AN UNFINISHED SCI-FI/ROMANCE? STORY

“My lady, the skiff to take you down to Blue Waters is ready,” the words came, somewhat garbled, from the outdated relay machine bolted to the bedside table, which was itself bolted to the floor of the cabin. What was the state of the empire coming to, Ilyra Fe’Arda pondering for a moment, when a member of the ruling house was forced to travel aboard such a rickety and under equipped craft as the one which now carried her?

“Thank you, Tamarin,” she said after depressing the reply switch, using a voice that almost dripped sweetness, entirely out of keeping with her present mood.
As soon as her finger slid off the device and her room’s privacy was returned, Lady Fe’Arda added, “For your fifth not so gentle reminder in the last three units.”

In her defense, her mood wasn’t entirely her fault. The trip from Arda House on Sesyrin had been pleasant up to a point, but once the outer marker to the Burning Hand cluster was reached, the ship’s crew had begun to suffer the effects of the ship’s artificial, and incrementally increasing, gravity. That had drained any lingering enjoyment right out of Lady Fe’Arda, who despite being sturdy and relatively strong by Empire Standards, felt herself bogged down to a crawl.

In truth, she’d been sleeping for the last two days, with the aide of some of Tamarin’s considerable pharmacology knowledge, interspersed with rounds of delicate massage from her private attendant. Supposedly, it was best to sleep through as much of one’s acclimatization to Blue Waters’ heavier gravity as possible, but in practice it only made Lady Fe’Arda dread having to wake up. Still, it wasn’t as bad is it used to be, at least according to some of the stories she’d heard about the earliest expeditions. The Empire’s first landing parties had been almost completely immobilized on reaching the surface, and those few that had remained able to move about ended up breaking something in the process, often fatally.

In comparison to that, two weeks of feeling herself grow progressively weaker, or heavier, whichever sensation fit the best at a given moment, had seemed like a pleasant alternative. Her attendant’s skilled hands hadn’t exactly hurt, either.

“Penna, help me dress,” Ilyra said, none of the false syrup in her voice that time.

Private Attendants were not exclusive to the Fe’Arda house, in fact they were a luxury enjoyed almost universally through ought the Empire, regardless of one’s station. In some places they were known by other names but their basic services remained the same.

Penna was a typical Fe’Arda Private Attendant: no older than twenty of Sesyrin’s full cycles, thin enough to seem almost insubstantial, with blonde hair and green eyes. She wore a sheer light weight gown that tended to cling to her legs as she walked. In some places, it was the custom for servants like Penna to wear as little as possible, with the display of flesh reflecting positively on the House that one served.

Ilyra understood that Penna had been designed to be as she was, not built like a machine, but designed none the less. Fe’Arda’s Flesh Makers prided themselves on their ability to regularly produce Pennas. The genetic information for fair hair was much less common, and the traits for the fine facial bones and eye color were even harder to maintain.

One thing had always bothered Lady Fe’Arda about the system: It had been designed by the ruling males in the Old Period, and so all the servants that were created had naturally been female. Sure, there were tales of some Houses who dabbled in creating males, but few were willing to risk the heavy sanctions that the Empire had imposed in the past when things had gotten out of hand.

Penna dutifully carried Ilyra’s protective garment over from its secure container and began helping her mistress dress into it. The first step was to remove Lady Fe’Arda’s night gown. Penna’s fingers were quick, not even appearing to pause for a millisecond as they flicked the releases at the back of the garment.

As Ilyra began to step into her protective body sheath, Penna’s hands wandered a bit, dancing across Lady Fe’Arda’s taut belly. Normally, the servant would have made a couple of circuits that included her mistress’ buttocks, her ample breasts, and finished with a bit of exploration between her legs. Arousal was considered the most attractive look that a noble woman could wear, but Lady Fe’Arda would be spending the next several hours locked up in a pressure suit and unable to relieve whatever tensions Penna might raise in her body.

“I’m in no mood to be frustrated today, Penna,” Ilyra said.

With a bow of her head, the attendant acknowledged the adjustment to her standing orders and instead busied herself with all the fasteners and clips that the complicated garment required.

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Lady Fe’Arda checked that her breathing mask was still sealed into the face of her pressure suit, that it was still connected to both the atmosphere tank as well as the emergency scrubbers, and that all of the various components involved in its operation were still switched into the on position. It was the third time she’d completed her inspection inside of fifteen minutes. Normally, Ilyra would never have displayed such anxiety even if she’d felt it, but there was nothing normal about this trip.

It had been thirty years since the Empire last tread within the Burning Hand cluster, thirty years since the last Empire ship had entered the atmosphere of Blue Waters. It had also been thirty years since Sesyrin’s brightest minds had decided to spread a genetic plague from one end of the planet to the other in hopes of exterminating the resistance movement that had been organized by runaway servants.

That was the major cause for Ilyra’s concern, that she would soon be walking on a planet that her people had done their best to render lifeless. The plague had been engineered to target only the specific genetics of the servant bloodlines, but there was always a chance that a freak mutation could have occurred in the last three decades. It wasn’t that much of a stretch to believe that the disease could jump from servant to master, after all, the people of the Empire were, when you got right down to it, only very distant cousins of the species that they’d replicated and subsequently enslaved.

The two peoples were close enough in composition that they were able to engage in sexual acts, that is to say that they had the corresponding parts to make it work, but not close enough to produce offspring from such a union. Considering the strict population controls in place throughout the Empire, that genetic difference had made servants like Penna into a perfect alternative, the ultimate contraceptive agent.

“Relax, my lady,” Tamarin advised, speaking over his shoulder as he almost unconsciously worked to trim their angle of descent.

Ilyra found herself gripping the arm rests of her co-pilot’s seat. She was relieved that it was Tamarin at her side, his long service to House Fe’Arda meaning that she could rely on his discretion regarding any breaches in protocol she might commit. Lady Fe’Arda didn’t even want to think about what the trip down would have been like if she’d had to keep up the ice cold façade she would have been expected to wear with anyone outside of the peerage.

“I wish I could have seen it before,” Ilyra commented, not so much thinking about what she was saying but just saying something to keep her mind off of wondering if her seals were still intact.

“From what I’ve been able to see so far, and what the machines tell me,” Tamarin said, “there hasn’t been much of a change to the surface. Blue Waters was almost completely uninhabited for almost thirty years before the uprising.”

“How can that be,” Ilyra asked, “I remember my father talking about going there on safari to hunt and coming back with three Beast Women for the Flesh Makers.”

“Almost completely uninhabited, my lady,” Tamarin repeated, “The aboriginal tribes maintained settlements in a few small areas.”

“Do you think any of the natives, or the runaways, survived the plague?” Lady Fe’Arda asked.

“I wouldn’t think the likelihood should be all that high, my lady. Besides, if there is any trouble, we have a detachment of Konos hoplites to help deal with it.”

Ilyra leaned closer to her pilot and long time adjutant, “I don’t like having to trust my security to the house of Konos, they’ve been our rivals for three generations.”

“It is a simple matter of specialization, my lady,” Tamarin said, his voice changing in tone a bit, trying to reassure Ilyra about their passengers and protectors, “Fe’Arda doesn’t have any enhanced gravity trained warriors.”

