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"You are the kindest person I know," said Danny.
Relain made a mouth-click that meant dismissal, her upper wings rattling slightly against her carapace. "I am soft-hearted," she said. "I cannot abide to see you suffering. That is not the same thing as being kind."
There were times when it was hard to remember that Relain wasn't human, and there were times when the gap was completely clear. "That's what being kind is," said Danny. It was an argument that they'd had before. "And three hundred credits for fighting something that's half a meter tall? That's enough to get back to Earth, free and clear, with a little extra for my friends."
She looked at the display. Whoever the exotic was, it was making a real mistake signing up for Station 18's arena. Height wasn't everything, obviously, but it was something, and half a meter wasn't enough height for fighting in an arena. Danny would control the range, she'd control the distance. Maybe it'd score a hit or two with that whip it carried. Danny had taken plenty of hits from things bigger than that, and she had the scars to show it.
What she hadn't done was taken three hundred credits for a single fight, and if it hadn't been for Relain cluing her in that there was a fight like that coming up, one of the other fighters would've taken the exotic's stake, and she would've been stuck on Station 18 for another year, doing odd jobs and warehouse management and trying not to spend more than she made, and failing, because odd jobs and warehouse management drove her to drink.
She rotated the picture of the exotic again. Half a meter tall, grayish fur, wide, batlike ears. Strange eyes; faceted and golden, with what looked like three parallel stripes across, and one going down. There wasn't anything in particular that it looked like. Relain looked a bit like a wasp. Not much like a wasp, but when it'd been a year since Danny had seen anything from Earth except people and the occasional pet, a lot of things looked like the things that she hadn't seen and wanted to see.
The exotic was female. Mammalian in some outer degree. Small breasts, furred tail. Female enough to be listed as female, anyway, with big hands in proportion to her body. Whatever the exotic was, it'd come from somewhere well outside the oikoumene, and its motives were. . . could be it needed a win as badly as Danny did. Wasn't going to get it.
"Perhaps," said Relain hesitantly, "it might be wise to see what the base's files have to say about her, and her type?"
"If I could afford it, sure," said Danny. "If I could afford it, I wouldn't have to pummel aliens to afford a trip home."
"Yes, but," said Relain, "she is. . . perhaps allow another challenger to see her first, so that you might adjust your strategies to--"
"Relain," said Danny. "She's a half a meter tall. Her arms are what, thirty centimeters long? I take a step back, she'll have to take a bus to catch up to me."
"A bus?" asked Relain. "That is not one of the objects that is allowed in the fighting arena"
"Forget it," said Danny. "Figurative language. There's a reason why I don't take fights against things that are three meters tall, and there are reasons why something a half meter tall shouldn't fight people who are one point eight. If I let other fighters take it on, it's going to realize that it can't win, and I want to get its money before it figures that out."
Relain clacked her wings. There wasn't any reason to be worried about this fight, but at the same time, she worried, because she was kind and worried about her friends.
Most fights in the arena were for arena stakes. Pitmaster put a couple dozen credits up, people paid a half-credit each to watch the fight. Winner took home the couple dozen credits in the purse and five percent of the take at the door, loser took her lumps and five percent of the take at the door. Danny had won more often than she'd lost, but even a win took a lot out of her. If she could fight every day, she'd be done in a month, but she was lucky if she could fight once a month.
This was personal stakes. Pitmaster paid nothing, and he didn't give up anything out of the take at the door. When Danny showed up at the arena, she could see that the pitmaster had probably pulled in five times as much as he had on her last fight, which had been against Eardo, a bullet-headed guy who had three arms and two clubs, and who'd keep smiling no matter how often Danny hit him.
Eardo was human—that third arm was an implant. Danny had won that fight by busting his knee, and then hitting him from range until he signaled defeat. He was in the stands, along with half of everyone else in Station 18, between two Khelmar women. He had an arm around each and a beer in his third hand; he raised it up to Danny with that eternal smile.
