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The woman, naked and bound, was presented to him, helpless, a luscious defenseless offering that had the male’s very large sex organ high and hard.
He was moments from taking her.
Whether she was ready or not.
Selena couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “Are you reading this, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant Strabo’s lips moved soundlessly, even as the blonde officer’s ponytail bobbed, her gaze locked on the same view screen they all watched.
It wasn’t the first time Selena had seen the rituals of a primitive culture. Their entire mission aboard the UTCS Gambier Bay was focused on just such a thing.
But this was the first time she’d felt heat—and wetness—gathering between her thighs at what she watched.
The command deck crew—four in all, including Selena—were utterly silent as the scene played out far below on the planet’s surface.
On the screen, a nubile—and quite well-endowed—humanoid female, awaited her fate. Her gorgeous violet eyes were frantic through the wild fringe of dark auburn hair, as she looked toward the inky blackness of the cave opening she’d been led before, her hands twisting at the vines binding her wrists solidly behind her back. Two other females, both much older matrons dressed in drab greenish robes, hoods covering their heads, held the young, practically naked female subject by the upper arms.
The female was herself clad in but the briefest of loincloths made from multicolored flowers woven together with delicate vines. Her heavy breasts—surprisingly generous for so slight a creature—were only barely concealed by the thick, tangled fall of her ruddy tresses.
The dominant humanoid race—they’d dubbed them ‘the pixies’ for short—on HW14-3, the planet they’d been assigned to survey, were remarkably similar to humans, really, save for longer, slightly pointed ears and a somewhat more diminutive stature. Their very pale, clear skin and iridescent eyes—distinctly marking them as other than human—were nevertheless striking, a most attractive species, by any human standards, anyway. Like other pre-agrarian species, they fit every other standard measure of the typical primitive.
But this particular tribe had a distinct difference, one that the orbital survey satellites had transmitted variance reports about nearly from the first hour the initial satellite had taken up geo-stationary low orbit.
This tribe seemed to practice ritual sacrifice.
Though it would have little real significance regarding whether or not fleet command would assign a colonization anchor team—the likelihood of that would depend upon the final results of the still ongoing planetary resources analysis—that difference was one that fascinated and horrified Warrant Officer Selena Marks.
It didn’t really matter though. Selena wasn’t paid to care about those details.
Paid to get the ship there and back, once on station, she was largely just there for the ride. She liked it that way, most of the time.
In the quiet of her berth that night though, she suspected those images might be replaying in her head, as she tried to rationalize away the unsettling implications of their effect on her. That her body might be admitting a truth her mind wasn’t able to face.
The image flickered, and Lieutenant Strabo flicked a glance over her shoulder at the science officer, Nils Lindemann. “Can we fix that signal?”
The square jaw of Lindemann twitched. “This isn’t a signal issue. I already told you—this was the interference all of the surface probes have reported. It’s consistent.”
“Which means it’s intentional,” Selena murmured, more to herself than her crewmates.
“Not necessarily.” Strabo sighed, scrubbing her chin with her palm, not taking her eyes from the screen for one moment. “Let’s just see if this one lasts a little longer.”
The fourth member of the command crew, Kara Richland—one of a cadre of Marine corporals regularly rotated into service aboard the Gambier Bay—cursed under her breath. “You know what this means. Do I have to say it?”
“We’re not there yet, Corporal.” Strabo cracked a wry grin. “Afraid you might have to pull your weight for once on a survey?”
Richland grunted, her pale eyes glittering in the low green and cyan light of the command deck. “Gladly. Anything to get off of this crate.”
The view on the screen changed, switching over to a distance shot, focused on the yawning opening, carved like a jagged scar into the rock face. There was little to judge scale but it had to be big. It was clearly an entrance to some sort of cave, immense boulders piled at either side, gnarled trees and verdant brush covering the top and coating either side in thick undergrowth. The entrance itself stood in a grassy clearing, perhaps a hundred and fifty meters across, surrounded on all sides by a dense jungle, the tangled canopy soaring high overhead.
“That’s gotta be... twenty meters high?” Selena was uneasy just seeing it on the viewer.
Something was... off.
“Twice that. Maybe more,” Strabo said. “But what I care about is what they’re about to do... right... now.”
The two women hustled the young captive toward the entrance, the girl clearly pulling now at their grip, her bare feet scrabbling for purchase, her toes digging into the soft loam of the jungle clearing.
Then the image brightened, the focus bleeding in and out for a moment—before alighting on the entrance once more.
Selena’s heart leapt into her throat, and she blinked, not quite believing what she was seeing.
“Only getting it on IFR,” Lindemann muttered.
“Try to get it to cycle the feeds,” Strabo said. “Maybe it picked it up for a second or two on one of the others?”
“I already tried that, Lieutenant. Nothing on visual, or UV. But loud and clear on infrared.”
It was... definitely not an it at all.
It was a man. Or at least a male.
The image appeared to depict him—whoever it was—at a profile, standing just inside the entrance to the cave. The imagery was ostensibly an infrared signature, the colors a mishmash of whites, grays, and deep purples, signifying different temperatures.
“That’s all wrong though,” Strabo said, holding out a hand. “If that’s IFR, then our probe’s on its last legs.”
“It’s reading correctly,” Lindemann said, the first hint of tension just beginning to creep into his voice. “Just like all the others have. It checks out.”
But even Selena knew it couldn’t be. In every IFR image she’d ever seen the core body mass was always the hottest, showing as a bright white on the screen. In the image they were all watching the core body mass seemed to be... utterly devoid of any temperature at all.
That wasn’t the only remarkable thing. It also appeared to catch the... arousal of the male. Quite prominently.
Strabo cleared her throat. “Yes, I know what it looks like, people. Stay focused.”
“We’re about to lose it,” Lindemann growled. “Damn.”
“Maybe he’s not into big-titted savages,” Richland drawled.
The lieutenant’s voice grew cool. “That’s enough, Marine.”
“Just a little more,” Strabo said, leaning forward toward her own screen. “A little bit—”
Then the image on the screen winked out entirely, scrawling the carrier wave frequency across a black background.
“Fuck,” Lieutenant Strabo hissed.
“Just wait.” Lindemann flicked a glance down at the lieutenant, the commander’s jump seat one of the two located below his own station at the upper rear of the command deck. “It’ll come back in just a second.”
Before he’d said the last word, the imagery flickered back to life, forcing Selena to blink against the intensity and brightness filling the command deck once more.
“I’ll... damn, this just makes no sense,” Richland said, rubbing her chin. “I... anyone got any idea?”
On the screen, the struggling captive fought no more. Instead, she was walking back out of the cave entrance, a serene, almost dazed smile lighting up her face. She appeared clean and unharmed. She was entirely nude though, with not even her garland of flowers to hide behind any longer. Her breasts swayed slightly as she walked, the nipples hard, prominent, and somewhat inflamed. The dark, dense pubic hair formed a stark contrast against the pale, lush thighs.
In a surreal reverse replay of the earlier images, the same two matrons moved into frame, flanking the girl, shrouding her in a rich cloak of sable and gray furs. The women chattered at the girl in their primitive tongue.
Then they led her away by the hand, the girl gladly following, the last image before the feed ended showing the girl looking back over her shoulder at the cave entrance, an almost wistful expression on her face.
Something most definitely wasn’t right.