“Then why was our house chosen to make this inspection?” Lady Fe’Arda demanded.

“You worry too much, my lady. It is an honor for you and for house Fe’Arda, just as it is an honor for the Konos Hoplites to accompany you.

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The Fe’Arda skiff set down in a clearing between a stand of gigantic trees and a lake that was so still it appeared to be fashioned out of a single piece of cut glass. Ilyra couldn’t take her eyes off of it, losing herself in the deep pure blue that had given this world its name in the Imperial Registrar. She wondered what it would be like to bathe in that beautiful water, to feel it lapping at her skin like an eager lover.

It was then that Ilyra realized that her landing party wasn’t alone. A magnificent looking animal stared back at her from the far shore. It stood on four legs, with its proud head held high on an impossibly muscular neck. It was black as a starless night, and, Lady Fe’Arda could swear, it was staring back at her.

“Tamarin, look,” she said, pressing her private communicator.

When her adjutant turned towards her, Ilyra pointed at the distant animal.

“What a spectacular creature,” Tamarin said, “I believe they were once called ‘horses’.”

“Horses,” Ilyra tried the word and found that she liked how it sounded, “Do you think I could obtain Imperial permission to bring one back with us?”

The sudden laughter in Lady Fe’Arda’s ears reminded her that she’d let go of her private communicator and had said her last words on the broad channel that they shared with the Hoplites.

“My lady, I apologize,” Alvax Thorin, commander of the hoplite detachment, said with a voice that was so deep that it seemed to vibrate against Ilyra’s skin, “but I can save you a lot of trouble. They’re stupid animals, bred to serve. Look at him, he doesn’t even know what to do. His masters are gone, so what does he do? He looks at us like that, waiting for someone to take control of him.

“It would be too easy for you to break his spirit, My lady, but even then you could never trust it. It wants to be controlled, but it hates it at the same time. It is too stupid to decide how it really feels. Such a low creature is not fitting as a conquest for someone of your breeding. If you would still like to inspect the creature, my men can fell it for you.”

Ilyra felt herself sneering at the hoplite commander, only her protective face plate serving to conceal her true feelings toward him. The hoplites looked like they were all assembled from the same parts pile. Their bodies had been hardened through rigorous training programs in varying gravities, giving them an overall coarse look. Their armor only served to intensify their beastly appearance, making them seem even larger than they were.

“No, that is quite alright,” she said, “we have more important matters to attend to.”

“As you command, my lady,” Thorin said, although his voice suggested more mockery than reverence. If he’d used that tone on Sesyrin, Ilyra could have had him disciplined.

Lady Fe’Arda watched the hoplites as they unloaded the rest of their gear. They were hulking monstrosities, and they all seemed to take more notice of her than she would have liked. It felt more like they were sizing her up instead of keeping a vigilant watch over her.

It was common knowledge that the hoplites were not permitted mates or personal servants for the duration of their training and active postings. This particular band of ten of House Konos’ best had been near the end of a five cycle deployment when they’d been tapped for this protection detail.

There had been an incident on the ship, one of the House Fe’Arda servants had disappeared. Eventually, the poor girl’s body had been found, twisted and crushed almost beyond recognition. It seemed as though she’d somehow fallen into the machinery that was responsible for the simulated gravity onboard, but Ilyra wasn’t convinced. She’d suspected one or more of the hoplites had likely had their way with the girl and then discarded her when they were through.

And now here she was, a noble woman, for all intents and purposes stranded on an alien planet with a bunch of heavily armed thugs.

She turned back in time to see the horse stand up on its back legs and then run off. Lady Fe’Arda couldn’t help but envy its freedom.

Ilyra watched Tamarin as he finished assembling the last package worth of sensors. His civilized outline was more comforting to her than those of the hoplites who milled about in their makeshift camp. They’d moved away from the skiff’s landing site, trying to keep any debris or gasses from their landing from contaminating the results of their scans. The ground was harder there, uneven and with jagged rocks jutting out at random intervals. Ilyra felt like she could trip and slice open her protective suit at any moment.

She feared that Tamarin had done just that as she heard him utter an old Empire curse.

“Are you okay?” Lady Fe’Arda demanded.

“I’m fine, my lady,” Tamarin replied, “but these sensors are way off. I can’t get any two of them to agree with each other. I’m afraid the trip down was tougher on them than I’d anticipated.”

“What does that mean?” the noble woman asked.

As if sensing a problem, Thorin and his hoplites began to close in around the two Fe’Ardans.

“I’m going to have to return to the skiff, I need a few things to help me recalibrate the sensors. I could have sworn I brought some of them with me, but…”

“So we’re going back to the skiff?” Lady Fe’Arda asked, trying not to sound too hopeful. The idea of sightseeing on a poisonous planet was seeming worse by the second, especially considering the knife edged rocks all around them.

“No,” Thorin said, “It would be a waste of time for all of us to return. My hoplites can handle this terrain better than the two of you. I’ll send them to retrieve whatever is needed.”

“I appreciate your offer, Thorin, but I’m going to need to salvage some components from the skiff’s electronics. One of the sensor batteries is almost completely burned up. I don’t understand how this could have happened.”

“Very well,” Thorin said, “Two of my men will accompany Tamarin back to the skiff, the rest of us will keep this site secure and protect Lady Fe’Arda.”

Before Tamarin or Ilyra could articulate a response, two of Thorin’s hoplites had deployed some kind of a device between themselves. A third hoplite lifted Tamarin and set him in place, revealing the devices purpose to be a kind of harness that would allow the brutes to carry him easily between themselves.

“Unless, of course, my lady has any objections?” Thorin added as something of an afterthought.

“Of course not,” Ilyra said, “whatever completes our objectives in the most efficient manner.”

She could have sworn that Thorin was grinning at her as the pair of his hoplites took off, Tamarin bouncing along in the makeshift carriage between them, clearly less than comfortable with their loping gait.

Almost predictably, Tamarin was barely out of sight when Lady Fe’Arda’s comm system began to malfunction. She could only hear a faint hiss when she dialed into her private frequency.

“Is there a problem, my lady?” Thorin inquired.

Ilyra was taken aback by how close the hoplite commander was standing to her. If they hadn’t been wearing environmental suits, she would have been overwhelmed by his smell. As it was, she could almost imagine it anyway. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.

“Nothing that won’t sort itself out in time, thank you,” Ilyra replied, being in an uncomfortable position, protocol wise. House Fe’Arda was above House Konos in the peerage, and so under no circumstances should a Fe’Arda give ground to a Konos hoplite. Still, she wondered if that meant she was supposed to let him knock her over, since he was clearly intent on getting even closer or forcing her to take a step back. “Konos Hoplite,” Ilyra said, in her most imperious voice, “I think you are forgetting your place.”

“My place is inside you,” Thorin said.

“What?” Ilyra demanded.

“I said my place is beside you, my lady,” his entire helmet seemed to be smiling.

Ilyra was sure of what she’d heard, just sure as she was that the remaining six of Thorin’s men were pressing into a circle around the pair of them. She tried to be casual about checking for her weapon’s power supply, but more laugher from Thorin’s men made it plain that she’d failed in that endeavor.

“I’m afraid your Sleska is malfunctioning, much like your nursemaid’s sensors,” Thorin said, “But you have nothing to fear, my lady, we are here to protect you.”

