I punch him hard in his ribs, but it just hurts my fist.
“Mark my words, Aegus,” I say. “I will take back my palace.”
He reaches down and squeezes my butt. “And I will take you...to bed!”
He flings me up and hoists me over his shoulder. I laugh and pound him with my fists, no longer angry, and he starts to carry me back toward the village like one of the wild boars. His prize.
“Aegus!”
“You can’t talk me out of this,” he says. “I will make you come so hard you’ll be too tired to fight–”
“Aegus, the boar!”
He stops and spins back around, making me dizzy as I hang over his shoulder.
“Ah,” he says.
He places me down gently. “I still mean what I said.”
“I know.”
He nods and heads back toward the fallen boar. He hoists it up onto his shoulder and grabs my hand with his other. We walk hand-in-hand back to the village together.
When we arrive back to the settlement, there’s a man in filthy clothes standing among the tribespeople.
As I get closer, I realize who it is.
“Donovan!” I shout, throwing my bow and arrows to the ground. I rush toward him in a full sprint. I slam into him, wrapping my arms tightly around him.
His body feels like a limp fish in my arms, and he begins trembling even as I squeeze him.
I let go of him and stare at him in worry. His face is pale white, and he’s looking down at the ground, not daring to face me.
“Donovan,” I say, “What’s wrong? Please–”
“Tsarina…” he says, still trembling.
“You can tell me, Donovan, you–”
“Tsarina...please. It’s not right…”
Oh. God. I’m naked. I’ve been naked for the last six months, and I haven’t even thought about it after the first week.
But I’m the Tsarina of Venus, and Donovan is...seeing me naked for the first time. Not only that, but I grabbed him and pressed myself up against him.
“Aegus,” I call. “Get me a rain blanket.”
Aegus slams the boar carcass onto the dirt, ducks away into a tent, and fetches a woven rain blanket.
He hands it to me, and I wrap it around my body.
“I’m sorry, Donovan,” I apologize.
He looks up at me, and his face has gone from ghostly white to deep red. “Please, Tsarina, let us never speak of this again.”
I resist laughing, and gave him a regal nod. “Can we get you something to eat or drink?”
“No,” he says. “Well, yes, later, but I need to deliver this. To Aegus.”
He reaches into his pocket and holds out a tablet. “I...didn’t know if you had a way to open a hard drive here, so I brought the tablet.”
“Is it a message?” Aegus asks. “From Fenrir?”
“It’s encrypted,” Donovan says. “But the signal came from Titan.”
“It’s Fenrir,” Aegus says. “Thank you, Donovan.”
He grabs the tablet and starts entering an impossibly long password string. Finally, the tablet shows Fenrir. He looks a lot like Aegus, but his eyebrows are...meaner looking, and his ears are pointier. His chin is pointier, too, but he’s definitely a good looking guy. Or good looking alien, I remind myself.
“Brother Aegus,” Fenrir says. “I don’t know if you received my first message…”
Donovan looks up at us and shakes his head.
“So I’ll repeat everything from the start…”
Hundreds of tribespeople begin to gather around, but the tablet is too small, so Yuri repeats everything loudly back for everyone to hear as Fenrir speaks.
“...so two hostile ships unaccounted for,” Fenrir says. “They cut their engines and went dark around the Oort cloud. We guess they are biding their time, and we’ll have to be on guard for decades against them. The good news...our reinforcements are here. A lot of people think you’re dead, but I don’t believe it. We’re going to hit Earth hard, with everything we’ve got. The Emperor’s reign is over…”
There’s some cheering from the tribespeople, but the question on everyone’s mind is what will happen to Venus.
“That leaves Venus,” Fenrir says. “We can’t really infiltrate those cities. The best plan we have so far is a blockade. Just starve out General Bahamut until he surrenders. If you’re still there and alive, and have a way to get a message to us...we need to know what you’ve got cooking so we can coordinate. We’ve got a stealth receiver floating in dead space between Earth and Venus. I’ll give you the coordinates for it, and you can send your message there. It shouldn’t be interceptable.”
