Pulling Teeth


Second Coming #4


By Valerie Hope

 

THE NBARU EMPIRE HAD NEVER had anything like it before, in all its history.  Their society grew from nomadic groups and hunting parties, and their leaders were those who were strongest, fittest and most ruthless, those able to either destroy or checkmate their enemies in their rise to power.  No one being ever excelled – all things were done for the glory of the clan, and now the Empire.  So the Fuzzies were completely unprepared for what they now had in their midst.

Celebrities.

The ‘Pussycat Club’ and its charter members were known by name throughout the entire force of occupation.  Pictures of them from publications and solar calendars adorned walls in barracks throughout the Nbaru armed forces.  Soldiers sent them gifts and fan mail.  Other clubs had arisen, around the world, but all based on the model of the original.  April and Brittany, once military commanders and now madams for the most adored prostitutes the world had ever seen, were household names.  Soldiers would volunteer for the dirtiest, ugliest and most dangerous duties just so they could be within transport distance of the Pussycat Club.  There was not a Fuzzy soldier or scientist on Earth or in orbit around her that didn’t know all of them – April, Amber, Ashlyn, Brittany, Bethany, Courtney, Cassi, Chelsea, Darcy and Dawn – by name.

And the girls – formerly soldiers in the fight against Nbaru occupation – were making the most of it.  Their clothing was the finest, looted from the most upscale and expensive boutiques and clothiers in occupied territory.  They dripped with confiscated jewelry, lounging around their living quarters sometimes wearing millions of dollars worth of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires and pearls.

But it wasn’t only the gifts.  They traveled, to different areas of the occupation, raising the morale (and the penises) of the troops like some perverse Bob Hope act from America’s past.  They were able to tour the bases and the scientific outposts, the orbital ships and the command centers.

And they gathered all the intelligence they could for humanity’s fight.

April, formerly Lt. David Camden of the United States Army, had been converted along with the rest of his men into a sex-starved bimbo by the Nbaru scientists, in order to serve the sexual needs of the non-breeding males who made up the bulk of the Fuzzy armed forces.  They’d been conditioned to be sexually inventive, promiscuous and completely dedicated to the pleasure of their partner.  Their inhibitions had been totally wiped away, and all of them had committed sexual acts that would have made the most dedicated porn star of old blush scarlet and avert her eyes.  And they’d loved every second.  The Nbaru had also altered them in other ways – anything from mutating the bones of their feet to only allow them to walk comfortably in four-inch heels or higher to addicting them to tobacco (a powerful aphrodisiac for the Nbaru).  And the Fuzzies had altered them into brainless little airheads, completely preoccupied with their looks and their sexual ability.  None of them could concentrate or pay attention past a few seconds before reverting to the horny, biddable little nymphets that the Nbaru desired.

But the Nbaru had failed.

Something in the military training these men had made them resistant to the conditioning.  With effort and no distraction, they could concentrate and block out the Nbaru conditioning.  And since all of them had been once dedicated to the removal of the Nbaru presence on the planet, that was what they concentrated on.  They’d provided more intelligence to the human military than any satellite or spy drone.  And they used their newfound fame and popularity to continue this effort.

The Army 128th Intelligence Division had been assigned the task of interpreting the data that April, Brittany and the others were busily gathering and trying to piece together some coherent picture of what the Fuzzies were doing on their planet and why.  So far the girls had given them some very detailed reports of activity and equipment, but nothing that the strange catlike aliens were doing seemed to make the least bit of sense.  But the biggest stumper was the revelation from the Pussycat Girls that the human women – those natural-born, that is – who had been rounded up and captured were still alive, somewhere in orbit on what the Fuzzies termed their ‘research ships.’  Satellite pictures showed that the Nbaru had come to Earth in two separate kinds of  vessel, both huge and heavily armed, but no one had been able to ascertain what their separate purposes were or what kind of military role each performed.  Both carried contingents of landing parties and fighter aircraft, both had similar powerplants and propulsion systems and identical armor and crew complements.  Originally the human militaries had just assumed that they were manufactured by different corporations, and the variances in appearance were for the same reasons that human fighter aircraft appeared different.  But April and her Bravo-Niner crew had disabused them of that notion – the Nbaru effort was unified under their Ministry of Expansion and they only ran two shipyards, one for each type of ship.

Lima Section, the field crew in charge of receiving and relaying the Pussycat Girls’ encrypted communications, was very much worried about their charges.  The girls were in constant danger of discovery and punishment for their espionage efforts.  They relayed requests to headquarters daily, hoping to rush the Fuzzy settlement where the Pussycat Club was situated and take ‘their girls’ (as they’d come to term them) out before anything happened.  Headquarters was adamant that this not happen, but Colonel Philip Krauss was determined to go against orders to get those valiant ladies out alive if the distress signal ever came.  The rest of his platoon – Lima Four – was in agreement as well.  If April called for help, they’d come a-running.  They owed her and her subordinates no less.  Some of the radio operators – Mike Lowery and Steve Hunsacker in particular – had developed some very real crushes on the voices they heard on the radio and had constructed some very elaborate ‘damsel in distress’ fantasies which featured them prominently in shining armor astride white horses.  It was a dangerous way of thinking, to be sure, but Phil Krauss couldn’t say he didn’t feel the same way in his weaker moments.  But for now, they had to leave those brave girls where they were and hope for the best.

