Author: alltheseroadworks

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Previous chapters:
One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Thirteen | Fourteen | Fifteen | Sixteen | Seventeen | Eighteen | Nineteen | Twenty | Twenty-One | Twenty-Two | Twenty-Three | Twenty-Four | Twenty-Five | Twenty-Six | Twenty-Seven | Twenty-Eight | Twenty-Nine | Thirty

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The Galliard were here – and they intended to kill Jayson Vice and take his women, to turn them into brainless breeding slaves.

Vice had three slim advantages.

The first was that Vice didn’t have to win.  He just had to survive.  Rescue was coming in only three hours – but the Galliard didn’t know that.  He had seen their camp, and he was fairly sure they did not have the technology to have detected the arrival of the Guild Ship Hartego Bay in the Persephone system.  They knew that Vice had signalled for help – but they could not possibly know just how close at hand that help truly was.  

Even as the Galliard came into view over the dunes at the top of the beach, he could see they were moving slowly, confidently.  They thought they could take their time, assess the situation, and proceed at their leisure.  They thought they had all day. 

They were wrong.

The second advantage was that the Galliard had underestimated Vice – or at least, he hoped they had.  The war party consisted of fifteen males – roughly twice as many as they had sent when they had demanded that Cunt be brought for judgement.  They probably thought that it was overkill – after all, Vice’s party consisted of only one male – not trained for war, and with no genetic modifications such as the Galliard had – and four females, who the Galliard regarded as worthless and irrelevant.  

They probably hadn’t even considered that the women might use weapons.  They had probably laughed at the idea that Vice himself might put up any significant fight, and told themselves that his success in incapacitating a guard in the Galliard camp and escaping on foot was nothing more than dumb luck.  It was likely they would have brought even fewer warriors – except they *had* seen Vice’s robot, and they probably *weren’t* underestimating Rospar.

If they had sent everything they had, Vice wouldn’t have stood a chance.  Fifteen was a lot – but he could at least *imagine* a victory.

And Vice’s third advantage was that the Galliard thought that Vice didn’t have any allies.

They stopped at the dunes.  Vice could see Confidence, the leader of the last group he had dealt with, among their number, but it was another of the towering man-beasts who stepped forward now.

“Jayson Vice!” he called, in a rough but powerful voice that carried easily across the sandy beach.  “My name is Dominance, and I speak for the Galliard.  Your time on this planet is at an end.  Emerge from your camp, unarmed, with your hands above your head.  Fighting runs the risk of us unnecessarily damaging your bitches.”

“I’ve got two counter-offers,” yelled back Vice.

There was laughter from the Galliard war party.

“You are not in any position to negotiate, Jayson Vice,” said Dominance.

“Then you shouldn’t have opened by talking,” said Vice.  “Do you want my bitches intact, or do you not?”

There was a pause, and then Dominance called back.

“Very well, Jayson Vice,” he said.  “What is your first offer?”

“My first offer is that you take yourself back to your camp, and within the week we’ll be gone, and you’ll never have to deal with us again,” said Vice.  In truth he planned to be gone much sooner than that, but he didn’t want to show his hand just yet.

Dominance laughed.

“I do not think so, Jayson Vice,” he said.  “The Galliard value their privacy – and their secrets.  And there is considerable interest in fucking your bitches.  We particularly like your redhead.  We have not had a redhead like her in some time.  Once we acquire her, I expect she will be fucked around the clock for several weeks.”

“That’s a shame,” said Vice.  “My second counter-offer is this: go fuck yourselves.”

Dominance snarled.  

“Jayson Vice, you have made a very ill-considered…”

Vice turned to Amy, and nodded.

She levelled her rifle, and fired.

The energy blast smashed into the beach beside Dominance, kicking up a small crater, and temporarily obscuring the area with sand.  The nearby Galliard flinched back, but Dominance stood his ground, unperturbed. 

“You missed, Jayson Vice!” he laughed.  “Is this the best you can do?  Have your women do your fighting for you?  A bitch barely has the brainpower to cook a meal, let alone shoot a…”

Dominance’s head exploded in a shower of gore.

