Farthest Space: The Wrath of Jan (10 page)

“Not bad,” Jan said.

“Not
bad
?”

Jan ignored his indignant response.
 
“Take it off,” she said, nodding toward his pants.
 
“Take it all off.”

Steven kicked off his boots, then, very reluctantly, pulled his pants off.
 
He was accustomed to seeing women gape with stunned delight at the size of his package.
 
But then, he was used to dealing with women on a one-on-one basis—or at least no more than two at once.
 
Okay, maybe three at once.
 

He sure as hell wasn’t accustomed to being stared at like some sort of sex toy.

The women stared with cold, contemptuous eyes, and a sick feeling of humiliation started to roil in his gut.

“I suppose you’ll do,” Jan said.
 
“But I’ve seen better.”

Steven did his best to ignore the embarrassment welling within him.
 
He met her eyes and forced a sardonic smile to his lips.
 
“If you’ve seen better, you’ve seen plastic surgery.”

“Not at all.
 
I’ve had a Klaxon warrior.
 
You haven’t lived till you’ve had a Klaxon.”

A murmur of agreement went around the cavern.
 
“Or a Canvul,” Vaish said helpfully.

“That’s right,” another of the women, a human, agreed.
 
“I’ve been to Canvulia, and trust me, sex with a Canvul man is not something you want to miss.”
 
She held up her hands about thirty centimeters apart.
 
“The one I had was this big!”

That is way more information than I wanted to know
, Steven thought.
 
He remembered what Vaish had said about Canvul men, and gritted his teeth together.

“Well, the Klaxon warrior I had—“ Jan started, but Steven decided he couldn’t take this any more.

“Are you ladies quite finished with me?” he said in his iciest tone.

Jan looked at him, an insolent light in her eyes he didn’t care for in the least.

“We haven’t yet begun, McNeill.
 
You’ll know when we do.
 
Trust me.”

To Steven’s disgust, he found himself forced to stand at the center of the cavern, like an animal exhibited at the zoo, while the women went about their business.
 
He stood in a forcefield, less than half a meter by half a meter, too small to let him sit.
 
Presumably they wanted to keep him on display.
 

They walked past him as they went about their business, making lewd comments about the size of his schlong or the tightness of his ass and copping feels.
 
Evidently the forcefield was configured so that they could reach in, but he couldn’t get out.

It was the single most humiliating experience of his life.
 
He’d always seen women as sex objects, and never really given thought to how the women might feel about that.
 
Now he had a pretty good idea.
 
And he didn’t like it in the least.

Even Vaish wasn’t being a lot of help.
 
She was confined near him—although in a slightly larger field, so she could at least sit down, pace, and even lie down if she got tired—and she was watching him with a glitter of icy amusement in her yellow eyes.

“You think this is funny?” he challenged her at last, irritated by her amusement.

Vaish, seated on the floor with her injured leg stretched out, seemed to consider the matter for a moment.
 
“Yes.
 
I do.”

“I know you want me,” he said, more harshly than he intended.
 
He was aware he was taking his anger out on the wrong target, but couldn’t seem to help himself.
 
“Let’s see how funny you find it when I’m forced to have sex with a hundred different women.”

Vaish looked up at him for a long moment.
 
At last she said in a low voice, “Steven, I’ve had to watch you have sex with other women for years.
 
I don’t see how this will be any different.”

There was a world of hurt in her tone, and Steven felt a swelling of regret in his chest.
 
He’d never set out to hurt her.
 
Until the last twenty-four hours, it had never really occurred to him that she’d cared.

Or that he did.

But he did care.
 
He realized that now, and he only wished he’d realized it earlier.
 
“Vaish,” he said, gently, “I never meant—“

There was a flash, and the lifepod materialized in the cavern.
 
Steven felt a surge of relief.
 
If the lifepod was intact, odds were that Fred was too.
 
He just hoped the computer’s circuits hadn’t been scrambled by the rematerialization process.

That fear instantly dissipated when Fred’s anxious voice came over the loudspeakers, echoing in the cavern.

“Steven!
 
Steven, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Steven answered, knowing Fred could hear him through his sensors.
 
“They haven’t hurt me.”

“But you’re not wearing clothes.”

“You’re very observant, Fred.
 
Jan and her friends took them.”

“Aren’t you cold?
 
My sensors indicate that the ambient temperature is rather chilly for humans.”

Steven bit back an annoyed response, aware that the computer tended to cluck like a mother hen when he was worried.
 
“I’m fine, Fred.
 
What about you?”

“I’m fine.
 
The rematerialization process didn’t hurt me.
 
But I picked up a transmission.
 
The
Arisia
is in this solar system.”

