HUMANS MUST KNEEL: A POSSESSIVE ALIENS ROMANCE

by Renard, Loki

  I put my hand on his arm and shake my head. He has a tendency to describe things through the scythkin lens, and these people know what they're in for. They don’t need to be told again.

  “Krave,” I say. “Let my people go.”

  BROKEN SPACE, HEALED HEARTS

  Seven

  POOF!

  That sound heralds thirteen souls being hurtled into the outer reaches of the atmosphere, headed for an empty planet capable of supporting carbon based life.

  “I thought that shuttle would make a more impressive sound when it left the planet.”

  “That’s because your idea of space faring comes from television, even though you’ve actually been on a shuttle yourself.”

  “Hi guys, hows it going?” Tyank comes into the room. He has a sheepish expression in his tone that even I notice.

  “What’s wrong, Tyank?”

  Tyank is cradling the scythkin infant in his arms. It is gnawing on something that looks like raw meat. I don't want to know where or who that came from.

  “Uncle Tyank doesn’t love the fact that you sent a demon down here to torment him.”

  “He’s just a little guy, he’ll grow out of it.”

  “I’m not talking about Czar. I’m talking about that woman,” Tyank says. “She’s like a matriarch but without the ovipositor.”

  “Sounds perfect for you. Where is she?”

  “Bedroom,” he says. “Sex is the only way to get her to be quiet.”

  “Attaboy. What else did you need to tell us?”

  “Oh. Sorry. I was distracted by Czar. He needs a LOT of meat. I’ve been feeding him the rest of these puppies, but…”

  “You’ve been feeding him PUPPIES!” I exclaim. “You can’t do that!?”

  “Sorry, not puppies, pirogies. All your human words are the same, and there’s far too many of them,” Tyank complains, shifting Czar in his arms. It is difficult for even a fully grown scythkin to handle one of their infants. Tyank has little cuts all over his body oozing black goo where Czar’s super sharp appendages have sliced through his thick outer skin.

  Tyank! What did you need to tell me.”

  “Oh,” he says as Czar grabs his horn and starts trying to yank his head off, while making incredibly aggressive snarling sounds. “Actually, a lot. While you were shooting those thirteen humans toward a distant rock, something really weird happened.”

  “What?”

  “The good news is, the fleet has arrived and is in orbit around simulated space. So we’re protected by several thousand scythkin warriors just zipping around getting more and more bored by the minute which can only lead to a bloody battle for fun. But there’s also bad news. Galactor wasn’t only trying to attack our service station. They were doing something even weirder. Oh, also, Vulcan didn’t return with the scythkin fleet. He stayed behind to taste Galactor blood.”

  “So Vulcan is alone against a Galactor fleet, who according to your intelligence, is doing something weird.”

  “Oh, it was really weird,” Tyank says. It’s difficult to understand him because little Czar is doing his very best to disembowel him, and is having some success by the looks of things. “There was an explosion. A really big one. Kind of a big bang.”

  “So they destroyed the service station?”

  “They did more than destroy the service station. They opened up a hole in space and time and reason and that dimension where everything is pink and fluffy. It’s a really big hole. Vulcan transmitted about it. I can show you, if you like.”

  “Yes, do that,” Krave says, moments before Czar hurls himself across the space between them and latches onto his throat.

  The co-parenting thing really isn’t working out, mostly because Czar isn’t going to stop murdering everything he encounters for several months, and they have to make sure he doesn’t get anywhere near me in case he literally rips my face off. Krave has been very clear that he’s not going to tolerate my face being removed by anyone.

  Tyank brings up the video transmission. Vulcan’s face appears on the screen, his vicious features contorted in fear, or maybe rage, or more likely, both. Behind him, all of creation is exploding, not in heat and light, but in a cascade of strangeness. The universe is broken behind him, strange objects appearing and disappearing inside the camera’s field of view. There’s a chair with a face, and a pink fuzzy polar bear, and the entire case of Cheers all vaulting through space behind him. The space between them is like liquid melting mirrors which pulse and occasionally squirt something else strange into existence.

  “It’s weird,” he says. “It’s getting even weirder by the second.”

  A paper crown appears on his left horn.

  “It’s getting closer. I’m getting caught up in it,” he reports with as much composure as a creature who was made to destroy foes in battle can have finding himself in a vortex of cosmic weirdness.

  “Keep watching,” Tyank says. “It gets better.”

  “It looks like he’s dying,” I say. “Slowly, and weirdly, but dying.”

  “He doesn’t die,” Tyank reassures me.

  I look over to see what Krave thinks of this. Czar has run out of energy and is curled in Krave’s arms, fast asleep. I look at his little horned head and the fangs, one of which is sticking out further than the other one, and I wonder what kind of future awaits the little beast we pulled from the broodsite. I wonder what future awaits any of us, as I look back at the cataclysm taking place all around Vulcan.

