by Tammy Walsh
Or else take matters into my own hands and cut short my sentence with a sharp blade, length of rope, or dash my brains against the hard tile floor.
I wouldn’t be the first to do that, I was sure.
And I wouldn’t be the last.
“It was supposed to be right here,” I said. “Right here. Beside this statue of a Desert Flower.”
Agatha was the first to see through her cloud of emotions and shifted position so she sat beside me.
She wrapped her arms around me and I rested my arm over her.
I didn’t deserve this kindness, this warmth from her.
But it sure felt good to have her so close.
We sat there with my back against the statue as the suns eased over the horizon and took their heat with them.
We fell asleep and awoke in grey twilight.
I checked Agatha was beside me and was relieved to find she was.
She lay with her legs out straight and turned at ninety degrees at her hips with her head on my chest and one arm draped over my stomach.
I leaned down and kissed her on top of the head.
In a desert of emptiness and death, she was all I had.
She was all I wanted.
And still, I managed a smile.
It was big considering the situation we found ourselves in.
I had zero reason to smile.
Except for her.
Her stomach growled and she mumbled in her sleep as she sat up and blinked awake.
She ran her hands over her face.
“Hungry?” I said.
“A little,” she said, which was another way of saying she was starving. “Do we have any jerky left?”
“We ate the last of it today. But there might be something I can rustle up…”
I got up and Agatha stretched her arms and legs and massaged her back.
I would have to get my fingers into her muscles later and work out the kinks.
I approached the Desert Flower statue.
“Are you going to perform more of your desert Kung Fu and find another fish in the desert?” she said.
“Maybe, if I have to. But I might not need to.”
I ran my hands over the Desert Flower statue’s rough contours until I came to one of the large petals.
Please tell me my crew aren’t complete assholes…
I slammed my palm into the petal and it sunk in an inch and then popped out again, falling to the ground.
I reached inside the hole.
Inside was a small cubby with a pile of food wrapped in rags.
I pulled it out and dumped it on the floor.
Then I placed the petal back in position and banged it into place with my fist.
I picked up a handful of sand to rub around the petal so no one could tell I’d opened it.
Agatha picked through the food.
“Wait. You’re capable of magic now?”
“No magic. I found it hidden here in the statue.”
Agatha rolled over the food and tossed it in the air, whooping and screaming with joy as if she’d found a secret trove of ancient gold.
I laughed and shook my head. She was one crazy cookie.
“It’s a feast!” she said.
“Compared to Desert Fish, yes. But don’t get your hopes up. There won’t be any human delicacies here.”
“I don’t care. I could eat anything right about now.”
“That’s fortunate because even the best-tasting food goes a little off after it’s been stored inside a desert rock for months.”
We gathered the packaged food and moved away from the statue and deeper into the desert.
Agatha focused her attention on the food and couldn’t stop picking through it until she decided what she was going to eat first.
We turned a corner and came to a stop at a crossroad of sand dune valleys. It would make seeing those who approached a lot easier.
“Here,” I said, handing over a large bottle of squirlatch juice. “We can use this to wash in. But save some for drinking later.”
It was unique in that it didn’t evaporate like most liquids and was a delicacy in my culture.
Agatha downed a huge gulp of it and sighed with satisfaction.
I checked the coast was clear before letting her wash beneath the stars.
I couldn’t help but glance at her naked body that glistened in the moonlight.
Once she was done, she handed the bottle over and I washed.
I thought I heard a footstep around the corner from where Agatha was waiting but each time I turned to look in her direction, she wasn’t there.
I must have imagined her gazing at my naked body the way I had hers.
We settled down and began munching away.
“It seems strange,” Agatha said, chomping on a ghax snack.
“What does?”
“Your crew didn’t leave a shuttlecraft here and yet they took the time to put food in the statue? And had the statue carved so you would recognize it? Why would they do that?”
“To irritate me? To show they only have a little love for me? Maybe it’s some sick and twisted game.”
“Maybe,” Agatha said with the air of someone who didn’t quite buy it.
I guess it did seem a little strange. If they didn’t expect me to escape, why provide me with food resources like this?
And if they thought I could get this far, they must have known there was a chance I could get off the planet.
And if I could do that, there was no reason I couldn’t find them and my ship.
So why not boobytrap the statue?
I shook my head.
Because my crew wasn’t like that, I told myself. My crew were good men. Honorable.
If they agreed to leave a shuttlecraft here, they would have done it.
Something must have prevented them from doing so.
It didn’t help me much with my current situation but it cheered me up a little, at least.
We munched on our snacks, a welcome break from the Desert Fish jerky we’d eaten all day.
