The sheets of Thrax’s bed were warm from long hours of rolling about and mad, hard humping, and were moistened with perspiration and ejaculate. Thrax had been as relentless as ever. He had screwed Agena up, down, and across the bed all night and all morning. He had mounted her, had her straddle him, put her on his lap, put her on her side, and drilled her furiously from behind.
He had straddled her chest and slid his pole between her breasts before climbing back down her body, hitching her knees over his shoulders, and plunging his long and demanding tool into her womanhood. They had taken turns orally pleasing each other and curled up in voracious 69’s. A couple of times, Agena had almost thought she would pass out from his savage plundering of her body, but he had felt so inexpressibly wonderful that she’d held on tight and stayed awake to revel in every delirious moment of his coupling.
He’d erupted into her with one geyser of seed after another until they both were so spent and sated that they fell into a tangle of naked limbs on the bed and plummeted into sleep. They did not sleep long. As soon as the morning light struck them, they stirred out of slumber and coiled into a kiss, and Agena descended his body and took his morning hard-on into her mouth, bringing him instantly to full and total arousal.
He mounted and entered her twice more, pouring streams of seed into her womb, before at last, the two of them lay entangled across the bed with Agena’s head on his chest. Contented beyond words, she petted the dragon’s dragon that had been inside her while Thrax fondled her bottom.
With a deep breath, taking in the scent of what he had been doing to her and what they had been doing to each other all night, Thrax said, “It is ironic.”
Agena lifted her head to look into his darkly handsome, stubbled, drunken-looking features. “What’s ironic?” she asked.
“The way that I’ve felt about Courtship for all these years. The way I have objected to it, resented the idea of it, and wanted it to have no claim on my life. I held it at bay like an enemy that was circling me, an opponent that I had to fend off. I thought it was everything I did not want. All that I wanted in life was my duty and abundant sex.
I never wanted abundant sex to be my duty. And now…this. I didn’t know that it would come to this. I didn’t know that when I finally could not defer Courtship any more, when I finally could not hold at bay my part in populating my planet…that a thing like was what would await me.”
“Like what?”
Thrax used the hand that was not caressing her buttocks and sifted his fingers through her hair. “Agena,” he said, “I have known at least as many females as you have males, and very probably more. And yet, for all the sex that I’ve had, I’ve never felt anything to compare with being inside you.
Each time I’m inside you is the best time I’ve ever had. Each time I come in you, and feel you come with me, I feel something like the way it feels to be a Knight. I feel as if I’m part of something more, something greater than myself. Is that the way our sex feels to you? It is, isn’t it?”
Agena smiled at him. She kissed that magnificent chest, rubbed her nose against its hairs, and took in the scent of him. She looked back at him and answered, “You make me feel like I’ve won something a hell of a lot better than any prize.”
Returning her smile, he raised his head and leaned in to kiss her, a long, sweet kiss.
“I guess you ran out of deferments to Courtship at just the right time,” she said.
“Yes, I did,” he said. “For I don’t believe I’ve ever enjoyed lying with any female, my own kind or human, as much as I enjoy topping you. If a child I must make, it should only be from the feeling that I have when I slip myself deep into you. Each time, Agena, I wish it could never end. I wish it could be one coupling and one coming after another, for as long as we live.”
“It practically has been,” she said. “You’re a dragon through and through.”
“I’m a dragon who wants nothing more than to be in you,” he replied with the most wickedly sexy look on his face that she’d ever seen on a man in her life.
That look could only mean one thing, Agena knew. In a second, she was on her back with her legs in the air again. In another second, she was under Thrax, glorying in the press and flex and push of his muscles, dizzy from the feeling of his steel-hard rod slipping back into her. Welcoming his mighty thrusts, moaning into his wet kiss, and enjoying the prickly rustle of his stubble against her face, Agena appreciated what he had said before about hoping it would take him a long time to make her pregnant.
Much as she wanted the child, her most overreaching desire now was for the body and phallus of its father. She let him take her, driving his piece into her like the flagpole of a conquering warrior claiming a new world, feeling him stretch and plunder her wetness, and after a time, feed a filling wetness of his own into her. And it was the most perfect thing in her life, as he’d said it was in his.
