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I yawn silently and stretch atop the sleeping mat, taking care not to wake the handsome Gathnarii beside me. Outside, the world is still dark--I can tell because there isn’t any light leaking in around the tent flap--but my internal clock tells me the sun will be up soon.
Time to move. In one fluid, noiseless motion, I rise into a crouch. That’s as high as the confines of the tent will allow. For a moment, I study my sleeping bedfellow. Even in the dark, my night eyes can see all of him, a sumptuous expanse of hard muscle and smooth skin. My member thickens at the sight. I allow my gaze to wander over his sleeping body, tracing the ridges of his pelvis, the deep channels of his abdomen, the thick slabs of his chest. Like all inmates on Ul, the right side of his chest is branded with his crime glyph: arson. How fitting. A hot crime for a hot criminal. I am tempted to caress him now, to kiss him softly, to thank him for the pleasure he gave me in the dark, but there is no need for any of that. Last night, I gave him equal pleasure in return. More than equal, if we’re being honest. Even now, his flavor lingers on my tongue. Who knew Gathnarii stuff tasted so sweet? The things you learn traveling with a caravan. I find my leather breeches and pull them on, followed by my boots. Then I move around to the foot of the sleeping mat where the young male has placed his satchel. I open it and start to rifle through the contents. There isn’t much inside. Five decent-sized hunks of ore. A few strips of slug jerky. A pair of Gathnarii coins, utterly useless here on Ul. Keepsakes no doubt. Nostalgia for a former life of freedom. I remove the coins and set them in a row at the foot of the sleeping mat. Everything else, including the satchel, I take. Outside, the camp is quiet. The big longstriders are huddled and sleeping, their stilt-like legs folded beneath their massive, chitinous shells. Two more tents are staked nearby. No one is standing watch. The Gathnarii was supposed to be doing that, but I persuaded him to take a break. Then I wore him out. I sneak to the nearest tent and carefully pull back the flap. The Slorrax within is nowhere near as handsome as the Gathnarii. Nevertheless, I have slept with him several times over the past days. I am not ashamed to confess it. A man must earn a living somehow, even in prison. I listen for a moment, just to make sure he’s truly asleep. Then I duck inside the tent to steal his ore as well. I suppose you could say I’m an Unfettered, but I’m not as ideological as most of those bandits. Typically the Unfettered use violence to rob Pharod’s caravans. Me, I prefer to use subtler methods. Take this caravan, for example. I met them outside the Ore Depot, at one of the many pleasure dens there. They had just dropped off a nice, fat pile of ore to be hauled away by the Imperial cargo ships, and they were loaded down with offworld goods to take back to Mount Bolguz. I persuaded them to let me ride along. I provided them with entertainment on the journey. Now it’s time to make a quiet departure. Right after I take their money. As I slip out of the Slorrax’s tent, my satchel is twice as heavy as before. The next tent houses two males sleeping soundly in each other’s arms. A romantic image. How sweet. I take what’s in their packs and move on. I have enough ore now to last me several mooncycles. If I budget myself properly, I won’t have to turn any tricks for a while. Yeah, right. Who am I kidding? Off to the east, the sky is beginning to lighten beneath the low-hanging ceiling of clouds. I really should be on my way. The caravanners will never catch me on foot, and the longstriders are not so fast when laden. Besides, they’ll want to get back to Mount Bolguz before Pharod sends his enforcers looking for them. There’s just one last thing I must check before I go. The sleeping longstriders still have their cargo on. Too much of a hassle to take it all off each night and put it back on every morning. The big sacks and crates of Imperial goods are held in place by netting, which in turn is held fast by hooks screwed into the longstrider’s massive shells. Most of the goods are useless to me. Metal bars for smelting. Mining tools. Armor that would only weigh a thief’s body down. But there are other, more interesting items mixed in. Using a dagger I just pilfered from the sleeping lovers, I quietly pry open one of the crates and look inside. Bottles packed in bonedust to keep them from breaking. I slide one out and look at the label in the gathering light. Wine. Salusian, and a fine vintage at that. Yeah, two or three of these ought to do nicely... I hear the sound a split-sareth too late. The subtle crunch of bare feet on ash. A subtle intake of breath. I start to spin, dagger ready, but before I can complete my turn, something