Alien (22 page)

The
Matriarchal Planet of Galis

Trek
Mi Q’an Galaxy, Seventh Dimension

6022
Y.Y. (Yessat Years)

Kara coughed and sputtered as her
head pierced the water’s surface. Her lungs ached from holding her breath, but
the need for air was tantamount. She sucked in as much oxygen as was possible,
her throat and lungs burning from the successive, harsh gasps.

Get it under control. You’ve got
to get out of this tank before the next boat smashes you into oblivion!

Panting, gasping, and coughing,
Kara fought to steady herself. It took her lungs another full minute of
dragging in air before they were replete. Her head was aching and her eyes
burning, but she needed to know where she was in proximity to the oncoming boat
in order to get out of its way before doing so became a moot point. She wasn’t
dead and she wanted to keep it that way.

Kara forced her gaze open despite
the searing pain. She blinked several times in rapid succession, her eyes
taking what felt like forever to adjust.

An odd feeling stole over her, a
sixth sense that told Kara something wasn’t right. It dawned on her that she
wasn’t hearing any of the sounds that should be assaulting her senses right
about now—no boisterous children, no shouts of mad panic as workers attempted
to pull her from the tank…

No nothing.

She fought with her vision,
mentally demanding it to bring her surroundings into focus. When her eyes at
last obeyed, she felt more disoriented than she had when her world had been a
blur. “What the—”

Kara’s eyes widened in disbelief.
Her gaze frantically darted around. “I must be dead,” she muttered, too shocked
to become hysterical. “This isn’t happening.”

Treading in water that resembled a
liquefied mirror, she gaped at the maroon shore just ahead. Beyond the shore
lay a dense jungle, its trees and plant-life a slightly darker shade of
reddish-purple. Rising above the thick foliage was a series of austere black
mountains. Innumerable white structures that looked crystal in appearance
encircled the foothills of the obsidian massifs, while a single, palatial
edifice of purple crystal sat at the apex of each peak.

Kara closed her eyes tightly. “I’m
hallucinating or I’m dreaming. I must be in a coma or something.”

Maybe she’d swum into a back lot
and was viewing what would eventually be a new Disney ride. With all the purple
and crystal it was possibly some ostentatious tribute to The Artist Formerly
Known as Prince. Or to Liberace.

She wanted to believe either of
those scenarios, but a nagging feeling in the pit of her belly told her it just
wasn’t so. Her eyes flew back open and her gaze wandered up further still,
beyond the purple mansions and into the bluest skies she’d ever before seen.
They looked as if they’d been colored in with crayons.

She stilled, the hair at the nape of
her neck standing on end. Kara stared unblinking at a sight so alien, so
unbelievable, that she couldn’t be certain it was even real. Five moons of
varying color dipped down from the heavens, piercing the blue skyline beneath
them. “Where am I?” she whispered, goose bumps forming on her skin. “What the
hell is happening?”

If she wasn’t dead and she wasn’t
dreaming then only one possibility remained, but that prospect was so
farfetched as to be unthinkable. Kara swallowed past the lump in her throat,
her silver-blue gaze paradoxically vacant and haunted. Her heart slammed in her
chest as she wondered aloud, “Am I still on Earth?”

A gigantic flying monkey swooped
down from the mountains, carrying two women on its back. Kara sucked in her
breath while the females eyed her quizzically, as if she was as foreign to them
as all this was to her.

Her mind was too stunned to perform
even the most basic of motor skills—like moving her arms and legs. No longer
treading water, it briefly occurred to Kara that the middle of a mirror-like
body of water wasn’t exactly the most ideal of places to experience the first
fainting spell of her life. As quickly as that thought struck her, blackness
engulfed her.

* * * * *

“
A fe’ka myna?
”

“
Zoot f’ya!
”

“
Ba ti fe’ka.
”

Kara slowly opened her eyes, her
eyelashes batting away any remaining vestiges of sleep fainting had provided.
Two female faces hovered over her. Two foreign faces with caramel-mocha
coloring, long dark hair and…
violet eyes
?

She sighed. If these women were
Prince groupies they were taking his love of purple to a new extreme.

“
A fe’ka myna?
” one of the
women half asked and half demanded.

