Tamed by the Alien Overlords Page 8

  “I… I will personally interrogate my prisoners,” I said, brainstorming out loud, my mind racing to come up with a suitably convincing answer to the question. “I will do whatever must be done to compel my prisoners to lead us to the other bases in Atlanta. I will offer favorable work assignments. I could even offer some their freedom-”

  “Preposterous!” cut in the ancient Adjudicator. “How will we look if we start setting resistors free? Weak, that’s how!”

  “We will look merciful,” I urged, “and others will see that cooperation with us can bring great benefits!”

  “What nonsense! What drivel!” The old Adjudicator was working himself into a rage, now. “You have human sympathies unbecoming to an officer of your station, Captain!”

  He was about to continue.

  But the grand admiral interjected.

  “I have come to a decision,” he said. “We will postpone any debate of the bombardment of Atlanta for the foreseeable future.”

  Shocked murmurs raced around the table.

  “I suspect that our gallant, human-loving captain will probably fail,” Ketoman continued. “But his words have convinced me to let him try. Perhaps he will think of a way of overcoming the resistance which our intelligence service has not thought of. There is little harm in trying something new - especially if it ends up working.”

  Relief surged through my body. I immediately offered the Grand Admiral a crisp salute, one closed fist thumping into my chest, directly over my heart.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said earnestly.

  “Thank me by doing exactly what you’ve said you will do,” Ketoman said with a wry smile. “We simply cannot suffer the human resistance forever. One way or another, we will put an end to it.”

  I bowed to the council. Ignoring the daggers which the adjudicators and intelligence officers were glaring at me.

  Lenth, Sandora and I ended our transmissions, our minds blinking back to our physical bodies in our personal quarters.

  For a few moments, nobody spoke.

  “Go ahead,” I said with a sigh.

  “Well… I mean, you probably know what I’m going to say here,” Lenth said.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  What Lenth was referring to, what was so obvious that it really didn’t need to be said… was that I had absolutely no idea how to find the remaining resistance bases. I’d claimed that I could… but I’d really only been thinking about buying some time for the city of Atlanta. The truth was that my ship’s small intelligence team had gotten extremely lucky in finding the first one. Being able to duplicate that feat - as many times as it took to truly shut down the Atlanta resistance - was going to be no easy task.

  It might even prove to be impossible.

  Now that I had put my reputation on the line by making a boastful claim before the sitting council, I suddenly felt the magnitude of my task rear up before me.

  I was no intelligence officer. My profession was war, not spycraft or interrogation.

  “Maybe your notable lack of experience will allow you to approach the situation with a fresh perspective?” Sandora offered.

  “Exactly,” I said. A bit too emphatically.

  A few more moments of silence passed.

  Eventually, we found ourselves sitting in our lounge area, pondering our task. For it was our task. An honor guard is sworn to protect not just the physical safety of their charge, but their charge’s interests and goals as well.

  We discussed strategy. Potential rewards for cooperation. Potential punishments for non-compliance. Whether or not any resistance-affiliated human would ever even believe us if we told them that the fate of the entire city of Atlanta depended on their cooperation. We tried to think of an approach that no intelligence officer had tried before.

  We didn’t succeed.

  Until, that is, Lenth broke yet another long silence.

  “Well…” he said, before trailing off.

  “What?” I demanded. I was open even to bad ideas at that point.

  “We… could always start with the women,” he said.

  It took me a long minute to take his meaning.

  When I did, I rolled my eyes.

  “This is no time for jokes,” I snapped. “Someday, we will find our mate, and we will know the pleasures of a woman’s flesh and heart. But until then-”

  “That’s actually not a terrible idea,” Sandora said. “At least, in theory.”

  I paused. Furrowed my brows.

  “Interrogation by seduction?” I asked. That couldn’t work.

  Could it?

  “Maybe,” Lenth said. “I mean, you’ve heard the stories. Once you tame a mate properly, she becomes like an extension of your own will. If it works so well on the women we can mate with, why wouldn’t it work on all human women?”

  “It very likely would,” Sandora said. “Speaking strictly from a biological perspective.”

  Yet another moment of silence.

  It was... crazy.

  But I couldn’t deny the logic of it.

  “It’ll work,” said Lenth. “I have it on very good authority that those stories are all true. It’s only natural for a Domann man to dominate his mate’s sex. But these human women… it’s almost like they were made for it. I’ve got friends in other branches of the military who’ve told me that there’s something about us Domann that they just can’t resist. Like we’re especially attractive to them. Add in some training and plenty of orgasms, and any human woman you want will be eating out of your hand in days. Trust me, this is our best move.”

  I thought about it.

  Frowned.

  “It’s not that simple,” I said. “Have either of you actually read any of the articles or manuals on the taming and training of a human mate?”

  Lenth and Sandora shook their heads.

