A MAIDEN ON BARSOOM
By 
Rick Johnson

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I: ADVENT

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Where does one start a story?  Especially when the people for whom you are writing may never read the manuscript and those who may, have no frame of understanding?

Perhaps a bit about myself first will help.  My name is Ayiesha Maria Ruth Mahmoud Villmer bint Penaut, of Clan Penaut, though for simplicity I go by Ayiesha Penaut.  My mother was a Bedouin Arab, my father a German-French expatriate… or rather, all were expatriates for my grandparents had been taken from Terra, which they called Dirt or Earth, while still young and placed on Gaea, the world I call home.  They were told that their children or grandchildren would no longer be human but faced with existence, or rather their expected misery on Terra as compared to a good life on a world so far away that it couldn’t be seen with a telescope, they chose to immigrate.  Not that they had much of a choice.  One grandparent was a German Jew who was on the way to a Concentration Camp during one of Terra’s many wars.  Another an African slave girl owned by an abusive Arab master, still another a homeless Parisian dying of cancer… these are the people Colonial sought.  People with potential but with no hope in an uncaring world, and so willing to cross the galaxy to fulfill the needs of the Barony and the Commonwealth if it meant health and home and regular meals and safety for them and their children.

I, myself am but a bare 20 Years of age, having recently celebrated that birthday in the caverns of Sothis during a firefight with the Shitai.  Not yet am I a fully mature adult woman, for we Weir are slow to mature, I having another five years before I am fully an adult at 25.  Despite this I have served Star Fleet these last two years in direct opposition to the will of my grandparents who felt that a virgin girl’s duty was to marry well and young and serve her husband, not her nation. My mother allowed my service for, I believe, she resented her own life of marriage and failed dreams and her own mother, by my age, had been married to a man she neither knew or loved and had born 3 kids with another on the way.  My mother was luckier.  She married a man she loved but gave up her own dreams of being a dancer for a family, giving birth to me at 21, my older brothers at 17 and 19 and almost dieing with my birth and nursing for human women aren’t designed to bear so many Weir children.  And as for me, while my friends were practicing with make-up and clothes, preparing for parties and choosing the best-looking boys to date, I was on a warship chasing pirates across the frontier.  I traded the dull but safe life of a peasant farm-girl for the harsh realities of an adult and the dreams of rising to Warrior Class.  And thus I grew up too fast leaving my school-friends behind and never experiencing the joys of my forgotten adolescence though they never watched friends blown apart on a far-away planet as did I.  Obviously, they were more fortunate for their dreams are of love and friendship wheras mine are often of the horrors I have seen and endured.

How I arrived here I know not.  I recall only going to bed in my parent’s house while I recovered from the war injuries I had sustained on Sothis.

I fell asleep under the physical warmth of a down comforter and the emotional warmth of my parents in the next room, still arguing over my choice of profession and wishing that I could escape somewhere, anywhere.  Yet knowing that my own emotional stresses of being a good daughter on a world that treasures family respect and my need for space travel was causing my damaged heart to flutter and ache as if a rundi were sitting on my chest.  Then my next recollections were the knowledge that I was freezing cold and that there was a rock pressing into my left breast as I lay face down upon the sward.

Star Fleet taught me that when you don’t know what is happening, do nothing until you evaluate your situation.  So… while pretending to be unconscious I took note that my back was freezing but that I was laying upon something soft… except for that rock… and I had a strong desire to sneeze.

There were no sounds at all to indicate jailers or danger so I opened my eyes and saw that I was staring into reddish moss.  I sneezed and decided that if anyone was around, they now knew that I was awake so I rolled over and looked around.  Obviously I had been teleported somewhere.

The sky was pinkish, the ground covered with moss, the sun barely over the hills and I was still freezing my tail off.  I also was sitting in a depression that was kilometers wide and ringed with low hills.  OK, I was obviously NOT on Gaea or any other planet I had visited or read about.  So how did I get here?  Wherever here was.  And, most importantly, how do I get home before my parents realize that I was gone?  They may have finally accepted my joining the Fleet at 18 but learning that their baby girl had been wounded in combat a dozen parsecs from home wasn’t what they imagined and loosing her again when she was so close would be unbearable to them.

I stood up carefully just in case I was drugged or injured and took inventory.  Races that abduct people and drop them on strange worlds have an unsettling tendency to do strange things to their victims like stick their brains into a robot body or anal probe them like those bald-runty Alphas always like to do to the humans they borrow on Terra.  Breathing was hard in the thin air so I switched to belly breathing which normally would get me stoned on oxygen but now just barely kept my lungs full.  But the pain in my chest was gone and touching my wound revealed that it was healed.  I would have the scars forever but I seemed to have my lung and ribs back so whatever brought me here, healed the worst of my wounds.  How long would that have taken?  Had I been kept in a bio-tank for the days or weeks it would take to regenerate my lost ribs and organs or was my healing a side-effect of the transportation process I suffered?

I was, of course, naked.  When you sleep under a down comforter, you wear naught but a light cotton nightgown.  But somehow, that gown was gone.  As was my comforter, bed, parents house and farm.  I was just a naked girl standing on some reddish moss in the middle of nowhere.

OK, anatomy first:
2 hands, each with 3 fingers and two thumbs.  Though looking at my palms I wondered if this explains that break in my life-line?  When our smallest finger was changed into a second thumb, it wreaked havoc on Palmistry, a situation the Fortune Tellers are still trying to understand.
Feet- 3 toes and a tarsal thumb.
Skin- very light brownish from a month on the frontier without adequate sunlight followed by a week under a northern winter sky.
Hair- long and blue and even my pubes had their normally thick and bluish curls.  Unlike some of my human girl-friends, I never shaved down there and we Weir don’t grow hair on our legs, armpits or anyplace but our heads and pubes.
Breasts- feeling strange. Lighter than normal.  I jiggled a bit and they felt smaller, firmer like when I was 17 and still a c-cup.  I grasped them and they felt normal-sized, only … tighter and the weight on my chest and back was much less than I was used to.
I curled my tail around and saw that it also looked normal even to the ‘finger’ print on the distal phalange.
I still had that plasma burn scar on my left arm and side from the Shitai so whatever happened to me, didn’t seem to have changed me… I hoped.  I’d need a mirror to see my face though and finish my inventory though my ears still felt pointed and I could tell my antennae remained.

Looking around again I saw that the sun was much smaller than was Lucifer and a solo star instead of our own Binary.  Less than a degree of angle so whether this star was smaller than mine or this world was further out than Gaea I couldn’t decide.  It did have a pinkish sky, then I sneezed again.  Wiping, I saw that my snot was red!  Blood?  No, dust.  The ground was red dirt so that coloured the sky pink.  I hoped that the dust would settle in the calm atmosphere.  I also saw much more ultra-violet in the sky which indicated potential problems.

Stretching my arms wide I wasn’t able to feel any magnetic field, which meant that either the planetary core had cooled or there wasn’t a ferrous core at all.  Without a molten ferrous core, no magnetic field could be generated and thus no Van Allen Belt to stop the UV.  And THAT means sunburn until my Arab genes could produce enough melanin to darken my skin and protect me.  “Couldn’t you, at least have left me some clothes and a lipstick?” I yelled at the sky but received no answer.

I looked around and saw what I thought might be an artificial feature on the ‘horizon’ some 50 klicks away so I chose that as my destination.  Unfortunately, my first step lifted me off the ground and flat on my face.

Low gravity!  The Demons had engineered my race for space travel, giving us tarsal feet and prehensile tail for climbing around a starship in zero-g so walking in low grav shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish.

I was wrong.

After a dozen failed paces I tried to crawl as a baby but made no real progress so I stood and resorted to a martial arts stride.  Keeping my knees bent so I could glide across the moss, I made progress for about kilometer until I realized that my hips and tail were swaying and that was making me wet.  “Damn!” Whatever that meant.  Father used profanity he had learned from his father but none of us really knew what the words meant.  Walking like this was fooling my body into thinking that I’m hunting a man.  I knew I should have gone to that party last night, I had been celebate too long and the Lanai with whom I serve in the Fleet see sex as a waste of time.   So I returned to a normal stride which caused my breasts to jiggle (my father would NOT approve) but eventually I learned to walk in the low gravity of this world and made good time.

Unfortunately, by the time I knew that my destination was a city, I was pink from sunburn.  My lips and nipples were burned, dried and cracking (I again wished I had a lipstick to cover and moisturize both) and I could feel my skin burning.  I now understood why my Arab grandparents wore those long robes in the Saudi desert.  At least my long hair was covering the back of my neck to keep the sun from boiling my blood and thence my brain and my bangs protected my antennae.  Small consolation when compared to the sunstroke and dehydration I felt coming on.
 

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INTERMISSION

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While walking I recalled my last conversation with my family.  As often these last two years, we fought for I was still a child by Weir biology and my human parents resented their baby girl, the last child mother would ever bear, going off to fight and possibly die on some alien world a dozen light-years from home.  Each time I took leave after a war or battle, the arguments would begin with both parents and grandparents insisting that I give up being a Warrior and settle down, get married and bear children before I died.  Before Sothis, I could argue that I was perfectly safe contained in body armour, shields and surrounded by Lanai Warriors who had been bred to fight.  But this time was different.

Trapped underground on Sothis, drinking my own urine mixed with whatever water we could find, eating bugs, fighting with rocks as our beamers ran out of power and vastly outnumbered by Shitai, I was wounded, badly.  A Shitai laser bored it’s way through arm, ribs and lung before damaging my heart.  Had my armour not de-polorized and reflected most of the beam, I’d be dead now.  And so I was home, regrowing my lost parts and listening to my mother cry over her injured daughter all the while my grandparents and parents and all my relatives argued with me to resign and return to the farm.

Sitting in the kitchen with my mother as a dutiful daughter while my father and brothers conversed in the family room, I tried to help with dinner but it hurt to breathe and my left arm was still almost useless until I could regrow the lost muscle.

“Ayiesha,” mother was crying.  She cried a lot since the war and I wish the Historians had never time-scanned the caverns to show everyone what we did.  “You were always my baby.  After you I could never have another child and your fighting like this is killing me.  Can’t you resign from the Fleet for just a few decades until your father and I are gone?  Let me hold your baby just once.  I’m so terrified that you’ll be killed even before you can have children.”

“Momma, what I do is important.  I am an adult and I made my decision.  I’m sorry I am hurting you like this but the Clan supports me and I am very careful.”

“Careful!”  She added screaming to her tears. The men stopped talking so they could hear but they’d not embarrass themselves by interfering with a woman’s argument. “Look at you!  You were almost killed!  You lost a lung, three ribs and part of your arm and heart.  You’ll be scarred for life and what damage did that plasma-laser do to your breast?  Will you be able to nurse children?  What if it had been a centi-watt stronger?  You’d be dead now!  Ayiesha…”

She ran from the room and my brother Eric entered.  Eric took after our father, inheriting daddy’s light skin and sandy hair while I had the darker brown of my mother.  Eric was mainly Jew out of respect for father so he didn’t feel embarrassed entering the kitchen like this as would father or our brother Fransua who probably had no idea of where the cold-sink was.

“Ayiesha,” he started as he poured me some Rundi Milk, added a raw egg and the medicines I was taking.  As I drank, he undid my blouse to check my wound and see if I needed any more synthetics added to aid the regeneration.  For such a large man, Eric was notoriously gentle.  “I know you feel you must do this and I am trying to understand.”  My breasts were bare for the wound prevented me from wearing a bra, something else that father disliked for he never accepted me growing breasts and mine were larger than even mother’s at their best.  But Eric had seen me naked so many times as I grew up that he probably never noticed they were there.

“But Eric, you have a life!  In a few decades father will turn the farm over to you and you’ll be Family Head with a dozen women seeking for your hand in marriage.  Then what of us?  Fransua will either serf-work for you for the next five-hundred years, and what decent woman will marry him that way, or he’ll move to the frontier to homestead another farm light years away.  But me!  I’m a girl!  And an Islam-Jew at that!  Pagan women are equal to men but with us if I stay, I have to wait for grandfather to marry me off to someone with a couple other wives and I’ll be like grandmother, married to a man I never met or run away like mother did!  Eric, I hear the stars call to me!  The Demons created us to travel between the stars.  Don’t you feel the pull?”