Kara’s nose wrinkled as she met the
woman’s—violet!—gaze. Whoever the stranger was, she was definitely the most
authoritative of the duo. “I don’t understand what you’re asking me…” Her voice
trailed off as she noticed what the foreigners were wearing. Kara’s breath
hitched and her eyes rounded. “You’re naked!” she sputtered, sitting up. “Or
close enough to naked to freak me out!”

Both of the strange-speaking,
strange-looking women wore G-strings, sandals with straps that wound up and
crisscrossed around each leg to just below the knee, and nothing else. They
looked like slutty prostitutes from Roman days gone by. Or like members of some
psychedelic harem Prince had put together. Kara’s eyes narrowed into
silver-blue slits. He had another think coming if the Purple Pain thought she
would dress like that, wear violet contact lenses, and learn some trippy
language he’d invented. He was as weird as legend allowed, she thought grimly.

The dominant of the duo reached
down and touched Kara’s erect nipple. She gasped, unaware until that moment she
was more naked than either of them. “What are you doing?” she breathed out.
“Where am I? Please don’t—”

But they weren’t paying her any
attention. Speaking in that bizarre language, they talked to each other without
paying her any mind. They behaved as though they’d never seen the pink nipples
of a redhead before. The leader rolled her nipple around, watching with rapt
interest when it lengthened and darkened. Kara swallowed, wishing the duo
wasn’t so convincing in their surprise.

The other stranger’s hand found her
other nipple and played with it too. The arousal Kara felt was sudden and
horrifying. She lifted her hands to push theirs away when an inexplicable
fatigue consumed her. She fell back down, her head hitting the softest pillow
she’d ever felt. Her arms collapsed to either side of her nude body. She dug
her nails into the silky, palatial bed she’d awoken on.

What was happening? These women,
whoever they were, weren’t Prince groupies. She couldn’t say how she knew, yet
she did. Kara’s thoughts returned to the five moons that dipped below the sky
and hovered above the mirror-silver waters. The maroon landscape and jungle.
The black mountains and crystalline purple palaces perched at the apexes…

Kara wasn’t on Earth. Acceptance of
that fact should have made her hysterical, but haziness stole over her instead.
Had the women drugged her? She’d never tried LSD, but this was as close to
understanding Pink Floyd’s
The Wall
as she’d likely ever get.

Her fingers, once gripping the
whisper-soft bed covers for dear life, fell limp. She had to have been drugged.
There was no other explanation.

All this for a little kid on a
Disney ride who wouldn’t listen to his mother. Shit.

* * * * *

Klykka Gy’at Li, High Mystik of the
sector that bore her surname, stared down at the alien creature she and her
sisters had saved from drowning in the waters of Loch Valor. The female was
unlike any other The Gy’at Li had ever afore seen. Leastways, her hair was the
color of fire-berries and her eyes the shade of the leaves of a
jumyun
tree. ‘Twas strange, that. Beautiful, but unusual. Odder still, the female
sported a small triangular patch of hair on her pussy that was identical in
shade to the hair upon her head. Galian women didn’t grow hair on their pussies
and in all her
Yessat
years Klykka had never heard tell of a species of
females that did. And the creature’s skin…‘twas reminiscent of the creamy
colored milk Galians drank from the purple fruits of the
Trefa
jungle.

Klykka’s nose wrinkled. ‘Twas an
enigma, this one. In all the galaxies of the four dimensions she’d traded in,
made war against, and visited for a time, never had she seen a female who
carried the look of this one. By the time a female earned the rank of High
Mystik she’d seen and done it all. Or so she’d thought.

“She doesn’t speak Galian or any
other language known to me,” Dorra said.

Klykka didn’t look away from the
alien female as she replied to her sister. “Nor any known to myself.”

“You think her a
Kefa
slave
of Tryston or a bound servant mayhap?”

“Nay. She hasn’t the look of the
slaves and she was wearing odd clothing when we removed her from the loch.”

Dorra grunted her agreement. “Aye.
Bound servants are kept mostly naked.”

Klykka had been inspecting the
female creature ever since she’d placed her upon the
vesha
-hide bed. The
alien was beautiful, her visage exotic, yet she was useless to their sector
should she be unable to reach thought-lock with her and the female warriors she
ruled o’er. Thought-lock was a rarely used weapon, but ‘twas a crucial one.

