Chapter 3

Count Douchefuck of I’mAnAsshole was as true to his name as I expected. I tried to not let my distaste show on my face as we whisked above the landscape in his personalized scout-form until I remembered pretty much all of his psi talent was currently being used to keep us suspended telekinetically in the air.

Realizing that, I started sticking my tongue out at him.

“What does that expression mean?” Count Buttsniffer asked. He was ‘seated’ in the center of the oval of blue-white telekinetic force that was his scout-form. I say seated. Really, his legs were crossed under him and he glowed with tendrils of white light that thrust out of his spine and shoulders and into the skin of the ship itself. His hair stood on end and he floated in the middle of the air as he radiated with raw power. Doyen scout-forms were a trick we humans couldn’t match. They were fast. Like, requiring human physicists to tear their theories apart and put them back together again in new ways fast. Like, we were going to reach the Doyen capital on Beta-3 in about fifteen more seconds.

And the Doyen capital was on the polar ice cap.

Such as it was on this hotbox of a planet.

Now, you may have noticed, I put quotation marks around Count Gerrymandering dialog. The reason why is simple: He was actually talking out loud. Using his lips. My palm rested against the skin of his ship and I sent a quick thought to Magnum Caliber, now that I could do so without being peeped on.

What exactly is our plan, Magnum?

Magnum was looking as serious and impassive as possible. Follow the Princess’ lead.

That was easy, so far. Tzali was currently looking as if she was getting everything she deserved – well, actually, she looked like she was getting slightly less than she felt she was owed, and that tiny missing amount was provoking a look of utter sneering contempt. This contempt had set a fire in the Count, and he had been subtly adjusting the ship for the past few minutes to try and make Tzali at least give him a bigger smile. None of it – not the mood lightning, nor the seats, nor the faint music, seemed to do anything but increase contempt. I wondered how far she could push that line before it set our Count over the edge.

“Whoa...”

That was Opal Midnight. She was, like the rest of the ‘slave’ girls, sprawled near the nose of the oval scout-form. This meant that all the Count had to do was open his eyes to get a great view at three of the finest human asses in the galaxy. But the upside was each of them got a chance to look out the front. And Tycho Bright and Ebony Noon were both looking impressed too, though they hid it better. I ambled over to the front and found, for the first time in my life, it was easier to look out a window then down at three scantily clad girls.

But Abby! I can hear you cry. I thought you were surrounded by naked girls all day!

Yes. That’s exactly it. Do you know the effect a golden bikini and loincloth has on someone’s body? It makes nudity – which feels more normal and natural by the hour – into near nudity. Suddenly, someone has flicked on all the ‘hey, this is sexy’ switches online again. Not that they had even been off for that long. I was only barely out of high school, cut me some slack. But even high school hormones and the gorgeous bodies of Tycho, Ebony and Opal weren’t enough to distract me from the Doyen capital.

The ice caps here on this planet did exist, despite the temperature. Don’t ask me to explain the fluke of geology and climate that kept things cold enough up here to maintain an icy attitude. But the end result was that we had hundreds of kilometers of brilliant white snow and ice expanding below us, with the occasional sharp, obsidian tooth of a mountain thrusting up. And the front of the scout-form was where the telekinetic field got thinnest, so we had the best view. And there, right about fifty kilometers ahead of us, was the Doyen castle.

I’d been told that Doyen castles were made of telekinetic energy.

I just hadn’t realized what that would look like until right about ... now...

Imagine a flower made of purest crystal, fanning outwards out of a pillar of fire almost five hundred meters tall. The fire roils and ripples outwards into snakes that loop and coil upwards through the air to press against the underside of the petals, providing support to shimmering, shining blades that looked big enough to hold entire apartment blocks on them. Now, start adding these details to your mind picture: Lightning strobes silently from the tips of of those flower petals, arcing upwards to the spire in the middle, which is made of a purple crystal that had been carved into an ornate, beautiful, Aztekish looking pyramid that rotates slowly in place.

That was just the main building.

Surrounding the pillar of flame were walls of fire and of lightning and of swirling tornadoes of ice and snow. Doyen Paladins in their glowing warforms strode atop those walls. Yes, atop. I saw them walking on tornadoes. Most of them were armed with large psi-bows. Which were exactly how they sounded: Recurved bows made of telekinetic energy, loaded with stone arrows that looked like they were nearly twenty meters long.

“I count ten Paladins in warform,” Ebony murmured.

Tycho nodded. “This isn’t as minor a world as we thought, was it?”

“Quite a fortification,” Tzali said through a yawn.

“Well, all the better to protect you, my darling lady,” Count Grumblefuck von Traitordick said. He managed to drag his attention away from his scout-form to reach out and take Tzali’s hand, then drag it near his lips to kiss it.

