Theron had tracked the original assassin to a deep-space liner. He’d then followed him through three ship changes to this place. His initial reconnaissance had indicated that there were ten to fifteen men inside the main igloo-like structure. It would be simple enough to detonate the lot of them, but he needed to keep at least one alive so he could find out once and for all what they were up to.
Granted, Nyssa was going to be High Councilor, but even assuming they knew that, why try and kill her? These men weren’t lunatics—they were well-organized and funded. They had some agenda other than some idle hatred of holostars. Morax had provided little help, other than to give him a green light to pursue the matter wherever it led. Which is why he was here, poised like an ice panther, ready to strike out of the silent, frozen void. A day so cold that even the sun stood blue and still in the sky.
The sentry never knew what hit him. Theron put him down quickly and easily. He had no wish to torture unnecessarily. Much of his initial anger was gone. Now it was a mission. A sacred duty. Nyssa herself meant nothing. She was not his future; they had both said as much in the hospital. The fact that she was there each time he closed his eyes, the fact that her spectral image crawled into the furs each night with him, sidling up and begging for sex meant nothing. She was a dream, a will-o’-the-wisp in her fascinating costumes, blowing her kisses to him, jingling her chains, beckoning.
Always beckoning. Beckoning in the middle of the night, hammering at his will until he was forced to empty his cock of semen. Twice, sometimes three times before the dawn. And during the day as well, whenever he closed his tired eyes, or drew an unguarded breath. And off he would go again, to the nearest hygiene room, to whip out his burning, inflamed cock.
Running his hand up and down, pumping his ass and fucking Nyssa…always Nyssa. He’d bonded to her, and that was the problem. His once in a lifetime primale urge had been imprinted, given her shape. There would not ever be another woman for him. No matter what he did. Or where he went. Every prostitute would turn into her and every contract woman, and even any obedient he might marry. She was everywhere, stamped on every face and every pussy. And the harder he sought to erase or devour that image, the more it would devour him.
Was there a name for this curse he was under? Maybe after he died of misery they would name it for him. Theron’s Affliction.
He didn’t bother picking up the sentry’s weapon. It would only slow him down. If his hands failed him, he had his hunting knife. And his teeth. Probably his look alone could kill by now. Among the ancient warriors, there was a thing called the trail of blood—a path of vengeance that the warrior strode, each step making him wilder and wilder, like the beasts of nature. If the warrior did not slake his vengeance after so many steps, it was said, he would turn in to one of those beasts.
Good. At least he would have a place in the world.
No such luck, though. The assassins were slow and sloppy. One by one, he took them out, none of them ever knowing the fate of their predecessors. Eight were down by the time he breached the outer doors. Two more charged him simultaneously as he entered—always a foolish maneuver against a trained Guardian. Taking them one in each hand, he demolished the required bones, ending their illicit existences.
Several more met their makers as he made his way to the control room. Talk about pathetic security. A small child could have wandered in here.
“What the—” A man in black leaped from his chair as Theron ripped open the steel door with his bare hands.
A second tossed a knife, which Theron deflected. He returned the favor, landing his own directly between the man’s eyes. The one in black took out a pistol, but he wasn’t shooting just yet. There was a third sitting at a card table, very quietly watching what was happening, his eyes looking for some kind of escape. That was the leader. Theron would get to him in a minute.
“Fuck,” said the man in black, fingers trembling on the stock of the gun, “it’s a primale. What do you want me to do, boss?”
“What do you think?” croaked the skinny bald man in the white silk shirt. “Kill the fucker dead.”
Too late. Theron had the drop on him. Kicking the pistol from his hand, he spun the man around and brought him to the floor.
“You’re making a mistake,” the leader said as Theron approached.
“And what mistake would that be?” Theron asked, standing calmly over the man who’d shot Nyssa.
“You’re taking the wrong side. You’re betraying your own people and you don’t even know it.”
Theron gathered him by the collar and lifted him six inches off the floor. “Talk,” he said.
The dangling assassin gurgled as he spilled his guts. “I know you want to kill me on account of the woman—but you don’t know who she really is. That’s not just a fem you fucked, primale.”
Theron growled, ready to rip out his throat.
“I swear to god,” he wailed, “she’s a half-breed, a freak. You don’t believe me? Ask General Morax.”
“What would he tell me?”
“Morax is her bio-father, that’s what he’d tell you—if he didn’t deny it first.”
“You’re a liar,” Theron thundered. “A no-good filthy liar.”
“Ask him,” the man repeated. “Ask him yourself. Ask him about Project X while you’re at it—they’re going to fuck with the genetic code big-time in a few years, my super-power friend. So if you care at all about the purity of the subgenders, you better wise up in a hurry.”
Theron had interest in only one thing now. “Who’s funding this?”
“I don’t know, I swear it. We all get recruited in secret. His name is Malthusalas. I’ve never met him. He makes sure we have what we need—credits, equipment.”
“You’re going to die now,” Theron explained. “Any last requests?”
“Yeah—wise up, pilgrim. Before it’s too late.”
