Xora 2 - "Dangerous Game"

by Brandy Dewinter

 

Chapter 4 - "Hunted"

With Titania’s help I was able to remain limp as they carried me through the garden. It’s surprisingly difficult not to react to sounds or unwanted groping. They loaded me into a rumbling vehicle and we were soon being thrown about in another journey without the benefit of inertial dampers. Then we transferred to yet another vehicle, one that had a different motion. Since most Federation vessels seem to be sitting still when everything is working correctly, it took me a while to realize that this second craft must be flying - on wings. I hoped the thing wasn’t as ancient as the technology it used.

It’s hard to tell how much time has passed when you have no references. Doubly hard once Titania became part of my life, since she takes care of some of the natural internal clocks.

"I don’t believe it," Titania interrupted my musing. "You’d complain if I gave you water in a desert."

*Oh, sorry Ti,* I said. *I was just trying to decide how long to fake being unconscious.*

"I assure you, I can still gauge the reactions your body would have without my presence, and I will alert you accordingly," she promised, still unhappy with me. Well, this time she had good reason. I was being ungrateful.

*And I hope you picked up on that apology, too,* I thought to her. She was silent, but a bit of her attitude always showed and I knew she’d get over it.

Well before the time I needed to fake revival, the vehicle landed and I was hauled out to be unceremoniously thrown over someone’s shoulder. His hand on my posterior was unnecessarily familiar, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Yet. I was getting to the point where I was going to do something, though. Something massive.

"Calm down," Titania ordered. "Even though I can protect you from many dangers, we are not invulnerable."

*Neither are these goons,* I said. Then I nearly did go berserk.

The one thing that had really, really made me angry when I was still the sedentary analyst of my past existence was when someone would assault a helpless person, especially a woman. As we moved along, I could hear the most anguished, heart-rending screams from a voice that still had some memory of feminine tones within the coarse roughness. Someone, some woman, was suffering tortures that could NOT be allowed to continue.

Titania sensed my mental decision to do something, *anything* to help whoever was screaming in such terrible agony. "Please, Xora, be patient just a little longer. It won’t help her if we get stopped before we’re even started."

*I don’t think I can, Ti. I just *can’t* lay here doing nothing!*

"You must. If I have to, I’ll insist," she threatened, but the tone in her voice showed just as much distress as I felt.

*How long until we can wake up?* I asked, looking for something that might at least be a start.

"I suppose it could be just about any time now," she admitted. "There is sufficient variability in effect that it would not be unreasonable."

*Good,* I said, then started to lift my head.

"Not so quick, girly," the man carrying me said when he felt the motion. That alerted others, and though I did open my eyes and look around, there was enough attention focused on me to prevent any effective action.

*You were right,* I told my symbiont.

She gave me a mental nod, but before she could say anything, we reached the scene of the screaming. The man stood me on my heels, allowing me just a moment to stabilize, then let go. I turned quickly to the sound and saw a woman being raped, right out in the middle of a small clearing. She was staked to the ground and from the looks of the group around her, the man assaulting her now was not the first nor would he be the last.

"You filthy psthakks!" I yelled, moving toward the woman. Before I took more than a step, two men grabbed my arms. I was virtually lifted off my feet, stymied while Sstton moved in front of me.

"You know," he said casually, "I don’t even know what a ‘psthakk’ is.

You Federation types are so cosmopolitan, don’t you know."

"Let her go," I demanded. His casual, arrogant smile, the one that didn’t touch his eyes at all, never wavered.

"Oh, we will," he promised. "When her replacement is ready."

The long, slow way that he looked at my body, so poorly concealed in that tight gown, made it clear who was intended to take the woman’s place.

"Have you ever gone hunting?" he asked in a seeming tangent.

"No."

"It’s really quite an interesting exercise," he said. His lecturing tone made it sound like he was in a classroom instead of standing a few meters from an ongoing rape.

"The prey has many natural advantages and usually starts out in a familiar environment," he continued, "but the hunter has advantages of his own. The challenge is to see who can make the best use of those advantages."

"It’s interesting that success for either the hunter or the prey leads to greater skill in the next encounter, while failure is fatal only for the prey."