He sat next to me, holding me like he did when I was a baby and he still my big brother though my military training now made me his superior in combat, a fact I carefully hid to avoid embarrassing the man.  “Ayiesha, not all of us are like that.  When we feel the Call, the Demons take us away.  I’m fortunate that I don’t hear what you hear because that means I can stay here, marry, farm and raise children.  And with a Weir wife, I can have dozens of children, not the two or three humans like mother can safely bear.” He sighed then continued, “Little sister, sometimes, when I hold you like this, I hear the song of the stars and understand a little.  But still, you ARE my baby sister. I used to change your diapers and keep you from under the rundi hooves and beat up the boys who teased you.  Mom and Dad don’t understand that you are growing up under Gaean culture, not as an Arab or Jew.  But you don’t understand that you are still a child.  You won’t be a real adult for another five years. So to me, you are still my baby sister and to mom and dad you are still their baby child.”

Later, dinner was eaten in silence but I loved meals at home.  Lanai don’t care much for dining and eat only to survive.  But mother was an excellent cook and being a farmer’s wife, we always had lots of fresh food though I used my tail to help eat, something my human and tailless parents normally forbade. Finally, father spoke up, “Muffin, you are still my little girl and I’m terrified to death that you may not survive the next war.”

“Daddy, that’s the second time you called me ‘muffin’ since I started puberty. I wish I were your little girl still but I’m a woman now, well, almost, and what I do is important.  The Shitai are pushing more and more.  We stopped them this time but in ten years when the next invasion happens, it’ll be worse and we may loose a couple frontier worlds unless we are very careful.  I HAVE to stop them.  I want babies too and I want to play with my nieces and nephews and to do that, I must remain with the Fleet to protect us all.”

We argued more but both momma and daddy were raised to believe that men fought, women cooked.  Lanai were all female but not real women being vat-born and not having parents or womb so they didn’t count.  And Drakonis was Pagan, not Jew or Islam or Christian so equality between races and sexes here was absolute so I could enlist if I wished by Law and Custom despite Clan and Family desires.  Even my best friend Caroline, human as she was, didn’t understand how I could be so submissive to a man, but she was raised Pagan and Merchant and saw my enlistment only as a means to Caste-jump for higher status.  Even she didn’t understand me.

Goddess! I wanted to escape so badly!  Anyplace would be better than watching the pain I caused my family and knowing that I had to return to the Fleet for Caroline was right, the Barony needed to be defended and despite the horror of war, the pain of my wounds and the emotions of my family, the Demons had engineered me for the stars and the stars called to me.  I could no more return to being a farm-girl than I could return to being a virgin.

So with my chest hurting from the pressure and my left arm number than before, I let mother take me to bed.  She helped me undress and covered me with the down comforter and tucked me in just like when I was small.  Then she kissed me and the last words I heard, were her whispering in my ear, “I will always love you my dearest baby child.”

END INTERMISSION

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I (continued)

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Getting closer I saw that I was approaching what could only be described as a wharf.  Or rather the ruins of a wharf.  I rested in the shade and nibbled some of the moss then immediately spat it out as too acrid.  I needed food and water and I needed them fast.  I must have sweated out at least 2 liters during that hike and needed it replaced.  Between the thin air, heat and dryness and the march I had just accomplished, I was totally on the edge of collapse.  The only thing that didn’t hurt were my feet for years aboard a starship in soft boots stole my callouses and only the soft and thick moss saved me frem blisters.

Catching my breath I moved uphill, trying to keep to the shadows but saw nothing but ruins.  An abandoned city.  But who built it and when?  Why it was abandoned was obvious.  A ruined boat dock that crept down the hillside indicated that the depression was actually the bottom of a dried lake or dead sea.  The inhabitants followed the receding shoreline until they finally gave up and left.

I saw a statue of some animal that I couldn’t identify but it did have eight legs, a head and a broken off tail.  I could make out two eyes, a mouth and nostrils but the statue was so worn that I couldn’t tell if it was an 8-legged lion or a dog.  “How many centuries or millennia of dust erosion would wear you down that much?” I asked.  But the stone refused to answer.

As I got closer to the main city I saw more vegetation of variety and then I smelled water.  There were reeds, grasses and bamboos, or rather plants that resembled these in the same way that that statue resembled a ravine or rundi.  I saw another larger statue ahead, on a much taller pedestal with ornate carvings so taking advantage of the lower gravity, I jumped some 6 meters up and grabbed the carvings near the top of the pedestal.  I then crawled under the statue and lay in the shade letting the cool stone soothe my burned skin as I observed the fountain below.

All that vegetation needed something to eat it and whatever ate the grass must be eaten by another animal which would be eaten by another predator.  The secret was to figure out the food chain and make certain that you weren’t on it.

I suffered more and more, with water just below, and was about to climb down and take my chances when I saw a six-legged rat-thing run out to the water.  Its jaws were exposed bone and I wondered if it was diseased or injured until I realized that like a vulture or other scavenger, it was bald to prevent blood from caking its fur or feathers.

The rat began to drink and I was wondering how to kill it and if I could eat it when it vanished!  One second it was there then it was gone. I reran the memory and thought I saw it streak to some nearby rocks faster than I could see.

Nothing there.  Then as I gazed away I thought I saw some heat waves radiating off the rocks.  I gazed away again and let my peripheral vision seek out patterns and there it was!  Well disguised but there.  A closer look revealed an animal simply resting there in the sun watching the pool of water.  As far as I could see it had about two meters of body, plus a head and tail and maybe eight or ten legs and it was the colour and pattern of the rocks upon which it rested.

“OK,” I thought.  “A three meter chameleon.  Big enough to consider me as food so how do I get to the water and fill my stomach without entering its stomach?”

The water being so close was maddening and I needed that cool liquid to soothe my burns but the chameleon was too dangerous to ignore.  Finally I decided that a couple of spears from the bamboo may be enough to kill it so I crawled back down and found a suitably sharp rock which I used to cut a couple poles.  Star Fleet has a belief that someday you will run out of ammunition or your batteries will die or your computer will crash so learn how to survive and fight with low-tech materials.  Trapped underground against the Shitai, we had run out of power and ammo the second day and had to fight for another five days with what we could make and steal from the dead.  Building a spear, a trap and a fire here would be easy compared to that battle.

Climbing back to my perch with my spears I located the chameleon again.  Like most ambush hunters this one simply lay there and waited because ambush hunters, like web spiders and pit snakes, are very good at not moving.

I tossed a rock at the creature and yelled at it.  Then another rock as I jumped and waved like a naked lunatic.  My mother would have locked me in my room had she seen this sight but it worked.  The chameleon moved towards me slowly seeking a better strike zone.  All I had to do was to try to judge the tongue length, maybe 4 meters, and kill it before it got that close.

It reached the base of my fortress, stopped and began to stare at me.  Still almost invisible but its position and lack of movement indicated that I was now close enough for it to kill me.  So I wrapped my tail around one of the statues legs for support, grasped a projection with my feet and drove a spear with all my might down into the beast.

Weir are stronger than humans, we’re engineered to be, and with two older brothers with whom I constantly fought and Star Fleet training, my muscles were honed to their best, thus on this world of lighter gravity, my simple shaft penetrated completely through the animal to shatter on the rocks beneath.  I tossed another one then it screamed and climbed the pedestal with amazing speed.  I drove another into its throat as its tongue shot out and wrapped around my leg and it fell down almost dragging me with it.  Only the grasp of my tail and feet kept me safe.  Had I been a human with walking feet and no tail, I’d be inside the thing.  It finally lay there on the ground, its tongue stuck to my body and stretching to a disgusting length, then it rolled over onto its back and without thought, I grabbed my final spear and holding it with feet and hands and tail, I jumped down and used the weight of my body to drive it into the thing’s body, pinning it to the ground beneath.

I jumped clear and picked up a large rock which I quickly used to bash its skull to jelly.  Then I frantically pulled the tongue off my leg and sat down and thought about absolutely nothing for I was drained of energy and thought.

Growing up on a farm I was used to death and fighting pirates and the Shitai made me able to kill anything without thought or worry but I was exhausted, dehydrated, sunburned, hungry, lonely and scared.

Eventually I got up and approached the fountain.  The opening was larger than the water needed, evidence of centuries of erosion.  There were plants, fish and crustaceans in the pond and I wasn’t willing to drink from that pool and risk some alien dysentery.  But the water from the spout seemed clear.

I took a handful and looked at it carefully.  Nothing that I could see.  So I let it run free and waited a minute to see if I felt anything on my skin.  Again nothing so another handful of water and I tasted it then spat.  After a moment of no ill affects save a taste of minerals I decided that the worst I would suffer were kidney stones so I drank from the spout until I was full.  I then splashed my body with the cool water and taking two handfuls of water, I bent over and dipped my burned nipples into my hands allowing the cold water to soothe their aches.

Now for the chameleon.  Dead it had ten legs and was a dusty red-brown colour.  I tasted the blood with my tongue then spat again and waited.  Again no ill effects so I cupped a handful of its salty blood and drank then set out to build a fire as I waited to be poisoned by the alien proteins.

The problem with Class-M worlds is that half of them use right-hand molecules which are useless to our left-hand anatomy.  And when you find the proper orientation, the proteins are often wrong and you either are poisoned or get no nutrition.  But it wasn’t as if I had any choice.  The Demons engineered us with a lifespan of centuries and the ability to survive on many worlds but that doesn’t do much good when opposed by simple stupidity.

The carcass wasn’t tasty but it was filling and might keep me alive until I could do better.  So I cut most of it into strips and smoke-dried it to jerky as I ate my fill.  I tried to eat the grass and bamboo to avoid protean poisoning for like my human ancestors Weir can only tolerate 20-25% meat in our diet,  but I couldn’t find anything worth eating so with a stomach full of alien protean and no vegetables or starch, I dissected the reptile.  I found lungs and a four-chambered heart and something that might have been a liver but the stomach was what I wanted.

After cleaning the dead rat from the inside, I washed and scrubbed the stomach until I had a good bladder.  The rat I tossed aside as too rancid even for my hunger to tolerate.  I then rinsed the stomach as I ate and then tied off the intestine end with a figure-eight knot and forced into the other opening a hollow tube of thick bamboo tied with a grass cord.  I then made a grass rope, a wood plug and filled my newly-made canteen with water and carrying my newest spear, went exploring as my jerky dried.

I imagine I looked a sight and almost wished my boy-friend were here for I’d love to have him sketch me like this.  I was naked, my too-pale skin sun-burned and contrasting with my blue hair. Breasts large and firm with a bladder-canteen over one shoulder and a bamboo spear in hand.  I just needed a breeze to ruffle my hair as some of the art the Pagans do of the Maiden Goddess.  I repressed the thought of him alone, on Gaea worrying about me and started to explore my now home.

The city was small with no building larger than two stories.  The doors could have easily been made for a human or Weir but there wasn’t anything in any building other than sand and moss.  The city had been stripped centuries ago.  I was hoping for something I could use for clothing, a robe or hat, a bra, even a cape, but the place was empty.

Then I heard voices!

I leapt to the roof of a nearby house and crawled forward until I could see what was talking and Lo! I saw three humans talking in the street.  They were almost naked save for a harness designed to hold their weapons and a g-pouch for their family jewels.  “Nice asses” I thought as I observed their naked cheeks and wished that I could see the rest of them as easily.  Before you judge me, remember that even on a strange planet, I was still a woman and the thoughts of young girls often turn to boys.  Besides, promiscuity was common on my world and we see nothing wrong with servicing a friend in need or casual sex and it had been a long time since my last encounter.

Each person had a coppery-red skin, black hair and held the reigns of an eight-legged horse.  At least the thing resembled a horse more than a rabbuck.  They also carried a long sword, a short-sword and a heavy revolver. They were also arguing and pointing down the sea-bed or across the desert or into the buildings.  Although I couldn’t understand their words, I could read much of their meanings from their thoughts.  These people appeared to have some telepathic abilities and I could hear their words and estann their general meanings as they spoke.

I kept getting images of some kind of damaged aircraft with two people, a man and a woman, that these three were chasing.  I also got images of chains and brutality.  Well, so much for my thoughts of a really fun groupie this evening.  These people seemed to be slavers or worse and I didn’t do pirates or slavers.