strikes me hard on the base of my skull. White light flashes inside my head, followed by a darkness as deep as the ashes of Ul. Just before I lose consciousness, I hear a voice uttering a single syllable of disdain. “Whore.” * * * I wake up groaning and already on my feet, which, if you’ve never woken up that way before, is a strange sensation indeed. My head throbs. “E’s coming ’round, boss.” “Yeah? Bring him round a bit more.” “Aye, boss...” A fist buries itself in my stomach, and I suddenly find myself wishing I had even the tiniest amount of fat to soften the blow. The punch drives all the breath from my lungs, and it leaves me choking and gasping for air. Instinct tries to move my arms in front of my body to block any subsequent punches, but my arms cannot move. My hands are bound above my head. My back is pressed against something hard and smooth. Longstrider shell. I am trapped. I open my eyes and look around. The world’s a little brighter than it was when I left it. Judging from the state of things, I’d say I’ve been out for a couple of kethars. The four caravanners are standing before me. They do not look the least bit happy. Dear Goddess, how utterly embarrassing. I can’t believe I let someone sneak up on me like that. The one who punched me just now is the Slorrax. He’s standing closest, sneering at me with his ugly vertical mouth. The leader of the group, Qelth, is behind him. He’s the one who knocked me out earlier. I recognized his voice insulting me as I went under. Standing beside him now is his lover, Lotan. The brands on their chests are for piracy, kidnapping, and assassination, respectively. As for the young Gathnarii, he is standing farthest off, wearing a wounded look on his handsome face. Under other circumstances, I might find that expression quite fetching. “So,” Qelth says, glaring at me with his faceted eyes. “Thought you’d just run off with our ore, did you?” I shrug and force a smile. “You said it yourself,” I answer. “I’m a whore. I don’t do it for free.” I add a touch of purring to my voice. Not enough to make it obvious, just enough to make it work. For a moment, it has the intended effect. The tension in the caravanners’ muscles slackens ever so slightly. Their expressions soften too. Arousal pushes at the fronts of their pants. But Qelth, hard-headed bastard that he is, manages to shake himself free of my spell. He strides forward and backhands me hard across the mouth. I taste blood. “Don’t flatter yourself, pretty boy,” Qelth snarls. “You were good, but not that good.” With his other hand, he lifts the satchel full of ore I had intended to steal. “This is theft, pure and simple. Now we just have to figure out what we’re gonna do about it.” “I think the whore is with the Unfettered,” Lotan suggests, grinning through his tentacled beard. “I say we take him to Pharod.” I cringe inwardly. I’ve never met Pharod personally, but I’ve heard tales aplenty--everyone in the quadrant has--and while I have a reasonably high tolerance for pain, I don’t think I’m ready for the kind of punishment the Ore Baron metes out. A nice, hard spanking can be enjoyable. Getting skinned alive, not so much. I roll my eyes in an attempt to play off the threat. “Honestly?” I say. “Do I look like an Unfettered?” “At the moment?” Qelth chortles. “Not exactly.” Well, I walked right into that one, didn’t I? My wrists are bound with a length of rope, which has been tied to one of the cargo hooks embedded in a longstrider’s shell. My bare back is resting against the creature’s hard, smooth carapace. I twist my wrists slightly. The ropes around them are tight and strong. Still, they are only ropes. If I had a blade... There’s a knife on the Slorrax’s belt. Qelth has one too. But he’s already stepped back, out of range. “Yeah,” he says. “We’re gonna take this thieving slut back to Pharod, for sure. Who knows, might even be some ore in it for us. But first, we’re gonna have some fun with ’im. Get our ore’s worth, if you know what I mean.” He nods to the Slorrax. “Take his clothes off.” The Slorrax kneels and pulls off my boots. I could kick him in the face, but that wouldn’t do much good in the grand scheme of things. I would still be bound to the longstrider shell, and the knife would be even farther out of reach. I remain motionless as the Slorrax unfastens my leather breeches and pulls them down my legs, leaving me fully exposed. When he stands up again, that’s when I’ll make my move. Just as he’s about to do so, something rumbles in the distance. The Slorrax takes a step back as he rises, and looks off into the cloudy sky. “What was that?” “Karfin’ ash storm,” says Qelth. “That’s all. Now turn him ’round.” The Slorrax turns me before I have a chance to make an attempt for his knife. Now my front is pressed against the longstrider shell, and my ass is toward the caravanners. The