Excerpt: Tat Warriors

I stared out my window at the planet glowing below me. Nothing particularly beautiful about this one. In fact, it was barren, hot and dusty for the most part, its deserts home to a particularly deadly species something like a giant tarantula. Of course the humanoids inhabiting the place weren’t much less deadly, even if they tried to kill you a bit more cleanly than the tarantula did.

I confess I was doing my best to ignore the prey I’d just left curled up defensively in my bed. I suppose, technically, she was more a sacrifice than prey. I hadn’t gone hunting her. Instead she’d been more or less tossed into my lair to feed my supposedly insatiable sexual appetite, and as a reward for a job well done.

I didn’t have to look around to remember how small and vulnerable she was, see again those big wide eyes staring at me. Nor could I forget how she’d bared herself to me and then, when I’d refused to mate with her, how she’d begged me to take her, because, and I knew she was right, because she’d be discarded as worthless if they thought her unappealing to men like me.

The problem was, of course, she was very appealing. Only not in quite the way the Guard commanders thought. Well, at least not to me.

So I’d held her in my arms and let her sob herself to sleep while I tried to reassure her that I wouldn’t tell anyone I’d found her wanting, and that, moreover, I wouldn’t tell them I hadn’t taken pleasure from her.

I often wonder what is wrong with me. The others in my unit appreciate the sexual treats they are given, or at least that’s what they claim. But then perhaps they, like me, do something else entirely in the privacy of their rooms, and think radical thoughts in the even greater privacy of their minds.

I stared at the barely discernible reflection of myself in the mirror and wondered again just how I’d ended up here and now. How had I managed to not merely survive but even to thrive under the circumstances.

Ironic amusement seeped into my mind from Lynx. She generally thinks me far too brooding and introspective for my own good. Even as I thought that she laughed in my mind. I told her to go away and leave me to brood in peace. She stretched, cat-like, then retreated to curl up into her own particular part of my mind and left me to my own bitter thoughts.

I gave it all up then and returned to my bed. I left the girl untouched and lay on my side, staring toward the window watching the twinkling of the stars beyond, lonely for something I couldn’t even name, hungry for sustenance that was far beyond my reach. We’d be jumping to hyperspace any time now, moving on to yet another world, another place of predators and prey, going where we were called, to police the unpoliceable.

I felt her tiny hand barely touch my shoulder. When I didn’t flinch at her touch she pulled herself over to snuggle against me, her hand snaking around to touch me, to try to arouse me. To my shame she did.

We coupled. She smiled. I fell asleep hating myself as usual.