Chapter 18: Leader Of The Heard Part 1

Chris answered the knock on the vehicle's door like a teenager caught masturbating in the shower. "Just a minute!"

The powersuit was still in the charger. The knocking came again and Chris twitched. He was naked. Unprotected. He yanked the powersuit out of the charger and stretched it, still warm, over his body.

READY blinked the icon in his HUD, and Chris sighed. There was plenty of juice in the fuel cells to keep him invulnerable. Nearly invulnerable.

When he was sure he was properly godlike and spear-proof, Chris opened the door.

And was immediately glad.

"Ginger Princess!" Or maybe he should be worried. "Look, uh, about last night..."

She raised a pale eyebrow and slid past him. LED-light shot sparks across her red hair and the metal cover of the tray she carried.

"Last night was great. Very..." Chris turned to follow her swaying hips, "intense. But you have to understand, I can't take the powersuit off...um."

She folded gracefully onto the floor, tray in front of her, looking up at him with wide blue eyes.

"It's just I'm not entirely sure about your motives." Chris knew he was looming, but wasn't sure how to stop. Maybe if he sat down on the floor, too? "Because, okay, you might be swept away by my godly majesty. Or you might be trying to get me out of my powersuit so you can kill me."

She spoke with careful emphasis. "Aye bee-ring wai-ow fow-wod."

Chris shrugged helplessly. "You certainly aren't attracted to me for the sparkling conversations we have together."

Rolling her eyes, Ginger Princess lifted the cover off the tray to reveal a set of little spoons, two clay pots, and a stack of pancakes.

"Oh," Chris said, "you were telling me you brought breakfast."

"Brek-fest."

"What did you say?"

"Brek-fest," Ginger Princess repeated. "Aye bee-ring wai-ow brek-fast."

"'I bring you breakfast'?" Chris stared. "Oh, hell. I can't teach you English. We haven't even done the Tarzan Jane thing yet."

She looked at him with an expression of strained patience.

Feeling self-conscious, Chris slapped his chest. "Chris," he said.

"Chris," she smiled and placed her hand on her own much prettier chest. Ginger-P was wearing a sort of toga or sari today, except it wasn't made of cloth, but dangling strips of leather. They hung off and between her breasts, always almost, but never quite, revealing the skin underneath. God, it would be really, really nice if she wasn't out to kill him.

Oh, and she'd just said her name.

"What?" said Chris.

She spoke again.

Chris shook his head. He couldn't even figure out where to begin with that rapid-fire rattle of syllables.

Ginger-P.'s smile grew strained. She made a motion like she was writing something on her hand.

"Oh, you want something to draw on?" Chris blinked into his HUD and the vehicle's projectors flickered to life. "Just a sec." He found and blinked at the icon. The drawing program was standard with everything, apparently, even the operating systems of time machines.

The air between them turned cloudy. "Watch." Chris spread his fingers for the cameras to track, pointed and dragged his finger through the cloud. It left a dark line. "Pretty cool, huh?"

Chris was hoping for a little bit of wonder and awe, but Ginger Princess only nodded, as if she expected nothing less. She passed her finger through the holographic cloud.

"An oval," Chris said, "the sun? A flower? Are those petals? Petals with claws? An octopus with six arms? A bug?"

One protuberance got two little dots for eyes, and the oval body of the animal got a hexagon pattern.

"A turtle?"

The princess pointed at the drawing, then at herself.

"Your name is Turtle?" Chris shrugged, trying to mimic a Turtle in its shell. "Turtle?"

"Tur-tlee," she said, nodding. But her name wasn't just Turtle. There was another part, much more complicated, and Chris couldn't get it from the girl's gestures. "Reading Turtle?" "Book Turtle?" "Impatient Turtle?" Who the hell knew?

Ginger Princess, or rather Turtle, rubbed her forehead and sighed. Giving up on her name, she gestured at the tray. "Brek-fest?"

So maybe Chris wasn't such a bad language teacher after all. "That's right. And this is a pancake," he picked one up, "or maybe more like pita-bread?"

"Pee-ta?"

"Bread."

"Pee-ta?" She frowned, "Bar-ed?" Before Chris could clarify, Turtle pulled the lid off one of the pots and passed it to him.

