Chapter Eight

 

“All right, boys!” Meg called through her cupped hands. “Lower it. Gently! Gently!”

“It’s made of solid freaking stone!” Sunchaser said through gritted teeth, his wings beating fiercely as he and the ten other Valkyire who all clung to straining ropes lowered the massive, ring shaped artifact to the plaza before the Free Lord’s palace. This plaza had once been a forum for debates and arguments, back when Babylon had been the City of Dead Gods. Then, when Sysminor had occupied it, it had been the place where slaves were sold.

Once again, times were changing.

And, Meg thought, the gate wasn’t even the biggest change.

She glanced backwards and frowned. The ambassadorial household set up for the Monodeists was as ostentatious as she had dreaded. Gold leaf covered the front door, while great silk banners displaying the golden cross on a purple field that was their symbol flanked the walls. Two Paladins stood in full steel plate mail. If they sweltered under the punishing Purgatorian sun, they didn’t show it underneath that gleaming, glittering armor.

One of the Paladins, though…

The faint creak of the gate settling into its carefully constructed platform drew Meg’s attention back. She gave huge thumbs up to the valks, who all landed about her with groans and grumbles. Sunchaser rubbed one of his arms, wincing as he did so.

“Why’d we have to fly this orbitally?” he asked. “We have boats! Boats can do this!”

“It took the Endless Mine three weeks to build it,” Meg said, shaking her head. “And according to Liv, the nanites are running low. Something about a recharge cycle and regeneration growth rate.” She shook her head. “It didn’t make much sense to me, but Dr. Cole seemed convinced that we’d need to wait months, if not years, before we could try and build another one.”

“That doesn’t mean we couldn’t have used boats...” Sunchaser muttered.

Meg ignored him as Tethis and Dr. Cole walked out. Dr. Cole was dressed in her normal mixture of Purgatorian clothes and what she had scrounged up from her supplies, after Ares had repatriated the rest of the science team. Behind the two of them came the rest of the Earth scientists. Meg had to admit, privately, that she was quite glad that a bit of serendipitous questioning and a bit of peeking at the bath-houses had proved that Liam remained unique among Earthers.

She liked Liam being special.

Made her feel better about getting her hands on him first!

“Your gate has arrived!” Meg said, cheerfully as the science team tore their eyes from the stone circle to her. Several of the science team turned as red as their complexions would allow. They all hurried over to start attaching the control interface they had been working on – cannibalizing parts from every bit of Earth tech that had been recovered while Mary and the Monodiest diplomats had danced around.

“Why does every man on the science team look at you like you’re a rampaging crystalback?” Tethis whispered.

Meg shrugged. “I dunno.”

Tethis narrowed her eyes. “I’ve heard some of them mentioning rulers.”

Meg grinned. “I was just engaging in my own scientific research. And I proved my hypothesis: Liam’s mom fucked a horse at some point.”

“Measuring dick size isn’t science!” Tethis said, putting her hands on her hips. “A-And don’t talk about Liam’s mom that way.”

“She’s my mom too!” Meg grinned, holding up her hand, spreading her fingers. Her golden ring glinted marvelously in the sunlight.

“That doesn’t make it better!” Tethis spluttered.

“Speaking of fucking,” Meg said, rubbing her hands together. “When are you going to cast that fertility spell? You promised me soon...”

“We’ve been trying to get a hyperspace gate to work, I’ve been busy!” Tethis put her hands over her face, covering her blush. “A-Also, can we not discus this in public?”

“But I wanted to show off,” Meg said, enjoying twisting the knife. Tethis squirmed so delightfully when she was embarrassed.

“Technically,” Bella said, smiling as she walked over. “It’s a wormhole gate. Not a hyperspace gate. It’s not going to another dimension, it’s finding a short cut in this one. Basically, the exotic particles generated by the inner surface create, via some kind of fundamental interaction with one another, a rotating point of gravitational disturbance that punches a hole in space time from point to point. The thing that’s amazing me is that this gate doesn’t just have the emitters, it also has the power source. We had to hook fission reactors to each emitter we built and our gateway was barely stable enough to get here. This should land us exactly where we aim like that.“ She snapped her fingers.