The message ends, and everyone starts talking at once.
I go to hug Donovan again, but my blanket opens up and gives him another full view. He turns away as if I’m going to kill him, and I quickly pull the blanket closed. “Sorry,” I mutter.
“Aegus,” I say, squeezing his hand. “Your plan worked. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel already.”
He squeezes my hand back, but looks down at me with a worried expression. “It could have gone much worse than it did...but two hostile ships lurking outside the solar system is a big problem.”
“It’s not something we can deal with now,” I say.
“Yes…” he says. “We have enough to deal with on Venus alone.”
“If only there were a good way to send a message to that receiver.”
“We could use the science hut,” Irena says.
“The...science hut?” Aegus and I ask in unison.
“Yes,” she says. “The hut where we keep the scientific equipment and the tokamak reactor that powers it.”
15 Aegus
Massive relief and volcanic rage take hold of my body. They fight each other deep in my gut, and they cancel each other out in a stalemate. I no longer feel anything at all, and I can do nothing but look up at Irena in bewilderment.
“You have...a tokamak reactor and the means to send and receive signals across the solar system...here in the jungle? The jungle I have lived in for six months, and you never thought to tell me this?”
Irena throws her bundled dreadlocks over her shoulder, sticks her spear into the ground, and sneers. “You never told us you wanted to broadcast anything, Yelda.”
“What is Yelda?” I hear Donovan whispering to Anya behind me.
The anger starts to come back. “When I told you all of my plan, you should have realized how beneficial it would have been for me to be able to signal Fenrir on Titan.”
The tribespeople look around solemnly at one another. Some scrape their feet and look down at the ground.
I begin to realize they are not stupid; no one could be so stupid. But they must not have trusted me or Anya enough to tell us about the equipment, and now they feel shame debted to us.
“Forget it,” I say. “Perhaps it’s best we didn’t know. Even the most cautious attempt to broadcast could have endangered the tribe and the Tsarina. Our greatest advantage has been Bahamut thinking we are dead.”
Irena nods. “But now, Yelda, we are about to strike. Maybe it’s not worth the risk of alerting them...they can intercept this signal still, yes?”
“Yes…” I say, thinking. “Of the ships we’ve gathered, how many of them can reach escape velocity?”
“A handful,” Yuri says. “Why?”
“I’ll do it,” Donovan says, stepping forward and anticipating my thoughts. “I will pilot the ship to the receiver.”
Donovan is smarter than I thought. “You can fly it?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “My father was a pilot. He taught me. I’ll simply broadcast that they should meet me in person, and I will only communicate the plan to one of your most trusted men. This way there is no risk of interception.”
“Good,” I say. “You’ll need to leave now.”
There are a few ships docked on our docking bay, but the bulk of them– almost a thousand– are hooked up to the deep and
hidden jungles. The tribespeople have lowered the oxygen content of certain jungles by tampering with the valves, and these jungles float much deeper in the atmosphere below the visibility of most scanners. It’s barely hospitable so deep down, so oxygen masks and pressure suits are required. Just before we attack, we’ll close the oxygen release valve again on the deep jungles, float them back up toward a more hospitable altitude, and load the ships with tribal warriors.
“Let’s start raising the shipyards,” I say. “And prepare to fight.”
Anya doesn’t come to our hut at night, so I go out looking for her.
The dome turns opaque at night to cut out the sunlight, as a day on Venus is over one hundred Earth days long. The trees need 24-hour day-night cycles, so the forest just stays on the dayside of Venus, while the dome cuts out the sunlight every twelve hours.
Anya must know she cannot hide from me even in darkness. I can track her scent.
Through the lingering scent of boar’s meat, leather, fruit pulp, smoldering ashes, thousands of tribespeople– I smell her.