There was a flash that Ilyra barely noticed followed by a sharp burning pain across her left breast that was impossible to ignore. She felt the panic setting in when she saw that one of the hoplites had just slashed through her encounter suit. She franticly grabbed at the frayed edges, fighting to hold the garment together even as her compressed atmosphere was vented out.

She felt another sting of pain, this time flitting across her right thigh. The hoplites were masters of their weapons, able to deliver a wound as fleeting as a paper cut or as fatal as in impaled heart in equal measure. She knew that they were toying with her, not that it mattered since she was dead anyway. The poison atmosphere would make certain of that, her own family’s legacy would see her suffocate to death on an alien world.

But she wasn’t suffocating. She was exposed to the environment and there had been no effect. As if to drive this point even further home, Thorin removed his own breath mask.

“We’ve been planning this for months, Lady Fe’Arda. We’ve known that this world was safe for our kind all along,” then to his men, Thorin gave another command, “Take her.”

The hoplites took hold of Ilyra’s arms, legs, and head, leaving their captain to taunt and posture with his energy spear. He’d stripped down to the field gear he was wearing beneath his encounter suit, and despite the fact the he was obviously very proud of the misshapen body that his high grav training had crafted, Ilyra was still sickened by the sight of him.

Thorin spun his weapon around almost recklessly, but it was just an act, because when he directed it against Lady Fe’Arda’s encounter suit, he worked with surgical precision. It was not long before the noble woman found herself wearing little more than tattered rags and showing off far more of her body to these Konos dogs than she would have ever cared too.

As she felt the buzzing tip of Thorin’s weapon whispering back and forth in front of her throat, Lady Fe’Arda wanted to scream. Her station, all the ceremony and politeness that she had grown to detest on Sesyrin had been stripped away. She was nothing now, just another servant to be raped and murdered like that girl on the ship.

Thorin removed all doubt about his further intentions when he undid the buckles and catches that held his uniform in place. His energy spear laid down beside him, the hoplite commander advanced on his prisoner with a weapon of a different sort clutched in his hand.

“Lift her,” he snarled to his men who eagerly complied.

Ilyra knew what was going to happen, and what she had to do. Before she’d let that piece of trash get inside of her, she’d bite through her own tongue and die. Or at least that was what she would have done if Thorin hadn’t suddenly thrust the ridge of his hand into her mouth.

She still made the attempt, trying to tear through her captor’s skin. She drew blood, but the grip did not relent. She squirmed, trying to climb higher somehow, as she felt Thorin’s phallus brush against her inner thigh. There was no escape, it was going to happen.

As she clenched her eyes shut, still trying to twist away from the hoplites’ vise like grips, she felt something warm spray against her face. It didn’t make sense, and what happened next was even more confusing. She was falling.

She took a chance and opened her eyes, though she didn’t believe what they were telling her. Thorin wasn’t there to threaten her anymore, instead he was being supported between two of the hoplites as the others formed a protective cocoon with their pulse shields. Thorin momentarily locked eyes with Ilyra, or more correctly locked eye with her, as he only had one left. Where the other should have been, there was only a long wooden shaft surrounded by an ugly mess of gore.

As Lady Fe’Arda watched, one of Thorin’s hoplites jerked back and fell to the ground, dead. She could see that the dead one, as well as another that was still on his feet, had also been hit by whatever type of weapon had struck their commander.

Thinking that perhaps Tamarin had come to her rescue, Ilyra got to her feet determined to make the most of it. Between the unfamiliar ground, the tattered clothes, and the fact that she spent more time looking over her shoulder to try and see what manner of attack had actually driven Imperial Hoplites to retreat, she didn’t really have a chance. Her balance ran away, and before she could catch it, she felt her head hit something hard and then saw only black.

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The noble woman awoke to an unfamiliar sensation. At first, she feared that her rescue had been a dream and that when she opened her eyes she would be back on the cliffs with Thorin and his hoplites pounding away at her. With her eyes open, she could at first see only an expanse of rippling black. It was then she realized that she was not the one being ridden, but the rider. Though she couldn’t be certain, she believed she was perched on top of the same horse she’d seen when the skiff first landed.

It was an exhilarating feeling, to be carried along by such a strong animal. Ilyra lifted her face some to feel the wind rushing past her, but in doing so she managed to upset her tenuous point of balance. It was then she knew that she was not alone on the animal’s broad back, as an arm clamped around her midsection like a vise to hold her in place.

She relaxed into the strength that she felt, finding herself leaning back against whomever she was sharing her mount with. He was large, but without any of the deformity that marred the hoplites. Lady Fe’Arda craned her neck up and back to steal a glimpse of him and felt her breath catch in her throat.

He seemed to tower over her, his hair a wild tangle that the wind took hold of like a standard bearer’s flag. The line of his jaw was obscured with a growth of stubble, but she could see the muscles bunched up. In the moment that he caught her studying him and met her glance, the magnificent savage kindled something in the noblewoman’s chest that made her feel weak.

The rider relaxed his hold at her waist and instead grabbed both of her forearms, steering them to the horse’s neck. Ilyra felt herself bend forward as he pushed his chest against her, driving her down flat with the animal’s neck. He squeezed her arms.

“Hold,” he commanded, his breath on the noble woman’s cheek, “tight.”

And with that, he was gone. Ilyra did exactly as she was told, for possibly the first time in her life, and held onto the animal’s neck as tightly as she could. The horse continued at a break neck pace. Ilyra chanced a quick look over her shoulder, trying to find where the rider had gotten himself to, and wished that she hadn’t. She saw a pair of loping shapes erupt from the nearby tree line.

The hoplites couldn’t quite match the horse’s pace, but they didn’t have to, as long as they could out reach it’s run with their spears. The first drew his arm back, preparing to loft his weapon down range but never got the chance. He was taken through the throat from behind by another of the savage’s arrows. The falling brute managed to foul his partner’s aim so that the remaining hoplite’s spear sailed off in a harmless direction a moment before an arrow found the small section of his neck that was left uncovered by either helmet or armor plate.

Ilyra did not know any of that though, instead she only knew that she was holding onto a runaway animal for her life. Mercifully though, the horse seemed to be coming out of his galloping pace, snorting and prancing as he transitioned back into a walk. The noble woman had just begun to think of herself as actually having escaped immediate danger when one of the brutish hoplites erupted from the unlikely cover of a nearby hedgerow.
The horse stood up and seemed to scream, front legs pawing wildly. Ilyra had no way of keeping her grip, aside from the feeble attempt she made at clenching her legs tight around the animal’s broad back. She couldn’t help but feel abandoned as her back hit the forest floor, the horse bolting for anywhere that was not within reach of the searing tip of the hoplite’s energy spear. Before Ilyra could react, or even get her bearings, she saw the hoplite rush her and felt the cold click of a restraint collar fastening around her neck.

“On your royal feet, my lady,” the brute grunted at her through a leer, a split second before hauling her up by the collar’s tether, “Thorin still wants a piece of you before we finish the job we came for.”

Lady Fe’Arda tried to say something cutting in one of the Empire’s old tongues, but the hoplite cut her off. The way the restraint collar and its tether were designed, all the brute had to do was depress a button on the handle to send a pacifying neural shock down its conductive length.

