“I forgive you Jana Cruz, and I am sorry for what was done to us. Be at peace,” said the familiar voice through her headset.
The high velocity round slammed into Jana’s temple an instant later, and her body fell limply to the ground as a fine red mist hung in the air where milliseconds before she had been standing.
Magna had heard the voice over the headset, and had seen Jana’s last moment. He was a brave man, but not a foolish one, and fled back down the stairs. He reached the bottom floor and sprinted out of the side hatch leading north. He did not pause to look behind him, for fear of his last sight being that of a sniper’s scope catching the light of the sun. Better, he thought, to focus on the path in front and to hope for the best.
Lysa looked down at Jana’s corpse for several moments, and then walked to the opposite edge of the warehouse. She could see Magna fleeing, and knew that at this distance a pistol round was unlikely to find its mark. Morgan was on the other side of the warehouse, hundreds of yards away, and would not have a clear shot. Lysa watched the big soldier disappear into the apocalyptic landscape, and it felt for a moment as if some final part of her humanity had left with him.
Lysa and the wounded but still living Izrid warrior rejoined Morgan at her firing position. The three men who had comprised Charlie Team lay still, their throat slit.
“What now?” asked Lysa as she stripped the bodies of useful food items and ammunition, “The resistance might back off for at least a little while, but if Cava-Rek still lives he will never stop, neither will the Izrid. You know that.”
“None of that matters now,” whispered Morgan as she gently caressed Lysa’s muscular arm and pulled the warrior woman’s hand across her swelling pregnant belly, “We have to make the sacrifices of our sisters mean something.”
“I can’t believe how quickly this is happening,” spoke Lysa as she felt Morgan’s belly and looked at the discarded meal kits that the sniper had already looted and devoured from the three dead men, “Though you are certainly keeping up the calorie intake.”
“I can feel it growing Lysa, and I’m barely keeping up with it. With them, “ Morgan murmured as she rested her hand on the warrior and began to walk south, “We have to find a safe place, and soon. Life is on its way.”
ACT VI
Cava-Rek had never known defeat and victory to manifest themselves in such simultaneous moments, though in recent days he had experienced both in profound ways. His compound had been raided and all but destroyed. One of his war hives was severely damaged before it could lumber away from the engagement, barely fending of the resistance fighters to attempted to overwhelm it. Two other magisters, Shak and Udex, had died during the lightning assault by the human resistance, along with dozens of warriors. Many were the defeats the Izrid had now suffered at the hands of the human woman Fiona MacArthur, and because it was he alone who had survived it was the name Cava-Rek that would be remembered as the defeated. The dead are forgotten, as only the living could bring glory and resources to the Hive. It was the Izrid way, and in such moments Cava-Rek was allotted the shame of defeat more steeply than the slain magisters.
Cava-Rek had always been different, and unlike the other magisters in his caste he had always seen defeat as a learning experience. Certainly the others learned from their mistakes, though they took no deeper accounting of such things. It seemed to Cava-Rek that the other magisters were perhaps less independent in their thinking and experiencing of the world than they assumed. To him, the way the magisters engaged defeat was more of a response to stimulus and an active correction of tactics or strategy. For him defeat was an indication of true challenge, a moment to rise above his current prowess and become a better warlord, or scientist, or poet. Perhaps, Cava-Rek often wondered, it was his self-image as all three things that made him different. The average Izrid magister was a consummate leader, more a tyrant of the Hive than anything else, an extension of the Hive that functioned as the Mind and the Will of the Izrid legions vast. Yet he felt that the role of the magister had the potential to run deeper, and he had always believed he could discover the secret potential in his caste. He could not say how he had come to believe this, for the Izrid were not typically dreamers outside of hard science or explorers outside of resource acquisition and conquest. As such, when he was defeated, he relished it. A chance to grow. A chance to change. To break with the Hive and return to it as something More. His victories had been many, even before making the star crossing to this tiny blue planet the name Cava-Rek was known. Once the invasion had begun Cava-Rek distinguished himself with tactics that possessed a kind of artistry, as if combat with the humans had brought some new level of prowess up from the depths of his being. When the rogue warrior had first glimpsed the human female Tara on the battlefield, and had pleasured himself while the human and her male had sexual congress, Cava-Rek had seen the edges of what he knew would one day be his masterpiece. He had always been fascinated with genetic science, and had a number of laboratories at his disposal. His imagination was as vast as the dark hungers that Tara had awakened in him, and for him the possibilities seemed endless.
