“Come on baby, come on.” I watched with growing anticipation as the food replicator began to glow.
The machine looked like a straight-up convection oven, only it was chrome, glowed bright blue rather than red, and could create over a million types of food.
Sounds great, right?
The only problem was that out of the over one million types of food, none of them were from Earth. But Purshia tweaked the thing again, and she was sure this time she had gotten it right.
Any moment now it would be cheeseburger time!
Ella, Purshia, and Val stood behind me, waiting giddily for what I had told them would be the best thing they had ever eaten.
Ding! The replicator stopped glowing, and a small frosted window opened.
“Oh yeah.” My mouth watered as the delicious, tangy, singular smell of beef drifted out of the microwave-sized machine.
I wiped my sweaty hands on my uniform, licked my lips, and reached for the glass plate. The girls made way as I brought the dish over to the large, circular table on the other side of the galley.
I took a seat, my eyes locked on the juicy goodness before me. They gathered around and waited with bated breath. The machine had created a perfect replica of an American cheeseburger. The meat looked like the real deal, the bun was brown and puffy, and the melted cheese draped over the sides like a family quilt covered a bed.
“Come to papa,” I said, mouth watering.
I picked up the burger. The bun was warm and soft, and the smell sharpened, tickling delightful memories or all the great burgers I’d eaten on Earth. I brought it to my mouth, closed my eyes, and took a bite.
It tasted like sawdust soaked in beef bouillon.
I spit it out and wiped my mouth. “Damn, I thought we had it this time.”
The girls groaned, crestfallen.
“I’ll tweak the replicator some more.” Purshia kissed my cheek and gave me a reassuring smile.
Ella sat down across from me with a dish from her home world. “Maybe next time. Until then, you wanna share?”
“What is it?”
“Roasted vhael with gherkak roots and greens.”
“I like vhael, right?” I asked, unsure. The girls had kind of been competing with each other to see which of their people’s foods I liked the best, and they’d been making me eat all kinds of things—some good and some that made sautéed lips and assholes sound appetizing.
We’d been in space for three Earth days, destination Zentary Station, and Purshia realized we were low on fuel. We should have filled up before we left, but with all the bullets flying around, and the ship falling apart around us, it hadn’t been an option. Luckily Zentary station was only a five-day flight. There we’d be able to fill up on krek dust to power the ship and pick up other supplies.
After Zentary we hadn’t really decided where we were going next. I couldn’t exactly return to Earth with a nanohand attached to my arm after being missing for more than a week, and the girls didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get to their home worlds either.
I tossed the nasty ass burger into the incinerator and felt a large hand cup my ass cheek. I turned and glanced up at Val, who had a mischievous grin on her face.
“Let me sooth your troubled mind,” she said softly.
“Are you feeling better now?” I asked. Her Aunt Flo had visited during the journey, and we hadn’t yet had a chance to let the spark between us burn brighter.
She smiled, picked me up, and threw me over her shoulder.
Ella whistled from the table as Val carried me to her sleeping quarters. Purshia had figured out how to download the music I had on my phone onto the ship’s computer, and a remix of “Let’s Get It On” played through the PA system.
Val kicked the door closed behind her and tossed me on the bed. I have to admit I was a little intimidated by the Nozama woman. She was the biggest woman I’d ever seen, and the grin on her face made me feel like lunch. She wasted no time with slow teasing, but stripped off her clothes with steely determination. Each breast was as big as my head, and when she smooshed them against my face, I was literally left breathless.
“I’ve been waiting for this for many long nights,” she said into my ear, pressing my head between her huge cans. “I’ve had to watch you please Purshia and Ella with your big, throbbing—” She squeezed my family jewels and moaned.
I managed to pull my head out of her cleavage and greedily gulped air. Val laughed like a horny succubus and undressed me like she was opening a highly anticipated Christmas present. She grinned as she beheld my naked body. My cock was at full attention, diamond hard and jerking with my pulse,
“Oh, Harry….” She took me in her mouth and deep-throated my manhood.
My toes curled, and I gripped the sheets as she made love to my shaft with her warm mouth. The visual of the Amazonian-looking woman sucking me off fulfilled a fantasy that had been on my mind since I met her, but up until now she hadn’t been feeling well enough to act on our shared attraction.
She was feeling much better now, and it showed.
“I will show you what a woman can do with a tool like that.” Val straddled me and held my ten inch rod in her big hand, rose above me, big tits bouncing, then gently lowered herself onto it.
I’d never met a woman who could comfortably take my entire erection, but there was a first time for everything, and this proved to be one of those times. She moaned as it slid deeper. She gripped my pecs and arched her back, her breath shuddering with every inch that disappeared inside her. To my surprise and utter delight, she took the whole thing. She even ground against me to take even more.
“You feel amazing,” I said between kisses. I had one hand on her terrific ass and the other at the back of her neck.
“Harry, I have never been so fulfilled before. Never stop. I never want you to stop!”
I didn’t stop, but the music did, and Purshia’s voice came over the PA. “Uh, we’ve got a problem.”
