Eva Blake always knew that her grandson was special. Her only legacy of her estranged daughter who had vanished without a trace after her last research mission, John was a delight. A little different from the grandbaby she'd always hoped for, with his pointed ears and… unusual genitalia, no doubt inherited from his unknown alien father. But once you got past those little foibles, John Blake was an absolute cherub of a child. She knew from the moment she looked into his eyes that he was destined for great things.
He was always happy and smiling and full of energy, never causing trouble for trouble's sake. He learned his lessons well and was so polite. John was a regular ball of sunshine, lighting up his grandparents' lives after the murky twilight of their strained relationship with Jessica and the crushing heartbreak of her disappearance after birthing John.
As John grew, though, Eva couldn't help but notice little… oddities. For one thing, he had the ears of a bat. She could be talking with her husband Don in the kitchen and when she asked a question about John, the boy would yell the answer from the open door into the backyard where he was playing. Then there was the made-up language. Almost since he was old enough to coherently speak Standard, John had also been in the habit of talking or singing to himself in a flowing, liliting sequence of sounds that sounded just a bit too… fleshed out to be simple gibberish. John even had an alphabet for his 'secret words', characters and glyphs that while matching nothing on Terra were distinct and seemed like actual script to Eva's eye.
On top of all that was his overactive imagination, expressed with elaborate stories he could wax over to Eva and Don for hours and pictures he drew with care. They all seemed to follow a theme of a fallen civilization getting revenge on the monsters that had almost killed them off. The hero with his magic sword was a frequent character and subject of the drawings, and somehow even a scribbled colored pencil sketch of that enchanted blade covered in runes sent shivers down Eva's spine.
Of course, Eva knew she was being silly. John was just a half-Terran boy with his head in the clouds. What other explanation was there, after all? The language wasn't real, the stories were pure fantasy, and those images were just the product of her grandson's creative mind. What disturbed Eva was how hollow and fake such assurances felt when she stopped to really think about them. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, there was something about John that was 'other', something that didn't fall neatly in her Terran world and understanding. But she still loved him with all her heart, so she did her best to ignore those ridiculous thoughts. John was her grandson, that was the end of it.
One night when John was 6, Eva was reading in her bed next to her snoring husband, fondly thinking it was past time she nagged him into buying that CPAP machine. Then she heard a scream from John's room and before she knew it she was already out of bed. She rushed to John's room and found him trembling in his bed, staring up at the ceiling in horror.
"John! What's wrong? Did you have a nightmare?" Eva asked, going to kneel next to him and feel his forehead to check for a fever.
John flinched from her touch, which was very alarming. He was normally a snuggle bug. "Yeah… nightmare…" he said slowly, a disturbing emptiness in his normally bright and shining eyes.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Eva offered, only wanting to comfort her beloved grandson.
John took a shuddering breath. "Grandma… am I a monster?"
Eva blinked, bewildered at such a question. "John, of course not! You're a good little boy, nothing like a monster."
"Okay… but what if I grow up into a monster?" John pressed.
"That won't happen, John," Eva assured him, wondering where this was coming from. "As long as you follow the rules and say 'please' and 'thank you' and do your best to be a nice person, you could never become a monster."
"Right… um, Grandma?" John said tentatively. "I promise, you'll never see me turn into a monster."
"Okay, John. I'll hold you to that," Eva said indulgently. "But you're being silly, there's no way you could turn into a monster."
As Eva made sure John was tucked back in and went to leave the room, she could have sworn she heard him say "Unless I build a Soulforge."
"What's that?" Eva asked, looking over her shoulder.
"Nothing, Grandma. Love you," John said, already half asleep.
Eva closed the door behind her, wondering at John's ridiculous idea he could be any kind of monster. Little did she know how easy it would be for someone with his power and knowledge to follow that dark path. But she went to bed blissfully ignorant, to continue the task of raising John into a fine young man in the morning. Meanwhile in his bed, John repeated his promise to himself. He wouldn't start his mission… not until his grandma and grandpa weren't around to see if he did become a monster.
The genetically enhanced Progenitor known as John Blake woke to his alarm. He sat up, stretching until he felt the 'pop' in his joints, then muted the annoying beeping from the device installed in the wall. John got out of bed, then immediately turned around and made it. He didn't half-ass it, putting serious thought and effort into making sure his sheets were in perfect order. When he was satisfied he could do no better, the compulsion abated and he went to his exercise corner. He dropped to the floor to start his daily pushups, part of him trying to stay perfectly aligned just so his sweat wouldn't drop on the floor instead of the mat.
Progenitors like John had a deep, instinctive need to dominate and exert power over others. John, having no enemies to slaughter or Thralls to manage while living like a hermit, satisfied that mental itch with an OCD-like need for cleanliness and order aboard his home, the freighter Fool's Gold. It took many hours to keep his ship up to standards that he was comfortable with, but needs must. Until he got a Matriarch and activated, he had to deal with the cost of not fulfilling his purpose for living.