I walk through winding paths toward her, and find her sitting among a small campfire with Irena and Yulia.
I hear her voice well before she can hear me.
“...so if you call someone a dick,” Anya says, “in the cities, it means they are...like...an asshole. You know?”
“How is a dick an asshole,” Irena says.
“Unless the dick is inside the asshole,” Yulia says, laughing.
“No. Like...stubborn....pigheaded...kozyal!” Anya says.
“Ohhhh,” the two warriors say, suddenly understanding.
“So you are not complaining about the size of his big teal cock,” Irena says.
I see her swig a drink from a gourd of palm wine.
“You will fight beside us,” Yulia says, standing up and chugging her wine. “It does not matter how large Yelda’s dick is, he cannot tell you what to do!”
I walk straight forward into the firelight, and they suddenly grab their spears as they spot me.
“Ah,” Yulia says, “Aegus…”
“You never call me Aegus, Yulia,” I say, grinning, “unless you’re worried I’m angry.”
Yulia grips her spear and narrows her eyes at me.
“You,” I say, pointing at Irena. “And you!” I point at Yulia. “Stand up!”
They both jump to their feet. They have no reason to obey my orders, but they owe me shame debt for talking about me behind my back.
I step right in front of them, and I snatch the spear from Yulia’s hands.
Anya is looking down at the ground, avoiding my gaze. She thinks she owes me shame debt, but she does not. It’s me who owes her.
“When we attack Sankt Petersburg,” I say, “would you trust Anya to fight alongside you?”
“Of course!” Yulia says, grabbing the spear back out of my hand. She slaps the wooden end against my ass. “She’s a fierce fighter, and I trust her with my life!”
“And you?” I point to Irena.
“Da,” she says. “It’s the same for me. I will fight by her side.”
“Good,” I say. “Then you will. Now get the fuck away from here so I can stake my claim.”
The two women grin, grab the skin of palm wine and their spears, and walk back toward their huts.
“So you’re really going to let me fight?” Anya asks.
“I thought about what you said,” I say. “It will show you are a strong ruler...your people will respect it.”
“So that’s the only reason?” she asks, finishing off her drink.
“No,” I say. “You want to do it, and I don’t control you.”
“Wow, Yelda, you’re becoming far too progressive for a Marauder–”
“No,” I say, grabbing her. “I still think with my cock.”
I pull her body into me, and my cock hardens against her stomach. It begins to vibrate as she reaches down and squeezes my ass.
I grunt and squeeze her back, and our lips lock together. We kiss deeply and without abandon, and the flames dance beside us, casting long shadows across the jungle.
I attack her suddenly and without warning, snatching her off her feet and pulling her down to the ground with me.
I roll onto my back, and I hold her naked body above me. She positions herself over my cock, but I tear her away, sliding her already wet pussy across my body until it’s just above my mouth.
She moans as my tongue licks up her juices and massages her clit. I reach up and cup her glorious breasts. I’ve seen her naked every day, all day, for six months now– but I never tire of seeing her body. I run my thumbs across her nipples, and my tongue slides up into her wet hole.
She gasps. We’ve been all over each other since we came to the jungle, but I’ve held one trick back from her– until now.
My tongue slides deep into her, as deep as a human man could go. I press my lips up against her and suck, and then I extend my tongue several inches deeper. Deeper than any man’s tongue can go.
“Jesus! Aegus!” she gasps. “What is that? What…what are you doing to me?”
I say nothing, as my tongue is embedded at least six inches deep inside her. I answer only by sliding it further and further into her, and when I’ve completely filled her up, I begin sliding it in and out.
“Oh my God!” she cries out, and I feel her inner walls tighten around my tongue. Suddenly I feel a surge of her wetness leak across me, and I taste her delicious come all over my tongue as I suck down her juices.
“Aegus!” she moans heavily, bucking her hips against me.