If everyone wanted to watch her beat the snot out of some exotic, she'd beat the snot out of some exotic. Danny went into the arena, lifted her staff in her salute. The crowd's roar was loud, and was . . . maybe not everyone there had seen her fight, but enough of them did to know that she'd come there to fight, every time she went out on the sands. They were happy to see her, and ready to see what came next.
Danny stretched, tested the weight of the staff, the sands of the arena. It was a luxury, but the same Khelmar culture which kept arenas legal meant that somewhere with fake sand would get a smaller crowd than somewhere with real sand, and an arena without sand wouldn't get a license at all. It wasn't a thick layer of sand. She could feel the decking plate under the sand, and that was for the best. A deep layer of sand might make Khelmar fight-fans happy, but it would slow people down. If she was going to control the distance, she was going to need to move.
The number of people in the stands, the edge to their cheers. . . maybe it was going to be a real fight, after all. Danny didn't see how, but she'd staked herself against the exotic's three hundred credits, so she wasn't going to take any chances. Hit early, hit hard. Maybe let the whip hit her, and pull it out of her opponent's hand when it wrapped her arm. Or just make sure that she didn't take chances, and end the little exotic.
It was harder to maintain that resolution when the exotic came out, to the cheers of the crowd. She looked less mouselike than she had in the hologram; her face was too long and too sharp, more like a fox than a mouse, and it'd been the gray of her fur that had reminded Danny of a mouse. Holos missed some things, even though they were supposed to be perfect representations. The height and weight though--those were required to be accurate, and those were accurate. Whatever she was, she was too small to be in the arena with a human.
It'd be a story to tell, anyway. Danny's grip on her staff tightened, and the first tone of the arena whistle sounded; by the third tone, she was out of her guard position, bringing the staff down hard and fast enough to end the fight.
Only the exotic wasn't there. She sidestepped, just to the left of where Danny's staff hit the sand, sending up a spray that. . . Danny turned the strike into a sweep, but the exotic avoided that with a little hop, again, just enough to clear the sweep. Then she turned away from Danny and bowed to the audience, neatly avoiding the sweep of Danny's staff.
The crowd's cheers were mixed with laughter. Danny took two steps back, well out of range, tried to figure out how it was . . . she wasn't far enough out of range. The exotic darted forward, and the whip lashed out for the first time.
The rules said that it was just a whip. If she'd wanted, Danny could've examined it before the fight. Braided hide thong, bone handle, sized for the exotic's hands, which were large in proportion to her body, but still pretty small. It was a whip, not something with an energy discharge or with blades hidden in the tip or anything like that. That wasn't what it felt like. The tip of the whip hit the inside of Danny's wrist, and it hurt worse than any time she'd been cut or burned or anything.
Danny screamed, scrambling backward to the wall of the arena, holding her staff in front of her with her good hand, trying to keep the exotic back; it was just standing there, but it moved fast, too fast, she couldn't lower her guard, not even for an instant. She looked down at her wrist, expecting it to be bleeding so badly that she'd. . . the whip hadn't cut her skin at all. It had hit some nerve cluster, and it had hit it so precisely that Danny had been sure she was going to bleed out without medical attention.
It was bad. Very, very bad. The crowd was cheering and the pitmaster was watching with his usual impassive expression, and the gates to the arena were locked, and they'd stay locked until the pitmaster decided the fight was over. Danny tried to flex her wrist, tried to work feeling back into her fingers. That whip. . . .
The exotic turned back to her. It was still small, too small to be a threat. It was going to win. It'd bet three hundred credits on a sure thing, and Danny had bet her life on a sure thing. One of them was going to lose. Danny tried to work some feeling back into her wrist, tried to see some way out.
The exotic chittered at her, and Danny took a two-handed grip on her staff. She tried to make it look like her left wasn't as strong as it actually was. The exotic's eyes took her in, those dark stripes across the golden facets completely unreadable.
Danny couldn't even tell where the exotic was looking. She bowed to the crowd to the left, to the right, but some of the facets in her eyes were still facing Danny.
The whip came out again, lightning fast. Danny had been planning. . . but it wasn't aimed at her, exactly. It snapped in the air in front of her, cracking loud, making her jump, just a little, instinctively. It gestured to her, making a motion, and then making it lower, against the sands of the arena.