Theron combed the facility afterward for records. He found little of use. More out of symbolism than anything, he set the entire place on fire, watching it burn from his nearby encampment. The heat made him horny and he jerked off again to images of Nyssa.
Could there be any truth to it? Could Fem Dekalia’s daughter also be the daughter of his commanding officer, his trusted mentor? It would certainly explain her strength of will and her cunning. But a female with primale genetics? It was impossible…almost blasphemy. Everything he had learned, everything society stood for was built upon the purity of the sub-genders. That was the way of the nation. The true and right order of human life.
What justification could his superiors have had for violating it? And what of poor Nyssa? Condemned to have a nature at war with itself—male and female elements in one skin. She would go mad eventually, wouldn’t she? How would she find any happiness, a companion to care for her? Suddenly a chasm was opening beneath him. Whereas a few short intervals ago he had one set of enemies, a band of outlaws ranged against the woman to whom he’d bonded, he must now face the possibility that the entire state could be working against her interest. Using her as a pawn, or worse, as some kind of guinea pig.
In that event, Theron would have to become an outlaw himself.
It was not a prospect he relished, but he might very well have no choice. Doomed as he was not to enjoy her, Nyssa was, for all intents and purposes his woman. As far as his body knew—his fearsome will—she was the one. The female he was programmed to protect and defend. At the cost of his own life.
Returning to his shuttle, Theron prepared himself for space flight. It was time to pay a little surprise visit to his old mentor and commander.
Chapter Thirteen
Nyssa was no good without him. Her body had healed stronger than ever, but all it wanted was the man’s touch. Theron…Theron…Theron. She was sick of him. She couldn’t even make sex with anyone. Just the thought of it made her pussy dry up and freeze. Like the grate was back over it, like she was wearing the belt, like she only had the right to spread her legs for him, waiting du
tifully for him to unlock the key.
Well, screw that. He wasn’t even here. And that was another thing—from the moment he left, she had been worried sick about him. He couldn’t at least drop her a scan, something, anything to let her know he was still alive? It was bad enough having to live with knowing he was out there in deep space risking his life to find the people who had tried to kill her.
The man was inconsiderate and selfish. Imagine him calling her that? What did he do for anyone else—life-saving aside? Did he have the first clue of how to be in a relationship? How to think about anyone else’s thoughts and feelings? Never had she met anyone more inept at male-female negotiations. How was she supposed to interpret the things that came out of his mouth? He told her that she was nothing more than a whore to him and she was supposed to take that to mean he didn’t want her feeling responsible for taking his virginity? He told her she meant nothing to him, and she was supposed to see that as some noble self-sacrifice?
Theron was really getting under her skin. And of all times, when she was supposed to be concentrating on learning the work of the Council. Politics was complicated. A whole lot more so than the grid, though she wasn’t sure which was less of a circus. Departments and budgets. Hearings and projections. Protests and quotas. Honestly, she wished she could just go back to being Vonda and holo-fucking anything that walked.
For now she was lying low, public identity-wise. Her new bio-parents wanted her off the hologrid, but they didn’t want her true identity exposed. Between the two of them, they had an endless list of things for her to do. It was like they were trying to make up in a single week for twenty-seven years of not parenting. She picked the stuff up quickly enough, and though she wasn’t about to tell anyone, she found it kind of interesting.
She tried to make up little games along the way, too. The nature of these she kept to herself. One of them was called “Strip Political Science”. She employed a robot, specially equipped, of course. This one was more fun when she got the answers wrong. To begin with, she would stand in front of the robot, which would ask her questions. For each wrong answer, she would have to give up an article of clothing.
Once naked, she would have no clothes to “pay” the robot with. From this point on, it was her ass that would suffer. Bending facedown over the desk or a handy chair, she would continue the lesson. The robot’s cold metal hand would swat her, soaking her pussy. She would think of Theron and the hairbrush. The way he had so beautifully mastered her, bringing her to ecstasy.
Another variation involved attaching a dildo to the robot’s torso. She would then let herself be fucked by it, either facedown or on all fours, as she attempted to elaborate on fine points of law and custom. Wrong answers meant withdrawal. Right answers earned her swift, deep thrusts.
She could often come this way, though she had to be careful not to get carried away in her games of pretend self-denial. If ever she said no to the robot, begging it to stop, it would, at once. Hard as she tried, she could not program it to the subtlety of her female needs. Nyssa wanted conquest, captivation. Theron knew what that meant—he knew how to read her, how to push her just far enough, how to break her in all the ways she subconsciously wanted.
After a while, she started feeling guilty about taking pleasure this way while Theron was out there in such danger. She experimented with forms of self-torture. Beating her own ass with a hairbrush, and not letting herself come afterwards. She even tried self-bondage. One morning a servo-robot had to cut handcuffs off her. She had spent the entire night on her back on the mattress, with her hands attached overhead to the bedpost. She then let the key slip off the mattress, thereby trapping herself.
