Planet of the Dino-whores Ch. 06

Zara swerved towards it and dashed into the jungle.

***

Karh Blade took his time to aim his blaster, using the sight at the end of the barrel before squeezing the trigger and watching his laser slice through a beast's armor plating to burn a mortal hole through the head of its rider, an orange flame licking up from the wound. The rider jerked back in her saddle and flapped to the ground like a rag doll tossed by a spoiled child.

Karh kept moving, his feet churning under him, kicking up dirt, keeping mobile. The smoke masked his steps, but he figured it would not be enough to keep him alive.

Karh turned and draw a bead on his next target. His movements were smooth and composed. He squeezed the trigger of his blaster. A rider fell. He turned, found a third target. Fired. Down went the rider. He felt his heart speed up a bit in his chest, a hiccupping tha-thump. Karh took a long breath and then exhaled, regulated his pulse. Even as he did this he took down a fourth target.

Then he saw Lorna, and a second later, she saw him. Her gladius flashed in her hand, the fiery inferno around them reflected on its blade like hell's fire on a hilt. Karh inhaled, brought his blaster to bear. Sighted. Lorna's blonde-framed face (adorned in a helmet made of the hollowed head of a giant viper, yikes) beyond the barrel, ripe for the plucking. Karh steadied his aim. Exhaled. Squeezed the trigger.

The laser erupted from his blaster and zapped straight and true. Lorna reflected it with the blade of her gladius. The beam flew harmlessly into the smoke. Karh Blade felt his heart speed up, and his blood run cold. His head could not slow down to regulate his heart rate, not this time. No one could possibly have the reflexes to deflect a laser. No one.

And yet, Lorna had.

Her monster bore down on him. Karh rolled, the horned snout of the beast nearly ramming through him, but it missed. Karh pulled out his dagger, thrust it into the beast's head. The blade shattered, the beast protected by its thick scales and armored plating. It turned and barked, hot breaths smelling of old rotting grass. Karh aimed his blaster and fired up into its head; laser sizzled a hole through its bellowing mouth and up into the thing's brain pan. If the beast had a brain the size of a pea, it was now a very burnt, split pea.

The monster collapsed with a gurgling grunt. As it fell, Lorna leapt from the saddle, her gladius swooping down in Karh's direction. He twisted and felt a screeching pain explode in his shoulder as the blade of Lorna's gladius ate a hunk of flesh.

Lorna landed on her feet. Karh stumbled to his knees. Blood dripped from the gladius.

Karh glanced at his shoulder, just a flesh wound. He got to his feet. The Captain of the Guard regarded him with a sneer of disdain and spat into the ground between Karh's boots. It was hard to believe this woman had shared her bed with him only a few days before.

"No kiss hello?" Karh said dryly.

Lorna snarled and came at him, the gladius high and red and hungry for death.

***

Hunter's lifeless eye stared up at him, glazed with death.

Like a crooked, gaped mouth in the rock floor, the crevice smelt of sulfur- a burning, churning gulf of darkness. As Henrik forced the body through the crack, he visualized Hunter's corpse falling like a dying star from heaven and landing in a river, the burbling magma guts of the sleepy volcano. There, the corpse would be incinerated and burn to nothing. Ashes to ashes.

Henrik smiled. It was a happy thought, one he wished he could share with the Queen.

Not until the body began to slide through the crevice of its own accord to tumble backwards into the dark of the void, did Henrik notice the charge, the third and final charge, clipped to Hunter's belt in case the other proved to be a dud. He reached for it, reached to keep the corpse from falling, but with a crunch of grit and a whisper of shifting dust, it was gone, swallowed by the abyss.

Now Henrik imagined what would happen when the charge went off in the heart of a slumbering god.

"Oops," he said and took a step back.

He turned and ran, and a moment later, the world exploded behind him.

***

Lorna's gladius swiped, and Karh jumped back, dodging, cloth from his shirt and vest tearing and flapping as the blade sliced through them.

"You will not get the better of me again, man" Lorna said, spitting the last word as a vile insult. "I will paint my blade red with your blood."

"You should pick up finger-painting instead. Much less painful," Karh said and brought his blaster up in a flash and fired, but the shot went wild, missing Lorna's head by several inches, as Lorna charged him, the blast cutting nothing but a futile hole into the smoke.

He steadied his aim and went to fire again, but the gladius was already coming down, cutting the barrel of the blaster. The laser exploded in Karh's hand, throwing both Karh and Lorna upon their backs. Air blew out of their lungs. Consciousness swirled.