_______________
After breakfast, Thrax and Agena settled into a bath, and for the first time since their first time, they did nothing but hold each other while sitting in the warm water. They both felt sustained and nourished by all the intimacy they had shared since that first morning, and they were contented in a way that neither of them had ever felt before.
At length, they rose from the bath and toweled each other off, smiling and lightly kissing, feeling a curiously innocent kind of arousal, more like young children comparing bodies than adult lovers who had been as completely together as it was possible for two people to be. They had a sense of awakening and discovery at just being naked together. Agena smiled a beaming smile at the sight of Thrax’s man-staff stiffening and lengthening to erection once again, as if she were watching a time-lapse holograph of a wild flower blooming and showing its stigma. Keeping hold of her towel, she took him by the hand and led him back to bed.
Agena stretched Thrax out on his back on the bed. His staff stood at full attention. She pulled back his foreskin as if his maleness were a delectable fruit rather than a mouth-watering piece of meat. A bead of sap welled up from the opening at the tip. She licked it up with the tip of her tongue and then slid her mouth down over the thick, juicy length.
She sucked him long and hard and delicately played with his plums, taking the opportunity to lick and suck at them as well. Thrax wrapped the mighty pillars of his legs around her, enclosing her in his thighs. Returning her attention to what stood saluting her, she started to suck heartily at it once more.
Thrax reared up on his elbows and brushed her hair, telling her that he was ready for another go between her legs. But Agena gently pushed him back down onto the bed, letting him know that she would not be done with him until she had finished him. Thrax grunted out his delight, his entire body suffused with warmth from her attentions.
He realized what was happening now. She was telling him with her specific deeds what had been evident all along. Agena wanted him for something more than just reproduction, more than just making a baby. For the first time, she was having him in a way that would not send his seed into her. She was having him just to have him.
Her urgent but tender sucking, and the feelings behind it, filled Thrax with not just sensual joy, but with a kind of pride that he had never known. She sensed through the data collector that his time was approaching, and it brought the tingle of oncoming orgasm into her as well. Anxiously anticipating, she let his fleshy bludgeon slip from her mouth while tenderly massaging his sac.
Thrax flung open his legs and stomach and arched his back, and rewarded her attentions with a white gusher that fountained up from the tip of his piece and splattered all over and down his stomach. His sticky cream coated his ab muscles and rolled from his skin onto the bedsheets. While Thrax gasped out the waves of pleasure rolling through his body, Agena was hit with a spasm of ecstasy that made her twitch and writhe between his legs and throw back her head onto his thigh.
She cried out, gulping and whooping at the climax transmitted from him to her. She trembled at the sweet aftershocks of it, and lay there against him, blissed-out from this most special exchange of pleasures.
Once the euphoric feelings had subsided, or at least ebbed to the point that she could do more than just lie there, Agena took the towel and wiped the slickness from Thrax’s skin, inhaling the sweet and musky smell of it, cleaning him off while he lay with eyes closed, subtly chuckling from the feeling of the cloth against the plates of his stomach muscles. Once she had wiped him off, she let the towel lie at the foot of the bed. She climbed up to lie at his side, and he gathered her up in his arms and kissed her.
“Thank you for that, Agena,” he said. “I’ve never felt so completely wanted, so totally desired.”
“That’s because you are,” she said. “I know now—I think I’ve known all along—I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you. Not just to give me a child, but to give me everything you’ve given me. Thank you, Thrax.”
Thrax pulled her head to his chest and held her. And for a while, they were still and drifted off back to sleep.
_______________
Late in the morning or early in the afternoon, their sleep abruptly ended.
Thrax was the first to bolt awake. He had cast off his duty to be with Agena, but not his training or his instincts. He recognized the sound from drills and demonstrations that every Knight and Corpsman knew, and from tests that every citizen of Lacerta remembered. It was a howling, loud and insistent, that rolled along the skin and made the nerves dance.
He jumped upright on the bed, as if prodded by an electric lance, and listened. Agena stirred awake, frowning and shuddering at the sound and the feeling that it produced, and sat up beside him, wrapping her arms around his arm. Half-groggy but growing tense, she asked him, “Thrax, what is that?”
Without looking at her, he replied, “The Colonial alarm. There’s a situation. I’ve got to get my badge.”
He jumped up and out of the bed and raced from the room. Agena, unnerved at seeing him instantly flip from lover back to Knight, gathered up the towel from the foot of the bed and wrapped herself in it as she got up to follow him. They were in her bedroom, on her side of the suite. He was heading for his side, where he had put his armor skin, powerblade, and badge.
