Penny the Conqueror Ch. 18

Penny laid back in the hammock, sipping the sweet nectar cocktail. The humble cabin they were given by Lake Lillipoga had few of the technological advancements of planet Bok, but that suited Penny fine. The warm sun and the cooling lake with its nearby waterfall was all Penny wanted to focus on the next few days.

Swimming out in the lake was Ilka, Penny's new love. She had on a skimpy two-piece, showing off her glorious athletic body. Penny swayed in the gentle breeze as she watched Ilka dive down every so often.

As she watched, Penny glanced down at her own pale skin. Too much time in the sun gave her burns. She could never tan too well. She looked on with envy as Ilka splashed in the water. Hardly any Boccans had to worry about something like a sunburn.

Ilka popped up again and waved at Penny. "Come, dear! Let us enjoy the day together."

Penny got out of her hammock and set her drink aside. She got off her shorts and shirt. Penny had on her own two-piece, which was a little more modest than what Ilka was wearing. She tiptoed to the water edge, trying not to burn her tender feet on the hot sand. She ran in and then went for a dive.

Penny caught up to Ilka, only to have Ilka smile and swim off in the other direction toward the waterfall. Penny growled, mostly in jest, as she tried to keep up with the long strokes of Ilka. Penny was still well behind when Ilka crawled up on the rock ledge right in behind the waterfall. There was a small rainbow forming in the sunlight as the waterfall cascaded down.

Penny finally made it, panting heavily. Ilka was sitting and fixing out her silver hair. Penny crawled her way up. "I think I'm out of shape," Penny wheezed.

Ilka smiled and rested a hand on Penny's lower back. "Are your daily training exercises not sufficient?"

Penny got up on her butt and let her head fall to the side. "I can't compete with the mighty Boccan women! Maybe I need to tell the chefs to tone it down with the meals."

Ilka got one leg up on Penny's lap. "I think you are still magnificent, m'lady." She leaned in and kissed Penny. Penny moaned as Ilka worked her way down to the neck. "We are alone here, Penny."

Penny took the cue and undid her top. The water splashing down made her skin cold and slick. Ilka ran a hand down on Penny's soft breasts as they continued kissing. Ilka reached in behind her and undid her own top. Penny loved the tear-drop shape of Ilka's boobs. She leaned down and licked on Ilka's corks. Ilka leaned back and enjoyed herself.

Penny got up on her knees, wincing a bit as the rock was still rough on her joints. She slid her bottoms off and leaned back, giving herself a fiddle. Ilka took control and put her hands on Penny's thighs, pushing her legs apart. Penny braced herself as the red warrior dove down and licked her pussy.

Penny's body twitched randomly as Ilka worked her magic. She sat up a bit and watched Ilka's corded back and heart-shaped ass in the air. She placed a hand gently on Ilka's head while she steadied herself on the slippery rock. The waterfall was loud, which allowed Penny a chance to moan away. Sometimes it was the simple things in life that blew away the thrill of planet-wide adoration.

Penny lost concentration long enough to slip off of the rock and plunge down into the lake. She burbled under the water for a bit, then got herself together and busted up through the surface. She coughed for a bit, then laughed at what happened.

"Penny!" Ilka slid down to meet her in the water, dragging their bikinis along with her. "Are you injured?"

"Nah, just a little embarrassed," Penny replied. "You're almost too good at that sometimes!"

"We should head back to the cabana," Ilka suggested. "I shall race you!" She stood up and dove in, getting a strong start on Penny. Penny groaned as she swam back to the far end of the lake, still naked. After a long while, Penny finally made it to the shore, with Ilka standing there holding their suits. She had taken off her bottoms at this point, wearing only a smile.

Penny gasped as she came out of the water, then rolled her eyes. Ilka helped Penny to her feet, then put a comforting arm around her. "You will be stronger someday."

"I better be," Penny panted.

After catching her breath, the two of them got on the bed and got down to business. Penny rode on top, while Ilka enjoyed the attention.

Just as Penny was about to climax, her communicator alert went off. "Shit!" Penny climbed off and went to the communicator. She had given an order not to be disturbed, so she knew this must be important. "Go ahead."

"Excellency, I apologize for the disturbance," Tannis said through the communicator. "An unidentified ship is in our star system, and is not responding to hails."

Penny pressed her lips together. "Understood. I'll be at the palace as soon as possible." She ended the hail, then turned to Ilka. "We better get dressed."

