The Hierarchy of Now and Forever Ch. 06

Starchaser sprang backwards, landing on a wall console that jutted maybe an inch from the curved corridor, and hissed. John, meanwhile, kept his cool significantly better by sliding his hands into his pockets and keeping his face still while his heart raced. "Romance?"

"Romance!" Pixie said. "That's your cover story."

Starchaser cocked her head and hissed. "What are you talking about, you psychic fungus?"

"Obviously, a whirlwind romance between you and the hunky Krull captain is why you decide to let him go," Pixie said, patting John's chest. "Torrid! Passionate! Opposites attract! Enemies to lovers. These are all vital cultural touchstones of any civilization that uses the SOF for any length of time. Your crews have regulations on it, I checked!" She held out her hand, focusing as she did so, and text began to scroll out of her palm like a glowing hologram. Starchaser and John both leaned in - but then Starchaser hissed.

"The Davidge Article is an old UNN-IAN regulation, it's only in our books because the Zemturga folded old Paw fleet into their new slave armada!" Starchaser said. "That can't possibly still apply." She paused. "Can it?"

John, who was still reading, murmured. "Romantic entanglement with enemy combatants are permissable so long as the two are trapped for a sufficient length of time in neutral and dangerous situations, see fig B..." He lifted his gaze from the text. "This is to cover combat pilots fucking on deserted planets, not falling in love with an enemy captain."

"Slave revolt," Pixie said. "Trapped you in the aft cargo section until the crew masticated them. During that time, torrid, wild passion over took the Krull captain and his Paw guest. Love, blooming in the squalid holes of darkness!" She clutched her hands to her chest.

"That is so crazy it just might work," Starchaser said, rubbing her chin slowly.

John had to admit, based on his readings of Interstellar Alliance regulations and the various case studies that he had had to take in the Academy - famous examples of romance flaring to life in the long and desperate war against the Zemturga - there was a legal precedent. Save for one problem: "The Davidge Article and similar regs were only ever enforced by our side. I'm pretty sure the Zemturga executed their pilots when they got them back."

"That depends on what part of the Totality it is," Starchaser admitted. "We Paw remember...at least...some of our origins." She looked ashamed. "Not nearly enough."

Pixie clapped her hands together. "I'll get the bed ready!"

John grabbed her arm as she started to scoot off. "Hold on," he said. "This little plan of yours doesn't actually require a bed. It's called acting, Pixie."

"...actually," Starchaser said, then reached up, tapping her nose.

"Really?" John asked.

"The Paw sense of smell is incredible. Even our space armor suits are built to support it," she said, shrugging one shoulder as her tail flicked from side to side.

"Can't I just rub up against you?" he asked as Pixie buzzed with excitement in his grip.

"No, the scent has to get deep in there," Starchaser said, her voice sounding nowhere close to resentful or regretful. "Like. Really. Deep. In there."

Pixie was literally vibrating so fast that her psychically manifested body was a blur. John sighed, softly.

"The things I do for the New Interstellar Alliance," he said, his eyes darting down to admire the very, very, very short leather skirts of the Paw Captain. Starchaser smirked at him, then mimed a pawing gesture with her hand as Pixie's blur expanded with a widening eeeeeeeeeeeee noise. John released her and she shot off so fast that the wall rippled with the psychic shockwave.

Starchaser sauntered after her.

Rolling her hips.

***

"So, think the Captain is railing the catgirl?" Eugene asked as he watched the Pallas class frigates circling around the ship. Shey, who was busy tapping away at her console, glanced up and shrugged one blue shoulder.

Albert grumbled. "This is bullshit," he said. "Why don't we get any alien poon?"

"You fucked me last shift," Shey said, turning to face him.

"And you fucked Kat two shifts ago," Eugene pointed out, amiably.

"Yeah, but...Kat and Shey don't count!" Albert said. Shey, Triana and Eugene all looked at him. Albert lifted his hands. "They're buddies, not aliens."

"Did I turn pink since I last checked?" Shey asked, grinning.

"Buddy!" Albert said. "I'm just saying, why don't we ever get any strange? I'm a daring space pilot dude. I should be attracting just as much hot alien pussy, right?"

