The Commander's Slave (10 page)

And outside engineering. Where two
propulsion units were out of commission.

Could he have attacked her? Or maybe
Asha had gone into Engineering Room Two just before the strike that
had damaged the units?

The thought of losing her was suddenly
unbearable. Twisting on his heel, Tangus left sickbay at a
run.

* * * *

Asha followed Tomben’s directions.
Engine Room Two was a mess, dark from lack of power and smelling of
smoke. Gingerly, she stepped along, glad she had asked the doctor
for some footwear.

After a long look at what she wore, he
had disappeared for a minute, returning with a bundle of
clothes.

“
The boots are the smallest
we have,” he said, indicating the footwear on top of the
pile.

With a grateful smile, Asha pulled the
pants and combat jacket over her clothes, followed by two pairs of
socks on each foot. Lastly, the boots which were only a little
loose. Finally, she was starting to feel like a real person again,
instead of a decorative plaything.

When she finally reached the pods, she didn’t at first
recognize them, mistaking them for some kind of fuel chambers, but
after walking back and forth for half a minute, she realized they
were the only group of three
things
in that section
of engineering.

Reaching forward, she grabbed the
handle of the nearest circular hatch and twisted it. To her
surprise, it opened easily, swinging out on heavy hinges and
tripping some internal illumination.

“
It’s now or never,” Asha
told herself, and levered herself in, closing the hatch behind her.
A red light still shone dimly.

Somehow she wasn’t expecting something
quite so basic. The obviously one-person pod was roughly circular
inside. There was just enough space for her to stand, bent over,
next to a seat that resembled a cross between a recliner and a
chair. She eased into the chair and looked for the attachments. She
knew she didn’t have much time to come up to speed with the
systems. She had the feeling that the battle was coming to an end
and wanted to be well away before Tangus began looking for
her.

The toilet attachment was unisex, and
to her surprise, the combat pants unzipped along the crotch seam to
accommodate the plumbing. She ripped the seam of her underpants,
and once secure, she strapped herself into the harness and powered
up the primitive navigation and propulsion systems.

If she didn’t think too hard about
things, Asha realized, knowledge just flowed into her, and she
wondered again at the kind of person she was to be familiar with
both first aid and basic spaceship operations.

Gods only knew exactly where she was, so Asha set the pod’s
search parameters to target and head for the nearest
humanoid-habitable planet and turned the oxygen mix to just above
minimum to maximize her search time. But before she could eject
from the
Strike
, it was done
for her. A last shudder hit the ship, she heard clamps releasing
and found herself tumbling over and over at high
velocity.

Asha tried to reach the controls but
the spinning made her nauseous. She tried to fire one of the small
propulsion jets but her fingers only scraped the switch and she
passed out.

* * * *

Lips were kissing her.

Asha opened her eyes to an intricately
arabesque-like ceiling soaring meters above her. She was in bed,
cool luxurious sheets beneath her body. To her right, tall narrow
windows looked out beyond an ivory balcony to an idyllic lake scene
shrouded in morning mist. One window was open, and she breathed in
the scent of greenery carried on a light breeze.

She blinked. Something wasn’t
right.

Lips were getting
insistent.

She felt another’s wet warmth envelop
her breast, hardening the soft peak with nibbles, and instinctively
protested by pushing with her hands.

They met a familiar resistance, her
fingertips recognizing the corded muscle they touched.

“
Tangus.”

He reared above her, his usually grim
expression softened, his dark eyes dancing.

“
I thought you’d sleep all
day. In fact, I could only think of one way to wake you
up.”

She tried to catch him, but he was too
quick, ducking her grasp and continuing his exploration of her
body.

He bit gently at her ribs, tickling
and arousing her at the same time, while his hands stroked her
legs. First the outside, then the inside, moving further up with
each stroke.

“
Your aunt sent a tray,” he
commented, his voice muffled as he buried his mouth against the
smooth skin of her belly.

“
My ... aunt?” That sounded
so familiar in a way and yet so unfamiliar in another.

“
Mmmmm. Which means we can
stay here all day.”

“
But--oh!”

“
Exactly,” he purred and
Asha could hear the satisfaction in his voice.

Gently, he parted the lips of her
labia, breathing in her musky scent before nuzzling her with his
lips.

“
Oh, Tangus.”

“
I was hoping you’d say
that.”

But she was past hearing, spreading
her legs and lifting her hips towards him in a blatant invitation.
She felt his hands accept the offer, slipping under her buttocks
and holding her in place while he invaded her with his tongue,
lapping at her until she gripped the bed sheets tightly, her breath
quickening.

She could feel the orgasm coiling
within her, taking her as high as the ceiling in her bedroom before
she exploded in delight, bucking and shuddering beneath his
mouth.

Tangus moved quickly, his erect penis
penetrating her while he kissed her passionately. Asha loved the
smell of her on him, the mingling of musk and wood, female and
male.

One hand still cupped her behind while
he thrust into her.

“
I love you,” he whispered
into her ear, then nibbled at her neck.

She wrapped her legs around him,
meeting each thrust with one of her own, panting out her
need.

“
Oh, please, Tangus. Oh,
please--!”

* * * *

Asha woke suddenly, her panting loud
in the confined space of the escape pod. With a groan, she
remembered her dream.

