God, this was humiliating, but she was doing it for the crew, for the last remnants of humanity. Dack had said they couldn’t let the Kolrathi take away their humanity. But surely it was better to let them take a little of that, rather than their lives.
“I would be your slave,” Cora said.
The alien arched one eyebrow. “Again, if that was the thing we wished, it is not yours to offer. We could simply take you all and enslave you.”
“Perhaps,” Cora said. “But I would give myself to you willingly. Certainly that counts for something, doesn’t it? And actually, if you did wish to take us all as slaves, that is something we could deny you.”
“Oh?” the alien asked. “How is that?”
Cora raised her wrist-com up to her mouth. “Initiate Omega sequence,” she said into the com.
“Omega sequence requires two-tier command-level authorization,” the ship computer said. Cora looked over at Dack, who raised his wrist-com to his mouth.
“Confirm Omega sequence,” he said. Cora heard a little shaken his voice, and hope no one else and heard it. If she was going to leave the ship in his hands, he would need to be strong.
“Omega sequence initiated,” the ship said. “Countdown or word-activation mode?”
“What’s going on?” the alien asked. “What are you doing?”
“Word-activation mode,” Cora said to the computer. And then to the alien: “All I have to do now is speak one word, and the entire ship will be destroyed. You see? You could not take us a slaves if you desired. I can deny you that at least. But you can have me, willingly, if you agree to leave the rest of my crew alone.”
He was looking at her now in an entirely different way. She had surprised him, and that was good. If he called her bluff, at least they would die on their terms. But she didn’t think he would. He was looking at her as if she were some curious thing he had not expected to encounter. He looked intrigued.
“What will it be?” Cora asked. “Do we have a deal? Or should I speak the word, and end this all right now?”
The aliens face relaxed, and he laughed again. That sound was still disturbing, grating on her ears, but this time it didn’t sound as dark or bitter. He sounded genuinely amused.
“I like you, Cora Riggs,” the alien said. “I do not wish to see you destroyed. Not yet anyway.”
“Do we have a deal or not?” she demanded.
He leaned over one more time, whispered one more time. It was infuriating, his casual attitude in the face of her threat to destroy her ship and crew. But she waited, as patiently as she could, the wrist-com poised in front of her face.
He straightened up again and smiled. “We have a deal,” he said. “Give yourself to me willingly, and I will spare the others.”
“How do I know you’ll keep your word?” she asked.
There was a dark twinkle in his eyes. “You don’t.”
And then the screen went dark.
“This is crazy.” Dack stood in the pod bay, watching her prep the escape pod for launch. “You can’t do this,” he said. “I… I love you.”
Cora looked up from the diagnostics panel. “Oh, that’s sweet,” she said. “But no you don’t. We fucked, once. I like you, Dack. But this is the only chance we have, and I have to take it. And I need you to stay here and be strong. I need you to lead. Can you do that?”
He looked uncertain, but it was true, he was a good man. Maybe not ready to take full command of the ship, but Cora hadn’t been either. And if this didn’t work, none of it mattered anyway. But if it did, maybe he would come in to his own as commander.
Dack nodded his head. “I’ll do my best.”
Cora stepped towards him, cupping his face in her palms. “Good,” she said. “But I have one more thing to ask of you.”
“Name it.”
She smiled sadly. “I’m transferring all automated command control to you,” she said. “If they don’t break off pursuit, before the lattice fails completely, I need you to reverse the engines.”
“Why would I—” And then she saw the realization dawned in his eyes. “Oh.”
“If they’re going to kill us anyway,” she said. “We might as well try to take a few of the assholes with us.”
“Right,” he said. “Our weapons are no match for theirs. But if we hit them at ramming speed when they’re not expecting it, and I initiate Omega just before impact—”
She leaned in and kissed him. He got it. Maybe she did feel something more than just a little lust for him. And maybe he felt the same way about her. But none of that probably mattered now. If her plan did work, she would never see him again. But that might be all right. She could live as a slave if she had the knowledge that Dack and the rest of them had made it. Maybe they could find a habitable planet, and start over.
She pulled away from him, taking her hands from his face. He smiled and nodded.
“Good luck, Cora,” he said.
She smiled back, then stepped into the escape pod, activating the bracer gel, enveloping her in a tight embrace. Then the door slid closed, and Dack gave her a small wave before she was enclosed in the darkness.
Cora braced herself as the catches let loose, the thrusters fired, and the pod shot from the ship like a seed being spit from a giant’s mouth. The gel held her firm, but she could still feel her teeth rattle and she closed her eyes and waited for the initial thrusters to throttle down.
When they did, she took a deep breath. The irony of using an escape pod to hurtle herself toward the enemy ship wasn’t lost on her. They had cannibalized the shuttles for spare parts long ago, along with the other pods. This was the only functioning one left. And now it was carrying her, not to safety, but to her fate, likely one worse than dying aboard her own ship. But a good leader made sacrifices. Had she learned that in command school? Or was that something Garret had told her?