I loved watching Agatha.
She was most interesting when she didn’t know I was watching.
She liked to peer around at her surroundings and take it in, thinking and considering, her lips making invisible words she didn’t speak out loud.
Then she would turn and glance at me and her smile would fade from her face.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She frowned and pursed her lips.
Yes, I thought. Being stuck out here with no shuttlecraft wasn’t good but it was far from the worst fate I could imagine.
At least I wasn’t alone.
Even better, I was here with her.
“What’ll we do tomorrow?” she said.
“Keep moving through the desert. We need to do some surveillance and see what we’re up against. There are other prisons on this moon. They might not be as intense security-wise as the one we came from.”
“Wait. Are you suggesting what I think you are?”
I grinned at her.
“You want to break into a prison?” she said.
I wiggled my eyebrows, causing Agatha to laugh.
“You’re serious?” she said.
“I rule out nothing when it comes to getting out of here.”
She shook her head.
“You’re crazy.”
“Maybe. But maybe we need a little craziness if we want to escape.”
“You might be right there.”
She lifted the juice and downed another mouthful.
She filled her cheeks and extended the bottle to me.
I shook my head.
“You Vulcarians really don’t eat much, huh?” Agatha said.
“And you humans eat a lot.”
“Not all humans. Only me.”
“I don’t know where you put it. You’re skinny.”
“I put it in this hole in my face. It gets a lot of usage. And I’m not as skinny as I
used to be.”
“That’s a good thing. I like a girl with a little meat on her bones. Otherwise, you’d only be good for picking teeth.”
Agatha chuckled.
“Thanks… I think.”
She cleared her throat and rasped a little with her breathing.
“Are you okay?” I said.
She tapped her chest with her fist and nodded.
“Clear as a be—” she said, but she coughed before she could complete the word “bell.”
“Sounds like you need another dose of me,” I said.
“You think?” she said, coughing again.
“I’m certain of it. Come here.”
She shuffled over and plonked herself beside me.
She got comfortable and tossed her hair over her shoulder.
She smiled as we pressed our lips together.
It was slower this time.
We each raised our hands and ran them through each other’s hair and down the back of our necks.
She couldn’t stop smiling and neither could I.
It was me that let out the soft sigh of contentment this time.
Our tongues massaged each other, both fiery and soft in equal measure.
Finally, we pulled apart and I opened my eyes.
She did the same with a big smile on her face.
“Will that do you?” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to overdo the daily prescription.”
She looked me in the eye.
“I might have already.”
“Oh?”
“I have a confession to make. I didn’t really cough because my throat was closing up. I coughed on purpose.”
I beamed and shook my head. I couldn’t believe this girl.
“And why would you do that?” I said.
“I think you know why.”
We kissed again.
This time, she leaned into me, pressing me back onto the sand dune.
She kissed me on the lips and worked her way down my neck to my chest.
She straddled me and I watched as she drew her shirt off over her head.
She gently folded it before placing it on top of the food packaging we ate earlier.
Then she helped draw my shirt off over my head.
I slurped on her nipples, licking and caressing them with my lips and tongue.
She placed her hand on my head and guided me in closer, to encourage me to take her breast in her mouth.
I abided.
I wrapped my arms around her and goosebumps sprung across the surface of my skin as her skin touched mine.
She was stupendous.
Magnificent.
And she was all mine.
I slipped my pants down and she removed her own.
She slid on top of me, guiding me inside her.
She braced herself with her hands on my chest as she rocked back and forth.
Delicious.
Hot.
She rode me, each time taking an extra inch, until she took all of me.
I felt her ass on my balls.
I leaned back and watched as she worked me, drilling me the way I had drilled her that first night.
Then she got serious and rode me hard, bouncing up and down with her breasts floating in front of my face.
It was sometime later, after we were drenched in sweat, with her lying on my chest and fingering the tiny sprigs of curly black hair that she asked me:
“How long do you think I’ll be immune to this planet’s atmosphere now?”
“I’m not sure. About ten minutes.”
She chuckled and leaned her chin on my chest.
“Are you just saying that to sleep with me again?” she said in a mock sour voice.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Neither of us slept much that night, me least of all.
Agatha lay sprawled across me and snored gently.
Her hair lay tossed and curled around her face and tickled my nose.
I ran my fingers through her hair and wondered how I had managed to live this long in my life without her by my side.
That golden glow in the center of my chest was brighter and bolder than it ever had been before.
My skin burned hotter and I had never known a girl like her.
I became more certain than ever that she was the one.
My fated mate.
To think I had met her here of all places.
She never should have been within a thousand light-years of this place.
