The Sarran Plague

Chapter 1-2

Despite their enthusiasm for their progress in the Fleet and their absorption in each other, they yearned for their fem. He and Jonal conducted relentless, meticulous psychic scans for their fem on Sarran. In their ten cycles together, the pair had worked their way into the highest ranks of the admiralty and to Brightstar. They held the Command Cruiser of Sarran Fleet, but had not yet found the fem to fill their hearts.

So, Tonas practiced the virtue of patience, knowing as he always did that the Bonding would come in time, and he tried to instill patience in his fiery counterpart, Jonal. As they traveled back to Sarran after what they believed to be the final victory over the Zyptz, they had lain in each other’s arms, passions spent, whispering of the search to come. It was time, Tonas had said, time to comb the entire planet for that one fem who would make them whole, complete them. She would revel in the love and passion only they could give her; with them, she would be complete. With her, they would be whole.

On the Bridge for arrival at Sarran, their hopes turned ashen as they beheld their home. Streaks of green slime circled the living planet. The remains of the Zyptz Warrior Bird, Ipz, floated through space. That hollow, soulless message appeared on all subspace communication channels.

Communication Console: Cycle 9432 Planting Trion, Rising 20

This is the Final Communication to the Humans from the Zyptz Cradles:

“Even now, in your flush of victory, we have sown the seeds of your defeat. We have exterminated your future. We will watch your extinction with glee.”

Supreme Leader Hanitz, Zyptz Invasion Force

It was all hideously real. Not a tree, nor a wall, nor a building was out of place. But all the fems of mating age were dead—unclaimed or part of a Triad—all were taken to the Goddess.

Tonas and Jonal had not coupled since that rising, almost as if denying their passion and joy in each other would bring back the future they had envisioned. The Sarran mourned, and the galaxy mourned with them.

After two cycles of hard work, the Alliance found a humanoid species that might ensure Sarran survival. They arrived at their destination, a beautiful blue planet its inhabitants called Earth. As they entered orbit, Tonas held some hope for the Sarran culture and people. Their future lay in the hands of the primitive race on the blue planet below.

* * * *

The elders had debated. Could these primitive fems serve to anchor a Triad? They had at last agreed that these Earth fems would be able restore the breeding stock of the population. They needed to rebuild their people, so the current generation could at least patch their broken souls with the hope that their sons would know true Triad, even if they could not. However, before the prize, came the trust of a planet new to the Galactic Alliances and suffering from a Zyptz attack. The planet’s governments had yet to let the citizens know the source of the plague that had circled their world. The only reason the Earthlings had not tried to knock them from the skies, not that they could with their primitive weaponry, was the antidote and vaccine that was offered on first contact to the most powerful and prosperous of the planet’s nation states. They were in this leader’s White House to use at his discretion. It had worked on test subjects. Now Tonas and Jonal danced the delicate minuet of negotiation.

The Leader needed the vaccine and antidote to save his population. He and his advisers also wanted advantage to maintain their country’s position as top predator in their violent world. Tonas and Jonal bargained for the survival of their own race. The Sarrans had the vaccine, the antidote, and the technology for FTLS (faster than light speed) travel. The Admirals held the winning hand, but it was necessary to play the game to the end. They tensed, anticipating the response to their last offer. The problematic issue was the trade off. Some of the Earthen fems had already unknowingly been psychically BondStirred by Sarran WarriorPairs. It was not something the Sarrans planned, it just happened. One of the pairs affected were the Admirals. The Alliance Scientists were correct. The Earthen fems were a match for the Sarrans. However, joy was short-lived for Tonas and Jonal, their connection to their fem told them she was dying. With heavy hearts, they asked to make their plea in person and planet-wide.

The White House Leader insisted on secrecy. He was afraid that his people would react with fear and violence. The Americans explained that a Triad in their culture was both a homosexual and polygamous liaison. These types of liaisons were considered indecent and immoral on most of the planet. Some of the population, the Leader explained, would react as if the women were being sold into slavery.

The Sarrans were in shock. The Sarran fem was given every care. She was the center of her Bond Pair’s universe, they explained. But on this issue, the Americans would not budge. American was the only big nation on the planet Earth still in control after the plague hit. Smaller nation states were still in control of their populace, according to Sarran reports from the ground, but with the smaller populations, the fems taken would be missed.

