by Athena Storm
With a hand against the rock face, it’s easy to keep balance and clamber to the mouth of the cave.
The opening is tall enough for me to enter standing, but it has to be a tight squeeze for the bulky Vakutan. Once past the crevice however, it opens into an ample cave with a shaft leading up to the ground above us letting in air and a trickle of light.
He has managed to get himself fairly wet, but I am well and truly soaked. At the sight of me, Duric unshoulders his satchel and hunkers down, digs into it, and comes up with a couple of thin survival blankets.
“Wrap up in one of these.”
I begin to put it around my sopping body.
“Don’t be stupid,” he says, “it won’t do anything if you’re wet like that.”
Picking up his implication, I raise an eyebrow at him. Nobody gets a free show.
He heaves out a beleaguered sigh, “I’ll go get some wood for a fire.”
As he squeezes through the narrow entrance, I call after him, “The path is easier to your left!”
Once he’s gone, I strip off my uniform, wring it out near the front of the cave, and find some rocks away from the spray to lay everything out to dry. When Duric crouches back in, I’m well wrapped in the itchy blanket.
“You’re right,” he says, “It is easier that way. But…” The rivulets of water still running down his face speak for him.
A small fire is going in short order and he fetches up one of the blankets, stepping behind a boulder to spare my modesty. The rock doesn’t conceal much and I get a healthy eyeful of his muscular build. Keeping his back to me only teases my curiosity. I see his full shoulders taper down to a tight waist above his remarkably well molded backside.
When he’s wrapped and turns back to me, I have to feign intense focus on some nearby patch of rubble to avoid being caught staring. Though, I’m sure he knows.
“How long have you been a Commander,” I ask, nodding to where his uniform is laid out.
“Long time.” He seats himself near me, “Every Vakutan serves the military when they come of age.”
“Which is six, right?”
His ridged face takes on an odd smile, “That’s right.”
“What?”
“Most humans don’t bother to learn anything about my kind.”
“I’m not most humans.” He nods at this and I nudge a little further, “Still, serving your own military doesn’t automatically join you up with the Alliance.”
“True,” he muses. “It’s an ambition for many of us. And we make up a pretty healthy chunk of their fighting force. But a Commander?” Duric gleams at me from the corner of his eye. “That’s something worth aspiring to.”
“Why the Alliance?”
He’s confused by my question.
“There are just as many opportunities for advancement with the Coalition. More I should think.”
“What are you saying?”
“Well, there are fewer Vakutan in the Coalition, so I imagine your particular skills would be an asset. It would be easier to rise in rank with them.”
Duric’s smile has vanished and his jaw juts forward, “I would never join the Coalition. None of us would. Any Vakutan who dares turn to them is a traitor.” He hasn’t raised his voice, but there’s definitely anger boiling at the edges.
“A traitor to what, exactly?” I’m not trying to goad him, though he certainly seems to be rising to the bait.
“Ask me that again.” His words sound very much like a threat.
“It’s just that it all seems to be about territory. Don’t misunderstand, I’ve studied the politics of your factions, but when you strip away the ideology it all comes down to who claims which regions. So, ultimately, whichever side you choose is irrelevant.”
“Never say that,” Duric explodes, rising to his feet and towering over me. “You studied the politics of our factions – how dare you talk to me like that,” his roaring voice turns the cave into an echo chamber and I’m engulfed in his rage. “You can never know!”
I’m way out of my depth. This naked Vakutan is towering over me in a fury, and I huddle against the wall behind me, trying to become as small as possible.
“Do you know where my people come from? The Shorcu created us. Bred us to be slaves for the coalition. Generations of Vakutan bled for our freedom and the Alliance fights for our deliverance. For justice. And you sit there with your degree in ‘our politics’ and tell me that we are the same? You are nothing but an ignorant, self-important, arrogant little human girl!”
Duric whips around and storms to the mouth of the cave, scraping through it, under the crashing water and out into the open air.