At times like that she wished the primale side of her genetics had included a little super strength. As it was, the Council had decided to give her the intellectual gifts only. She thought that a little unfair, though Morax had told her it had to do with concerns over female hormone balance. Dekalia took her aside and offered a different, more likely explanation.
“The primales don’t want women who can equal or exceed them, dear. They’re a rather insecure lot. So we allowed them to keep their strength superiority, which is obviously the least important advantage, though they think it’s the most important.”
Primales were all about ego—that much was clear. Although she was one, too, so she had to eat a little humble pie from time to time. Actually, she was enjoying the company of both her parents when they weren’t being too overbearing. She liked the rest of her routine, too, the exercise and meditational disciplines. Sexual frustrations and Theron worries aside, she was ready to plow ahead for months if need be.
But then one day she got the word that she had been waiting for with bated breath. Theron had completed his mission and was just now on his way home. The message came from her father, though the strange part about it was that he didn’t want her to tell anyone or to make any effort herself to contact him.
“You’ll see him soon enough,” Morax said. “We need to let him travel in peace for the time being. He’ll be back in another week and then he and I have a little unfinished business. After that he’s all yours.”
Nyssa attempted to inform her father that under no circumstances did she actually want the man, but he broke the comm-link before she could get a word in edgewise.
Well, at least she didn’t have to worry that he was alive. Now she had to think about seeing him, though, and what might happen if some of those tamped-down emotions inside her came spilling out.
The results might not be pretty. Not to mention very safe for bystanders. Maybe they could get space on the grid. The first ever he said-she said primale head-to-head conflict. At least something profitable would come out of the whole mess.
Nyssa called for her robot. It was time for Strip Political Science. She had a feeling this particular session might go long into the night.
“How’s your battery supply?” she asked the machine.
“I have one hundred solars reserve,” the machined replied.
Wow…a straight century of spanking. Maybe that would get Theron off her mind. Though somehow, she doubted it.
* * * * *
Theron discovered the tracker microbe in the bottom of his coffee receptacle just a day outside earth’s orbit. He should have known better than to think he was traveling under the radar. Guardian Command would never let him go without monitoring him. In ordinary times he would be thankful. Brother primales had each other’s backs. Should anything happen to him they would still be able to track his ship.
In light of what the leader of the assassins had said, however, he had to wonder if Morax was spying on him. Trying to make sure he stayed right where they wanted him.
So much for the element of surprise. He toyed with the idea of evasive maneuvers—dumping the microbe and heading back into deep space, but that would only delay the inevitable. Besides, if Nyssa was in danger, he could not afford to waste any more time. Perhaps he ought to go and get her now and spirit her away to safety.
But they would be watching him. If he tipped his hand as to his true intentions, they would watch her, too. Maybe even detain her. No, the only way was to play it cool. To go ahead and meet with Morax, size up the situation and look for a quiet opportunity later. If all else failed, he could fight his way out and go for Nyssa.
Truly, this whole enterprise broke his heart. Morax was the one man he trusted above all others. He was the living embodiment of truth, of the rightness of the sub-genders. If Morax should prove false, what more would he have? Nothing but shadows and memories, old scars, and false hopes.
As for Nyssa, she was lost to him, too. Although he might rescue her, she would never again be what she had been to him. They would never be able to share the kind of intimacy and passion they had known. And that was what hurt more than anything. For this betrayal alone, he might well be forced to kill his beloved mentor.
Theron found Morax in his sitting room, occupying one of two gray bamboo-cite chairs, the
only furniture in the room. The apartment he kept on the three-thousandth floor of the Government Cylinder was sparse by most mem or fem standards. With its bare walls, slate floors and opaque view ports, however, it suited the personality of the Guardian’s top officer.
“I would tell you I’ve been expecting you,” Morax smiled, “but you already knew that.”
Theron handed him the microbe spy device.
“Won’t you sit down?” Morax offered in exchange for the tiny silver ball, no bigger than a grain of dust.
To other than primale eyes, the thing would have gone unnoticed. To these men however, it might as well be the size of an ancient basketball.
“This is not a social call,” Theron informed him.
“I didn’t ask you to sit for social reasons.” Morax snapped his fingers, signaling for a serving robot. He was wearing a white robe, open to the waist. His still-muscular chest was well revealed.
Theron occupied the opposing chair. Rather like chess, he thought, without the board. “No thank you,” he told the robot that offered him a tall, thin tube of colored liquid.
Morax took one and waved the machine away. “I suppose you would like it confirmed?” he cut to the chase. “The origin of Nyssa’s genetics?”
“Yes.”
“She’s mine. And Dekalia’s. She will head the Council. And the Guardians.”
“No woman can command primales.”
“She’s not just a woman. She has my blood.”
“What you’ve done…is an abomination,” Theron said bluntly.
Morax downed his drink. “She didn’t seem so abominable before, Theron. When you were making sex with her…rutting like a couple of pack wolves.”
Theron gripped the edges of the chair. “Morax, I honor you like no other. But I can and will kill you.”
Nyssa's Guardian Page 15