position is far from ideal. The rumbling in the distance gets louder. The clouds over there are thick. Too thick to see much of anything at all. Just some blurry yellowish lights moving through the gloom. “You sure that’s a storm?” the Slorrax asks. “What else would it be?” says Qelth. The caravan leader advances. I can hear his boots crunching softly on the ashes covering the hard ground. He stops behind me and drags his knuckles across my bare ass. “That was a lot of ore you tried to steal, slut. Now you’re gonna have to put out.” “What do you think I’ve been doing for the past five days?” He chuckles. “Yeah, but this time we’re gonna do it rough.” “I like it rough,” I tell him. “Not this rough.” Steel whispers as Qelth draws his blade. Then the other sound comes again. The rumble. Only this time it isn’t a rumble; it’s a roar. A small vehicle zooms toward the camp at high speed, maybe fifty veks above the ground. Qelth stops what he’s doing and watches as it shoots past. I’m tempted to watch as well, but I have more urgent matters to attend to. With the end of my prehensile tail, I snatch the knife out of Qelth’s hand. Then I slash it across his throat. Arterial spray gushes over my naked back, sticky and hot. Qelth’s lover screams and charges. I fend him off with a backward kick to his stomach. Then I push off from the longstrider’s shell, turning myself upside down in the air. I manage to cut one of my hands free before my body starts to swing back down again, but the way they’ve tied the rope, my other hand is still bound. The Slorrax has his knife out now, and he’s lunging for me. I block his wrist with my foot and switch my own blade from tail to hand. I drive it in deep, just behind his collarbone. When I withdraw it, a geyser of black blood comes shooting out. The Slorrax tumbles backward and dies atop Qelth’s equally lifeless body. Lotan has already recovered from my kick. He’s charging toward me again, blinded by a combination of grief and rage. I cut my other hand free just in time to catch his wrist. A quick stab up under his chin sends him off to meet his lover. And that leaves one. The handsome Gathnarii has his own blade out, but he isn’t attacking. Not yet, leastways. He looks at me for a moment, then at his dead comrades, then back at me. “We don’t have to do this,” I tell him, and I gesture to the wide open ash plains around us. “We can just... go our separate ways.” For a moment, I think he might actually make the right decision. Then his handsome face clouds, and his eyes brim with tears. “You bastard!” he shouts. “You said you loved me!” “Did I? That really doesn’t sound like me.” He rushes me with a roar. I spin away from his first attack, then duck under his follow-up slash, which comes too Goddess-damned close for my liking. I let him have five more tries before it becomes clear he will not give up. That’s when I wrap my arm around his and pull him to me, pushing my blade in just below the arc of his ribs. Last night, he was the one penetrating me. My, how the tables have turned. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “Truly, I am.” I kiss him as he dies. I can feel his heart beating through the handle of my weapon, and I can feel when it stops. I gently lower his body to the ground and slip the knife out. Then I wipe it on his pants to clean the blade. The ground quakes violently. When I look off in the direction of the storm, I see smoke on the horizon. Great black billows darker than the clouds. Where there’s smoke there is fire. Maybe that wasn’t just a storm after all. I do a quarter turn and look in the direction the flying object went. What was that thing? A little spherical spaceship of some kind. But how could that be? To say spacecraft are rare on Ul would be an understatement. The only ships that are ever supposed to touch down on the planet's surface are the big imperial cargo carriers that collect the ore. The thing that zipped past a moment ago definitely wasn’t one of those. I suppose I’d better go investigate. That thing saved my life, after all. Besides, it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do. First, however, I need my pants. And my ore. TO BE CONTINUED! PRE-ORDER HERE: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GHMN112X
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Rusty chains rattle as the primitive elevator carries me up the sheer rock face of Mount Bolguz. Through the bars of the rising cage, the great ash plains spread before me, vast and dark and gray. The sky above the plains looks like bleeding ink. The air smells of burning.
“Vruhk’tar...”
I wake, as I always do, with a start.
My name is Jean Wolfe, and I’m trying to come.
The ship moves through the vast nothingness of the hypercosm, like a great fish swimming amidst the shoals of eternity.
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