"Nope," Triana said. "Captain's get most of the weirdness. Then it filteres down through the crew on proximity." She started to waggle her hands, moving down. "The space opera field induction curve follows the same inverse square law effect of a laser in realspace, save with metapsychic relations rather than in physical space. So, every rank below captain you get, you're actually getting the metapsyche difference, squared. Sharp enough dropoff that most of the crew outside of the bridge crew barely even notice anything weird save for the gossip chains." She grinned. "You should thank your lucky stars. Imagine running a fusion powered starship with most of the crew being-"

A brilliant flash of white light surrounded Eugene. When it faded, his uniform sloughed to the ground, completely empty.

"-abducted," Triana finished.

"Shit," Shey whispered.

"Oh come on!" Albert groaned. "He can't even have fun! He has a girlfriend!"

***

Lt. Eugene Xao frowned as he looked left, then right, then up, then down. Right: His arm was restrained by gleaming silver chains. Left: His arm was restrained by even more chains. Up: A gleaming yellow lamp, filled with crawling insects that cast jagged shadows across his body. The bugs writhed around one another, driven about in mindless agony by the brilliant light that was shining directly onto themselves. Down: A grating of steel and murky water, dripping and moist. He sighed, softly.

His own body?

Completely buck ass naked.

"Great," he said. "This is a Krull dungeonship, isn't it?"

"Clever, Terran..." A soft, purring voice came from the shadows. Glittering compound eyes glinted back at Eugene as the light shifted with the motion of the bugs.

Eugene lifted his chin. "I'm Eugene Xao, bedslave of the Zemturga Totality."

"The first lie. How fascinating..." the Krull said, his voice slightly higher pitched than the rumbly bass that Eugene had heard in the training vids. "You are aboard the ship that the catbitches have been waiting for."

"Waiting for?" Eugene asked.

Those gleaming compound eyes - the only thing he could truly see in the shadows - shifted in the darkness. "We've been keeping an eye on the Paw, as they have been keeping an eye on us in Trade-1. Everyone knew that they were waiting for something. For someone. And then a mysterious ship arrives at the edge of the system and is met by three rockfucker frigates - and lo, the cargo inspection went on and on. Reports from our snooper spies are that the Captain of one of those frigates has fallen for your Captain. And so, we snatch you - easy enough..." The silhouette of the Krull interrogator spread one hand to the side, and it caught the light - greenish fingers curling up into a fist. "...and now you will tell us more than you could possibly imagine."

Eugene arched an eyebrow. He had not done as much studying on psychic phenomenon as the Captain, but he knew that whoever had snatched him couldn't be a multitalent. If they were strong enough to pull him off a bridge and to wherever this ship was, even if it was within an AU of the Excalibur, then they'd have been strong enough to bust through his mental walls with telepathy no matter how much it was a secondary or tertiary mode. That meant this psychic had to be a monotalent: A single powerful esper, with the ability purely focused on teleportation.

But he knew, also, that merely being here would blow the Excalibur's cover if they could prove he was an officer.

Fortunately, the teleport hadn't brought his clothes. He shifted a bit and half closed his eyes, regarding the shadowy Krull as if he was the Captain. What had his interrogation class been?

Determine who is interrogating you, and tailor your response to their cultural eccentricities...

Sadly, the Krull tailoring had been a rather upsettingly frank series of suicide methods. Not even painless ones. You take an out you can get with the Maliceocracy, sadly, the instructor had said. Eugene frowned and shelved that idea. He had a girl back home that was waiting for him, damn it.

The Krull took a step forward. The light shining from overhead cascaded along his...

No...

Along her shoulders. The Krull was no male interrogator at all! Her compound eyes were set to either side of her surprisingly dainty nose, her lips relatively thin and her tusks small and easily missed. Her skin was somewhere between lime green and sea green, with tufts of fur along the backs of her arms and the sides of her thighs. She, like most Krull, went nude thanks to her thick skin and her slabs of heavy muscle, which rippled along her curvacious form. Her breasts were full, perky, and her nipples were pierced with gleaming skull-headed studs, connected by a barbed chain that hung down to her belly. She had a small loop of leather around her curvy hips, and dangling from it was a particularly natsy looking Krull pain-wand. She caressed it with her fingers, grinning slowly.

"Now, firstly, you are no pleasure slave," she purred.

Eugene gulped, slightly. "No, I'm not," he said, his heart thumping in his chest. There had to be some method out of this that wasn't suicide. Think. He thought about what Captain Tangent would do. He had been best friends with John for his whole life and...

Could that work?

