Freedom for Tara

Chapter 8 – The Ort and the Overseer

I must have fallen asleep sometime during the session, because when I awoke I felt considerably improved. My neck and shoulders were a bit stiff, but most of the pain was gone. I was still laying on my tummy in Zeb’s bedding, and now that I was able to shift my head around, I saw that the Fretah girl was curled up next to me, her hand resting warmly between my shoulder blades. She was unclothed from the waist up, and I blushed, remembering how I had walked in on Benie and Makiela. I also noticed, to my continued embarrassment, that I was still completely naked, though it appeared that sometime since my rescue I had been quite thoroughly bathed. This was an especially nice discovery since I’m sure I must have smelled like a whore-house coming out of that pit. Which begged the question of how long I had been out. I decided the answer could wait as Zeb was waking.

“How do you feel,” she asked as soon as her eyes were open and she saw me. She sounded a little panicked.

I smiled at her. “Good morning to you too. I feel great, Zeb. Your healing fingers are like magic!”

“Magic?” She asked in confusion. “Well, as long as you take it easy, you should probably rest at least another day maybe two…” I stopped her.

“I’m o-kay, Zeb, really.” I carefully shifted, turning to my side. I didn’t move too much just in case, but I wanted to see Zeb’s face. In the dim light, I saw that her eyes were not the solid black that I was used to but instead were composed of an iris and pupil like my own. But where I had white, she had dark tissue. I could see that her iris softly glowed a faint bluish color, but aside from that, and her ears of course, the young woman looked surprisingly human sitting there. “In fact, I feel better than I have in many days… uh, assuming I haven’t been unconscious for that amount of time.”

The Fretah giggled. “No, just about thirty Terran hours, or just over a standard Galactic day.”

I was still surprised. “I’ve slept through a WHOLE DAY?!”

“It… it takes a while to heal that kind of trauma,” replied the girl, looking suddenly sad.

I frowned. “I really was in bad shape, wasn’t I. I don’t remember much pain… Zeb, what kind of damage are we talking about here?”

Even in the weak light, I could see tears on her cheeks. “Head trauma. The fangs were horribly deep, Tara. We weren’t even sure if you would ever wake up. There wasn’t a lot of damage on the outside, mainly just the two puncture wounds, but there was so much blood. There must have been something in the venom that prevented coagulation. When we came back through the portal, you looked… uh, you were covered in it, and dirt, and the webs, and… I… uhnn…”

I could tell that the woman was having serious emotional issues with the memory, so I reached out and placed my hand on her arm to stop her.

“It’s alright, Zeb, I get it. I was a mess. You don’t have to relive that any more.”

She nodded, looking a little frail.

“You’re amazingly brave, you do know that, right?”

“Was I?”

I laughed. “Are you kidding me? You’re my hero, I owe you my life!”

The girl looked horrified again.

“Uh oh. What did I say that upset you?”

“Tara, the Fretah do not take slaves… It would be an abomination to everything that we believe in, and to all that we…”

“Zeb…”

“…all that we hold sacred… and…”

“ZEB!” The other stopped, surprised by the volume of my voice. “It just means that I’m very very grateful.”

She stared down at me for a few seconds until she understood, then her whole body visibly relaxed. As I watched her, I suddenly made a decision in my head.

“In fact…” I replied, taking her hand in mine. I then closed my eyes and pictured very clearly how I wanted to thank her. I heard Zeb gasp, and when I looked back up at the girl, her eyes were as wide as saucers.

“Really…” she whispered.

I nodded, holding her gaze. “I’m ready, and frankly, I can’t think of a better therapy right now.”

“But… Benie thought that because of what happened to you, you might be… I mean, that you wouldn’t want… uh…”

I took her other hand, forcing her to lean closer. “Benie was wrong. It does happen you know. Zeb, that spider, or Pleasure Thief, or whatever it’s called… It tortured me. It forced me to feel unimaginable pleasure, but never let me fully enjoy it. What I really, REALLY need right now is for someone to help me erase those memories by making safe and happy love to me, and more than anything else, letting me COME.”

The girl’s mouth was hanging open, her breathing was hardly more than shallow breaths.

