Alien Conquest

by Tracy St. John

  The young man waited, his ex­pres­sion hint­ing at only a lit­tle of his ner­vous­ness. Tra­nis gave him a nod. “Ex­cel­lent. Give the or­der, Sim­dow. The task is yours to com­mand.”

  Sim­dow re­laxed and even smiled a lit­tle to have im­pressed his cap­tain. As he be­gan the prepa­ra­tions to aban­don the spy­ship, Tra­nis used his pri­vate chan­nel to call Li­don.

  “Cap­tain Tra­nis to Weapons Com­man­der Li­don.”

  “Li­don here, Cap­tain. It’s good to hear your voice.”

  They spoke in Kalquo­rian, but Cas­sidy looked at Tra­nis when Li­don’s voice emerged from his per­sonal com unit. A slight smile warmed her ex­pres­sion. Tra­nis was be­gin­ning to en­ter­tain real hope that they might win the Earther’s bruised heart.

  “Our ship is dead, Li­don. We’re trans­fer­ring op­er­a­tions to the trans­port, along with all per­son­nel and pris­on­ers on Eu­ropa. Co­or­di­nate se­cu­rity for the trans­fer and as­sign a de­tail to take charge of the Earther gen­eral.”

  “I’ll take care of him my­self.” Li­don’s voice lifted, a sure sign of good feel­ing. “I have news for you.”

  “Let’s have it.”

  “I’ve bro­ken a few more codes. I know where the en­trance to the Bermuda Tri­an­gle por­tal is. It’s only two days’ jour­ney from here on the other side of the se­cu­rity grid.”

  Tra­nis’ heart leapt. “Ex­cel­lent job, Li­don. I’m glad to know I won’t have to take the in­for­ma­tion from our Matara.”

  “How is she?”

  Tra­nis thought of Cas­sidy’s night­mare, of her con­tin­ued pain. Since he was within earshot of other crewmem­bers, he de­cided to keep such per­sonal rev­e­la­tions to him­self for now. He sim­ply said, “She’s as good as one can hope for a woman in her sit­u­a­tion. I’ll see you soon. Tra­nis out.”

  Cas­sidy and De­gorsk joined him. “Those Tra­gooms sure made a mess out of your ship,” she ob­served. “It’s al­most as bad as what they did to you.”

  “Worse, ac­tu­ally,” Tra­nis an­swered, tak­ing her hand de­spite be­ing on duty and sur­rounded by a large num­ber of his crew. To hell with pro­to­col. “The ship is dead. We’re go­ing to use the Earther trans­port in­stead.”

  “I’d bet­ter get to Med­i­cal and pack up,” De­gorsk said. “Then we’ll work on our quar­ters.”

  “Can I help?” Cas­sidy asked.

  “Thank you.” De­gorsk eyed Tra­nis. “No lift­ing, Cap­tain. Doc­tor’s or­ders.”

  “Matara’s or­ders too.” Cas­sidy squeezed his hand, mak­ing Tra­nis smile. He bowed his head in as­sent.

  “As you com­mand.”

  * * * *

  Cas­sidy found she wasn’t much help to the Kalquo­ri­ans when it came to pack­ing up sick bay. They were too fast and too or­ga­nized for her to keep up. In the end, she sat to one side, stay­ing out of ev­ery­one’s way.

  When De­gorsk had fin­ished di­rect­ing his staff and fi­nal­iz­ing how they would set up on board the Earther trans­port, she went with him back to the clan’s quar­ters. Her heart leapt to see Li­don was there with Tra­nis. The Nobek smiled and in­ter­rupted what he was do­ing to place a gen­tle kiss on her fore­head. Then he got back to work, ready­ing the clan’s be­long­ings for trans­fer.