John hadn't so much had some grand epiphany one day and realized he was Kyth'vindathys, Vengeance of the Kyth'faren reborn. He'd sort of just… known, for as long as he could remember. His understanding of all his genetic memory, all the information encoded into his DNA that lurked in his subconscious, had grown and developed with age. But he'd always been aware of what he was: the man destined to kill the Progenitors or die trying.
John wasn't sure what his father was thinking, whichever Progenitor out in the wide Milky Way that Jessica Blake had encountered and been impregnated by. Why customize John into a Progenitor killer in utero and then just send Jessica back to the Terran Federation to drop him off? Was he so confident John would never raise a hand against him? Because if John's unknown father was anything like every other Progenitor in the galaxy, then he had the blood of billions on his hands and deserved to be struck down. Was John's birth a long, elaborate suicide attempt or had his father not fully understood exactly what he had created?
John didn't have the answers. The vast repository of forbidden, arcane knowledge tucked in the depths of his mind was very explicit in all the methods and necessary steps to exterminate a Progenitor. Not so much in the actual history of Progenitors or their place in the galaxy. That part was up to John to investigate and research, it would seem.
John had done his best, as he'd grown up in the Terran Federation, to work out his place in the world. Same as anyone really, even if his circumstances were rather unique. It simply couldn't be a coincidence that Terrans looked so much like Progenitors. Nor that the Trankaran Republic or Ashanath Collective both had names rooted in the Progenitor language. And the Maliri language and written alphabet were just a little too similar to Progenitor, almost like they were a dialect that had evolved over thousands of years from the original version John knew instinctively.
John's whole life had been built around his mission, in one way or another. Despite knowing it would break his grandparents' hearts, he enrolled in the Academy and joined the T-Fed military rather than inherit the family restaurant. He needed the combat experience, the fate of billions or even trillions depended on that. He did his best to make it up to them, but their relationship never really recovered after John became a Marine. John served with distinction for 11 years, up until Galon Prime. He won the Stellar Cluster, but John could no longer stomach serving a government that would obliterate whole cities of its own citizens with an orbital bombardment. He worked out a deal to semi-retire, keep a few perks but otherwise become a private citizen in exchange for 'favors'.
And then started his career as a trader. Trading was fun, the art of a good deal feeling like a delightful game to John. And it allowed him a certain degree of freedom and independence. More importantly, he was free to travel around the Galactic League and learn more about alien cultures. Specifically, whether they had any Progenitor influences in their ancient past.
John struck out in the Kintark Empire and the Brimorian Enclave. From all he was able to discover, they had nothing to do with his ancestors. A closer look at Terran Federation computer technology, though, showed to John that they were on the exact same path the Kyth'faren had taken eons ago, just not as far along. John began to wonder exactly how Terrans had developed along that road, positing that they'd discovered an ancient Progenitor computer and tried to reverse-engineer it. Alas, such secrets weren't available to the public, and if the military knew then it was above John's clearance, so it remained just a theory.
A deal involving couriering Ashanath parts for a Tachyon Drive showed John that they were a knockoff of Progenitor tech. That, their Progenitor name, and the fact they were naturally psychic made the Grays of real interest to John, though he never managed to make any headway. The Collective, for all their pacifism and friendliness, proved surprisingly secretive about their past and technology.
After enduring a long lecture on Trankaran mythology and religious doctrine, John found a gold mine when he visited Demladuhr Station regarding the tale of the 'Great Maker'. The story of being created by some godlike being to mine his worlds and the fact Trankara meant 'miner' in Progenitor had to be related. And the War of the Heavens sounded an awful lot like two Progenitors, one with a Quantum Annihilator, squaring off. The sapphire, all female 'Favored Ones' could have easily been a Thrall race too.
John's biggest clue, though, came from his friend Ceraden at Geniya Station in the Maliri Regency. After getting half-drunk after a very lucrative deal, John had made an innocent inquiry into Maliri folklore. You could learn a lot about a culture by the stories they told themselves, after all. Which is how John had heard the tale of 'the Mael'nerak', a boogeyman who kidnapped bad Maliri girls and whisked them away. The instant John heard the name for 'the Evil Enslaver', he knew that the Maliri were a Thrall race, unclaimed since Mael'nerak's death.