"Get to the point," I interrupted.

"Ah, but that is the point," he said cheerfully. "I have been quite successful over the years, don’t you see? And as a result, quite skilled. Animal prey is no longer much of a challenge at all."

I suppose I should have caught on sooner. But the suffering of the woman, now reduced to hoarse sobbing, had distracted me. Whatever it took, I was going to get this fiend and see if I could find something comparable to do to him.

My anger and my resolve must have showed in my eyes. Back in my old body I’d have gotten laughed at. I know. When I had gotten angry in my fat, weak body those provoking me had considered that just part of the fun. Thank God I’d never before faced a situation with so much need for action as this.

But I was now in a new body and carried with me the reputation of a Federation field agent. I didn’t really deserve it, but it gained me a measure of respect that added to my obvious anger to make Sstton step back.

Titania whispered patience in my ear again, but in her tone I could hear the same sort of resolve. "We’ll get him. Just wait until the odds are a little more in our favor."

The Kommissar tried to cover his moment of fear by abruptly concluding his lecture. "You will be set free, here on my ranch. After a fair head start I’ll come after you. When I catch you, you’ll take this woman’s place."

"If you catch me, you’ll find your hands full," I promised.

"Oh, I’ll catch you, if you survive long enough," he said with his own promise. "Of course, you might not."

He waved to some of the other hovering goons. "Okay, boys, take her panties for the dogs."

"Uh, oh," Titania said. "We’re not wearing panties."

"Not wearing panties," I blurted out in reflex.

"Indeed?" Sstton said. For once his amusement reached his eyes.

"Perhaps you won’t want to run at all?"

"I’m wearing a, um, bodysuit," I tried to cover my stupid remark. "Nothing removable. Besides, Federation fabric won’t hold a scent anyway."

"Ah, well, thank you for informing me of that," Sstton said lightly.

Then he ordered one of the underlings, "Jole, go fetch the dogs now."

The assigned man brought out a pair of some sort of mammalian derivative, but they were like no dogs I had ever seen. The other men who were holding me forced me to my knees so that the dogs could sniff in my hair.

*Can you fake something here?* I asked Titania. *If they don’t smell anything, they’ll give us away.*

"I can handle it," she assured me. "I’ll let your scent out for them, then seal it off at the right time."

*Oh, good idea,* I realized. We could lay some sort of false trail or something. I might have been brought up in an urban setting, but I was determined I’d survive this untamed environment to turn the tables on Sstton. I didn’t add the thought of the alternative. At least, not consciously.

My hands were forced behind me and I felt a rope being wrapped around my wrists.

*When we get back, I’m going to pop Jonesy one, right in the nose,* I promised myself. *So much for not being a bondage toy on this assignment.*

When my hands were tightly tied, the men holding me stood back. I struggled back to my feet, not at all easy in the long, tight gown which had gotten under my shoes and my knees. It seemed to be a source of amusement to my unwanted companions. Add another item to the score I was keeping.

Sstton waved his arm grandly toward the path leading into the heavy growth surrounding the clearing. "Normally, we let the prey go at sundown, then pursue her at sunrise. Since it’s already well after midnight, I’m afraid you won’t get quite so much of a head start. But then, for a famous Federation field agent it should be adequate."

I just gave him a promise with my eyes of what was going to happen to him. His own brow furrowed in reaction, his confidence slipping for another second. But that mouth-only smile appeared quickly as he and all the men stepped back, opening a corridor toward the jungle.

It was hard enough to walk in the stilts that Titania loved so much, even on smooth floors. The gown didn’t make it any easier as it nearly tied my knees together. And the ropes that held my wrists behind my back forced me to sort of wiggle my way along with precarious balance. Small wonder, then, that the crowd behind me hooted with lewd and profane suggestions while I tried to get far enough through the jungle to get out of sight. A part of me wanted to go into great detail about how truly wonderful I found being a woman, but I was saving that rage for Sstton.

As soon as we were out of sight, Titania had me stop. "Let me fix a few things."

*Please do,* I thought. You can clench your teeth even better when you’re only thinking of saying something.

The first thing Titania did was extrude something to cut the rope holding my wrists. As soon as they were free I threw the thing back down the path at my tormentors. Then I walked over and picked it up again. "I may find a use for this," I said.

