The Last Of Hukke's Prisoners

Reverse speech. In the latter days of Earth, before it exploded into the shards and stones of the new asteroid belt that surrounds the sun in place of the old orbiting planet, the science of reverse speech had been a vanguard of the increasingly peaceful society that had inhabited most countries. For those that may not know, science had discovered that all people, everywhere, spoke two distinct languages simultaneously. One language, the conscious spoken word, is understood with the left brain and the conscious mind; the other, spoken in metaphors and emanating from the right brain, and in reverse, happens simultaneously and is understood subliminally. The information dispensed from the right brain appears in the conscious mind as intuition.

One of the benefits of this discovery was the increasing inability for people to lie to each other. There was no way to squelch the intrepidly truthful right brain and as people learned to pick up the intuitive information as second nature, duplicity became impossibility. Conversely, Mother Nature became more and more erratic. As mankind became more ordered and peaceful, the planet frayed at the edges. The whole earth became hotter and hotter each summer, tornadoes became unseasonable and flooding forced entire countries to take up residence with their inland neighbors. The same science that had tamed the devil within mankind could find no answer to the dissolution of the planet. The only answer was to build environmental cones over major cities and huge anti-gravitational complexes beneath the city streets. Once finished, these flying cities lifted off from the bosom of their mother as the inner core of the earth exploded. Only Tokyo, lagging behind the fleeing herd, was caught in the blasting expansion.

None of this was any help to me at the moment. I sat in a booth at the local Hoovers, sampling the only beer to be found in the universe and awaiting a to-go plate to be brought to me by the pretty blue skinned waitress. Across from me at my table, with a blaster aimed at my head, sat the bounty hunter known as Gretch. His green head and alien eyes where just a bit too large for the rest of his frame, and his lack of a neck was functional to the extent that his whole upper torso was used to keep him balanced and not helplessly face down in a gutter somewhere.

“I know who you are.” he said.

“Really? Why don’t you tell me and we’ll both know.” I said sarcastically. I slowly reached for my atomizer beneath the table which I had placed on the seat next to me.

The moment was an unusually tense one for me since he not only had the drop on me, but he was also impossible to read. All my right brain reading abilities only helped me with humans, and since humans were now a race thrown far and wide across the galaxy, reverse speech was barely a help when dealing with the “wild west” attitude of aliens in space.

“You are the man who destroyed Arnim Hukke and brought down his regime. You are the man with the dragon on his back. A man with a high price on his head.” The aliens’ black eyes hid his intentions as he spoke, but I had the feeling he would rather have brought me into the makeshift remnant of Hukke’s officials in a living state, rather than as a dead husk.

“If that were true,” I answered calmly, as I began to grip the trigger on my atomizer, “why in the universe would I come back here to this hell hole of a planet?”

“Guilt, perhaps… due to the fact that you helped to create this uncivilized disaster of a society that was once proud and strong.”

“The man you’re looking for wasn’t the one who crushed his own people under his heel, now is he? He wasn’t the one who lived in a palace while his people starved.”

“Hukke was a hard man….. true, but his people never wanted. They never did without.”

“You’re talking about his family, not his people… if I had been this man you’re looking for, I would have assisted the rebel alliance, too… but I certainly wouldn’t be so crazy as to return here, risking my life once again for practically nothing.”

He gripped his gun tightly and ordered, “Take off your shirt, human, and prove to me you are not the man with the dragon tattoo.”

I nodded as if that would be the easiest thing in the world to do, “Okay….” I said as I made a move like I was going to open my jacket, but instead I raised my atomizer below the table and fired into his midsection.

I jerked my shoulders to the right and avoided the ray he shot off involuntarily in response to the disorienting shock of having his stomach and intestines turned to jelly with the loosening of their atomic structure. His eyes spun in his head, and his tongue leapt from his mouth as he hissed a nasty gaseous odor and made a sound like an accordion dying.

“GAAAAhhhhhaaaaa!!!” he spat out. His dark eye covers flipped from their positions beneath his eye lids, bouncing and dancing on the table between us and revealed his cross-eyed sky blue irises.

