by Calista Skye
I stare at the Trophy. She’s slumped against the wall, glowering at me from under eyelids tipped with thick, dark fur. The effect is enchanting.
We do need money. But the Glup know something I don’t. She might be worth lot of money, this human female. Perhaps she is the only one of her kind. That might make her valuable to slavers and such.
“How many of you are there?”
She snorts. “Dude, I ain’t telling you shit before I get some clothes on me.”
The defiance in this one is both appalling and enticing.
I turn to Bleep. “Can we make some rags for her?”
“Have you seen me make you a new pair of pants every freaking time one of them rips?”
I groan. “I mean, some garments that might fit her. Doll size. Pup size.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Bleep says and zips back into the control room
Again I’m alone with my prey, and that’s enough for my cock to jump so much that I suspect Bleep might have to make another pair for me soon.
“You will have clothes. How many of you are there?”
“I’ll tell you when I’m not naked. And when I’m not wearing this.” She points to the marker around her neck.
“You know I can force you to reply. Naked or not. I thought I had made it absolutely clear to you that a small female obeys a larger male.”
“Why the hell would I do anything for you?!” she explodes. “You’ve done nothing but bossing me around and punishing me and taking advantage of me. You can go and fuck yourself so fucking hard.”
Her defiance is titillating. She will have to be punished again, and I do so enjoy punishing her.
I take a step closer, and she shrinks up against the wall. She’s the most delightful prey. Her rapid heart rate resonates in my own chest from a pace away, her sweet fear teases my nose and her fast, shallow breath is the sound of a successful hunt. Now all that remains is the kill—
“This should fit,” Bleep says brightly behind me. “Oh, am I interrupting something?”
I sigh. “What did you get?”
A white garment unfolds itself and hangs in the air as if held by invisible strings, but it’s only Bleep’s strange force fields. Bleep places herself right above the neck hole of the jumpsuit-looking thing.
“It’s pretty much a jumpsuit,” the little robot says. “A little like what she was wearing earlier. But the machine can’t make it just like that. This is as close as I can get right now.”
I snatch the thin piece of fabric out of the air and toss it over to Althea. “Wear this.”
12
- Althea -
He flings the jumpsuit at my face, but I grab it in the air and hold it out. It might fit, if there’s a little bit of stretch in it. “Okay.”
“The color will be good on you,” the little point of light says.
I glance at it. “Oh, you speak English, too? What are you, anyway?”
“I’m a drone. The name is Bleep. Yep, read your brain waves the moment you came in here. Not the most complicated language. But lots of swear words. Try your suit on.”
There’s no other option than to step into the hole for the neck and then pull the thing on me. It’s stretchy, and the mesh is so fine I can’t even see it.
I struggle to get it on, then look down myself. “Are you kidding me? I might as well be naked!”
“Indeed,” Brox grunts.
The suit is so tight it’s like it’s been painted on me. And of course the white fabric is as transparent as the thinnest pantyhose you ever saw. Totally sheer. My nipples and the dark triangle at my crotch stand out just as much as when I was wearing nothing, except with the white tone from the fabric the contrast is just even more scandalous. In other words, I look like the world’s least discreet stripper.
“Perfect,” the tiny robot says.
I don’t even dare think of how my ass looks in this getup. “No. This is too thin. Don’t you have another color? Something darker?”
“You think this is a tailor’s workshop?” Brox growls. “You will wear what you’re given. Now tell me how many of you there are.”
I point to the degrading collar around my neck. “I’m not talking to you until you take this off.”
The huge alien snarls like an angry tiger, and the breath sticks in my throat. Maybe being this stubborn is not too wise.
He towers over me, a giant of barely contained predatory power and violence. “You will tell me how many of you there are. Or I will punish you worse than you thought possible.”
It’s weird. The more dangerous he becomes, the more I want to defy him. “Go to hell.”
He draws breath through his teeth, and that is probably the most dangerous sound I’ve heard. Shit. That was the curse that really set him off last time.
“Shit,” I begin. “I’m sor—”
“They’re ten billion,” the little drone says quickly. “Estimated.”
The alien fixes me with his eyes, pinning me to the wall with them like a physical force. “Estimated?”
“Nobody’s actually contacted them before now,” Bleep continues. “They only have one planet with any major population. Their homeworld, probably. Ten billion humans. Half are females.”
Still, he only stares at me while talking to his drone. “There are five billion of this thing?”
“Estimated,” Bleep says again. “But yeah. They’re not actually that rare. Just primitive and probably even unaware that there’s a whole galactic society out here.”
“So, a determined slaver could easily acquire thousands of them,” Brox growls. “They’re not rare. No reason why the Glup should want this specific one. Unless it was to give themselves an advantage for the next match.”
“Starting to look that way,” Bleep says. “There are a couple more females in this colony, too, the Glup say.”
“Are they taking them?”
“Wait.”
