Chapter Four

Following the abortive attempt at a blowjob the alien experimented with a variety of human sexual positions. Most of these attempts failed, with the reverse cowgirl proving spectacularly impossible for the alien as it tried to bend itself back and toppled over with a loud crash. Finally the alien settled on a restrained doggy style. It finished by pulling out and ejaculating gallons of whatever pink fluid approximated semen onto the woman's back as well as the birdlike man.

The camera was set on a table and Popov entered the frame holding several towels. He lifted the woman unsteadily to her feet and began toweling her off. The alien creature began to speak and Popov just stared at it impassively, swabbing absently at the pinkish goo matting the woman's hair. He then broke into a smile and waved toward the alien as it moved out of frame. For a split second the birdlike man's hand entered the frame and then the tape cut out.

It took almost thirty seconds for Crutch to stop staring at the screen long enough to end the capture. He briefly considered what to do next and then came to the only rational conclusion.

He would post the video on the Internet.

***************

The Zed-9 class strike and interdiction cruiser Well Meaning Gesture was the top of the line in the Imperatrixian fleet. It was thirteen hundred meters of pure, sleek, and menacing firepower. Its armored black hull bristled with hundreds of turrets and lance batteries. Its reinforced spine was a moon-busting gamma cannon that drew its power directly from the ship's zero point reactors. It was a weapon capable of etching five kilometer deep canyons into the surface of a planet like earth in seconds. Its bulging underside was swollen with a swarm of interceptors, anti-shipping torpedo bombers, Imperatrixian code enforcement trooper assault craft, and cargo shuttles. Along its narrow flanks were over 100 missile projectors capable of launching an unstoppable typhoon of rockets of varying sizes and purposes. On either side of its armored bridge pod was a rank of torpedo tubes, all but one loaded with a light-jumper torpedo that could red shift beneath an enemy vessel's refracting shields and explode against the hull with the power of a sun.

The commander of Well Meaning Gesture was as formidable as the ship itself. Imperatrixian Galactic Trade Commission Enforcement Commander Maximillian Soak Xc8 was the sort of Imperatrixian that scared others of his own kind. In his environmental power armor he stood a tad over three meters tall. His soft jellylike flesh was concealed beneath the burnished black armor engraved and inlaid with intricate finery reserved for the most honored members of his species. He was nearly a millennium old, but he felt invigorated despite his age.

This was the most important assignment of his long and illustrious career, and after it was done he would retire to Imperatrix prime. There he would clime atop one of the pedestals of heroes on the avenue of the champions. He would stare out as the GTC honor guard sang the hymn of commerce, watching the sun set across the black armored towers of Capitol Capitalist. When the sun had fully set and the hymn was finished being sung, he would salute the great statue of Lord Liberitas and then flood his environment suit with neurotoxin. The poison would kill him instantly, but as his corpse withered to dust inside, his suit would forever remain locked in position among the empty husks of the greatest heroes the GTC had ever witnessed.

Maximillian snapped out of his reverie as one of his Chimopteran bonded crewmen approached his side.

"Master," it was O'Ronry, one of the higher ranking split-tongues, "we have entered the orbit you have wisely defined for us and the mimetic hunter is ready in tube six."

The mimetic hunter droid was to be their first shot fired in this planetary system. The indigenous species called their world "earth", an amusing sign of their egotism, but not one uncommon among recently encountered civilizations. Grand Delegate Memnoc had spoken highly of the emissaries of the dominant species, particularly a female that had stood her ground during negotiations. Maximillian did not care what the weak-willed Memnoc said, there should be no amiable negotiations about trade enforcement issues with such a pathetic civilization.

While Memnoc had babbled on and on about the human's "incredible potential" and "intimidating resilience" Maximillian had comforted himself by imagining a cloud of killer droids reducing every life form on earth into its component atoms. Had fate made Maximillian the Grand Delegate for this segment of the galaxy he would have snapped the human female's neck and then killed the other emissaries just to calm himself down. When Memnoc had reached the part about only sending a single hunter droid and - he was loathe to even consider it - a bounty hunter, it had taken every ounce of Maximillian's self restraint not to hurl the Grand Delegate of the nearest airlock.