The stench from his spilled inner liquids hitting the open floor at our feet rose quickly above the table and made me nauseous. His head slammed down on to the table and he slumped backwards against the wall. Immediately the establishment guards saw his brusk movement and headed through the crowded restaurant for my table, within moments, their black helmeted forms stood high above me expecting some sort of explanation.

“Damn! Smell that???” I offered. “He farted and knocked himself out.” I said with disgust.

The guards looked under the table and made waving movements like they couldn’t stand the stench either. “Whew!” said one of the guards in an electronically altered voice. “He crapped all over your boots!”

“Friggin drunks!” said the other guard. “Help me get him out of here, Tam. Sorry, sir, we’ll get this cleaned up for you.”

“How do you let this scum get in here anyway?” I asked.

“Have you been out on the street, sir? This whole planet’s crawling with ‘em!” the first guard replied, and they both grabbed Gretch and dragged him to the back door and out into the night.

I pulled my feet around to the side of the booth and took a look at the aliens’ spilled blue green insides all over my boots. They were ruined, but I was still alive. I hadn’t expected bounty hunters to be looking for me amidst all this mess almost a year after the war had ended. It seemed like a century ago my ship had swooped in out of nowhere during the final resistance battle and blasted Hukke’s ship into dust just as he was about to deliver a death blow to the rebel fighters. I had gone my separate way, back to my life of illegal hooch trafficking, and me and my partner Crunchy had made quite a profit over the last year operating in a galaxy now over run with disarray and random acts of violence.

I’d have to radio Crunchy and warn him to turn on the ship cloak, get the engines rolling so we could take off immediately. My intuition had been nagging me to return here. I didn’t know why …yet. All too often it spoke to me in single syllables and I knew better than to ignore its’ call. Go back to the planet, it had told me. Go. Unfinished business. Go. I had been here only a short time and now my life was in danger once again on this planet. I decided that perhaps the opening of Gretch’s bowels was the final business to be done. I was happy. Now I would leave post haste.

I headed out into the night and once on the street I popped open my communicator and notified Crunchy of our immediate departure. I held in my other hand the go plate of the food I had been eating in Hoovers, with the full intention of finishing once I was again on board. Suddenly there was a voice behind me.

“Hey, mista…” a pale gray elephant-man looking alien said to me, “you got any change? Maybe some of that food?”

He was ragged and malnourished. He also struck a chord inside me that drew me to help him instead of dismiss him… and as I have said, I rarely ignore my intuition.

I pulled up my blaster and with a snarl I said, “Get in that alley, muther fucker!”

He visibly shook with fear and begged, “No, no …listen, mista… I just wanted to get something to eat…please!”

I pushed the blaster to his head and he backed down into the alley. Once we were out of the crowded street and hidden by the darkness, I pulled my blaster down and handed him my to-go plate.

“Eat! And make it fast!” I ordered. “I’ll stand by and make sure no assholes try to take this from you.”

He looked at me with wild eyed surprise and worry, but he didn’t hesitate to gulp down the food I had given him. I told him, “The gun was just a ruse, to make others think twice about following us….. you get it?”

“MMM-hmmm!” he responded while seeming to “die” under the effects of hot food going down his pipe once again, perhaps for the first time in a long time.

Suddenly there was a voice behind me – a decidedly female voice. “Hold it right there!” the voice demanded. “What the hell do you think you are doing?”

I turned and was dumbfounded by the sudden vision of an incredibly sexy and beautiful girl. She was about 5-5 and 98 pounds, but built like a brick shit house. Standing there at the mouth of the alley she had her fists resting on her hips and her chin thrust forward with all the confidence of someone who had either faced down many a man with a blaster, or someone who was looking to have another person escort them violently to the next life time.

Her wavy dark red hair flowed down her back and over her shoulders and she wore a halter top dress with huge blue and white alternating vertical stripes. The material was something I had seen only on soldiers who went on long missions into uninhabitable war zones. The material was a rubbery consistency, like that of a squid, but it fed and cared for it’s wearer like a living barometer that measured the nutritional and physical needs of it s owner and then, like a topical agent, it supplied or fixed what ever problems it was designed to diagnose. I hypothesized that the girl must be wearing it to feed herself, for she was just a bit bony and far too brave to have lasted here on this hell hole of a planet for too long with only a dress made of some soldiers outfitting.