“Walk,” the brute commanded.

With her choices being limited to shock pacification, or being run through by an energy spear, Ilyra did the one thing that came least naturally to her, she followed orders.

They had not gone very far before Lady Fe’Arda’s hoplite captor was attacked by a blur. Something hit the brute hard enough to force him to the ground, with the sudden tension it caused along the restraint tether being significant to take the noble woman down as well.

It was Ilyra’s savage protector coming to her rescue again. He’d snaked an arm around the hoplite’s ample neck, and had used all of his weight against one of the brute’s leg joints to take him down. Despite the Konos soldier’s valiant attempts, he was unable to dislodge his attacker, who managed to maintain his grip with one arm leaving his second completely free.

Lady Fe’Arda caught the briefest glimpse of whatever bladed weapon it was that the savage carried before its entire length disappeared into the hoplite’s back. She could swear that her savior was snarling as he sawed back and forth through the brute’s tissue and spine. Once he seemed satisfied that everything below the blade’s point of insertion had been rendered inert, he withdrew the weapon. Using the crook of his arm to lift and pull back on the hoplite’s head, the savage plunged his knife into the far side of the soldier’s throat and drew it all the way across.

Despite the way she’d comported herself up to that point during her sojourn to Blue Waters, Ilyra had always prided herself on having a sterner constitution than most of the other nobles she was accustomed to dealing with, and definitely a stronger stomach than the other noble women. Even so, it was all she could do to keep from retching when she noticed that the savage’s last attack had actually succeeded in removing the hoplite’s head from his body.

She lay there helplessly, as if hypnotized or in shock, as her unknown protector approached. She watched him wipe the brute’s pale, thick, blood from his blade before returning it to a sheath that apparently ran parallel to his spine with the handle pointing down. She could see his chest and knew that he was breathing heavily, even for someone as strong as he appeared, it would have been no easy task to subdue the Konos dog like that.

He wore boots and leg guards, along with something that might have been described as a loin cloth, had this been one of the Empire’s old exploitation films rather than real life. Everything was made from the hides of some animal or another. She noticed he wore other weapons, besides the knife, with the pistol secured beneath his left arm appearing to be his most modern piece of equipment. She wondered why he hadn’t simply used that. Then again, as capable as he seemed with that great bow of his, perhaps the hoplites simply didn’t warrant wasting good ammunition.

The savage knelt next to her, and at first she thought he was glaring down at her. Ilyra soon realized though that his contempt was not for her, but for the device around her neck. Of course, she thought, he’s seen something like this before. The noble woman was a little taken by surprise as the man’s hands latched onto the collar. She watched as the muscles in his arms, shoulders, and upper chest tightened. The collar split along its seams with a crackle of energy, completely unable to resist the savage’s strength.

Lady Fe’Arda found herself in the savage’s arms as he lifted her from the ground, she also found herself completely content with that turn of events. Wherever he wanted to carry her, he had her approval.

The beast man did not live in a simple hole carved into the side of a mountain, but rather a well made cabin of wood and stone. It seemed the only limits imposed on its constructions were the savage’s considerable strength, and the apparent cunning he was accustomed to applying it with. The dwelling was a cross of several styles, from multiple time periods and cultures, at least as far as the noble woman could tell from what little instruction she’d received in the history of the planet that the Empire had named Blue Waters, yet it all fit together somehow.

The man locked the door behind them before setting the noble woman down on a pallet that was far more comfortable than the bed she’d been assigned for the trip out. Ilyra felt at ease, almost intoxicated. With nothing better to do, she simply studied the man as he went about removing his weapons and pouches. He treated the bow as if it was his most prized possession, and it was easy to see why. Of all the tools he carried, it seemed the most likely to have been hewn with his own hands. The harnesses for the blade and the pistol were separate, but the weapons went the same place once they were removed: a small table that also supported what appeared to be a box of hard ammunition. For some reason, Ilyra got the impression that the savage had more weapons hidden on his person. The last piece of equipment to come off before he turned back to her was a coil of rope.

Without warning or preamble, he took Ilyra’s head in his hands and bent close to her face. He pulled at the skin around her eyes with his thumbs, intently studying the movement of her pupils. She winced as he squeezed at the wound on her forehead, which likely came from when she toppled down the incline after Thorin’s attempted rape was interrupted.

He left her for a moment, only to return with some leaves, a small bowl, and something that looked like a piece of heavy bone. He chewed one of the leaves a couple of times before spitting it into the bowl and adding other ingredients. Ilyra propped her head up on one hand and watched as he used the bone to grind the mixture into a sort of paste. When it appeared to gain the proper consistency, the savage scooped some out on the tip of his forefinger and applied it to the cut. It felt warm and tingly, Ilyra thought, but it also seemed to take the pain away instantly.

He set the bowl on the edge of the table and continued to inspect Lady Fe’Arda for further injuries. She realized that his scrutiny of her body was beginning to arouse her. The fact that he cradled her wounded breast with one hand as he rubbed more of the medicine on it with the other wasn’t helping, or perhaps it was, from a different point of view.

Up to that point, Ilyra’s only real concession to decorum and modesty had been the fact that she kept her legs tight to each other and drawn up almost protectively to keep him from seeing anything. At the touch of his warm hand on her thigh, even if it was just to apply more medicine, she felt herself wanting him to see everything. To be honest, she wanted him to do more than just see.

Ilyra felt like a child as she consciously changed her posture and started to open her legs. She remembered taunting her classmates at the Junior Academy. They were too immature to know what to do with what she was offering them, though still too proud to actually admit it. Watching the woman open herself up for him, the savage’s brow wrinkled ever so slightly. Clearly, he hadn’t expected her to behave like that, his eyes flicked up to her face. She held his steely gaze for a moment before closing her eyes and nodding her head, a silent assent to whatever he wanted to do to her.

The savage’s mouth was suddenly pressing onto the Ilyra’s. A bit unsure what to do, the noble woman followed her rescuer’s lead, allowing his tongue into her mouth. It brought a whole host of foreign but pleasant sensations with it. The noble woman caught herself briefly wondering why her lips had been just about the only part of her body that Penna’s mouth had never touched.

“I thought I was the last.” The savage said in accented Imperial.

That was when Ilyra realized that her savior was under the impression that she was a fellow survivor, a native of Blue Water. She was at least a good fifty years away from the skin hardening effect that would eventually out her dominant ancestor as reptilian rather than mammalian, and her eyes were protected from the light of the Burning Hand by artificial membranes that mimicked the photosensitive properties of the natives’.

“The Masters will never hurt you again, I promise.”

Lady Fe’Arda’s breath caught in her throat. The form that her rescuer had used, The Masters, as a way of referring to the Imperial Houses, was very old, and not a kind one at all. It was strange to hear a single voice drip with that much venom and nectar at the same time.

Almost before she could fashion another coherent thought together, the savage had buried himself to the hilt within her body. The noblewoman let out a sharp gasp, surprised not as much by his size, but by the warmth of him. His whole body seemed to burn for her, from the heat of his breath against her throat to the touch of his skin against hers. His arms wrapped around her back, both cradling her and pulling her closer as their hips bucked against each other.