Vice looked over at Cunt.  Vapour was rising from the barrel of her just-fired barrel.

“Good girl,” he said.

She beamed at him.

And then the battle was on.  Vice, Amy, Cunt and Telea laid a barrage of fire in the direction of the Galliard force, who had been so arrogant that they had not even acquired proper cover to approach the base.  Vice caught one in the leg, bringing one of the huge beastmen to his knees, and then finished him with a blast to the chest.  Telea winged one in the arm, but Vice thought it probably wasn’t incapacitating.

And then the Galliard were returning fire – half of them shooting while the other half retreated to more favourable ground.  Vice signalled his girls to get down behind cover, and they sat, breathing deeply, as they heard and felt blaster fire smashing into the bits of scavenged starship hull that made up the outer walls.

“Thirteen left, by my count,” said Vice.

Telea nodded.  Her own count agreed.

After a while the gunfire stopped.  Vice waited a little longer, then peered over the barricade.

The Galliard had retreated – to craft a more practical plan of attack, and choose a better angle of approach.  They knew his women could shoot now.  They would take that into consideration, and be more prepared next time.

Let them plan.  Let them prepare.

Time was on Vice’s side – he hoped.

Two and a half hours left.

He took the time to go along the barricade and pat each of his girls, stroking their hair, telling him that he loved them and that they were good bitches.  Each of them nuzzled at him appreciatively.  He spent a little extra time with Cunt, letting her suck on his cock as reward for her excellent aim.

Still the Galliard didn’t come.

Two hours.  One and a half.  One.

Vice dared to hope they might not come at all until it was too late.

But his luck didn’t extend that far.  The Galliard *did* come again – and this time they didn’t announce it with a call.  They came quietly, and fast.  They came from the beach to the south, using the cover of large chunks of metal from the crash of the Cinnabar Hawk to shield themselves from gunfire while they approached the camp.

That was okay.  Vice had expected them to come that way. 

After all, he had placed those chunks of metal there yesterday, specifically to encourage such a plan.

They *did* yell when they passed the final piece of cover, making a direct run at the base, intending to bypass the barricade by wading through the sea at the point where the camp wall met the water.  They fired wildly as they ran, to force Vice and his women to take cover, making it hard to return fire.  They were only a couple of hundred meters from the camp, and it would take them less than a minute to cross the distance on their long bestial legs.

That is, if that stretch of beach had been undefended.

Vice, taking cover behind the barricade, heard the mighty crash of displaced water first – and then heard the first scream.  He looked up to see a Galliard nearly a hundred metres in the air above, dangling by one foot from a monstrous tentacle.  The Galliard had dropped his gun, and his arms were flailing wildly.

Then a second tentacle came, and pulled off the Galliard’s head, as easily as a child might disassemble a doll.

Even as this was happening, there were more screams. Vice chanced a look over the barricade to see one Galliard clawing futilely at the beach sand as he was dragged into the waves by a tentacle coiled around his waist.  Another was struck in the chest by a tentacle, and Vice hadn’t realised how fast the tentacle had been moving, and with how much mass, until he saw the Galliard propelled through the air by the impact, to crash into a piece of ship wreckage down the beach with a sickening crunch, and fall to the sand, lifeless.

The Harvester had come.  And it was fulfilling its bargain.

He looked at Telea.

She held up both hands, with one thumb curled down.

Nine left.

The Galliard were retreating again – but this time they weren’t moving away from the camp, but rather up and around the perimeter wall, fleeing the Harvester while remaining close to the camp itself.  

That was just fine.  Vice had surprises all over.

When the Galliard had first approached the camp, they had discounted the pile of crates off to one side, covered by tarps.  They had assumed it was just more supplies – and besides, they could see Vice and his bitches on the makeshift battlements, so they weren’t looking for other threats.

Now, as the Galliard rounded the front of the camp, the tarp came loose, detached from its moorings – and what the Galliard had thought was supplies turned out to be a pack of angry, territorial Rapehounds.

Victoria forced herself to her feet, and ran at the Galliard, tits jiggling, face determined.