The interior of the pod was mostly dark. She powered up the screen to see the external view. And there it was, the enemy ship, closing in at a frightening pace. Even their ships were built for intimidation. Cora remembered sitting on her dad’s lap, looking at pictures of marine life in a book. She remembered turning the big, glossy page and seeing something that looked scary and beautiful at the same time. She couldn’t yet read, but her dad told her it was a scorpion fish.
The Kolrathi ship reminded her of that fish, not just because it was a deep crimson, with hundreds of spines and sleek appendages that looked like razor-sharp fins, but because of how it made her feel, admiring and frightened at the same time.
When it came down to it, though, their technology hadn’t turned out to be that much more advanced. Just enough of an edge to tip the scales, combined with the element of surprise. But not all of the transmissions from earth had been hopeless messages of doom. Some had contained valuable information about the Kolrathi and their technology, and Cora and her crew had absorbed and studied as much as they could.
Perhaps she could find a way to sabotage their ship, though she doubted they’d be stupid enough to let her get anywhere near control or engineering. Still, if she ever got the chance, she was damn sure going to try.
The enemy ship swelled in the view, overtaking the entire screen with its shiny crimson hull, criss-crossed with black stripes. She saw a small part of the hull spiral open, and a beam emerged, filling the screen with light and rocking the pod.
Then she felt the pod being pulled. They would at least have to either slow down or stop to engage the beam to pull her aboard. At the very least that had bought the Salvation more time, maybe an hour or two.
The pod shook and the power failed, everything going dark. Then she cried out as she felt the gravity of the ship, the pod dropping, hitting with a loud thunk. With the power out, she couldn’t activate the door, so she’d have to pop the mechanical hatch. She detached the canister of spray from the wall and sprayed the gel. It melted away immediately, freeing her to fire the mechanical bolts.
But before she got the chance, the pod sh
ook again. Sparks sprayed from the door, and she jumped back. The torch cut through the pod door in seconds. The sparks stopped, and the door fell open.
A blue face clad in goggles peered in, then snapped back away.
“Come out,” said a voice she recognized, the alien she had spoken to from the relative safety of her ship. Now she was here, on his ship, at his mercy, and that voice was far more frightening.
She waved the smoke from the melted door away, coughing a little, and emerged into what looked like a storage bay. The alien who had cut open the door stood by the pod. The alien commander stood in the open, hands on his hips. He was striking, naked from the waist up as before, ripping with muscle, his skin a dark blue. She saw now that he wore what looked like a silver metallic kilt, a shiny, scaly armored skirt that reached just past his knees. His feet were bare.
The tech was not as physically impressive as his commander, and he wore a gray jumpsuit instead. But he still looked larger and stronger than most humans. She looked back at the leader.
Cora cleared her throat. “Thank you for agreeing to—”
“Remove your clothing,” he said. “Your kind are not people. You are animals. And animals do not wear clothing.”
She felt a sudden flash of anger, but held it at bay. The fate of her crew still rested in her hands, and she wouldn’t let her pride destroy everything. Not after she’d gotten this far.
Cora unfastened the front of her uniform. She was naked underneath, a remnant from her encounter with Dack earlier, and she had never bothered to make it back to her quarters to put on a clean pair of undergarments.
So her breasts were exposed to the air first, and she noticed the environmentals were warmer here than on the Salvation. She pulled her arms out of the sleeves of the uniform and felt goosebumps break out across her arms, not from the cold, but from fear.
Keep it together, she thought. You can do this.
Cora slid her uniform down her legs and stepped out of it, kicking it aside to stand completely naked. She folded her hands in front of her. Her hair down there was neatly trimmed, but either way it was ridiculous to think the alien cared. Apparently he did.
“Put your hands by your sides,” he said.
She obeyed, slowly, revealing herself fulling to him. He stepped forward and took in a deep breath, closing his eyes. A strange sparkle of pinprick lights danced across his skin.
What the hell was that? Cora thought. Was that some kind of arousal mechanism?
He opened his eyes again and took another step closer. Cora was tall, but the alien still towered over her. This close, she noticed his smell, like burnt cinnamon, strong, but not entirely unpleasant.
He reached down to the belt of his metal kilt and unclipped a shiny metal circlet. Reaching out with one hand, he grasped her lower jaw and lifted, exposing her neck. She gasped with surprise. His fingers felt warm and strong, a weird static sensation emitting from his skin.
With his other hand, he slipped the metal collar around her neck. The device whirred, tightening enough to be uncomfortable, but loose enough to still let her breathe. He let her go, and she reached up to touch it.
“Don’t,” he said. “The device has built in defenses. It would interpret your touch as an attempt to remove it.”
She lowered her hands, wondering what would happen if she did touch the metal band, wanting to ask, but holding her tongue. She felt as vulnerable as she had ever felt in her life and utterly humiliated. She wondered what she had gotten herself into. Maybe it would have been better to just go down fighting with the ship. But she was still alive. And now was not the time to be weak.
Look, listen, learn. Garret had told her than once. She needed to stay alert, study what she could about the Kolrathi and their ship, in case she was ever presented an opening.
The alien placed a bracelet around his wrist and swirled the tip of his finger across it. The collar began to hum softly around her neck.