He looked again at the whiteboard he’d set up in his command center – the largest of the three caverns he’d dug out of a hillside overlooking the Trinity River.  He’d written all the key pieces of intelligence they’d gathered there, hoping that his hours and hours of staring at the incongruous pieces he’d get a sense of the puzzle.

First was their retention of the natural-born women on the ships in orbit.  Why keep the natural-born women apart and then go to such time and expense to create additional women out of the male prisoners?  It had to have something to do with fertility.  The ‘created’ women were in high sexual demand because of their inability to procreate.  The Nbaru females, who held most of the political influence on the Nbaru, had placed a strict ban on any human-Nbaru offspring.  The Nbaru had done an end-around on the stricture quite neatly, managing to get their rocks off with impunity while guaranteeing no babies.

Second was the strange disposition of Nbaru resources on the planet and in orbit both.  They could weed out the resistance pockets in a week with the military force they had, but the Fuzzies didn’t do anything other than defend their encampments.  Instead of gathering intelligence or moving against the sizeable forces still in the field against them (the Chinese Army, the United States Navy and many others), they devoted major amounts of materièl and manpower to scanning the heavens with Earth’s captured radio telescopes and with their own orbital sensors and investigating things like meteorite impacts and volcanic activity.  They even ran a ‘Noah’s ark’ process around the planet, devoting considerable resources and manpower towards capturing and cataloging a male and female of every single species on the planet.  Some suspected it was to find some method of exterminating the human race in one move with a manufactured chemical or biological agent.  Others believed that it was Standard Operating Procedure for any planet that the Nbaru took by force or colonization.  The end result was that it didn’t make any damn sense to anyone.

And the third item which didn’t figure in was the near-obsession that the Nbaru had with sterilization.  The Pussycat Girls had found out that the strange armored re-breathers which all Nbaru wore planetside weren’t because the Fuzzies had difficulty with Earth’s atmosphere.  They contained both a high-efficiency ultraviolet radiation source and an organic super-antibiotic, one that killed all airborne particles that the girls’ limited resources had been able to come up with.  Similar filters were installed on the air systems on every single Nbaru ground facility.  They strained every possible microbe out of the air and killed it before it ever reached Nbaru lungs.

So there were the pieces.  Captured human women, nonsensical scientific tests run at considerable expense on Earth’s surface, and an infection protocol that made the Centers for Disease Control look like a bunch of rank amateurs.

Phil Krauss sipped at a truly awful cup of coffee and scratched his three-day stubble.  There had to be a key, a single explanation that ran through all three key pieces and drew them together somehow.  But he wasn’t going to be able to get to it from a cave outside of Dallas.  He and his men had agreed late last night, and it still made his skin crawl just to think about it.  They weren’t going to figure anything else out from where they were sitting.  If April and her sisters didn’t turn up something crucial, they were still at square one.

*          *          *

“We’re, like, completely tired,” April half-whined, snuggling into Mree’s broad lap and scratching the dense, soft fur of his mane with her long fingernails.  She’d chosen her outfit carefully with the knowledge that the Nbaru were attracted by bright colors and were absolutely enamored of the human breast.  The tight red corset made movement a little difficult, but she’d noticed that the Nbaru scientist’s eyes were more apt to review her cleavage than her face.  The near-bath she’d taken in Chanel No. 5 and the half-a-pack of cigarettes she’d smoked in his presence probably had his olfactory senses well pleased, and the feel of a well-padded feminine arse squirming in his lap had the tactile end of things covered well, too.  If her husky mezzo was pleasing to his ears, then April was easily overloading every single sense the Nbaru had.  Mree had always seemed to like April anyway, and she was milking it for all it was worth.

“You labor hard,” Mree admitted.  “But is this not your choice?”

“Mmm,” she cooed, nuzzling his neck.  “Yeah.  I totally love what I’m doing.  So do all the others.  But there are so many of you.”

“You have become quite popular among my people,” Mree told her.  “Is this not what you desired to happen?”

She giggled.  “Yeah,” she admitted.  “But we can’t keep all of you satisfied.”

“What are you saying, Human April?” Mree asked without suspicion.  His confidence that he’d reduced the former Lieutenant into a brainless bimbo was absolute.

“I mean, you said it would take, um, like seven more months to make more girls, right?” April asked guilelessly, giving them time to do the math in their heads and convert from Earth months to Nbaru solar cycles.

“About as much,” Mree answered.

April sighed, heaving her bosom admirably.  She saw that it did not go unnoticed by the Nbaru.  “I just wish we knew about the g-spot, and Kegel exercises and deep throating and all that stuff.”

Mree’s ears angled back, a Nbaru sign of mild confusion or annoyance.  “What are these things you refer to, Human April?” he asked.

“Sex tricks,” April said.  “When I was a boy, they used to totally blow my mind, y’know, when girls would do ‘em to me ‘n’ stuff.  If we knew ‘em, we could totally fuck the brains out of any Nbaru alive.”

“You wish to know these things?” Mree asked.