After a quick trip on the hover bike, Penny and Ilka were in the palace. Penny did not want to waste time changing, even though she was in shorts and sandals. She went up to the fleet commander, Julen, who was advising on possible near-space maneuvers.

"Your excellency," Julen stated as he gave the salute. "We do not recognize the structure of the ship, but the technology suggests visitors we had two hundred years ago."

Ilka stepped forward. "The aliens," she said coldly. "The ones who had decimated our planet. We had barely survived their last assault."

"Why would they come back here?" asked Penny.

"Unknown," Julen replied. He tapped at the console, and a holo-view appeared of the ship. "This is a massive vessel--over five minochemes long."

Penny knew that was about nine kilometres. "We couldn't stop it, even if we had our entire fleet home."

"Nor if the planned fleet expansion and orbiting base were completed in time," Julen lamented. The heavy combat ships were still nine months from completion, and the orbital base was still a few years from happening. "I fear that this might suggest a long, protracted ground war could be inevitable."

Penny turned to Ilka, who had been joined by Tannis. "I could use some suggestions."

"We should assemble the ministers," Tannis said. "That ship could arrive planet-side by tomorrow. They have blasted several of our long-range detectors out by the gas giants."

At the emergency assembly of the ministers, Penny had only one plan. "We have to surrender."

The ministers were appalled. "How can we do such a thing?" the minister of defence bellowed, especially outraged. "What if they grant us no mercy?"

Penny shook her head. "We lost one-third of the entire planet's population the last time. For all we know, the aliens could have new weapons that could devastate us even worse." She slumped down in her seat. "I hate this, believe me. There are just too many lives at stake with that giant ship. That thing is four times the size of the old invasion ship."

"We shall not be conquered by an outside force!" The minister of the treasury stood up. "Our people will not stand for this, Queen Penelope. Perhaps the people of Earth would be so willing to surrender their sovereignty, but we Boccans are a proud species."

Penny pushed her lips together, then nodded. "You think I'm a coward?" She stood up defiantly. "Fine. I'll go and plead for the safety of my people. My people." Ilka had run up and put a hand on Penny's shoulder, but Penny brushed her off. "Don't estimate Earth people. We can still talk things out. I'll go and try to reason with these aliens."

The ministers murmured among themselves. "Queen, we appreciate your sacrifice, but is this wise?" The minister of agriculture was upset. "We need a leader right now."

Penny hung her head. "Leaders have to be willing to make the sacrifice." She left the conference room, with Tannis and Ilka following behind.

"Excellency! Penny!" Tannis spun Penny around and grabbed her shoulders. "Think about this! What is your plan? How will you convince them?"

"We don't know what they want yet," Penny reasoned. "I want to go and talk."

"They have refused communication, and they have acted aggressively," Ilka pleaded.

"I'm going," Penny replied stoically. She turned to go find a shuttle. Ilka and Tannis followed along.

The shuttle launch pad was ready within half a Boccan hour. Penny had her flight suit on. Crele had come along, armed with a rifle and her sword. Tannis and Ilka agreed to go.

Groovi and Oola gave Penny a huge hug. "Please come back to us," Oola begged, crying.

Penny gave a winning smile and gave Oola a pat on the shoulder. "Look after Groovi, and Khazal." The four women climbed in, and the shuttle took off into the upper atmosphere.

"What do we tell the occupants of that ship?" asked Crele.

"We don't know what their intentions are yet," Penny said. "Look, they had two hundred years to get better. Think about it--you have a civilization that can travel through space, and probably went through amazing technological advances. Why would they want to go back to their old ways?"

After nearly half a day, the shuttle approached the giant ship. "Open a hail," commanded Penny.

The ship trained energy weapons on them, which triggered the alert. Crele steered them suddenly, which made the other occupants lurch. "Switching to cloak," Crele announced.

"They might still be able to see us," Penny bellowed as Crele steered toward the large ship.

The energy cannons mounted on the alien ship fired in random patterns into space. Crele pointed the shuttle at the ship. "What are you doing?" yelled Tannis.

"They will not hit us if we are near or on the ship," Crele replied as she brought them within a few metres of the ship's surface. "There!" She pointed through the front window at a small trench. Crele piloted the craft in, and they were able to find a sliding cargo door.

"I will engage the repulsion ray," Crele announced. The repulsor was typically used for pushing off large objects like meteors, but they were able to pry open the doors and fly themselves in. The craft made it in just as the doors snapped shut.