Ilyra had never felt like this with any Imperial. By nature they had always been cold and harsh, so that she felt more like she’d been the victim of repeated stabbings than an act of intimacy, and she’d never once left a bedroom without nursing puncture wounds from the possessive bites that Imperial men seemed to think their woman adored. That was what she was feeling, she realized, because of what he thought she was, the savage cherished her completely.

A sudden start of fear kindled in Lady Fe’Arda’s chest as their coupling built towards its natural crescendo. What if something in her anatomy gave her away? Would this man who had been taking such good care of her suddenly snap and murder her as easily as he had the Konos Hoplites? She knew that her people’s reproductive anatomy had undergone some significant changes a few thousand years ago, coming more in line with the mammalian norm than they had before, but as to what her insides would feel like to her lover, or what he had to compare them to, Ilyra had no clue.

If there were any tell tale signs, the native obviously missed or disregarded them. Ilyra felt the change in his breathing and realized that even between different species, certain cues were the same. After pressing his mouth against hers another time, the rhythm of his hips changed again and the noblewoman felt a fresh warmth spread inside of her that ignited all kinds of involuntary reactions within her body.

Her mind dulled by shock, trauma, and pleasure, Lady Fe’Arda had no idea what the sudden flash of bright light that filled the room meant, or why her lover fell away from her as if struck down by the gods themselves.

----------

Tamarin stood over the savage’s subdued form, his weapon still whining from the high capacity discharge. Apparently he too had seen the futility of the pressure suits and had gone back to his standard uniform.

“Did the savage hurt you, my lady?” Tamarin demanded, stepping gingerly over the fallen man as he holstered his side-arm.

“No, not at all,” Ilyra said, her breathing still ragged and heavy, “He rescued me from Thorin and his men, they were going too…”

“I know, my lady,” Tamarin said, reaching for a magnificent hide blanket he spotted that would go a long way toward returning his mistress’ modesty to her, “I was able to escape the death that my two escorts had planned for me in time to convince one of them to betray the details of Thorin’s plan. My only regret is that I couldn’t find you sooner, before…”

With that, the savage let out a groan and Tamarin’s sidearm slid free of its holster again.

“Don’t hurt him,” the noblewoman shouted, her voice coming out as more of a forced hiss than anything else, since there was no time to dress it up with fancy tones.

Tamarin was struck dumb not by his mistress’ command, but by the posture she’d adopted while giving it. She was acting like a common feral rather than the High Lady of House Fe’Arda, having sprung to a forward crouch with her teeth bared and her hands poised to claw at her adjutant’s eyes and throat.

“By the gods,” Tamarin’s voice fell, “You… the coupling with him was your choice?”

Suddenly possessing an animal grace she hadn’t thought herself capable of within the harsh gravity of the Burning Hand’s reach, Lady Fe’Arda leapt to the floor, using her body to block Tamarin’s aim from the chest of her lover.

“You can have me zipped into a bag and fired into the deep cold for this if you want, but it’s my duty,” Tamarin said, with great resolve as he holstered his pistol.

The adjutant’s slap was felt before it could be seen, but it seemed to have the desired effect: clearing Ilyra’s head long enough for her to realize what she was doing and who she was threatening.

“I’m… I’m sorry Tamarin, I don’t know what came over me,” she said. Her awareness with regard to her stark nudity returned shortly thereafter, but Tamarin was quick with the blanket he’d spied earlier.

“I was able to lock out the skiff’s controls, so Thorin and his remaining men won’t be leaving without us, but we need to hurry. I don’t want to give them any more time to put a plan together.”

“We can’t leave him here,” Ilyra said, meaning her rescuer, “I think he’s the only one left.”

“If you’ll permit me, my lady,” Tamarin said, feeling not the slightest ill at ease with the full bore return to formality. It was definitely preferable to having his mistress hissing at him from on all fours.

Once Ilyra got out of the way, her adjutant knelt next to the stunned savage. He laid a fingertip along the side of the man’s neck and nodded. He moved to the savages face, reaching up to open one of the man’s eyes.

“His eyes aren’t green,” Tamarin said, confused. “Why aren’t his eyes green?”

He continued his inspection, looking for the maker’s mark of whatever Imperial Flesh Maker surely must have minted the form, but there was none. Tamarin wasn’t quite sure what to make of the man, but he did know that the stun charge wasn’t going to keep him down much longer.

“He lacks any known maker’s marks. The alternative is… impossible, but in any case, that is a mystery for another day,” Tamarin said, straightening back up, “we must go. I wouldn’t put it past Thorin to destroy the skiff once he realizes his men won’t be able to get it working again.”

“But what about him? He’s no slave. He even speaks the Imperial tongue.”

“He’s better off here, milady. Even if he is the last of his kind. Males of his species are incredibly rare, kept only as curiosities or pets. They are castrated to remove the threat of the servant population swelling beyond containable numbers. To take him from this place would be to destroy him, my lady.”

Ilyra Fe’Arda knew that her trusted advisor was telling her the truth. Maybe it was just because she was so ashamed at how she’d acted when she thought Tamarin was about to kill the man, or maybe it was guilt at allowing the savage to think she was something that she was most certainly not, but something made it a lot easier to steer her away from that place than she would have thought it could be.
The highest lady of House Fe’Arda knelt to touch her lips to the savage’s one last time before allowing Tamarin to escort her away.

Alvax Thorin’s mind sifted back through the last ten years worth of memories regarding the interactions between Houses Konos and Fe’Arda. His own father played largely in the events in question, or it would be more accurate to say that his father’s fall from grace played largely. If only the old serpent hadn’t become such a slave to first the markets and then to the whims of dice and cards, perhaps things would have played out very differently.

As a younger man, before his body had been warped into a high gravity monstrosity, Thorin had appeared on the short list for potential mates for a certain member of House Fe’Arda. Sure, Ilyra was attractive enough to make him covet possession of her, but it was all that such a union implied that really inspired him. The Empire had faced no real organized threat since the last days of the Great Uprising, so those born into even the highest warrior houses held little real value to the Emperor. With little left within close enough reach to actually conquer, it fell to scientists instead of warriors to extend the Empire’s glory.
House Fe’Arda had always been known for its elitist breeding policies, and the fine minds that those policies had routinely produced during the last thirteen generations. The fact that Thorin had even passed the initial genetic screening could have been considered a high honor. If Thorin had been the one to take Ilyra’s hand, he could have been awash in riches and respectability, but instead his father had pissed away half the coffers of House Konos and ruined any chance of that ever happening.

Thorin had been removed from the list of potential mates and selected for high gravity training within a matter of days. Still, for some reason he found that he’d always blamed House Fe’Arda more than he blamed his own father. He blamed Ilyra most of all, believing somehow that a single word from her could have rescued him from his fate.

That was the basic train of thought that kept looping through Thorin’s mind as he and his men waited for Lady Fe’Arda to come for the skiff. When the unexpected attack from the savage had disrupted his initial plans, it hadn’t taken Thorin long to formulate another approach. He smugly wondered of that frail and overly self-satisfied man servant of Ilyra’s had actually thought that he was able to escape on his own.

