“Kellac,” she protested.
“Sorry. Just wanted to get us alone.”
Gema stared at him in confusion.
At the stream he dropped her hand and looked at her, eyes lowered, his long thick lashes screening his eyes.
“Why are we here?”
He grabbed her by the hips and pulled her tight to his groin. His rigid cock pressed into her belly. “We need to communicate.” His hands pushed and pulled on her hips in a way that made her undulate against his cock. Desire swamped her and she sagged against him.
“So,” he said, still pressing his cock against her in a sexual rhythm. “Do you like the mop haired boy? Is he your type?”
His words made no sense at first, her mind clouded by desire until she figured he was talking of Dooley. “What? Mop haired boy? No, I’m not attracted to him. I mean, there is nothing offensive about him, he seems perfectly nice—”
Kellac lips ground on top of her own, stopping her words as his tongue shoved between her lips.
“So you are not interested in the pretty boy from your world?”
He was jealous! “No!”
“Prove it.” Kellac yanked off his shirt, opening it wide and flipping it onto the thick grass near the stream. His shoes and pants followed until he was nude, his toasted gold flesh so smooth, his cock straining up toward the dark brown curls growing above his sex. “Take off your clothes, lovely Gema. Show me you want me.”
He looked incredible, rippling with muscled, golden and strong in the sunlight. “Of course I want you. You know it.”
He shrugged. “PureGen all look the same. Perfected features, perfected bodies. Some variation in hair and eyes but not much. All my brothers and I look alike, people can hardly tell us apart. It’s why we have our own eye color. And then there are all the other PureGen men in our units. Tall brunets were all the rage so many of us have similar physical characteristics.”
Funny she’d never considered the fact that maybe they lost their individuality when everyone was equally attractive.
Slowly she disrobed. “I don’t want you just because of your looks. You are a good man. Kind, giving. You have stood up for me over and over. In the end it is always what is inside that counts, isn’t it?”
His shoulders relaxed for a moment but then tensed up again. “I wasn’t kind about your ancestry. I’m not really an adolescent spoiled idiot.”
“I don’t think of you that way.” Gema moved close to him and slid her hands up his chest. “The worlds are complicated, with so many different people. And we come from different ones.”
“Dooley comes from your world.”
“I’m not interested in another man. All my interest… all my desire is held by you.”
His lips curved into a smile and light came back into his eyes. Somehow whatever she’d said had reassured him. The atmosphere suddenly changed from tense and serious to heated play.
He gripped his cock, which had remained hard through their whole conversation. “Prove it, lovely Gema. Prove your desire.”
Gema was willing to play. He looked so hot, his hand wrapped around his thick penis. She moved closer, assessing him. “How?”
Kellac spread out his shirt over thick grass and pulled her down to it. “Play with your breasts. Can you suck your nipples? Let me see.” He leaned back, hand fisting his member again.
“Hmm. I don’t know. Do you think they are big enough for me to reach?” She lowered her head and glanced at him through her eyelashes, pretending to be shy. She cupped her breasts in her hands and raised them, pressed them together to make cleavage. Then using her fingers and thumbs she pinched her nipples, drawing them out. Kellac’s lips parted in a pant. She rolled them, slowly. Her body responded, almost as if Kellac was touching her, because he was watching her, his eyes bright. Closing her eyes, she moved her hips in a swaying motion, side to side, pressing her thighs tighter, wanting to get him even more aroused.
She opened her eyes. A gleaming drop of pre-come now decorated the head of his cock.
“If I can’t I’m sure there’s something else I could suck.”
Cupping a breast, she leaned her head down and was able to lick and circle her nipple with her lips. She did one then the other. “Am I doing this right?”
The way he watched her made the act of self pleasure ratchet up into a whole new category of intensity. It was exciting to tease him.
“Oh yes,” Kellac groaned. “Now turn around. Come closer. I want to inspect your ass.”
She did as he said and giggled as his hot breath tickled a little against her bottom.
“You have swirls here, on your ass. Did you know?” Gentle fingers traced a symmetrical pattern down her buttocks, near her crack. “Pretty.” Hot breath touched her and she shivered as his tongue traced the pattern on one side, and then on the other.
“Show me, Gema. Show me if the pretty swirls decorate your pussy.” Strong hands pulled her down and onto her back. Kellac moved to his knees between her legs. Gripping her calves he pushed her legs up and out as far as they would spread, leaving her open and vulnerable. “Pinch your nipples. Pull them. I’m gonna play down here for awhile. But I want to look up and see you playing with those sexy tits.”
His husky voice made her shudder, already her clit felt full, plump, and she had moisture gliding down from her pussy to her inner thighs.
Kellac inspected her closely. “Yes,” he breathed. “The lines from your bottom continue around to your front.”
His warm wet tongue slowly traced the patterns, avoiding her clit where she wanted it most. “Kellac,” she complained.