“I want you to help me have as many orgasms as I can stand! And,” I said, making sure she could see the lust in my eyes. “I want to do the same to you…”

I saw Zeb actually lick her lips. From the way her nipples suddenly perked up, I could tell that she was thinking about it most seriously, but that she was also hesitating for some reason.

“What is it? Are you not allowed? If Benie forbid you from being with me, I’ll…”

“No! No… It’s just… Tara, I know you may feel okay, but…”

“But what?”

“There was so much blood… When I came through the portal with you, I thought you were dead!” The tears were back and I could see that the girl was starting to lose it. Finally, I just reached up and pulled her face down to mine. Her lips fell against my own even as she mewed with desire, her soft sobs swallowed by my mouth as she hungrily returned the kiss. I felt her hands looking for a place to alight, as though she didn’t want to touch me lest she shatter the moment. But I was already growing wet, so I snagged her left hand and slipped it up to my chest. With my other hand, I pulled her down on top of me, my thighs parting to either side of her hips as she lost balance and was forced to lay along my length. I felt her stiffen, as though she were worried I might break somehow, but then relax.

I couldn’t claim complete innocence with members of my own sex, but my few encounters had been limited to kissing and a little friendly petting. I was as curious as the next girl, and being a little more active sexually than is probably normal, I had given it a fair shake. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, but kissing another girl just didn’t elicit the same spark that I had gotten from males… until now.

I’m not sure why it was different, but it was. No doubt, my current state of need had a lot to do with it, but there was something else too. I certainly didn’t think of Zeb as male-like (she was all girl, through and through), but being a different species of human was definitely noticeable. And it wasn’t simply her ears, or even her eyes, but rather smaller details. The big differences were a bit like having a lover who liked to wear masks in bed. They were simply part of the game. But something like the slightly slippery feeling of her tongue was just strange enough to remind me that I wasn’t kissing another human being… or rather, a Terran human, but an alien. And for me at least, that was hugely sexy.

Once I let go and focused on what I was feeling, it took only a few minutes for me to see that as young as I thought Zeb was (she looked maybe eighteen or nineteen by Earth standards), she was quite experienced as a lover. Or maybe she was just really good at it. Whatever the case, I was moaning and nearly quivering under her in no time. She played with my nipple with the hand I had put there, but the other was creeping slowly along my side, pressing up over my belly, and then turning as she gradually pressed it between us and dropped it down into my lap.

I was nearly frantic, but she was always calm and patient, continually letting my body set the pace of things. She was creative, and sensitive, and enormously playful as her fingers eventually worked their way into my very very slick petals. And as much as I was enjoying what she was doing to me, it only took a few light strokes over my clit to send me right into orbit.

I broke our kiss and gasped as my world tumbled and I was lost for about thirty long seconds. When I came back, I was nearly laughing with happiness.

“Are you okay, Tara?” asked Zeb, staring down at me.

I sighed contentedly. “Oh yeah… I am SO okay you can’t even believe it.”

She let me catch my breath, but lightly caressed my Mons to keep my arousal at a low rumble. “We were worried that perhaps the Regileek Spider had… damaged you. That… that you might not be able to…”

“Have an orgasm,” I finished for her. She nodded.

“Well,” I said with a happy sigh, “I can assure you that part of my brain is working just fine. Just fine, indeed.” I noticed that her fingers stared to grow a bit more active, reaching down again. She also shifted herself so that her face was lower. I had about a half a second warning before she leaned forward and took my left nipple into her mouth, letting her smooth tongue wrap around the still-hard bud like an after dinner mint.

“Ughnnn!” I moaned, my lower body trembling. “Oh god… Yes, more please…ummmm!”

After a minute or so of bliss she raised her head and said, “No ‘rain check’?”

I laughed aloud, but only for a moment because her fingers slipped once again over my clitoris and after that I had trouble focusing my eyes for a while.

Having Zeb make love to me that day was perhaps one of the best sexual experiences of my life, but not for the obvious reasons. Other lovers had given me more intense orgasms, but none were so healing to my psyche. She was exactly what I needed to get the memories of the Pleasure Thief out of my head, for sure, but also to pull me out of the mental rut I had settled into. I realized later that I had allowed myself to become isolated from the other abductees, seeking the solace of separation rather than trying to find my place in the community. It simply didn’t matter that we were all from different worlds, our situation was the same, as was our need for comfort and love. We may have been different on the outside, but for the most part, we were all feminine.