  “Pain and pleasure are certainly powerful motivators,” I said. “But it is well known that human women are creatures of deep and complex emotions. Among many other things, the training materials are all adamant that significant interpersonal bonding is required to truly bend a human woman to one’s will. As is having very frequent, very forceful sex with them.”

  Both Lenth and Sandora looked taken aback at that. Sandora frowned.

  “Are either of you willing to give yourselves to a woman who isn’t your mate?” I asked.

  Neither answered.

  Domann mating tradition, since time immemorial, was to save one’s first sexual experience for the one who will be their mate for life. As that all-important primary relationship grew strong, many Domann couples freely practiced polyamory. But philandering before taking a mate was harshly frowned upon in all strata of Domann society - and for good reason. The emotional bond between mates should rightly be placed above all else in life, as it is the foundation upon which all of society rests. And the forging of that bond is made infinitely stronger when both parties are exploring their sexual selves for the first time, together.

  Sadly, and fascinatingly, many of the human mates that had already collected had already experienced sex; predictably, humanities’ wildly fragmented culturescape was just as wildly contradictory on the subject of socially appropriate and desirable sexual behavior. However, the fact that human females who’d experienced sex were proving no less susceptible to being tamed and trained than those who were virgins was driving a robust debate in Doman society, a debate that questioned the value of saving one’s first sex for their primary mate.

  Yet, my desire for my bond with my eventual mate to be as strong as possible had led me to conclude that I would wait for them. Life was long. There would be time to explore my sexuality with partners beyond my primary mate after I’d found her. After I’d tamed her. Trained her.

  Made her mine in every way imaginable.

  “It’s worse than that,” Sandora said. “If memory serves, we’ve got over a hundred female interrogation candidates.”

  “I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I intend for the fi
rst time I have sex to be with my mate. If we already had one, that might be one thing. But we don’t.”

  “Actually,” said Sandora, “there’s a really good chance that we do. We’ve already collected blood samples from every female prisoner, and we’ve processed almost fifteen percent of them. If that signal we received just before we took down the resistance base was genuine, then we already have our mate in our custody. We just don’t know who she is yet.”

  I frowned.

  “You’re right,” I said, “but there’s always the chance that signal was a misread, or some transmission error.”

  “A small chance… but, time will tell,” said Sandora. “But if our mate is one of the female interrogation candidates, then interrogation by sexual domination might actually work. On one of them, anyway.”

  “Besides,” said Lenth, “we don’t necessarily have to have sex with them in order to break them. There are nearly infinite ways of giving a woman pain, and even more ways of giving one pleasure. Even if we stop short of sex, a strict mate-training regimen could loosen a few tongues.”

  Nobody said anything after that.

  We were all too deep in thought.

  It seemed… crazy. Unseemly. We were essentially talking about personally training a hundred human women as if we were mated to each and every one of them. That was no small endeavor. Taming and training a human mate entailed more than just sex. Humans had to be educated in Domann history and culture. Most of them needed to be broken of their mindless resistance to being subjugated in any way. And the deep emotional bonds that truly defined the Domann-human mate relationship took time to properly form.

  “One thing’s for sure,” I said. “I doubt that this has ever been tried before.”

  “It hasn’t,” said Lenth. “I’ve actually been thinking about this for a while now… so, I checked into it. We’ve never gained much intel from the women who become our mates. But only a couple of them had ever belonged to the resistance before, and none of those had the rank to know anything anyways. So it kind of makes sense that nobody has ever thought of training non-compatible women as mates, for the sole purpose of obtaining intelligence.”

  I tried to think of a reason why this was a stupid idea.

  I thought of too many to voice.

  So instead, I tried to think of a reason why this definitely wouldn’t work.

  Nothing sprang to mind.

  “Could it be so… I don’t know… obvious?” I asked. “So… risque?”

  “There’s certainly one way to find out,” Lenth said with a grin.

  I permitted myself a chuckle.

  If we tried this... tried to extract intel on the human resistance through the sexual domination of some of its female members - and to be honest, we really didn’t have any better ideas - it would go one of exactly two ways.

  “If it works,” I said, “it could put an end to the human resistance once and for all. On the other hand, if it fails… and our superiors find out about our, uh, methods….”

  “Then we’ll be lucky if we only become laughingstocks,” Sandora finished. “Hell, I could see how something like this could be cause for censure.”

  “Maybe we should test this approach,” said Lenth. “Pick, I don’t know, five or six of our female captives. There must be a way to determine which ones would be the easiest to tame. And if it doesn’t work, we could keep it from getting back to our superiors much more easily than if we tried it with all of them.”

  “That would also allow us to concentrate our efforts,” said Sandora. “Spreading ourselves too thin would only result in us training a hundred women badly. And that probably won't help us at all. By picking a handful, we would have a chance to develop the rapport, beyond the strict hierarchical structure, that a true mate relationship requires. With what we know about human women, that approach might actually be a lot more effective than trying to tame every single one of them anyways.”