Vice held his breath.  There was nothing between Victoria and the Galliard blasters – not even clothing.  If they stopped firing backwards at the Harvester, and aimed forwards…

But he only had a few brief seconds of anxiety before the Rapehounds had overtaken Victoria.  One – her mate – pushed her bodily to the sand, and hunched over her protectively, its dick pressing against her buttocks warningly.  

The rest threw themselves into the Galliard.

Vice heard the sound of blasters, the roar of the Rapehounds, the screams of the Galliard.

He tried to count how many were dying from the sounds.

Eight left.  Seven.  Six.

There was a deep, tortured animal sound, and then another.

“Those were Rapehounds,” whispered Laurel.

The Galliard were fighting back.  Vice could only hope that none of the dead monsters were the one protecting Victoria – and that Victoria herself was not caught in the crossfire.

More screams. More roars.

Five Galliard left.  Four.

Four Rapehounds left.  Three.  Two.

“Fuck,” swore Vice.  “Shoot them.”

He swung up to a standing position and sighted his rifle at the Galliard.  The girls did likewise.

But he must have counted wrong.  He expected four Galliard still standing, but he only saw three.

Telea fired and hit a Galliard.  Amy finished it off.  Cunt took another in the head with a single shot.  

The remaining Galliard fired wildly.  A stray shot got lucky and brought down a Rapehound.  There was only one of the monsters left – the one standing over Victoria.

The Galliard looked up at Vice and his women on the barricade.  Then he turned back and levelled his gun at the Rapehound.

Vice fired.  His shot found his target and the Galliard went down.

It was over.  Vice had won.  

He turned to his girls to celebrate… and his heart almost stopped.

Standing there, only a few metres away on the barricade, inside the camp, was Confidence.  His fur was wet and bedraggled.  He had come in around the camp wall in the water, somehow dodging the Harvester.

And he had Telea.

He was lifting the beautiful blonde navigator by a grip on her neck.  He had brought her up to his own head height, choking her into silence in the process, and then lowered her onto his erect cock, her tits outward, so that his shaft was buried deeply in her fuckhole and his groin was supporting much of her weight.  In his other hand he casually held the blaster rifle that he had taken from Telea, and he was pointing it at Vice.

“Well, Jayson Vice,” he said.  “You were significantly more dangerous than we believed.  I congratulate you.”

“Put her down,” said Vice.  He was breathing shallowly – not because he was scared for his own life, but because he was suddenly, truly scared that Confidence was going to actually hurt Telea.  Worse – that he might kill her.

“I don’t think so,” said Confidence.  He bounced Telea lightly on his dick, and she made a strangled sound.  “I like this one, but I think you like her more.  You are soft, Jayson Vice.  Despite everything, you regard your bitches as people, not objects.  If you had learned your lesson, you would know this bitch is replaceable, just like all bitches, and you would feel no sorrow at placing her in the garbage where she belongs.”

Vice tensed up, and Confidence gestured with his gun.

“Careful, Jayson Vice,” he said.  “It would only require a little more pressure to snap this bitch’s neck.  And you know I will do it.  And then I will still have my gun, and I will still shoot you.”

“What do you want?” asked Vice.

“You know what I want,” said Confidence.  “Lower your weapon, and make your bitches do the same.  I will give you a swift, clean death, and then I will take the bitches for conversion.  We have lost many Galliard today.  They will have much breeding to do.”

Outside the camp, the last Rapehound growled – a low, menacing sound.  It surely couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it seemed to perceive the threat posed by Confidence.

“No, I do not think so,” said Confidence – and then he casually swung his gun to one side and blasted the Rapehound.

All it took was one shot.  The beast went down, dead.

“No!” screamed Victoria, struggling up onto all fours.  “No!  You didn’t need to!”

“Make your bitch be quiet, or I will make her for you,” said Confidence.

“Victoria,” called Vice.  “Don’t antagonise him.  This conversation isn’t for you.  You’re nothing but a bitch, remember?”

She remembered.  She fell silent.  

Confidence’s gaze returned to Vice, locking onto him.  He bounced Telea on his dick a little more, and clearly found it pleasant.  Telea, for her part, was gasping for air around his choking grip on her neck.