He gave a breathy chuckle. She gripped his thick silky hair and gave a little tug. In one swift move he pulled himself over her and gripped her wrists, moving them over her head. He was grinning, lilac eyes catching the sunlight. Gema wrapped her legs around his waist and gripped him tight. She could feel his hard ridge pressing into her thigh and wiggled, trying to get him where she wanted him.
“You are one naughty girl, Gema.”
She nipped his chin. “So you should give me what I want.”
“I will. As long as what you want is me.” Kellac’s mouth came down on hers and Gema got what she wanted.
Three days later the cyborg transport had not returned. The four were gathered together around the fire for the evening meal. Kellac and Gema had made a meal from packaged and foraged foods. Dooley ate with gusto but Lorl picked at a few bites of packaged rations. Lorl had barely spoken, Gema wasn’t sure if it was due to shock or due to being forced into the presence of non-PureGens. Some PureGens lived their whole lives only seeing non-PureGens from a distance.
The contrast between the two was sharp. Dooley was energetic and enthusiastic about everything. He chopped wood and helped find cures along the stream. Lorl helped, cleaning their muddy clothes at the stream and foraging for greens, but she didn’t have much to say.
Kellac outlined chores that needed to be done each day and some of the things they would need to do to store food for the winter.
“What if they don’t come back for the transport? Then we might find food stores in the crashed ship,” Dooley said.
“We should see what we can find in the debris,” Kellac said.
Dooley’s head snapped up from his plate. “I agree. Then we can scavenge for fuel and transmission equipment.”
“Yes. I think the aggressors have probably moved on to the PureGen Worlds. Those worlds are full of technology and, trust me, their military is not prepared. They sent troops to the Allied Force but were lax with their own forces and defenses. Even my homeworld, New Prague is more ready for an aggressor and it doesn’t have a quarter of the wealth of the PureGen worlds.”
“There’s a jumpstream here with access to and from Toph. That’s how the Game ship got out here to film the show,” Dooley said. “But this is not publicly charted. Toph might have more detailed records of different jumpstreams out here. No telling what the Gorvas have hidden, or what j
umpstreams they may have discovered for their use.”
Kellac agreed. “Yes, I think we are seeing a new wave of aggression, coming from the Rim Worlds. It makes sense to take the PureGen worlds, with all their tech. The Central Confederated Worlds have been in a civil war so long, who knows what new technology they have produced. There hasn't been much regular communication from them. I heard Toph military talking about it. We know of the Strafe, and the cyborgs, those all come out of the Central Worlds Confederation.”
“But isn’t it too far away, beyond the Terran Alliance Planets?” Gema spoke up. Her knowledge of spaceography was lacking. Her own homeworld was a territory within the Alliance. Planets like New Prague were in the broader Terran Alliance. Toph and Adelphia were part of the Terran Alliance but also had formed a confederation of planetary systems that required either all Terran DNA or Puregen certification for citizenship.
The Central Worlds were far away, settled in the First Diaspora but too distant from Terra to have close ties. When the Terrans first left their planet they made for Terra-like planets all over the galaxy, and the distances were so great they didn’t communicate much with one another for centuries. Planets eventually grouped into larger governments, the Terran Alliance, the Center Confederated Worlds and the remote Vangellis system. Gema had never before found the topic interesting.
Dooley shrugged. “It all depends on the jump streams. That’s why two planetary systems can be close in proximity—space proximity—but largely isolated from each other, because there is no jumpstream. Center Worlds were working on the jumpstream creation, before they got bogged down in the war. From wherever you want, to wherever you want? That would be an amazing technology.”
The war had always seemed so far away to Gema. It never really reached Toph, and she’d been busy trying to survive on a PureGen world. She knew so little about spaceography since she’d left the education Toph had provided. She had been required to live in a Juvenal Detention Facility with a bunch of unstable PureGen kids. She’d found a low level cleaning job instead…
“Why have I never heard of the Gorvas? It’s true I didn’t pay much attention to galactic news, but I would think I would have at least heard about them. Since they are so aggressive.”
Dooley shrugged. “Maybe not. Toph and Adelphia were pretty insular.”
Gema felt stupid about her lack of knowledge in Diaspora studies, something other educated people took for granted. She got up and collected the empty dishes for a quick scrub.
“I hope we can find a transmitter and find help, send out a warning, too. Gema and I know we are on Duseault 9.”
“How do you know that?” Lorl asked. “Only the upper management knew the location.”
She must be upper management, Gema thought.
“Not so. All the navigators and pilots knew,” Dooley spoke up. “They could read their instruments. We had to sign a waiver we would keep it secret. But the coordinates couldn’t be hidden.”
“Gema smuggled a military grade com from the prison,” Kellac said. “It was loaded with location information. With it we gathered data until we got a result.”