That’s not to say that the differences weren’t interesting. I found out about one such difference in Fretah anatomy later when I had a chance to return the very great favor Zeb had given to me. I was explaining that I might not be as skilled, basically making excuses as we traded places and I found myself staring between the girl’s thighs. Zeb had most expertly used that slick tongue of hers to bring me to a fast series of orgasms that nearly knocked me unconscious, and I spread her open as she had me in order to do my best to thank her, when I noticed something didn’t seem quite right.

When she saw my face, she giggled.

“Am I seeing double, or do you have two clits?”

“Your eyes are quite fine.”

I was stunned, and frankly jealous as hell. “Damn… Do they both, er… I mean…”

“Yes,” she completed for me, “they are both functional… at the same time.”

“Wow… Okay, now you have me seriously wondering about male Fretah.”

Zeb laughed. “They are much the same as Terran males, I’m afraid.”

I was still staring unabashedly between her legs, my mind in the gutter.

“Tara?” she asked.

“Oh, sorry,” I replied, snapping out of my daydream. “So how do I, er…”

“Any way you wish…”

And so I did. And we did. And it was wonderful.

We bothered away most of that day in her room, and when we did re-emerge, I found myself just a little embarrassed. Not of Zeb, mind you, but of suddenly being reminded that the doors to our rooms were nothing more than a hanging cloth. I had been vocal enough that everyone in our compound must have heard us. But if they did, no one said anything. It surprised me. Back on my home world, I’d never have heard the end of it in a similar situation. But here, the sound of people getting happy was not only acceptable, but welcome. Zeb explained it to me when I asked her about it over a meal.

“As tenacious as Terran humans are, I think you’re also a bit stuffy by Galactic standards, Tara. And more than that, depression is a very serious problem here. To hear someone crying out in happy joy, even if it’s not you, can’t help but make you a little bit hopeful for the future.”

She was right of course. In fact, I did notice that people seemed a little brighter than I remembered them. I had just finished a too-large plate of biscuits and gravy, when Makiela waved to me.

“May I join you for a few moments? I have something I want to show you.”

Not being completely certain of Galactic etiquette, I looked to Zeb.

“Have a seat,” she said through a mouthful of green noodles.

The Marroon woman smiled and dropped into a chair across from us. Then, with her grin widening, she handed me an Ort.

“I had a chance to check out the com-unit while you were healing. Obviously, they don’t have the range to contact anyone that could help rescue us, but I started wondering if they might somehow be used as a means of staying in communication with each other.”

My brows went up. “Uh… not to belittle your idea, but do we really need that,” I asked. “I mean, everyone here is pretty much in voice range.” I blushed again, thinking of the sound of my gasping cries of ecstasy echoing through the compound.

“…especially,” she continued, unfazed, “with those planet-side.”

“I thought you said the range was too short?”

“To communicate from orbit, yes… but you forget one thing – the portals.”

I frowned for a moment, not understanding. And then I did.

“Light goes through!”

She nodded. “Yes, and probably electromagnetic radiation. I’m not certain, but it is likely.”

Then I frowned again. “Wait, I thought that these things needed towers, or infrastructure or something in order to operate.”

“Normally, they do. But,” and she smiled, “they do have a test mode. By putting the Ort in a test loop, it basically transmits to itself.”

I wasn’t getting it. “How will that help us?”

She grinned and produced another Ort from her pocket. “Because we have an unlimited number of copies of this device. Here, put it on.”

She handed me the tiny ear-clip and I fumbled with it for a few moments until Zeb helped me get it settled. “Okay, now what?”

I saw Makiela put on hers, then tap her ear. Then she made a few strange guestures with her hands and I suddenly found myself looking at a transparent version of myself.

“Whoa…” I exclaimed, and heard my own voice echo in my ear. “What am I seeing?”

The Marroon stood and walked a short distance away. As she did so, the transparent image shifted and moved with her. It took me a moment, but I realized that I was seeing and hearing things from her perspective.