“You are mine now,” he said. “You have always been mine, but now your status as my slave is fully realized.”
“Are you going to break off the pursuit?” she asked.
He stepped aside and touched the bracelet again. Cora felt the collar tug her forward, pulling her toward the door of the bay.
“Your slave band will take you to my…what would you call it? Play room. I will join you there when I am ready.”
“We had a deal,” she said as the band pulled her forward. She tried to turn her head, but the collar kept her facing forward.
“A sun does not make deals with a speck of dust,” he said.
Asshole, she thought, though the odds had never been on their side that the Kolrathi would honor the agreement.
“Wait,” she said, as the collar dragged her to the threshold of the door. She strained to turn to face him. “I don’t even know your name.”
He smiled. “My name is Drokoma,” he said. “But you shall never utter it. You shall only call me Master.”
And with that, the collar dragged Cora naked and struggling out of the bay.
The hallways of the Kolrathi ship were wide and curved, made of what looked like a dark blue clay, flecked with crystal. The collar pulled her forward, past a pair of aliens wearing white smocks. They gave her a passing glance before continuing on their way.
Being pulled around by a mechanical collar was humiliating, but Cora wondered exactly what the hell awaited her in Drokoma's "play room". He was an imposing presence and would have been considered incredibly attractive by any standards back on earth, other than the fact that he was part of a genocidal invading force.
She was pulled around another corner, and the wall to her left was some kind of transparent membrane. She strained her neck against the collar to get a better look and gasped when she realized what she was looking at.
Down below she could see a cylindrical structure rising up from the floor like an ancient tree and reaching upwards through the roof. Embedded in its surface were evenly spaced crystals she would have recognized anywhere, even if she hadn't just been looking at them on her own ship a few hours earlier. They were same material the Salvation's lattice used to power the vessel.
Their crystals were embedded in the twisting tree structure, but from what little she knew of the physics, the basic idea was the same, just in a different configuration. Both humans and Kolrathi had solved the same problem in a slightly different way.
The collar tugged her forward before she could make a thorough study of the engine room. She saw workers in what looked like red skin-tight suits milling around the tree, performing routine maintenace functions, taking measurements and making adjustments. They had been tweaking their engine to try to get the most out of it during the chase, and that made her feel at least a little satisfied, that they'd been able to stay ahead of their pursuers despite the Kolrathi's best engineering efforts.
Just past engineering, the collar pulled her back into a narrow opaque tunnel, which appeared to be a dead end. But just as she reached the wall, the clay dilated into an opening wide enough for her to be dragged through. The room inside was featureless, with smooth clay foor and walls. The opening shrunk closed behind her.
The room was dark, illuminated only by the luminscent sparkling crystal in the walls, almost like a starfield facing her in every direction.
The room was quiet, leaving her alone with her thoughts. Time stretched out, and after a while it was difficult to guage how much had passed, at least several hours by Cora's internal clock, if that could be trusted. She was starting to get hungry, she knew that much, and then she wondered whether she should have brought rations. She'd never paused to think what the Kolrathi ate and what, if anything, they fed prisoners.
The collar had apparently powered down, giving her free reign within the room, for all the good that did. She sat on the floor against one wall. She hugged her naked breasts and stared at the artificial stars all around her. She thought about the engineering room. She thought about Kayla and whether or no
t she'd be able to work with the Kolrathi's version of an energy lattice, whether or not, if given access, she'd be able to adapt it to the Salvation's infrastructure.
And as she wondered these things, she caught motion out of the corner of her eye, the door spiraling open. Drokoma stood at the threshold, wearing his metal kilt. He surveyed the room, then saw her sitting on the floor against the wall.
Cora stood up and took a step toward him. "I've done everything you've asked," she said. "Have you stopped the pursuit?"
"But I have so many more things to ask of you," he said, smiling.
Sounded like a no to Cora. She just hoped Dack would have the courage to follow her final order, to reverse what was left of the engines and ram the enemy ship. Until then, she was at the mercy of Drokoma, and if he wanted sex, there were worse things she could think of.
Drokoma unfastened the catches on his kilt and let it fall to the floor. His version of a human cock was as impressive as the rest of him, and the same dusky blue color. The Kolrathi hadn't bothered with pubic hair though. He was completely smooth, making the meaty appendage between his legs seem even larger.
He still wore the gold bracelet he had used to command the collar, and he touched it now. She expected to feel another tug at her neck, but instead the floor between them began to move, as if made of melted lava. Then it rose up into three pillars, a little less tall than Cora.
"Step forward," he told her, not bothering with moving her around by the collar.
She stepped up to the pillars, and they moved to meet her. The two on either side reached out and curled around her arms. The one in the middle furled around her neck like a monkey's tail. The pillars acted like living stocks, binding her and pulling her in a bent-over state, her ass perched up in the air for the alien's perusal.
He walked around her.
“What must it be like,” Drokoma said, “to be so frail? To live in a body that weak, that can never change into anything else?”
Cora struggled against the alien clay, but it was no use. The bonds held her tight.
Surrender Among the Stars (Alien BDSM Science Fiction Romance) Page 2