The flying little point of light goes silent, and I have the feeling she’s talking to someone using some other way to communicate. She’s right. There are three other girls at the Mars colony. They’re all older than me, though.
I don’t like this talk of slavers and calling us ‘females’. Still I can’t face Brox’s hard alien gaze.
“They’re not taking them,” Bleep finally says. “They are not interested in the other colonists here. They’re done interrogating them. They only want this one.”
“Ask them why,” Brox orders.
“They’re ignoring the question. It’s their only option if they don’t want us to know. They can’t lie. They’re the Glup.”
The alien bows down low, getting even closer to me. I can feel his heat radiating through the half inch of air that separates us. I hug the wall, breathing fast, feeling my heart race.
Prey.
“Why do they want you?” he asks softly, and his whisper is worse than his shouting.
“I don’t know,” I whimper while my mind is racing. Why would aliens want me specifically, out of the four girls here on Mars? I’m not the leader. I’m not that gifted. I’m really only here because my mother—
Oh fuck.
Yes. That’s why.
13
- Brox -
She suddenly gasps, and then her large, dark, wet eyes meet my gaze for a split second before she turns her face away, eyes clenched closed.
She knows.
She knows why the Glup want her.
“Why do they want you?” I ask her once more. And now I know she knows.
“I don’t know.”
Her voice is thin, but there is a new tension in it.
“Can you read her brain, Bleep?”
“You want to perfect your command of her language? I’m not sure that’s possible. I projected it into your brain as well as I could.”
“No. I want to know why the Glup want her. She knows.”
“Oh. Then, no. That’s not how the brain scan works. I can extract her main language. That’
s it. And by the way, if you want to be able to continue speaking it, you better use it. A projected language decays in minutes if you don’t keep speaking it for a good while.”
I sniff the prey in front of me. Cornered prey. Scared prey. “Then I suppose I have to find out some other way.” The alien language feels strange in my mouth and my ears, but my brain has no problems with it.
“Do we really care?” Bleep says. “I don’t think they want her because of the Competition. It’s something else. It’s probably nothing to do with us.”
“How much are they offering?”
“Asking for their offer. Stand by.”
I hope it’s a low offer. It would mean they don’t want her that much. And then I might keep her for myself. Just feeling her with my hunter’s senses makes my blood run hot, bringing the ancient beast close to the surface. Every sense is screaming prey!
“Thirty million,” Bleep reports.
“Zohiq,” I exclaim. “They’re trying to trick us!”
“They don’t know how to,” Bleep assures me. “But it settles this whole thing. We’ll sell her, and we’ll have funds to complete the Competition. Easily. We can’t afford to not take this deal.”
She has a point. We really need the money. This galactic Competition only pays if we win the whole thing. We went into it on a shoestring budget, taking a chance that it would be enough. But this Competition has spanned more of space than it ever has before.
I rub my chin. “I don’t like it. At that kind of money, they really want this human female. This specific one. And she knows why.”
“I’m sure she does,” Bleep says with a surprising amount of exasperation for an artificial being. “And yet, coming to this remote star system cost us a quarter of our entire fuel budget. Heck, we can’t even take off from this planet until we know where we’re going next, so we don’t burn a single atom unnecessarily. Thirty million? We could cruise through this Competition without a care in the world.”
I fix my eyes on Althea, trying to read her mind by force of will. “That’s one thing that worries me. They know how cash-strapped we are. They can tell from the way we fly to conserve fuel. Having us pull out of the whole Competition because we’re broke is their best chance at victory. Now they’re willing to throw it all away. For one human female. She’s worth more to them than the win is.”
“But is she worth more than the win to us?” Bleep asks.
Althea is keeping quiet, averting her eyes.
“I can make you answer,” I say, trying to keep calm. “You have no idea how convincing I can be. Why do the Glup want you?”
“I don’t know!” she says again, this time with a little more force in it. But no more conviction. It’s not hard to know when prey is lying. Prey is always lying.
“You’re lying. To a larger male. To a superior. I’m not sure I can properly explain to you how dangerous that is.”
14
- Althea -
“I’m not lying.”
His jungle predator’s eyes twinkle with what could be both fury and anticipation. It makes me feel completely at his mercy. And that in turn sends new tingles to my pussy.
Shit, this is confusing the hell out of me.
I’ve been able to follow their conversation a little bit. The robot wants to sell me to some other aliens, while Brox isn’t sure and wants to know why they want me.
There’s only one thing it could be. The one thing that only I know in the whole colony. It’s the reason why this colony was established in the first place.
“You are lying. Every word you say drips with deceit.” His voice is both growly and silky smooth, and so deep it resonates in my chest.
“I’m not!” I can’t tell him my secret. It’s one of the very few things in the world that are worth dying for. Maybe the only thing. My mother trusted me with it. For everybody’s sake.
The door of the spaceship is still open. Outside, the orange Mars day is turning into a crimson evening.
“The Glup are asking for a decision,” Bleep says.