Lorl turned her cold blue eyes on Gema “How would you get a military grade com?” Her voice was angry and accusatory.
Dooley laughed. “Betting on the underdog.”
“Correct.” Kellac continued. Lorl frowned but said no more. “So we know our coordinates. We need to find a way to send them to someone who will help us.”
“Good plan if we can make it work. The transport transmitter doesn’t have that kind of range. The ship didn’t have a huge transmission ability. It communicated with a relay station not far from here,” Lorl said.
“Do you know the coordinates of the relay station? Or can you find them using the com?”
“I can find them using the transport com.”
“So we need to make a transmission strong enough to reach the relay station.”
“That could be tricky,” Dooley said. “Wouldn’t the relay station broadcast it to the viewer channels? Those would be preset, right? How would we program it? And who are we going to call for aid? Toph?”
They all looked at Lorl. “A crew set the relay up at the station. When we transmitted, the relay picked it up at shot it out to our affiliates. The crew sometimes traveled to the relay to adjust the settings. The broadcast company sent transmissions to all their affiliates, which didn’t change much.”
“I understand,” Kellac said. “So there was no way to set it up from the ship, they had to physically get into the relay station and do it.”
“Yes, they had to go to the relay station.”
Gema sighed as she scrubbed the wooden plates. Didn’t sound like they could contact anyone for help.
“Could we take the transport to the relay station? If we found fuel?” Kellac asked. “Could some fuel have survived the crash?”
“Some could have.
The fuel was stored in supercells that probably did survive,” Dooley said. “They were made to survive almost anything since no one wants a fuel explosion is space. And the transport was used to access the relay when we first set the Viewcast ship up for this location. I wasn’t the pilot, but the travel record is still on the com.”
“But the ship exploded.” Gema said. A shiver ran down her spine, remembering the crash, the black smoke.
“Not all of it. There should be a long trail of debris. Hopefully the crew jettisoned the fuel cells before they crashed, hoping they could survive…”
“We can contact New Prague.” Kellac paused and frowned a little. “My family’s in the government. But I think my family could send a small ship, eventually.”
Lorl looked skeptical. “You really think New Prague would send a rescue ship for us?”
Kellac sighed and looked at Gema. “I haven’t said anything because I didn’t want it broadcast all over the PureGen Worlds, but I’m the son of the Protectorate of New Prague. It’s hereditary. I’m third in line for the title. Unless one of my older brothers has had a child while I’ve been gone.”
“Your father is the Protectorate? Isn’t that like a king?” Gema asked.
“My mother. Father is a PureGen scientist. And I would have said something earlier except for the Viewcast. Somehow the Toph didn’t get the connection, and I didn’t want to advertise it.”
Gema did not meet his eyes but busied herself with her washing up.
“They would send a rescue ship for you.” Dooley sounded a little too pleased. “This will probably save our lives.”
“Should we go in the morning?” Kellac looked at each of them.
“All of us?” Gema asked.
“Yes. I think we should stick together,” Kellac said.
They agreed to leave in the morning.
At dawn, Kellac and Dooley crossed the river on the raft and landed the transport near the dugout. They loaded dry rations and filled the transport’s water supply to capacity. Gema packed what toiletries they had and clothing. Lorl actually spoke to her about her hope they would be able to salvage some clothes. She was once again wearing the jumpsuit she wore when they escaped but it had a tear and they had not been able to repair it.
By midday they found the debris trail and followed it until they came to a large wreckage site. The twisted, broken wreckage made Gema uneasy. The idea of climbing inside had her heart pounding, her mouth dry. She fell back behind the others and hesitated at the gaping hole the others climbed through. What if the Harvesters had left dead bodies behind?
“Gema?” Kellac appeared in the gap. He frowned at her. “Are you all right?”
Gema swallowed gestured toward the wreckage. “It’s all broken up. I—” She shrugged unable to find the words.
“—You’ve been in a wreck before,” Kellac said softly.
“Well, yes, but I barely remember that.” She remembered pain, terror. Loss. But not much of the actual crash since she was unconscious for most of it. “But it smelled just like this. Fuel and scorc
hed wires and plastic.”
“You probably remember more than you want to. Why don’t you stay at the transport? We have the com set up so we can talk back and forth. You might see something.”
“Or scavengers. I know the Harvesters were here, but it smells of death. Might draw animals.” Bile rushed up her throat and she had to swallow hard at the idea of finding a body.
“You could make a small fire, maybe make some sweet leaf tea. We’ll search for an hour or so then report back here.”
The transport was meant for short hauls, so it had no food preparation facilities. Gema got a fire started and listened to the chatter on the com, thankful she didn’t have to climb in the stinking dark wreckage. But being alone meant she had to think about Kellac. She’d figured out long ago he came from a wealthy, powerful family. She hadn’t expected to learn he was an heir to a planetary rulership.
Alien Blood (Diaspora Worlds) Page 9