Opal, helpfully, kicked me in the shins.

The scout-form darted down towards the flower. My brow furrowed slightly as something clicked: Where was the Doyen stargate? The observation flyby that had sent us here had spotted that thing in a village somewhere. As I thought that, the scout-form started to dissolve away. Once it was gone and the Count was standing again, I realized that standing on a Doyen castle’s floors was ... trickier than I might have expected. It was a bit like putting your feet against a surface that badly wanted to be frictionless. I actually saw Tycho flinging out her arms and kicking her feet a bit before she managed to get the floor to behave. Cause the floor was psychic. I just had to convince it that it could hold my feet, and I could stand there just fine.

But that extra bit of effort distracted me from everything but my feet and Tzali’s laugh as the Count said something. What? I tried to think back, but realized I hadn’t heard a thing. She waved her hand to Magnum, her voice imperious as she offered her arm to the count as daintily as ... well, a Princess. Slave, I wish you to take my pleasure chattel to my room. Bodyguard, you will be with me. She nodded to me. Magnum shot me a look that I was pretty sure commanding officer type people had shot newbies like me since the first caveman picked up a rock to throw at another caveman’s head under orders from a third, only tangentially related, caveman.

That look said: Don’t fuck this up, kid.

I chose to ignore he was only a year older than me and nodded solemnly.

The interior of the castle was just as fantastical as the exterior. The corridors arched overhead and witchfire seemed to thrum along the walls in regular intervals, providing a brilliant illumination to the interior. The walls were opaque – more like Dr. Manhattan’s butt than the stone, but I wasn’t about to complain – and the other inhabitants were scarce. We walked past one another Doyen who was hurrying down another corridor and away from us, two mindless slaves who walked along in crystal slippers and swept up bits of detritus off the floor (very carefully, as every brush sent the dirt skidding for what seemed like miles on the frictionless surface) and that was it.

Tzali sniffed. Quite crowded ... she said.

Oh, yes, the Count said. My apologies for being so tight here, oh my lady. But ever since the attack that House Fenzor managed to pull off, everyone is tetchy.

Is that why you moved the capital here?

The tiny frisson of suspicion that flared across the Count’s face was pretty fucking obvious. Like, if this had been a poker game, I’d have assumed that he had just drawn a straight red poker. Er, a full flush? I had never played poker. But I’d have assumed it would have been a bad hand. Or a hand that made him think that the other guy had had a better hand. Whatever. The upshot I’m going for here is that he was not a very good poker player. But I saw no ‘aha’ on Tzali’s face. Was she a better poker player?

Well ... yes, he said. A polar orbit is more difficult. So, a polar base is harder to easily strike.

He didn’t mention their stargate. Was it still in their old planetary capital?

The Count stopped beside a wall that seemed like every single other fucking bit of all in this maze of a place. But he gestured towards it and said: Your chambers, my dear.

Tzali inclined her head, waved her hand, and created a doorway in the shimmering corridor wall. We walked through, her and I, and she waved to shut the door in the Count’s face. Booyah! And with that door shutting, Tzali dropped her rump into a bed that flowed itself up out of the floor and, with her rump, she dropped her whole ‘I am Tzali, queen bitch of the multiverse’ attitude and was simply Ali again. I knelt down before her and took her hands in mine, smiling at her. She smiled back, wanly, but her ears drooped.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s clever,” she said, grinning. “No one will be listening for vocal communication! Hah!” She leaned forward and she kissed me. Now, it had been a few hours since I had gotten snogged by Ali. And that was enough time to forget how total and complete a kiss from a Doyen princess is. Her tongue flooded into my mouth as her delicate fingers caressed my cheeks, her pseudo-claws teasing my skin as her tongue slithered down my throat. My eyes widened, then closed as I kissed her back. Pfft. Breathing was for people not currently kissing Ali. Her hands slipped from my cheeks to my neck, tugging me back onto the bed. I let myself slide against her, feeling her silky smooth skin, the faint bumps of her crystaline armor. Then the kiss broke, her tongue actually remaining in my mouth as she lolled her head backwards. Then the tongue popped free and my hands went to her crystal armor, yanking and tugging at it.

“Yes...” She whispered as her breasts bounced free. Her nipples were hard enough that I was surprised they hadn’t cut her armor as I pulled it off. Then I had no time for surprise or anything else. I only had time to do what any good boyfriend should do at a time like this.

Worship.

Them.

Titty.

I sucked hard and drew my mouth back, making her breast stretch slightly against the pressure. This caused Ali to tossed her head to the side and kick one leg out spasmodically as she arched her spine. Her arousal was already glowing along her thighs, dripping onto the humming, blue-white floor. My finger found the place where her legs joined – or, as we Earthmen called it, her perfect pretty pussy – and slipped gently in. Thanks to previous experience, I found the part that made her squeak and then cry out in inarticulate joy.