Once the doors were sealed, the scans showed that the air had returned to normal. The four women sneaked out of their craft. Crele took point, and waved them all through once the coast was clear. Many of the hallways were large and empty.

"What is our plan, exactly?" asked Ilka.

"We'll do our best to beg for mercy," Penny replied. "There's little else we can do."

"We should fight to the last warrior," Crele growled.

"That cost your planet a third of its people last time," Penny reminded Crele. "I hate the idea of surrender as much as you, but if it means saving lives, it might be worth it. This threat is just too much for us." She sighed. "Maybe I didn't get us prepared in time. Maybe getting the Voltans to disarm was a bad idea. Maybe--"

Ilka placed a hand on Penny's shoulder. "You cannot blame yourself. You have tried to prepare a fleet for such an emergency. Perhaps you are right. We might not be able to sustain a second planetary war."

The four women were confronted by two sets of automated trains of carts, pushed along by non-humanoid androids. The robots seemed oblivious to the presence of the women.

"Jump!" Crele got to the side hallway, and Ilka and managed to leap out of the way. Penny and Tannis were both swept up by the carts and whisked away down the hallway at breakneck speed.

Tannis looked over at Penny. "What do we do?"

Penny looked at the cross hallways whipping past them. "We need to jump off! Maybe we can get caught up with the others!"

Penny watched the pattern of hallways whipping by, then braced herself for a jump. "Let's go!" Penny launched herself off of the cart, just narrowly avoiding getting decapitated.

Tannis had hesitated too long, and went whizzing away. "I will find you, excellency! I am sorry!" She was gone within a few seconds.

"Damn it!" Penny got to her feet then heard footsteps coming her way. She froze, unsure of where to go, then saw a doorway to what looked like a lab. She went to the door and pushed the red button on the door panel. The doors slid open, and Penny got in. The doors closed behind her.

Penny halted, as she saw perhaps twenty people standing around in the lab. They looked to be Boccan, but many of them seemed to have misshapen bodies or odd faces.

One of the Boccans turned, a woman who was under five feet and had an arm that was half the normal length. "Oh! We have a visitor."

Penny moved ahead slowly and looked around. There were several beds with covers, almost like sleep pods. "What's going on here? Who are you?"

"We are the clones," the woman explained. "Unfortunately, we have been made in error. We will be repaired."

"I don't get it," Penny stated. "What happened to you? Who made you?"

The woman examined Penny's skin. "Oh, you must have been mutated terribly. Look at your skin! You are all white. Do not worry, as you will be fixed."

"I don't need to be fixed," Penny insisted."You all look Boccan. Were you kidnapped from the surface?"

Just as the woman was about to reply, a white smoke came out of the vents. All of the others appeared calm, but Penny tried to make it back to the door. Once the gas hit her, she felt lightheaded and her legs grew heavy. She collapsed to the floor, along with all of the other lab occupants.

After the white gas was extinguished from the room, two guards in gas masks came in. They almost tripped over Penny sprawled out on the floor. "What is this one doing here?" one of them inquired.

"Not sure," the other replied. "She appears to have had a skin issue." She pulled out a bio-scanner and ran it over Penny's body. "99.8% match for Boccan. She must be one of them. Her mutations are the least severe."

"Put her in the rejuvenation chamber, same as the others," the male guard told her. They got to work putting the individual people into their own suspension chambers.

Penny was placed in last. "You will be made better," the male guard promised through the glass cover.

Tannis had taken several minutes before she had decided to jump off. She landed in an awkward way, and managed to graze her shoulder on the corner of the hallway. She groaned and held onto her tender arm as she struggled to get to her feet.

Worried that she might be discovered, Tannis went to one of the doors and pressed the entry button. She slipped in and pressed her back to the wall as the doors slid shut again. As she turned to look in the room, she was surprised to see two tall men staring back at her.

"Aieee!" Tannis jumped into a ridiculous fighting stance. The two men did not move a bit. Tannis took a good long look over both of them. They low-riding shorts and half-shirts, showing off their toned abs. They also had impressively powerful legs.

"You appear to be confused at our being here," one of them said with a smirk.

Tannis gasped. "You speak Boccan? You're Boccan?"

The two men looked at each other. "It is part of our mission," the other man said. "I would have assumed you knew about it."

Tannis struggled for a second. "I mean...yes, of course. The mission." She started to make her way toward the two men.