That was the third sleep period in a
row that she had dreamed of Tangus. But where exactly was that
wonderful dream location?

My bedroom.

Was it? Had she really lived in such a
magnificent setting? Or was it her overactive mind conjuring up
delusional fantasies? And surely if she had lived in such a place,
if that’s where she belonged, why would she leave it for the
dubious pleasures of, say, Helson V?

She checked her instruments and turned
down the temperature control. It was warm in the capsule and--was
she imagining things?--the air was starting to get stale. She still
wasn’t reading a habitable planet within range although
occasionally it would seem that her scope was picking up an
anomalous object. A comet perhaps?

She slowed her breathing and took
stock. According to her calculations, she had enough air and water
for the next eight days, together with as many ration bars as she
could force down her throat.

What if she didn’t find a planet, or
some rescuer didn’t find her, before her oxygen ran out? What if
she died out here in the dark vastness of space?

She didn’t know who she was or why she
had been in a crashed spaceship. So far, her entire life could be
measured in days, but already she had regrets.

She regretted that she had taken flight from the
Strike
during their firefight, leaving the man she had fallen in
love with without even a word or look of farewell. But if she had
stayed, what life could she have looked forward to as a breeding
machine for the rebirth of the Seti species? Would Tangus have
ordered her to a brothel complex where she had to service other
males until she fell pregnant? Or would it have been more
impersonal--impregnation by insemination?

She regretted that she had fallen in
love with the right man in the wrong circumstances. There were so
many things her subconscious thought they could do without: a past
for her, punishing vengeance for him. But they were insurmountable
obstacles, and she had been fooling herself with brief fantasies of
a happy ending.

And now, as she drew a breath, she
regretted dying alone. How long would it be before someone happened
on her cold drifting coffin? Ten years? Fifteen
centuries?

With a heavy arm, Asha leaned forward
to turn the oxygen intermix down another notch. It would maximize
the time available to her, but it would also put her into a
near-coma.

As she drifted off into sleepy
unconsciousness again, she hoped the extra time would buy her
salvation.

* * * *

An insistent buzz broke through her
thick sleep and forced her eyes open. She couldn’t believe it. The
pod was picking up a planet with a compatible atmosphere. It had
locked on coordinates, it informed her, and was heading in that
direction. Asha quickly checked one of the readouts: estimated time
of arrival in three hours.

After almost four days, by her internal reckoning,
planet fall in a mere three hours.
She could hardly contain her excitement. Her first task would be to
identify exactly what species she was. With luck she would make
contact with more established Fusion members who’d have ready
access to such information. Then she’d contact her home world.
Surely it wouldn’t take too long for someone to recognize her,
especially if she supplied details of where her original ship had
crashed?

And Tangus?

She brushed the errant thought to one side. She would think
on
that
difficult subject after she regained a speck of
self-determination. So far, the life she could remember had treated
her like flotsam--from the downed ship to the Helson natives, then
on sale to Tangus and his Seti remnant and finally grabbing a
desperate chance to launch herself into a vacuum.

Yes, if there was something she was in
desperate need of, it was self-determination.

Slowly at first, the pod’s readouts
began changing.

Entering the solar system.

Approaching the planet which, to
Asha’s eyes, seemed to get smaller with each sensor
reading.

Entering atmosphere.

Chutes deployed. She checked her
harness.

The pod hit the surface and start
rolling. Asha quickly lost her sense of orientation. When it
finally stopped, she checked its status and, after a long pause
with jumbled thoughts chasing each other through her head, began
unbuckling her harness. Suddenly, it seemed so much harder than
previously. Every movement of her body required enormous effort,
and she was panting by the time she unstrapped herself from the
straps and plumbing fixture and zipped up her pants.

She couldn’t even stand but had to
crawl to the hatch, twisting it open with great difficulty, then
falling out with it as she swung the panel open.

Of course, the problem was gravity.
Her body had been in a weightless environment for several days, and
now the effect of a planet’s gravity was like a giant pushing her
into the earth.

Asha rolled over onto her back, trying
to draw deep breaths into her lungs. It might have been a difficult
task, but she hadn’t smelled anything sweeter in her life. Trees
towered above her, sending filtered sunlight onto her face, and she
smiled.

She didn’t know how long she stayed
there, just smiling and breathing, until she gathered enough
strength to struggle to her feet and stick her head back into the
pod, trying to ignore the miasma of exhausted air it still
contained.

There were indications of a population
about an hour’s walk away, and by pulling every latch she could
reach, Asha finally found a small backpack with a container of
water and the inevitable ration packs. Shouldering the pack, and
using a fallen branch as a staff, she began walking in the
direction indicated.

Would it be a village? A mining camp?
Surely not a city? Sounds of strange animal life filled the air,
flitting from tree to tree above her head. It was all a bit wild,
she thought, as she stepped carefully over yet another aboveground
root system, but with a welcome lushness that only a planet with
enough rainfall could provide.

It was perhaps half an hour later when
she began to hear sounds of approach. She supposed she should have
been more cautious, but she was eager to make someone’s
acquaintance. After being sold at a market, losing her virginity,
falling in love with her captor and escaping into space in a tiny
survival pod, what else could possibly surprise her?

She found out one minute later when
she battled through a thick veil of low-hanging branches. She
swiped the large, damp leaves out of the way with impatient hands …
and walked straight into a stranger’s chest.