  For a won­der Tra­nis be­haved him­self, not help­ing to store things away. He sat on the bed while Li­don care­fully packed ob­jects from his al­tar in a con­tainer. Cas­sidy sat down next to the cap­tain, who also greeted her with a kiss. She felt re­lief that his color had re­turned. The bruis­ing had al­ready be­gun to fade. She’d heard Kalquo­rian medicine was far ad­vanced of Earth’s, and Tra­nis was proof of it.

  Li­don lifted his al­tar, ex­pos­ing a plas­ter mold of – Cas­sidy gaped – some­one’s but­tocks?

  The Nobek snick­ered and showed it to De­gorsk. “I sup­pose you want this back.”

  “My ass!”

  Tra­nis laughed, grab­bing his stom­ach as if the hi­lar­ity hurt. “I knew you wanted to keep his ass all to your­self. Greedy Nobek.”

  Li­don’s back was to Cas­sidy, but his shoul­ders shook, let­ting her know he was laugh­ing too. “As you said, it’s a very nice one.”

  Cas­sidy couldn’t con­tain her shock. She stared at the sculp­ture, dis­be­liev­ing her eyes. “Why do you have that?”

  Tra­nis an­swered, still chuck­ling. “One of his jokes. De­gorsk thinks it ir­ri­tates us to have it hang­ing on the wall.”

  De­gorsk grinned. “Our clan­mates are so se­ri­ous all the time, pre­cious girl. Haven’t you no­ticed? A lit­tle hu­mor is needed to com­bat the ram­pant somber­ness around here.”

  Tra­nis couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. “You might not laugh if you saw the at­ten­tion Li­don gives it when you’re not around.”

  Li­don ca­ressed the mold to un­der­score the Dramok’s words, his ex­pres­sion las­civ­i­ous. De­gorsk snatched it from him.

  “Get your hands off my butt.”

  That prompted more laugh­ter from Tra­nis. He winced at the ef­fect on his bat­tered in­sides.

  Cas­sidy looked at the three men, try­ing to wrap her mind around what they in­ti­mated. It had to be a joke. But then Li­don pat­ted De­gorsk’s real back­side with af­fec­tion. In re­turn, the medic shot a warm smile at him be­fore putting the sculp­ture in a padded con­tainer.

  Sus­pi­cion grew, and she said,“You’re not se­ri­ous. I mean you three don’t – don’t –”

  Cas­sidy couldn’t fin­ish the ques­tion. The three men looked at her, bland pa­tience re­mov­ing the hi­lar­ity. Her stom­ach squirmed as she saw the truth in their eyes. “But it’s a sin for men to lie to­gether! The worst pos­si­ble!”

  Tra­nis moved so his body touched hers. “Cas­sidy, we’re aware of your Church’s stance on the mat­ter. I know the idea may be ab­hor­rent to you. How­ever, our sit­u­a­tion is very dif­fer­ent from what you’re used to on Earth.”

  She stared at him, dumb­founded. What was there to say?

  Tra­nis sighed and kept try­ing to ex­plain. “There are only a very few women of our species left on Kalquor. I can count on my hands the num­ber of Kalquo­rian women I’ve met, and three of those were our moth­ers.” He brushed a lock of hair from Cas­sidy’s cheek. “Kalquo­rian males’ needs are great, and we can’t al­ways deny our­selves the warmth of an­other body. For us it’s un­nat­u­ral, even im­pos­si­ble to deny our urges.”

  De­gorsk sat on the other side of her, tak­ing up her hand to press to his lips. “There are those who pre­fer to be with their own sex. I say pre­fer, but choice doesn’t en­ter into it. Sci­ence has found that sex­ual pref­er­ence is en­coded in our genes. For the rest of us who fa­vor fe­males, we still have the need for in­ti­mate plea­sures. We must ac­cept what we can find.”

  Li­don added, “We clanned Kalquo­rian men count our­selves for­tu­nate that our bonds are so strong. We see no shame or ug­li­ness in our unions.”

  Cas­sidy strug­gled with that. “Are you in love with each other?”