"Stand still, please," Titania directed. ‘Please?’ When had she said please before?

"Um, well, I can tell you’re upset, and I thought I’d be a bit, um, careful with what I said," she explained.

"Oh, Ti, I’m not mad at you," I assured her.

Her tone was doubtful when she said, "If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be in this fix."

"If it weren’t for you, I’d still be behind a terminal somewhere, slowly vegetating, and we wouldn’t have the chance to stop the dirty piece of bat guano."

"Bat guano?"

"Well, somehow it seemed appropriate," I said, snickering at her confusion despite my anger.

"Bat guano he is, then," Titania said with her own giggle. While we had been talking, she’d reabsorbed the skirt of the gown, leaving me with the legs of my traditional jumpsuit. The deep blue worked pretty well in the dim, bluish moonlight, actually better than black, so we were soon moving further into the jungle.

"I think I saw some mountains over that way," I said, pointing.

"Me, too," she said, sending a humorous side tone. What else? She looked through my eyes.

"So, I guess we better head that way," I continued, trying to decide if we could make it through the native jungle, off the path.

"Oh, no, we need to head the other way, toward the swamp," Titania quickly replied.

"Why? I don’t like swamps. They’re all mucky, and wading through the mud will slow us down."

"It will slow down our pursuers, too," Titania pointed out. "But more than that, it will hide our tracks."

"Can’t you change our footprint, disguise it somehow?" I asked.

She nodded, mentally, but said, "However, if the tracks of a woman’s spiked heel suddenly stopped, and those of a, oh, wolf or something else of comparable weight suddenly started, don’t you think they’d be suspicious?"

"Oh, I hadn’t thought of that."

"Trust me, Xora, as you’ve never trusted me before. It is for this that my race evolved. We have been helping our hosts avoid predators since your own ancestors were still trying to figure out that a stick could become one of your ‘tools’."

Well, that was pretty compelling logic, so for the next hour I just went where Ti suggested. That’s when we heard the dogs.

"Not quite sunup, yet," I observed. Neither one of us were surprised.

"Yes," replied Ti. "And I’m still leaving spoor behind so that they should have no trouble tracking us."

"Uh, good, I guess," I said.

"Oh, it’s going well," she assured me. Then I could feel her mental excitement as we came upon a nasty, sluggish slough of scummy water.

"Ugh, now we’ll have to double back," I said disgustedly.

"Not at all," she said. "This is what we’ve been looking for."

I had stopped at the edge of the fetid swamp. "You don’t want me to actually go in there, do you?"

"Of course," she said.

"There have got to be all kinds of nasty things in there," I said, shuddering with revulsion.

"There is one particularly nasty sort of thing coming up behind us, Ti pointed out. "And the kind in the swamp I can handle very easily."

"Well, if you say so," I said with a sigh. Under her direction, I walked along the edge of the water for a bit, just enough to establish a direction. Then, in a place where the sluggish stream widened, she had me wade out into it.

"Now what?" I asked when the stinking water was lapping at my chin.

"Keep going," she said.

I started to try and swim in the stuff, but she stopped me, "No, just let yourself go under the water."

"Can we breathe this stuff?"

"Not really, but I can leave a tube up to get fresh air," promised Titania.

"Have to be a damn long tube to get high enough for *fresh* air," I grumped. Taking a deep breath I clamped my eyes shut and stepped into deeper water. Well, at least some of it was water. Or had been once upon a time.

I never had to let out that breath. I could feel some sort of extrusion from Titania floating above us, but I’m sure our breathing tube was not making much of a wake. Even if I had wanted to move quickly, the bottom was pretty mucky and it was slow, heavy progress to extract each foot in sequence and move forward. Then, after a dozen very difficult steps, Titania made me freeze.

"I wish you wouldn’t do that," I complained. She could have just asked. I hated that lockup thing she did.

"Sorry," she said, "but they’re here."

I never understood how all of Titania’s perceptions worked. She could certainly pick up on things I couldn’t detect with my human senses. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do remote vision. I guess we had a snorkel, but no periscope.