Peering up into the smoky brown haze of sky, Karh groaned, "By the way, I love your helmet. Does it come in cobra?"

He reached out, groping for the fallen gladius. He'd seen it drop from Lorna's hand as she was thrown backward. His fingers brushed the shell of an egg growing out of the field but nothing else.

"Looking for this?" Lorna's voice asked, and Karh heard a rustle of clothing and movement as she crept to her knees. He glanced towards the voice and saw that Lorna had already found the gladius. Karh, meanwhile, the remains of his shattered blaster lying scattered around him, remained unarmed but for the egg which might as well left him completely unarmed. Lorna glared down over his prone body and sneered. She moved so that her knees were to either side of Karh's hips.

"This is for escaping me in the arena."

Lorna brought the hilt of the gladius into his face. Karh grunted, saw stars, heard a crunch, felt a few teeth go loose in his mouth. The taste of blood like old pennies filled his mouth.

"This is for fucking me."

Again, pain exploded as Lorna brought the hilt into his face. His nose broke; viscous fluid gushed, a spray of crimson into Lorna's sneer. Something wet and warm trickled into the back of Karh's throat, a mix of mucus and blood. Dizziness twirled his head like a top.

"And THIS is for besting me with my own dagger, for TOUCHING my dagger."

Karh chuckled, a wet gurgle bubbling out of his mouth. His hand reached for the scabbard at Lorna's waist. He moved like a snake, stealthy and beneath Lorna's notice. Lorna paused, the hilt of the gladius raised over her head like a poised snake, coils tense.

"You mean this dagger?" Karh murmured, and his hand closed over nothing. The scabbard was empty. Lorna wouldn't fall for the same trick twice, and Karh should have realized it. His hope withered.

"No," Lorna replied. She held the gladius in one hand and let the other creep into the cleavage of her green-scaled armor to slip out the diamond-studded dagger. Karh groaned.

"I mean this dagger!" Lorna cried and drove it hilt-deep into Karh Blade's shoulder. Electric, throbbing pain screeched, vibrated through his bones. Despite his reputation of calm cool-headedness, Karh couldn't help but scream. Lorna grinned, her teeth bared, spittle dripping from her lips. She looked not unlike a rabid dog.

"Any last words, man from the sky, Karh Blade?"

Gathering himself, pushing the pain to a dark cell in the back of his mind and locking it in, Karh said in a low, weak voice, "Just good luck."

"What?"

"You're right," he coughed, spat blood. "Some people think saying 'good luck' is bad luck, so I'll just say..."

Lorna paused. Karh smiled a bloody clown's smile, red-painted lips on pale white skin.

"... break an egg."

His hand came up and crushed the egg against Lorna's face. It exploded over her beautiful, tortured features. She gagged and clenched her eyes shut. Yellow, runny slop oozed down her face, sunny-side up. Karh bolted to a sitting position, grabbed Lorna's wrists and swung them in on themselves. He thrust Lorna's arms in, his hands over her hands, forcing the gladius in and through Lorna's stomach.

Lorna opened her mouth to speak but only blood came, no words.

"Give your sister my regards," Karh said and pulled out the gladius. Crimson guts spurted from the wound, splashed to the dirt, and Lorna, the Captain of the Guards, fell dead.

Karh figured the worst had passed, and then the top blew off the volcano.

***

Zara had lost Vanitoth and thought she'd managed to even lose herself when the shape of a ship loomed out of the jungle like a mirage. She didn't become convinced the ship wasn't a hallucination until she placed her hands on its hard metal hull and felt it cool and smooth under her palms.

"I knew you'd come," the Queen said as she stepped out of the jungle. "I've been waiting."

Zara turned to face her. The Queen wore shiny gold armor, a large horned helmet, and held a trident in one hand, her talons gripping the long pole like vices. The Queen looked deadly and angry; her tail thumped the ground, splattering specks of mud.

"You've caused me great agony," the Queen said. She struck the trident against the ground. Blue electricity sparked to life between its tri-spear tips, bolts snap-crackle-popping.

"Sorry about that," Zara croaked. Her hand squeezed the handle of the blaster of her side. Her face felt warm and wet with blood. Motionless, the Queen glared at her.

"I knew from the moment I saw you that you would be the source of much trouble. My instincts knew that you must die."