  “We are clan,” Tra­nis said, as if that ex­plained all. When she stared at him, he said, “Ours is not an ar­ranged clan­ning. We three are to­gether by choice.”

  “It’s a fam­ily unit with ex­tra ad­van­tages,” De­gorsk sup­plied. “There is the re­spect, con­cern, and yes, the love one shares with spouses.”

  Cas­sidy sat quiet for a lit­tle while, ab­sorb­ing the star­tling in­for­ma­tion. As Li­don had said, there was no shame what­so­ever in their at­ti­tudes. They ac­cepted the ar­range­ment as if it was the most nat­u­ral thing in the uni­verse.

  With­out women, it prob­a­bly is. Some of the il­le­gal books claim that ho­mo­sex­u­al­ity and bi­sex­u­al­ity were once ac­cepted on parts of Earth, be­fore the Word be­came law. In some of the so­ci­eties, men we
re al­lowed to marry men; women mar­ried women.

  She thought hard about it. There was no doubt in her mind the men of her clan truly cared for one an­other. Cas­sidy had the idea that their feel­ings for each other went even deeper than they let on. She thought per­haps they were be­ing care­ful with her, try­ing not to up­set her sen­si­bil­i­ties with their in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ship.

  Was their ap­par­ent de­vo­tion to each other such a ter­ri­ble thing when it was forged from real love? Did her dif­fi­culty with such ideas mind­lessly stem from the dic­tates of the Church?

  Cas­sidy spoke with de­lib­er­a­tion to let them know she was work­ing hard to un­der­stand. “You have to re­al­ize, this is com­pli­cated for me to wrap my mind around. My peo­ple have long had prob­lems with the moral­ity of same sex li­aisons. The cur­rent re­li­gion was formed from three ear­lier ones: Ju­daism, Is­lam, and Chris­tian­ity. All of those be­liefs spoke out against such re­la­tion­ships. They were an abom­i­na­tion to God, Yah­weh, and Al­lah.”

  “‘Bet­ter to clan the beloved who is hate­ful to oth­ers than to clan the hate­ful, though he be beloved of oth­ers’,” Li­don in­toned.

  De­gorsk nod­ded. “Even un­der the threat of tor­ture and ex­e­cu­tion, your peo­ple still pur­sue their nat­u­ral urges. Even when those urges mean sex with their own gen­der.”

  “I’ve never known any of those peo­ple.”

  The three men ex­changed looks. Cas­sidy could feel them weigh­ing some­thing of im­por­tance, try­ing to de­ter­mine if they should speak.

  “What? Did you dis­cover some­thing about the nuns or as­pi­rants?” None of her spy­ing had ever hinted that any­thing un­to­ward went on at the con­vent.

  De­gorsk’s voice was so quiet she strained to hear. “Cas­sidy, your grand­fa­ther is no stranger to this sup­posed sin of ly­ing with men.”

  She stared at him. “That’s not pos­si­ble.”

  He squeezed her hand. None of his usual hu­mor was in ev­i­dence. De­gorsk’s de­meanor was as gen­tle as if he de­liv­ered news of a loved one’s death. “I ex­am­ined Gen­eral Hamil­ton my­self to de­ter­mine his abil­ity to be ques­tioned. My ex­am­i­na­tion was ex­tremely thor­ough to be sure his health was not com­pro­mised in any way be­fore he was sub­jected to our in­ter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods. The signs were there. He’d re­cently en­gaged in sex­ual in­ter­course with an­other man, prob­a­bly the very day we cap­tured him.”

  A sense of un­re­al­ity washed over Cas­sidy. Her grand­fa­ther was ho­mo­sex­ual? The man who’d ad­mon­ished her ev­ery wak­ing minute they were to­gether to fight im­pure thoughts and de­sires? Gen­eral Patrick Hamil­ton, who prayed louder and went to Church ser­vices more of­ten than any­one else she knew? He’d turned to men when there were so many women on Earth who would gladly ac­cept his pro­posal if of­fered?