“What should we do with her? Mayhap
she is dumb of the mind, Klykka.”

“Mayhap.”

“Should I take her to the gulch
pits and offer her as a sacrifice to the goddess?”

“I cannot say.” The Gy’at Li
sighed. “And there’s only one way to find out.”

* * * * *

Kara fought the intense, gnawing
arousal with every bit of strength she had left. Her treasonous nipples stabbed
out, her body betraying her. She wanted to scream—from fear or pleasure she
could no longer say. Her eyelids shuttered, opening slightly, letting her take
in the scene unfolding for a brief moment.

Her surroundings still hazy, her
body adrift in a sea of arousal, the two alien females kissed and licked all
over her. Kara gasped, the first sound to escape her lips since this foreign
fog had enveloped her. If the women hadn’t been totally naked before, they were
now.

The dominant female’s
caramel-colored hands reached for Kara’s porcelain-pale knees. Their gazes
clashed and locked. The leader thrust Kara’s legs apart, a half-smile curving
her red lips. The alien’s face, so perfect in every way, disappeared between
her thighs.

Kara gasped again, her eyes closing
and her head lolling back, the feel of a soft tongue swiping across her clit.
She moaned, her hips instinctively rearing up to give the stranger full access
to her pussy. The second woman positioned herself next to Kara and played with
her stiff nipples, tweaking and sucking on them as the first female continued
to swig at her clit. Kara groaned loudly, a knot of titillation coiling in her
belly.

There were hands and tongues all
over her, hundreds of them, rubbing and licking and sucking, coaxing her flesh
into an intense state of arousal. Her eyes flew open. There were only two women
touching her, yet she felt hands and tongues everywhere. Both of her nipples
were being sucked, her clit nuzzled, her anus tickled, her ears kissed…

Kara came on a loud moan, her eyes
closing, as the hardest orgasm she’d ever known slammed through her body. Her
orgasm created a ripple effect, causing the other two females to come as well.
The power of their mirroring orgasms turned the ripple into a tidal wave. Kara
screamed as another wave of primal hedonism ripped through her, her breathing
turning into pants.

And then another wave came, and
another, each orgasm stronger than the last. Her skin was slick with
perspiration, her clit pulsing, her nipples so stiff they ached. “No more!” she
begged, exhausted. She was so drained of energy and fluid that she feared
dehydration. “Please—no more!”

A final orgasm hit her, its impact
a tsunami. Kara moaned like an animal as she rode out the wave. A blinding
flash of light slammed through her head, the pain worse than any she’d ever
felt. She could hear the two females chanting, the dominant one demanding
entrance into her mind. She instinctively recoiled against it, but the leader’s
will was stronger. Exhausted and whimpering, Kara gave up whatever fight she
had left in her. She closed her eyes and succumbed.

A fe’ka myna?

A fe’ka myna?

Kara’s mind entered an inexplicable
void that she shared with this strange woman. The void quickly cracked, scaring
her, as the mirror-like waters rushed in. Her heart rate accelerated. The
stranger held out her hands.

A fe’ka myna?

Trembling, Kara grasped her offered
hands. Beneath an endless sea of liquefied mirror, they should have been
drowning.

What fe’ka myna?

But they weren’t drowning. And she
instinctively understood that she would never drown so long as she trusted in
this alien woman. Kara’s heart rate calmed.

What is your myna?

Her silver-blue gaze locked with
the stranger’s violet one. Kara squeezed her hands tighter.

What is your name?

Her eyes widened and her lips
trembled, but she opened her mouth and spoke. She had no idea where she was or
how she’d gotten here, but she knew all the answers would be soon in coming.

My name is Kara Summers.

Kara awoke on a yawn, her tummy
growling as she stretched her muscles. Today marked a full Yessat year since
she’d arrived on the planet Galis. She smiled, knowing her adoptive family had
planned a day of festivities to mark the anniversary. But first she needed
breakfast.

Naked, Kara climbed out of her cozy
bed and donned a blue
zoka
—a garment that amounted to nothing more than
a shiny G-string. She chose matching blue sandals with ribbons that
crisscrossed up her calves and tied just below the knee to complete her
wardrobe. Her breasts were bare, as was expected. No Galian female ever
shielded them from the eyes of others.