One of the remaining hoplites made a brief gesture. Thorin nodded. It wouldn’t be long now. He would take everything he could manage to from lady Fe’Arda, and then he would make sure there was nothing left of her large enough to identify, although he did fancy the notion of keeping some manner of trophy for himself. Her skull perhaps?

----------

“My lady, I believe you dropped this earlier,” Tamarin said, extending the case of Ilyra’s Sleska to her, “I took the liberty of making the required repairs.”

Ilyra affixed the device to her left wrist and tested the power coil. This time the weapon actually responded. Combined with her makeshift clothes, which consisted of the blanket taken from the savage’s home and a length of chord to cinch it closed at the waist, the presence of the weapon almost made her feel like a child again, acting out the barbarian queen fantasy that one of the old holos had drilled into her brain so long ago.

“Very good,” Thorin’s voice burst out of the tree line roughly twenty meters ahead of them, “I’d begun to worry that you weren’t coming at all.”

Tamarin took aim at the general direction of the voice, but did not take a shot.

“This was never the place for you to settle your grudge with our House,” Ilyra declared.

“I disagree, your highness,” Thorin’s voice replied from a different location. Tamarin shifted his aim accordingly, “this is the perfect venue. I only wish that your new pet had lived long enough to follow you into the void.”

“What are you talking about?” Ilyra demanded, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach suggesting that she already knew.

“The runaway that came to your rescue,” Thorin’s voice had moved yet again, “one of my men caught him trying to follow your trail from that little hovel. Arnos is probably still working on him as we speak. I gave orders that I wanted its skin.”

It was strange how much of Ilyra’s training was able to run on automatic despite the fact that she was about as calm and collected as a super nova. Without even thinking about it, she’d tuned the sleska to reach both maximum distance and output, even as she began swinging it.

The result was a plasma whip that was entirely capable of reaching the location that Thorin’s voice seemed to originate from. The only problem was that as the energy lash sizzled through the trunk of a great tree, there was no Konos flesh behind for it to bite into.

A trio of hoplites exploded from the tree cover behind the Fe’Ardans, but they had gravely misjudged Ilyra’s skill with the Sleska. Somehow she managed to move eighteen meters worth of a near weightless energy whip with the grace of a master calligrapher. The tip, which burned hottest of the whole length, danced between the noblewoman and her adjutant close enough for them to hear the snapping hiss of the air burning, before leaping forward again and neatly bisecting all three warriors before their feet returned to the ground.

Tamarin pumped a few shots into the head of a familiar hoplite as he approached, taking note of the fact that their hardened skin and armor took a few more hits to get through than he thought. This time, he was certain that the big warrior was truly dead and not just playing at it for strategic effect.

Ilyra adjusted the sleska again, reducing the length and intensity of the whip to ensure that her power pack would last her through the remainder of Thorin’s men. She was almost amused at how easy it was for her weapon to bypass the hoplites vaunted defenses. Charged polarity shields weren’t very effective against a weapon that simply curved around them and sliced through whatever was on the other side. She was just about to congratulate herself on how efficiently she was mowing down the Konos military elite when Tamarin dropped to the ground clutching painfully at the place where his left arm used to join his elbow.

In battle, Thorin seemed to be an exception to the laws of physics. Something that big, with the weight distributed that poorly, should not have been able to move that fast. The tip of his spear was reduced to a glowing blur that kept slicing ever closer to Lady Fe’Arda.

The leader of the hoplites had sacrificed what few men he had left to probe the noble’s capability with her chosen tool. It hadn’t been all that difficult for the seasoned warrior to pick apart the flaws. Despite her skill with the sleska, Ilyra knew that Thorin had the upper hand, baring a lucky strike or a careless mistake on his part.

He began to tag her lightly, taken care to make sure the tip of his spear made contact first with each of the sites he’d previously wounded Lady Fe’Arda before moving on to new territory.

Ilyra rallied briefly, and was almost able to get Thorin snared in her energy whip, but the hoplite leader was able to slice through the clasps holding the device onto her wrist, leaving her functionally defenseless.

“I always thought that the Sleska was the perfect noble’s dueling weapon. All flash, no substance,” Thorin said, “No adaptability in the field. No defense against an enemy who gets close.”

With that he delivered a strike to Ilyra’s abdomen with the dead end of the spear, easily knocking her onto her back and making her gasp for her next several breaths. The last remaining hoplite switched his energy spear off, leaving a tip that was still sharp enough to slide through flesh with ease, but that was able to lift the corner of Ilyra’s makeshift robe without immediately burning through.

“All the finery of the Empire at your disposal, and you decide to go native? If only our houses could see us now.”

Out of the corner of his remaining eye, Thorin caught movement. He lifted his spear to his shoulder, chambering for the toss, but saw that the outline approaching through the trees matched up with Arnos’ armor. His attention fell back to his prisoner and prize.

“House Fe’Arda will have your entire family gutted for this,” Ilyra hissed.

“For what? I’m the brave hero who fought to defend a doomed Fe’Ardan experiment. When we arrived here, we were swarmed by an army of organized natives. They slaughtered most of my men, your assistant, and unfortunately you as well, my lady,” Thorin smiled, “But don’t worry, I have the skin of their war chief to take back with me, and I’m sure that rumors of an organized slave army will make sure that the fleet arrives within the week to scorch this rock into a cinder. It’s a shame you won’t be there to see it, my lady. I’ll probably be awarded my own House for avenging your murder.”

Ilyra rolled to her feet and lunged at Thorin, but the big warrior easily caught her momentum and twisted it against her so the she ended up back on the ground and nursing what was possibly a freshly broken arm.

“Be that way,” Thorin hissed, “I would rather you have lived to feel what I’m going to do, but you made your choice,”

He chambered to drive the point of his staff down through Lady Fe’Arda’s heart, but instead found himself mutely staring at the shaft of a spear protruding from his own chest. The warrior fell to his knees, the strength rapidly fleeing from his hands and arms. His own weapon clattered to the ground next to him. Thorin’s head turned slowly back to where he’d seen Arnos approaching.

Where he’d seen the warrior’s shape before, now he saw the savage that he’d presumed skinned. Behind him, Arnos hulking frame lie inert, leaking what was left of its lifeblood onto the ground below it.

Thorin’s eye closed for the last time before his body had even hit the dirt.

Ilyra could barely believed how happy she felt when she saw that her savior was still alive. She ran to him, wrapping her arms around him, but something was wrong. It seemed like most of his strength was missing, it was all he could do to stay on his feet. Lady Fe’Arda could feel more of his warmth, but this time it was leaking out of him from several ugly wounds. She felt him start to sway and then had to catch him as his body went limp.

He’d been practically dead on his feet, and still his only thought had been protecting her. There was no way she could leave him behind anymore.

Tamarin regained consciousness sometime shortly after the anesthesia wore off from the surgery to attach his temporary prosthetic limb. Organic limbs could be regenerated easily enough, but Tamarin had made a point of requesting the use of a mechanical unit if he ever suffered a severe enough injury while away from the capital. He didn’t want Lady Fe’Arda to have to suffer through the time it would take for him to re-grow the missing limb without the benefit of his council and service. Besides, there was nothing stopping him from having the wound healed the proper way once they were back on Sesyrin and the veritable army of servants available to House Fe’Arda could pick up his slack.