I’m panting against the rocks still echoing with his anger. You can smell it hanging in the air. For all my studying, I didn’t know the origin of his species. Not the part he said.
Curled up on this dirt floor, I feel very much the way he described me. Shame ices over my heart and for the first time today, tears roll down my cheeks.
I just saw the purest example of everything a Vakutan can be. Huge, proud, righteous; vigorous in anger, yet restrained in acting upon it. Every inch of him quaked with violence, but he demolished me with the force of his words.
When he returns – if he returns, I am going to owe him so much more than an apology.
Nine
Duric
Water pounds over my back as I slip through the falls. I emerge from the frothy water and blink it out of my eyes, still fuming over the ignorance of that human woman.
“Studied our politics,” I mutter, mocking her voice and intonation. “I have a degree, I’m so much smarter than you. No wonder her own planet kicked her into outer space.”
The sun comes out from behind the clouds while I pick my way around the lake’s rocky shore. Even during midday, the massive gas giant this moon orbits is visible in the navy blue sky. It just reinforces the fact that I’m stranded on a hostile alien world, with an even more hostile alien woman.
Of course, to her human perspective, I’m the alien. Maybe I should not have told her about being bred by the Shorcu. That fact tends to prejudice a lot of other species against the Vakutan. They get this expression on their face, a kind of ‘oh, so that explains X about Vakutans.’
Just because we were produced by meddling with nature rather than the pitifully slow evolutionary process that created most sapient species doesn’t mean we are any less valid of a people. The Trident Alliance acknowledges this officially, even if I still deal with some prejudice from our other member races. That’s just one of the many reasons why the two sides in this war are not the same. Not even close.
My belly rumbles, reminding me of our lack of provisions. The emergency rations had mostly been destroyed or lost in the crash, and while the insufferable woman and I have been blessed with plenty of potable water, we have yet to fill our bellies with more than extremely meager portions from the one rations pack that survived.
That’s when I notice the silver scaled, darting shapes in the miniature lake. Sort of like a cross between a typical piscine and a serpent, there certainly seem to be a lot of them. The biggest one I see is nearly as thick as my arm. Just one of them would provide enough sustenance for a whole day, and if we smoke the meat perhaps provide rations for a few days beyond that.
I’ve been traveling around the galaxy for years, and I’ve encountered many different ways of fishing. The Pi’rell, for example, fish only at night or in dense jungles where the sun doesn’t reach the forest floor. They choose to hunt with muscle powered projectile weapons, bent sticks which send smaller, straighter sticks at high velocity. Often they have some string or other cord attached to their missile, to reel in the catch.
The Alzhon, on the other hand, utilize nets as their primary means of sourcing food from the rivers and seas on their home world. Ever the efficient and mass-minded people of the galaxy, they harvest their piscine cuisine in gigantic amounts.
Shorcu prefer to run live electrical wires into th
e water and just electrocute the fish until they bubble up to the surface, regardless of the damage that can do to the ecosystem. More proof that they are evil scum who deserve death.
I don’t know how humans extract piscine species from aquatic environments, and I don’t care. My people have a simple, but most effective means. We find a good stick, sharpen it with a knife, and spear the creatures right where they live.
A spear would work better, of course, but a stick will do the job if you’re in desperate circumstances. My khaffi staff doesn’t perform well in aquatic environments. Its large, slow moving projectiles tend to lose all momentum even in shallow water. Likewise, the club end is unsuitable for thrusting through the waves.
Fortunately, the nearby jungle has plenty of deadwood littered about. I pick up longish bit and blow the tiny arthropods clustering on it away. I’ve often found that the tiniest of alien creatures can have the sharpest sting.
Using my survival blade, I sharpen the end of my new spear and head over to the water. I allow the blanket to slip from my waist, since I’ll probably have to splash into the pond to retrieve my catches.
For a time I stand on the rocky shore, still as a stone while I wait for one of the silver serpent type creatures to dart close enough for a throw. It’s slow going, as they seem to be clustered around the center of the pond. The little creatures have some sort of appendages along their longish bellies, which seem somewhere between tentacles and the segmented limbs of insectoid life.