I reach up and press gently to her clit with one finger, and I move it in small circles as she drips come across it. She’s so wet that there’s almost no friction, and I feel the telltale signs– the tightening and convulsing and moaning– that she’s about to come. Much sooner than normal, too.
I slap my hands onto her ass cheeks and squeeze, and I slide my tongue in and out faster and faster as she begins to come hard all over me.
She screams and wails uncontrollably, and I drink deeper of her juices– deeper than I ever have before. I know that what I’ve just agreed to let her do could mean her death, and I’ll protect her at all costs, but I need to hold tight to her and feel and taste every part of her while we are together like this.
She trembles atop me, and as I lick up the last of her juices, she falls off of me in a limp heap beside me.
“I can’t believe you saved that trick for so long…” she says. “You hiding anything else?”
I raise my eyebrows at her and flick my ears. “Perhaps…”
Someone coughs from the forest. “Ah, Tsarina, Yelda…”
Seriously? Now?
“What?” I snap.
“Very good news...for both of you. Come!”
It’s my first look in the “Science Hut.” The tribespeople had been fairly tight-lipped about it ever since mentioning it, and I didn’t want to risk offending them by asking to see it. Now, though, Yuri hurries us along as we run through the trees in the early morning. The dome is slowly transitioning from opaque to transparent, and it feels as if the sun is rising, though there’s no actual sunrise to see–just a growing orange haze above the dome, like faint embers of a dying fire.
“Here,” Yuri says, bringing us to a huge tree.
“I don’t see anything…” Anya says.
Yuri sticks his fingers into a notch on the tree and pulls.
A panel opens up on the tree like a door, and he disappears down a staircase.
Anya looks back at me and shakes her head.
“I’d never have found it,” I say.
We step down the stairs, and lights begin turning on. I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen artificial light in six months, and being fully inside a building with electric lights rather than in a hut with a tarp door feels quite strange.
We reach the bottom of the stairs, and the space expands outward to form a room that looks to be about thirty meters by th
irty meters. It’s packed with outdated equipment– even for humans– but it’s still hundreds of years more advanced than anything the tribes have above ground.
“Here,” Yuri says, turning on a monitor. “Watch. This is live news from Mars. They’re broadcasting pirate signals toward Venus so the civilians here can know what really happened.”
The sound comes on, and I see footage of a massive, purple Marauder ship floating above Venus. The camera pans back out, and forming a full sphere around the planet are dozens of other Marauder ships.
“Holy shit,” Anya says. “How big are those things?”
“They are larger than your tallest skyscrapers,” I say. “Each ship can hold two hundred thousand Marauders, propulsion systems, and all the life support and antimatter needed to power a voyage across the stars.”
“Everything you guys do is big,” Anya says, looking down at my dick. “You’d think the ships would be teal.”
Yuri clears his throat, loudly, and Anya stops flirting with me.
The narrator starts to speak. “After the Emperor’s suicide, when faced with the Marauder-Martian fleet, General Bahamut promptly declared himself Emperor, and moved the seat of power and capital of the Empire to Sankt Petersburg.”
The screen shows the great statue of Tsar Nikolai IV being torn down, and a time-lapse fades in, showing a statue of Bahamut rising up in its place.
“That bastard,” Anya shouts, balling up her fists.
“The Marauder fleet is surrounding Venus, but it’s not as Bahamut says,” the narrator continues. “The Marauders are closely allied with Mars, and they wish no harm to come to the citizens of Venus. They’ve already liberated Earth, and they have left Earth and Luna to re-establish a democratic system of government.”
“We’ve won…” Anya says.
“Almost,” I mutter, thinking of Bahamut playing emperor in Anya’s palace.
“Our human-Marauder coalition is hoping to force Bahamut into surrendering. He’s threatened to sink the cities into the crushing pressures of the lower atmosphere if he sees a single ship break into orbit from space, so we will make no attempt to attack. We have no interest in causing civilian deaths, but…”
Marauder Aegus Page 10