"I do not believe we have seen you before," the first man said. "I am Marn, and this is Yoti. We were just studying up on the methods of proper infiltration."

"Infiltrating...?" Tannis struggled to concentrate. She was enamoured with the two men, standing close to a foot taller than her.

"On planet Bok," Yoti finished. "It will be part of our subterfuge program. Were you not instructed yet?"

"Ah, I see," Marn said. "She must be fresh from the generation pod. Perhaps she is still disoriented." He placed a hand on Tannis's shoulder. "Do you require a moment to gain composure?"

Tannis's teeth began to chatter as she reached up and caressed Marn's strong hand. "Huh-uh-uh. I, uh...perhaps I could stand to sit down."

Marn and Yoti got her to sit on one of the beds as they both massaged her back. "It can be troubling," Yoti assured her. "Marn and I were released but a quarter year ago. We have since been training ourselves, both physically and through our studies."

Tannis's head was swimming. She rested a hand on Yoti's chest. "Oh dear," she panted. "Oh, but I must rejoin my associates." She sat up as the men stayed on the bed. "I am sorry, but I am afraid that I might be discovered. We are from a peace delegation from Bok. We came to plead mercy."

"Mercy?" Marn looked confused. "Why, we were told we would simply be observing from below."

"This is a war ship," Tannis protested. "I believe that you were deceived. You mean to infiltrate my people."

Marn and Yoti looked at each other. "We are sorry, miss. We did not anticipate that we might be part of something nefarious. Is this what you are suggesting?"

Tannis looked at the two men. "Let me tell you about my planet's history. We will start with two centuries ago, when a similar alien vessel visited us."

Crele and Ilka, meanwhile, were making their way to Penny. They had her unique bio-signature in Ilka's scanner. Penny was nearly a kilometre away, and the journey was taking longer in order to avoid detection.

"I do not understand," Ilka said as she looked at the scanner. "Penny's bio-signature is there, but it appears to be getting weaker."

"She might be in danger," Crele reasoned. The two of them were making their way down another nondescript hallway. "Oh, I did not mean to suggest..."

"It is all right," Ilka said, doing her best to keep composure. "Finding Penny might be the easiest part of our mission."

They took nearly three hours making their way to her location. Ilka held up her scanner to the door. "She is here, although...the readings are inconclusive somehow. It is as if it's a close approximation to Penny."

Crele pounded the door button. "I will make chopped meat of those who dare to harm her excellency." The two of them went in, only to find several sleep chambers in two rows.

"Is she in here?" asked Crele as she pressed her face up against the glass of one of the beds.

Ilka waved her scanner around, then stopped at one of the beds. "Here." She pressed a few of the buttons. While Ilka put on her translation glasses, she could read that the readout showed 100% success rate.

"Success rate for what?" asked Crele. Ilka did not answer. Instead she pressed several more buttons. The sound of pneumatic pistons blasted as the door slid away. The cold mist hung in the air as the two women waved it away.

Inside of the bed was a woman. "Penny?" Ilka leaned in. "Do you hear me?"

The woman sat up, then put a hand to her head. "Ugh," she said. "Yeah, I'm fine, I think. I just feel a bit..." She sat up and turned her legs to hang over the bed.

Crele stared, then glanced at Ilka. "Are you sure that is..."

The woman got up, stumbling a bit. Crele rushed to help her, but the woman waved Crele away. She wandered over to a mirror and rubbed at her eyes. "Just give me a minute, okay? I gotta..." She stared hard at her hand as her eyes began to focus. She flipped her hand over, back and forth. "It's red." She reached up and felt her hair, then brought a handful up to her eyes. "It's...white?"

Penny then looked into the mirror. She spent several seconds making tiny gasping noises, then she screeched. Staring back at her in the mirror was a beautiful woman, with sharp cheekbones and smooth red skin. Her eyes were now brown, and her eyebrows had wisps of white to match her new hair.

Ilka ran up beside her and put a hand on Penny's back. "Penny, you're..." She looked up and down. "You're taller now!"

Penny became vertiginous as she realized she was now five inches taller than Ilka. The two of them were the same height at one point. Penny looked down, and realized some other enhancements were made as well. She was feeling more curvy all of a sudden. Penny felt down and gave her girls a jiggle with both hands. "Wow! They're bigger!" She suddenly had a huge smile. "Ooh, and firmer, too!"