It was late for me last night when I finished 'Rescue Me' and to be honest I didn't even think about one very large, glaring hole in the story. Where was Mace when Rimfire came calling? How come it was so easy for him to get Harley out of there... did the rat follow them and interrupt their steamy little love session? Hmm... well here is my answer to the gentle nudge given to me by The Third Biker Scholar - thanks by the way, hope this fulfils your enquiring mind's expectations!
Rescue me: Mace's story
He was tired. Very tired. Tired of running, tired of hiding. Tired of the company he kept. Before he had made camp in the hand-shaped rock cresting the Elysium plains he had had at least someone more lively to talk to... someone more responsive than her. But every time he had shown his face anywhere on this wretched planet he once had called home, someone would recognise him somehow, and soon he would be forced to move on again.
Even when he mixed with his own kind the whispers followed him. Mostly it was curiosity, sometimes even a little fear – he was after all notorious for his role in the Plutarkian war – but frequently this would transform into distrust, and even his old comrades would end up asking him to leave.
It had been easier when he was travelling the galaxy. His disguises were much more effective with species that did not rely on smell for identification. But all that moving around had left him exhausted and longing for a single place he could call his own, somewhere where he didn't have to wear a mask. Somewhere familiar. In the end he had decided there was only one place that would ever be, and so as soon as he was able he had taken his final trip back to Mars.
The first few nights had been tough. He had been away for so long he took some time to get his bearings. Even though the destructive intrusion from those fish-like invaders had been halted, the landscape had still altered considerably since the last time he saw the red planet. He had found himself hiding out in the deserts, the only shelter for miles being the small rock formations that cropped up here and there. But this was the only place he could go, he didn't want to be discovered wandering around the more populated areas. Not with her at his side.
They still haven't given up looking... even after ten years?
The female mouse he had taken hostage that day nearly a decade ago was his only company now. At first she had fought him; her strong will and high spirits pushed her to test him, to find his weaknesses in the hope she might exploit them. She hadn't reckoned on his own stubbornness though, and he refused to give her any leeway. As soon as he had found a place to rest for a few days, he had taken her to his bed and forced her to submit to him, using his male strength and insatiable virility to break her down, to make her accept that she was his now and that this would not change unless he willed it.
Now she doesn't scream anymore... There's no passion in her soul, nothing for me to work with, nothing for me to push back down. She might as well be dead.
Some nights he lay beside her wondering if he had been too forceful in those early days. At least when she still had the character to challenge his every move it had been far more exciting for him. Her struggles whilst he forced himself into her had aroused him far more than any female of his own kind had ever managed. Her fur was so soft compared to his species' coarse-haired pelt, and her seductive scent far more appealing. Female rats bore a much more musky odour, and hadn't evolved the means to attract a mate like the other rodent beings on this planet had. Unlike the mice, their females usually did everything in their power to keep male attention to a minimum.
I don't blame them... even for us sex is pretty rough. Must be worse for this mouse though.
Mace didn't feel a shred of sympathy for the whimpering form pinned beneath his body. As far as he was concerned, she was there to pay the price of her kindred's superior attitude to his race. Martian mice always looked down on the rats... and so when it came to a choice between slavery or death versus survival, they had taken the latter. Now the mice had a real reason to think badly of his species. They had done a deal with the devil and taken the money offered to them by the Plutarkian scum who wanted their land.
And now we live on the fringes of society, reviled by our distant kin. No matter, our time will come... we will take over this planet in the end.
After nearly a year living in the cave, this thought kept coming to him more and more frequently. It bothered him. Whilst his comrades had moved on from the war and settled down to start families, he was out here alone with a mouse. For all their similarities they were still too different to produce any form of viable offspring. Even if they had managed a hybrid, it may not have reached full term, or if it had it would have had difficulties later in life. Who knows what it would have looked like, or how their respective species would have reacted to it. It wouldn't have been worth the effort, or the heart ache. Their progeny would not have been able to have children of its own anyway.
He felt he was wasting his life out here in the desert. If he spent too long away from the colony he would find himself too old to reproduce, and would eventually die without having passed on his genes to the next generation. He yearned for that, the biological imperative that drove all living organisms, the urge to live on in another. He needed a female of his own kind, he needed the chance to claim the right to fertilise her eggs, the access point to a litter of his own.