The magister vividly recalled the way Tara’s mouth looked as he pumped his cock in and out of her, and the way the spittle trailed from his shaft to the tip of her tongue when he pulled himself free. He thought of how Morgan had looked as she writhed beneath him, lost in the depths of his pheromone injections while he filled her body. That, he thought to himself, was the real victory. He had poured over the data that had been salvaged from the compound, watched endless hours of video feed. It was the videos, he had to admit to himself as he walked into the brood bearer’s chamber, that continued to bring him here. He had not been to the brood bearer’s chamber since his encounter with Tara. He had become so occupied and obsessed with his sexual experiments and conquests of human women that he had neglected his brood bearer.
Cava-Rek could smell the pheromones pouring from the Izrid female as he entered the chamber. The bright glow from the viscous fluids in which she was immersed filled the room with a pearl white light. He stood at the edge of the pool and slowly slid his robe away from his body and let it fall to the floor. He had changed so much since last he had coupled with the brood bearer. In his mind he considered the number of human women he had penetrated, and for a few minutes stood silently next to the pool as he considered each of his conquests, recalling their names, faces, and explicit details of each. The memories were exceptionally arousing, and further fueled his already inflamed desire.
He had been reviewing the visual recordings of each and every encounter between Izrid and human that had occurred in his compound. He had discovered, much to his amusement, that the countless hours of sexual recordings made him crave the touch of his brood bearer more and more. It was as if watching all of the Izrid and human intercourse was shedding a new light on the silent and unconscious beauty of the brood bearers. They had no real sentience, and yet he knew from his research that they could communicate through chemical excretions. In the course of his study into human sensuality and sexual physiology he had discovered startling similarities between the human females and the brood bearers. In many ways the differences were fewer than the similarities, key among them being appearance and sentience. Cava-Rek had two human women still captive on his war hive, neither of them having been transferred to the compound prior to the assault. At first he had gone to them when his arousal reached a height that demanded release, so that he could continue to focus on his growing understanding of the new hybrids yielded by his wanton experimentation. Neither woman seemed to satisfy him, despite significant doses of the pheromone compound and truly stunning amounts of sexual debasement. Cava-Rek had found himself unable to imagine new ways to sexually conquer them, and he found himself longing for his brood bearer. It was as if he had experienced all that human females had to offer, and craved to be with Izrid flesh once more.
Cava-Rek’s cock swelled with desire, bouncing slightly in time with his rapid heartbeat. He
waded into the pool and hissed with pleasure as the warm fluid moved across his skin. The brood bearer shuddered as it sensed his approach, and secreted tremendous amounts of pheromones into the air as her skin suddenly glistened with oily lubricants. The brood bearer resembled the Izrid warlord only in that her face was distinctly Izrid. Of all the creatures of this blue planet, thought Cava-Rek as he reached out to flick the clitoris of one of the many sex orifices that lined the brood bearer’s body, the giant serpents of the southern hemisphere most closely resembled the brood bearer. Cava-Rek had never made the attempt to please the brood bearer, nor did any magister or warrior or pilot or builder with his respective caste’s brood bearer. It simply had not existed in their minds as a possibility, as the brood bearer orgasm had always been seen as a side effect of intercourse, and never as a pleasurable goal. Cava-Rek leaned in and extended his tongue to lick a second clitoris as each of his hands began massaging and fingering the many clits available on the brood bearer’s body. The brood bearer emitted a low keening sound and began to coil herself around the warlord. He had never experienced this until recently, having discovered that if one teased and pleasured the brood bearer before intercourse she was so much more involved in the process. It was as his entire lifetime had been spent having intercourse with a sleeping dragon, and now it had finally awakened.