They eventually led their horses into a building which they blocked off and then they began to explore the town.  I watched them for awhile until the pain in my back indicated that I was just making my sunburn worse so I moved to the shade and drank some water as I thought of my next move.

Obviously, there were humans here but native or planted?  And were they potential friends or enemies?  I had no idea if their prey were escaped fugitives or victims.  For all I knew, these three could be a police force seeking a kidnapper and victim.  I was still musing this over when I heard shouting.  One of them had discovered my camp and had called the others over.

I jumped from roof to roof for the Fleet taught me that humans evolved from a forest ape to a veldt existence and as we evolved from primate to human, danger and safety and food switched from trees to grasslands.  Danger came from the grass, safety was hiding in the grass so humans are genetically disposed to search down.  Thus if you are being tracked, get above eye level and they probably won’t look up to see you.  I hoped these Red Men were the same.

When I reached the fountain, the trio was eating my dinner and arguing again.  “How impolite,” I thought.  “At least they could ask first.”  My desire for a meeting was rapidly fading.  All three then pulled swords and began to search around my camp.  Definitely aggressive and potentially dangerous to me.  Were I to reveal myself, I could run the risk of gang-rape and slavery.   I who only a short time before had been entertaining fantasies of three at once or sequentially was now worried about being forced to do that which I wanted to do willingly.

I followed them as they searched the city, building by building.  Their tactics spoke of professionalism for one would remain hidden as two approached the building.  Then they would flank the doorway and one would enter and move aside to leave the opening clear.  A moment later he’d call out and his companion would enter as the first approached and stood outside the doorway.   And so, they continued building by building as I watched from above.  Once I returned to the fountain and collected as much meat as I could and refilled my stomach and canteen then returned to observe my potential companions.  The sun finally began to set and the three ended their search and returned to their horses where they covered themselves with thick furs and blankets and two slept while the third stood watch.

With the setting of the sun, the lights went out immediately.  There was not enough atmosphere to reflect light into twilight and with the darkness, came the cold for the thin air retained no heat.  The UV from the distant sun would warm the ground and induce Infra-Red heat which warmed the planet during the day but the ground quickly lost its stored heat at night.   I could see in the dark easily as my pupils opened but the cold was another matter.  Being hairless and naked was a disadvantage here so I sought a building with a small closet, and pulling up moss, I tried to make myself as comfortable and warm as possible.

The trio, I noticed, carried themselves like Warriors.  They kept their weapons close but didn’t fondle them as would someone less secure or fearful of attack.  These men knew that they were warriors and could handle themselves so why worry.  I was the one who was in danger.  Naked, unarmed, hungry and freezing and with no idea of where I was or how to get home, my options were limited to starving to death, trying to survive an unknown world or surrendering to these men and hoping for the best.  With these unpleasant thoughts, I shivered myself to sleep.

The next morning I awoke, frozen and starving and moved to a corner where I squatted to empty my bladder.  It was in such an embarrassing position, spraying urine onto the moss when one of the men found me.

“OK, what now?” I thought and decided to finish my ablutions.  Nudity didn’t bother me for we Weir tend to take these things in stride.  Especially when you are aboard a small military starship with limited privacy.  So I finished, wiped with some moss (please let me NOT be allergic) and smiled at the man holding the sword as he walked towards me.

“#Hello,” I said hoping for friendship.

The Red Man kept his sword pointed at me and looked me over carefully.  He spent time staring at my breasts and tail and feet but his sword-point never wavered.  Then he barked something I didn’t understand but I got an image of being tied up.  Now like many women I had fantasized at BD/SM games but those were games and this was serious.  But he was armed and I wasn’t.  He drew his short sword, then sheathed his long sword and pulled some leather straps and came at me.  He grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around and I got images of brutal bondage so true to my training, I continued to spin until I knocked his wrist aside with one hand and back-fisted him on his temple with the other.  It was a classic Martial Arts move but effective.

The man dropped like a rock and then I realized that I had killed him.  A body adapted to a low gravity world wasn’t capable of surviving a full blow by my Weir strength backed by muscles adapted for a greater gravity.  And using full force as the Dojo taught me pulped his skull like a melon.

I knelt there wondering what to do next for I had probably eliminated any chance for peaceful co-existence when the remaining two entered.

I was about to either jump them or try to leap out the window when they pulled their handguns and leveled them at me.  As good as I probably was, I couldn’t stop a bullet so I stood slowly with my hands up and tried to explain myself.

One of them turned me around and kicked my knees to force me down.  Then with a pistol at my head, he tied my hands behind me and then my feet together.  My tail gave him some trouble and he pulled a knife intending to simply remove it when the other snapped something at him.  I got images of me being more valuable intact so he tied some leather to my tail end, pulled it between my legs and tied my tail to my neck so if I pulled, I’d choke myself.  Then he kicked me to my side and they examined their dead companion.

One, the smaller, touched the dead mans skull, whistled and pointed at my fist, still bloody as he talked to his companion.  They obviously now had some respect for my unarmed fighting skills and strength and that made them nervous.  Unfortunately nervous people tend to simplify their lives by killing whatever complicates matters and right now, I tried to be as uncomplicated as I could possibly be.  Shit!  I’d give them whatever they wanted if it meant staying alive.

Then we heard a growl and one went down under something that looked like a huge lion with ten legs.  He was dead in an instant but the remaining man backed away and proceeded to shoot the animal repeatedly.  What I took for a primitive revolver (for why carry a sword when you have an effective firearm) was, in fact, a lethal engine of destruction comparable to our beamers.  He must have fired a dozen explosive rounds into the lion, each round destroying a part of the lion the size of a decent Hurling ball and still the lion came on.  Two of its legs were gone, blown away as was its face and much of one side.  I could see fountains of blood spurt from large holes with every beat of its massive heart and still it came on.  Injuries that would have felled a Gaean dragon were as pinpricks to this lion and then it was over.  The lion crushed the last man with its jaws then shuddered and died.

Frantically, I managed to move to the man I had killed and sought his sword to free myself.  I was able to grab it with my feet and turned it to cut my hands free for my tarsials could easily act as hands and thumb, clumsy as they were.  Then my tail and ankles and as soon as I was free, I grabbed a revolver and leapt to the ceiling beam for fear another beast would enter.  I was so scared that the only thing that stopped me from peeing down my legs was that I had already one that.

You may ask why I, a decorated war hero who had survived two wars and numerous battles was scared.  If the truth be told, It’s easy to be brave when wearing a cloaking device, armour and force-shield and carrying a beamer while inside a battle cruiser surrounded by a hundred Lanai, each of whom had been bred into a super-soldier.  But here, I was just a lonely girl, years away from full adulthood, lost, naked and unarmed and despite my military experience and training, I really wanted my mother to be here to hold me and to tell me that my daddy would make things better.  Or failing that, have a squad of armed Lanai to back me up for nothing makes a Draconan feel safer than knowing that there are Lanai of the Warrior Caste nearby to handle danger.

When nothing else came into the room, I decided that the lion was a solitary predator so I dropped to the ground and stripped the bodies as quickly as I could and grabbed my own canteen and meat.  I then left and ran for the horses where I took stock of my new-found gear while keeping watch for another lion or worse.

Three each of pistols, long swords, short swords, knives and gear bags.  One of the swords was curved like a saber, the other two straight.  My grandfather told me that in Arabia he used a curved scimitar because it slashed better on horseback but ground fighters used straight bladed for stabbing and striking.   I opened the gear bags and found food and a first aid kit.  Inside one canister was an ointment that I smeared on a patch of sunburned skin and almost immediately the pain vanished and the skin softened up.  A healing balm, so I smeared some on my bleeding lips and nipples and as these began to heal, I used the rest on my burned skin.  Then I found the food to be some starchy material similar to a tuber so I ate that to prevent protein poisoning from an exclusive meat diet.  I also found a small chess set but with a hundred squares instead of our sixty-four.  Like all Weir, I enjoyed the game and hoped to find someone who could teach me the local version.  I also found the usual trinkets that find their way into a man’s pocket or a woman’s purse.

The saddles contained silks and furs and cloth blankets plus short rifles of a larger caliber than the revolvers.  The horses, however weren’t happy with my alien scent and snapped at me with sharp teeth.  I never liked horses anyway, even these eight-legged ones, as rabbucks gave a smoother ride but I did know how to tame one.  I returned to the pool and found some grass that looked appetizing and bundled it under my arm-pits.  By the time I got back to the make-shift stable, my sweat had permeated the grass and as I fed it to them, all the while broadcasting thoughts of peace and calmness, I hoped that they would associate my scent with food.

I also took some of the silk bedding and cut it into strips, fashioning a bra and loincloth/skirt.  These were more for protection than support for Weir remain firm almost forever.  My Human mother, after nursing three Weir children had breasts that looked like sand in stretched out wrinkled socks and was always jealous of our Weir neighbor who at 50 with 6 kids had a DD chest that was firmer than most human teens of a much smaller size.

Then I adjusted the men’s harness to fit my smaller size and differing curves and once dressed, such as it were, felt immensely better.  Clothed and armed, now I felt more confident and picked up their g-pouches.  They were soft leather and plain and totally unsuited for my anatomy but they did smell of man-musk.  Curious as to how an alien could smell as nice as a Weir or human, I lost myself in the sensations and thoughts that their sweat produced.

“Damn!  Now I’m horny again.”  Well, we Weir have a saying, “A woman with a tail can survive easier than a woman without one.”  This perpetual sexuality we endure was one of the side-effects the Demons didn’t understand when they changed us.  They enhanced all of our senses and strengths and also, without meaning to, our hormones as well.  I tossed the g-pouches away to remove temptation and prepared to leave the city before any more danger arrived.

I ate some more of their rations and saddled the horses then led them to the fountain where they filled their bellies from the pond.  I didn’t know if they were immune to the creatures living there or not but they were natives so I trusted their instincts to survive.  I also wove some grass into a conical hat for protection, then filling all the water bladders I could, I mounted one of the horses and leading the others, started out in the direction where the two pursued had been pointed out.  I figured that although these three were not good men, perhaps those they sought were.  At least I may be able to count on the woman’s generosity and nurturing nature… I hoped.   As an afterthought, I returned to the stable and picked up the pouches.  It was going to be cold and lonely on the desert.

---

II: OASIS

---

I made good time that first day.  My horses seemed tireless and like a camel, able to live without much water.  I ate and drank in the saddle and used the silk as a cape to keep the sun off me.  The healing balm I took from the bodies was doing its job and my skin was rapidly darkening.  In another couple days my skin should be as brown as my mother’s and almost impervious to the UV that sought to cook this world.

As the sun approached the western horizon (I assumed that it was west) I began to look for a safe place to sleep, something away from the lions and chameleons and whatever else lived in this bareness.  I saw some plants in the distance and made for them hoping to find more water.  I didn’t, but the rocks around which they grew would retain the day’s heat and protect me from predators.   So I hobbled the horses, made a small fire and fell asleep exhausted.

I was woken by a bright light and grabbed for my nearby revolver but relaxed when I saw that it was simply one of the two moons crossing the sky.  She, as I named the larger and slower of the moons was beautiful in her own way for we Draconans see in the moon the Goddess and I saw no reason to change that belief just because it was a different moon.  He, the smaller and faster would orbit about three times a day wheras She orbited so slowly that she seemed to cross from West to East or reverse the normal direction.

I made genuflection and spoke to Her, “Greetings Lady of the Moon.  I appreciate Thy light on this cold evening and would ask that Thou tell thy Sisters of my plight that my family may be comforted by my presence once again.” I heard that on Terra, atheists deny the existence of any god, lunar, solar or other, but frankly, I needed the comfort of my faith.  I had been named after holy persons of three of the religions of my grandparents as an offering of peace but after listening to my grandparents argue with each other that their own faith was the truth and the others were wrong, I ignored them all and followed the State Religion of Drakonis despite my being legally a Jew and Moslem.  So I settled down among the furs and watched Her dance across the sky.  A part of me noticed that she traveled in a more northerly orbit than should be normal but then, astronomers are always being proven wrong about every one of their cherished theories.