Maybe that part will taste like a crustacean?
I don’t know how long I stand like a statue, spear raised over my head, one hand bracing me in a crouch. Long enough that the sun ceases to be pleasant warmth and changes to oppressive heat. Long enough that my shoulders ache and my hand trembles slightly.
But my patience and endurance are finally rewarded. A silver scaled serpent darts close to the shore, and I strike. The spear takes it right in the thick part of its body, and I shout with triumph as I haul it out of the water. It flops back and forth on the end of the spear, leaking aqua marine blood down the haft. I set it on the stone and crush its skull with a rock.
Gleefully, I collect several more of the creatures. I could be satisfied with my catch, but instead I grow greedy. It seems that I have caught some of the runts of the litter, so to speak. The big, fat ones with plenty of meat are all near the center of the lake.
Carefully, I wade into the rocky lagoon, keeping my movements slow so as not to disturb the creatures. The water rises to my waist, and then my chest. Then I reach a point when my questing, bare foot cannot find any purchase. There’s a major drop off, and I feel the cold blast of what has to be a natural spring chilling my toes.
Damn. Not close enough for a spear strike. Just when I’m turning to head back to shore, something snags my ankle in a hard pinch.
Hollering fit to wake the dead, I splash about, terrifying the piscine creatures into fleeing. Whatever has a hold of me drags me toward the drop off, and panic seizes me to the core.
Realizing I’m not going to prevent myself from being submerged, I take a deep breath and cry out for aid.
“Woman. Woman. I require aid.”
There’s only time for one more gulp of air before I am dragged under. Once beneath the waves, I can see my aggressor in blurry detail. It’s one of the serpent fish that I’ve been catching, but much larger, nearly ten meters in length by my estimation. Its jaws are big enough to fit around my entire body, I have no doubt, but I see no teeth.
That’s when it uses the strange appendages to draw me and wraps its thick coils about my torso. I lose the spear in my struggles, and my knife is back on the shore. Kicking my legs, I manage to lift both of us to the surface, where I can snort in some air and let out another shout.
“Woman.”
It’s all I can muster before I get dragged back down by the thrashing serpent. I sink my teeth into one of its tendril like appendages, and am rewarded by a spurt of blood in my mouth. But even when I tear it off completely, the serpent seems unfazed. Perhaps it can regrow those tendrils and loses them often while hunting.
How did I go from predator to prey so quickly? It was stupid to enter the water. I had no idea what was lurking down here, and it seems it will cost me my life.
Stubbornly, I refuse to give up. Spending the last of my flagging strength, I manage to kick back to the surface one more time, but I have no breath to call for aid.
When I break the surface this time, however, the human female is standing on the rocky shore, holding my khaffi stick. Surprisingly, she seems to have discerned its function and is aiming it like a rifle. I fully expect she will miss her shot and hit me between the eyes instead, but at least that would be a quicker death than drowning.
There’s a sharp crack, and a puff of smoke, and the serpent is wracked with spasms. For an instant its coils tighten about more than ever, and then its body goes limp. Its blood clouds the water as it drifts toward the bottom.
And it’s not the only one. We Vakutan are very solid, and tend to sink in water if we’re not actively using our limbs for locomotion. I’ve spent all my strength, and can do nothing as I begin to drift toward the bottom.
Then the water explodes into myriad bubbles, and the human woman is there. Her nude form slides through the water and grabs me around the chin. Kicking her legs fiercely, she drags me back to the surface.
Coughing and sputtering, I manage to drag in enough air to revitalize myself somewhat. Leaning heavily on her, much to my chagrin, we make it into the cave and she sits me down by the fire.
“Thank you.”
She seems surprised by my words, her eyes widening and mouth going slack. Recovering quickly, she builds up the fire in our makeshift pit.
“You’re freezing.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t. Vakutan physiology features a vast network of capillary veins to help cool off their massive musculature.”