  That was the moment I actually started to believe that taming captured women, training them in the ways of being the mate of a Domann, might actually produce some actionable military intelligence.

  Because my mind reached back to when I’d publicly punished that beautiful human soldier.

  Many human women needed to be conditioned to take pleasure from pain. But that one had seemed to love my punishment out of pure instinct.

  And if she did… might others as well?

  “Ok,” I said. “We’re going to try this. We’re going to tame human women as mates, in order to find out what they know about the human resistance. But we can’t be blind to the risks to ourselves. We’ve all read the reports of Domann who get too close to human women, only to abandon their service to live their life with a woman they come to love. If we engage in the taming of human women… we can’t allow ourselves to become emotionally attached to them. No matter how much we might enjoy the process. We have to remember that they are not our mates. This will be an exercise in intelligence gathering. Nothing more. Of course, all taming entails seduction and emotional bonding. But we can’t let that get in the way of our service to our race. We are doing this not only to protect a large human city, but ultimately to promote unity between human and Domann, that both our species might thrive in harmony. We are not doing this for our own pleasure. If any of us becomes too emotionally attached to any of the subjects we attempt to train, we will stop this experiment immediately. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal,” said Lenth.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Sandora.

  “Good,” I said. “With that settled, I see no reason to delay this little experiment of ours. You two come up with a list of the five female prisoners who might be most susceptible to being tamed. As for me… I already know exactly who I’m going to start with.”

  Chapter 14

  Liza

  At first, all I could see through the opening was… nothing. No light came through it.

  Then a form emerged into my cell.

  A drone.

  It was larger than me, and obviously weighed more, despite its oblong body hovering neatly above the ground.

  I stared at it. It… maybe stared at me? It was hard to tell, since it didn’t exactly have a face.

  Suddenly, arms began to protrude from its chrome chassis.

  At the end of one arm was a small, thin, razor-sharp looking blade.

  At the end of another was a wickedly long, thick needle, attached to a syringe, in which was some mysterious dark green liquid.

  At the end of another was a sort of fork. As I watched, the occasional spark of electricity flared to life from it.

  At the end of another was some sort of heating element. There was no flame, but it began to glow red as I stared.

  A depthless horror opened up under my feet. Began swallowing me whole.

  A voice came from… nowhere? Everywhere?

  “We know that you have information,” it said. “We know that you can tell us what we want to know.”

  That voice… rang a bell. Though I couldn’t place it.

  Silence followed.

  Despite my sudden urge to terror-vomit, I managed to stand.

  I’ve heard other resistance soldiers tell stories about being tortured. Even though they all said that the Domann never caused real injury to their prisoners, one and all had been adamant that it really didn’t matter how much you resisted. No matter how much pain you could take, no matter how tough you were, everybody had a breaking point. That point where you lose control of yourself. Where you’ll say anything you think they want to hear.

  I didn’t know where mine was.

  But I sure as hell intended to find out, and to face my fate on my feet, for as long as I damn well could.

  “You know what?” I asked aloud, addressing the robot, even though it struck me as only a tool. “I do know. I know everything. What I know could end this war today. And I’ll scream my throat to ribbons, I’ll die from the pain, before I ever tell anything to a slimebag alien.”<
br />
  The voice, which seemed to come from the room itself, chuckled.

  “Then it’s a good thing we’ve decided to break you in a... less traditional, fashion.”

  I blinked. Not knowing how to respond to that.

  As I stood there, wondering what the hell was happening, the drone retracted all its arms.

  Then, it… left.

  Just floated right back through the door it had come in through.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh from my belly or sob with relief.

  I ended up doing neither.

  Because I still didn’t know what was going to happen.

  Another door opened. A different one, this one along the wall behind me.

  And in walked the last person I’d been expecting.

  Him.

  The Domann who’d punished me so thoroughly, so publicly, so shamefully.

  “I’m glad to see you again,” he said.

  That shocked me. The casualness of it. The… shit, the politeness of it.

  Right away, I noticed that his eyes had changed color. They were a dark, regal purple now. His skin was a deeper shade of blue as well, just slightly, and his long hair, which had previously fallen loosely around his face and neck, was now tied into a tight, exotic top knot. He wore one of his Domann kilts, but a different style than the one I’d seen him in last. Per usual for the Domann, his gloriously muscled torso and chest were bare.

  As if on display.

  I caught myself staring at them.

  Forced myself to turn away.

  However, before I did, and despite my dire circumstances... I just couldn’t help but notice that the kilt he wore now was a noticeably tighter fit than the last one. Which had the effect of better showing off his thick thigh muscles and tight butt.

  “You the asshole who’s brave enough to torture a helpless prisoner?” I asked. I’d managed to put a fair measure of disdain in my voice, and for a moment, let myself feel proud of that. It was one thing to picture how badass you’d be if the enemy ever caught you. It was quite another thing to actually be that badass once you were helpless, captive on an enemy ship, and about to be asked some very hard questions.