Was she. . . was she telling Danny to put down her staff? Things had gone badly, and they were going badly, and Danny knew that the exotic was trying to get her angry. But seriously? One hit with a whip, and the exotic thought that ended the fight?
The whip lashed out again, and this time Danny rolled under it; it just grazed the front of her shirt as she dove. Staff in the left hand, other hand open. Hit it and grab it and just fucking smash the fucking thing into the arena wall behind her.
Only it wasn't where she was grabbing. Danny got a face-full of sand, kicked up in her face. She spun around, her staff twirling in her hand, as she tried to find the exotic, as it found her; the whip hit again, at just the right time, and the staff spun out of her hand. And she discovered that when the whip had grazed the front of her shirt, it had cut it open, waist to collar, even though it hadn't touched her skin at all.
The next few minutes were. . . it was impossible. Every move she made was far too slow. The exotic anticipated, avoided, sliced at her with her whip. Danny went through furious to frightened to halfway resigned, in a few quick minutes, as the exotic didn't just beat her--it demonstrated how thoroughly it had beaten her, in a half-dozen ways.
The whip was just a whip. Braided hide and bone handle. But the exotic used it like a scalpel and like a hammer, and then like shackles. She'd wind it around Danny's wrist, pull her down, wrap the other end around Danny's ankle, bow to the crowd as Danny tried to struggle loose. Then she'd slap her in the face, jump up onto her back, across it, grabbing the handle as she passed, the whip unwinding in an instant when Danny hadn't been able to loosen it at all. Then back to the pain points, when Danny didn't do what she was told, when Danny tried to pick up the staff that she'd spent half her life training with.
Pain points and riding Danny like a half-tamed horse, and those little bows to the crowd, those little gestures that showed that not only was she winning, but that there hadn't even been a real challenge at all, until Danny was kneeling on the sands, hands behind her back, short, painful cuts on her cheek and her neck, warnings of how easy it would be for the exotic to kill her.
Then the whip cut through the compression halter that she'd been wearing under her shirt. The whip moved so fast that Danny wasn't even sure what was happening, until the fragments of her shirt fell away from her. The crowd roared its delight, as her breasts fell free of the compression halter in the shirt, and the scraps of sweat and blood-stained cloth fell loose.
Danny looked up and saw Eardo's grin, the way he whispered something into the ear of one of the Kheldar girls with her, and she saw red. She'd given up; she'd given up completely, learned the exotic's words for "sit" and "stay" and "lie down," and she'd obeyed those instructions. But it was still a fight, they were still on the arena. She was up, running for the exotic, whose back was turned. If she could grab it, she'd. . .
One strike with the whip, the exotic flicking it behind her back, which cut through the waistband of her pants and underwear. Danny pitched forward, onto the sand, and the exotic was around, behind her. Another roar from the crowd, as the exotic's hand rested briefly on her leg, light as a bird, dry and warm.
Then it was between her legs. Danny jerked up, but the whip snapped, right next to her ear, and the command for 'stay' came. She had to. . . she couldn't. The whole thing hadn't taken that long; it hadn't even been twenty minutes since she'd entered the arena, looking forward to three hundred easy credits and a trip back to earth. It'd been long enough that she froze when that whip snapped. She could twist, she could try to knock it off, but the whip told her that she'd fail, and that it would hurt to do anything other than what the exotic wanted.
The exotic's clever little fingers opened her up. Small and light and hot and dry, and it didn't take them long before they found what they were looking for. Danny twisted, trying to get away. The command to stay, the crack of the whip. She looked up at the crowd, unable to move, watching them leaning forward, seeing the hungry looks, the disgusted looks, the humans and aliens who were laughing out loud, or touching themselves. Danny looked down again, as traitorous heat started to build in response to the exotic's fingers.
Then came a command that she didn't understand. She froze. It came again, and she wept. Learning a new word hurt. The exotic could understand oikoumen well enough that it knew the rules of Khelmar arenas. Why couldn't it just tell her what it wanted? She'd given up, it could. . .