She did not need him to tell her that something must be terribly wrong. That howling sound and the fire of urgency in his stride made that clear. For days on end, she had seen him naked and ready for sex. Now, she was seeing him naked and ready for anything.
In Thrax’s bedroom, his armor skin hung on one wall, and beside it, the hilt of his weapon. Or his other weapon, as the case may be. Not even bothering to dress, he simply removed his badge from his armor and at once, a holographic image leaped from the metal object into the air. At the same time, the sound of the alarm was muted, at least here in the suite. It was still audible, though muffled, coming from outside. Agena found herself standing on the opposite side of a hologram of Thrax’s Mentor that floated between her and her suitor. She thought at first to step all the way around it, but instead, she stepped off to one side, letting Thrax address his Mentor alone.
“Sir Thrax,” the Mentor said, “we are in a state of planetary emergency. You are to resume duty at once.”
“Yes, Mentor,” replied Thrax. “What’s happening?”
“Lacerta is under attack,” the Mentor announced grimly. “Alien craft of unrecognized configuration have entered the system and are nearing orbit. They are penetrating our defense perimeter. All Knights and Corps members are on highest alert. Stand by for visual.”
The hologram dissolved, refocused, and expanded into a satellite transmission. Thrax watched grimly, and Agena watched nervously, as the image panned from a hemisphere of Lacerta out into space. Ships moved against the face of the planet and out past its orbit to meet larger shapes. Shocking flashes of light appeared all around. The larger shapes were ruddy-looking objects with a look of age about them. The flashes of light in the dark expanse between the opposing craft were like little exploding stars. Agena blinked, realizing what she was seeing.
“Those ships, the ones coming out from the planet… I know those; they’re Lacertan ships,” Agena said.
“They are,” said Thrax. “The others, though…the Mentor is correct. They’re alien. Totally alien.” He paused, staring at the hologram as if to burn a hole through it. “And hostile.”
Agena said nothing more. The only words she could summon for the tableau in the air in front of them were obvious: They’re fighting. Fighting out there. She knew that interplanetary disputes did happen and that they did turn violent. The Knights of Lacerta had been involved in their share of battles and uprisings and had fought to keep the peace on planets and in space.
But no such conflict had come to human space for years. She had never known of such conflicts as anything but outbreaks of hostility between alien worlds. She gulped, suppressing her reaction to the fearful implications of the hologram—and what it might mean for Thrax and for her.
There were at least eight of the incoming ships heading for Lacerta and a swarm of ships from the planet shooting out to meet them. The flashes of light went on like lightning in a summer storm, exchanges of fire between the defenders of the dragon colony and the unknowns that continued undeterred along their path. Bursts of light appeared around the alien ships, and a few appeared searingly on their surfaces.
Amid the flashes in space, there were terrible eruptions of red and yellow sparks, and wherever one of these appeared, one of the Lacertan ships suddenly vanished. Agena let out a half-audible gasp when she saw these latter flashes. She looked at Thrax and saw his teeth clenching. He breathed more heavily each time one of these eruptions occurred, and Agena felt a stab of pain for him each time it happened: for each one surely meant the destruction of a Lacertan ship—and the deaths of his comrades aboard it.
The display of the battle in space contracted and shifted back to the image of the Mentor. “Sir Thrax,” he said, “you and all other Knights and Corps members in residence at all of the Chateaux are ordered to evacuate the civilians present; they are now under your protective authority. The remaining Knights on planet and the Corps are being assigned to defend the cities, settlements, and vital facilities.
Once the Chateaux are evacuated, all Knights on planet will join the general civil defense and engage with any alien troops or craft that succeed in reaching the planet’s surface. Reinforcements are now heading in from other systems to aid in the defense. You, Sir Thrax, are the highest-ranking Knight at your Chateau and will lead the evacuation effort there. Once the evacuation is complete, you will contact me for further orders.”
“I understand, Mentor,” Thrax answered. “But Sir…have the aliens given any identification of themselves or stated their origins?”
“They have not, Sir Thrax. They have ignored all hails and all attempts at communication. The engagement in space began with warning fire from our craft, which they answered by firing upon our vessels. At that point, the battle began. They may state their origin and purpose once they have entered orbit, but we are not waiting that long.