I lay there in the silks and furs and absolute silence and became aware that the furs smelt of sweat.  Man sweat.  Well, it had been a very long time so I reached for the g-pouches and reveled in the fantasy of what might have been had things been different.  Then with fingers and tail I self-pleasured until I was, again, sleepy.  But this time I smiled as I rolled over and dreamed the dreams of the satisfied.

When I awoke, I found the horses huddled together in a crevasse for warmth.  I understood how a desert could be so hot during the day and so cold at night but that knowledge didn’t make me feel any better.  So I dug a hole for my bodily wastes, had breakfast and was about to saddle my mounts when I estanned life nearby.  I crouched down, checked to see that the horses were still concealed and swept the desert with my gaze.

What I saw was unnerving.  A half dozen horses similar to mine but giants.  Were my mounts were the size of a Mustang, these could have put a Clydesdale to shame.  Even a rundi would come off poorly by comparison and rundis were giants to us.  But it was they who rode that shocked me.  Green Pirates!  They lived a thousand c-years from Drakonis on one small planet and spent their time raiding their neighbors.  They were tolerated only because they never conquered, only raided so we killed those who raided hoping to eventually remove those genes from their race.   But these were different.  Five meters tall, green skin with two arms, two legs and an intermediate set of limbs that could be either, they were a formidable enemy.  Plus they had tusks growing from their lower jaws and their eyes were set on the sides of their heads and able to rotate and see in any direction.  These were thinner in nature, adapted to a low gravity and carrying lances a dozen meters long with swords at their sides that were longer than I was tall.  Green Pirates would never carry such primitive weapons so either these had been abducted and dumped here as was I or the pirates I knew originated here and had been abducted and drooped in our sector.  And that meant that this planet was probably visited as frequently as was Terra, which implied a chance for a ride home.

Regardless, of this, the cruelty of the Green Pirates was infamous and the one encounter I had with them during the Pirate Wars caused me to loose my dinner after looking into their hold. Even the Lanai were upset at the remains of their prisoners.  With this in mind, I carefully pulled my revolver and pretended to be a rock as I shivered in terror.

Luck was with me as they continued in their silent travels until they were over the nearby horizon.  Even then I remained calm and unmoving for a half-hour just in case.  If I was scared of the lion in the dead city, these terrified me to immobility.  Once again I wished for a decent cloak and shield and perhaps a mobile pulse-phaser.

Eventually I felt safe enough to raise and saddle my mounts and continue on.  But now I kept all senses open and sharp for this world was far more dangerous than my own and the thought of suffering at the hands or claws of the locals made me sick to my stomach.

Around noon I came across a glint in the distance.  As I approached closer I saw that it was a boat.  But how did a boat appear in this desert where the nearest water was a fountain 200 kilometers behind me?  Then I saw the prop, a propeller that was made for air, not water.  A closer examination revealed that the air-craft had taken repeated arms fire and that the hull had been pierced in a half dozen places by explosive rounds.  I took a torch from my pack, courtesy of my erstwhile fantasy-mates (Goddess!  At this rate in a few days I’ll convince myself that we four were happily married) and looked inside the holes.

I could find no residue of water or fuel nor evidence of the same.  But each hole had penetrated a different tank.  I couldn’t see evidence of repulsors or gravity-panels so whatever caused this thing to fly was a technology I couldn’t yet understand.  Whomever did this damage knew exactly how to bring this craft down and was an excellent shot.  The interior of the craft was a very small cabin and pilot chairs, all stripped of weapons, food or water.  Whomever flew this craft had survived the crash, taken anything useful and left to attempt to cross the desert on foot.  The mental images of the trio in the dead city centered around a man and woman in an aircraft so perhaps this was their conveyance?   One thing that brightened my day was the fact that despite the dead city and the primitive swords used by the locals, they did have advanced aircraft and technology so even if I couldn’t build a sub-space transceiver, perhaps they could for me?

I searched around the craft but the moss carpet would retain no prints, but after some searching I was able to find some moss that had been kicked from its roots and that gave me a direction to travel.  So remounting, I raced across the desert hoping to find the duo before either the Green Pirates or any more slavers could find the trail.

Evening was a repeat of the one before.  I found another grove of plants and evidence that it had been used the night before.  So after hobbling my mounts who still seemed to need no water, I ate some more of my trail rations, drank from my rapidly dwindling water, curled up into my furs between the rocks and this time, took my time pleasuring myself.  Why not?  The nights were long, I only needed four hours of sleep and couldn’t read or do anything else in the dark so this was a pleasant way to spend a few hours.  I only wished I had someone to help me out.

---

It was shortly after noon when I saw a reflection in the distance.   Perhaps the sun shining off a rock or the metal of a man’s harness, but it was in essentially the direction I was traveling so I adjusted my course and raced onward.

It took less than a half hour to catch them, a man and woman, both almost naked.  His harness was essentially the same as that of the trio from the dead city, at least to my untrained eye they seemed the same.  Her harness was slightly different but with softer leather that exposed her small breasts.  At first I thought that she was a child.  Although some human women are as small-chested as was she, most humans that small were only beginning to develop.  Weir, being late developers, don’t begin to grow breasts or pubic hair until we reach 15 or later.  So what I at first thought was the body of a young girl, a child, possibly with her father, changed as I looked at her face more closely.  She was definitely a woman there.  I raised my hand to cover her body and see only her head and face and her beauty was breath-taking.  I wished that I looked that good and I am not considered to be unattractive.  But when I covered her head and looked at her body, I saw the rounded curves of hip and waist of a woman with a chest of a girl.

The man was handsome and decently built.  Muscled as would be a fencer but I could see that he was no walker as both were tired and the distance that they had covered was short by infantry standards.  Perhaps they had spent too much time flying and not enough walking.

“#Hello” I said, first in Spanglic, then Arabic, German and French for we Drakonans value the multi-linguistic.  On the off chance that they had contact with the Five-Races, I also tried Demon but no luck.

“Koar!” said the man, smiling as he raised his right hand.

I smiled and replied “Koar.”  Then dismounted as a sign of friendship.

He then started to talk but I had to stop them, “#I don’t understand your language#.” Which caused them to speak to each other until the man pointed to my horse and said something that sounded like “#####  ### ### thoat ####?”  and when he said the word ‘thoat’ I got a mental image of the beast I was riding.  So the word for these creatures was ‘thoat’.  I’d remember that and so my language lessons began.

I saw that they only had one canteen so I offered them one of mine and some trail rations, both of which they consumed eagerly.  As they did so, I pointed to myself and said “Ayiesha Penaut!”  then I looked at them and waited.  The woman smiled, pointed to herself and said “Taria Kolos” then to the man and said “Tor Tal” and so we made informal introductions.  As we rested, I would point to a rock or sword or body part and they would tell me their word in Barsoomian, which was the language of this world of Barsoom.  Somehow knowing the name of this planet made it seem less strange.

Then they mounted the extra thoats and we all rode across the desert seeking someplace chosen by Tor Tal.  As we rode I continued to learn and by the time we stopped for the night, I had a vocabulary of several hundred words, most of which I was able to remember.  They also showed me plants that we could eat and one, the mantalia, was my salvation.  It was a plant that grew almost everywhere and would give up to nine liters of a milky liquid a day.  I had passed these plants a dozen times and could have slaked my thirst at any time had I known.  Plus the sap from the younger leaves was a healing balm for my sun burned skin, another fact I wish I had known earlier.

It was when we stripped for the night’s sleep that I got a good look at my companions and they at me.  Considering the sparsity of their harness, about all that was hidden were their genitals and the casualness with which they stripped naked indicated that clothing among the Barsoomian was practical and had nothing to do with modesty.

Taria, naked, was as beautiful as she was clothed save her pubic hair was vary sparse.  Not shaved sparse but simply a lack of growth unlike mine which was a forest.  Tor, on the other hand, dropped his g-pouch and the sight took my breath away.  Maybe it was the last month of celibacy because I’ve seen better but there was something about him that just made my mind and body want that man.  He was like Weir in that he had no foreskin but I couldn’t tell if it was because, like my grandfathers’ it had been removed at birth or age 13 or, if like Weir, he was born without one.  I just knew that he was well formed and that I wanted him.

Had they been Weir, I’d just ask and Taria’d loan him to me or even join in but humans are funny about fidelity and sex.   I recall my grandfather telling me how in Mecca they would toss a woman to her death as an adulterer simply for being alone with a man who wasn’t her husband even if nothing sexual happened.  Also I had no ideas as to their views on lesbianism for though most Weir are bi-sexual, my Arab grandparents encouraged my brothers homosexual experiments while condemning my own lesbian desires though, strangely enough, my Jewish grandparents were the opposite, pretending that my affairs with women didn’t happen but soundly berating my brothers when they were caught with another boy.  And since I didn’t know what the Barsoomian customs were (or if they were married, lovers, friends, or brother and sister), I thought that I’d better wait and suffer.

What they thought of my body and attitudes, I didn’t learn until later.

The next morning we awoke, had breakfast and continued on our journey for to me any place was as good as any.  We continued with our lessons, a task made easy by the Barsoomian telepathic ability that caused a flash of image with almost every word and by evening that day I could converse with them in simple sentences.

As was usual, we stripped naked for sleep to allow our harness to air dry and the two would stare at my body and whisper together. This time I was rubbing my limbs and breasts trying to warm up when I noticed them staring.  “Have you ever seen a person like myself?” I asked hoping that the Fleet had a Stargate or spaceport here. Of course, our conversation wasn’t that complex but more like me pointing and saying, “You see me me me here there?” but I’m fleshing it out for easier understanding.  It would be days before I could actually speak their language fluently and that only because the language was so simple and because both Weir and Barsoomian had some telepathic ability, especially when we touched.

“No, Ayiesha Penaut,” responded Tor Tal, for it was their way to use all names.  I was glad I didn’t tell them my entire legal name or we’d never manage to find time to talk.

“Upon the face of Barsoom, we have a number of races but none like yours.  Your skin is brown but all the races on Barsoom are black, white or yellow and we Red Men which are a mixture of all three.  Your hair is blue but all red, yellow and black men have black hair.  Only the white Orovars and Therns have yellow or auburn hair.  But no race has a tail or feet or hands like yours, nor do we know of any race with pointed ears, eyes with slits and those antennae which grow upon your forehead.  Also, I wonder, and please forgive me if I offend, but your breasts are so huge and you cover them so, are you ill or such?”

“Huge?  Ill?  I don’t understand?  I always thought that I was average size but I don’t think that this low gravity makes them look much bigger.”  I tried to stare down at my chest but without a mirror I couldn’t see anything other than the tops and my eternally cold-erect nipples.

“Are all the people of your race like you?” asked Tor Tal.

“Pretty much,” I replied.  “Some taller but few shorter.  We do range from white to brown to black skin with all shades between. And our hair can be blonde, red, brown, black, green and blue though the darker the skin, the darker the hair usually.

Taria jumped in and said, “But Ayiesha Penaut, the way you keep rubbing your breasts and you keep them covered and hidden and their size makes me wonder if there is something wrong like a tumor or disease.  We have excellent doctors in Ptarth….”

I could tell that she was worried about something but couldn’t understand what. “I’m completely lost here,” I said.  “The only thing wrong with my breasts is that they’re cold and my nipples ache.  I come from a warmer climate and my people wear clothes to keep warmer.  Don’t some of your people have larger chests?”

“Uh, no,” she said, embarrassed.  “Why would anyone need them larger?”

“To #nurse your #babies?” I hazarded…. “#Babies?  #Young?  #Infants?  They come from your #womb?”  I tried to pantomime holding a baby and a pregnant belly and nursing as I had to use Spanglic words.  But all I got were blank looks.

OK, I thought, Humans are live bearers but Demons are egg bearers, Lanai clone and Shitai hive so just because these Barsoomians appear to be human, doesn’t mean that they are the same in all areas.  I tried again, “Then, if I’m not being too personal, how does your race reproduce?

Tavia responded, “Like all forms of life on Barsoom, we lay an egg which is placed in an incubator and after five years of growth, the egg hatches to release an almost adult person.  Is there any other way?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at this.  Despite their external similarity to humans, internally, Barsoomians were different.  They lay eggs which hatch into adolescents.  Of course they wouldn’t nurse so breasts are little more than gender dimorphism.  I wondered if they derived any physical pleasure from them.  The thought of experimenting with Tor Tal made my own breasts flush with warmth.