“Not now,” I said and groaned. Unless the universe was imploding, I didn’t want to hear about it. I was on the verge of visiting heaven.
A moment later something, rocked the ship so hard that Val flew off my cock and tumbled to the floor.
“You all right?” I asked, helping her up.
She rushed to the window and gasped sharply. Had the grays finally caught up with us?
A giant ship was approaching, and it was sending out a beam of sparkling blue light that surrounded us.
“Is it the grays?” I asked.
“I do not know.” Val scowled at the ship. “But whoever they are, they’re going to pay for interrupting the best sex of my life.”
“Really, the best?”
She touched my cheek. “Don’t be coy.”
We hurriedly got dressed and raced to the bridge. Purshia was tapping furiously on her screens, turning dials, pulling levers, and cursing all the while, but nothing was working.
“They’ve got us in a tractor beam,” Ella yelled from her gunner station, which appeared to be offline, like half the displays in the ship.
“Who are they?” I drew closer and gazed at the ship, which had to be fifty times the size of ours. It looked like a big metal whale with wings, and as we were pulled toward it, a mouth-like bay began to open in front.
“Anyone recognize this ship?” Val asked as she enabled her laser gun nanoarm.
“No,” said Purshia. “I’ve never seen this model before, and it matches nothing in the computer’s database. The life-forms on the ship are quite varied, and none of them appear to be grays.”
“Any chance they’re friendly?” I asked.
“I doubt it.”
We waited with trepidation as we were drawn toward that gaping metal mouth and then inside. After the big ship had engulfed us fully, the main screen went black.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “We’re most likely outmanned and outgunned, and trying to fight our way out of this is going to get us all killed.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Purshia asked, joining the three of us.
“I think—” I was suddenly forced to my knees by a sharp pain that made every nerve in my body flare. The girls seemingly experienced the same thing, and for a moment we writhed on the deck in tortured agony.
“Resistance is ill advised,” said an eerie voice over the PA. “Drop your weapons and exit the craft.”
“Fuck you!” I yelled through the pain.
“If you will not come freely, you will be forced into submission,” we were warned.
“Fuck you and your mother!” I growled.
There was no reply, but the pain suddenly stopped. I would have been happy about that had my body not stood on its own and walked to the hall leading to the bay.
“What is this?” Val asked, horrified, as she stiffly marched beside me.
“How are they controlling our bodies?” Purshia wailed.
“Don’t you feel it?” Ella struggled to say. “They are somehow controlling the nanobots inside us.”
My organic left hand moved to my right and twisted off my nanoarm. It also relieved me of the grappling hook nanoarm and sword arm I carried on my belt, which were in their compact cylinder form. I heard the girl’s nanoarms hit the floor behind me, then I was walking through the door into the alien ship.
The air was stale and had a copper smell to it. We were in a big metal hanger not unlike those found on Earth, and there was a variety of alien life-forms going about their business. The space was huge. There were about twenty other spacecraft in the hanger that looked like fighter jets, only way cooler.
I walked down our ship’s ramp and was greeted by the snarls of two tall guards who were of the same race as the Sasquatch-like dude I had encountered in the grays’ arena. They were as tall as Val and carried massive cannons the way I’d hold guns.
“Any chance you two dudes have any Jack Link’s beef jerky?” I asked.
The one on the right snickered as I walked stiffly past him, and the other ogled the ladies with unmistakable desire.
The drogan we’d brought with us from the arena growled in the cargo bay.
Purshia freaked out. “If you touch a scale on Drogy’s head, I’ll rip your hearts out and eat them raw!” Her voice echoed through the football-field sized bay and was met by the keening call of the drogan.
“It’ll be all right, Drogy!” Ella called in a voice thickened with anxiety.
The Sasquatches fell in line behind us as we were marched against our will to a long hallway.
“Try to stay calm,” I urged Val when she protested the physical hijacking with mumbled expletives.
Beyond the cargo bay, the ship was a mess of copper pipes and thick snaking wires that ran along the porous metal walls. Piss yellow light issued from bulbs hung every four feet along the high, curved ceiling. The walls were too dirty and rusty to offer any reflection, and the gloom added to the eerie feeling of lurching like a mindless zombie with no control.
The copper smell was soon replaced by that of seawater and fish, and the humidity went up to 100 percent when I stepped through an arched doorway. I immediately felt hot and sweaty. The chamber was full of mist and aquamarine light that turned everything a light bluish-green. I could hear water splashing somewhere, but I couldn’t see it. I sloshed through two inches of water across the foggy chamber, which was becoming more and more swamp-like the farther I went. Ferns appeared, then small bushes with multicolored leaves and angry looking flowers. I felt eyes on me, but I couldn’t see anything other the occasional tiny creature scurrying in the water, small trees, and hanging vines.
“Welcome, my friends, to the Ardominus,” said a deep, rumbling voice.