He was still trying to get used to the mechanical ticks and whines that the replacement limb made when he discovered that he and Ilyra were not the only ones to have made it back to their ship.

“My lady, I thought we agreed that it would be wrong to take him from his world,” Tamarin said, evenly.

“He almost died to protect me, he would have died if I left him there. I couldn’t do it,” Ilyra was sitting on the edge of her bed, making slow circles on the savage’s chest with the fingertips of her left hand.

Tamarin walked over to the side of the bed and looked down at the man. His wounds were not quite as severe as Ilyra had taken them to be, but he wasn’t about to point that out.

“How many know about him?” The adjutant asked.

“You, me, and one medic. He’s sworn to secrecy though. It is amazing the level of confidentiality you can buy with the promise of a villa on Garniv, complete with its own harem. I’m having him kept under sedation until I can figure out what to do about this.”

“He’s stable now, perhaps we should just make an excuse to take him back?”

“I know what you think this is,” Ilyra said, “You saw us, you know what happened, but there is more to it than that. Look at this,” Ilyra sifted through the wounded man’s unruly hair and came up with a small charm that he’d apparently tied into it at some point.

“Did you… give that to him?” Tamarin inquired.

“No, I didn’t even see it until I was loading him onto the skiff. Why does he have a signet ring for my house tied into his hair? I know all servants are taught to understand the Imperial tongue, but why can he speak it so well? Why does he know the Old Words that have barely been spoken in our lifetimes?”

“And then there is the mystery of his eyes and the lack of maker’s marks. To say nothing of the fact that he does not appear to be old enough to have been born before the attempted sterilization of Blue Waters. I believe you are right, my lady. There is more to him than would appear at first glance.”

“I want you to try and gather whatever information you can about this, as quietly as possible. I want to know as much as I can before we return home.”

“There is one thing you’re missing in all of this, my lady,” Tamarin reminded her, “We have no way of knowing how he’ll act when he learns the truth about you, and about what you’ve done to him by bringing him aboard an Imperial ship.”

“Maybe he never has to,” Ilyra suggested, “I wouldn’t be the first Fe’Ardan to take an eccentric streak and disappear to some remote estate for the rest of my life.”

“My lady, you have responsibilities to your House and to the Empire,” Tamarin pointed out, “and need I remind you, that you also have a husband. One who, as I was told on my way to your quarters, has been trying to get through to you for the last several hours.”

“This isn’t going to be simple, is it, Tamarin?” Ilyra said, watching the little escapist fantasy she’d put together in her mind, the one where she and her new lover could escape to some remote corner of the Empire and live out their days without any interference from reality, fracture and then explode into a trillion tiny shards.

“It never is, my lady,” Tamarin replied, “It never is.”

----------

When he awoke, it felt like his mind was full of sand, and that it started to leak out any time he turned his head. The first thing he tried to do was put the pieces back together and see if he could remember how he got to be in such an unfamiliar place. He could remember the fight with the monsters, and how the biggest one had almost killed him. He remembered trying to rescue… the woman.

At first, when he’d woken up in his home, muscles and brain all aching and strange, he’d thought that she must have been a dream. The monsters, the woman, their ride through the forest, it had all been a dream. He’d been alone so long that his mind had started to conjure up things to keep him going.

But you couldn’t smell dreams, and he could definitely notice the subtle tang of her perfume in his home. It was a strange smell, floral and sweet, but not matching anything he’d known before. There had also been subtle evidence that he had not been alone in his bed.

He remembered putting it together, that if the woman was real and they had actually been together, then the monsters that were chasing her had to be real as well. The Masters’ monsters had come back to his world to finish what they started. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to protect her.

He had been alone on his world long enough to know every rhythm that it contained. The aching joints that had never quite set right after an old injury let him know with perfect accuracy when the weather would turn. He could hear game moving at incredible distances. He’d actually been able to follow the woman through her perfume more than her tracks, since the smells of his world were so common to him that she stood out like a giant signal fire.

He knew that wherever he was now, it was not his world, for he knew nothing about it. The smells were harsh and unnatural, the sounds all crashed together, and the very floor thrummed below his feet. At first, superstition got the best of him and he briefly believed he was in the belly of some great beast that would fly him to the netherworld for his final judgment.

That was when his mentor’s lessons started to come back to him. He was in some kind of ship, likely traveling at speeds beyond what his mind could easily process. The only place vast enough to allow for that kind of travel was space, the dark haze beyond the light of the world.

Man had not owned the technology to accomplish such a feat in more than a thousand years, so he knew he was not among kinsmen. The Masters had returned with their warriors, and they had taken him. That also meant that they had taken his woman. He knew that he must find her and protect her from The Masters.

But there was something wrong. In the whole constellation of strange sensations, there was one that was freshly familiar. The perfume that his woman wore. Once he noticed it, he couldn’t get away from it. The smell was much thicker than it had been in his home. He searched the room and eventually located a small phial of liquid. As he tried to pick it up, he accidentally activated the sprayer and had to cough. This was where her scent had come from?

Was she a tool of The Masters’, sent to lure him into a trap?

He heard a high pitched noise briefly before a door at the far side of the room split in half and then vanished. A thin female figure appeared, lit from behind by hallway’s ambient glow. He knew that it was not his woman, her sizes and curves were wrong, but he could tell that at least on the surface, whoever it was seemed to be like him.

He realized that she couldn’t see him. The room was kept dark, and her sight would take time to adjust from the light in the hallway. She did seem accustomed to functioning in the dark though. She moved with confidence born of routine and familiarity. She didn’t need to see the room to move through it, she was that accustomed to it.

It made it almost too easy to sneak up on her.

Penna let out a brief startled cry before a strong hand clamped shut over her mouth. She tried to struggle at first, but was easily led to a corner of the room where one of the environmental readouts for her mistress’s quarters gave the room its only ambient glow. She could make out a male face, eyes glaring at her. She saw the man press a finger to his lips. Penna nodded, and tried to relax as the hand fell away from her mouth.

“Where are we?” the man asked, speaking the Imperial tongue perfectly, if with a slight accent.

“The bed chamber of Mistress Ilyra of the House Fe’Arda,” Penna replied in the only language she knew how to speak, which didn’t happen to be Imperial.

The man’s brow only knitted at her. He didn’t understand what she said. He repeated his question.

Penna started to panic. Like all Pennas, she was able to understand the language perfectly, but had never quite been able to respond well in it. If this person was speaking to her that clearly in Imperial, he was probably Sesyreen, even if he didn’t look like it. That meant that she was expected to serve him, perfectly… yet she wasn’t able to reply to him because he didn’t understand her low-tongue. The Sesyreen never formed their questions like that, they usually never even asked questions, just made demands.

The man took her by the shoulders and shook her a couple of times before releasing her and repeating his question again, adding, “Do you understand me?” at the end.

Not knowing what else to do, since she was fairly certain that screaming would probably get her killed or punished at the very least, Penna dropped to her knees in front of him and reached up to move out of the way whatever that flimsy garment he was covering himself up with was so that she could start to service him. She’d been trained to cater exclusively to females, like Mistress Fe’Arda, but figured that men shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out.

When the man snatched her back up to her feet by her wrists, Penna decided that maybe she was wrong about that.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I serve?,” Penna managed the two words of the Imperial tongue she was able to, forcing the latter into a question with her inflection alone.