“Uh-huh,” April said, cuddling her forehead in the crook of his neck and puffing on her cigarette poutily.  “But, like, we can’t do ‘em.”

“For what reason is this?” Mree asked.

“’Cause, like, only real girls know ‘em.  Y’know, real, like natural-born Earth girls.  Their mommies teach them and they pass it on to their daughters,” April said faux-sadly.  “We didn’t never get to learn ‘cause we were totally born boys, y’know?”

“Interesting,” Mree said.

“Yeah, like, natural girls know all kinds of stuff we don’t,” April said, feeling the time right to make her play.  Fighting down the nervousness in her chest, she took a deep breath and carried on – it was now or never.  “Like, especially the Kama Sutra.”

“What does that do?”

“All sorts of cool stuff,” April bubbled.  “Like, you can totally pleasure a man without touching him.  Get him off ‘n’ everything, baby.”  It was the first outright lie she had ever told a Nbaru.  Amber and Courtney had fucked her for hours to get her un-horny enough to even contemplate it, and the adrenalin was taking it the rest of the way.  April felt sure Mree could hear her heart pounding against her ribcage like a trip-hammer.

“These methods – they are effective on Nbaru?” Mree asked.  His eyes were huge, contemplating the possibilities.  If the Pussycat Girls could give sexual gratification without touch, as April suggested – then it would allow the breeding males to partake of them without violating the terms set on them by the Council!  For Mree, who had not known the touch of a woman for nearly five years, it was too intoxicating a thought to let go of.

“Oh, totally, baby,” April said.  She put a manicured finger in the air about navel level.  “This is what we can do now.”

She put another in the air about three feet above the first.  “And that’s what we can do if we knew shit like the Kama Sutra and Kegel exercises ‘n’ stuff.”

“And your human genetic women are privy to these methods?”

“Most of ‘em,” April said.  “Some, like, wacky religions forbid ‘em and shit, but most would know ‘em.  And I totally bet that we could learn ‘em, too.  I can already almost do a Venus Butterfly.”

All the exotic terminology was piquing Mree’s interest as it tented the front of his leggings.  April began gently squeezing his erect shaft with her calves as she nuzzled his ear.  Mree was looking off into space, deep in thought.

“What if I was to arrange a meeting with some of your Earth genetic females?” Mree asked.  “How long would it take you to master these methods you mention?”

April looked confused.  “With a real girl?  I dunno, like, um, a week or so?” she said, twirling her hair around her finger.  “I guess, like, only four or five of us should learn first and we could, like, teach the others ‘n’ stuff.”

“Then choose your five women, Human April,” Mree said, lifting her gently onto the floor and standing.  “I will arrange for you to visit a research ship.”

*          *          *

The five that went were the five that had been together since the beginning – the men-turned-bimbos of Bravo-Niner.  April, Courtney, Cassi, Darcy and Amber had bid tearful farewells to their compatriots in the Pussycat Club.  About seven hours after Bravo-Niner launched away in a Nbaru shuttle bound for the research vessels, the famous Pussycat Club would be attacked and overrun by three companies of the Thirty-Seventh North Texas Infantry supported by elements of the 2nd Armored Division brought in under cover of darkness.  With luck and speed, April prayed, her best friends Ashlyn, Brittany, Bethany, Chelsea and Dawn would be safe at a human military headquarters by sundown.  They’d spent the whole night packing, since the Nbaru conditioning wouldn’t allow any of them to leave a stitch of clothing behind.  The densely-packed trunks for the girls of Bravo-Niner held a little extra, however, in amongst the silks and satins and leathers.  Hopefully the girls would never need the M16A2 Assault Rifles and ammunition they’d hidden there.  But anything could happen once they played their hands.

The sun was up and shining brightly by the time the girls finished the marathon orgy they’d concocted – some would say forced to concoct – so that their heads would be clear for the day’s work ahead.  With tears and hugs and kissed cheeks and squeezed hands, Bravo-Niner boarded the orbital shuttle behind the slender Nbaru pilot and the hulky brown-furred guard and set out to put their plan in motion.

The shuttle left the ground smoothly and rose into the clouds with barely a sensation of movement.  The pilot had his lap pleasantly filled by the willowy, olive-skinned Darcy, who massaged the backs of his ears (they’d learned early that was a quick way to drive a Nbaru wild) and asking coyly, “So, um, how does this shuttle, like, work ‘n’ stuff?”

The pilot was giving a detailed description of docking and undocking procedures as Darcy nibbled his neck and Amber knelt between his thighs, sucking his aching erection with wet smacking sounds.  April could only smile behind her hand.  Amazing how a little oral sex could get a Nbaru to teach secret piloting information and military protocol to their enemies.

April licked her generous lips.  Maybe this might be a little easier than she thought.

*          *          *

The door swished shut behind April and her friends, leaving them alone but obviously under surveillance.  With the harsh click-clack of their platform heels on the tiled floor, they strode forward in their sinuous, sexy way towards the antiseptic-looking ward that housed the natural-born women of Earth.

The dim room was not large to start with and was completely dominated by the six huge beds which lined the walls, three on a side.  Women reclined on the beds, glassy-eyed, staring at nothing while incomprehensible machines flashed lights and made soft noises above their heads.  April held very still as the airtight glass panel slid away and their access was granted.  She stepped very carefully, afraid to make any unwarranted noise.  The women weren’t exactly asleep, but the unearthly silence in the room seemed to make her want to make as little noise as possible.  That, and there was something distant tugging at her mind, something left over from her male self.