The whip lanced out, but not at her. It flicked out at the remains of her shirt, and sent one of her sleeves up into the air. Then the whip did touch her, on the underside of her arm, where she crouched on the arena sands. She gasped, and the sleeve was suddenly pulled through the air and into her mouth.
It'd been split by the exotic's whip, down the side, so that it was twice as long as it had been. Danny tried to spit it out, but the exotic pulled it tight, jerking head back up, so that she could see the stands, the sleeve a sharp line drawn across her lips. Then she loosened the tension, and Danny's head drooped back down.
The exotic had taught Danny a few words. She'd also taught Danny that she wanted to do what the exotic wanted, that failing to do what the exotic wanted would hurt more than she could bear. She didn't try to spit the sleeve out. It wouldn't work, and she'd just get hurt again. The new word again, and then a jerk back on the sleeve, pulling her head back. Relax the tension, head forward, new word, and Danny pulled her head back up on her own, which earned her a pat on her pussy. The sleeve was still in her mouth, and it was pulled taut again, as the exotic's pat turned into a caress, turned into stroking.
Another new word. Danny wasn't sure—the exotic's fingers tightened on her clit like a pair of needle-nosed pliers, pulled forward, jerked back; she screamed, tried to move with it, hoped it wasn't going to just pull it off of her. Two new words, then. One for "keep your head up," and another one for "fuck."
She didn't speak any human language, and Danny had never even seen pictures of her species, but the exotic knew humans well enough to know exactly where to use her whip, and she knew humans well enough that it didn't take long before Danny's eyes were fluttering closed, and her head drifting down, as the exotic's tiny, featherlike fingers stroked and pinched, and—there was a crack, and a searing pain, as the whip caught the edge of her neck, just below her ear. "Head up," in the alien language, and her fingers stroked Danny's clit, and Danny's hips bucked in response.
There were cheers from the crowds, and suggestions, and when Danny looked up at Eardo, one of the women with him had her hand down the front of his pants, as all three of them watched her, intent. She tried to look away, but the whip didn't let her. At least she was able to close her eyes when the exotic brought her to climax, in front of everyone who'd come to the arena, to see who was better than whom.
At some point while she'd been doing that, the pitmaster had dropped a cage into the arena. Heavy steel bars, but too small—the exotic backed her up toward it, snapping the whip in front of her face, darting forward and baring her small, sharp teeth, until Danny was halfway back into the cage. Then she turned, and did a sweeping bow to the crowd, facing away from her.
They were still in the arena. It was still a fight. If she could. . . Danny backed the rest of the way into the cage. It was impossibly tight, but there wasn't any point in pretending that she wasn't beaten. Not naked and bleeding from sharp little cuts from the whip, not with that wetness between her thighs. Not after everyone had seen what they'd seen.
The exotic turned back to her. She smiled and patted Danny's cheek. Then the cage slammed shut, trapping Danny in a space that was far too tight for her, for however long the exotic decided to keep her there. A cheer from the crowd, and then another one as the exotic picked up Danny's staff where she'd left it.
The ends of the sleeve had been tied tight around the back of Danny's head, and were then tied to the bars of the cage. She couldn't turn her head away as the exotic twirled the staff, tested its weight, and then smiled at her.
There wasn't much room in her cage. Not much room at all. Even if she was willing to risk the whip, there wasn't any way for her to get out of the way, when the exotic went around behind the cage, and put Danny's staff between her legs. It was too big, it wasn't. . . it wasn't too big, and the exotic had gotten her ready. The staff slid into her cunt to the cheers of half of the population of Station 18, and it went in deeper than she thought it could. The exotic tied it there with what was left of Danny's trousers, and when the pitmaster's crew came to clear the arena for the next fight, Danny had confirmed that she was far too thoroughly impaled to even hope about getting loose, to the delight of the crowd.
There was a repulsor under the bottom of the cage. They floated her out of the arena, naked and caged and with her staff up her cunt, out into the service passages, to one of the cargo hulls that were attached to the lower disc of Station 18. The workers were Khelmar; they'd been on shift, so they missed the fight, and it seemed that the exotic's reputation was enough that all they did was find the right cargo hold, lock the cage in the retaining clamps, and leave. Which, on the one hand, she'd been having a bad day, and didn't need to be groped by some Khelmar laborers to finish it off.