She should be living in a mansion on Arcturon Prime, not abducted and dumped in this prison to service aliens.
I thought about how I would feel to let her go once we got off this moon after I returned her to her home.
I thought about how I would never see her again.
It made me sad, so I shoved it from my mind and kept myself in this single exquisite moment.
I needed to take a leak, so I shuffled out from under her and crossed the clearing to a sand dune on the other side.
I leaned back and enjoyed the rush of liquid evacuating my body.
The soft splatter of urine made a tiny stream that washed away part of the sand as it rolled down the incline and further into the sand dune valley.
Then the sound turned hard and thudded like rain on a roof.
I looked down and spotted a circle of plastic mostly submerged beneath the sand.
I shook myself off and tucked myself away.
I bent down and gripped a fringe of wood and yanked it from the sand dune.
It was a square box with a familiar symbol on the front.
I opened it and discovered a bunch of items a doctor would use in emergency situations.
A cold feeling washed over me as I slammed the box shut and turned it over.
I ran my hands over the outer casing until I came to the identification marks along the bottom.
I couldn’t believe it.
It was the first aid kit from the shuttlecraft.
It was here! The shuttlecraft had been here!
I turned and quickly scanned the area.
I didn’t know what I was looking for but I knew I would recognize it the moment I saw it.
There.
Was the edge of that corner a little sharper and more angular than the other dunes?
As if something had passed over it and left a groove in the sand?
Yes.
That was where the shuttlecraft went.
No, that was where the shuttlecraft had been taken.
My crew hadn’t let me down after all.
Someone had stolen it.
Agatha
Egara woke me that morning and he could barely contain himself.
Within ten minutes, we had buried the packaging from the food we ate the previous night.
Egara unlocked another two petals of hidden stash buried inside the Desert Flower statue and we hit the road.
Egara had a new lease of life and it spilled over into me.
He found tracks that might lead to the shuttlecraft his crew had left for him.
“The tracks are fresh,” he said, “which means someone must have taken the shuttlecraft recently. At least, more recently than the last big storm that passed through.”
“Five days ago,” I said confidently.
I remembered the storm well.
It came right before I met Egara, when I’d been claimed by a species known as the Hiigarans.
They were rough and brutal creatures, notorious among the Prizes for treating their mates as violently as they did their opponents in the pit.
Where Egara was known for being kind and giving, the Hiigarans’ focused was on take, take, take.
It was one of the worst nights of my life and took some time for me to recover—both physically and psychologically.
That was how I recalled the storm so clearly and wished I couldn’t.
“Tracks for what?” I said.
“Merchants.”
“There are merchants in this place?”
I said, surprised. “It’s a desert.”
“It’s not as dead as the rumors might lead you to believe. On my homeworld, even the deserts are rich with life if you know where to look. Beneath these rising and falling sand dunes are huge schools of fish that swim as easily as those in the ocean. Each morning when the cool mists pass overhead, they come up to drink the condensation. It’s not much but enough for them to survive another day.”
“Do you think the rumors about being unable to survive out here were created by the supervisors?” I said.
“There’s no question. Control how the prisoners think and you control how they act. Fewer escape attempts, fewer riots. If they don’t believe they can survive out here, why try?”
But the desert wasn’t without its dangers.
The air was difficult for me to breathe and could very well be toxic to others.
But wasn’t that true of every atmosphere of every moon and planet in the galaxy?
It was perfectly suited to one species or another and deadly for others.
I smiled over at Egara.
Our lovemaking wasn’t as vigorous as our first night together. It was warmer, closer.
I found in him a need to release pent up emotions that reflected my own desire.
He lay back and let me do what I wanted—what I needed to do—and in the process, I gained the ability to breathe easier on this world.
I was wrong about him not being handsome.
He was gorgeous.
His features weren’t “traditional” but how could they be when he sported those incredible horns on top of his head?
And last night, during our second round, he did something I’d never experienced before…
He took me in his mouth and licked me, rubbing my clit with his thumb and strumming me like a well-worn guitar.
As my hips began to buck and loosen up, he lifted my legs and didn’t rest them on his shoulders as I’d expected but on his horns!
His horns!
My knees fit perfectly in their natural curve as if they had been designed for that very purpose.
God bless you, evolution!
He slurped at me and I felt my juices flow far sooner than usual.
Using his horns like that turned me on more than I could explain. Or understand.
It freed up both his hands and allowed him to probe at me to his heart’s content.
It was sheer bliss.
We peeled around another sand dune when I heard a low thrumming noise.
I looked back at Egara, who had stopped several yards back, his tuft of ears fluttering, peering first in one direction and then another.
