by Kipjo Ewers
He strolled over cutting off her walk to look her in the eyes.
“But none have the skill set that I require for this task. You, my dear, possess abilities that only a hand full of species possess, and is mostly held by those of higher station or royal blood. Add to the scale that only I, my sister, and those loyal to me know of your existence makes you the perfect tool for my cause.”
Merc reached out taking a handful of her blonde locks to examine them; she invaded his space giving him passive kitten eyes while tracing her fingers across his well-defined abs. She maintained eye contact with him as her hand slowly made its way down his torso into uncharted territory.
“Well this tool comes with a price,” she whispered.
“And what price may that be?” he asked with a purr.
“My freedom and my neck intact still breathing after the job is done, and whatever is the universal currency to ensure that my white ass is set for life,” Peace snarled, “and a map of all the planets I can spend my earnings in peace.”
“No desire to return to Earth?” He inquisitively asked.
“Fuck no,” she spat. “I never want to see that shithole again. So, what’s the job?”
“Let us say, I will need to commit a series of acts that will ensure a vote in my favor.” Prince Merc smiled. “For now, you shall remain in the shade as a guest at my home, until the time I shall give you instruction.”
“Fair enough, I always wanted a vacation.”
Peace knocked back another goblet full of Star Shade which brought on violent coughs and shivers running down her spine.
“Okay,” she gasped while shrugging it off. “Take off that stupid ass pro wrestling belt and diaper so we can get this party started.”
Perplexity plastered over Merc’s face as he watched her sashay over to the wading pool getting in.
“Come again?”
“I’ve never fucked a prince or an alien before,” she turned to him waist deep in the red water. “Now I get to do both in one shot. Well, what the fuck are you waiting for? I ain’t going to get any wetter than this.”
Merc huffed as he finished his own drink, setting the goblet and bottle of Star Shade on the floor before making his way into the pool with her.
“I’ll have you know I have sampled one or two of your female species from Bencari Skin Traders. Despite your boasted bedding prowess, they proved to be both grossly subpar and easy to break.”
“That’s what happens when you pick mutts over a thoroughbred,” Peace growled while placing her hand down his loincloth. “Oh …call that Nati chick back in here …I want to play with her too.”
“Naticala!” Merc politely barked while using a finger to slowly pull down her bandage top. “Do come in here …your presence and talents are required.”
˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
The next late morning on Thracian time, the crown prince made his way down his winding steps in a purple loincloth and a broad black belt similar to the one he wore the day before getting off at the third level of his castle.
Waiting for him was a dark grey skinned Thracian who appeared to be his senior with a full head of silver and black dreads and a Fu Manchu mustache and beard adorned in a regal emerald green double shoulder toga.
“Your majesty,” the Thracian elder uttered in his homeworld dialect as he took the knee.
“Embaro,” Merc acknowledged him with a toothy grin. “How is my favorite Manor Lord?”
“Very well my Prince, your day meal has been prepared for you. Princess Attea is also in the meal hall awaiting an audience with you.”
“Thank you Embaro, oh in regards to my domicile guest upstairs. Make sure she is properly fed, bathed and then clothed. Also, there is an annoying crack in my floor, be sure to have it repaired before nightshade.”
“As you command my Prince,” Embaro slightly bowed.
“Carry on Embaro.”
Prince Merc continued on to the meal hall as a loyal Embaro fluttered his eyes while heading up the steps in disgust over the fact that he had to tend to a human. Prince Merc began to whistle and hum as he swaggered into the hall to find his sister sitting in one of the one hundred seats of the meal table. Her guarded folded arms and legs and disapproving glare did very little to dim his good mood.
“Greeting dear sister, have you eaten yet?” He asked with a genuinely concerned look. “Do not tell me Embaro left you sitting without ensuring your favorite meal was prepared?”
“Embaro is a faithful servant who never wavers in his duty, including when it comes to rearing you,” She coldly answered. “I have already fed and declined his offer.”
“Apologies then if we dine and converse, Star Shade is the only thing to fill my belly since last night. I wish to add a proper meal to it.”
The second Prince Merc took his seat, a circular door in the side of a faraway wall rolled away as a male servant entered the room pushing a hovering cart on a polarized propulsion system. He took a knee showing respect to his prince and princess, rose back to his feet, and began skillfully placing closed trays and removing the lids revealing warm Thracian cooked food and fresh fruits in front of his Prince as if he was performing a dance. Each cover he dropped on top of the other creating a stack back on the cart without making a loud clanging sound.
When he completed his task, he retook a knee waiting for further instruction.
“Are you sure you hunger for nothing?” Merc earnestly asked his sister. “Not even a little slice of Sweet Delight?”
She looked at him with a face of disbelief.
“Do I look like a youngling to you?”
“You will always look like a youngling to me dear sister.”
“I required nothing.”
“Very well,” he shrugged. “Thank you Argeto, that shall be all, but remain close …no telling when this one will change her mind.”
“Yes, my Prince,” Argeto acknowledged.