On the other hand, anyone who would keep Khelmar laborers from groping was. . . Danny didn't know what she'd gotten herself into, and didn't know what to expect. The exotic owned her—owned her contract, which meant that she was responsible for Danny's air and food and all that. After what'd happened at that fight, she was going to have a hard time getting any chance at fighting at serious purses. They'd. . . .
She had no goddamn idea what the exotic wanted. Given what she'd done to Danny, she had a guess, but it wasn't . . . well, it wasn't a guess that she wanted to make, and also, it wasn't necessarily that practical. After a fight like that, Danny wasn't going to be taken seriously enough by other fighters to be able to compete for major purses, and after a fight like that, the exotic was going to be taken far too seriously by other fighters to compete for any purses at all. So what was she going to do on Station 18? If she'd come on her own vessel, there wasn't going to be any way it was big enough to fit Danny aboard, let alone have the right sort of life support. . . .
It felt like forever, but Danny wasn't actually left alone in that hold for that long. There was the crack-hiss of the seal opening, and she tensed in her cage, as the exotic came in, with Relain behind her.
"Oh, I know," said Relain. "Not in the least surprising that you would have additional offers, of course. But I'm afraid that there is a limit to what I can afford. If our agreement is no longer—"
The exotic answered her, but it didn't use any of the words that it had taught Danny.
When Relain laughed, her upper wings buzzed. It was cute, and Danny was filled with hope that maybe Relain was going to pay off the exotic. She tried to twist so that she could see her, so that she could say something, that she could promise.
"Oh," said Relain. "It's so difficult seeing her like that; cold and frightened. Could you put something over her face, please? And also her hands. They look so frightened. And now there is also despair."
It didn't take long for the exotic to make the adjustments that Relain requested. She moved exceptionally fast, and it wasn't like Danny could go anywhere. One last, despairing look at Relain before the sack went over her head.
"There!" said Relain. "Much better." She stroked Danny's side through the bars of the cage, and Danny flinched. She couldn't help it. The follicles at the end of Relain's limbs were sharp.
"You will have to get rid of that," said Relain. She caressed Danny's ass, which made her flinch again. "You've assured me that your methods are effective. I do want her to long for my touch."
A quick gabble from the exotic.
Relain sighed. "I want her to express longing for my touch both verbally and physically, then," she said. "If there is hesitation or unwillingness, I don't want to see it. Not in this and not in any other things."
The staff that had been shoved up her cunt shifted, and Danny winced at that, tried to pull away. It was heavy, and it had been put in too deep, and then left there. It slid out roughly, and she collapsed when it was out, as much as she could collapse, in that cage. She was going to be sore for—
The follicles scraped along the length of her pussy. "This will also have to be trained," said Relain. "It will have to open a good deal wider before I am able to make proper use of it. And the anus as well, for when I am. . . for my additional purposes."
A quick gabble from the exotic.
"I have every faith in your abilities," said Relain, "and it is true that we've discussed this in advance. Please, excuse my nerves. It is all very important to me, you understand. She is to be warm and welcoming and friendly, and I do not want any trace of disobedience or unwillingness."
The exotic talked for a while, and then Relain's upper wings buzzed.
"Very well, very well. But if there are lapses, I can send her to you to reinforce her training? That is good to hear; there isn't any way I could face doing what's necessary myself. I'm far too soft-hearted. It's good to know that you're available to do what is necessary."
The follicles at the end of Relain's arm scraped along the outside of Danny's pussy again. She tried to shout at her, to beg her not to do this, but all that came out was muffled shouts.
"There, there," said Relain. "There, there. I will see you again when you are made happier."
Then she was left alone with the exotic, knowing that when the cage opened again, the work of making her act like she was happier was going to begin. And she knew that Relain had left because she was too soft-hearted to enjoy watching that work, but that she was definitely not kind, whether or not Danny was going to have to act like she was.