The Queen flicked the trident, and the electric bolts crackled like lightening and shot at Zara. Anticipating the move, Zara threw herself to the ground, withdrew her blaster and fired with a single, flawless movement.

The bolts missed Zara, zapping into the side of the ship and bouncing off into a nearby tree. An unlucky monkey fell dead from the branches, its fur smoking. Zara's laser, on the other hand, did not miss the Queen, but it was far from productive. The beam merely struck her helmet and sheared the horn. It clattered down the Queen's gold armor and stuck upside-down in a splash of mud.

The Queen moved in a flash, bringing her trident up to bear down on Zara, and Zara rolled just as the trident crashed into the ground, zapping ants and worms. The trident also happened to snatch the blaster out of Zara's hand and smash it into about a billion useless pieces. The pieces flickered with energy before melting.

Zara grabbed the broken horn of the Queen's helmet as she spun up to her feet and thrust it, sinking the ivory tip into the thin scales of the Queen's throat.

"Should have listened to your instincts," Zara said and twisted the horn through flesh and out of the back of the Queen's neck. Something snapped and crunched inside the Queen's throat, and she burbled her last words: "My children..."

A rumble in the ground trembled beneath Zara's feet, and the volcano exploded at her back. Zara turned and saw the boiling lava and the cloud of rock and dust belching out the top of the dormant god. 'VOLCANTOR,' that's what the women should call this one, Zara thought and wondered if she was far off the mark.

"I think your children are all going to die," she said, but the Queen had already passed to a place where Zara's words could not follow. Zara relinquished her grip of the splintered horn, and the Queen collapsed in a heap of lifeless coils: another dead snake.

***

Henrik, charred and smoking, worked his way down the volcano. Every part of his body felt scorched, and for the most part, they were. His clothes were not but flaming scraps melted into his skin. But he was alive and moving.

He could see nothing but smoke, and in a moment, the debris from the volcano and the mix of its deadly gases and tumbling rock would wash over him and annihilate everything if he could not make it to the ship.

Zara would save him; she always had.

She was not the Queen, but the Queen would be dead soon. All life on this planet would be dead soon. Henrik valued life more than the Queen; at least that part of him was still his own: the will to live.

The ground flattened out under his feet, and Henrik knew that he had made it to the field. He was halfway home. He broke out into a weak trot, the best he could manage under the circumstances.

It came out of the smoke.

Henrik skidded to an abrupt stop. Then he pissed his pants, steam whisking up where the urine splashed his thighs.

Still looking for prey, Vanitoth regarded the crispy flesh man in front of it with desperate, hungry eyes. Vanitoth was confused, not understanding what was happening around it but disturbed by the situation all the same. The surface of the planet was rumbling, and perhaps Vanitoth knew at some level that today was the end of its world.

What better way to make the end go a little more smoothly than with a snack?

Henrik had no chance. He looked up at the teeth coming down at him and froze. He watched as they clamped down, sinking as deep into his torso as they could go before meeting up with more teeth and ripping Henrik in half. Inside the mouth, it was dark, and it was painful. Henrik screamed, the upper half of him still alive long enough to feel the slimy sides of Vanitoth's throat as it swallowed, and Henrik went down and down and down...

***

At the controls, Zara finished her pre-flight preps when she heard something shift behind her. Her mind flashed to the Queen, zombified, trident in hand, and Zara twisted in her seat and brought her blaster to bear.

"Sorry, I left my ticket in my other pants," Karh said.

"Karh!" Zara said, unbuckled her harness and helped him into the seat next to her. "You look like hell."

"Feel like it, too. And it's going to be a lot worse lest you get us off this heap."

"Hunter and Henrik..."

"Think they actually made it?"

Zara paused. "I hate to say it, but you're right. Strap in."

Moments later, they were off the ground. A few moments after that, they were in space. They didn't look back until the planet was nothing but a blue speck in the holographic virtua-window behind them.

***

Once a suitable course was set, Zara flicked the controls to auto-pilot and set about bandaging up Karh Blade. The ship contained a small med station, and Zara led Karh by the arm to the metal observation table within the room.

A nasty looking wound in his shoulder: Zara cleaned it out with a sterilization tube and wrapped Karh's shoulder with gauze. A couple of scratches and flesh wounds: Zara burned them closed with laser stitches. The bruises would heal of their own accord. She looked Karh over, examining her work.

"Between the bandages and your pallor, you look like the universe's sexiest mummy. The muscles are your saving grace," Zara said, her eyes flicking over him.