“Well, Jayson Vice?” said Confidence.  “Do you want to save your bitches, and have an easy death?  Or do you have another witty counter-offer?”

“Listen,” said Vice.  “You don’t need to kill me.  Just… take the women.  I’ll move somewhere else on the planet, far away from you. I won’t leave, I won’t share your secrets, and you’ll never see me again.  You can enjoy my bitches.  Just spare me.”

Amy gasped.  “Master!” she said, in an agonised tone.  “No!  I love you!  We love you!  You can’t leave us!  Please!”

The note of betrayal he heard in her voice tore at Vice’s heart.

Cunt made a low, sad, animal noise.  She believed in serving any male, yes – but even so, she had her preference.  She had come to love Vice.

Confidence laughed.  “I knew you didn’t deserve to own bitches such as this, Vice,” he said.  “Your cowardice is entirely unsurprising.”

The Galliard paused – and then he spun and fired his gun down into the camp itself.  There was an explosion of sparks and hissing.

Vice turned to follow Confidence’s aim – and saw Rospar.

Or rather, what had once been Rospar.  The robot’s head and central processing unit were a mess of scrap.  The robot’s arms held a blaster, which it had been aiming at Confidence.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice your robot, Jayson Vice?” said Confidence.  “It’s not exactly stealthy.  Was this what you were buying time for?  Was this your deception?”

Vice swallowed.  Rospar had just been a machine – but he had also been a loyal companion.  He had significantly contributed to the survival of all the castaways.  To see him smouldering and defunct brought a wave of sadness and horror over Vice.

But not as much horror as the progressively quieter choking noises Telea was making as Confidence slowly fucked and strangled her.

He swallowed, and tried to compose himself.  Because Vice had seen something that Confidence hadn’t – the flare of rocket engines high in the sky overhead.

The Guild Ship Hartego Bay had begun its descent.

And if vice had seen that, then Rospar had seen that.  

And if Rospar, having seen that, had nevertheless been *inside* the camp, at this hour, then that meant…

“Damn you,” he swore at Confidence.  “You know if I could kill you, I would.”

Confidence laughed again.  “But you cannot.  Enough stalling, Jayson Vice.  You didn’t really intend to abandon your bitches , did you?”

“No,” admitted Vice.  “I was just buying time.”

“Then it is over,” said Confidence.  “You have played your last card.  Tell your bitches to drop their weapons.”

“Amy, Cunt – put your guns down,” said Vice.  He threw his own gun to the floor.  “He’s right.  It’s over.  You should at least live.”

“Master…” said Amy, in a tortured voice.

“Girls, I need you to trust me,”  he said.  “You need to trust me – and you need to remember that you’re too brainless to think for yourselves.  Let me do the thinking.  Put down your guns.”

There was a long pause – and then they did.

Confidence smiled.

“Excellent,” he said.  “Any last words, Jayson Vice?”

“Just one,” said Vice.  “You have helped me teach my girls that they are bitches.  It’s a very important lesson, because learning that they are bitches means learning that they are animals, less than human, designed for breeding, and that they need an owner to control them.”

“That is correct,” said Confidence.

“But bitch also has another meaning,” said Vice.  “One I think you’ve forgotten.”

“And what is that?” said Confidence.

“An unpleasant, difficult woman, prone to disrespect, violence and aggression,” said Vice.

And that was when Victoria rose up behind Confidence and brought a large piece of ship hull down on his head with all the strength she could muster.

Rospar had helped carry her in from outside when he detected the Hartego Bay’s descent, exactly as Vice had ordered.  That was why Rospar had been back in the camp and free to menace Confidence.

Victoria’s blow was hard, but perhaps not hard enough to kill a Galliard on its own.  Confidence’s eyes crossed, and he let go of Telea.  She felt to the ground with a thud that hopefully wasn’t too damaging, twisting Confidence’s dick painfully as she fell off it and making him howl and clutch his groin.

Clutching his groin took two hands.  Vice seized Telea’s blaster from him raised the nozzle, and fired.

The shot went straight through Confidence’s neck.  

The Galliard gurgled, fell to his knees – and died.

The battle was now finally, truly, won.

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