“Ahhgyes!”

Mostly inarticulate.

Ali got her elbows under herself and shoved herself up so she could watch my fingers sliding into her sex. Glowing juices frothed along my fingers and puddled onto my palm as she grew wetter and wetter. Her eyes started to flash as she bucked her hips, the bed moving with her own thoughts to rock her hips against my hand. Meanwhile, my mouth was kissing from her breast to her belly button, leaving my own shining trial of spittle along her evening shaded skin. My tongue circled her belly button, teasing her as my thumb found one of her clits and started to tease her.

“Abbyyyyy!” She whined.

I grinned at her. “Come on...” I purred, before kissing one of her astounding girl abs. All girl abs are, by definition, ten thousand times sexier than boy abs. For proof, refer to my ten page competitive essay between the Legend of Korra and The Last Airbender. “Use my call-sign.”

“It’s dumb!” Ali managed to gasp out between her pants.

If this were a sitcom, I’d have stopped fingerbanging her. Maybe gone: Excuse me? And there’d be a funny bit where we argued about names being dumb or not dumb. But she was right, Pirate Mask was a lame ass call-sign. I could have been Magnum Caliber, for god’s sake! However, being right didn’t also preclude the fact that ... we were on mission. And call-signs didn’t just exist to make us sound cooler. They were an extra level of defenses, a psychological trick to keep our minds focused and to ensure that the Doyen had fewer rooms to enter the brain. Despite not having an official sign, Ali had her persona as Tzali to fall back on.

But me?

Thinking of myself as Pirate Mask was part of how I kept my defenses up. And considering we were in a nest of vipers...

Ali did manage to look somewhat chagrined between the mini-orgasms that made her face scrunch up in that adorable way that only the really good porn stars can fake. Because, like, dude, I wasn’t going to stop fingerbanging Ali. I’d need to have my hand removed by a psi-sword to do that!

Please don’t let that be foreshadowing.

Ali’s breath went from short, shallow, gasps to full on hyperventilating as she started to let out the quiet mantra of ‘ohfuckohfuckohfuck’ that presaged the truly epic eruptiont that I had been stoking. I ducked my head forward, losing myself in the musky heat between her thighs. This movement set off her ‘clench’ reflexes and as I pressed my mouth to her sex and slid my tongue in while my fingers spreading her nice and wide, her knees clamped down on my head and I was pretty sure that my head was going to explode. But the sound she made was totally worth my imminent death.

“Piiiiiiiiiraaaaaaaaaate!”

Her juices exploded in my mouth, as delicious and as shockingly alien as she had been the first time I had eaten her out. My throat worked as I drank and drank and drank, actually slipping a hand under her rump. I lifted her up like a cup, just so I could drink her juices down more greedily. By the time she was done, I felt like my head was spinning and Ali had sprawled back onto the bed in a boneless limpness that only came from death or world shattering orgasmic pleasure. Needless to say, I preferred the latter method of bringing this kind of sprawl about.

I managed to work my head free – easier now that her legs had slumped open – and looked down at her blissed out face. Girlcum dripped from my chin as I grinned.

“So, how was that?”

Ali burbled quietly.

I crawled onto the bed next to her. Now, I was hard as a rock, and very much wanted to slide right into her cunt and literally nail her to the bed so hard it’d take a crowbar and five stout men to get her out of it again. But I was also a gentleman. Gentlemen only screwed their girls so hard that they couldn’t walk after asking permission. Or if an agreed upon safe word was in effect. I slipped my arm under her spine, then drew her to my chest, cuddling her. My hand brushed through her crystalline hair as she breathed slower and slower, her eyes half closed.

“I’m scared, Pirate,” Ali whispered in my ear, her breath a warm, moist burr that set my spine shivering. But her words brought a furrowed brow, not an eager moan of desperate lust.

“Why?” I asked. “Do you think the others are in trouble?”

She shook her head lazily. “No. They’re my slaves, no one will hurt them. It’s Count Gatzlon Xon Chur of the House Chur.” She brought out his full name with an aristocratic lilt that made her almost sound as posh as Squaddie Amelia could. I tried to not giggle. Then I tried to not picture Ali and Amelia sharing a little but of lesbian fun times. No. Bad Pirate Mask. No mentally imagining cheating. Cause Squaddie Amelia had a girlfriend. Liuentenant Natasha had to stay on Earth – the longing the two girls felt for each other was what powered the stargate.

Yes, we had a stargate powered by lesbian angst. It wasn’t even the fourth weirdest thing in my life right now.

So, not only would that be cheating and thus bad...