The overwhelming desire to let pregnant women rest.

April didn’t know a lot about pregnancy, since she nor any of her friends would ever experience it, and Lt. David Camden had known nothing of it either.  All the women in the room looked to be about seven months along.  About the same length of time April had been April.  These women must have been captured around the same time – or just a little after – Bravo Niner had been taken prisoner.

“Um, April?  What’s the deal?” Courtney whispered.

“They totally can’t all be pregnant,” Darcy said from behind them.

“But we are,” a flat, hollow voice.  April did a quick catwalk turn to face the woman who had just spoken.  All the faces were the same blank, absent neutral.  April sidled up to the bedside carefully and sat down.  The woman didn’t seem to mind.

“Are you, like, okay?” she asked, putting her hand over the woman’s.

“Fine,” the woman said.  There was no expression at all.  Her eyes didn’t even blink.

“What’s your name?” April asked, venturing a shy smile.

“One six five zero one.”

“I mean, like, your real name.  The one you had before you were captured ‘n’ stuff.”

“Immaterial.”

April sat back.  The woman was a mindless robot.  “Do you, y’know, remember anything from before your capture?”

The woman paused a moment.  “I remember everything.”

“Don’t you care?” Darcy interjected.

“No,” the woman stated simply.

“How did you, like, get pregnant?” Amber asked.  “Who’s the daddy?”

“I was inseminated.  Test batch twelve dash zero zero two.  We are all test batch twelve dash zero zero two.”

“Twelve dash zero zero two, twenty-ninth week of gestation,” the entire room chorused in a soft, emotionless voice that sent chills down the spines of all the Pussycat women.

“Do you even know what’s happening to you ‘n’ stuff?” Cassi asked.

“Of course,” the woman named 16501 answered.  “I’m having a baby.”

April seized upon an idea.  “So, like, what happens to your baby when it’s born?”

“It will be taken to serve the cause.”

“Taken where?” Darcy asked.

“I don’t know,” 16501 answered.  “We are not told.”

“What’s the cause?” Amber pressed.

All the women chorused again, like some kind of susurrus-voiced Hitlerjünge that made April’s blood run cold.  “The total victory.”

“Victory over what?  Us?” April asked.

“The ultimate victory,” 16501 answered.  “That’s all I am allowed to say.  We are needed.  That is all they tell us.  And it is enough.”

Several large Nbaru in full rebreather masks were gathered outside the glass partition.  Apparently the Pussycat Girls’ line of questioning had piqued the curiosity of the Fuzzies on the other end of the surveillance cameras and they’d come to make sure that nothing was amiss.  April had the itch in her middle and the sight of the burly, physical guards outside was making her rub her thighs together in preparation.  It was the most difficult part of the plan, the one which would either get them their answers or it would leave them shoved out an airlock into high Earth orbit.

At least she’d die laid.  It was something Lt. David Camden had wanted, too.  She stood and thrust out her tits proudly, leading her sexy comrades out to satisfy their lusts.

*          *          *

April sighed contentedly, arching her back sexily as she ruffled her long-nailed fingertips through the long, impossibly soft blonde hair over her temples.  She scratched idly at the belly fur of the Nbaru she’d just fucked into unconsciousness, making him mumble and purr in the most delicious way.  She reclined on him long enough to pull her thong panties over her smooth legs and snugly against her still-damp mound, light a long slender cigarette and peck her lover sweetly on his furred cheek.

All of the other girls had done their parts as well as she had.  Forcing themselves to go without for a long period had nurtured a titanic lust in each of them, and they had exhausted an entire squad of Nbaru guards in slaking it.  For their troubles they had a raw soreness between their thighs, a dull ache in their jaws, the itchy flakiness of the dried semen on their soft skin and one other, most important thing:

A security keycard.

They slipped down the hallway outside the guard station as quickly as they could in their seven-inch platform heels, back towards their transport ship.  The guards there helped them carry their heavy trunks to their temporary accommodations, the best the research ships had to offer.  Each of the helpful guards received a very spirited blowjob as a gratuity, and April was pleased to note that her usually insatiable need for sex had abated somewhat.  The Nbaru conditioning had left her with a sexual urge that was never truly satisfied, but prolonged sexual indulgence did allow them all to concentrate on other matters.  Given the chapped state of her privates and the ache in her jaw, the rubber-legged shakiness of the multiple orgasms she’d had, April estimated that she had about two hours before her clitoris got the better of her.  Luckily, they’d elected to work in pairs, just in case they ran over time.  They could satisfy one another as easily as the Nbaru males could.