He could feel a psychic pressure in his mind as the brood bearer used her coils to pull his throbbing cock into one of her vaginas. Her body began to pulse with energy as he pumped himself in and out of her, aided by the mighty oscillations of her profoundly more powerful body. As mighty as the Izrid males were, Cava-Rek had marveled at the raw strength of the brood bearers, yet another arousing trait about their caste that he had never before taken notice of. The two Izrid writhed together, magister and brood bearer, as the serpent body coiled around the warlord, squeezing him hard enough to bring his desire into full flame. Cava-Rek gripped the brood bearer’s body with all of his hands and began pushing his thumbs in and out of the many vaginas while using his fingers and tongue to work the clitori. After several intense moments the brood bearer’s body began to shudder and the force of her orgasm shook the entire chamber. Several of her vaginas ejected more pheromone fluids of particular potency that went straight into Cava-Rek’s system, forcing him to experience the most prolonged orgasm of his life. The brood bearer used her musculature to milk his cock for every last drop of seminal fluid as her tongue cascaded over his body to lick up the oil he had excreted during his orgasm.
Cava-Rek opened his eyes as the psychic pressure grew, and found himself looking straight into the sleek black eyes of the brood bearer. For the first time in an age, magister looked upon brood bearer, as a sentience long dormant rose to the surface of the creature, and the serpent revealed to him her deepest of secrets…
Several time segments later Cava-Rek burst into the command temple of the war hive and began barking orders to the pilot caste. The magister gripped the pulpit and connected himself to the temples of his other war hives, lost without their slain magisters and annexed into his own growing brood. He issued his orders, and the Izrid legions began to mobilize for a new kind of war.
INSURGENTS
Episode 4
ACT I
It had been a good day.
Two well-placed IEDs, simple roadside bombs that packed a major punch, had taken out two Complex armored vehicles. As the Complex soldiers and the Izrid half-dragons had scrambled to recover from the explosion the resistance fighters had opened up with small arms fire from all sides, catching the enemy in a crossfire. By the time the insurgents had retreated at least a dozen or more soldiers and several half-dragons lie dead and bleeding on the pavement next to the burning wrecks of their convoy. Alexis, merely a youth of nineteen years and already a hardened resistance fighter, considered that a mission well accomplished. Her lover, a burly giant of a man known as Magna, felt much the same.
The couple burst through the doorway to the meager hovel that they called home, at least for today, and already they were kissing each other desperately. Alexis chewed on Magna’s bottom lip as she wrapped one arm around his thickly muscled neck while she unclipped finished shedding the cold weather jacket. Magna returned her kisses and his rough hands began un-clipping her tactical harness, and then her hip belt as he pushed her deeper into their home. Alexis put her other arm around his powerful neck and hoisted herself onto him while she wrapped her legs around his waist. The freedom fighter was a man of significant stature, and her fleeting weight was nothing for him, and he continued to kiss her as he embraced her. The couple reached the threadbare pallet in the drafty room that passed for their master bedroom, and Magna sank to his knees and gently laid Alexis onto her back amidst their meager bedding.
“What the hell are you doing with an old war dog like me anyway eh?” he asked with a sly smile as he unlaced and removed her boots even as Alexis unfastened her belt and shimmied out of her combat cargo pants, “A girl as pretty as you ought to be on the arm of some half-dragon prince or drinking wine with the Serpent King himself.”
“I’ll take the man who fights over the man who kneels any day of the week,” the young woman said huskily as she leaned forward and helped Magna pull his shirt over his head to reveal his muscular tattooed body, “MacArthur is just as wise in the lady’s locker room as she is on the battlefield.”
