Chapter 12 Venim
It is nearly nightfall by the time we reach the crash site.
From high above, the Scarlet Ship looks like an expensive toy shattered across the wasteland, each smoldering piece trailed by a massive furrow gouged from the impact. I hover for a moment, scanning the scene of destruction. Then I spur my thrumwing forward and steer it down toward the ground.
Behind me, a few hundred other inmates do the same. A few hundred of Pharod’s toughest enforcers astride a few hundred of his fastest mounts.
My thrumwing touches down, raising little ashclouds as it flutters to a stop.
Firelight from the wreck glints off the creature’s membranous wings, which are veined like cracked glass.
With a clicking of its mandibles, the bug folds its chitinous legs until its segmented body is resting on the ground.
It is tired. Thrumwings are fast, but when carrying a rider, they must stop often to rest. Hence the length of today’s journey.
Still, it’s faster than traveling by longstrider. Or by foot.
Much faster.
I swing one leg over and hop down from the saddle, my boots raising twin puffs of dark gray dust where I land. Behind me, other thrumwings descend, other riders dismount.
One of them approaches from my left side.
A tall, gaunt figure wrapped in a long cloak that conceals everything except for his face and chest. He does not walk toward me so much as glides, the tattered hem of his garment sweeping the ground as he comes.
His bare, elongated skull holds a pair of scheming eyes sunk deep within dark sockets.
Krone.
If I am first among Pharod’s enforcers, Krone is second. He comes to a stop beside me and takes in the scene of destruction.
“Well,” he rasps. “Isn’t this a fine mess?”
Coming from Krone, it doesn’t sound like a figure of speech.
His abrasive voice is filled with genuine appreciation.
I glance briefly at his pale gray chest. Like all the inmates here on Ul, he is branded with a glyph denoting his crime.
Krone’s glyph is the Brand of Desecration…
whatever that means. I’ve never asked him. I don’t suppose I ever will.
I look again at the wreck.
“A fine mess indeed,” I agree, though my tone is more ironic. “We won’t be finding any survivors in there.”
Another voice gurgles from my other side. A voice as thick and noxious as gas bubbles rising through black mud.
“Then what the muck are we doing here, Venim?”
I give myself a slow three-count before turning to face this new voice. Not that I need my eyes to identify its owner. His odor precedes him.
Sleezl is third among Pharod’s enforcers, and whereas Krone is long and slender, Sleezl is short and stout.
His skin is pale green, and his broad, flat head rests atop his shoulders with no discernible neck in between.
An amphibian, Sleezl must protect his flesh from the dry climate of Ul by slathering his body with a rancid substance of his own concoction.
I do not know what that stuff is made of. Based on the smell, I do not want to.
“A mucking waste of time, this,” Sleezl says, flapping a webbed hand in the direction of the wreck. “We should be out looking for escape pods.”
The glyph burned into Sleezl’s chest is the Brand of Rape. I suppose that explains his impatience. Of course, we have very strict orders from Pharod regarding how we should deal with the concubines. Very strict orders.
I decide to ignore Sleezl’s insolence for the time being. It’s not that I am afraid of a fight, but I do not particularly want one either. Not right now, at least.
Besides, Sleezl does have a point. If there are females scattered around the wasteland, it would behoove us to find them sooner rather than later.
They may have survived their descent in the escape pods, but there are plenty of things on the surface of Ul to cut their survival short.
The weather for one. The wildlife for another. Inmates.
Still, I am curious…
Why did the Scarlet Ship crash here on Ul? And more importantly, why did it come here in the first place?
“I’m just going to have a quick smell around,” I say. “The two of you wait here with the men. I don’t want anyone tainting the air.”
Sleezl mutters something under his breath. Krone says nothing. I leave them both standing there and head for the center of the wreck.
The ship no longer looks like a toy to me.
Not up close. Instead, it now more closely resembles the mangled carcass of some vast interstellar beast. Sections of the fuselage tower around me, the scorched red hull torn back in places to reveal the inner frame like enormous ribs of steel curving up toward the darkening sky.
Within, the guts of the vessel are still smoldering in the twilight, the ruins of what must have once been a lush and beautiful garden.
Now it is nothing more than a tangle of charred wood and broken branches.
And bodies.
Most of them are Znthians, judging from their armor, but a few of them are not. Concubines, I presume. Females of an unknown species. Their remains are too badly burnt to tell me much about them, other than the fact that they are small and delicately built.
A species ill-suited to life on Ul.
Briefly, I search within myself for any semblance of sympathy for the dead. I find none. Ul has robbed me of such feelings. Perhaps I never had them at all.
When I reach the center of the crash site, I halt. Even through my armor, the heat radiating off the wreck is sweltering. Blessed Monad, how I envy those creatures with the ability to sweat.
But then, we Znthians have abilities of our own.
My forked tongue flickers out, sampling the air. Each sweep feeds the vomeronasal organ in the roof of my mouth, triangulating the lingering odors of fire and fear. The wreck speaks to me in chemical signatures, weaving a tale others could never read. I close my eyes, and sink in.
The odor is a starscape to me. There are nebulae and galaxies of smell.
Constellations and planets. An entire universe of scent.
I sift the molecules one by one, piecing together the story of the ship’s passage.