Karh's eyes, meanwhile, examined those of Zara, and he said, "You know you have a tiger's eyes. Kinda yellow-green-gold. Incredible. Gorgeous."

"Officially they're hazel."

"Yellow-green-gold."

"That's not even a color. That's a tragic mix resulting in puke-ish murk."

"Zara, I..."

She stopped him with a kiss, her lips brushing over his, her hands coming up to hold his face steady. Karh went rigid- shocked, surprised, and delighted.

She looked deep into his eyes and said, "Yes, you may."

Karh felt his strength return with sudden swiftness. He hopped off the observation table, wrapped his arms around Zara and lifted her to where he had just been sitting.

"I've wanted you for so long," he said.

"I know."

He peeled her flight suit off, kissing her revealed skin, tasting the salt of sweat, relishing her on his tongue.

"Delicious," he said.

"Of course."

He inhaled her scent and greedily ran his hands over her skin, needing to be everywhere at once, feel every part of her.

Karh kissed her cheek softly, kissed the wound there clean.

"Beautiful," he said.

"Duh."

Zara closed her eyes and allowed her body to give in to Karh. She had wanted him, and with no one around to know what was happening, she could have him without worrying about damage to her credibility. There was no future with a man like Karh Blade; there was only the moment, the now. She planned on enjoying the moment while it lasted.

His tongue lashed her nipples, and Zara sighed. She ran her fingers through the twists of his hair. It was dry, still dusty from the battle, still smelling of smoke and sweat. Zara felt his hands caressing the small of her back, his mouth moving lower over his stomach.

She stretched her legs straight and lifted her bottom up, shifting her weight to her hands, when Karh peeled off her pants, pulling them over her long, lean legs. His head dipped down, tongue flickering on her calves, on her inner thigh.

"You tease," she sighed.

Shivers tingled Zara's spine as he edged closer and closer, teasing her with his lips, with the nimble fingers exploring the curves of her legs. And then he found her, lips closing over her clitoris, finger slipping into her warmth, and Zara gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and soared-

-deep, unfathomable space. Stars on stars, a congregation of diamonds against a backdrop of black ink. Zara flew through them, bathed in the ink, wore the diamonds, a necklace of nebula around her neck-

She opened an eye, peeked, came back to reality, still soaring but now back on the observation table, cold metal under her rump, Karh's face between her thighs, his lips and fingers wet with sticky moisture. It was not deep, unfathomable space, but it wasn't so bad for reality. She could stick around her awhile and enjoy herself.

"I want you," Karh said, looking up at her.

Zara had never wanted anyone as much as she wanted Karh Blade at that moment, the threat of death receding behind them but still as fresh as wet drops of rain on their shoulders after passing through a downpour. Zara's nipples were so hard they hurt; a pleasant but needy throb pulsed in the pit of her stomach and ached in her pussy.

"Take me."

Karh stood up and unbuckled his pants. They dropped around his ankles as his penis sprung up, full and large and hard; Karh's balls probably ached as much as anything in Zara's body, their need to release as dire as Zara's.

She wrapped her ankles around Karh, heels digging into the top of his buttocks, and she pulled him close to her and then into her, Karh taking his time, careful to be gentle. Their battered and bruised bodies probably could enjoy nothing but the gentlest, sweetest pleasures. This probably worked to Zara's advantage. In any other circumstance, she imagined Karh would prefer to be brutal. It catered to his macho reputation.

As he entered her, Zara sighed and saw stars. They filled her.

The stars, the diamonds, were in her eyes, blinding her with their beauty, overwhelming her. Karh had barely managed any kind of movement, and Zara already felt herself peaking, thrown into the diamonds, bathing in their light, glowing, burning, exploding within her, the stars everywhere, in and outside of her, glorious and brilliant.

She felt as though she were going blind and could see everything at the same time, and when Karh saw the expression on her face, he became concerned that he was hurting her. She was looking right through him and shivering.

"You ok?" he said.

"So good," she whispered, her body quivering. "So good. Don't stop. Make me cum again."

Karh bent over and kissed her, moving slowly in and out, in and out. He found a rhythm and built upon it, connecting them, morphing them from individuals into a collective whole. One hand went into her auburn hair and nested there, brushing through, caressing the back of Zara's head. The other gripped a thigh, shapely and smooth, rippling under his palm as he moved slowly in and out, in and out, the repetition the only thing maintaining control, not allowing him to spend, not yet, just focus on moving slowly in and out, in and out.