Chapter 16
Ember stepped across the toppled tree, keeping her boots in line, until she remembered that was bad for balance and widened her stance. The Xatars who’d gone first had cleared the log, partly, and it was wide enough to take a big man lying down, but the drop to either side was horrendous.
The bump on her forehead ached, thumping in, reminding her of the crash.
She had no idea where they were, except that it was nowhere near the city of Verd. The Xatar couldn’t seem to contact their fellow zealots.
Step, step, avoid the stub of a branch. Already her tights had several holes torn in them. Thank the gods her boot soles had great non-slip capabilities. Keep going. Don’t look down, or up, because the sky was fucking kilometers above, through the irregular opening between two overgrown skyscrapers. The sun could barely wriggle its way down here. Intermittently, the Xatar used their helmet lights.
She glanced down. Crap. Huuuge amounts of crap. Such a long way. Trees, branches, glimpses of decayed building, floating specks and leaves toyed with by some giddy breeze, then darkness at the bottom.
Falling would be fatal, painful, and might involve being skewered by either a tree bit or a piece of old metal. There’d be germs. She was sure the pain and death would be the worst part, but the fall might also leave her writhing on a spear of rusted, mossy steel to slowly expire over days. The Xatar wanted her alive, but would they risk themselves to rescue her if she were stuck somewhere screaming?
The whole montage of agonizing death had played out before her eyes as she looked over the edge.
She swayed, gulped.
The Xatar captain grabbed her elbow to steady her then grunted at her to keep going.
She did, trying not to hurry. The gap between her and the Xatar warrior before her had lengthened.
The Xatar twitched; his left leg shook then stuck out sideways.
Ember smirked.
A bit of her programming had chosen to kick in. Power armor could be a bitch if you got spray-virused by a death-dealing princess.
The Xatar behind her commanded the twitcher to stop playing around.
“Can’t! Sir! My armor is –” Then he lurched, toppled, and fell over the side screaming. The thuds as he hit things below made her wince. Ouch.
A morsel of fear wormed into her heart. That had rather obviously been an armor glitch.
Maybe too obvious.
“Hmmm.” The officer behind her sounded unhappy.
Poor diddums. She widened her eyes, rolled her lower lip outward. Maybe he needed a hug?
Once they’d stepped out of the crashed landing ship, the Xatar had freed her from everything. It was obviously impossible to negotiate the maze of trees and buildings while restrained.
That was when she’d had to sort out her courage. Was she brave enough to do something and not just think it?
It’d taken her an hour to work up to sneaking the data knife from the zipped skirt pocket. Dormant, it looked like a mostly brown palms-length piece of fan art. It had her fave anime star emblazoned all over it in tiny stickers. The Xatar had found it and sneered then stuck it into her pocket.
With another hour and tons of internal cursing and excruciating mind-fiddling with a preformed virus, she’d succeeded in crafting a crude piece of code that should mess up their armor. It should also transfer via any communication they made that used their comm devices.
Given a window when a flock of ships had roamed overhead blasting flaming pieces off each other and distracting the Xatar, she’d fired up the knife on low and pressed it to the back armor of a rubbernecking Xatar
For those seconds her heart had gone into overdrive. She’d tucked away the knife, her hand trembling.
But...he’d not noticed the quiet sizzle and the light had been concealed by her body.
Success. The Xatar were humanoids, but she didn’t feel a single iota of remorse. Die, assholes.
So far six had fallen and the dicks hadn’t worked out why. Not looking gleeful was the most difficult part. Would this, could this, virus take out all of them?
The log led to a large window in the structure ahead. If there’d been glass or framing it’d rotted away long before this time. Mold, moss, and a few small plants, grew happily on the walls both inside and outside. The internal walls were intact and small doorways led deeper. Something slithered across the debris-strewn floor and vanished into a hole.
Ember shivered and at the same moment the officer clapped his gloved hand onto her shoulder. Small flying creatures erupted from a crevice in the floor, battering her face with wings as they shot past, weaving between her and the Xatar. Their screeches deafened.
Gone.
She spat, feeling grimy, even though nothing had landed in her mouth.
“This one has somehow poisoned our armor! What did you do, girl?”
“Fuck!” she whispered, hand to her heart. Lots of small fucks too. Swearing got easier with practice. “I did nothing?”
Oh she’d made that a question. Bad move. He was already suspicious.
The other men turned to look at her, moving in and grumbling.
The officer spun her to face him.
“Fix it you blasphemer with your dirty exposed breasts and filthy mouth. You swear, you kill my men. I know it is you!” His pointing finger shook. “Fix it. Or the next accident I will cut off a finger of yours, then another, another.” He snarled.
She drew back. Confronted by so many angry males in black scary armor, who had no qualms about killing, it was clear she’d have to comply. Stupid not to. But to admit to the wrongdoing would be bad too.
“I will look at the programming. Okay? I’m really good at this. You might have all picked up a virus?”
Then Ember realized she’d have to show them the data knife. Show how it worked. She sighed, bit her lip. No other option was possible.
One by one she checked each of them, pleased in a way that five out of the remaining nine had the virus she’d made. She should have been smart and topped them up with a worse, cataclysmic virus, one she’d been honing for years, but having the officer standing over her with a weapon melted her courage.