“Did you, like, get the map made?” Amber asked Darcy, who’d been their designated cartographer.  Darcy was shucking out of her floor-length evening gown into a pair of scandalously tight black leather pants.  All of them were changing out of their garishly bright ‘party clothes’ into more subdued colors.  Their mission was beginning, and the silver lamé sheath dress April had been wearing wasn’t exactly low-profile.  Now it was skintight t-shirts or jog-bras and leather or vinyl low-rise pants which clung to their curves deliciously.  April felt a little naked without her diamonds and other sparkly jewelry, but there was nothing she could do about that, contenting herself with a huge pair of black plastic hoop earrings.  She finished French-braiding her hair into two cute little pigtails, one behind each ear, and then snugged on the fingerless black workout gloves she’d brought along before hefting the matte black M16A2 Assault Rifle she’d stashed in the bottom of her trunk.  She was as ready as she was going to get.

“As good as I, y’know, could with a dick in my mouth,” Darcy giggled.  “I’m, like, almost 100% sure from the way this place is laid out ‘n’ stuff that there’s a big area on the other side of the wall where the women are.  I totally couldn’t see access from the rooms, but we, like, passed a lot of doors ‘n’ stuff in the hall that could have been a way in.  I say we totally take the hallway and try all those doors.”

They were finishing preparations – pulling on their knee-high or thigh-high black platform boots with no smaller than a six-inch heel – it was all the Nbaru modifications would let them move in – and trying to find nerve they remembered from their times as soldiers.  They’d been encouraged to see that the Nbaru guards had carried only a stunning version of a nightstick.  April was certain there were small-arms lockers on the ship, but the Fuzzies were very confident in the security of their orbital ships.

April put on a fresh coat of lipstick, a frosty bubblegum pink, and pursed her lips together sexily in the handheld mirror as a final touch.  She hefted the rifle and made sure that the spare magazines on her black leather belt were within easy reach.

“Girl power,” she giggled, blowing her comrades a kiss as she led the way out the door.

*          *          *

It had taken hardly any effort at all.  For one thing, no Nbaru alive could willingly pull the trigger against one of their beloved Pussycat Girls, no more than the curator of an art museum could take a butcher knife to a Monet or a Renoir.  And the booming three-round burst down the central corridor had sent the lightly-armed Nbaru scurrying for cover, leaving the girls easy access to the doors along the hallway.  The guard’s keycard let them into a small-arms locker which they quickly emptied and then into a restricted hallway which led deeper into the complex, towards the undefined room Darcy had hypothesized on the other side of the maternity ward.

They stepped out into a round chamber, about twenty feet across, with an open roof looking up a huge shaft nearly a hundred feet high.  Row upon row of six-bed maternity suites lined the inside of the shaft, stretching up to a dormer bubble window at the top which showed a starfield partially obscured by the pocked surface of the Moon.  Shocked-looking Nbaru stood on gantries which accessed the rooms, dressed in the full-rebreather suits with the markings of the Scientific Research unit.  The girls fanned out with a military precision that the conditioning hadn’t erased, taking firing positions all around the circular room, rounding up the Fuzzy scientists neatly and turning the whole room into a killing floor.  A brief ‘conversation’ with the business end of an M-16 convinced the locks on the other doors to cease operating, leaving only one way in or out of the lab complex.

Intricate and vastly complicated machinery and monitoring equipment lined the walls and spotted the open, tiled floor.  April tried her best to make heads or tails out of the complicated experiments going on in the research facility, but she couldn’t get her modified brain to understand a bit of it.  The conditioning made her mind go towards interest in pretty colors and how cute Courtney looked in her skin-tight leather pants and how good she would look in the black vinyl crop-top that Cassi was wearing.  A part of her wanted to scream out in frustration, but the larger part of her just wanted to know if she could borrow it someday.

“Anybody?” she asked, the permanent perky lilt in her voice masking the frustration.

“I totally don’t know,” Amber said.  “This is, like, um… really complicated ‘n’ stuff.”

“The conditioning,” Cassi added.  “It totally makes it, y’know, impossible to think.”

“So impossible,” Darcy echoed.

April grabbed one of the scientists by the elbow – trying to ignore the flush of heat along her breasts and inner thighs when she made contact with the hard, corded muscle beneath the smooth, dry skin – and jerked him to his feet.  He topped her by a foot, but his slitted yellow eyes didn’t leave the muzzle of her rifle.

“What’s your name?” April asked him.  He looked at her blankly.

“He so can’t understand English, baby,” Courtney said.  “You need one of those, um, y’know, translator thingies to talk to him.”

A stripe-maned Fuzzy rose easily from a crouch in the corner, hands raised in surrender and supplication.  “That is not necessary.  I speak your language.”

April’s brow knit slightly, giving her a pout she knew was adorably sexy.  This Fuzzy was different from the others somehow.  Not as commanding, but somehow more sinister in a way.  April really couldn’t track what it was, she just felt a sense of foreboding and danger from this Nbaru instead of the customary sexual flush.  The threat was almost palpable, even though this Nbaru seemed smaller, more slender and not as massive as the others.  Lighter on the feet, more dainty.  Six sizeable nipples tented the front of the snug-fitting white top of some pearlescent fabric, and some large pieces of jewelry – unheard of among Nbaru soldiers, April had thought – clinked merrily on the slender wrists.

“You’re female,” April said.

“My name is Br’owa.  Supervisor Br’owa.  This is my laboratory you invaded,” she said, striding easily towards April and looking her up and down speculatively.  She traced April’s cheek with a long-clawed finger and even seemed to be sniffing her silently.