“Let them wait,” Brox grunts. “We really should know what it is that we’re selling.”
I’m able to gather up some indignation, most of it fake. “What the hell is this talk about selling? I’m not a piece of fruit. I’m a living being from an advanced civilization. You have no right to sell me!”
“We have the right of the Captor and the Hunter and the Superior,” Brox calmly states. “And the Warrior, come to that.”
“He’s right,” Bleep confirms. “In the wildness of interstellar space, the strongest always gets their way. You let yourself get captured. Now you’re a captive. There’s no such thing as rights.”
“No!” I protest as the reality of the situation sinks in and my stomach turns to ice. “That’s illegal! It’s unethical and wrong! You can’t do that to me! You can’t do that to anyone!”
“She’s spirited,” Brox muses. “It would be such a shame to see her go.”
Fuck. They might actually sell me to some other aliens. Brox is bad enough. But these other ones are the ones that attacked the colony. And they don’t sound all that nice.
Tears of fear are burning in my eyes. “You can’t do this. I am a person, not livestock.”
“Keeping them waiting seems to have worked,” Bleep says. “They’re raising their bid to forty million.”
“They really want her,” Brox says. “We just have to—”
Before he finishes his sentence, I bolt towards the open door. I twist and am just able to avoid Brox’s hand that immediately shoots out to grab me. I shoot out the door, but right at the opening the gravity turns back to the much less powerful Mars standard. I’m suddenly only a third of my normal weight, so I totally misjudge my step and fall headlong down the metal ramp. As some kind of reflex and half-remembered emergency spaceship drill, I tuck my head in and bounce once on my way down the ramp like a white tennis ball full of jelly.
I can hear steps behind me, heavy feet on the metal. I scramble to my feet and run across the rocks and gravel. But they don’t hurt my bootless feet — the alien jumpsuit turns hard under the soles, and it’s just like running on the springy soil in a forest. I turn slightly to run back towards the colony.
Again, I adapt to the strange gait that’s the most effective on the surface of Mars. I’m almost parallel to the ground as I use my legs to propel me up and forward.
I don’t look behind me. I know he’s coming. I can hear it. Slow, heavy steps on the ground, crunching on the gravel.
He didn’t have much trouble catching me last time. But I’m running easier now. The suit is light and frictionless, while my old utility suit was heavy and loose. And this alien garment gives me support right where I need it, somehow.
I think he’s coming closer. In a flash of panic, I’m able to run a little faster. But even in this low gravity, my body needs air. I’m starting to pant, and my throat is constricting from the thought of being sold. Like an object.
The colony is only a hundred feet away now. And the sound of Brox’s steps behind me are also getting closer.
He’s toying with me. I know it. He could have caught me after ten feet. He’s enjoying this.
He’s an alien predator. I am prey.
I’m getting close to the first dome of the colony. But it won’t help me. It’s where we grow our vegetables, and that door has no lock.
I run towards it, anyway. I have a plan.
15
- Brox -
She runs with a gait so female and so graceful that I almost forget I’m hunting her. The strange, long fur on her head streams behind her, and I think I’m starting to see the point of it. It has to be ornamental in nature. And her behind in that sheer garment Bleep made for her is the most alluring thing I’ve seen for a long, long time.
I have to make a short stop and adjust my pants. It’s difficult to run when my crotch swells like this, even in this low gravity.
She runs, scared and with those pa
nicky moves that scream prey. It stirs the ancient parts of me, the parts of me that are at the center of my being.
I could easily catch her. Two slightly faster steps and I would have her. But the hunt has a pleasure all of its own. Here the outcome is certain, and the excitement is less because of it. Still, I’m enjoying this. I should do this more often. I should go on more hunts like this, the old way, on foot. It nourishes the soul and brings me in touch with my innermost being.
She knows I can reach out and get her any time I want. She has no chance to really escape. But she tries. She tries her best. Spirited prey is indeed the best prey.
It reminds me of younger days. I can’t hold back a growl.
Mine!
16
- Althea -
I can hear him snarling behind me. I don’t know if he’s trying to scare me or if this is just what he does when he’s chasing someone across the surface of a desert planet.
I have a dull ache in my back, sending out rays of pain with every step I take. I must have hit my spine harder than I thought when I bounced down that ramp.
I make for the door, then, right before I’ll reach it, I sidestep to the right. I get the satisfaction of hearing Brox grunt and slam one hand into the dome, making the huge plastic structure give off a deep boom. He’s right behind me, and my whole body is just waiting to be grabbed.
I feint to one side, then the other. Then I run right past the broken antenna. Everything we brought here to Mars had to be light, to save on rocket fuel. And on Mars, it’s a third of the weight it was on Earth. I grab hold of one of the pieces of it antenna, holding it by two of its thin spars. Then I lift it up, rotate in my tracks, and fling the thirty feet tall segment of the mast right at Brox’s face.
He grunts in surprise, then simply grabs it out of the air and tosses it aside.
