Their Human Vessel Page 5

  “I’m Michael Peterson. I’m—“

  “Don’t give me that shit,” Burgess cut her off. “Who are you and who are you working for?”

  Corrie’s mind was churning. She had to tell him something, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. Her pulse raced as she struggled to come up with some lie.

  Burgess shoved off from the desk and strolled toward her. His face was smooth and pink from his shave. His eyes were beady with anger.

  It occurred to Corrie that she was still wearing her contacts, the replicas of Burgess’s irises. That meant the man was staring into his own eyes at the moment, though he didn’t realize it. After all, how well does a person really know the hues and whorls of their own eyes?

  “I asked you a question.”

  Corrie was totally unprepared for the heavy fist that flew forward and rammed into her gut. She doubled over with a groan. The flavor of sour milk surged into her mouth, and for a moment she actually thought she would vomit from the punch.

  “Please, I—“

  A sudden wave of fear washed over her. There was something wrong with the vocoder. Her voice came out tinny and artificial, with a whisper of digital static.

  She gasped as Burgess’s meaty fingers clutched a fistful of her hair and pulled her upright. His beady, predatory eyes studied her with a malevolent curiosity. Corrie’s breath came and went in ragged gasps as she struggled to recover from the gut-punch.

  “Something’s wrong with your voice, Mike.”

  Corrie tried her best not to whimper as Burgess opened the straight razor and held it up to her face. She noticed that it had an ivory handle. She could see the whorls of Damascus steel in the handcrafted blade. She felt stubby fingers pluck at the top of her turtleneck.

  There was a sudden flash as Burgess swiped the razor downward at an angle.

  Corrie was certain that Burgess had slashed her throat. That the blade was so sharp it didn’t even sting. Or maybe it was just her adrenaline that was blocking it out. Any second now, however, she would feel the searing pain of the fatal wound.

  But Burgess had not cut her. Instead, he had only cut open the top of her turtleneck.

  “Well, well, well. Would you look at that?”

  Burgess tilted Corrie’s chin up to get a better look at the thin, flexible vocoder device that was stuck to her throat. He pulled it away, and the adhesive stung like ripping off a band-aid.

  “Please,” Corrie said in her natural, feminine voice. “Don’t hurt me. I promise—”

  Burgess tucked the vocoder into Corrie’s pocket. Then, with a quickness that was surprising for his physique, he gripped the front of Corrie’s shirt and pulled, stretching the fabric away from her chest. With a second swift motion, he slashed the cloth again, this time exposing the tight elastic girdle beneath. He let out an ugly panting sound.

  The razor clattered to the floor and Burgess grabbed the elastic in both fists, then ripped it open with a grunt.

  Corrie’s naked breasts bounced free.

  “Oh shit,” the guards said in chorus.

  She could feel all three pairs of eyes on her exposed chest. In front of her, Burgess stroked his long mustache and grinned an ugly grin. His beady eyes lingered on her skin for a long moment before traveling back to her face.

  “Why don’t you tell me your real name, sweetheart?”

  “Corrie Pedersen.”

  She was done lying. There was no point anymore. The game was up. And it was ending much more badly that she had ever thought possible.

  “Corrie Pedersen,” Burgess repeated.

  If Burgess recognized her name, his face didn’t show it.

  “And who do you work for, Corrie Pedersen?”

  Corrie swallowed.

  “The Solar Sentinel News Agency.”

  Burgess’s face brightened with recognition. He grabbed her throat with one hand while the fingers of his other hand searched along the line of her jaw. With a bit of work, he discovered the edge of her prosthetic mask and peeled it away, ripping the latex in the process. Corrie’s real face was exposed.

  “Yeah, I thought that name sounded familiar,” Burgess hissed. “You broke that big sex-trafficking story a few years back, didn’t you? And now you’ve snuck into my little ranch to blow the top off the Juvanis operation. Is that the idea?”

  Corrie just shook her head, speechless with fear.