There are, of course, the obvious smells—scorched metal and burnt flesh—but as I dig deeper, I discover subtler details lurking beneath.
The ozonic tang of energy rifles, for example, faint yet unmistakable. A firefight. It would seem this crash was not entirely accidental.
My tongue flickers; my mind sifts.
I focus now on the organic scents, olfactory ghosts of the burning dead.
The Znthian pheromones are clear to me. I can sort and isolate them as easily as another species might identify a face or the timbre of a voice.
I can determine each individual’s age, his dominance, what he ate for his final meal.
I can also tell that all of them were eunuchs, chemically castrated to keep them from sampling the cargo before they arrived at their intended destination.
And for good reason. Despite the fire, the female scents are still strong in the air.
The scent of heat, of fertility. That is a result, no doubt, of the various drugs the females were given in preparation for their new life in the Emperor’s harem.
Unlike the guards, I am neither dead nor a eunuch. Beneath my armor, my mating appendage thickens, an involuntary response to the females’ scent.
Blessed Monad, I’m as bad as Sleezl.
Which reminds me, I shouldn’t keep the men waiting any longer. I’ve gleaned enough from the wreckage for now. It’s time to return.
Yet…
Something compels me to have one last taste. I dart my tongue one final time.
And that’s when I smell it.
That’s when I smell her.
A female, similar to the others, but different at the same time. It can’t be more than a single particle of her scent that reaches me, but it’s enough to set my entire body ablaze. To call it desire would not do the sensation justice. This is instinct, pure and untamed.
An instinct to possess, to protect…
To breed.
Before I even have a chance to stop and think about what I’m doing, I tear away the codpiece of my armor and rip open the breeches beneath.
My appendage springs upward, fully erect and aching with need.
I don’t bother with spitting on my hand.
That would require taking off my helmet, and I don’t have the patience for that, so I jack myself dry instead.
A dozen strokes is all it takes before the seed comes shooting out of me, harder and faster than it’s ever come before.
The climax buckles my legs, and I fall to my knees as my cock continues to pulse, staining the ashes in front of me a pale, pearlescent blue.
How pathetic. How utterly pathetic. The great warrior Venim, brought to his knees by a female—by her mere scent.
A new emotion fills me now. A species of rage. I must find this female, must dominate her completely. It is the only way to settle the score.
But… no.
I have orders from Pharod. Clear orders. The women are not to be tampered with. They are worth more to us clean, untouched. I take a slow, calming breath, and my pulse settles back into a reasonable pace.
Then a sound makes it jump again. A shuffle of feet on ashes, barely audible above the crackling flames.
My eyes snap open.
Twenty paces ahead of me, perched atop a hunk of smoldering metal, a robed figure crouches, watching. The face is indiscernible within the deep shadows of the hood that surrounds it. All I can make out are two glowing eyes, like a pair of pink embers burning within.
He is not one of my men.
With a roar, I surge to my feet and draw the glazeblade from the sheath on my back. The figure hops down from his perch and starts to run. I give chase.
Who is this bastard? If he’s not one of Pharod’s men, that only leaves a few other options. The other Ore Barons’ territories are too far away, so he can’t be one of theirs. That means he’s either a Weedian or one of the Unfettered. My instincts tell me it’s the latter.
Whoever he is, he’s fast.
Damned fast.
The last I see of him is the tattered end of his robe disappearing behind the edge of a ruined piece of hull.
By the time I turn the corner myself, he is gone.
Even his footprints are fading, effaced by the air currents blowing through the wreckage.
I lick the air, and detect the shadow of a scent.
The strange, resinous aroma of dreamweed.
Behind me, I can hear running footsteps, voices calling my name. A moment later, Krone arrives, followed by Sleezl and a small cadre of other inmates.
“Sir?” Krone says. “We heard you shout, and—”
His voice cuts off as his eyes drop to my groin. My mating appendage is still hanging exposed between my legs, dripping seed. As soon as Sleezl sees it, he sneers—to the extent that his wide, amphibian mouth is capable of sneering.
“Enjoying yourself, Venim?” he asks.
I ignore the question and point my sword in the direction the robed figure went. “There was someone here,” I say. “Not one of ours. He smelled of dreamweed.”
“Do you want us to search for him?” Krone asks.
I consider this for a moment, then shake my head. “No. It’s time for us to head out and start looking for escape pods.”
“Finally,” Sleezl groans.
I turn and gesture with my sword in the other direction.
“The ship came in from the southwest, so that’s where most of the pods will have fallen. We’ll spread out. Krone, you’ll take ten dozen men and comb the west. I’ll do the same to the south.”
“What about me?” Sleezl whines.
“You will stay here at the crash site with the rest of the men.”
He starts to protest, but I cut him off.
“Most of the concubines are probably still in their escape pods, but some of them may have set out on foot. This would be the obvious location for them to congregate. I want you here waiting for them when they arrive.”
I fix him with a firm glare.
“And remember,” I say. “Pharod wants the women untouched. If you disobey him, and he finds out, there will be null to pay,” I look at Krone. “That goes for you too. Understand?”
Krone nods. Sleezl just grunts.
I sheathe my glazeblade, followed by my cock. Then I turn and set off to look for my codpiece, thinking about the scent that caused me to remove it in the first place, and wondering if I will ever taste it again.