He rose to his feet and returned back to the door that rolled away housing the kitchen as Merc dug in grabbing food with his hand from different plates and placing them within his octagon shaped emerald crystal plate. He started by plucking the freshly cut fruit into his mouth, every now and then taking an animalistic bite out of the meat on his plate.
“So, are you done playing with your new human pet?” Attea snarled getting to the point. “Shall I inform mother and father that you have possibly sired them another half-breed bastard?”
“Wouldn’t do much good considering he adores all of his grandchildren,” Prince Merc grinned while chewing his food. “The news of another would crack a smile on his ancient countenance.”
“Not when he finds out it might be from an excrement slinging human,” she scoffed.
“She is of superior stock,” He said wagging a cooked limb from a dead animal at her. “And savagely skilled in the art of bedding, she even withstood both rut positions, and actually begged me to bite her harder. Poor Naticala gave out before she did. Would you believe that she hoisted me onto her shoulders to pleasure my spike with her mouth, and then stuck a finger in my ….”
“I did not come here to hear sordid details of you slumming it with a beastly human brother,” Attea glared at him.
“Beings who you have struck with a glancing blow have either died days later or were never physically the same,” Merc pointed out to her. “This human was able to recover from one of your strikes with considerable ease. She will be perfect for the task at hand. Pity, she shall be leaving mortal coil soon, and not just by our hands.”
“No one told the life milk sucking sow to absorb so much elemental energy in one sitting,” Attea muttered.
“You can see it in her eyes,” he shook his head. “Her cells eventually will not be able to keep up with the rate of absorption. I suspect she will either dry out or go the way of uncle Othotol.”
“Don’t place that backwater life milk rag on the same pedestal as uncle O
thotol,” Attea warned her brother. “He met his end like a true Thracian warrior.”
“Taking five legions of Razcargians with him while going supernova,” Merc recounted his uncle’s death.
“And he slaughtered a couple hundred more before he met his glorious end,” his sister added to the legendary Thracian tale. “I should only be so blessed to meet such an end.”
“Still having nightmares of dying an old maid in your bed surrounded by your offspring?” Merc chuckled.
“Tis a pathetic way to leave this plane of existence,” Attea scowled.
“Not for me, I so abhor violence.”
“Yet you excel at it so well,” she said while side-eyeing him. “One of the main reasons we have so few siblings.”
“I reasoned with each and every one of them who challenged me for father’s throne,” Merc defended himself with a pouting face.
“Even our eldest Morgor?
Especially he,” Merc wagged a finger. “I respectfully took him aside and gave him a detailed explanation as to why he was unfit to rule after father, and why he should succeed to me. I even swore to find him a comfortable secondary title should he relinquish his claim to the throne to me. Poor Morgor …it hurt my heart to dispatch him in the Embary …he was the first to take me down by the river banks to spy upon females bathing.”
“I remember,” his sister recounted. “I was down by those river banks you lecherous mongrels.”
“All of them stubborn just like father,” Merc sighed while shaking his head. “A plague on our family I tell you.”
“Blessing from the gods that you managed to acquire mother’s cunning and father’s strength,” Attea smirked.
“I’m quite curious why you never challenged me for father’s throne,” he said with an inquisitive look on his face. “If there was ever anyone that fair …”
“You know I was never a politician,” she cut him off with narrowed eyes. “I was born to lead our regime, crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and hear the sweet lamentations of their kinfolk, nothing more.”
“And you excel at your station most magnificently dear sister,” Prince Merc answered while raising a cup to her.
“But the day you become smitten with that flea-ridden human sow, and think to put a crown on her head,” Attea snarled while pointing at her brother, “Is that day I come for both your heads and father’s throne.”
Merc calmly held his hands up submitting to his sister.
“Fair enough.”
“So now that you have acquired your pawn,” Attea huffed while folding her arms getting down to business. “We are actually proceeding as planned.”
“Of course,” he grinned while popping a piece of fruit in his mouth.
Attea began to nervously fidget in her seat.
“If father ever found out what we are plotting …”
“Be still dear sister,” Merc rolled his annoyed eyes cutting off her sentence of fear. “By the time we have completed said task, father will be none the wiser, nor will he care. Neither will the Dominion Council …”
“I care not of the opinion of the Dominion Council, except for the embarrassment and ramifications it will bring father if said plan is found out. You know all too well the two acts that will move father to violence with his own hands.”
“Breaking the law and embarrassing him,” Merc muttered while fluttering his eyes in disgust.
“I would like nothing more than to wipe out the filthy humans, and appropriate their worlds as our own,” Attea said while tapping her sharp fingernail on his meal table. “But what we do treads deep into those murky waters.”
“You act as if is the first time I ever acquired planets before,” an offended Merc snorted at her while folding his arms.
“None of those planets were the homeworld of a half-breed Annunaki and the second Eye of Ra,” she growled back at him. “Conflict with Anu is also the last thing we require.”
“And I say to thee again,” Merc snapped back sternly at his little sister. “It shall not come to that.”
He leaned back in his seat taking a slow breath to calm himself.