Meg snickered. “They sent you over here because your skill as a geologist isn’t really applicable to gates, is it?”

“No, not really,” Bella said, sighing. “Though, speaking to Loki about Odin’s excavations to explore the inner skin of Purgatory was fascinating. I can’t wait to get more supplies...”

“Did you guys ever manage to call Earth and tell them that you’re coming?” Meg asked.

Bella shook her head. “The communication systems we brought were all destroyed. Or at least, we haven’t found the replacements yet.” She made a face. “We didn’t think that the dispersal would be so huge, or that so many people would be around to bash them open and muck around in the crates...” She shook her head. “Still, if the first tests go well, we can send a signal through the wormhole before we arrive ourselves. It’s really fascinating how electromagnetic radiation interacts with the-”

Meg mentally reached for some way to cut Bella off before she drowned her and Tethis in jargon. Tethis might be interested, but Meg was more of a philosophy girl. She preferred to know why to do something, not how to do it. How usually ended up being ‘hit it with a stick’ or ‘out think it.’ Or some variation thereof. And so she leaned forward and grinned.

“Sooo, how is Xapanos?”

Bella stopped like someone had reached out and smacked her butt. “I, uh, we...t-talk sometimes.”

Meg’s eyes sparkled. “And his wiiiife?”

Bella whimpered under her inspection.

“Meg!” Tethis whispered.

“What?” Meg grinned. “Nothing’s juicer than gossip.”

 

***

 

Simone panted, softly, looking at the ceiling, and tried to figure out how she had gotten here.

She had been in the gymnasium.

“You’re looking good!” Liam’s cheerful voice rang through the room as Simone paused between reps. Simone grinned slightly at him, her forearms gleaming with sweat as she swung the bronze weight that she had been using to replicate a bar-bell down. She set it on the ground and started to stretch, enjoying the pleasant burn in her muscles. Her wound hadn’t even left a scar. Healing magic. She really was going to be spoiled rotten, the first time she broke or sprained or cut anything on Earth, it’d be like she had suddenly become a hundred year old woman with brittle bones, incapacitated by even the tiniest of bumps.

“Thanks,” she said. “You’re looking good too.” She grinned. “What happened, you walk through a kitchen?”

“Oh, uh, no, Brax invented a catapult,” Liam said, looking down at his chest. “I was just going to get some wash cloths.”

His chest was smeared with cherry red stains and purple marks. Simone walked over, brushing her hands through her hair as she looked at his chest. Marks or no marks, it was a fine chest. Muscular and strong. Her tongue darted along her lips as she reached out with her hand, rubbing her thumb on one mark. It smeared and she arched an eyebrow. “Paint?”

“Grapes. And cherries.” Liam grinned.

Simone popped her thumb into her mouth without thinking. She could taste the faint tang of a grape. Thank god the Purgatorians brought some seed-stock with them when they were banished, she thought, even as her tongue also tasted the salty muskiness of Liam’s sweat. She slowly drew her thumb out of her mouth. How had she gotten so close to Liam. She gulped, slightly, then looked down. There was his kilt. And, ah. A reason to look down that wasn’t the slowly growing bulge there.

“Your new foot working out?”

“Hephaestus added some improvements over the last model,” Liam said, his voice husky. He tapped his heel twice in rapid succession and a blade snicked out of the pad of the foot, glittering as it thrust beyond the metal toes.

“Sick,” Simone purred, moments before her inner snide voice started to scream at her that it wasn’t 1999 , she wasn’t a teenager trying to impress a girl with her fucking Van Halen T-shirt, and if everything went well, she’d be reporting to her superior officer about the results of the mission within a few days. She shook her head and turned around, striding away from Liam. He started to tap his foot again – and she heard the faint click click click of the blade retracting.

One of the many innovations that Liam had brought from Earth had been punching bags. The leather was hand crafted rather than machine stitched, but it worked the same. Simone started to punch it, bouncing from foot to foot. She wondered if Liam’s eyes were glued to her ass. She was wearing shorts and a tank top – some of the only clothes that had survived the transit and the looting intact. She wondered if he liked how her ass looked, now…

“You okay?” Liam asked, sounding a bit concerned.