  “Who all knows about this?” Burgess asked. “Who knows that you’re here on Terramara?”

  “Just my boss,” Corrie stammered. “Perry Walpole, the editor-in-chief of the Sentinel.”

  “No family, nothing like that?”

  Corrie shook her head. Burgess smirked as he glanced back at her exposed breasts.

  “That’s a real shame, Miss Pedersen. You see, all of the authorized personal that work in the restricted-access zones—the ones who know the secret about Juvanis—they all have families. We make sure to hire married men. It gives us a little leverage. An insurance policy if you will. We know they won’t spill the beans, lest something unfortunate should happen to their loved ones. But in your case, no family just makes our job a little easier. Less cleanup to worry about.”

  Burgess knelt and picked up the dropped razor and carried it to his desk.

  “Mr. Burgess, please,” Corrie stammered. “Please don’t hurt me. Just put me on a shuttle back to Earth, and I promise I won’t expose what you’re doing here. I’ll just—”

  Burgess whirled on her.

  “You won’t expose what we’re doing here?” he rumbled. “Is that supposed to be some kind of threat?”

  “No,” Corrie stammered, “I mean—“

  “Because you’re in no position to be threatening me,” Burgess said, getting in her face. “No position to be bargaining neither.”

  Corrie’s heart was pounding so hard inside her ribs it felt like it might bust out at any moment and scurry away. She just wanted to get out of here. She wanted somebody to save her. Somebody. Anybody.

  Burgess tore two strips of fabric from her slashed shirt. One of them he balled in her mouth, and the other piece he tied around her head as a gag. He spoke to her as he did this.

  “I’ll tell you how this is gonna go down,” Burgess growled. “You ain’t gonna expose nothing to nobody because you ain’t never getting off this planet.”

  His eyes flicked to one guard and then the other.

  “We got ourselves a problem here, boys. You two are gonna dispose of it.”

  Dispose? Corrie’s mind reeled at that word and all of its implications.

  “Do you want me to off her, boss?” One of the guard’s hands dropped to the pistol on his hip.

  “Jesus, son, not here,” Burgess snapped. “And not with a gun.”

  “Slit her throat then?”

  A chill ran down Corrie’s spine, and for a fleeting instant she thought she might puke. These men were discussing how they were going to kill her right in front of her face.

  “No knives either,” Burgess drawled. “It needs to look like an accident, just in case the authorities decide to look into it.”

  Burgess picked his hat up off the desk, set it on his head and started to pace, stroking his mustache.

  “Here’s what happened. Corrie here stole a vehicle from the garage and took it for a spin out in the desert. It broke down. Then her respirator got damaged. She was lost and stranded in the wilderness, and after a couple of hours, she finally succumbed to the poisonous atmosphere.”

  The two security troopers frowned.

  “What are you talking about, boss? She’s right here.”

  Burgess squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose like he had a headache.

  “You two geniuses are gonna make it look like that’s what happened,” he said in an exasperated tone. “You’re gonna drive her out there to the wasteland, disable the vehicle, and break her respirator. Then you’re gonna sit there with her and watch her die.”

  Corrie swallowed, struggling to
keep her rising gorge down. She wanted to protest, to scream for help, anything, but she knew it was useless.

  What she needed to do was not panic and look for any opportunity to escape.

  “Oh…good plan, boss,” one of the guards said.

  “Wait,” the other said. “If we disable the vehicle, how are we supposed to get back?”

  “You take two vehicles, you fucking dipshit!” Burgess erupted. “Vickers drives one and you drive one. You bust one up and leave it out there, then drive the other one back. Jesus H. Christ, am I gonna have to hold your hands?”

  “No, boss. We got it.”

  Burgess switched his gaze between the two guards, as if he wasn’t sure they really did get it. Then his eyes fell on Corrie, mouth gagged, face wet with tears, clothes ripped. He let out an exasperated sigh.