“So, this is why the males have done such great things.  I do not see what makes you so unique, to be honest, but as long as you keep my troopers motivated, I do not have a problem with you.”

“Sit down with the others,” Darcy said, gesturing with her rifle.

“I do not take orders,” Br’owa said calmly.

A three-round burst into a table said otherwise.  Wide-eyed, the Nbaru female backed slowly away hissing, hands snapping back into a position of supplication.

“You totally take orders now,” April said softly.  It was not a question.

Br’owa bared her wicked canines and pricked up her ears in the Nbaru version of an amused smile.  “I was wrong,” she mused in a slurred, singsong accent.  “It does not matter that you were once male.  You are as dangerous as any female.”

“What have you done to these women?” Courtney demanded, gesturing up the shaft.

“They are not being harmed.”

“They’re total fucking zombies ‘n’ stuff,” April argued.  “What did you do to them?”

“A simple matter of bypassing the primitive human brain,” Br’owa explained.  “We introduced a microorganism designed to interrupt the signals from their brains to their bodies and replaced them with more agreeable impulses.  We took every precaution.  Females are by far the more vicious enemies within a species, and we dared not risk a revolt.  We felt sure that our modifications of you males would keep you docile.  I see now that Mree misjudged you.  He was always prideful.”

“I want to know what you did to them,” April insisted, gesturing with the rifle.  “Why are they pregnant?”

Br’owa seemed to consider for a while, her whiskers twitching involuntarily while she pondered.  Her spine straightened and her tail smoothed out from its bottle-brush state of alarm as she reached her decision.

“Come with me.  Your concern for your females speaks well of you all.  Perhaps this should never have been hidden from you in the first place.”

She barked a few orders in the Nbaru language to the scientists, who returned to their stations with downcast eyes.  They continued to shoot furtive glances at the women and their rifles through the corners of their large, oblique eyes.

“Cassi, Darcy, y’all, like, stay here ‘n’ stuff.  Keep an eye on these guys,” Amber said, the natural command in her voice still present from years and years of commanding men in the field, not eroded by the lilting mezzo she now voiced.

“Um, Amber?” Cassi whispered.  “You sure that’s, y’know, smart?  These are males, baby, and um, like, I’m starting to get horny.”

Amber gritted her teeth.  So she wasn’t the only one who was starting to feel the nagging itch in her middle.  “Hold on as best you can, baby girl,” Amber said.  “We’ll try not to be long.”

April lit a cigarette and followed Supervisor Br’owa to a locked door where the Nbaru entered a lengthy code on the keypad scrawled with strange Nbaru lettering. Amber and Courtney flanked her as they entered one of the small, glass-sided elevators which led up the shafts past the myriad maternity suites.

As the door closed, Br’owa relaxed a little.  She gestured at Courtney’s rifle.  “You no longer have need of those.  I will not resist.  They – make me nervous.”

“Good,” Amber said.

The elevator rose to the top of the shaft and stopped smoothly.  The door didn’t open until another lengthy code had been input into the keypad.

The room was darkened.  A growled syllable in the Nbaru language illuminated the automatic lights, bathing the hexagonal room in an unearthly greenish light.  Banks of readouts and computer terminals lined the walls, blinking solemnly in the half-gloom, interspersed by the strange interfaces that the Fuzzies used which had no keys or mechanical inputs but instead tracked complicated gestures.  In the center of the room was a ring of laboratory tables covered with viewing and testing gear, none of which the Pussycat Girls could identify.  A different race with different scientific approach.  In the center of the ring of tables was a hollow tube extending from floor to ceiling.  Inside, in some strange preservative solution, lay suspended the dead body of a gruesome monster.

The thing was easily two meters tall, scaled and powerfully muscled.  A pink, forked tongue extended partially between the rows of needle-sharp teeth in the slack jaw.  A hard, bony ridge hid small eyes with a malice and intelligence in them that not even death could take.  The scales of its chest and upper legs were thick, possibly even thick enough to stop one of the high-velocity rounds from April’s M-16.  A long, barbed tail coiled behind the legs and the long, clawed hands made this monster as deadly unarmed as armed.  None of the girls wanted to go near it.  For that matter, neither did Br’owa.

“What the fuck is that?” Courtney breathed, her voice a whisper for the unspoken fear of all of them – talk too loudly and you might wake that nightmare up.

“Neither your language or mine can pronounce what they call themselves.  In our language, we call them dromothi,” Br’owa said.  “They are our ancient – and most implacable – enemy.”

April took a drag from her cigarette, daring to approach the monster closer.  “They, like – ohmygawd, they’re, like, totally evolved to be killing machines.  Look at the musculature ‘n’ stuff.  The claws.  And is that, like, totally a stinger on the tail?”

“Neurotoxin.  Kills an adult Nbaru male in seven of your seconds,” Br’owa said, her eyes never leaving the creature.  “I suspect that humans would be quicker still to die.”

“What are they?” Amber asked.

“Slavers,” Br’owa responded.  “They enslave males for production and take the females for food.  We have fought them for thousands of mr’aa among the stars – they were the first race we ever encountered when we left the homeworld.”

“They’re space travelers?” Amber interrupted.