Jonal sat in the Starroom waiting on the signal to go ahead from Earth.. He ran his fingers through his hair. The tousled black curls just touched his shoulders. His lightly tanned complexion sported visible stubble crossing the edge of his jaw, easing around his soft lips, suggesting a heavy beard despite a recent shave. At six-foot-seven, he was shorter than Tonas, but wider through the shoulder and solid. Jonal was granite to Tonas’s steel. Massive muscle definition rippled across his shoulders and pecs, down to his washboard abs and flat stomach. His maroon flight suit, made of Nathrian leather, pulled tight across his c**k and balls. Although not as long as Tonas’s member, Jonal’s c**k was wide, the plum-colored tip a fist in heat. Knee-high black boots of the same subtle material were fitted to hard calf muscles. Navy eyes flecked with silver flashed with impatience and barely restrained anger and passion. Anya's touch on his mind had awakened him from robotic state he had assumed since the Ipz attack. He burned with returning hope, flinging back and forth through the talks from despair to hope again. He now knew the elders were wrong, the Earthen fems could Bond. As he paced the room along the star table, the tic in his jaw throbbed, stretching the line of a thin scar down the right side of his face. It was a tic his BondMate knew well, and it betrayed his impatience. The scar transformed Jonal’s face from cold beauty to vibrant male. Unlike his BondMate, he paid little attention to his appearance. His suit, although impeccable in tailoring, was rumpled and a bit unkempt. Though he could be preternaturally still in battle mode and on the Bridge, here in the StarRoom he showed his fire. Jonal's style was to trust his instincts, sizing up situations and acting rapidly. He and Tonas were the ideal command team. They balanced each other. Tonas was used to his pacing. In more light-hearted moments, Tonas had teased him about wearing a rut in the floor around the table where Jonal had paced their way through the Zyptz War. Jonal had not paced since they saw the wreckage of the Ipz on Sarran.

“Tonas, don’t they understand their fems and their planet are doomed unless they take what we offer? Don’t they care about their people, or ours?” Jonal banged the table for emphasis. He turned, looking at his Bonded, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “How do you negotiate terms for what is given away? Our Elders sprung to ill-founded conclusions, Tonas.” Jonal brushed his hair back from his face. His intense frustration was evident in his clenched jaw teeth.

“They had insufficient data to make a sound working theory,” Tonas explained.

Jonal shouted, “Our fem endures, suffering, below our boots. The longer we linger over this continent, the more intense the song that stirs our Bond. Anya is ours. We recognize her as ours. The Bond summons. Primitive or not, when our fem needs, we provide.” Jonal’s emotional anguish had merged with the siren song of fem to WarriorPair. His organ pressed against the fine leather of his flight suit. For the first time in three cycles, passion flamed. He swayed from lust to intense pain. “The sewer sucker below negotiates duplicity while sentient life lies in misery.”

Tonas, Prince of LightClan, leaned on one of the consul desks. Outwardly, he was the cooler, more deliberative of the WarriorPair, yet inwardly he seethed. Down there on that blue planet was their destiny. He felt her every whimper. He couldn’t comprehend how she held on. His loins ached and hung heavy. Tonas saw the tension in Jonal’s face. There was urgency just under the surface driving him. They shared an instinct that demanded instantaneous response to threat.

Their fem, heart of their Bond, was down there, and her life force was faint, thready. Tonas’s muscles screamed for freedom to defend, champion, fight. They could not. Neither the Galactic Alliance nor the Sarran Elders authorized war. Trade, yes. Outright bribery, if necessary, even capture, were possibilities, but not war. Tonas rose to his full height, green eyes shooting golden sparks of light.

“They fear us, Jonal,” he said, attempting appeasement. “They have just had their first taste of the Zyptz, their population decimated, and they don’t know who to trust. The Elders were arrogant in their assumption that inferior technology equaled insufficient intelligence. The intelligence is there; they need time. Geological and cosmic events forced the course of life on this sphere into rebirth more than once. The evidence lies before us on the pockmarked surface of their moon. The planet itself is still actively volcanic. They have not learned to harvest and direct the core energy. We can offer them a future free of accidental extinction, with unlimited energy. What the planet offers to us is more valuable than any known object in the universe. It offers fems—life.” He finished with a breath of bitterness.