  At least the Kalquo­ri­ans, so close to ex­tinc­tion, had an ex­cuse for their same sex en­coun­ters.

  That thought prompted an­other ter­ri­ble idea, and Cas­sidy stared at Tra­nis. “Did you—?”

  His cat’s eyes widened. “Ab­so­lutely not. Your grand­fa­ther has not been touched by us in that way.” The dis­gust in his voice rang true.

  “I can’t be­lieve he would do such a thing. He’s so de­vout, so de­ter­mined to pun­ish sin­ners.”

  “‘The greater the trans­gres­sion, the louder the dis­trac­tion.’” Li­don tapped his holy book be­fore care­fully pack­ing it away.

  “I’m sorry you had to learn the truth like this.” De­gorsk held Cas­sidy close, and she let him. She felt she might fly apart with­out his arms around her.

  “It’s as if ev­ery­thing I’ve been told is a lie,” she whis­pered.

  Li­don drew close. “What can we do to make you feel bet­ter, my pet?”

  Cas­sidy’s world was crum­bling, and she didn’t think she could bear it. The shaky foun­da­tions that had made her feel so un­wor­thy were all she knew, and they had fallen, tak­ing her with them. What was right, and what was wrong? She no longer knew and couldn’t even be­gin to find her way in the en­croach­ing dark­ness.

  Her lips pressed grimly to­gether, she said, “Make me not care. Even if it’s tem­po­rary, I don’t want to care for a lit­tle while.”

  Li­don’s bite came with such swift­ness that Cas­sidy never felt his fangs pierce her skin. She dove into the eu­pho­ria of in­tox­i­ca­tion, drown­ing in it un­til there was only lust’s sweet crav­ing.

  Cas­sidy clutched at each man, beg­ging with hands and mouth to be taken all at once, as if dar­ing the heav­ens to strike her down for her sin. The three men were ea­ger to give her what she wanted. They filled ev­ery sweet pas­sage with their need. Li­don was in front of her, mov­ing like silk within her sex. Tra­nis crouched be­hind, stretch­ing her tight­est sheath. De­gorsk stood over the kneel­ing trio, his hand cupped over the top of her head as she tasted him with erotic can­ni­bal­ism.

  They moved as one heav­ing beast within her, and Cas­sidy im­mersed her­self in the sen­sa­tion of be­ing pos­sessed com­pletely. Right or wrong no longer mat­tered; only the joy of en­clos­ing them in her body made sense. Be­yond judg­ment she closed her eyes, con­cen­trat­ing on Li­don’s chest press­ing her breasts flat, the strength of his man­hood as it stabbed deep into her womb, their com­bined wet­ness mak­ing soft, moist sounds as he slipped back and forth.

  Tra­nis moved slow and care­ful but with as­sured thrusts into her rear en­try. The plea­sure of him there was of a thick, rich qual­ity, adding to the in­tense pas­sion sweep­ing her body. Cas­sidy’s hips rocked, now tak­ing Li­don deeper, now mov­ing back to im­merse Tra­nis in her warmth. Mean­while, De­gorsk slipped in and out of her mouth. She rubbed her tongue against the pound­ing vein on the un­der­side of his length. His groans were a sweet melody to her ears.

  I wish Grand­fa­ther could see me now, the hate­ful old hyp­ocrite!

  There was no anger in Cas­sidy’s thought, only de­light in the knowl­edge he had no right to judge her any­more. In her ine­bri­ated state, she felt true free­dom for the first time. There was no need to fear his con­dem­na­tion, not when he was con­demned him­self.