“This little physical evolutionary leap the humans have taken in the past seven of their years is the gift we needed to present them to the Council as the potential threat to the universe they were theorized by many to be. As much as you detest my guest upstairs, she has more power than several triads of Razcargians. Given the human species’ barbaric and sadistic history which is well document, we will be able to paint a bleak and dark picture of a possible future where all humans are capable of reaching her potential, and what it would mean for the universe if the Council does not act.”
Merc extended both his hands in a peaceful gesture as a smile came back to his face.
“The humans will be wiped out for the good of the universe, the Earth, as well as the six additional planets within that sector, will be awarded to us, we will probably be hailed as heroes, and none shall be the wiser. Laurence Fairclough and those who were abducted by skin traders over the years if they’re not contracted to be a special dish will live out their end days as the last remaining members of their species. That is how we shall write our tale and the final chapter of the human species.”
“Do you think you will be able to publish your tale before the deadline?” Attea asked with a raised eyebrow. “Our cycle of shepherding the Earth and the other planets within its quadrant will be coming to an end very soon.”
“That is why the next act will not only be executed swiftly but etched into the memories of those who will bear witness to it for eons to come.”
“We still have no knowledge of who lead us to her,” Attea raised another issue. “Or their agenda, which could very well be our undoing.”
“I already relayed to you my source,” Merc answered with a stern voice.
“Enuc, the filthy Tangerian,” she fluttered her eyes in disgust. “Who relayed information to him, or how did he become privy to her status, especially in a quadrant he avoids at all costs due to the bounty on his head?”
“Enuc is a skilled information master, whose data has always been reliable. He is oath sworn to the protection of his sources,” Merc reminded her. “He has also never brought secrets to my feet that would injure me knowing how deep my purse is, and how well I have compensated him for his loyalty.”
“Or is it the fact that either you or I will slowly remove his head from his body with our bare hands should he betray us?”
“That and the fact of how much he fancies you,” Merc said with a devious grin.
His comment forced a wriggle of disgust from his sister as he bit down and chewed on a piece of tender meat allowing for the juices to run down his mouth.
“So, this is what has become of the great Thrace,” Attea sighed throwing up her hands in disgust and defeat. “We now debase our hallowed and feared heritage by becoming merchants and profiteers?”
“I would hardly say securing prime real estate for the benefit of our species as debasing ourselves,” Merc snorted. “Especially when it entails taking it from a species that clearly does not appreciate it. The universe has vastly changed over the eons, dear sister, to survive we must assimilate to that change. Those who are equal in power with us are our allies now, and those who are our enemies do not possess the power to oppose us. Such is the wages for securing great power. The glory days of combat are as ancient as our father. Our new charge which we shall be revered for is ensuring that we bring continuous wealth and prosperity to our people by expanding our territories. Thereby ensuring their love and loyalty for eternity.”
“Is that not something we already have?”
“The love of the people is like fire,” Merc said while locking his narrowed his eyes with his sister. “If not repeatedly stoked it will wane and die. Once we secured the support to wipe that parasitic species from mortal coil …the Earth and the other six planets within that quadrant will be enough to kindle our people’s love for a couple mor
e eons.”
˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
Back upstairs in Prince Merc’s bedroom, a naked Peace laid on his bed covered in sheets and the bodies of the elite guards that were supposed to be protecting her fast asleep.
Silent tears fell from her eyes as she turned looking at the mirror on the wall as she realized what she has been reduced to once again several billion light years from Earth.
Once again, she was someone’s pawn …someone’s whore.
Peace turned her head looking back up at the ceiling, as her lips softly moved forming words without a voice.
Her mouth made the same motions over and over again.
“You survived daddy …you survived Rosen …you will survive this.”
CHAPTER 11
May 2017, 6:00 A.M Sanctuary time,
Kimberly was startled out of her sleep by her mother dressed in her Freedom uniform barging into her room. A flustered Kimberly whose body was reconditioned to sleep sat up on her bed rubbing her eyes which quickly refocused after being startled awake. What made it worse was the ear popping hand claps that made her body vibrate.
“Rise and shine young lady,” Sophia’s voice boomed. “Come on! Get up!”
“Wha …what, what did I do?” A confused and semi-awake Kimberly frustratingly mumbled.
“Grounded doesn’t mean you get to sleep in, or lounge around this house or island, and do nothing,” Sophia said with a steel tone. “I am leaving for a mission, and will be gone until tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“There are five medical books downstairs I want you to read before I get back and a list of chores that I wrote down on a paper and expect you to complete. Earl has a copy and will tell me if you do not finish them, or are slacking off.” Sophia continued. “I expect you to complete all of your chores before 5 P.M. this evening. And if you happen to finish them before that time, I expect you to find yourself back inside this house, you are still grounded, which means no telephone, tablet, television, radio, computer, video games or internet. I have shut down the cable and internet in the house, and Vincent will know if you turn it back on or go looking for your devices. He will also know if you borrow one of your friend’s devices, so do not do it.”