Just one female would give him several offspring. They frequently had more than six, sometimes up to ten, although this was quite rare nowadays. Their fertility rates had fallen quite drastically since the Plutarkian invasion, and didn't seem to be showing any signs of picking up now they were gone.
At least we're doing better than those stupid mice... how do they ever expect to repopulate having only one or two kids over their whole life?
Mace was smug about this one detail. As rough as it was for their females, and despite the complexity at which their families groups operated, at least their way they could maintain their genetic diversity, giving them a better chance of surviving such a huge contraction in numbers.
But here I am stuck with that dead-eyed mouse. Is there any point to it anymore?
For several days he had brooded, musing over the lack of social interaction, wishing for the feel of one of his own against him. As nice as the mouse had been, now she was a mere bag of skin and bone. Filthy and disgusting, and of no further use to him. He wanted to leave, he wanted to seek out a mate and leave this lonely, nomadic life for good.
Then one day everything changed. He had left the cave to search for supplies, leaving his captive bound in the deepest part of the tunnel system so that she would not escape in his absence. The trip itself took a couple of days, and as he headed back towards the rock on his battered-looking motorcycle (stolen from one of the mouse-led outposts) he found himself not wanting to go back at all. Despite the negativity of his thoughts about returning to the stale-smelling cave, he would have still returned there... had it not been for something else catching his attention.
For once the desert winds were relatively calm, and as the rat pulled his worn bike over to the shelter of a small outcrop he detected something lingering on the light breeze. Something wafting enticingly across the copper sands and into his flaring nostrils. A musty scent... the distinct aroma of fertility. The perfume of a female rat in season.
As the seductive odour penetrated his sensitive nose his mouth began to water, allowing him to taste the pheromones filling the air around him.
A rat... a female rat... and she is so close... I must get to her... I must get to her before anyone else does.
What any rat was doing out here he couldn't fathom, perhaps there was a small tribe roaming the desert, eking out a life away from the disapproving glare of the Martian mouse population. Whatever. He didn't care why, he just wanted to know where.
His hormones had been triggered by the chemical message, and were rampaging through his racing blood stream, signalling to his body that it was at last the time to fight for a mate. His heart rate soared, pushing adrenalin to his muscles and testosterone to his brain, readying him for both battle and for sex.
He abandoned his resting site, and sped as fast as the dilapidated vehicle would allow to the hand-like formation on the horizon. He would have gone straight to the source of the tantalizing smell, but he had unfinished business to attend to in the cave.
He practically leapt down the concealed tunnel in his haste to conclude his dealings with the mouse. He ran down the passageway, first into his own quarters to gather all the supplies (not to mention important equipment and incriminating evidence of his activities) that he needed, before turning once more to the small cave deep inside the rock. She was still exactly where he had left her, and she gazed up at him with terror etched across her bony face, cringing into the mattress on which she huddled. Her eyes were wide in fear as he approached, no doubt afraid of what he was going to do to her next.
He bent down with the long, dull-edged blade gripped in his clawed hand, and she moaned beneath her cloth gag. She was sure this was the end this time, and she almost hoped it was.
Stupid woman... she doesn't even realise she is free.
So unfeeling was her tormentor that after he had cut her free from the ropes he did not even inform her he was leaving. He stood over her for one last time, baring his teeth in disgust at what she had become.
"If I find you have moved from this spot when I return..." Mace didn't need to finish the sentence, the threat of any harm against her was enough. He turned away, barely able to contain the pleasure welling up inside him. He was finally going to leave this dump, and that broken-bodied woman would do as she had been told, and stay there expecting him to show up any moment, expecting him to punish her. She wouldn't know that he wasn't coming back. She would die there rather than risk it.
He would leave her and go in search of the fertile female he had detected earlier, and if he was lucky he would reach her first and take her as his mate. If he wasn't the first he would fight for the right to claim her, and if he failed... well he probably wouldn't live long enough to make it back to the squalid den anyway. No matter what lay in store for him now, anything was better than wasting away in that hole, wishing he had lived a different life, yearning for the family he had been denied for so long. He cared not for the fate of the girl he had kidnapped all those years ago... he couldn't even remember her name anymore. She was nothing to him. All that was important now was his future, whatever that may be, and as he left the rocky cave that had been his home, he didn't even once look back.