He frowned, slightly, while the Krull woman chuckled softly. "What are you? An escaped Terran battler? One of those United Nations Navy officers we've heard sooooo much about?" Her blunt fingers slid along his muscular chest. The touch reminded him of Angela, who waited for him back on Zeta Colony. Angela had stroked his chest just so on their going away coupling, when he had carried her to the bed and-

The Krull interogatrix jerked her hand back, hissing. "What was that?"

"So, you have some mind reading, huh?" Eugene asked. "I guess even a monotalent can pick up something from skin to skin contact like that."

"If you think you can drive me off by thinking of such repellent thoughts..." The Krull sniffed. "You have another think coming, Terran."

Eugene lifted his chin, his voice serious. "And yet, you can't stop those thoughts from entering your head - not without stopping up your ears!" He leaned forward against his chains. "I met my love Angela when I was twelve years old and the frisbee I was playing with landed on her lap - I didn't know why she was in a float chair and asked her if she wanted to run around with me. But she said that she couldn't walk, so I offered to push her around if she wanted. And she said that she didn't need my help and flew off!" He grinned. "And that's when I first knew I wanted to spend more time with her. She was so beautiful and she didn't even realize it."

The Krull hissed, drawing back into the shadows. "You...you can't believe that would work on me!"

Eugene licked his lips. "Our first date was when were in high school - I asked her out and she agreed to come with me to the cinema! We sat side by side and watched a romantic comedy together - and she thought that it was the funniest movie in the universe, but all I cared was that she was happy and holding my hand."

"Nnh...silence!" The Krull interogatrix growled. She surged forward, her pain-wand in her hand. She lifted it and jabbed it into his belly. Eugene clenched his jaw as agony exploded along his nerves like white hot fire. He gasped, then threw his head back. The Krull interogatrix's eyes flashed with fury as she sneered, showing off her tusks and her sharpened teeth. "Not so funny now, huh? Your perverse little stories have had no effect on me. But my pain-wand? Yes! Not so easy to-"

"We...made love!" Eugene gasped out. "I had to carry her to the bed! Ah! Like a prince! In the old...books!" He screamed the words out through the agony as the Krull's face twist. She trembled and pushed harder - but he forced the words out. "She said...ah...that she'd love me until the end of time!"

"Auuuuuuuuuugh!" The Krull's hands leaped to her temples as her pain-wand crashed into the metal grating of the floor, sparking and hissing. Eugene went limp, the relief from the agony so intense that he almost passed out. He gasped in, then forced out the words, bringing to mind every memory he had of his girlfiend back on Zeta Colony.

"I spread her thighs with my hands and kissed my way down her belly, s-saying every inch of the way how much I loved her!" he said, raggedly as sweat beaded and dripped along his muscular frame. "She moaned my own name as if it was the name of the Gods!"

"No! No!" The Krull clutched at her head, falling onto her back, writhing. "The sweetness...the agonizing saccharine!" She rolled onto her belly, then started to crawl desperately towards the door. Her hand reached out - for some call button, he was sure. So Eugene played his trump card. He leaned forward against his restraints.

"Push that button and every Krull on the ship will know you've been defeated by a measly human," he said, panting softly.

The Krull froze, her fingers mere centimeters from the shadowed button.

"...she asked me to marry her a year before, but I knew we would be sailing. So, instead, I said we'd marry when we returned. I kept a lock of her hair by my bed, in a stasis field, and I think of her every night. My beloved Angela, waiting for me to return home and complete our lives together, in love and matrimony!" Eugene continued. The Krull's shriek was loud and futile - rebounding off the sound proofed walls of the dungeon. She writhed upon her back, her hands clutching at her ears, trying to stop out the words. "She says my eyes are more beautiful than the stars themselves!"

"Nooooooooo!" The Krull's back arched, and she let out one more shriek, then went limp, collapsing to the ground. A thin line of black blood dribbled from one of her ears as she breathed shallowly. Eugene sagged with relief, his head hanging forward.

"Now for th...the hard part." He wriggled and squirmed against his restraints. He felt the faint give of flesh, and breathed a sigh of relief. A lot of Terran strengths were not as well known by the Totality as they should have been - but considering the UNN had joined the war relatively late...he wrenched hard and bit back a scream as he dislocated his thumb and got his wrist out of the restraints. He panted, hanging his head forward, then leaned and stretched his good fingers out. The pain-wand came into his palm and he touched the sparking tip to the other silvery chain, turning it to maximum. It started to slowly but surely melt through the metal.