(Even if a tiny part of my brain purred about just how incredibly fucking hot the idea was)

... but it’d also possibly strand us hundreds of lightyears from Earth without a supply line.

This was, in the officer’s school that trained the best and brightest of the PsiCom into leaders and strategic thinkers, referred to as a cock-up of the highest degree. As that thought spiraled through my brain, Ali started to caress my chest. I wasn’t a hairy guy, all things considered. But what little chest fluff that did grow on my coffee-brown skin was something that Ali found endlessly fascinating. It had kinda hurt a few times when she had first tested to see how much she could tug on before I stopped her. Now, she settled into her normal pattern of tugging, tugging a bit harder, tugging ever so slightly harder, then petting until it stopped stinging and shooting a shy smile at me.

What me? That smile said. I have no idea how you hu-man hair is supposed to work.

Then right back to tug tug tug.

“The thing is,” she said on her second tug. “I can’t read the Count at all.”

“Huh?” I asked.

“I am ... was ... a Prime,” she said. “I was trained to read the patterns of thought of anyone who might be a political enemy. Or ally. Or bystander. But the Count is a perfect crystal. He only shows what facet he wants.”

I blinked. “Are ... are you kidding?” I asked. “Dude was totally fucking shocked that you knew the capital was moved. He looked like you had gotten a full bridge in the opening bridge and just slapped it down on the table and got all the bridges.”

Ali’s brow furrowed.

“I don’t know how to play bridge,” I said, grinning.

Ali leaned forward and chomped on my nipple. That jerked me half-upright, gasping. “Ah ow weird boner, weird boner!” I cried out as my cock slapped her thigh. She kissed my aching nipple a moment later, then grumbled.

“You humans and your dead things are bad enough, now you’re showing me up! Me!” She sounded quite cross. Hurt, even. Like if Usain Bolt had met a paraplegic that had just run the four minute mile in three.

I shook my head. “Ali, I didn’t see through his telepathic facade. I didn’t even try. I was watching his face. He has a shitty poker face.”

“I thought it was bridge...” She furrowed her brow, her ears perking up. “Wait, can you see my face right now?”

I nodded.

She squeaked and looked like she was trying to school her expression. But she couldn’t hide the slow, wicked grin that was spreading across her lips. “You can read faces. You can read faces! You can read faces!”

“ ... yeah?” I asked.

She grabbed onto my shoulders, dragged herself up, and kissed me. Hard. Her tongue and mine met and sparred and I lost and oh, oh, oh how I loved to lose. When she drew her mouth back and slurped her tongue out of my head, I let my head loll back on a limp-noodle of a neck, my head spinning with love. And oxygen deprivation. But mostly love.

“You will be my nek’tak’atah!” She purred.

I blinked slowly.

“M-my, uh, psionic blade hidden between the folds of my sex,” she clarified.

I jerked my head up. “Jesusfucking What, you have a name for that!?”

“It’s a common tool in-”

I clapped my hands over my ears. I didn’t want to hear it.

My feeling of smug superiority lasted until Magnum nodded and said: “Good. Opal, Ebony, Tycho, you three use this talent and...” He sighed. “Get ready to cheat, if you need to.” He tossed me one of our obsidian chip-wood swords. I caught it by the handle, dropped it, tried to grab for it, and ended up having to scramble to not get my palms sliced open on the edges. Once I was holding it, I shook my head and blinked at Magnum, who was starting to slide armor on.

The pleasure chattel were all stored in a big communal stable made of roaring flames. The pleasure chattel of the other Doyen nobles were all beautiful in their own exotic way. I saw lizardwomen with breasts the size my head, four armed snake-boys (or should I say bois) who were as sleek and exotic as I could imagine. There were women with flames for hair and skin the color of space. There was a shimmering cloud of nebula contained within a blue telekinetic field, who was dressed in gauzy silks and thrusting out what I thought was an ass provocatively. And all of them looked at us with the curious skepticism of prisoners eying the new fish.

“Why do I need a sword? Aren’t we going to the gala?” I asked. Ali was, as we spoke, performing her role as Tzali in the opening of the gala that the local Doyen were throwing for her visiting. I had gone to tell the others about humanity’s latest way to cheat.

“Oh, we’re going,” Magnum said. “The Count told us that he was going to throw a bit of an entertainment. He was quite evocative in his description of the wildlife he had found in the equatorial regions. The choice words included implanted eggs, thirst for ocular jelly, claws as tough as crystal, tree-ripping strength, a ‘member that would make even the spider-queens of Orchan balnch’, a-”

“I get it!” I said, then looked down at my sword. “He’s trying to kill us?”

“You, honey, he’s trying to kill you,” Opal said, shaking her head. “He can tell you and Ali are butt buddies. He wants to get his Doyen dick in the Princess.”