“My people are different.” I said.  “We retain our #young within our #wombs for 4 months as it grows.  Then when we give birth, the #baby is tiny and totally helpless for three years and must be protected, fed and cared for.  The only food the #baby receives is milk that is produced by these.” I held my breasts for them to see.  “The #baby suckles #milk from the breasts for three years until they grow teeth and are #weaned to solid food.  Then they begin to grow rapidly and learn and we help to teach them to be good people.  This is why we Weir need larger breasts than humans or you Barsoomians, our #babies are so helpless they need to #nurse almost constantly.”

Their blank looks turned to shock, “like #animals!” she cried.  I got an image of something similar to a small rat that lives on garbage in the sewers of the cities.  This was not going well so I tried to make it a joke to diffuse the tension, “At least it’s better than my grandmother.  She was #pregnant for almost ten months and it took almost 3 days for her to birth my mother who had a head the size of a #melon, and she nursed her last child for five years, even with teeth.”

From the looks on their faces, I guess that they didn’t get the humor.  Well, I now knew that no other human or Weir had visited this planet.  I was effectively marooned unless I could find the technology to build a sub-space transceiver or a star-ship.  And I wasn’t an engineer but a peasant farm girl turned soldier.  From their reactions, I didn’t think I should discuss sex so I bade them good night and crawled into my furs and thought about where I was until sleep overtook me.

The next morning we ate in silence, neither of them looking at me.  I then realized that they were never really alone together.  They slept on opposite sides of the fire, never held hands and although the looks they gave were intimate and I could feel their attraction for each other, neither showed it outwardly.

I hazarded a statement that I knew would cause trouble but I had to know.  “Pardon me for asking but are you.. uh, what is your relationship?”

Tor Tal replied “I am her protector.” And dropped the matter.  I knew that there was more to that statement but decided that he was hands-off and I shouldn’t push the matter.  If they were potential lovers in that sensitive stage, any outside interference could ruin their future.

It was while on the trail that Taria asked me her first really personal question.  “Do you have … lovers back on your world?”  I had earlier talked about my home planet and how I found myself here so they knew that I was an alien though it turned out that her word ‘lover’ had a different meaning than mine.  Regardless, I enjoyed the conversation and even the long explanations for certain words helped me to learn their language.

“Oh, some I suppose.”  I replied.  “Not as many as most girls my age but that’s because I am in the military so the last two years while my friends are experimenting with sex, I was aboard a warship fighting pirates and fending off invasions.  I’m still only twenty and only became sexually active a few years ago so there’s still time.”

She looked shocked again.  I guess I was getting used to this.  But better I inadvertently cause trouble here than in a city.

“And #children?  Have you many with all these lovers?”  She was even more embarrassed now.

I laughed at this.  “I’m far too young to become pregnant.  My people may become sexually active at 15 but we cannot become fertile until twenty-five. And then we need to be almost exclusive with one person to be fertile for our promiscuity hinders fertility.”  Her look caused me to try to explain how we were the products of Demon engineering.

“A thousand years ago the Demons abducted a bunch of humans from Terra.  At first they only cured and healed them and allowed them to run free.  Then the Kentaurans found that they couldn’t live on a desert world with no iron so the Demons changed them to green copper-based blood, dark skin and a few other adaptations that allowed them to survive their new home.

“Then the Kris wars started 500 years ago.  Both Demons and humans were almost exterminated so the Demons changed themselves from small plant-eating pacifists into large, meat-eating warriors.  Then they changed the humans into the Mon, giant three-meter tall soldiers and between the two, they pushed the Kris back and won the war by simply exterminating the Kris religion and race.

“By the time they started to collect my people, the war was almost over so with no more need for soldiers they changed us into starship crew.  Our feet and tail are to grasp projections on a ship in zero-gravity and to act as extra hands.  Our ears and eyes were enhanced with greater perception.  We were made with small enough bodies to crawl through access tubes.  They did make one big mistake though.  Demons don’t understand human needs or emotions so they also accidently enhanced our sexuality and passions.  Whatever we do, we do with our entire being.

“But the Baron didn’t want Mon soldiers defending the Barony so he created the Lanai to protect us.  And occasionally, some of us, human or Weir, enlist and become soldiers ourselves.  That’s what I did.  My mother’s people are Peasant Caste and believe that a girl should marry and be a good wife.  I saw my mother follow that way and I decided that I’d be different.  So I enlisted at 18 and became a Warrior to rule my own life and raise myself to Warrior Caste.

“But I was wounded during the Shitai invasion, lost a lung, some ribs and part of my arm and heart,” I showed her my plasma scars and continued, “and while recovering at my parent’s home I went to sleep and woke up here.  Naked, alone and lost.  What I’m trying to do is to find out where I am and try to go home.”

She was very sympathetic to me though she understood little of what I said.  The ideas of a woman being sexually active and a soldier was stranger to her than the idea of being pregnant and nursing a baby. Then something occurred to me.

“Who were those three men who were following you?”

Tor Tal pulled his Thoat to a halt and turned to me, “What men?”  He demanded.

I explained about the dead city and the trio that had been chasing them then explained they had died.  When I was finished he was silent

Tor Tal explained, “Taria Kolos and I met when I was a padwar in her father’s guards.  We fell in love but my station wasn’t high enough for her father and he decreed that we never see each other again.  But our love was stronger than he realized and I took a post with another noble hoping to better myself and become rich enough to impress even Kol Fias.  But it was while I was guarding my employers’ son that I was called away and while gone, a gorthan entered and killed my charge.  I was disgraced and condemned to death but Kol Fias arraigned for my escape and said to me that I could leave in a small flyer and know that I’d never be allowed to return to Ptarth nor see his daughter and that would be an eternal torture.

“But he didn’t count on the love of his daughter and when I entered the flyer and left Ptarth under cover of darkness, I discovered Taria Kolos hidden away within.  She had chosen a life of exile with me over a life of ease in Ptarth such was her love.

“The Flyer that we used couldn’t be controlled and was taking us to an unknown destination but aparantly Kol Fias hired those three panthans to hunt me down and such was his wealth that he also managed to somehow hire six Green Men as well.  It was while flying across the dead sea bottom that the Green Men struck, their radium bullets destroyed my buoyancy tanks causing my flyer to crash.   But I managed to change course and nurse the flyer so that it came down in a direction other than expected and we two then ran for the hills until you found us.”

That was so romantic, like a novel or tri-d and I could only hug Taria.  These were my only friends upon Barsoom and I loved them for their sacrifices.  I knew that somehow I’d help them live the life they deserved.   I thought for a while, told them about the Green Men I saw and then said, “I want you to teach me to fight with a sword.”

He was shocked so I had to explain that I wasn’t like a Barsoomian woman.  Although still only a teen even by my own people’s standards, our ways were different.

“I come from peasant stock.  My mother’s people are Bedouin Arabs who search the desert herding #sheep and occasionally robbing #pilgrims until they were driven into the Rub al Kali, the emptiest desert in Arabia.  Dying, the Draconan Colonial Service found them and offered them life on Gaea, an offer that they took.  But Arabs believe that a woman is little more than chattel, to be sold for alliance and even then only #virgins were valuable.  They believed thusly even on Gaea but my mother loved another, a man of another race and religion but with no wealth other than a small farm he inherited from his father.  She was forbidden to see him but they ran away together and married and eventually I was born.  It was years before my grandparents would talk to her again, such was the anger they felt.

“My father’s family were German Jews who were being killed by their own countrymen for being different when they were rescued by Colonial and came to Gaea.  With them were some Parisian homeless and together was my father born.  I don’t think that my father’s parents were married but they loved each other anyway.  For he was a Jew and she a Catholic and such could not marry by the laws of either religion.  But the laws of Drakonis said that anyone may marry and that women were free to live their own lives and what could my grandparents do but eventually accept the reality.

“Then was my brother born.  It was one thing to be told that your children or grandchildren would be Weir and another to birth a child that wasn’t human.  But a mother’s love was stronger than her disgust and even my father grew to accept and love his Weir son.  By the time I was born, Weir births were normal but my Arabian grandparents saw in me a chance to marry me to another family to increase their own position.

“The problem with my grandfather’s plan was that I must be a #bloody-sheet virgin and Weir have no #maidenheads to give.  Nor do we wait until marriage to sample the joys of sex.

“I see you don’t understand.  Humans have a flap of skin over their genitals.  In men it’s a #foreskin that covers the head of the penis and in women it is a #maidenhead that covers the opening to the vagina.  When a man first enters a woman, that #maidenhead tears apart and she bleeds to prove that she knew no other man.  So important was this that a woman could be killed on Terra if this #maidenhead was missing.  So important was this that Arab men have their #foreskin removed at 13 years to share in the woman’s deflowerment.  My mother told me that on her wedding night it ‘hurt like hell and she bled like a pig’.  But we Weir have neither #foreskin nor #maidenhead and when I was 16 and my breasts and pubes began to grow, I decided to be different.  So a number of my friends, human and Weir gathered our money and hired a couple of #whores, a man and woman to show and teach us about sex.

“At first it was embarrassing but we quickly learned and by the end of the evening none of us were virgins in any manner.  When my father found out he was so angry!  I think that his anger at that was the one thing that made my mother’s family befriend him but my mother took me aside and asked only if I enjoyed the experience.  When I said that I did very much, she simply said ‘I’m glad’ and never mentioned it again.

“I saw my mother tied to her house by Arab culture and bearing Weir children and one day when I was 18 she told me to follow my own dreams. So I went to the Baron and enlisted in the military to see something that was forbidden me by class and ancestry.  For although we Draconans grant equality for all, men and women, human, Weir and Lanai, we are a class people and peasants like my family were lower than all.  So I saw this as a chance to become Warrior Caste and raise my status and pride for my family.

“For two years I fought for my Barony.  I gathered honours and awards and even the Baron himself told my family that they should be proud of me.  Then came the battle at Sothis.  The Shitai had invaded our lands again and so we drove them away again.  We chased the Shitai into the caverns of Sothis and 20 of us were trapped with the Baron underground.  We ran out of power and ammunition the second day and had to fight over a hundred Shitai with what weapons we could make and steal.  For a week we were trapped underground but the Baron kept us alive and fighting until rescue arrived.

“After the battle, I returned home to recover, to re-grow my lung and repair my arm and heart.  This scar on my arm is the external marking of that battle.  But my parents cried that I was too young to die for I am too young to even give them grandchildren and if I died, it would be my brothers who would carry the family name.

“So one night I fell asleep in my bed in my parent’s home and woke up here.  Perhaps I died in bed and this is Allah or Jehovah’s joke of a Paradise or punishment.  The rest you know.  I have no idea of how I got here or why, but my main goal is to return home for I see that my lifestyle isn’t suitable for your world and I miss my family and friends so.

“But if the Green men are chasing you and if your father hires more panthans to hunt you, two swords are better than one and I am already a soldier by my nation’s laws and my own history.  So, again, I ask you to teach me to fight with a sword.  There may come a time when you will need me with that skill.”

Tor Tal tried to argue because women on Barsoom don’t fight but eventually I won him over and in addition to language lessons, came fencing.   I was an apt learner as the sword isn’t unknown on Drakonis and many are the soldiers who come to us from Terra with blade-experience such as Marcus, our greatest hero, who had been a Roman Legionary before Colonizing.  Martial Arts training included the sword but we don’t use swords in war, we reserve them for ceremony and duels but peasants like myself rarely even own a blade larger than a carving knife.

---

It was a couple of days later that we found a small oasis.  This had real water for bathing, trees and was a paradise in the desert.  I could well believe the joys my grandparents felt when they found the one in the Rub al Kali that led them to Gaea and I gave my thanks to all the Goddesses of Islam, Judiasm and Drakonis.

And so for three days we bathed, and rested and enjoyed our respite.  Even my companions began to hold hands before me for they realized that I wouldn’t be shocked at this display.  I suspect that their mutual attraction never went further than a brief kiss or her laying in his arms as they talked though I didn’t understand why he didn’t just throw her to the ground and enjoy each other but Barsoomian custom was their law.  “Goddess! I HAVE to find a way home where I can get a decent hot shower, a hot meal and even hotter man.”