Piecing it all together, John had a working idea of how the Galactic League had come to be. He didn't have all the pieces, but the general picture seemed clear. Mael'nerak was an ancient Progenitor who had come to this part of space. Given thousands of years to experiment and improve on base Progenitor technologies, it was entirely possible that Mael'nerak had created his own slave races to supplement the Maliri. The Ashanath as psychic grunts, the Trankarans as miners, the Drakkar or 'pawns' as shock troops, and possibly even Terrans for some reason or other. Another Progenitor had come from the Trankaran side of his territory, and they'd fought to the death in the War of the Heavens. Fast forward thousands of years, and John had been conceived on that one planet in Kirrix space he was programmed to report to when his mission was done. And now John was in the Galactic League, an unactivated Progenitor just waiting to ascend and become the dominant power in this part of the galaxy.
But John had made a promise. John had every hope that there was a way to 'fix' the Soulforge, find some way to make that necessary metal without sacrificing hundreds of lives per day. But if there wasn't, John was painfully aware he just might have to fight fire with fire, build a Soulforge and use it despite the cost if he was to have a prayer of defeating other Progenitors. Such an act would make him a monster, though, and John had sworn to Eva she'd never see him become one.
Which is what had stayed John's hand and kept him celibate apart from one night stands throughout his 30s. But his grandparents had both passed away last year, within weeks of each other. John, now freed from his promise, wasn't quite so crass as to seduce a woman to become his Matriarch the night after the second funeral. John decided to mourn his grandparents in peace for a time before he started seriously thinking about claiming his birthright. While he grieved, though, time marched on and he was still a trader with bills to pay.
Now John was 40, and set to arrive at the asteroid colony Karron in Omicron Ceti later that day. He'd been catching up with his much older spacer friend 'Mad' Jonah Bennings in a bar one night in the Core Worlds. The geriatric drunk had pulled his faculties together after recalling the delights of a Karron brothel to mention to John that he'd heard the local miners had found a vein of Tyrenium. The rare metal was in huge demand by the Terran Federation, being the key component in constructing a Singularity Generator. John had dropped everything to rush to the edge of the Outer Rim to potentially make the deal of a lifetime. The journey had taken a month, and John dearly wished the tip had been good so he hadn't wasted his time coming out to the asscrack of nowhere.
John finished exercising, got a quick shower and dressed, before occupying himself with maintenance chores. An alert over the intercom informed him when he was 10 minutes away from his destination, at which point he went to the cockpit. He patiently monitored the instruments until he reached the edge of the gravity well for the target system. The FTL Drive deactivated automatically when the sensors detected the Nav-Beacon's signal for the safe radius from the local star. John took over by plotting a route to Karron, a dwarf planet floating in the lone asteroid belt around the red giant star. His subpar civilian engines ignited, taking him at a rather slow pace towards one of the last colonies before the Kirrix border.
John dealt with a rather unprofessional Flight Control tech and landed in a Docking Bay. He was struck by how deserted the whole place was. There was literally only one other ship in the whole bay, which appeared to be in the middle of a loading operation. And he hadn't detected much incoming or outgoing traffic on the way here. Karron apparently wasn't that popular a destination even for traders. With credits and supplies lean and poorly circulated, John could just imagine the kind of desperation and corruption that had festered out here, especially with how little care or attention Colonial Administration probably paid any population center under a million.
John, figuring better safe than sorry, unlocked his weapons locker and belted a holster with a heavy pistol. Between the gun, his natural muscular bulk, and the right attitude, he should discourage any trouble. Bracing himself, John exited the airlock, leaving the safety of the Fool's Gold for the dubious environment of Karron. He kept his face carefully blank and moved like he was on the way to feed someone their teeth, projecting a subtle aura of violence.
John spotted a foreman for the miners who were laboring to fill up the heavy freighter at the other end of the Docking Bay. Knowing the fastest way to get some answers in an unfamiliar place usually involved bribing a local, John approached the superior barking orders at his underlings. "Yo. You look like a man who knows what's what around here," John said in his strong baritone.
The foreman turned and looked up. And up. John was an impressive six-foot-two and blessed (or cursed) with genetics for a warrior's body. By comparison, the Karron native was five-foot-five and rather lanky. There was a moment of disquiet at the unspoken acknowledgment that John would obviously win a fight, then the foreman shrugged. "I keep my ear to the ground. Whatcha wanna know, stranger?"
"Tyrenium. I have it on good authority that a vein was discovered sometime a couple months ago. Which mine was the lucky winner to find it?"
"What's in it for me if I tell ya?" the foreman asked point-blank, his beady eyes narrowed in greed and suspicion.
John narrowed his eyes, but reached into his pocket for a credstick he'd preloaded with just such a scenario in mind. He held it up for the man's avaricious gaze. "50 creds upfront for good intel… or a broken nose when I track you down if you lead me on a wild goose chase," John said with a hard smile.
The asteroid colonist or 'worm' gulped, knowing John wasn't kidding. "Fine, fine, no bullshit. Go to Mortimer, bastard's boys have been bragging about finding an exotic ore like that to anyone who'll listen for weeks now."