We did have a pretty good passive sonar, though. Through her tube we "listened" as first the dogs and then a lot of men started splashing through the mud.

"She definitely got this far," someone reported. "Not only are the dogs certain, but the mud has been disturbed on the bottom."

"Right," came Sstton’s voice. "Well, did she swim off or what?"

"I’m not sure," we heard. "I don’t see any break in the scum on the far side of the slough."

Sstton gave a dry, mirthless chuckle and said, as though he knew we were listening, "Oh, my pretty Federation agent, you are a tricky one. All the other prey went directly for the mountains. Most women just can’t handle the thought of getting all dirty in the swamp. But then, I already knew you were special. Worthy of the hunt. I wonder how long it will be before it is you screaming her lungs out as my men take their reward for the chase."

Then he lifted his voice and gave orders for his men to cover both sides of the water.

"Uh, boss, how do we get across?" someone asked.

"Walk, swim, grow wings and fly," Sstton replied. "I don’t care."

"But, Kommissar, there are, um, things in that water."

"One of which had better be you, in about 2 seconds," Sstton said threateningly.

Before we heard anyone moving out into deeper water, though, the one who seemed to be the chief tracker, anyway the voice that confirmed we had come this way, said, "We might lose the dogs."

Though the risk to one of his men had not bothered Sstton, the risk to his tracking dogs worried him. "Oh, very well. Send for the copter and we’ll haul a few people to the other side. In the meantime, all of you keep close watch on the water. If she’s holding her breath, waiting for us to leave, I want her spotted even if it’s just the tip of her nose. She’s a tricky one."

Fortunately, at least for me, the tip of my nose didn’t need to show. Ti silently assured me that she had matched the shape and color of some of the reeds in the swamp with her tube, and we settled down, literally not making any waves. Ti reported that the sun was well up when we heard the sound of an approaching vehicle; apparently the "copter" that Sstton had mentioned - whatever that was. Men shouted. Dogs whined. The machine sustained an incredible racket. Eventually things settled down as we heard the various sounds move off.

"Are they gone?" I asked.

"Maybe," Ti said. "But we’re in no hurry."

"Yes we are," I said. "That woman back at the clearing - we need to rescue her."

"Not if we get caught," Titania said.

On my own, I’d probably have taken the chance, but we debated the issue inside my head for a while. Titania’s points were that even aside from the risk, the woman had apparently been there for several days if she was the girl whose apartment we had visited. Waiting until dark was not that much more time.

It was difficult to wait. There in the dark slime. Not breathing. Feeling things crawling through my hair, down my body. I wished that I’d been able to get a download on this planet’s native nasties. Then something slithered along my jaw, poking for a moment at my clenched lips. *Then again, maybe I just don’t want to know. . * I finally had to have Titania made a sort of shield over my face so that I couldn’t feel anything, even if the additional protection was really only symbolic.

Her patience was rewarded, though. Several hours after the main body had left, just as Titania was reporting that the sun was setting, we heard the sounds of someone moving about on the bank. Sstton had apparently left a trap. Not for the first time, I appreciated Ti’s wisdom as much as her talents.

"Thank you, dear," she said.

"Oh, sorry, I was just thinking to myself."

"I know, but I appreciate the thought," she said. She gave me a sort of hug, squeezing me just like a huge set of arms.

"Goodness, that was nice," I said.

"Wait’ll you get a real one," she replied.

"What are you talking about?"

Ti snickered and said, "I modeled that hug on Darius, his arms, his height, his strength."

"Yeah, that’ll be the day," I snorted, releasing a little of the air I’d inhaled so long ago. That seemed like a good enough reason to move on.

The bubbles broke the surface, followed in short order by my dripping, filthy hair. The rest of me wasn’t any better. Still, it was good to be able to see again, and to get out of that muck. We made our way back toward the clearing. This time, Ti extruded pads from my feet so that we left prints matching the many work boots that had trampled the trail.

On the way back, we passed a running stream with reasonably clean water. Ti used that to void wastes and clean the crud off our body. Now once again scentless and slickly blue-black in appearance, we slipped silently through the woods toward the clearing.

 

(continued in part 5)

 

 

*********************************************
© 1999 by Brandy Dewinter. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.