“I can kneel when it matters,” said Magna as he pushed Alexis by the shoulders back down onto her back as he knelt down to prop her legs over his shoulders. He nuzzled his face down into the young woman’s garden and began to tease her with his tongue. He stayed there for a few moments as his hands explored her body.
“Oh you melodramatic son of a bitch,” Alexis moaned as the older man’s tongue rasped against her clit with expert familiarity, as going down on her had turned out to be one of his favorite sexual activities, “Don’t stop.”
He was an artist, Alexis found herself thinking amidst the waves of pleasure, and that would be something none who thought they knew him would expect. Magna was known as a ferocious killer, and most who knew him gave the man extra space. Alexis had heard the stories, about how Magna had once been romantically involved with one of the hybrids, back in the old bad days before the Serpent King. He had been part of a group of soldiers who had gone into the badlands to hunt down the hybrids, and only he had returned. He could have lied, could have claimed victory, and yet he’d admitted defeat, and told the tale in great detail to Fiona and the others of how Lysa, Morgan, the other hybrids, and a lone Izrid warrior had slaughtered the resistance fighters. Among those slain was Jana, whose reputation and combat record had rivaled most, her loss was especially painful for the local forces. As Magna’s tongue lapped at her clit and his fingers explored the tight wet folds of her womanhood she started to push herself upwards into him. He was relentless, and she began to arch her back in pleasure as she moved his hand up to squeeze her small breast, coaxing him to pinch her nipple as she gripped his short cropped hair with her other hand.
She found herself thinking about the brave martyrs who had come before her time. The saints of the resistance, people who had given their lives to protect humanity. These people had been the myths and legends Alexis had been raised on, even those who had fallen from grace, like Lysa, or the sniper Morgan, and the other women who had been abused and ultimately sentenced to death in the Serpent King’s laboratories in the years before his rise to global domination. As Magna’s wet attentions coaxed her into readiness she opened her eyes and invited him in. She feasted upon the sight of his rippling muscles as they made the pacific-islander tattoos on his chest and arms move as if they were merely shadows upon the water. His cock bounced in time with his rapid heartbeat as he stroked it to its full hardness. He used his fingers to caress her and then run her wetness up and down the shaft of his cock as a natural lubricant. When the freedom fighter leaned over her and began slowly and sensually working his cock into her tight little pussy Alexis found hers
elf thinking about Tara. The female resistance fighter had always been a bit of a dystopian urban legend amongst the people of Chicago, and not just the resistance. She had been a person of little consequence in her life before the war, though when the Izrid came she had joined MacArthur and become a heroine. Tara, the one true saint of Chicago, famous for her single-handed destruction of a mighty war hive. Nobody really knew the details of her death, not for sure, though the stories were as prolific and as varied as they came. Magna thrust himself into Alexis as she thought of the saint, and wondered if she would ever strike such a blow against the Izrid as to be worthy of such a title. To have her name carved on MacArthur’s secret wall, with Saint Tara next to Saint Alexis. That was a fate she was comfortable with, and as the freedom fighter pounded his throbbing manhood deep into her body the young woman felt as if she knew this very thing would be her destiny.
Magna’s powerful body loomed over her, his glistening muscles obscuring every view as he drilled her. Fucking him was almost as exhilarating as combat, and it was almost as if she could feel the bullets whizzing by her head as Magna’s grunts of pleasure buffeted her eardrums. The man fucked her like there was no tomorrow, as if he was determined to mine every ounce of pleasure out of her young body as he could before meeting his end. She looked up at him, the spell of MacArthur’s history lessons broken as his cock slammed into her again and again. They were both living on borrowed time, and they both knew this as fact. It mattered little that Magna was easily twenty years her senior, and there was not a moment of hesitation in their passion. They had both known horror, faced the inevitability of their deaths, and had chosen to live while they still drew breath.
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