Steven felt a brief horror that Fred had provided this information in front of the enemy, then remembered that the
Arisia
was in enemy hands.
 
He glared at Jan, who was watching the exchange with interest.
 
“What are you doing with my ship?”

“It’s
my
ship now, McNeill.
 
And I’m going to take over the Patrol, and from there all of Galactic civilization.”

“Yeah, right,” Steven scoffed.

Jan glared at him through slitted, dark blue eyes.
 
“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

“Find this disturbing,” he said, and saluted her with his middle finger.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Vaish almost crack a smile at his adolescent behavior.
 
Almost, but not quite.
 
He noticed she didn’t join him in saluting Jan, either.
 
“A typical plan,” she grumbled.
 
“Do villains always have to try to take over the entire galaxy?
 
Can’t they just settle for taking over a planet or two?”

“That would be small thinking,” Jan said.
 
She glanced at Steven’s crotch.
 
“I don’t think small.”

Frustrated, Steven balled his hands into fists.
 
Damn it.
 
The
Arisia
was right here, in this solar system, and there wasn’t any way of reaching it.
 
Even if it landed in the meadow, he was trapped in a forcefield.

He had to find a way to get out of this situation.
 
It wasn’t just him and Vaish—it was all of Galactic civilization.
 
Even with only one or two ships, Jan could wreak significant havoc.
 
Jan had proven herself to be a resourceful adversary, and he’d barely stopped her plan of galactic conquest last time.
 
Now she had a warship at her disposal.

Not a good scenario.
 
And it was all his fault.

“We have a couple of units before the
Arisia
arrives,” Jan said.
 
A ship couldn’t distort space within 150 million kilometers of a star without causing it to go nova, so it had to travel at lower speeds within the system.
 
She walked toward Steven, an evil grin on her face.
 
“Plenty of time to play.”

Great.
 
They could do anything they liked to him, since they could reach into the forcefield and he couldn’t reach out, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop them.
 
He wasn’t looking forward to being raped, but there didn’t seem to be any way to avoid it.
 
He emptied his mind and stared at the opposite wall, bracing himself for what promised to be an extremely unpleasant experience.

And then he heard a roar.

One of the great felines bounded into the cave.
 
It raised its paw and struck into the crowd of women.
 
Women flew everywhere, like bowling pins in an old-fashioned game Steven had learned on Earth.
 
The women who hadn’t been knocked senseless struggled to their feet and fled, screaming, down the various passageways.
 

At the same moment, the forcefield surrounding Steven flickered off.
 
Despite the fact that he was stiff from his enforced immobility, he leaped in front of Vaish, intending to protect her from the cat.

“Very noble, Steven,” her acidic voice said from behind him.
 
“But perhaps you’ve forgotten that I can control the beast.
 
It’s not going to hurt me.”

Steven turned to face her, noticing that her forcefield was down as well.
 
They were both free.
 
She came to her feet, awkwardly, and scratched the cat between its ears as it stretched its enormous head toward her.

“You brought it in here,” he said, amazed, as the cat gave him a friendly nudge with its head that almost knocked him over.

“Of course.
 
Did you think it simply decided to come in here at an opportune moment and start kicking Noo’dis’t ass?
 
I summoned it.”

“How did you manage to drop the forcefields?”

“I did that,” Fred interjected cheerfully.
 
“It was easy.
 
I just emitted a frequency that interfered with their normal operation.
 
I figured out how to do it a while ago, but I was waiting for a good chance, because I figured they wouldn’t let me get away with it more than once.”

Steven let out a long sigh and turned back toward Fred, giving the cat a hesitant pat on the head.
 
It purred loudly, rumbling like the
Arisia’s
engines under full acceleration.
 
“Hell.
 
I should just retire.
 
You guys don’t need me.”

“Not for any practical purpose, no.”
 
Vaish reached out and, to his immense shock, pinched his naked butt cheek.
 
He looked back over his shoulder to see her grinning up at him.
 
“But you’re decorative, so we’ll keep you around.”

“Thanks a whole lot,” he grumbled.

“At any rate,” Fred said, “if you’re feeling useless, maybe you can come up with a plan to recover the
Arisia
.”

“Good idea.”
 
Steven stepped away from the friendly cat and headed toward the lifepod, stepping over the inert bodies of several women.
 
“Let’s tie up these women first, then we’ll see what we can do.”

*****

He was going to get the
Arisia
back.
 
Because otherwise he’d be stuck in this paradise for the rest of his life with Vaish, and that simply wasn’t something he could tolerate.
 
Trapped alone in a paradise with a beautiful woman… nope.
 
Not a good way to spend the rest of his existence.