  “The ship is starting to disintegrate,” he says. “I’m being pulled back toward it. This may be my last transmission. So this is my last chance to say everything I never said when we were together. Krave…”

  Whatever he was going to say is lost in a sudden swirl of perfect strangeness, everything breaks down into fractals and we find ourselves staring into an abyss of what must be pure creation. There is silence inside the room. There is no way Vulcan survived that. It isn’t possible…

  …

  …

  …

  … the scene clears to a green field. Vulcan is standing, alive, on that grassy plain.

  “He survived?!”

  “That’s not the best part. Look where he is!”

  Tyank hits a button somewhere and cuts to another camera feed. This one is broadcasting from what looks to me like mostly empty space. Everything is gone. The dancing bears, the paper hats, the television characters incarnating from the distant past existed only to blink out of existence the moment the playful photons emulating them decide to disperse. But they have left something in their wake. Something small and blue and green. A planet.

  “Is that Earth?” Krave rumbles the question. “It looks like Earth.”

  “It is Earth,” Tyank says. “Better than Earth. It’s Ancient Earth. Galactor opened up some kind of wormhole to the past and yanked Earth back through it.”

  “That's not how wormholes work.”

  “Well, I don’t know, I’m not a scientist. I don't know what made the hole, or what the hole was caused by. Or what its favorite food is,” Tyank snarks. “I was just told about a hole. A big hole through which Earth came.”

  “So this is good news?”

  “Sort of. The scythkin probes we’ve sent out can’t get to it.There’s some kind of temporal field around it. So Earth is back. We can observe it, but we can’t reach it. And Vulcan is going to be down there a long time if we can’t get through it.”

  “It’s not really possible to pull a planet back out of time once it has been destroyed,” Krave says. “What’s down there is an echo of the past. It’s not real. Or it is real, but it already happened. Vulcan doesn’t belong down there. He’s an anomaly. The planet will try to reject him, like a splinter in its finger. It will attack him again and again.”

  “He’ll like that,” Tyank says.

  “Yes,” Krave agrees. “He will.”

  “Happy ending, then.”

  “Very happy ending.”

  They high five one a
nother.

  “You’re going to rescue him though, right?”

  “Sure,” Krave shrugs. “Why not.”

  I’m bewildered, but if they’re happy, I guess I’m happy. The only skin I have in this game is Krave, and I guess, Czar, though it has been hard to bond with an infant who tries to rend my flesh from my bones every chance it gets.

  “I’m going to send a detachment from the fleet to establish new guardianship around Earth,” Krave says. “Most of the Galactor and other scythkin fleets were destroyed in the timesplosion. They can breed at the perimeter. The strongest matriarchs will be permitted to lay on the moon, and their broodkin will guard the realm. Tyank, you, will rule over this simulation with Kar3n by your side, and my mate and I will do something I’ve never done before.”

  “Speak about her as if she’s not even there?” I roll my eyes.

  “No.” He turns to me, handing the sleeping Czar off to Tyank so he can embrace me without my throat being ripped out. “You and I are going to travel. I’m going to show you the universe. We will sail the stars until you have seen your fill, you and I. Once we’ve dragged Vulcan out of his latest mess, anyway.”

  “Okay, so that is a happy ending,” I agree, holding my hand up for a high five.

  I get one big high five from Krave, and then one more. A surprise from little Czar, grinning at me through his bloody little fangs.

  “Aw, look at him. He’s being nice to me. He didn’t even try to claw my hand off and stuff it in his mouth!”

  “I told you,” Krave says. “He likes you. You’re a good mother, and an even better lover.”

  “Not in front of the murder-baby!” I hiss, covering Czar’s pointy little ears. The broodkin kicks his clawed feet and lets out a laugh of pure joy.

  Epilogue

  Seven

  Over the last few months, I have been skipping through time with Krave by my side. I have seen sights I never imagined existed. I have eaten food I wish I hadn’t. I have loved and been loved more thoroughly than I knew possible.

  Now we return to the small colony where the humans freed from the simulation bravely decided to live their lives. I have been nervous about this, wracked with guilt. In my timeline, barely a year has passed, but in theirs, over three hundred years have gone by. The first thirteen settlers are long gone, becoming ancestors to the new population of the planet I said we shouldn’t name. That is for the new humans to do.

  “Is anyone alive down there?”

  Krave checks the stats the computer is gathering. “Four hundred thousand people.”

  I start out of my chair. “Bullshit. That’s not possible!”

  “There’s been around fifteen generations,” Krave says. The first five females gave birth on average five times each. The population more than doubled in that first generation, and continued to more than double for the next fourteen generations. Even with losses, they have managed to grow exponentially. This is one of the reasons scythkin respect humanity so much. Your species is almost as efficient as ours at reproducing.”

  “Four hundred thousand new humans,” I say, wonderingly. “Because we saved thirteen, three hundred years ago, there are now four hundred thousand souls down there.”

  “It’s quite something, isn’t it,” Krave smiles. I think he is proud. I know I am.

  “What are they doing?”