“Hey, lady…” I protested. “I was just feeding him…”

She hurried over to where we were and looked down at the alien who had now sunk down to the street and seemed to be passing out. “Do you see what you’ve done? You bastard!”

“What the hell happened to him?? He was just eating ….”

“He can’t eat everything you and I can…. He’s not like a human!”

“Hey, good point.” I surmised. “What the hell are you doing here anyway? I didn’t think humans were this far out.”

Ignoring me she crouched down to lift the alien to his feet. “Don’t worry about me, help me get him up!”

In my intuition, the word“Valkyrie” popped into my thoughts. I was intrigued, it had been sometime since I had read right brain speech, and I was glad to still have the talent. Then the word“Wounded” sprang up.

I crouched with her and we both took an alien arm and lifted him to his feet. She had very little strength and I had to carry the alien on my side with most of his weight, which actually, wasn’t that much anyway.

I looked across the aliens’ head to the beauty on the other side as we made our way out of the alley and down the street. She was incredible! Chiseled cheeks and ruby red lips, the large soulful eyes were dark, and their color evaded me in the night . But the intention behind them was both intense and fearless…. Or at least that what it appeared to be at first glance. She struggled greatly with her side of the alien, not being in the best physical shape herself, huffing and puffing as we worked our way to some unknown destination. But she didn’t complain …. And it touched me somewhere deep inside my own being that this strange, beautiful girl would so risk her life and safety for another species. What the hell was she doing here?????

We made our way about a block or so and entered an old rotted husk of a building. Once inside the musty and dark place I could see beings of other species all laying out on the floors and beds in a great mass of homeless and starving life. This was some sort of shelter for these people, and no doubt, I had just met the director.

Setting the alien down on a couch, I turned to her and said, “Listen, I can fix this. My atomizer can re-assemble him good as new. It’ll be like nothing ever happened to him.”

“Bull-shit!” she spat out. “Do I look stupid? You’ve done enough! Now please go back to whatever sadistic planet you came from and leave these poor people alone!”

I grabbed her shoulders and pushed my nose into her face. “Hey, shut the fuck up! Watch what I can do, before I knock your silly ass out!”

She backed away from me visibly shaken and wary eyed. I pulled out my blaster and adjusted the settings. With a breathless voice she almost whispered to me, “Please, don’t kill these people…. They are mine to take care of. Do what you want to me, but leave them be.”

“Why?” I asked aiming the blaster at the elephant-man. “Why doesn’t it matter what happens to you?”

“My life story is none of your concern.” She replied looking off into some distant, imaginary world.

But in my intuition the word“Fault” popped forward. I fired the blaster at elephant-man and his atomic structure began to loosen and divide, he turned into a bee-like swarm of loose and flowing matter. After a few seconds, I lowered the blaster and he returned to solid flesh. The whole time the girl stood there with her hands over her mouth and her eyes fearful and worried about the outcome of my actions. When he suddenly rolled over and sat up, seemingly in the best health of his life… she almost collapsed.

She fell backwards against the nearby wall and stuttered, “That’s …. That’s not possible!!!!!”

Elephant man turned to me, he was wild eyed and looking quite healthy, he too, was amazed that he could once agin feel this way. “You….you did that???” he said to me. “I feel like I could ramp the forniglad once again!!!”

I supposed this meant something to him, something like a great ability his people enjoy on his home world which he was no longer privy to. “Yeah,” I said. “You could go do that now…whatever that is…”

The girl grabbed hold of my arm and said, “How many of these people can you restore like that?”

“With enough power, I could restore them all. But I can’t fix the hell hole they live in. Eventually they will return to their former state.” I said matter of factly.

She nodded her understanding and scanned the rest of the fallen homeless in the room. “I know just what you mean.” She whispered.

While she stood there I took a liberty and caught a look at those magnificent gams of hers that flowed out from under the rubber dress. They were quite nice, all shapely and muscled. Even the feet in her dirty sandals were finely shaped and very female. Was I a person who liked feet all that much, it might have been enough for me to get a hard on, but her legs were good enough to get me feeling a bit randy…. Oh, and of course the wonderfully rounded cleavage of her breasts was fully on display also. I wanted her in the worst kind of way… but I had to ask my self a question: Who in this hell hole was she showing legs and cleavage to?