Simone realized she had been throwing herself into the punches, kicks, knee strikes. She grunted, then slammed her leg in hard enough that her shin went numb and the bag started to swing from side to side like a wrecking ball. She grabbed onto it and sagged forward, hanging her head forward. She closed her eyes. The heat of Purgatory pounded against her...and the tension of the past few weeks. Of watching Liam’s back during the negotiations, of getting the science team and her soldiers back together. All of it.

“Honestly?” she asked. “Honestly...I want you...to throw me on that judo pad and fuck me until I turn to butter.” She slammed her knee into the punching bag hard enough she swore she heard the stitching creak. “I want you to slam me harder than I’m beating this fucking bag. But!” She punched it again, glaring into the leather.

Liam’s hand went to her shoulder. Simone tensed, then gasped as he spun her around. Her back pressed to the bag. It swung, then was caught against the wall, crinkling against her shoulder blades. Liam’s eyes met hers and his hand cupped her cheek. His voice was husky. “But?”

Simone panted, her mouth opened. Her skin tingled.

“B-But...” she whispered. “It wouldn’t be...right, you’re...my...I...”

Liam leaned forward, slowly.

Simone let him kiss her. Her lips didn’t move, even as his tongue spread them. Then his tongue touched hers and Simone felt every repressed feeling she had surge to bubbling life. She remembered watching him as he plowed the goblin pirates...and remembered the intense heat that had filled her. But what was more important was what she forgot. Her hands went to Liam’s wrists, dragging them to her chest. He knew what to do. His hands cupped her breasts through her tank top and he kissed her harder and more desperately, his hands tugging at her tank top. He had to break the kiss...just long enough for her tank top, still tasting of her own sweat, to skim over her head and land on the floor.

Simone whispered. “We shouldn’t.”

“Why?” Liam asked, reaching back, working at the buttons on her bra with...actual shocking clumsiness. He gritted his teeth, his cheeks flushing. Simone laughed, softly. Her hands shook as she put them on his wrists, feeling his strength. He tugged, twisted, gritted his teeth. Simone knew she should be pushing him away. Telling him the reasons. He was possibly going back to Earth and going to jail, depending on how President Deinhardt decided to react to a civilian appropriating military equipment, acting as a mercenary for foreign countries, and establishing his own quasi-dictatorship. But her body was begging her to let him fumble. Fuck, no, it was begging her to help. Her cunt ached with a wanton neediness that shocked her.

I’ve never been fucked like this, she thought, her eyes widening as Liam finally got the clasp undone.

“Purgatory has spoiled me,” he said, grinning.

Simone licked her lips. “It has...” She leaned forward. Kissed his neck. Nipped at his skin. Her tongue traced the beating pulse point on his neck and she groaned into him, her nose flaring as she inhaled his scent, reveling in the feeling of air on her breasts as her bra hit the floor. Then his hands cupped her skin directly and it felt as if electricity was surging along her spine. Her nipples were hard enough to cut glass, and Liam stroked and tweaked them with an expert’s care. Neither too hard nor too gentle…

Simone moaned into him, her hands slithering along his arms to his shoulders to his sides to his kilt. Then under the hem. To his cock. Her hand closed around him awkward, and she hissed softly as she found that her newly shrunk hands couldn’t quite touch finger to palm. She squeezed tighter, trying to fully encircle him, but she couldn’t.

“Jesus,” she breathed.

Liam chuckled, his voice catching slightly. “G-Gently, please.”

“Sorry, just...Jesus.” Her hands slipped up. But only so she could undo his kilt with desperate eagerness.

As his kilt hit the ground, Liam took her in his arms. His member ground against her belly, smearing pre along her muscles. His hands cupped and squeezed her ass, then shoved her shorts down, even as he bore her to the mat. The mat absorbed the gentle landing and Simone realized just how literally Liam had taken her as he spread her open. She had never felt quite so...vulnerable there, spread eagled on the floor, her sex glistening with moisture. She whimpered softly, her eyes half closed as Liam leaned forward to kiss her on the mouth, his cock teasing her sex.