A large form grew out of the mist, and the humid fog was parted by the creature’s breath. I was surprise at the appearance of the creature who had spoken. He looked like a cross between an octopus and a spider. His tentacles were long and slimy, but they were scaly and ended in three-toed feet. He sat upright on a throne of moss, his bulbous green and brown belly giggling as he breathed. Two long arms were open wide, and webs spread between the three fingers on the left hand. To my surprise, the right hand grew out of a nanoarm just like the ones we had worn.
“Release us immediately!” Val demanded. The octo-creature appeared amused.
“You call us friends,” I said calmly, “yet you took control of our bodies and forced us before you.”
“You should see what I do to my enemies.” He laughed deeply, his booming voice reverberating in my ribs.
“What do you want from us?”
“Right to the point. I like that.” He picked up a flat metal object and gave it a tap, and just like that, I had control of my body again.
No sooner had we been released than Val took three steps toward the throne and leaped through the air at the creature. Octo-dude pointed his nanoarm at her, and she was abruptly caught in a glowing ball of energy. He waved her away, and she slowly floated end over end across the room, pounding on the force field and screaming.
“Will you cooperate, or do you need more convincing?” Octo-dude tapped the metal pad again, and pain shot through me, bringing me to my knees once more.
“We’ll cooperate!” I gasped out through the pain. I would have told him to go pound salt a few more times before giving in, but the girls were in anguish, and I couldn’t stand to hear them like that.
He tapped his pad again, and the pain went away. I got to my feet, then helped up Purshia and Ella. Val floated over to us and was unceremoniously dropped on her ass.
“Now that I have your attention, I will explain why I brought you here. But first, introductions are in order. I am Orcag, captain of the Ardominus.”
“Harry Warwick,” I said. “This is Val, Purshia, and Ella—”
“Ell’Aharadia’Aquisaria,” said Orcag. “Yes, I am quite familiar with you all. I very much enjoyed watching the three of you work together during the 990th Vorak Games.”
“You stink like bad sushi,” Purshia blurted.
Orcag laughed. “That may be true, little one, but it is also true that by bringing you here, I have saved you from being found by the grays.”
“Explain yourself,” Val insisted.
I gave her a look that told her to chill out, then turned my attention to our captor. “You’ve fought in the arena.” I nodded at his nanoarm.
He grinned widely, showing off rows of teeth and a mouth he could fit my head into. “Yes, and I was the only winner.”
“And they let you go?”
“They never let their champions go.” He regarded his nanoarm. “They keep on using them until finally, inevitably, they are defeated. They have the same plans for you, and it is only a matter of time before they find you. The nanobots they put into your bodies act like a homing device, and until I brought you onto my ship, they were tracking your every move.”
I’d had a nagging feeling the grays would be able to find us through our nanobots, but none of us knew how to take them out.
“Have you found a way to remove them?” I asked, daring to hope.
“Better than that,” he said with a widening grin. He tapped on his tablet, and my sight instantly became better.
“You can control them like the game masters.” I said in awe.
“Master; I like that title.” Orcag chortled and slurped up a small jellyfish creature that was swimming by.
“So what’s your angle? What do you need from us?” Ella demanded.
Orcag slowly chewed and eyed us all in turn. His giant orbs seemed to see
right through me, but I tried to remain stoic.
“There is an artifact I dearly covet,” he said at length. “Steal it for me, and I shall give you ultimate control of your nanobots. Enhanced speed, endurance, sight—all available at your fingertips, and no grays stalking you like a shadow for the rest of your lives.”
I looked at my companions. They nodded agreement.
“We’ll do it,” I said. “But on one condition.”
“Which is?”
“First I want a goddamned American cheeseburger.”
Rather than hook me up with a cheeseburger, Orcag had us thrown in a holding cell. He said it wasn’t personal, but knowing we had escaped the grays’ arena, he wasn’t taking any chances.
The cells were constructed of good ol’ iron, but they were also backed up by an energy shield that was enabled as soon as I was thrown into my cell. The walls between the cells kept me from seeing the women, but when I asked if they were okay, they called out in the affirmative.
Orcag was smart to keep us apart. The girls and I had a way of getting out of hairy situations together.
He hadn’t elaborated on the plan to steal the artifact, whatever it was, or where or whom we were supposed to steal it from. The alien captain seemed like the kind of dude who had a lot of resources, and I wondered why he’d picked us for the heist. Maybe he thought we were disposable, or maybe he thought we could really do it.
One thing was certain: he really had us by the short and curlies with his control of the nanobots.
I should have been pissed at being abducted… again, but I was enticed by the idea of having full control over the nanobots. I still had a couple of the bonuses left from the arena that I hadn’t used yet, and the gray skull icon that only I could see was still floating near my brow. If we were given full control of the little bots inside our brains, we would be unstoppable.
But first we’d have to retrieve the mysterious artifact.
I wished he’d given us some idea what the heist entailed so I could at least mentally prepare, but he was an octo-dude of few words.
The low hum of the ship grew louder, and I felt a small vibration in the floor.
“Stellar speed in ten, nine, eight….” someone gruffly announced over the com.
Warwick: Episode 2: Galactic Fugitives Page 1