"Jam." Chris sniffed. "Or...chicken? Meat jelly?"

"Meet-jlee." She showed him how to use the little spoon to spread the jelly on his bread, and held up the other, smaller pot.

The stuff inside this one looked like applesauce and smelled like..."Ugh!" Chris pulled his nose away. "Butter and vomit? What the hell is that? No, I don't want any."

Turtle said something that was probably an explanation, but it wasn't as if knowing what this stuff was would make it taste better. "I'll have my breakfast meat-jelly-pita without stench-sauce, thank you."

"Brek-fest," she muttered to herself, "brek-fest meet-jlee pee-ta."

"Damn straight." Chris rolled the pita in a burrito-shape and took a bite. It was good, if a little gritty and bland. He was half-way through the thing before he noticed that Turtle wasn't eating. She was just staring at him.

"Something I can," Chris swallowed, "do for you?"

Turtle nodded eagerly and reached between the leather strips around her hips.

Chris smiled. "What do you have for me, huh? Some little - "

She flourished a dagger as long as Chris's hand.

Chris's enhanced flinch shot him off the floor like a scalded cat.

WEAPON IDENTIFIED. INITIATE COUNTERMEASURES?

Chris blinked NO before the suit could snatch the knife and break Turtle's hand. "What the hell - "

The girl flipped the dagger over and held it out to him, handle-first. She spoke softly as she scooted towards him.

Chris wiped the remains of the pita-burrito off his hand and took the knife. "Okay? What should I do with it?"

She mimed the action.

"Weird, but okay." Chris grasped the handle in one hand and the blade in the other and bore down. His powersuit stiffened and the bronze blade bent neatly in half.

Turtle jumped up, clapping and bouncing.

"So," said Chris, enjoying the spectacle "what was that for? Some sort of symbolic - "

She grabbed him and kissed him.

The ruined dagger clanged on the plastic floor.

Well, why shouldn't Chris kiss her back? Chris was a god to Turtle. She probably thought he was doing her a favor.

She didn't resist when Chris's hands came up to her breasts. No, she pressed against him, moaning. Her little hands slid down the ridged plastic of his powersuit, past his stomach. If only Chris wasn't wearing the powersuit, he might be able to feel something down there.

She said something with the intonation of a question.

Chris swore. What the hell was he supposed to do? Not have sex with the hot princess?

She asked another question.

"Look, I'm sure you're a nice girl, but," Chris shrugged helplessly, "I'm kind of afraid you'll have me executed. You want me to mime that out for you?"

She folded her arms, and her dangly garment suddenly became a lot more interesting.

"Look, I told you. There is...nothing I would like to do more than strip out of this powersuit," Chris hooked a finger into the collar of his suit and pulled, "but it isn't safe. I remember Dr. Yang."

Turtle's pale brows came down.

"Look, I'm sorry - "

But the princess was smiling. She called out the open door of the Hilbert Space vehicle and a soldier appeared, carrying not a spear, but a wooden board.

"Uh," said Chris, "I'm not exactly into spanking..." He saw the hinge in the board and the three holes for hands and neck. "...or whatever this is."

But of course they couldn't understand him. The soldier placed Turtle's arms and head in the device. He turned a key in the lock and, blank-faced, handed the key to Chris.

Chris looked at the key in his hand and at the retreating back of the armored servant. "Look, princess," he said, but she walked past him deeper into the vehicle and kneeled on the floor. Her hands dangled on either side of her head. Helpless. At his mercy. Chris licked his lips and commanded the vehicle door to shut.

This was a hell of a bad idea. Turtle might not be able to physically attack him, but Chris had no idea how having sex with her would change things. The dangling strips of leather parted over her waist, exposing milky, freckled thighs. Oh, who cared what happened, or how things changed? Chris was the one with godly technology. What were they going to do to him?

Turtle said something and twitched aside some more strips. She wasn't wearing anything under there but a sort of thong woven from what looked like human hair. Well, of course it would have to be, given the fact that humans were the biggest Maastrichian mammals around. Chris could easily slip that down.

Chris still needed to rescue Andrea and get out of here. But he couldn't focus on those goals all the time. Turtle wanted this. He wanted it. And Chris deserved something to take the horror out of the last couple of days.

Chris deserved a good morning.