“Goddess take me, Tonas, she’s down there and she’s ours by right of Alliance. Alliance Law extends even to this backwater of the universe. I need to take her pain away. My member is hard. I’m overwhelmed by guilt at our lust and grief for her pain. I am enraged at being herded into calumny by the roach below. I am lost. We have been one since our twentieth cycle. Ten cycles ago we pledged under a Tierest tree. Physical desire, intense need for you, for her, and I reach out with my mind and body and I’m alone. Dammit, I need you both and soon. I’m alive again. We haven’t been alive since the Ipz.” Tonas waited and watched Jonal pace around the table, caressing the inlays, straightening the wide burgundy leather chairs. The StarRoom’s carpet was well worn under the broader man’s boots. Jonal had marked this path through the Zyptz Wars. Jonal’s fingers ran through his hair and the tic in his jaw appeared more often. Those strong, blunt fingers pulled at the sleeves of his flight suit, loosened the collar. He stopped abruptly and banged the table again, his body vibrating with anger. Tonas didn’t try to calm his Bonded. Jonal’s fire was finally kindled after three cycles of suppression and focus on mission. His body vibrated for release.

“What more could they possibly want? Fems are dying, Tonas, dying. What is it going to take?”

Tonas didn’t answer; instead he grabbed Jonal and pulled him into his arms, lowering his mouth onto hungry lips. The shock of his Firefly’s taste after so long a thirst for both of them sent Tonas reeling to near climax.

“Too long,” Tonas whispered as he licked and teased his kisses across Jonal’s deep jaw line in deliberate slow appreciation of his lover’s beauty. Tonas reached the corner of Jonal’s mouth. He outlined it with his tongue. His kiss deepened. Tongue and lips became a frenzied, brutal, invading force. They dueled, sending shock waves that reached past the wet, lush cavity of mouths to engorged c***s and hardened sacs. Jonal grew long and wide against Tonas’s body. For the first time in three cycles they were lost in each other—their responsibility, for a moment, set aside. They clung to each other, hips moving in a circular motion in sync with their mouths. Lips moved over flesh, licking, biting, and marking. Jonal unfastened the panel of the uniform beneath which Tonas’s c**k lay hard and ready. He pulled, exposing the long golden spike to the air. He grabbed, pulling hard, his fist circling with his thumbnail pushing into the slit revealed with the foreskin pulled away. Jonal dropped to his knees. He used his other arm and pulled his lover’s hips toward his face. Tonas groaned as Jonal inhaled the scent of the coarse golden hair. Cinnamon, exotic spice, that feral, earthy odor his senses craved. Jonal buried his cheek against Tonas’s sac, kissing and taking each of the tight balls and rolling them inside his mouth. His left hand moved behind the sac to the heavy yellow-gold ring decorating the guiche piercing on Tonas’s perineum. It matched the white-gold piercing on his own, their personal symbol of commitment to their Bond and their love. He tugged gently, then twisted and pulled as his mouth rode his lover’s shaft. He ventured as near as he dared to the hard muscled cheeks, touching the forbidden crease where completion lay. Tonas’s hands pushed down on Jonal’s shoulders. Jonal’s mouth moved to the shaft, his tongue worried the point just underneath the area where the foreskin attached to the head. He licked the circumference.

“Goddess, your mouth. How I have missed that mouth. Please…Firefly, please…”

Jonal moved his lips down Tonas’s twitching member, planting kisses, his tongue following the pulsing, ropey veins.

“I need you…I want…oh, my love, she’s with us. I can feel her; she’s wet…Jonal,” Tonas shouted.

“Yeah,” Jonal whispered. His chest heaved and his hands shook. Sweat formed on his upper lip. He stretched his mouth over the purple c**k head, running his bottom teeth on the underside as his mouth descended down the shank. He sealed his lips, sucking, running his tongue, his throat working as it had so many times before. He felt what Tonas was feeling. He felt himself sucking and being sucked. He was Tonas, and Tonas was him. They were joined, mind to mind. They heard each other’s thoughts, and they felt each other’s senses. And now…she was there. She was wet, wanting, needing. She felt them. The link was almost complete. Almost there…