“Do you understand,” she asked, her voice coming to me through the Ort as clear as though she were still seated across from me.

I laughed. “This is so amazing! And you think it will work through the portals?”

“It should,” she replied. “And the programming is smart enough to deal with multiple signals, so we should be able to hook up everyone that goes down. I can give you a quick tutorial on how to control what you see. You could even turn off the visual if it bothers you.”

“That would help, at least when I’m down on the surface.”

“We’ll be able to test it as soon as we know who will be chosen next. It could be any day now.”

She showed me how to tap the Ort again to have it sleep. “Oh, well leave this one with me, since I’ll be going down for sure.”

She gave me a quizzical look. “How do you know that?”

“Because I’m going to be joining every match from now on,” I answered simply. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Zeb go pale.

“There’s no restriction on joining a group, only that those picked must go,” I continued. “I plan on helping in any way I can, for as long as I’m able. The Var-Lish may make the rules, but I’m going to exploit every loophole I can find.”

“Tara, you can’t be serious,” said the Fretah sounding a bit panicked.

“I am, Zeb. I refuse to sit by and watch my friends here die if there is anything at all I can do about it, and I don’t want you to try and talk me out of it.”

Things got pretty quiet at our table after that. Benie found me about an hour later in my room.

“Are you insane!” she said as she pushed aside my door cloth without knocking and glowered at me as I made a few notations in my journal.

“That didn’t take long,” I said to myself more that her.

“What do you hope to accomplish by putting yourself at such risk?!”

“Whatever I can.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you understand? You’re our motivation for living right now. You’re our hope. You have no right to risk that unnecessarily. If you were to be killed…”

“We need more than hope, Benie. I need to get you thinking differently. Hope isn’t going to save our asses, and I can’t do it by myself.”

“We’re Galactics, Tara. We don’t have it in us to fight like you do.”

“You’re wrong,” I replied, holding her eyes. “That fight is there, it’s just repressed behind thousands of years of technological laziness. When you achieved peace, you no longer had a reason to fight, but the skills didn’t just vanish. I’ve seen them.”

“Where?!”

“Everywhere. In Gerisha the first time I went down, then in Zeb. She literally fought off a giant spider and dragged me bleeding and broken from the pit of hell with her bare hands!”

“Tara, she’s in love with you!”

Suddenly I was very angry, and I wasn’t even sure why.

“Yes,” I said, gritting my teeth. “But that does not diminish the magnitude of what she did in the slightest. The only difference between you and her is that she has a motivation.”

“You don’t think I want to leave this place?”

“NO,” I yelled, coming to my feet. “I DON’T! As dangerous and fucked up as it is here, I think you like being in command! Maybe it’s just your way of dealing with what you see as a no-win situation, but as much as I may give us a sense hope, everyone looks to YOU for leadership. And what do you tell them? Be compliant! Just survive another day! Don’t rock the boat! I said it before, Benie, and I’ll say it again… If we do nothing, WE’RE ALREADY DEAD! It’s only a matter of time. Sooner or later I’m going to meet something we’re just not prepared to handle and that’s it! I’m done! Game over! I would rather put myself in mortal danger every day of the week for the slim chance that I can find another loophole to exploit, or some tiny thing that our Var-Lish captors missed.

“But you would rather that we just sit and wait for our doom. Give up. And I won’t do that. So now, you’ve come here to chew me out. Here I am, a prisoner in a starship a billion years from home, the captive of a sick and immensely powerful race, living out what few remaining days I might have as a twisted form of entertainment, and you have the GALL to tell me I don’t have the RIGHT to risk my own life?! FUCK YOU!”

The Fretah woman covered her face with her hands and slowly dropped to her knees on the floor, sobbing. I was still fuming, and when I looked up, I saw that there were several people standing in my doorway, including Zeb.

“Aw shit,” I cursed under my breath and then took a deep breath to clear my head of the anger. I came around the table and sat down next to the Fretah woman. Then, looking up to those in my doorway, I made a gesture to leave. Zeb was the only one that hesitated, but in a moment we were once again alone.