  “All right get her out of here.” Burgess hiked his thumb toward a door at the back corner of the office. “Take the back way. We don’t want to make a big scene out of this.”

  “Right boss.”

  Holding Corrie by both arms, the guards moved her toward the door. She tried to dig in her heels, but the men were simply too strong. They lifted her bodily until her socked toes were only just dragging the ground, like she was a troublesome drunk getting eighty-sixed from a bar.

  But the fate that awaited her was much worse than that.

  She tried to scream, but the desperate sound was muffled by the ball of cloth stuffed in her jaw.

  “Oh and one more thing fellas,” Burgess called after them.

  The guards turned, swinging Corrie around in the process.

  “Yeah boss?”

  “Remember, it needs to look like an accident. No foul play. That means no you-know-what.”

  Both guards blinked silently, their blank looks indicated that they didn’t know what.

  Burgess sighed again.

  “Don’t rape her. God forbid, if the Bureau sends some investigator poking around out here, we’ll have problems enough. The last thing we need is for them to dig up a dead body that’s covered in your DNA. It’s a bad look, understand?”

  The two guards nodded reluctantly.

  “Understand?” Burgess repeated angrily.

  “Yeah boss,” the guards answered in chorus. “Understood.”

  “Good. Now get this nosy cunt out of my sight.”

  And with that, Burgess turned back to his desk.

  As the guards shoved Corrie out the door, she stole one last glance back at the mounted head of the Terramaran female where it hung on the wall, over Burgess’s desk, teeth bared, green eyes fierce.

  That alien female had faced her unjust death with the courage of a warrior.

  Corrie wondered how she would face her own.

  CHAPTER 7

  Vorne stalked cautiously through the hazy morning light. His bare feet moved silently over the coarse dark sand which was still cool from the night. Before him lay the human facility, its walls awash in the angry red glow of the newly risen sun. The nighttime lighting devices were still on, and as Vorne watched, they gradually clicked off as the morning grew brighter.

  He was exposed now compared to the darkness of the night, but it didn’t matter. Vorne had ventured here to scout the facility many times, and he knew the humans’ patterns all too well. This was the time when the guards were changing their shifts, and that meant fewer eyes directed outward to the surrounding desert.

  Vorne didn’t care about the guards. And he did not care about finding the best way into the facility, which was usually his reason for scouting.

  Today he only cared about one thing.

  The female.

  When young Grekh had come rushing back to their grotto last night babbling and stumbling over his words as he tried to tell Vorne what he had seen and smelt, the older alien had felt a sudden rush of elation and hope.

  But he had immediately crushed that hope.

  These were hopeless times, after all.

  The only thing that Vorne could rely on was the severing blade of his falchion which he carried now in his right hand, ready to cleave any human whom he might come across. Yes, that he could rely on. That and the loyalty of his younger brother, Grekh.

  Grekh had been confused, certainly. He believed too strongly in the Listener’s prophecies. There was no other explanation for it. Why the hell would the humans bring a female to Terramara after years—decades—of making sure that all female life on the planet had been eradicated?

  But then Xalleus had shown up, the escapee, and he had corroborated the younger alien’s claims. He was wounded. Delirious from pain and exhaustion, perhaps.

  And yet, his story had fit with Grekh’s too perfectly.

  Could it really be true?

  A female, here on Terramara?

  A womb? A vessel for his seed?

  But even if it were true, how the hell would Vorne find this valuable creature. It wasn’t as though he could simply stride inside the facility and take her by force, as much as he would like to do that. He was more than a match for a dozen armed humans, but there were hundreds inside, and they were armed with their coward’s weapons.

  No, he would just have to be patient. Watch and wait.

  Vorne prowled around to the back side of the facility, darting swiftly from the concealment of one volcanic boulder to the next. He timed his movements with the gusts of breeze that swirled the dust. His dark skin made his body blend with the surroundings. He was almost invisible.