We can only assume they have come for planetary resources. Water, land, food, vegetation, minerals, and population are all at risk. Until we know more about them, we will defend by any and all means available, and reinforcements will add their strength to our own. You have your orders, Sir Thrax. The other Knights at your location will be awaiting you.”
“Understood, Mentor,” said Thrax.
“Dragon’s fortune to us all,” said the Mentor.
“Dragon’s fortune,” repeated Thrax, and the hologram disappeared.
Instantly, Thrax turned to his gear on the wall. He reattached his badge to his armor skin and took down the shiny garment. Agena watched him silently and apprehensively until he looked over at her and said curtly, “Dress yourself. Now. Others will be gathering; we’ll join them, and you will do as we instruct you.”
His demeanor was totally changed from the way he had been since he had stepped out onto the balcony that morning, so many days ago, and had offered himself to her. This was a Thrax Helmer that she had never seen, not even on that day when they were first paired in the Lottery.
His courtly manner was gone, and his passions were changed. This was not Thrax the suitor, nor was it Thrax the lover. This unsmiling, imposing figure was Thrax the warrior Knight, a leader of dragons and a creature of battle. It chilled Agena to the bone to see the man who had delivered her into uncanny ecstasy disappear into the man now armoring up in front of her.
“Go,” he repeated. “Dress yourself; we’re leaving.”
Without a word, holding the towel tight around herself and feeling more vulnerable than she had ever felt in her life, Agena moved to leave. She paused for just a second at the threshold and watched him take the hilt of his powerblade from the wall. He pressed its activator, and the lance of energy leapt forth from it, gleaming with power.. He glanced from the glowing weapon over to her, and for a moment, his expression softened as if to tell her that he regretted this moment and would give anything to return to the way they had been.
Taking the meaning in his eyes, Agena nodded and left, going quickly back to her side of the suite.
_______________
Presently, she was using her data collector in a manner for which it was not intended.
The Knights and Corps had followed their orders with flawless efficiency. All the civilians were gathered in an open outer courtyard of the Chateau to await the arrival of aerovans that would bear them to safety. The courtyard was filled with a hubbub very different than the noise that had inundated Thrax and Agena at the Stadium during the Lottery.
They were now immersed in a buzzing of a different sort: just as constant and insistent, but lower, more subdued and restrained, with an edge of nervous, anxious energy. People’s data collectors and other media devices, including Agena’s collector, were showing the reason why.
Everyone had divided into sub-groups to watch the live holograms that now floated like stationary bubbles in the courtyard, showing the battles that had unfolded in space—and the ones that were breaking out all over Lacerta; now, the alien ships had entered the atmosphere and had started making their way for the populated areas.
Agena held a holographic playback in front of her like some ancient seer’s crystal ball. A knot of other people had gathered around her, people she did not even know because she had been so busy—or Thrax had kept her so busy—since the morning they had talked on the balcony. Thrax had shown her how to call up different kinds of information from the data collector, though she frankly could have figured out how to do so herself.
What she and her fellow aspirants were seeing now was a continuation of the nightmare that she and Thrax had seen in the suite. The lead alien craft in orbit, reminding her of the rust-colored, spiny shells of Earth crustaceans, had taken a geosynchronous position over Silverwing. The flotilla of ships accompanying it had issued a swarm of other craft that had descended like metallic hornets on Lacerta. They were gliding over the cities, exchanging fire with Lacertan aircraft that swooped in to challenge them.
The air was torn with streaks of energy leaping back and forth, and harsh blossoms of explosive force that hammered the buildings and cracked and broke their facades, sending thick tendrils of smoke and showers of debris in every direction. Civilian were dragons flew wildly through the carnage, looking like scattering swarms of birds, and in some places, they winged their way through smoke clouds that made them flounder and falter in the air or were struck by hurtling pieces of rubble and went spinning to the ground.
And on the ground, more civilians ran, desperate to put as much distance between themselves and the violence as they could, spurred and shepherded on by members of the Corps who barked and screeched at them to keep moving and not to stop.
In Agena’s little knot of people, and in other clusters all around the courtyard, the questions flew back and forth. Who were the aliens? Why were they doing this? What did they want? Why didn’t they try to communicate? Did they mean to kill everyone? Or capture people and take them as prisoners and slaves? Agena, soberly and tensely watching the display from the band of false scales about her wrist, wanted to voice the same questions, but they felt redundant even before she spoke them.