“Where’s you husband?” I asked her.

She looked down and away from me, “I don’t have any family….anymore” she said.

I put my hand under her chin and lifted her eyes to mine, which I could now see in the dim light were a kind of hazel color, but there was a great sadness behind them. “What kind of girl are you, “I asked with concern, “that approaches strange men with blasters in dark alleys and dresses like a dance hall girl for no reason at all?”

“It doesn’t matter what happens to me….” She seemed to repeat with an air of finality that began to give me chills.

“What HAS happened to you?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Nothing that shouldn’t …” she said with all the conviction of a martyr.

In my mind the word“Dress” popped forward. “Lift up your dress,” I ordered her.

She looked at me with indignity, “Are you out of your mind???”

Then the word“MAKE”came forward.

I grabbed her upper arm and dragged her into a back room, she protested the whole way. Once there I spun her around and pointed the blaster straight at her. “Undress!” I ordered or I will leave these people with no one to care for them!”

“I hate you for this!” she spat.

Just then the elephant-man came running into the back room in a huff. “Mista! Mista! No, don’t hurt her… she cares for us all!! I beg ya!!”

“Okay,……..” I said to him, “tell me why she puts herself out to be killed ……or worse the way she does!”

She gave him an angry look, “Tell him nothing, Crayt! He mustn’t know!”

He hesitated between us and I lifted the blaster to her head. “Okay! Okay!” he said with his hands up in a surrender gesture, “She gets raped all the time, beaten up and left for dead… but she’s all we have defending us.”

“Not much of a defense,” I commented. I fired the atomizer at her dress and she tried to back away against the wall to avoid the inevitable. The material buzzed and flowed and then disappeared.

She tried vainly to cover herself with her hands but it was to no avail. “OOOOOHHH…you bastard!” she groaned.

I lifted up the blaster next to my head and focused on her loins for a better look. She had been savagely violated. Her lovely round hips seemed ready to give birth with their shape and curves, but her inner body was black and blue with abuse… not to mention some dark splotches of matter which I had no clue to what they might have been. Her inner thighs, up near her sex, where veined with bruises.

“Good God, girl!” I said with amazement. “You’ve allowed this, haven’t you?”

“AAAAAUUUGGGHHH!!!” she frustratingly groaned as she slowly sat on the filthy floor in an attempt to hide the rest of herself from me. Her eyes refused to meet mine, and she tucked her chin down on her chest.

Elephant-man stepped up next to me and begged, “Please mista, she ain’t done no wrong to be treated like this!

I nodded. “Don’t worry, my friend, I have the blaster for this job.” I said raising my gun to take another aim at the huddled mass of girl before me.

She stuck out her hand to me with out looking up and pleaded, “NOOOO!! You mustn’t!!!! You can’t!!!”

“I’ve had enough of this crap!” I said, impatient with the pity party, and I atomized her nude form.

She swirled and churned in a loose conflagration of atoms and then after a few seconds, I returned her to solid form.

“Wow! Mista! You done good!” elephant-man said patting me on the back, he was obviously delighted at the improvements my “re-booting” of the girl had made.

She stood from her crouched position, looking at her own hands and then her now beautiful clean female parts. She was now full-bodied, about twenty pounds heavier and filled out. She wore the weight well, and her color was a wonderfully healthy hue. Her face was no longer chiseled and bony but now had a healthy roundness, her breasts were pert and fresh looking, nicely rounded and their nipples pointed out and slightly up. Her tummy was magnificently flat and had that athletic look of a gymnast. The legs were toned and powerful, they gave her all the symmetry of a race horse, and I bet she could have out run one right about now. But the most startling change was the bright shine in her eyes. Re-booting will do that to you…. The body, mind and spirit are all re-made. A person is truly born again, ……but without having to go through the embarrassing childhood.

She looked inwardly with wonder and said, “My God! It’s like it was all a distant dream! I … I can’t feel the pain anymore!!! I can’t feel anything but …..but the best I have ever felt!”