“Yes,” the Nbaru said.  “They stole the interstellar drive from us.  Millions of Nbaru died in the first war with the dromothi.  Millions more in the years following.  Every colony we founded, they attacked.  We are taught to hate them from the litter.  They kill or enslave any sentient race they encounter.  A race of intelligent beings once known as the ururai underwent complete genocide at their hands.  None survived – the dromothi hunted them down to the tiniest outpost and exterminated them.  We were curious as to why the dromothi would go to so much trouble for such a trivial race as the ururai.”

“Did you, like, find out ‘n’ stuff?” April asked.

“The ururai were stargazers.  Cartographers.  And they had found something significant.”

“What?” Courtney piped in.

“You,” Br’owa said simply.

“So, like, you mean these gross dromothi thingies are coming to Earth?” April gasped.

“Perhaps,” Br’owa said.  “Our monitoring stations on your homeworld have been looking for them constantly.  We have seen no signs, but that does not mean they aren’t coming.”

“That’s why your, like, detectors haven’t been aimed at our militaries,” Courtney said.

“This totally doesn’t explain why y’all’re, like, impregnating our women ‘n’ stuff,” Amber remembered.

Br’owa made a sound deep in her throat, the Fuzzy equivalent of a sigh.  “Do you know, you strange humans, how unique you are in the universe?”

“Well, I totally knew I was hot,” Courtney said.  “What’s your point?”

“We have explored this galaxy for a thousand mr’aa.  Met every conceivable kind of sentient life.  Of all the races and species we have encountered, humans have evolved from their primate ancestors a quality which no other race in the universe is capable of.  You are the only beings in the universe with – your science calls it an ‘immune system.’”

“Do what now?” April said incredulously.  “We’re the only ones with an immune system?”

“Usually, planets with extensive microorganisms or allergens must be re-formed in order for us to colonize them.  Also with races such as the dromothi.  You humans are able to live anywhere, in any sort of condition.  We came here to study you.  Your females are pregnant because we are hoping to breed them, to give us the secret of immunity, so we can combat the dromothi’s most deadly weapon.”

Br’owa waved her hand through an interface box and a section of the wall displayed a glowing image of a virus, rotating through three dimensions with strange notes and data in Nbaru script flowing past.

“Um, like…  uh…  I totally think I know what that is,” Courtney said, her pretty face screwed up in thought.  “At least, I did.  Y’know – before ‘n’ stuff.”

“Think, baby,” April urged.

“The shape is, like, totally familiar,” Courtney mused, moving closer to the rotating graphic.  “Um – I think it’s the flu.”

“Really?” April said.  “We have, like, a vaccine for that.  Antibodies.”

Br’owa nodded.  “We know.  Which is why we are breeding your women.”

April was enraged, but the permanently sexy pout only made her look petulant.  “You total fucking bitch.  You totally could’ve asked us to help you and we would’ve.”

“You don’t know that,” Br’owa countered.  “Who has the gun here and who does not?  You are a warlike race.  Territorial and unpredictable.  The Nbaru decided – and I believe it was the right decision – to occupy your planet and defend it from the dromothi while we did our research.”

“So, like, has it worked?” Courtney asked, still pondering the display of the virus while she sucked idly on a long cigarette.

“We do not know,” Br’owa said.  “The latest test looks promising, but your long gestation and the human trait of one offspring at a time has limited us.”

“You didn’t have to force us,” April maintained.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” the Nbaru said.  “We will never know.  This is the course we chose.  We have to live with it now.  If it works, then the threat of dromothi domination is over for both Earth and Nbaru.  If we fail here, the Earth is doomed.  The dromothi will come eventually.”

“Um, April?” Amber said, looking down the elevator shaft.  “We totally need to get back down there.  Cassi and Darcy are fucking everybody.”

“Knew it,” April said.  She turned to Br’owa, weapon raised.  “Some things are going to change.  You know that.”

Br’owa nodded.  “I do.”

April gestured to the elevator.  “Then it’s time we all talked.”

*          *          *

Life went on.  Besides an immune system, humans were unique and remarkable for other reasons, one of which was their capacity to adapt to new conditions.  The Nbaru remained in orbit around the planet, but now the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control maintained laboratories around the globe which were staffed with equal parts human scientists and Nbaru.  The enforced breeding program had been stopped – the scientists had better luck with in vitro fertilization anyway.  None of the hybrid babies born from human mothers lasted very long anyway.

Meanwhile, the UEG – United Earth Government – which grew out of the shambles of the United Nations was on track in building and equipping Earth’s brand-new space defense force, using bases on the Moon and within the asteroid belt outside the orbit of Mars to train and base the new fast-attack craft.  Earth’s first line of capital ships – the Eisenhower, the MacArthur, the Westmoreland and the Schwarzkopf – were due to launch in a few months.  New human monitoring stations from orbit announced the skies clear of the dromothi threat – for now.

The truly remarkable thing was how fast the animosity between human and Nbaru eroded.  It was hard to be angry at the person who was helping you rebuild your smashed house and teaching your children strange, atonal Nbaru songs.  Pluralism was still a long time coming, but the idea of a long-lasting Alliance between Earth and Nbaru was not so far-fetched a thing as it was a few short months prior.