She fixed. Cleaned their programs.
On the last warrior her inner freak made an appearance.
You’re smart and can do something subtle they will never notice. What if they really fall? Which had happened. And so, what if something goes mildly wrong, after that fall?
She could slow them down and when a man only has milliseconds to react...BAM. Dead.
He’d threatened to cut off her fingers.
What if. Ember worked on the last man’s array of processing units and pretended she found something complex.
It could spread through the comms again...
She liked her fingers though.
A subtle mischief that would take its toll if they walked long enough.
After a while, she stood and shrugged, spoke to the officer, “Done.”
“Good. I see you use this thing to do it?”
“The data knife? Sure. It’s –”
He snatched it from her. “You are evil female. Dirty. I will show you how we treat blasphemers before we behead them.”
Oh. She liked her head even more than her fingers. “Wait, umm...”
“Unfortunately I cannot behead you because those above want you. However you will now take off your dress. You want to be dirty. You be dirty.”
That didn’t quite make sense but she obeyed, slowly, sweating through every twist of her body as she drew the dress over her head. Her lack of underwear and the torn and stitched crotch of her tights drew more mutters from the officer and jeers from his men.
It was then that she realized she’d not seen any of them show a single square of skin. Not even an eye.
“Leave the boots and the tights on. Give me the data knife.”
The officer took the dress and stuffed it into a backpack one of his men carried. From that same pack he pulled a length of slipmeknot rope – she recognized the branding. “Bend over with your ass facing me.”
There was a gleam of satisfaction, a sexual leer in his thick words. The man in the armor was turned on. Though nothing else pleased her, that did in a weird way. He wasn’t squeaky clean after all. Hypocrite.
With no real choice in this, Ember bent over, presenting her ass in his direction. She felt his hands there, heard a tear as he ripped the crotch open. Did he mean to rape her, here? So much for their serenity. Hands planted on her knees she waited, trembling with hatred as much as fear.
Something cold and hard touched her entrance and he began to work it into her, pushing slowly.
“You can keep this filthy knife of yours up here until we reach someone who can decide how else to punish you, whore. I see someone has fucked you recently. I smell him on you.”
She shook more, wishing she could turn and slash out his throat.
The last hard thrust made her wince but she said nothing. He ran rope between her legs, made her stand while he tied a rope belt that also ran between her legs, dragging upward between her pussy lips.
“There.” He patted her pussy. “It will stay there and remind you not to be bad. Your hands I will also require.” He talked as he tied a rope harness that wrapped around her chest, above and below her breasts, then he attached both wrists to it. As he worked, he lectured her about how good girls behaved. “You will be careful not to fall, yes?”
The false kindliness in his voice made her nauseous.
She grunted back. Her wrists were attached to her chest by lengths of rope. If she fell, she could throw her arms out to lessen the impact, but not very far. The hard feel of the data knife inside her reminded her of where it was and what he’d done.
“This is how we treat filthy whores.” A smaller section of rope hung from his hand and he made it swing then flicked it up to lash across her nipples. She snarled silently. “Onward. You walk in front of me. Whenever we pass through a safe area I will make sure to whip your bottom and your back until they are red. If you protest, I will whip your exposed breasts.”
Oh the hypocrisy.
She turned away and he chuckled.
“You killed six of my men. You’re lucky I let you live.”
If only she’d introduced that pet cataclysmic virus she had sitting on her knife.
There would be opportunities to run. There must be.
The one unexpected problem was that being naked and having that rope where it was, with the data knife handle inside her, and all these males watching her while he whipped her bottom, or even while she merely walked, it made her so very horny.
Impossible, as she’d told Hoss.
Every time they reached a whole building, stepped onto floor that was not going to cave in, the officer did what he’d promised – he whipped her with the rope. Pushed her against a wall, had her bend over, had her kneel and put her head to the floor. Every position known to mankind, when having sex.
Embarrassing.
Such a damn turn-on.
And each whip stroke across her ass cheeks made her wetter, made her want to touch herself and come. She swore silently until the officer ceased to whip her. Then she recovered, panting, and listened to him chastise her again using words from a forgotten language she vaguely recognized.
Meretricibus dantur mercedes eius contabescent in infernum.
The whipping grew more fervent when he said his crazy words at the same time.
Quae fuerint peccatores metes.
She bit back her yelps, her groans, her breathy sighs, when she could.
She was sure he noticed her wetness and the puffiness of her lips below. Something affected her that transcended fear.
Why? Who? She had to face the fact that Hoss was the main suspect, for she had no desire for these soldiers. It was Hoss she thought of with every beat of the rope across her skin. Sometimes the Xatar had her bend so he could beat her pussy. Agonizing, yet still the haze of lust arrived. It had to be Hoss. He’d done something to her, given her some drug.
Why? Just to mate her?
Ig appeared after a while, and she was so very thankful none of the Xatar saw him. She staggered onward, dying for release. Her moisture began to leak onto her red tights and turn their color darker. Her cunt juice as Hoss called it. Was it possible to die of shame or from not climaxing? She definitely had a blue pussy.