it was being pitched to him as something entertaining, the plot was clearly paper thin and the characters poorly sketched. There wasn’t even the promise of thrilling combat to arouse his interest.

Then, finally, the ad finished.

At first, Kuz was confused.

But then, he was amazed.

And then, deep in his heart...

He felt a bloom of hope.

“I, ah, don’t mean to complain, but, um ... my ... back hurts,” Xee groaned.

Dey smiled. The young Huntress had been obviously in pain since the adrenaline faded and the drugs were flushed from her system. She had been wondering when she’d complain. Xee had lasted thirty minutes. It was actually kind of cute how hard Xee was trying to seem tough and grizzled. Dey rolled her shoulders.

“Can you beam your medical info over to Loki?” she asked.

“W-What!?” Xee spun to look at her, her facial emoticon flashing up. >///>

“Hey, you can have your suit computer edit it so that it’s just surface level physiognomy stuff,” Dey said, holding up her palms. “I don’t want to start making bioweapons or anything.”

Xee chuckled, then gasped – her back twitching with a clear twinge. “Okay. Sending.”

Muauahahahahahha! Loki cackled.

Dey smiled. [Yesss?]

Oh, just, I know what her skin color is now. The back seems to be a tension injury. Their medi-drugs have to be good, considering she skipped off the water like a stone thrown at a lake. But a backrub should clear it up.

[A backrub?] Dey asked.

“D-Dey, why are you waggling your eyebrows?” Xee asked, sounding distinctly nervous.

Dey shook her head. “Nothing. Lay down on your belly.”

Xee nodded and laid herself out. Laying like this, her spines thrust into the air – each one shimmering slightly. But looking past those, Dey could admire the smooth curve of her spine, rising up to the perfect, heart shaped mound of her rear. Dey’s mouth almost started to water. She put her palms on Xee’s back, tiny hapatic flashes from Loki guiding her palms and her fingers. She squeezed Xee through the suit, rubbing her thumbs in slow circles. The motions made the suit twitch and the small points of those radiators draw circles in the air. Xee groaned low in her throat, her face plate turning to the side.

“Oh goddess that feels good,” she whispered.

“Thanks,” Dey said. Her mind drifted back to her few experiences with another girl. In the 22nd century, it was hard to find someone who wasn’t bisexual. So much so that some pundits and such thought that bisexuals had been some recent development, a creation of a more secular society, or moral decay, or a new flowering of human intelligence, or whatever such bullshit that they thought would get clicks.

Dey had a much better theory.

Changes in diet and increased knowledge about human nutrition had banished the obesity epidemic of the 20th and 21st century. That, combined with the internet, meant everyone saw hot people both on the tubes and in real life all the time.

Why wouldn’t you be bisexual then?

Still, Dey herself had only had a few brushes with drunken fumbling when her ship was in port, and one time on Ceres while in the airforce academy. Right now though, she was having a hard time remembering what was so appealing about men as her palms slipped down along Xee’s spines, making the radiators lay cool and flat. Thanks to the doppler shifters that made them emit radar waves rather than thermal radiation, they were cool to the touch. Dey shivered all over as Xee made a sound like a purring cat.

“D-Dey!” she gasped. Dey’s hands were right above the curve of her ass.

“Yes?” Dey murmured.

“K...” Xee turned her head forward. “Keep going.”

Dey slipped her hands down, her whole body buzzing with excitement. The danger of the situation tightened her nipples – and the soft, eager, almost innocent moans of Xee made the pirates seem to be a million miles away. The fact Loki was cupping and squeezing her breasts with slow, easy hand motions only accentuated the eagerness. Dey leaned forward and laid her cheek against the purple smart fabric of Xee’s suit covered behind. She nuzzled Xee and breathed in – and smelled something that made her smile.

“You wet?”

“U-Uh, I was in the ocean,” Xee mumbled into her arms.

Dey grinned and then shifted her face down. Xee’s thighs spread and Dey’s nose bumped against where her sex would be. She didn’t know how Huntresses fucked. But it seemed they, like humans, need copious amounts of lubrication, and their women showed their desire in the same way as humans. She slid two fingers up, pressing them against the smart fabric. Something in Xee’s suit knew what Xee wanted before the alien did: The fabric drew taut enough against her sex that Dey could see it. There were a soft pair of pussy lips. But there seemed to be two nubs, thrusting out above and below her pussy.

Dey grinned. She made the devil horns.

Xee jerked her head up, her whole spine bending into a U shape, her radiators flaring out.

“Deeeyyyyyyyyyy!” she squealed.

“Well, it looks like your back feels better,” Dey purred. “Does this feel good.”

“Nnhuahh!” Xee laid her body flat, writhing as Dey’s thumb and pinkie pressed to the bumps, alternating pressures by wiggling her wrist. “Ah! Oh goddess, oh goddess, oh-”

“Try fuck,” Dey grinned. “It’s a good english word for situations like this.”

“Ahh-unnnh fuck!” Xee shuddered, her facial emotion making it clear what she felt.

;;;;^///^;;;;

Dey grinned and drew her fingers back – watching the damp spot spread across the inside of Xee’s thighs, puddling along her belly. She wished, oh how she wished, that she could drink that juice up and see what a Huntress tasted.

But she was pretty sure the brain freeze would be killer.

“O-Oh, wow,” Xee panted. “I-I’ve never gone past one.”

“I guess going from making out to being finger banged by another girl is a big leap,” Dey said, sitting up. Her hands went to her tank top and she skimmed it up and over her head, tossing it aside. Her breasts glistened with sweat. The heat and humidity of the room only added to the heat and the pleasure. Her nipples were hard enough to cut glass. She licked her lips greedily as Xee looked back over her shoulder, rolling onto her side.