The Pussycat Girls were still celebrities, but now human celebrities as well.  They were lauded as heroes for their valor and perseverance – even though the governments of both species thought it best not to publicize their gender conversion lest the fragile deténte between human and Fuzzy was overly strained.  It would be made public in due time – probably after the calendar sales and their special issue of Playboy wore off.  The Pussycat Club never re-opened, but the new Medal of Honor winners weren’t very sad.  Most of the old crew – April, Amber, Ashlyn, Brittany, Bethany, Courtney, Cassi, Chelsea, Darcy and Dawn – had retired to private life.  They remained dependent on the drugs the Nbaru fabricated to keep their sex drives under control, and would all their lives – Mree had done his work too well, the changes were irreversible.  Most of the transformees over the Occupation – some seven hundred men-turned-women – were simply mindless fucking machines with no hope of survival.  They were in permanent rehabilitation to try and restore their personalities, in orbit on the Nbaru ships.  And, April suspected as she smoked a cigarette on her new back porch, keeping the garrisons of Nbaru soldiers stationed up there very, very happy in the process.

April shivered a little in the cool morning breeze but didn’t make any move to close the filmy robe which did very little to conceal the white, lacy merry widow, garters, g-string and thigh-high stockings she wore.  She perched easily on her seven-inch heels and shook her shiny blonde mane out in the wind.  She’d never lost her predilection for revealing and glamorous clothes, and the gifts she’d been given by all the Nbaru ‘customers’ she’d had in her tenure at the Pussycat Club had made her an extremely wealthy woman, especially when added to the bonus from the newly-reconstructed Earth military.  She’d bought a gorgeous ranch house in Central Texas and rode her horses every evening before dinner.  Outside of her utter dependence on the cigarettes and the pills which kept her sex drive in check, she was a completely normal, healthy girl in the prime of her life.

The rolling growl of the sliding door behind her made her smile.  Her husband, Fr’a, cozied up to her from behind, the soft fur of his chest pressing warmly against her shoulders.

“You are thinking of something, mate-for-life?” Fr’a asked.  The Nbaru hadn’t yet mastered the idea and meaning of marriage, but mating for life was something new and novel which they understood well.

“Just what all has, like, happened to be and the others,” she said, blowing her smoke out in a wispy cloud which floated lazily towards the stand of oak trees overlooking her swimming pool.

“You miss your old life?  Your companions?” he asked.  Curiosity about human emotion was a predominant trait among the Nbaru – particularly retired soldiers such as Fr’a, who had fought in Eastern Europe during the Occupation.

“Oh, fuck no,” April added quickly – Nbaru had fragile egos, and she had to let Fr’a know all the time that she’d never leave him.  They liked the concept of mating for life, but they weren’t too convinced that it was for real just yet.  “I mean, like, I see Ashlyn and Amber and Courtney all the time ‘n’ stuff.  And Brittany, Bethany,  Cassi, Darcy, Dawn, Chelsea – they call me, like, every week almost.  I was just, like, thinking of what all has happened, y’know?  Like, how I got here ‘n’ stuff.  It’s pretty amazing.”

“It is,” Fr’a agreed.  “I only wondered if you were happy then, as you are now.”

April shrugged, jiggling her breasts deliciously.  “I guess I was.  I mean, not like now.  Different, y’know?  I miss dancing for people, and being famous a little.”

“You know that the Nbaru are opening a club like yours on Nbaru Prime,” Fr’a said.  “Peopled by transformees whom you trained yourself, just before the Occupation ended.”

April smiled.  H Group, J Group and K Group had only just been transformed when the Pussycat Girls had taken the research ship.  Mree had used similar methods to form their conditioning that he had with the original Pussycats, hoping to create more of the sensation.  The Pussycat Girls had taken the new women under their wings immediately, making Heather, Holli, Haylee, Heidi, Jessica, Jennifer, Jana, Jodi, Kimberlee, Kayla, Kristen and Kelli into sex-starved celebrities as they had been.  Unwilling to retire, they’d agreed to take ship to Nbaru Prime to see what kinds of fortunes could be made.  April wondered how well it would work, in a planet completely free of microbes.  Humans needed certain bacteria in their mouths, their digestive systems, even their pussies in order to function.  But she was convinced that any team of Nbaru scientists could crack the problem if their dicks were hard enough.

“You will come inside soon?” Fr’a asked.  “I am lonely without you.”

She snuggled against him dreamily.  “I’m glad I found you, baby.”

“As am I.  I would like to spend time with you before you go to your Council of Government to speak again,” he said.  “They take up so much of your time.”

“They need me,” April said.  “If Nbaru and human are ever gonna, like, work together against the dromothi, we’re totally gonna have to keep going to these meetings ‘n’ stuff.”

“You are right,” Fr’a said, a little dejectedly.  “But I need you as well.”

April smiled, a hint of mischief in her sparkling blue eye.  “Aw, cheer up, kitty cat,” she said, running the tip of a manicured nail along her breast where the lace cup of the merry widow met skin.  “If you don’t make a big deal about this, I may just forget to take my pill tomorrow.”

Fr’a growled deep in his throat and flattened his ears.  Although humans were only now beginning to grasp the variety of Nbaru facial expression, April knew exactly what that one meant.  She had from the beginning.

 

End

since 07/16/04