  Cas­sidy held noth­ing back in her en­joy­ment of the men. She worked to please her­self as much as them. With great aban­don, she sucked and licked De­gorsk’s cin­na­mon-y sweet larger staff while her hand worked the smaller. She ground her hips in tight cir­cles, spark­ing thrills of ela­tion in her loins as Li­don and Tra­nis touched ev­ery sen­si­tive nerve of her in­ner anatomy. Feel­ing as if heaven it­self was in her reach, she rose and fell on the tide of their pas­sion­ate mo­men­tum, glo­ry­ing in wan­ton aban­don. Cas­sidy shame­lessly pur­sued rap­tur­ous bliss, and when she cap­tured its starlight burst, she stretched to grasp it again. Greed­ily claim­ing all she could, all she’d been de­nied in the name of right­eous­ness, she car­ried the men with her, ab­sorb­ing their ex­pul­sions like a sponge.

  Later, as their breath­ing re­turned to nor­mal and the in­tox­i­ca­tion faded, Cas­sidy locked eyes with Tra­nis. “Do you re­mem­ber what you told me last time we were to­gether?” she asked.

  He didn’t pause. “I re­mem­ber.”

  “Did you mean it?”

  “Yes, Cas­sidy. I love you, my Matara.”

  “As do I.”

  “And I.”

  The af­fir­ma­tions came with­out hes­i­ta­tion from all three men. She be­lieved they spoke the truth. Cas­sidy bowed her head against Tra­nis’ chest and wept.

  Chap­ter 14

  Walk­ing ahead of her clan, Cas­sidy boarded the shut­tle tak­ing them from the crip­pled spy­ship to the Earther trans­port. No sooner had she en­tered the pas­sen­ger cabin when she stopped short. Her grand­fa­ther sat the back row, naked and strapped to a tan seat built for a much larg
er body. His hands were cuffed in front of him, and he cupped his gen­i­tals to hide them from view. The once-ter­ri­fy­ing Patrick Hamil­ton looked strangely dwarfish sit­ting there, per­haps be­cause of the seat. Or maybe it was the two huge Nobeks on ei­ther side of him that made him ap­pear al­most child­ishly small. They held stun prods at the ready.

  The in­tox­i­cant from Li­don’s bite had long faded, and Cas­sidy trem­bled with rage at the sight of the gen­eral. His eyes widened to see her. He raked her with his gaze, re­mind­ing her that she was clad only in the thin, cling­ing fab­ric of her un­der­dress. His lips curled in dis­gust.

  “Are you still pure?” he shouted. He strained against the thick black straps, as if he wanted to spring up and con­front Cas­sidy.

  She had no chance to re­ply as Li­don moved past her with breath­tak­ing speed. Her Nobek clan­mate loomed over Hamil­ton.

  “You will be silent,” he said over the cho­rus of growls from the guard­ing Nobeks. Then he whis­pered some­thing Cas­sidy couldn’t hear. She was shocked to see her grand­fa­ther cringe in re­sponse. She’d never seen him afraid of any­thing. His of­ten pro­claimed as­ser­tion, “True be­liev­ers in the word of God have noth­ing to fear” rang in her mem­ory.

  Li­don turned and stalked back to the clan. Hamil­ton lifted his gaze once more to Cas­sidy. Tra­nis chose that mo­ment to snake his arm around her, pulling her close to him­self. He sent a nasty grin to the gen­eral.

  “Let’s sit down, Cas­sidy. You too, Cap­tain,” De­gorsk urged, push­ing them both to­wards seats where they could sit with their backs to Hamil­ton.

  Tra­nis sat on one side of her, and De­gorsk on the other. Cas­sidy could still feel her grand­fa­ther’s eyes on her, burn­ing her like the flames of Hell. As if he had the right to judge her!

  Tak­ing her anger out on Tra­nis, she whis­pered to him, “Did you have to use me like that to get what you want from my grand­fa­ther?”

  The Dramok blanched. In a con­trite tone he whis­pered back, “I’m sorry I up­set you. I didn’t em­brace you in front of him in an ef­fort to an­tag­o­nize in­for­ma­tion from the gen­eral.”