As I lay there, cranky and irritable from some unimportant thing that made me angry, I tried to calm down by watching the motionless trees and the blue sky for the dust had settled and the sky changed colour, we heard the squeal of thoats.

I grabbed my weapons and met Tor Tal who said, “visitors” and pointed to the east.  Taria brought the thoats and we prepared to run or fight as the situation warranted when four men rode into our oasis.  At first we just stared at each other when one demanded, “What do you with the Oasis of Ted Halor, Jed?”

Tor Tal explained that we were lost and trying to return home when they interrupted.  “All who enter our lands do so as slaves or corpses, which are you?”  and they laughed at his wit.  Tor Tal was about to jump them when one of the men said, “Dwar, these people aren’t enemies, just wanderers.  Perhaps we should show them courtesy as a guest and help them on their way.”

This was seen as weakness by his fellows who then demanded our surrender.  “We are four and you but one warrior and a deformed animal who thinks she is a man.” He said as he looked at my weapons and tail.

Although we Draconans are a polite race (you must be when an insult could result in a duel to the death), I tried to remain calm even though I wanted to rip his tongue out.  He was right, we were outnumbered and peaceful talks are always the first step.  But Tor Tal laughed and said, “If you want us, take us!” and he drew his long sword.

The four charged him so I said, “Damn!” drew my own sword and rushed to his aid.

The one who asked for mercy held back a moment then joined his fellows.  I think it was more loyalty than anything else that did this but Tor Tal quickly killed his first opponent and faced the remaining three when I entered the fray.  I killed one immediately, more by accident than by design and then we each faced a single opponent.  Tor Tal dispatched his after a fight that left him bleeding from a half-dozen cuts.  But I tried a different tact.  I couldn’t hope to match his skill so I simply used my superior strength to beat his blade down then punched him with my free fist.  He went down unconscious but still alive.

As Taria rushed to care for her lover, I bound the unconscious man and stripped the rest of their possessions then dragged the bodies away from the oasis and into a crevasse where the scavengers would find them or we could bury them, according to the wishes of my companions.  I wasn’t certain about our prisoner as we Draconans generally don’t take prisoners during war.  When we do, we prefer to run their brains through a blender to extract information and toss the rest into the garbage.  But I didn’t know enough about Barsoomian chivalry to know if they would kill or enslave or release our prisoner.

Tor Tal's injuries were slight and in a matter of moments he was up and walking.  He stared at our prisoner then shook his head and drew his dagger.  “I’m sorry, but you understand,” he told the bound man.

“At least do it quickly and with little pain,” the man replied.

As I said, I saw nothing wrong with such a casual murder of a helpless man but suddenly I had an idea. “Hold, Tor Tal!  A word if you please.”

He took this request graciously as no one enjoys murdering the helpless, necessary as it must be and we walked away with Taria.  “Let me have him, please,” I asked.

“What for?” Taria asked.  “He’s an enemy and tried to kill us for no crime other than trespassing.  Free him and he’ll bring his fellows to kill or enslave us.  His death, though unpleasant, is necessary.”

I tried to explain, “If he is to die, will you not grant him a last joy?”  They wore blank looks so I tried again.  “Among my Terran ancestors, a condemned man is given a last meal and sometimes a woman.  They felt that if a man must die, he should die happy.  Can we not do the same?”

Again, blank looks.  “Our food and water is too limited to waste on a man who will be dead soon enough.”

“OK then, I need him!” I cried.  “Surely you’ve noticed how angry I become lately over stupid things.  I’m cranky, I cannot sleep, I sneak away to self-pleasure a dozen times a day, I NEED a man or I’ll die!  If not him, I need you to service me.”  I was crying now.

They were horrified of course as what I was advocating was that they assist me in raping then killing that man.  Murder they could do, but rape was as alien to them as unmarried consensual sex.  But I pleaded and finally promised that I wouldn’t force him and if he still refused me, I’d accept it and suffer.  I also promised that I would be the one to kill him saving Tor Tal the stigma of murder.

They finally and grudgingly agreed and strode away so they wouldn’t have to see the deed done.  I didn’t blame them as Draconan law was cruel and swift to rapists.  With prostitution legal and respected and sexual freedom the norm, we had no word for forced sex so what I was planning was illegal and immoral by even my own nations law and custom.

But I was desperate.  And I hated myself.

I knelt before him and saw that he was awake.  I suppose I was learning to pull my punches.  I smiled, moistened some of my silks with water and wiped the blood from his face.  “You know what we have to do.”  It was a statement, not a question and so he was silent.

What do you say to a person that you are about to violate then murder?

“You can see I’m not from this world.”  He registered no surprise as did Tor Tal and Taria which was curious.  “My ways are not yours. And among the people of my homeworld, we grant the condemned a last request.  Usually it’s a meal but other things have been given.”

“Why,” he sneered, “to try to eliminate the guilt you feel?”

“Probably,” I smiled again.  “But in your case, I am willing to offer you something special as your last memory, … me.”

His look showed that he had no idea of what I was saying.  “Sex!” I tried again. “I understand that your people are often virgins but among my people sex is normal. I’m offering myself to you so you can die smiling.”  I started to remove the silk covering my breasts but realized that this wouldn’t be the sexual signal we used so stopped.

He was to say the least, unconvinced.  I suppose that no one had ever made this offer to him.

“Are all you aliens that way?’ he asked with resignation.

“All?  You mean that there are others here?”

“Of course, John Carter and Vad Varo and others from Jasoom.  I hear that occasionally someone from other worlds visits. What of it!”

I almost lost sight of my goal with this new information and wanted to shake Tor Tal’s teeth out for withholding this information.  I now knew that I had to save this man and had an idea of how.

“Listen to me carefully.  I have an offer and if you agree, I will not only #fuck your brains out, but I’ll release you alive when we leave.”  Of course he didn’t know the words but the images I sent of us rolling in a couple were very graphic.

He was shocked and filled with disbelief so I explained carefully.  “My people have a great need for sex.  I’ve been celibate for almost two months now and I am in misery for the want of a man.  If I don’t get sex soon, I’ll die a horrible death.  You can solve that immediate problem by #fucking me.  I ask nothing other than your body and can promise that you will enjoy the act as much as I do.  In addition, you have information that I need about these other alien visitors that may help me return to my home.  Plus, I and my companions will swear by whatever oath you choose that we are not here to harm your Jed or nation and we will leave your nation in peace by any route that you say.  I offer you this because I need you but mostly because from your actions in trying to stop your people and leave us in peace, I can see that you are an honourable man.   What say you?”

“And why should I believe you?”

“Because you have no choice.  If you agree, instead of killing you, I will see that you are released unharmed.  Think of it, your life to continue serve your Jed, our promise to leave your nation and peace between us.”

He thought about it for awhile and then agreed, “Release me and I will agree to your terms.”

There is no need to describe what we did then other than to say that he was a willing pupil in the arts of lust and an hour later I felt much better and he couldn’t have lifted a sword against us if he wanted to.  I lay there next to him playing with a leaf I had found thinking of…. Well, I really wasn’t thinking at all.  I just felt really relaxed and lay under the light of both moons as they crossed orbits.

Later when I saw Taria Kolos and Tor Tal with Tulan in tow (he had eventually told me his name), Tor Tal drew his sword again.  “Hold!” I cried, “We have a deal to make.”

Taria didn’t look at me at all.  I guess thoughts of rutting animals were flowing through her mind so I talked to Tor Tal who I hoped would be easier to convince.  “I found a way to avoid murder and make everyone happy.  We swear that we are not here to harm either his Jed or nation and promise to leave as soon as possible.  In return, Tulan here will escort us to the nearest friendly nation and we let him live.  Everyone wins!”

I could see that they were wavering for no sane man loves murder and this would save all lives.  Finally with little more argument, we all drew our blades, Taria sharing Tor Tal's, and swore to the terms of the deal, adding that we would not harm each other and would protect each other until we reached another friendly city.  That done, all relaxed for the Barsoomian takes such an oath with great severity and dignity.  Taria was even willing to pretend to ignore my escapades so happy was she with the agreement we made.  We then returned to Tulan the possessions of his companions and we four buried the dead according to the customs of their nation.

Tulan and Tor Tal drew a map of the area in the dirt and discussed their goals.  It was unfortunate that the rifles of the Green Men had driven his flyer off course and forced him to unintentionally cross this nation.  But Tulan showed us a nearby city where he felt that we would be received in friendship and even hire a flyer to take us to Tor Tal’s original goal.  Taria and I kept out of these discussions.  She because it is in the nature of Red Women to allow their men to guide and protect them, I because I had no goal other than to leave this world.  And thus, we allowed the men to rule our lives.

We, or rather they, made plans to gather water and food and use the extra thoats as pack animals so we could leave on the morrow and he showed us which oasis plants were edible so we managed to collect enough food to last a month if need be.

As we prepared for sleep that last night, I approached Tulan and asked him to share my furs for I was most anxious to repeat this afternoon’s joys.  He was taken aback by my suggestion but agreed with some embarrassment, for what man would reject such pleasure after partaking of a woman’s honey, and such was how I spent my last night in that pleasant place.

---

III: CAPTURE

---

The next morning, neither Tor Tal nor Taria would look at either of us and I figured it was because I tend to be noisy and thus reminded them of my rutting ways.  But then, when I saw them smile at each other I knew that finally they had taken my example and broken that last barrier.  A Weir would have rushed over and asked for details but I knew she was embarrassed enough and so gave her time though I was dying to tell her about Tulan’s growing skills and to learn about Tor Tal’s ability.

I also wanted to find out about the other visitors to this world.  John Carter was a Terran name but Vad Varo was not so my initial thought that Jasoom may be Terra seemed to be wrong.  There was time to find out.

During our first lunch break I approached Tor Tal and asked “Tell me about John Carter!”

He looked up and said easily, “John Carter is the Prince of Helium. He came to Barsoom some decades ago from Jasoom and married the Princess of Helium.   His fame spread across the world for among his feats was the uniting of a number of nations into one whole, making peace with the Tharken Hoard and the overthrow of the false Goddess Issus.  Vad Varo was another from Jasoom who traveled the void to Barsoom.  Why do you ask?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about them when I asked you if there were others like me here?” I demanded.

Taria chimed in, “Because there are none like you on Barsoom.  Neither John Carter nor Vad Varo resemble you, nor have I heard of anyone from your planet Gaea upon the face of Barsoom.”

“But I told you that my grandparents came from #Terra,” I was almost yelling at this time.

“Yes, Terra, John Carter doesn’t come from Terra, he comes from Jasoom.” Said Tor Tal with infinite calmness.

The situation was so pitiful that it was funny and I fell to the moss laughing my fool head off.  All this time I had been using the Spanglic word for ‘Earth’ which was ‘Terra’ and they were using the Barsoomian word which was ‘Jasoom’ and it never occurred to me to confirm or translate the names.  And when I mentioned my parents, I never described them as resembling more the Barsoomian than the Weir.

“I’m sorry,” I said because they were looking at me as if I were insane.  “All this time I described my parents and grandparents as #human but didn’t tell you what a #human looked like or what #Terra meant.  It’s all my fault and could have been fixed if only I had thought a bit.

“Where do these people reside?  I need to talk to them and find out how to get to Jasoom.  I’m certain that Star Fleet has a Stargate on #Terra ... Jasoom, maybe a dozen which I can use to get home to Gaea.”

They told me that John Carter lives in Helium and Vad Varo in Amhor and that we could send a message to both easily once we settled down safely.  Now I had even more reason to help my friends and a solution to my own problem was right there in front of my face.  All we had to do was survive the desert, predatory carnivours, Green Men, gorthans, panthans, starvation, thirst and hostile nations.  All that couldn’t be harder than telling my family that I had enlisted and was going to war but it would be much easier than explaining to my father that I was no longer a virgin.

Fortunately, with two men present, my fencing lessons improved dramatically.  Each had a different style and I learned that one had an offense that would penetrate the other’s defense and both outdid themselves to compete in my lessons.