“That sounds like a good thing.” My voice is distorted by my chattering teeth. The sound is akin to a mollusk shell being snapped closed repeatedly with great vigor.
“It is, unless your body temperature drops too low. Then it’s a hindrance.”
“What are you doing?”
“What I must. I weep for both of our dignities.”
Then I feel her pressing her bare flesh against mine, wrapping me in her arms and then draping a dry blanket around both of us. Her method works, and soon my shivering stops.
“I thought you were cold.”
She stiffens a bit against me, but doesn’t respond verbally.
“But you’re warm, woman. Very warm…”
Unable to stop myself, I suddenly press my lips against the tender flesh of her neck. The woman gasps, but she doesn’t pull away.
“My name is Daphne, not woman.”
“I am called Duric.”
“Shut up, Duric.”
Then our lips meet, and suddenly she’s not so annoying any longer.
Ten
Duric
Daphne’s body seems light and feminine in my grasp, her sinuous form sliding against my skin as we explore each other’s mouths. Her taste fills my senses, lending a heady giddiness to the proceedings.
I never thought I’d be attracted to a non-Vakutan, especially not this one in particular. Yet, the sleek curves of her body and the softness of her skin is more intoxicating than any beverage or herb I’ve yet tried.
Part of my mind is screaming how wrong all of this is. An hour ago I wanted to throw Daphne in the nearest river, but now I’m about to interlock our bodies in the most intimate way imaginable. She’s not even the same species as me, which should be enough to stop my feelings before they begin. Add in the fact that she’s insufferably arrogant and insulting, and there’s no possible way I could be in this situation.
And yet, here we are, naked in front of the fire.
Maybe it’s misplaced gratitude. This woman just saved my life, after all. That can c
reate a kind of false intimacy. My body, however, isn’t concerned with the whys of attraction, only the how. As I carefully kiss Daphne’s lips, my member grows stiffer by the moment.
Daphne takes notice of my arousal. She gasps, looking at me through half lidded eyes, and then pulls away slightly. Her hand rummages around between us until she puts her warm fingers around my shaft.
“Astounding.” Her voice is husky, low, and filled with desire even though her words seem to convey a more scientific curiosity. “My fingers don’t even reach all the way around. Are you….typical…for a Vakutan?”
I grin at her and run my hand down the sleek curve of her spine. Her skin is so soft, I feel as if I could enjoy caressing her all day.
“I am not ‘typical’ in any way…especially that one.”
“You’re so proud, aren’t you?” Her words are teasing, but Daphne’s soft, luscious lips part in a slight smile. “Well, I suppose this might be something special after all.”
Daphne strokes my rod with careful deliberation. I lean back on the blanket to give her some room to work, amazed at her sudden wantonness. From the dazed but delighted look in her dark umbra eyes, I’d say she’s just as startled by her own desire.
As if I’m one to talk. I’m a healthy male Vakutan, and I enjoy a good fuck as much as any of my species, but there’s usually a more extended ritual before copulation.
“You have an excellent cock, Duric.” Her hand slides up to the engorged lavender head of my shaft and her fingers curl around gently. I groan when she uses her index finger to stroke across the tip of the crown. “Hmm, seems quite sensitive.”
“Am I your science experiment now?” My words have no venom, especially when it’s all I can do to hold back and not spurt all over the place.
“I can’t help being curious any more than you can help being prideful. It’s in our nature.”
“I can think of better uses for your mouth at the moment than speaking.”
Her dark eyes flash over to mine, and for a moment I think I’ve offended her. Then her lips stretch into a wry grin, and she slides her hand down to the middle of my veiny shaft. Daphne leans over and presses her face into the underside of my cock, her soft lips brushing against the sensitive crown. Gently, she kisses the tender flesh, making me shudder with desire. Her lips move down until they find my wrinkled gourds. I groan when I feel her wet, nimble tongue slide up the seam between them and upward further, along the underside of my shaft. Daphne makes one, sensual lick all the way to the tip, and then opens her lips and takes the crown inside her mouth.