He didn’t even try to penetrate her. At first. He simply ground his girth and his length along her. Simone squirmed, writhing as she grabbed onto his shoulders, then his back, her fingernails sinking into skin as her desperation mounted. Mounted. She broke the kiss, gasping. “C-Condom?” she hissed. Honestly, she was fucking shocked she had managed to think that far ahead, considering the things that Liam was doing to her mind with that fucking cock.

“Don’t worry,” Liam said, his voice husky. “Tethis gave me a bit of an enchantment, with so many pretty humans wandering around.” He grinned at her. “I’m only fertile for one woman right now.”

Simone practically melted as the tip of his cock pressed to her sex. She wasn’t sure if it was the fact she had been altered via magic, or the fact that no one had barebacked her in...ever...but the feeling of his cocktip gliding against her sex was ludicrously decadent. He looked into her eyes, then slammed into her. The motion was shocking and skillful, filling her utterly in a single smooth motion of hips and belly and arms. His balls slapped her ass and Simone cried out in purest bliss.

She had never felt fuller. But she was so fucking wet that she didn’t feel a single hint of pain. She only felt the pure pleasure of Liam’s dick as he fucked her into the judo mat. The impacts filled the gym with the slap of thigh on thigh, ball on ass, back against leather. The sounds were nearly as perfect as the feelings coursing from her sex as Liam fucked her faster and faster and faster. Sweat beaded on his forehead as his fingers dug into the mat to either side of her head.

Simone’s eyes went unfocused as she realized...she was cumming.

Hard.

Real hard.

Her whole body quaked and she bit down on Liam’s shoulder to keep from announcing that fact to the whole fucking palace. She wasn’t sure if that was enough, because Liam was making good on the promise to fuck her into pure butter. Her knees were already going slack, her joints loosing the battle in trying to keep her in some kind of deliberate posture. She was already letting her legs slump against the ground, simply because it was easier than keeping them up. Her eyes closed and she released Liam’s shoulder.

It was safe now.

She couldn’t...quite form words. Or sounds. She was too busy hyperventilating as Liam fucked her.

“Simone!” He groaned, low in her ear, then slammed home once more, his balls slapping against her ass. Simone knew, moments before it happened, that he was cumming. And he was going to cum hard. She wanted to lock her hips around him, to keep him from pulling back. But she was too fucking spent, too limp, to do much more than gasp out a soft plea.

“Cuminme!”

Liam thrust home once more. Her sex tightened around him like a fist...and then warmth bloomed inside of her. Simone closed her eyes, focusing purely on the tactility of the cum spurting deep inside of her. Filling her womb. She shuddered. She hadn’t been fucked bareback before the spell had been worked, so she had no...way to compare the feeling between being cummed in when she had a womb and now. But she knew that a deep, shameful part of her brain reveled in the simple knowledge that it was happening. She closed her eyes, then lay limp.

Liam nearly collapsed atop her. But he was enough of a gentleman to keep his weight on his arms just long enough to roll aside. He lay on his back.

Simone panted.

That was how she gotten here: Sprawled on her back in the gym, cum dripping from a well fucked pussy, Liam Vanderbilt laying beside her. He started to laugh. Simone blinked, then slowly managed to get her head up, lifting it as she looked at Liam, trying to see why he was laughing.

Liam weakly pointed.

Simone looked over.

Like a flag planted on some beachhead, Liam’s false foot remained where it had been. The leather straps had slipped free as Liam rolled aside, and the foot looked stuck there. Slowly, Simone lifted her toe and bumped it. It wobbled and she realized that it was stuck fast on the blade.

“Gonna,” Liam said around gasps. “Gonna have to, ah, ask Haphestus for a redesign on that.”

Simone couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Holy fuck.” She shook her head. “I...am really embarrassed of how badly I needed that.”

“That’s Purgatory for ya,” Liam said, groaning as he laid back. Simone slowly slumped to the side, pressing her face against his chest. She licked gently at some of the cherry smears. Then she saw that similar smears had pressed to her own skin. She sighed, dramatically.

“Great.” She muttered. “Now I gotta get clean.”

 

***

 

“I’m not sure if I’m comfortable having you here for this,” General Sung said, his voice clipped, the way he always got when Deinhardt did something without asking for his permission first. As one of the most senior members of her joint chiefs, he was also one of the few that she could speak to as a friend, thanks to their shared experiences. Both had gone to the same college. Both had been in the same chess club. And both had kept in touch, even as one went into politics and the other into the military.