  At the back of the facility, there was a dusty pad, smaller than the one used for the spacecraft that constantly streamed to and from the facility. This smaller area was home to the bulky, wheeled land transports that the humans used for venturing into the desert. The vehicles sat parked in neat rows, their shiny, black paneling glinting sunlight.

  Vorne had encountered such vehicles before.

  Images came flooding into his mind of the humans chasing down his fellow Terramarans in the vehicles just like these. They disabled the Terramaran warriors with their electro-wire shock nets fired from guns. Once sedated, they would bring the males back to the facility to be milked for their seed, which was a powerful form of anti-aging medicine for the humans.

  Vorne was one of the few remaining Terramaran males who had evaded capture. In fact, the only other one that he really knew of was Grekh.

  And now, of course, Xalleus had escaped.

  That was a good sign.

  It was the beginning of something. A revolution, just as wise old Gulnara had predicted.

  Once again, Vorne felt the bright light of hope swelling in his chest. Again, he tamped the feeling down. One must be ever vigilant against hope. It weakened the heart and dulled the mind.

  Now was the time for focus.

  Set into the broad, dirty expanse of the facility’s rear wall, a door opened, and a black-clad guardsman peeked out, casting a surreptitious glance around the parking area. The man was checking to see if anyone else was around.

  Vorne crouched and watched intently.

  What was the man doing? Why was he being so sneaky? Something suspicious was most certainly afoot.

  Once the man was satisfied that the coast was clear, he motioned to whoever was behind him to follow, and then he stepped out into the fiery dawn light. A moment later, his companions emerged as well.

  Despite all his decades of training and discipline, Vorne nearly cried out in surprise.

  It was her! It was the female!

  Even before her scent reached his nostrils, Vorne knew that it was her. Grekh had said that her appearance was not so different from the males, other than her stature. But the youngster had clearly been mistaken.

  The female’s shirt was ripped open, revealing her soft supple skin beneath. Her chest was adorned with two mounds of flesh, each tipped with a lovely pink nipple. At the sight, hormones surged through Vorne’s arteries, filling him with lust. His cock swelled, aching within the confines of his leather loincloth.

  His eyes went next t
o the female’s face. Her features were nothing like the males’. Her nose was pretty and delicate, and her cheeks were suffused with a rosy glow that was only accentuated by the morning sunlight.

  But something was wrong. The female had a piece of cloth tied around her mouth, presumably to silence her.

  As Vorne looked closer, his acute eyes also noticed thin bits of skin around the edges of her smooth face, as if a layer of skin had been pulled away. Perhaps the female was moulting. That would explain why Grekh had not seen her feminine features clearly before.

  Then it hit him, borne on the lazy morning breeze, a scent so warm and soft and raw that it hurt.

  Now Vorne’s erection was tenting his loincloth, painfully trying to burst through the leather.

  His testicles pulsed and throbbed with desire. He could feel his seed attempting to shoot out, but he clenched down hard, squeezing an interior muscle at his root to deny his release.

  He was not going to spill his seed.

  Not here. Not yet.

  With the female was another soldier, this one also dressed in a black combat uniform like his companion. Vorne’s first thought was that they were bodyguards for the female. However, the rough way that they led her forward spoke otherwise. And then, of course, there was the matter of her torn clothing and the rag in her mouth.

  As they turned toward one of the vehicles, sunlight winked off metal at the female’s wrists.

  That was no jewelry. She was handcuffed, her wrists bound behind her back.

  This female was a captive.

  Seeing her like that—hands bound, clothing torn, flesh exposed—it raised a welter of conflicting emotions in Vorne’s breast. Foremost among these feelings was an overwhelming urge to protect this frail and helpless creature from her oppressors. And in a close second place was a jealous hunger to possess her as his own.

  As his pet.

  Vorne performed a quick breathing exercise, calming his buzzing nerves.

  He reminded himself that this was not about love.

  This was about war.

  This was about capturing the human female and conquering her body.

  This was about claiming her womb and utilizing it toward one practical purpose—the continuation of the great Terramaran lineage.