“It… It’s all true,” she said between sobs. “Every word. I just don’t know how else to cope. I… I think I felt that if I could just be a leader, that it would give me a reason to keep it together.”

“We all need something to latch on to,” I replied, trying to keep my emotions out of my voice. “You’re no different. Neither am I.”

“I… I just want you to know that I’ll step aside without… without a fight.”

I looked over at her, frowning. “What, are you crazy? You think I want your JOB!?”

She seemed confused. “But I thought…”

I barked out a laugh. “Oh hell no! Benie, as misguided as your motives might be, you really are the one who keeps this place running. All I’d do is screw everything up. No. Like it or not, you’re in charge of this band of unfortunate rapscallions, and to be completely honest, you’re damn good at it.”

She was shaking her head in denial. “But look where I’ve led us? Nowhere!”

“No. Not true. You don’t see it because things are so smooth. I’ve always thought that the best leadership happens without anyone even realizing it, and you’re the epitome of that concept, Benie. When I first arrived here I was so freaked out that I nearly had a heart attack. You took me in and straightened me out so quickly that I was eating breakfast with the rest of the gang the following morning. And more so, I knew that if I had a problem I could just find you and ask. And yet, you didn’t hover, or try to lay down a bunch of rules on me. You gave me just what I needed and then backed off. Perfect leadership.”

“But…” she continued, wiping tears from her brows. “What have I accomplished?!”

“Hey, just keeping this pack from jumping together into the recycler is a huge accomplishment! It would be so easy to just give up and fall into depression. But we don’t. We keep going.”

“That’s because you give them hope…”

I shrugged. “Maybe, but I also bring frustration. Nothing is more depressing than to be given a ladder to escape that turns out to be a foot short.”

“I… I think I understand. Do all Terrans use so many analogies?”

I laughed. “Maybe not. I’m a sap that way. My point is, that regardless of what I bring, it’s YOUR sense of order that keeps us alive, Benie.”

We sat there in silence for several minutes, just thinking. Finally, the Fretah sighed and said, “So what do we do now?”

“About what?”

“About people not knowing who’s in charge.”

I was shocked. “What do you…”

“Come on, Tara. You just publicly chastised me. There’s bound to be some confusion.”

I considered this. She was right, of course. And the last thing we needed now was people taking sides.

“Right, well I suppose we should talk to them then. As long as you and I are clear, I think the others…”

I was interrupted by a warbling alarm.

Benie was already getting to her feet. “Damn… Another match. Tara, I…”

“Go!” I entreated to the woman, giving her a quick squeeze on the shoulder. “It’s what you do.”

She smiled at me briefly and then passed out of my room. I grabbed a few things I had placed so I could retrieve them easily, and then followed her.

I was starting to get used to the rush and panic that preceded a portal event, and since I had already decided to go down with the chosen regardless, it took away some of the nervousness. I quickly found Makiela coming out of my workshop and asked her to set up Nusho with an Ort. She nodded that she would, and I tapped my ear to wake my own device. I had set the visuals mostly off, so not to be a distraction, but had left mine transmitting. A brief pressure change and a loud hum told me that the portal had arrived, and about a minute later I heard someone curse as the favored were chosen. A Marroon who I knew as Keeplee stepped forward reluctantly, her blue selection circle magically following her, as well as a somewhat reclusive Fretah named Gen Osa, or more simply Gen.

“Just two,” I asked Keeplee, who looked a little surprised to see me.

“I… I think so,” she said, nervously. “Are you really going with us?”

Here it was, my last chance to back out. I didn’t hesitate. “I am.”

The other looked relieved, and even smiled for a moment. I seriously hoped that I could live up to her expectations of me.

“Benie,” I said excusing myself. I saw her comforting the Fretah girl. “Is this everyone?”

“I believe it is, Tara. You sure about this?”

I patted my kit and grinned. “Yup. As soon as we’re through, find Nusho and help her get linked up. If this works, I want to try to have her identify where we are. With any luck, she might even be able to give us tips on how to deal with whatever’s waiting for us.”

“Right,” she nodded. “Tara… I… please be careful, okay?”

I smiled. “Be back soon.” I then took Keeplee and Gen’s hands and together we stepped through the portal.