The next two days were fairly repetitious.  We would travel by day, rest and eat at noon where I would continue with my fencing and language lessons.  After which we would travel some more then just before dark, locate a place to sleep, eat our meal, fence more, then Tulan and I would find a place where we would be alone and a few hours later to fall asleep exhausted.

It was after one of our nicer sessions that I lay there under the furs, for I still found the Barsoomian nights to be unbearably cold, that Tulan began to stroke my breasts.  Although my body reacted pleasurably to his attention, I couldn’t help but wonder why?  He always had to force himself to touch my breasts for in his mind they were ‘deformities’.

“My lover,” I asked avoiding religiously the word ‘chieftain’ which to the Red Men was an indication of eternal love or an engagement while in reality, Tulan was just something to do at night, “What are you doing?”

“Playing.  Don’t you like it?”

“Hmmmm, very much.  But you’ve never liked them before no matter how much I begged.  Why now?”

“Because you are stronger and faster than me.  I’m still a better fencer but for no other reason than I have centuries of experience.  In a year or less you’ll be better than me at that too.  So, this is the only area where I can control you or be better than you.  So,…” again his stroke caused me to loose focus, “remember that here, at least, I am in control.”

I don’t remember anything else that he may have said as he quickly demonstrated a skill that I didn’t know he had.  Unfortunately, as I said before, I am quite noisy when .. enjoying myself and there were more people out there listening than Taria Kolos and Tor Tal.

I was THAT close when Tulan was pulled off me.  My immediate reaction was to scream, “Not now, oh Goddess I need you now!!” But what happened was the peal of guttural laughter struck my ears.  I looked up and saw Tulan being held in the grip of two Green Men and both Taria and Tor Tal swearing as another couple Green Men held them prisoner.

I started to jump up to fight when I felt the barrel of a radium rifle press against my head.

We were quickly bound with absolutely no gentleness as would be expected of the Green Race, be they Green Men on Barsoom or Green Pirate in space.  Tulan made some demand and the nearest Green Man struck him a blow that laid him on the ground then peal of laughter broke the night.

That night was a nightmare. We four were bound naked and left in the open to freeze or not.  As we huddled there together seeking the warmth of our combined bodies though the Red Man seemed to tolerate the cold easier than did I, the Green Men went through our belongings, tossing some, keeping others.  Eventually they fell asleep leaving a guard that regularly checked our bonds thus making escape impossible.

After a sleepless night that left me feeling sick from the cold, we were dragged up and tossed onto our thoats sans breakfast. Then the Green Men hurried us across the desert at a breakneck speed that slowed only when one of our thoats stumbled and fell, breaking one of his eight legs.  The Green Men stopped and took that time to torture the poor animal near to death then remounted and left the suffering beast to die in agony.  The Green Men forced us to watch their cruelty and I had a flashback to the time we captured that Green Pirate ship and saw what was in the hold.  The thought that they’d do that to us terrified me so much I felt pee running down my legs.  By the time night fell, we were back at the original dead city and I was coughing up green slime.  The cold, lack of food or drink and exhaustion had given me pneumonia.

The Green Men simply laughed at me, then tossed us all into a deep pit and left us in the darkness to await whatever fate they chose.

How long I lay there I don’t remember.  I was feverous and couldn’t breathe and coughed constantly.  Finally I was able to tell my friends how to pound on my back to free the phlegm, a task that they did almost constantly as they took turns.

I know that I lost weight as when they finally dragged us from that pit, I could barely stand and needed help to do even that.  We were all filthy and our only grace was that we hadn’t been tortured, only starved.  But now, we thought that the torture would come, but we were wrong.

We were dragged before a man who Taria recognized as her father, Kol Fias.  These then, must be the Green Men that he had somehow hired.

“Well, well, well,” gloated Kol Fias.  “Daughter, I would have given you everything but instead you ran away with this… thing that doesn’t deserve a second name. And what is this .. creature?” he said pointing to me.

Another coughing session ensued with me spewing more green slime down my face and chest.

Kol Fias stepped back in disgust saying, “Take it away and do with it as you wish.  I thought I could sell it but the thing dies and is useless to me.” And so I was dragged away leaving my friends to the not so tender mercies of a madman.

The Green Men shoved a tube down my throat and forced some liquid into my lungs and stomach, an action that caused me to nearly die from drowning.  Then they threw me into an empty room and left me alone.  When the sun rose, I was feeling much better, the liquid had cured my infection but I was weak, hungry and thirsty but otherwise healthy.

I hoped that they did that out of mercy but when two of them returned after sunrise, they said  “Are you well?  Good!  Your agonies will be more pleasing if you are healthy enough to last more than a zode.”  Then one grabbed my arm and started to drag me from the room.  I am a couple hand-spans under two meters tall and the Green Man was three meters taller than I, but his crotch was at my head height and exposed so I collapsed and before he could see what I was doing, I stood up quickly with fists balled and drove my clenched fists into his testicles with all the strength I could muster.

I didn’t kill him, weakened as I was, but I did cripple him for life and as he dropped screaming in agony (all men are sensitive there), I pulled his revolver from its holster and shot the second Green Man repeatedly until he collapsed.  The Fleet would have sent me cleaning the bilges for wasting ammunition for we believe “one enemy, one bullet” and I used maybe a half-dozen just then but I didn’t care.

I grabbed his canteen and leapt, or rather climbed and leapt for the roof beams and hid as their companions entered.  On a world of no trees, the Green Men acted as a human would have and never looked up.  It wouldn’t have been difficult as the beams were only a few centimeters above their heads and they could easily have found me had they tilted their eyes a bit.  But they looked around the floor then making comments about my escaping the building, one ran to report to Kol Fias while the other one searched the outside of the building.

I rested there for a bit drinking the water until I felt well enough to move.  Funny, a couple weeks ago I was naked, starving and hiding from three Red men and today, I am naked, starving and hiding from four Green Men in the same city.  Does this not prove that the Horned God has a really perverse sense of humor? I almost laughed but my chest hurt too much to do more than breathe.

The Green Men killed their injured companion and left the bodies where they were but both had been stripped so all I had was a half-empty canteen of mantilia milk and a revolver with an unknown number of rounds.  Grasping a projection with tail and feet, I swung upside down and looked out the barred window.  The effort made me dizzy but I saw that the area was deserted so I dropped to the mossy floor and peeked out the door then windows.  Satisfied that I was alone, I crept from the room and sought the safety of the roofs.  At least this time my skin was brown and I no longer feared sunburn.

I couldn’t remember where Kol Fias was staying but I figured that if this city had anything resembling a palace, he would be there.  So assuming that any government would be near the center of the city for safety and efficiency, I headed in that direction via the rooftops.  Eventually I found the largest building there and once upon a nearby roof, I saw two of the Green Men standing guard.  I tossed a pebble and as one came to investigate, I dropped onto his shoulders and with all my remaining strength, twisted his head until the neck snapped.  His companion saw what happened and ran to stop me but I was holding the radium pistol in my tail and, switching it to my hand, shot him dead.

Now I had killed four Green Men with two left to hunt.

I quickly, took a part of their harness and made a belt from which I hung a holster and short sword and dagger.  At least the Green Man Short sword was the length of a long sword and the dagger a short sword.  Fortunately for me, unlike the Green Pirates, these were so emaciatedly thin that their handles matched my hands easily. Perhaps the Green Men had adapted to the low gravity so well that they had no need for large musculature as did the Green Pirates who lived on a larger planet and so must be larger and stronger to survive.

Regardless, I took whatever rations I could find and ran off before my gunfire could bring assistance and hid upon another roof.

Resting there, I ate my fill of dried cheese and mantalia milk and planned my next move.  With two more Green Men to hunt, the numbers were approaching my favour but these remaining would be on alert so killing them would be much harder.  Plus, I had an unknown number of Red Men in the employ of Kol Fias with which to deal.

That was when I saw a large flyer lift off and fly away.  Knowing that my friends were aboard, I opened fire with my pistol and emptied the chambers towards the aircraft hoping to damage it enough to force it down.  Unfortunately, the two remaining Green Men had located me and returned fire. Fortunately for me, the roof edge protected me and their fire destroyed the artwork near my head but missed me by millimeters and my only injury were minor cuts from rock shrapnel.  I ducked and crawled for safety before they could reach a level that would reveal me to their rifles.

Now I had an empty pistol and was being pursued by two of the cruelest race in the galaxy and I had no place to hide.  I considered making a bolas with my blades but using that would expose me to their fire.  So I jumped to the ground and ran for cover to the edge of the city.

I was lucky that the Green Man never walked when he could ride and so their chase was slower than would be a Red Mans’.  I easily outdistanced them with my stronger muscles and even leapt across open spaces that were some four meters wide.  Eventually I was far enough ahead to change my course.  If the Green Men followed me, they would still be chasing me to the edge of the city when I was really circling around and returning to the center.

It wasn’t too long before I was able to locate the palace again but a quick search revealed naught.  I didn’t think that I would find my friends but I was hoping for some useful gear.  Almost by chance I stumbled across the pit in which we had been imprisoned and on impulse I tapped on the cover.  Almost immediately I heard voices so I dragged the lid off and found both Tor Tal and Tulan within.

Reaching down I was able to pull them to safety and warned them of the Green Men.  Tor Tal took my long sword and Tulan my short Sword leaving me unarmed again but I didn’t mind for I was exhausted.  Then we hunted.  Tulan’s plan was for me to lead the Green Men down a narrow alley where he could be ambushed by the Red men.  Tor Tal didn’t like this as it exposed me to danger but I saw the wisdom of him plan for the Green Men thought me alone and the Red men being hidden would be to our advantage.  Hopefully I could lead them one at a time.

So I crept out to seek the Green Men and when I saw one, I pretended to stumble and ran away.  He, of course followed and I was able to lead him to my friends who immediately hamstrung their opponent then stabbed him to death before he could recover.

Now we had another revolver and more swords so we spread out and shortly, the last Green Man lay dead in the street.

We then returned to the palace and searched it until we found our harness and gear and my companions filled me in with what had happened while I was away.
 

Kol Fias had become angry with me and ordered me taken away and given to the pleasures of the Green Men.  Tulan had tried to attack them but they beat him down and tossed him back into the pit while Kol Fias gloated over Tor Tal.

“You fool,” he cried.  “Think that such as you could oppose me!  It as I who set you free and it was I who tracked you down.  Had it not been for that deformed she-animal, I would have recaptured you earlier but no matter, you are here and I will have my revenge.”

At that time Taria broke free from his guards and embraced her lover declaring that no matter what, she would love only him.  When Kol Fias had her dragged back, she told him that she had loved Tor Tal in the ways of a wife and that caused Kol Fias to again loose his temper.  He struck her and when she fell, he kicked her repeatedly.  Tor Tal tried to break free but he ordered him to be tossed into the pit as well to be a plaything of the Green Men.

Long did Kol Fias rant and scream until exhaustion took him.  Then in the morning he had the pit uncovered and he gloated again.  “Know that you will suffer agonies under the tender mercies of the Green Men that would give even me nightmares were I to remain to watch.  But I have business elsewhere and Taria and I leave you with the knowledge that she will quickly forget your miserable existence.  Farewell!”  And with those words, he had the pit resealed and that is all they knew until I found them.

I told them of my attempts to damage his flyer and we all swore to travel to the ends of the world to find and save Taria from her father. A vow that none of us would break.

So together, we cleaned ourselves, replaced our harness and clothing and after eating a simple meal, prepared to race in the direction of the flyer knowing not if we would find the flyer crashed in the desert or have to chase it back to his home.
 

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IV: REVELATION

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While the men prepared for the trip, gathering food and water and as much gear and weapons as they could find on the Green Man bodies, I took a few of the mirrors from their pouches and set them in a wall.  I then stripped and didn’t like what I saw.  Weir are not Human.  We don’t get very fat nor do we menstruate so the only sign of pregnancy is usually when we eat constantly and put on hip fat.  And that never occurs before full maturity at 25.  What little fat I did have had quickly been toned down by the Fleet and that week on Sothis eating only survival rations and what we could catch in the caves had used up the remainder.  My mother tried to over-feed me when I returned home to recuperate but most of what she forced me to eat went to regenerating my ribs and lung with little left over to make fat.  Now the weeks of travel and hunger on Barsoom, plus the improper proteins I was eating were taking their toll.