  “They’ve settled three main cities. One has the bulk of the population, the other two are satellites to it.”

  “But I mean, what are they actually doing?”

  “Their technology is essentially stone age,” he says. “So they’ve done some basic construction, stone monoliths, and…”

  “No, I mean right now.”

  “Oh,” he says, screwing the dial of his machine so the probe sinks lower, giving us a better, richer view of the world below. I can see people in the streets of the stone city. It’s an incredible feeling to know where they came from, to have seen their ancestors and to know the sacrifices that were made for them. I wonder what these new Earth people think of their world, and the people who bore them. I wonder what their legends involve. I wonder what they are doing, because it is mid-day over their city and none of them are moving. I squint at the camera to get a better look.

  “Are they… kneeling?”

  The entire population of the city is on their knees. There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for it, but they’re all very much doing it. There’s not a single person who isn’t playing along, even the smaller people are doing it, the juvenile ones who are yet to attain adulthood, and some of the pets.

  “Why are they still kneeling?” I look at Krave, confused.

  “Tradition,” Krave says. “That would be my guess.”

  “Tradition?”

  “It’s when humans do things many years, dozens, or hundreds, or even thousands after the original need to do the thing has evaporated. They call it tradition.”

  “So they do this because you couldn’t find a reasonable way to keep track of people besides making them go down on their knees for several minutes every day.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “You know, in a way, every single one of those people down there are our offspring,” I say. “Not like Czar is, but in a different way.”

  “In a very strange way,” Krave says. “I like to think of myself more as a distant god.”

  “Of course you do,” I snort.

  The mocking tone in those four words is enough to make his brow rise and my blood quicken.

  “It’s been too long since you kneeled,” he growls softly.

  I feel a spark inside me, a sexual chemistry starting to fizz as my body prepares for him. I always know when I am going to be taken. I hear it in his voice, a throaty intensity growling through me, letting me know that my pussy is soon to be split open around his alien hardness.

  “Kneel for me, little human,” he purrs, sending a bolt of excitement through my belly. This is how our story began, my rebellion, his insistence, the flaring of erotic energy which fused our souls.

  “Humans must kneel,” he rumbles deep in his throat. “You especially.”

  I bite my lower lip to try to hide the sex-driven grin which threatens to spread across my lips. He and I have been through a great deal. We have crossed worlds of understanding and strangeness to find some commonality, a place where our love can exist.

  “Make me,” I whisper.

  He lets out a possessive growl. It is a sound which will never fail to excite me. Krave and I are connected at the core. We are so different. Alien. Human. But we are the same thing.

  His mouth descends on mine. His lips caress mine. His hand covers my head, slides down my neck and clasps the base of my spine in a grip which is as possessive as it is loving.

  His grip tightens as he pushes me down on my knees, just as he did that first time, when our species was still completely imprisoned, and when I was nothing more than a naughty anomaly in his simulation. I allow myself the luxury of resistance, knowing that he will overcome it. My knees find the floor and my pulse quickens as I look up the long, aggressive body of the male who is my soul.

  I kneel for him. He is the only being in creation I will ever kneel for.

  His claws run through my hair, the tips of those sharp appendages dragging lightly across my scalp, sending tingles all the way to my toes.

  “You’re perfect,” he snarls. His words are devoid of aggression, but he can’t help but sound aggressive anyway. It is who he is. He cannot feel anything strongly without being animalistic about it. Just like I can’t be in his presence without feeling that same animal charge.

  He presses his hips toward me and I let my lips run over the ridge of his alienhood, that thick rod of ridged flesh which has pleasured me so many times. Another growl graces the cabin as his big hands clasp my head, his claws still extended to scratch lightly against the nape of my neck.

  Our lovemaking used to be fast. Intense. Rough. Even disciplinary. Now it is slow and
deep and urgent. I crave him, just as he craves me with a mutual need which may never end.

  Krave

  Looking down at Seven, I see those beautiful blue eyes staring up at me with all the innocence I have ravaged so many times. I am about to do it again here in orbit above the planet of thousands of souls who owe their existence to her bravery. Her resistance has always meant just as much to me as her obedience, without it, nothing would ever have changed.

  She tips her head back and lets her tongue extend lightly, teasing my rod, the corners of her lips opening in a naughty smile. She doesn’t want to make this easy for me, and that is why I love her.

  I let her play with me. Even from that position of alleged weakness on her knees, she has always known how to torment me and make me hers. My need for conquest has never been entirely sated by Seven, and it never will be. That’s what makes her perfect for me.

  She swallows me down, takes me in her mouth and pleasures me with slow motions of her lips until I cannot take it anymore.

  Seven

  He is mine as much as I am his. I know how to bring this powerful scythkin to his knees, how to make him roar with pleasure, how to tease him to the very brink of climax and hold him there until he cannot stand it. His eyes burn down at me and every breath he takes is a carnal growl, but still I let my tongue and lips play without giving enough to let him spill over the edge.

  “More,” he snarls, his claws curling in my hair.