It had taken Kara several months to
accustom herself to the norms of this world, but she was proud of herself for
having done so. Nakedness was no longer equated with embarrassment and
vulnerability in her thinking, but with pride and empowerment.

As she walked down the crystal
corridor and headed toward the spiral staircase that would take her to the
great room and dining hall below, she reflected on how different her life had
become since arriving on Galis. Like Alice tumbling through the rabbit hole and
into Wonderland, Kara had been whisked through space and time by forces unknown
into a world that made little sense to her earthly mind. The pieces of the
puzzle were slowly coming together, but learning was an ongoing process that
would take years—if not the rest of her life—to completely comprehend.

Some of the knowledge had been
quick in coming, especially as it applied to gender roles. On Galis, social
interactions and political processes were dictated by female mystiks rather
than by the whims of wealthy men. Here it was women who ruled and males who
deferred to the “goddess-given superiority of females” in all matters. Galian
women were bred to lead; Galian men were reared to follow. The unfortunate
result for a transplanted female Earthling was a lack of attraction to the
weepy, sensitive, sexually manipulative ways of the effeminate Galian males.
What Klykka and Dorra found arousing about Galian men were the very things that
turned Kara off. Despite their muscular physicality and six-foot statures they
were, quite frankly, wimps.

“There you are,” Klykka said, smiling
from her seat at the head of the dining hall’s table. Kara’s naked breasts
jiggled as she made her way down the staircase. “I was about to send a servant
to locate you.”

“I must have been exhausted from
last night’s lessons because I slept like a baby.”

“’Tis tiring, your training.”
Klykka nodded her understanding. “Mayhap we should continue at a slower pace.”

“No way!” Kara took her seat next
to Klykka, directly across the table from Dorra. She threw an absent look at
the naked male standing stoically behind her chair, prepared to serve Kara in
whatever capacity arose. His cock, perpetually stiffened by a spell Klykka had
placed on all male servants under The Gy’at Li’s dominion, was as erect as
ever. The Galian version of a moist towelette dangled from his penis. At meal’s
end it was considered proper to use the towelette to clean one’s hands.

Kara sighed. It had been a year and
she still wasn’t accustomed to that particular facet of Galian life. Stiff
erections aside, the concepts of magic and casting spells were the stuff of
sideshow carnivals back on earth. But here? They weren’t merely concepts or
tricks used to fool a rapt audience—they were real and they worked.

“Happy day of birth, sister,” Dorra
told her. She raised a chalice of fermented
pici
juice. “’Tis proud I am
to call you a Gy’at Li.”

Kara’s smile was soft and genuine.
Dorra hadn’t exactly been her biggest fan when Klykka made the choice to adopt
her as a blood-sister, but Kara had worked her butt off to gain Dorra’s trust
and approval since day one. It had paid off. She knew Dorra had come to love
her as Klykka did. “Thank you. I’m very proud to bear your name.”

“Speaking of names,” Klykka
announced, drawing Kara’s attention, “’tis a pity this must be done today on
your Galian day of birth, but it must.”

Kara’s wine-red eyebrows drew
together.

“I must choose for you a new name,”
Klykka informed her. “Leastways, you cannot be called ‘Kara’ ever again.”

Kara’s gaze widened. She
immediately felt sick to her stomach. The last remaining vestige of her home,
of her family, was being stripped from her? “Why?” she asked, breathless. “It’s
all I have left from—”

“We know, sister,” Dorra
interjected. Her violet eyes were uncharacteristically empathetic. Dorra wasn’t
prone toward showing emotion—any emotion. “But ‘tis the holy law.”

“I don’t understand…”

Klykka’s bare breasts heaved on an
expulsion of air. “Our planet is a part of the Trek Mi Q’an galaxy,” she
explained, “and as such we must abide by its laws. Whilst the emperor is
content to not interfere in Galian politics or our way of life, ‘tis with the
understanding that we adhere to his galactic decrees.”

“He doesn’t make many,” Dorra
muttered, “but when he does they must be obeyed.”

Kara shook her head. “I still don’t
understand what my name has to do with this emperor or a holy law.”