My cheeks were shallow, I could see my ribs and hips.  Even my feminine curves were now solid muscles with none of the softening that is common in women.

Even my breasts were shrinking and sagging, a sure sign of starvation for unlike human women whose milk glands are attached to their blood system, Weir milk glands are tied to our breast fat which is different, more intensive and nutritious, from body fat.  This is why our breasts are so large and firm as compared to humans.  They have to be for it takes more than five years to manufacture enough breast fat to support the milk glands that feed a Weir baby.  The fact that my body was desperate enough to cannibalize fat reserved for nursing showed how badly I was suffering.

My ovaries and womb had probably shut down from starvation too and would take years to recover.  “Damn!  If this doesn’t change soon, I’ll be a teen until I’m 30.”  My mother won’t like my reproductive maturity stopping, “Why me?” she’ll whine.  “It’s bad enough you Weir can’t have babies until 25, now because of that stupid soldiering you insisted on, you can’t give me grandchildren before 30!  I’ll never live long enough to play with my own grandchildren…”  My mother can be a pain in the tail-joint sometimes.

If this continued, I’d be dead of malnutrition within another month.  Well, that would save me listening to mother complain.  The men had to know what was happening to me even if it affected our plans to rescue Taria.

Again dressed in silks and harness, though now I wore them to hide the ravages of my body, I found Tor Tal and Tulan already packed and ready to go.  Although they tried to rush me to mount the thoat, I took a moment to investigate the supplies that they had packed.

“Hurry Ayiesha Penaut,” encouraged Tor Tal.  “We have to catch up with Kol Fias and Taria Kolos!”  Even his thoat was picking up his impatience and that made the beast nervous .

“No!” I said.  “Not yet.  We need more supplies.”

Tulan interrupted, “We travel light to travel fast.”

I just stared at them.  How could I tell these, my friends and lover on this world that I would die if we left now?  How could I place that burden on people who had abandoned their homes and lives for Taria?  How could I ask them to choose between us?

“I’m not Barsoomian.  The Demons created my race for space travel, not deserts such as this.  I need twice your food and thrice your water just to survive.  The cold nights are freezing to me and the only reason I can continue is the low gravity which is weakening my bones.

“Yes!  We need to rescue Taria but she is safe for now.  Despite his anger, her father won’t allow her to die.  So she is either on the way home where she will be safe and can be rescued at our leisure or she is on the sea bed surrounded by his personal guard.  Either way, she’s safer than we are and he won’t harm her or allow her to be harmed!  A father’s love for his daughter is one of the strongest forces in the universe.  I know because my own father has that love despite his anger at me for the choices I made and that love would make him die for me and my happiness.  Despite Kol Fias’ anger, I saw that same father’s love in his eyes.  He will punish her, imprison her, insult her but HE WILL NOT HARM HER nor will he allow her to come to harm!

“If we are to take her from his clutches, we need to arrive strong and healthy and rushing across the desert eating and sleeping in the saddle will weaken us to the point where we will be captured again.

“I suggest that we overload on food and drink and take our time so that when we take her back, we do so with full strength.  Tulan, where is the nearest city where we can get a flyer?  That should be our destination.”

They were taken aback for it isn’t the custom for a Red Woman to disagree with her protectors and despite my strength and martial skill, their nature was still to protect me because of my gender.  They argued of course, but finally saw the wisdom of my words and grudgingly, they repacked more food and water while I stuffed myself with all that I could find to eat.  I even found a nest of Darseen eggs, that chameleon reptile I had earlier killed, and using one of the Green Man’s mirrors as a pan, fried and ate them all.  By the time the men were ready to leave, I was stuffed and asleep and they argued a moment about if they should wake me or let me sleep.  I guess that the wait faction must have won and as I rested they searched the city for anything else that could be useful, reloaded the revolvers and rifles, slaughtered one of the Green Men’s thoat and dried and smoked the meat for the trip.

I must have been more exhausted than I thought for it was dark when I awoke.

Tor Tal said to me, “It’s too late to leave now so we will go at first light.. IF her majesty feels so inclined.”  His sarcasm wasn’t lost to me.

I smiled and told him, “I’m sorry that you are angry with me but please do not think that I care not for Taria.  In my own way I love her as much as you do.  Here, she is my sister and I am more than willing to die to help her. But I am not as bound by passion as are you so can think easier as to the best way to accomplish our goals.”

He softened at my words and allowed me to hug him but his gender wouldn’t allow him to cry so I cried over Taria for him.  And that is how Tulan found us, me in his arms crying.  Without a word, Tulan turned and stalked off unnoticed by either of us.

I ate my fill again then sought my furs for more sleep but Tulan wasn’t there.  I assumed that he was on watch but my condition was such that I was glad for a night of solitary sleep.

The next morning, we ate as the sun rose and left for Dusar which was, they felt the closest safe city, a four day ride by thoat.  There, Tor Tal felt that we could somehow buy a small flyer, return to the dead city and follow the course of Kol Fias’ flyer in case my pistol fire had forced it to land before it reached Ptarth.  If we couldn’t find the flyer, we’d continue to Ptarth and plan the rescue/abduction of Taria Kolos there.  As Tor Tal had been a padwar in the service of Kol Fias, he was intimate with the buildings and grounds and had friends within who he was certain would help us.  It wasn’t the desired plan of Tor Tal but considering the situation, it seemed to be the safest and one with the best chance for success.

Nothing was said on the ride the first day, we each being lost in our own thoughts.  But during the lunch stop, I insisted that my fencing lessons continue which was unfortunate as in demonstrating a move, Tulan drew blood from Tor Tal which caused him considerable glee for some reason.

We continued and that night as I prepared my bedding between some rocks to bask in their daytime warmth, Tulan sat and asked,” Tell me about your world, Ayiesha Penaut.  You are so different from us, both in physical design but also mentally.  No woman of Barsoom would follow your actions.  None would be as .. sexual (here was he embarrassed) as you are nor would they choose to be warriors.”

I smiled at this for I could see he was very uncomfortable.  So as I stripped and crawled into my furs, I explained.  “Drakonis is a Barony on the frontier of the Commonwealth.  We protect them from the Shitai but are not yet a member of the Commonwealth.  We are large by many standards for the Barony covers slightly more than four dozen star systems and it takes light more than a century to cross our borders.  But we are under populated for the frontier was uninhabited before the Baron forged our nation from the void.  So the Colonial Service was formed by the Devil who rules the political arm of our government as the Baron rules the military and the Speaker rules the legal arm.

“Colonial haunts Jasoom seeking people who will fit in with our society, people who can survive hardships and people who are willing to leave Jasoom for a new life.  So they haunt the byways of the various nations seeking colonists.  My grandfather was rescued from a death camp where he was condemned for praying to a different god and not being “Arian” enough for his nation.  Another grandmother was rescued from slavers who were about to sell her and so on.  Each is given a description of the Barony and offered a chance to immigrate.  Those who say ‘nay’ are left to their own fate.  Those who agree are taken to a Ram-ship that is cloaked and orbiting the moon of Jasoom.  There they spend a year in transit learning our language, culture, religion and are prepared for their new life.

“Once there, they are encouraged to inter-mix and inter-breed, which is hard for some as they must now live next to people who were their enemies or slaves on Jasoom but it works.  While the mixing of your races produced the Red Man, the mixing of ours is producing the Brown (I held up my now darkly tanned arm to show this).  Also, the first to Drakonis had been abducted and engineered by the Demon Race to work in their star ships and this was continued with us.  A human colonist may bear human children but those Gaean-born children will bear Weir like myself.  Thus at any time about one third of our population is Jasoomian-born humans who moved to Drakonis, one third are humans born on Gaea or another of the Draconan worlds and one third are Weir.  Plus we have constant visitors who are Mon, Kentauran, Demon, Dragon and a dozen other races.  So with all these races intermingling, equality by law must be enforced.

“My father is German-French and on Jasoom would have been forbidden to marry my mother who was Arabian with African ancestry and so is not ‘white’.  Upon Drakonis this marriage was accepted as the best way and so was I born.  But this equality also crosses not only race but gender as well so women are expected to achieve the same as men.  Although the Baron and First Speaker are Male and Weir, the Devil is a woman of Jasoom for such is our way to allow women to achieve their dreams.  And so although my mother’s family expected to marry me off young and virginal to ally themselves with another family, I chose another path.

“But my options were limited.  I could remain Peasant Class, marry another peasant and spend the next few hundred years working on a farm or ranch popping out a baby every five years.  Or I could try for Merchant Class and have headaches seeking more wealth.  Or the Priesthood and pray most of the time or the Warrior Class.  You know the choice I made.  I, a peasant girl, can walk down any street in my Star Fleet jacket with my combat stripes and people bow to me!  Even the Devil herself once gave me her seat in a restaurant and thanked me for defending her nation.  As a Warrior, I am respected and admired and honoured.  True, my life is harder and shorter than expected.  As a peasant I could easily live 500 years, a dozen times longer than my human parents could imagine but as a Warrior, I’ll be lucky to live past a century.  But what a Century!”

“And lovers, Ayiesha, you take many of them?”  he asked quietly.

Strange, although we had been lovers since we met, this was the first time he used only my first name.  “When the Demons engineered my race, they enhanced all of our skills and senses. But Demons are reptiles and never understood human passions.  So these were enhanced as well condemning the Weir to a life of sexual need.   Humans can ignore their sex drive though they enjoy the act as much as we do.  But Weir cannot.  We NEED sex or we suffer.  When a Weir looses their desire to seek physical passion, we know we are dangerously ill.  But neither do we see any reason to deny our charms and bodies to one person for life.  Some do but most of us take our lovers as we wish.  And marriage among us can be complicated by many husbands and wives and lovers for we enjoy the passions of both men and women.  Although we enjoy the passions of many partners, we do reserve our children to our husbands alone.  It’s a complicated situation that I’ll explain another day.

“Does it bother you overly much that you were not my first lover nor will you be my last?”  I asked.  I knew that humans are possessive towards women who they consider to be property but here, our physical relations were a simple business deal and no romance existed between us.

Tulan made no comment other then he bade me a good night and left for his own furs.  I found this strange as he had shared mine since that first night but was too tired to pursue the subject.  And so I passed the night alone and in deep sleep until they awoke me at sunrise.

It was late the next day while I was riding next to Tor Tal that Tulan told us he was leaving.  When we asked why, he replied, ”My home lies that way.  Taria is in no danger so you don’t need me.” Then he looked at me and spat out, “Our ‘business deal’ is done!” and turned away.

I caught up with him, grabbed his reigns with my tail and demanded to know what was wrong!  He pulled away, so I tackled him and pulled him form his thoat.  “Tell me what’s wrong?  It isn’t right for you to leave us like this.” Our thoats had taken off and I saw from the corner of my eye Tor Tal rushing off the catch them.

Again Tulan pulled away, “Taria is gone, you have Tor Tal, you don’t need me obviously!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”  I actually had to trip him and toss myself onto his body, holding his arms with my hands and grasping his legs with my tarsal feet to stop his struggles.  Even though I was much stronger than he, he continued to fight, “I know you love Tor Tal!  I saw you together in the city!”

I almost laughed at this revelation but forced myself to stop.  Men are sensitive creatures at times, sometimes more sensitive than are women.

“Of course I love Tor Tal.  He’s my brother and Taria is my sister.  How could I not love my brother?  Think you there is anything more there?  Tor Tal loves Taria so much he cannot see me as a woman.”

He stopped struggling then and asked, “truth?”

“Of course it is my lover.”  I started to caress his cheek with my tail.  He always found this gesture uncomfortable but with us it was a gesture of compassion and caring.  “They are my brother and sister.  We have fought together, traveled together, suffered together.  Can any bonds of blood be closer than this?”

I couldn’t help it and began to cry then, “My mother almost died birthing and nursing three Weir children.  She’ll never give me a sister.  My true brothers are 10,000 light years away from here and gone forever.  Your planet is killing me with the cold and malnutrition!  I’ll die here soon and never see my family again.  All I have is you and them, my lover and my brother and sister.  I can’t loose you too.”

He then wrapped his arms around me and comforted me as best he could.  I guess that then he realized that what he had seen in the city was no different from this.  Eventually I stopped cryin