It added a touch of familiarity that made getting the straight truth a hell of a lot easier and less wrapped in comfortable bullshit. But considering half the people who interacted with her administration were still unlearning bad habits picked up under the previous administration, Deinhardt was just glad to have someone who had skipped to the end of that adjustment period.

Even if Herbert was sometimes a bit of a worrywart.

“If Four layers of bulletproof glass, two machine gun nests, and one of those tank guns aren’t enough to stop a sneak attack,” President Deinhardt said. “Then the Old Man deserves to take over.”

“Because a competent president should have spotted that kind of threat?” Sung asked.

Deinhardt nodded. “I may not know Lieutenant Fong personally, but if I can’t tell when I’m being handed a bill of goods, I’m might as well turn in my rancher card.” She chuckled slightly, letting some of her Texan twang slip back into her voice with that last bit. It had played well in a few choice demographics, but being able to suppress it had gotten her a shockingly large amount of California. And she hadn’t even changed her policy talk.

Sung didn’t look happy.

But, fortunately, the gate chose that moment to open.

The coordinates had been hashed out between the State Department, the Pentagon, NASA, and a few eggheads from DARPA and a few other, slightly more secret think tanks. The site chosen was a base that Deinhardt hadn’t even known existed before  it had been suggested by the high forehead types. It was underground, distant, and easily destroyed if needs be. But it also was the one nearest to the equator. That, apparently, made the math needed to be done a hell of a lot easier, and since the Purgatorians (funny term for a group of people) didn’t have many computers…

The gate looked beautiful. A sphere of blue-white light exploded in the center of the room, emerging from nowhere. It rippled like water and shone with an inner radiance. Deinhardt leaned forward, her eyes glowing in the reflected light. She knew the cameras in the rooms would be recording her for posterity, once this got declassified. And unlike a lot of shit that went on at this base, she was pretty sure it’d get declassified fast. According to the CIA, the Russians were already probing at Project Orpheus and trying to figure out just what they had done.

She grinned.

Probe away, Putin, she thought. You’re going to be greener than a ten dollar bill once I’m through revealing this to the world.

The sphere rippled.

Flexed.

And emerging from it came a warrior clad in armor and carrying a shield. A sword was strapped to their hip and a musket was slung from their back. But the most striking thing about him was that he wasn’t human at all. He was a broad shouldered, incredibly muscular fusion of human and lizard. It was the kind of thing that you’d see on Star Trek, but...this guy wasn’t CGI. There was a terrifying, surreality though, to seeing something that everything your mind said was unreal be there. Real. Deinhardt’s mind felt like it was reaching for a seam, looking for a zipper. She was desperate to find something that would make it a costume.

Then the elf came out, and the goblin, and the winged woman, and Liam Vanderbilt himself.

Seeing each of them was like a fresh shock. Liam shouldn’t have been a shock, but...he managed it. Despite knowing that he would have changed in the two years, it was still an eyebrow raising moment to see him shifting from her mental picture of the muscular college student to this bronzed, chiseled warrior. His foot clicked as he took a step forward. He was dressed in a silken tunic and a kilt, which flared around his thighs in a wild profusion of jewelry and colors. Fancy. Very fancy.

He smiled, then waved at the guns aimed at the group.

“Take me to your leader,” he said in cheerful, Californian English.

“See?” Deinhardt said to Sung as the science team and the surviving members of Fong’s squad started to emerge. “Told you.”

Sung chuckled. “I’m heartily relieved, Madame President.”

Deinhardt looked back and watched as Lt. Fong saluted to the officer who had come out to lead her away for a debriefing. The soldiers started to troop out, and another officer led the surviving members of the science team away as well. Lt. Fong glanced backwards at Liam.

Deinhardt’s brow furrowed.

“What?” Sung asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Deindhardt said, shaking her head.

But she had been in the buisness long enough to tell...when someone was fucking someone else.

This was going to be an interesting first meeting. Wasn’t it?

She smiled to her old friend.

“Well, General Sung?” she asked, gesturing to the door that would take them to the meeting room, where Liam and his friends were going. “History awaits.”

 

THE END