“No, I don’t want that,” the man said, “I need to know where…” he faltered, seeming not to know how to phrase his question. “Where is the woman who smells like this?” he asked, dragging Penna over to where the phial of perfume rested.

“You’re not Sesyreen,” Penna said. The man looked at her blankly, clearly not understanding a word of what she said, “You don’t belong here. I’ll get in trouble if they find you here. You have to leave.”

The man had no idea what language the girl was spewing at him. It wasn’t the language he’d spoken with his people, and it wasn’t one of the languages that the old man had taught him.

Clearly knowing the room better than the intruder did, Penna was able to draw a blade that was concealed along the lip of a nearby shelf. Whoever the man was, he didn’t belong there and that made it Penna’s responsibility to remove him.

Penna didn’t really have any combat training though, so she just slashed on instinct so the blade took a little notch out of the man’s cheek instead of severing anything important in his throat. He answered her frantic attack with a simple slap that should have maybe knocked her back a little as an absolute worst case, but somehow managed to send her to the ground in such a way that he knew she wasn’t going to be getting back up.

He felt something twist in his chest as he looked down at her crumpled form. He wasn’t sure what she was, she seemed to be like him, but she had smelled wrong. The old man had referred to it as pheromones, and whatever this girl was, she didn’t seem to have any. She was about as chemically inert as anything alive could be. Only she wasn’t alive anymore. The thought that he might have just accidentally killed one of the only others like him in the universe tore through him like a blade.

The first two words out of Grand Duke Hasre Kahn Fe’Arda’s mouth on seeing his wife’s battered face on his screen were, “My beloved.” The rest of the sentence went something along the lines of “where in the gods name have you been, and what in the deep cold happened to your face?”

“My Konos escorts decided to try to rape and assassinate me,” Ilyra bit, “ and not necessarily in that order.”

Lady Fe’Arda was irritated at just about everything in the Empire at that moment, but she was especially irritated at her husband for having the audacity to remind her that she was, in fact, married. She briefly toyed with the idea of divulging the nature of her liaison with the savage, including the fact that she was pretty sure she could still feel some of his seed inside of her, but decided that while it would definitely shut the duke up in the short term it would probably get everyone on her crew killed when the Imperial military decided to scuttle their ship with all hands still onboard.

“Are you okay?” That is what the Grand Duke seemed to ask, but what he really meant was, “Did my perfect bride get herself defiled by a pack of Konos High-Grav dogs?”

“Tamarin and I were able to stop them,” Ilyra said, finding it hard to look directly at the screen for some reason.

“I must confess that I already read one of the reports. The entire unit of Konos Hoplites, along with their leader, were wiped out? Do you expect anyone in the empire, with the possible exception of the more boastful members of Fe’Arda, to believe that a Lady of the House and her manservant were able to slaughter a full company of trained warriors?”

“What do you want me to say, Hasre?” Ilyra asked, “I told you it was a mistake to trust House Konos from the beginning. If anything, I think an act of retaliation is required.”

“House Konos has already condemned the actions of Alvax Thorin and his renegade band of warriors. It was a jilted man’s petty attempt at revenge, nothing more. You get such a fire in your eyes when you call for blood, my beloved. Save some of that passion for when you return to me, Ilyra. Our bed has been cold too long, and I’m still waiting for those sons you promised me.”

Almost mercifully, Tamarin arrived at her side, presumably with some contrived excuse to get her out of the conversation. Then Ilyra discovered that what Tamarin had actually come to bring to her attention was that not only had their secret guest gone missing, but that he’d apparently snapped Penna’s neck like a twig in the process.

----------

Somehow, he’d stumbled into the servant’s quarters. He saw roughly twenty variations of the young girl he’d just killed, covering about a five year age range. Again, he briefly considered that he had descended into some kind of afterlife, and again it was the old man and his words that brought him back to reality: A manufactured race that will never grow or change.

Even though many of them were in various stages of undress, either coming from or heading to the shower to freshen up between their shifts, they all froze to study the man that they now saw before them.

“I’m not one of them,” he said, his clear Imperial startling a couple of the younger variations, “But I’m not one of you either.”

They stared back mutely, making him wonder if their intellect had been dialed down along with their pheromones.

“Can any of you help me find…” he had to pause again, not knowing what to call the woman he’d rescued, “can you help me find the woman who came from the planet with me?”

“Don’t move,” Tamarin ordered, his sidearm trained on the savage, though tuned down to a high stun setting instead of a killing blast.

Naturally, the savage moved, turning to face him, but Tamarin neglected to take his shot. He could feel the other’s eyes tearing him apart. His aim never wavering, Tamarin briefly found himself looking past his target as one of the servant girls broke and ran.

“A young Master with a metal hand?” The savage asked, “Did I take off your hand? I don’t remember everything that happened yet.”

“No, it was one of our mutual warrior friends that did it, one of the ones you killed, so I guess I should thank you,” Tamarin said, “Now, I want you to step away from the girls slowly. Nobody else needs to die.”

“I didn’t want to kill her,” the savage said, “I didn’t think I hit her that hard. I just wanted to find the woman I rescued.”

“I can take you to see her,” Tamarin was surprised at himself for what he did next, which was to stow his pistol away in its holster, “Just come with me.”

----------

Ilyra was much happier to see her lover’s face appear at her door than she had been to see her husbands appear on her communcation screen. Much to Tamarin’s surprise and dismay, there was nothing he could do to keep the savage from rushing to Lady Fe’Arda’s side and sweeping her up off the ground. They kissed again before the savage broke the embrace and positioned himself to block Tamarin from advancing towards Ilyra.

“Have the Masters hurt you?” The savage asked.

“No,” Ilyra said, pulling on the man’s shoulder to turn him back towards her. She ended up with a hand on his chest, feeling his warmth and the beating of his heart, “He is a friend.”

“You are friends with the Masters?”

Tamarin was trying to be subtle as he shook his head no. He was actually trying to will Lady Fe’Arda into not telling the truth, for all the good it did.

“I have to tell you something, and I’m sorry that it took me this long,” Ilyra said, “I’m not who you think I am. I’m not even what you think I am.”

The savage took a step back from her, a confused look on his face.

“I’m a Sesyreen, Lady Ilyra Khan Fe’Arda.”

“You’re a Master?”

“Please let me explain. I didn’t mean to trick you, but everything happened so fast. You saved me from Thorin and his men, and you were taking care of me and then…it just happened. I’ve never felt anything like that before, and I just wanted to…”

Tamarin made a point of loudly clearing his throat. Understanding and compassion for other species aside, he didn’t like seeing her tapdance for this savage any more than he liked the idea of her being impaled on any piece of his anatomy in the first place.

“You never lied,” the savage said, slumping his shoulders slightly forward, “I never stopped to ask, I just wanted you to be like me.”

“I’m afraid that I put you in a lot of danger by bringing you back with me,” Ilyra said.

“I just wanted to protect you,” the savage replied, possibly not actually having paid attention the Lady Fe’Arda’s last sentence.

“Now its my turn to protect you,” Ilyra said, “I have a plan to hide you, until we can figure out how to take you home. We can make you seem to be like us, and our surgeons can just fix you later when it is safe.”