“No humanoid within Trek Mi Q’an
can share the same name as the emperor, empress, or any in their direct
bloodline of succession.” Klykka handed her a parchment. Judging by the laser
stamp on the broken seal, the communiqué had likely just been delivered. “Each
time a new hatchling is born to the emperor a missive is sent out to all rulers
of the planets under his power declaring the royal child’s name.”

“Once that happens,” Dorra
interjected, “the decree is then circulated to the lesser rulers who in turn
disperse it to the free men and women of their protection.”

“All who carry the name of the new
royal hatchling are given no choice but to change their names.” Klykka frowned.
She picked up her chalice of
pici
juice. “‘Tis that or the gulch pits of
Kogar.”

Kara scanned the royal missive. She
had learned to read, write and speak several languages by joining Klykka in a
lesser version of thought-lock known as linking. Trystonni, the native tongue
of the emperor, was one of them. Her heart sank as her eyes zeroed in on the
pertinent part of the decree:

In the Yessat Year of the Goddess
6023, on the seventh day of light in the moon-month of Rama, the Empress of
Trek Mi Q’an and High Queen of Tryston did so hatch the High Princess Kara
Q’ana Tal…

Kara’s nostrils flared. She
crumpled up the parchment as she fought back the tears that threatened to
spill. The only thing a person ever truly owned was their name. Now she didn’t
even have that. And all because some bitch on another planet hatched a baby?

Hatched
a baby? What the—
She stilled. That question would have to wait.

“’Tis sorry we are, sister,” Klykka
said softly. She covered Kara’s hand with her own. “I would that I could defy
this directive, yet I cannot. ‘Twould put the whole of my sector in harm’s
way.”

“I understand,” Kara whispered. “I
don’t like it, but I understand.”

“In truth,” Dorra frowned, covering
Kara’s free hand with hers, “’twould be wondrous to me did we declare war on
the warriors of Tryston. Their way of life is perverse.”

“Aye.” Klykka nodded her agreement.
“Women serving men, wives living in total subjugation to their Sacred Mates…”
She harrumphed. “’Tis as natural as hatching a babe from your arse.”

Kara’s amusement came out as a
snort. “Thanks for the mental image.” She grinned, her dimples popping out. “I
guess I’ll never be vacationing on Tryston.”

The sisters released Kara’s hands
and told her frightening tales about the Trystonni warriors. They stood seven
to eight feet in height, had heavily muscled bodies, were the fiercest of
fighters, and had a reputation for stealing women they coveted as brides. It
was the stuff nightmares were made of. The males of Galis might be too
emotional for Kara’s taste, but at least they weren’t misogynist assholes with
an affinity for kidnapping.

“Many warriors travel to Galis.
They are bedazzled from childhood onward by stories of our mastery in the
sexual arts.” Klykka’s face was stern. “’Tis mayhap impossible to avoid the
Trystonni warriors altogether, but ‘tis for a certainty you should never share
the
vesha
hides with one.”

“Several Galian females have gone
missing throughout the Yessat Years,” Dorra murmured, “and always after sharing
the
vesha
hides with a warrior. Do not join their numbers, sister.”

Kara’s eyes widened. The women sat
in silence for a prolonged moment as Kara’s brain soaked up all she’d just
learned. She took a sip of
pici
juice, the lump in her throat making
swallowing a bit difficult.

“Well then,” Kara finally said,
setting down her chalice. She didn’t want to give up her name for it reminded
her of the home she could never return to—and the sister she’d never again see.
Not a day went by that she didn’t grieve the loss of Kyra. But neither did she
wish to draw the attention of the warriors from planet Tryston, much less incur
their wrath. “I guess you better tell me what my new name is then.”

Klykka nodded. She could tell by
her expression that The Gy’at Li was proud Kara hadn’t given into the desire to
weep. Emotionalism was expected in males, but frowned upon in females,
especially women training under a High Mystik.

Kara’d been caught crying a few
times since arriving on Galis, mostly at night when she thought she was alone
and had permitted herself to think about her sister. She could only pray Kyra
had moved on in life rather than mourn her. With their parents dead, all they’d
had left was each other and Geris—her sister’s best friend since childhood. If
there was any consolation to be had, it was in knowing that Kyra would always
have Geris by her side.

The High Mystik’s chin notched up.
Her violet gaze was simultaneously soft and firm. “I bestow upon you the name
Kari,” Klykka announced. “Kari Gy’at Li.”