The chain came free. Then the other. He dropped, hissing as he held his hand to his chest. He started towards the door-

And a thick hand closed around his ankle. The Krull interrogator snarled. "No you don't!" she hissed, furiously. Power began to flow through her body, feeling to Eugene like a crackling buzz of static electricity. He frantically drew his foot back.

His heel and her nose met at the same moment the power discharged.

Eugene dropped, fell, hit some soft dirt, and tumbled forward. He rolled, grunting and yelping as soft dirt slapped against back, front, side. He came to a stop on his back, panting, and saw that he was on a bright pink hillside. The pinkish dirt he had rolled down plumed into the air as a chalky cloud that obscured the heavens - teal and green, with a sharp edge of obsidian black cutting through it. The ring system of a nearby gas giant. His lungs didn't burn, and his skin didn't boil, so he supposed it had oxygen and pressure.

Then, roaring, the Krull interrogator leaped atop him.

"You made me misjump!" She snarled, grabbing onto his throat, squeezing fiercely. "You Terran worm!"

Eugene clutched at her wrists, then brought his knee up into her muscular belly. It was no use - it was like kneeing against a tree-trunk. He grunted, then closed his eyes. He focused, and brought to mind the adorable, giggly little snort that Angela let out when he surprised her with a really dry pun. The hands squeezing the life from his throat sprang free as if he was red hot and the Krull yelped. Eugene rolled away, coughed, drew in some breath, then swept his gaze around to take stock of the terrain: The hill led up to a brackish pool of black liquid, surrounded by dark blue and teal plants with broad leaves. There was also a rock. He grabbed the rock and swung it against the Krull's head as she shook herself.

She reacted faster than he thought possible. Her arm lifted up, blocking the blow, and sending the rock tumbling away. Then she smashed her head into his forehead - the blow weakened only by her off balanced stance and by Eugene flinging himself backwards to try and avoid. It still left him seeing stars. He shook his head, trying to clear his image - then felt the air driving out of his lungs as the Krull tackled him. They sprawled, rolled, came to a stop beside the pool with the Krull woman on her back.

She reached up, but Eugene shoved her wrist with with one arm, dodging the other grasp, leaning forward. She grabbed onto his hair, squeezing him tightly as their eyes met, their bodies pressing together. Softly, Eugene panted - and the Krull's compound eyes softened as she looked up at him. He realized, then, just how beautiful compound eyes could be - like glittering gemstones, catching and refracting the curious pinkish light of this moon.

Their mouths met, frantically, warmth flooding his body. Her tongue was broad and eager, her tusks pressing against his lower lip like tiny exclimation points. His hand went limp against her wrist, his other hand sliding along her muscular side as she moaned into his mouth. When Eugene broke the kiss, it was for air, not for hesitation. Her thigh lifted up, her knee sliding against his side, baring herself - her hairless sex gleaming with eagerness as she rocked her hips up. Her excitement filled the air, a thick musk that made Eugene's head spin and his own arousal flare even brighter as the deadly adrenaline of combat transmuted into the heady aphrodisiac of lust.

He leaned forward, kissing her neck, biting her greenish skin as his hips bucked. His cocktip ground against her sex, feeling the blazing heat of her. She groaned, then whispered. "No, we can't...I...I'm a Krull warrioress, not a...oh by the Cruel Ones!" She moaned as his hips bucked and his member drove into her hot, needy alien cunt. His balls clapped against her meaty, muscular buttocks and she clutched the back of his head as Eugene kissed down to her nipple, sucking her hard, dark green nub greedily as her leg locked around his back.

Eugene drew half out of her, feeling her sex tightening around him as if she didn't want him to leave her. His mouth released her nipple and he kissed he neck, nibbling - and she melted against him, moaning softly. "Oh it does feel better without the pain condoms..."

Eugene barked a laugh. "That's why they're called- nevermind." He shook his head, his hips starting to drive themselves now. He needed no thought, nothing but the raw, fierce instinct of the moment as he bucked his hips, fucking his alien enemy into the pinkish dust of the distant moon. His balls made meaty thock noises as they slapped against her green ass as the Krull maiden lifted her arms above her head, gripping a nearby stump to anchor herself as her hefty green breasts bounced in time with his fucking. She moaned softly.