There would be no answers until the aliens chose to transmit their intentions—or emerge from their craft. Or until the defenses of Lacerta found a way somehow to force them out into the open.
She looked away from her holographic bubble when she caught sight of Thrax in dragon form striding near and heard him say, “The aerovans are almost here. They have had to maneuver around the fighting near the Spires and through other traffic heading out of Silverwing. The Corps has been managing the traffic flow at the same time as they’ve been protecting civilians. It’s especially dangerous around the Spires because here in Silverwing is where the entire planet is governed. The aliens, whoever they are, knew this was a strategic point to attack.”
“Of course, they did,” Agena half-muttered, feeling overwhelmed by it all. She waved her hand over the data collector and stopped the hologram; it turned to pixels and was gone. Now her attention and that of the people near her was squarely on Thrax.
The other Knights and Corps members, also morphed into their reptile bodies, had distributed themselves around the outer edges of the courtyard as if to herd all of the civilians into the place. The armor-skinned, winged personnel stood watch, keeping their eyes on the sky and brandishing the hilts of their weapons, ready to produce their blades and lances of energy at an instant’s notice. Thrax, as leader, had taken his prerogative to step away while the others stayed at their posts.
It took a minor adjustment of thinking on Agena’s part to relate the two-legged dragon in front of her to the man who had made such rich and lascivious love to her for days on end, for she had naturally spent much more time with, and been far more intimate with, the man than with the dragon. But this was her Thrax. He carried himself and spoke in the same way. For all that he was now a human reptile, the man under the scales still shone through.
With one hand on the hilt of his weapon, which lay tucked into the loop in the armor at his waist, Thrax said, “Don’t be afraid, Agena. We will not let anything happen to any of you.”
Agena believed his intentions, if nothing else. His voice had a slightly rasping, hissing sound in this body, but the tone of human concern—and more than concern—still rang through in his tone and his manner.
This was still her noble Knight. This was still the man who had told her that he enjoyed her more than he had any other woman he had ever known. The future father of her child was here to reassure her that there would still be a future. He did not reach out to touch her with his gauntleted reptilian hand, but she would have welcomed his touch if he did.
A whirring sound welled up from around one side of the Chateau. From that direction came three shiny, floating oblong craft with dark-tinted windows. They glided to a halt just outside the edge of the courtyard: three aerovans with enough seating among them to carry everyone in residence at the Chateau, guests and staff.
The craft hovered down closer to the pavement. Their hatches swung open, and ramps extended downward. The armor-skinned reptilians motioned to their charges to start calmly and quickly boarding the vessels. The holograms in the air winked out, their users now intent on moving rather than watching.
“It’s time to go,” Thrax said, pivoting his dragon neck and head from the direction where the aerovans waited and back to Agena. “We’ll be away from here directly.”
Agena stayed close to Thrax as the crowd started to move. “Where will we be going?” she asked.
“There are places in the forests,” he replied. “And caves where the Draconite and Odysseum are mined. Though we shouldn’t stay any longer than we absolutely must in the caves.”
“Because of exposure to the minerals,” Agena guessed.
“Yes,” Thrax said. “The vans will have a supply of inhibitors, enough for everyone, to minimize the risk of mutation to humans that might complicate any pregnancies. And medicines for exposure to the radiations of Odysseum. But the caves, if we use them, are only a short-term option. Quickly, now…”
The crowd moved briskly, and people began to climb aboard the vans. The hubbub in the courtyard grew noticeably more frantic. In just a few more minutes, Agena thought, amid the human static, she and Thrax would be safely on board the nearest aerovan and ready to peel out of this place and into the Lacertan countryside.
Then, a deep, loud rumbling made her wonder if they would even make it out of the courtyard.
The new, nerve-drumming sound came from overhead. Agena and Thrax looked up but did not need to ask what the source was. It descended from out of the clouds, its shape like some huge, ruddy, sinister cosmic shell. Lights glowed at the front of its hull like the eyes of a demon, fixed right on the courtyard. And now, among those rushing to climb aboard the aerovans, the constant, hushed murmur broke into screams and shouts. Thrax instinctively threw himself in front of Agena.
And that was when the firing began.