"Pleasure doing business with you," John nodded, handing the credstick over. John turned and left the Docking Bay, entering the colony proper. The first word to pop into his head to describe the place was 'grubby'. John tracked down a cab, using tires and an internal combustion engine rather than a power core and anti-grav cyclics. Shaking his head at how low-tech things were out here, John paid to be taken to the Mortimer Mining complex. He got dropped off at the gate, which was manned by competent-looking security staff or mercenaries. Whoever ran this business seemed to have both money and sense, a potent combination in a place like this.
John checked in with a receptionist who didn't seem to have been hired for her brains. Still, she called him in and got him a meeting with Seb Mortimer himself. John shook hands with the diminutive mine owner before taking a seat in a chair before the man's desk. "Dina tells me you're interested in making a large purchase, Mr. Blake," Mortimer grinned acquisitively.
"Depends. I was told you're the man to talk to about buying Tyrenium. Was that accurate?" John checked.
Mortimer got a self-satisfied smirk. "Ah, at last, word of mouth prevails. I couldn't exactly take out an ad on TFNN. You're the first trader who's even asked about the damn stuff. How much you want?"
"That would entirely depend on price," John said neutrally.
Mortimer hummed in thought. "It's a damn finicky ore, my boys had to mine it the old-fashioned way. I'm talking pick-axes instead of bore-hole machines and explosives. I'm sure you understand I'll need to factor all that labor into the price."
"Of course," John nodded, bracing himself for an exorbitant price per ton.
"Still, I don't want the crates to just keep gathering dust in my storage, so I'll cut you a deal. Let's call it… 250k a ton," Mortimer offered.
It took all of John's considerable self-control not to burst out laughing at his good fortune and Mortimer's ignorance. In the Core Worlds, Tyrenium could go for over 10 million for a single ton. John had expected a cheaper rate due to a variety of factors, but he hadn't counted on Mortimer being that out of touch with how valuable this ore really was. Trying not to seem too eager, John made a show of looking like he was debating it. "Well, I suppose that's fair," he finally sighed. "Let's call it 10 tons, 2.5 mil even. You're not going to screw me with a transport charge back to my freighter, are you?"
"Always built into the price, my friend!" Mortimer beamed, thinking he was getting the upper hand in this deal.
John pulled out his ship's logging manifest. "Let's do this by the book. You have an auth device, I'm sure."
"Damn, you actually play by the Merchant's Guild's rules? Well, you do you," Mortimer chuckled. "We could have just transferred the credits chit to chit and skipped the hassle."
"My backers are real sticklers, sorry," John shrugged. The truth was he wanted this trade logged and verified to make it impossible for Mortimer to sue him if he ever realized how much John was cheating him blind.
Mortimer plugged the auth device into John's manifest and typed out the simple commands to facilitate a transfer of 2.5 million credits in exchange for 10 tons of unrefined Tyrenium. They waited in tense silence as the signal was bounced through the Terran comms network back to the Core Worlds and confirmation was sent back. With a beep, John was rendered nearly penniless but Mortimer was legally obligated to hand over the cargo. He now had less than a thousand credits to his name, but if he completed this trade with his planned buyer, he'd be set for life.
Mortimer contacted a team of his miners to load a truck and split a measure of whiskey with John to toast the occasion. John choked down the rough burning liquor that tasted like it was cheaper than the bottle it came in, then waved Mortimer farewell to hitch a ride in the truck. John watched the slums of Karron pass by through the windshield. He was struck by how dirty and dark his surroundings were, and the mean, pinched look to almost every colonist, even the children. John had never felt more blessed to have been raised on Terra instead of an inhospitable colony like this.
The truck reached the right Docking Bay and parked next to the Fool's Gold. John opened his cargo bay and supervised the men loading the ore crates and mag-locking them in place. Even with how lean his account was now, John still tipped each man what he could afford to thank them. He had the feeling every little bit helped in the tunnels of Karron. Waving the miners goodbye, John hit the button to close the cargo bay door and set the room for auto-decontamination. He went to the cockpit and dealt with Flight Control to get clearance to leave. That done, John piloted the Fool's Gold back out into outer space before heading to the edge of the gravity well. Almost an hour later, he finally made it and planned his route to Alpha Centauri. Satisfied he'd chartered the safest, fastest trip he could, John activated the FTL Drive.
With an unsettling lurch John had still not gotten used to after a decade traveling in the Fool's Gold, the antiquated freighter went into hyper-warp. John leaned back in his pilot's chair, sighing in relief. Another month, and he'd be a millionaire. Assuming no issues in transit, but he was trying to be optimistic. Yet despite the thrill of victory, John still felt a little jittery, tense and on edge. Brushing it off as nerves and lingering sticker shock, John went to put his heavy pistol away. He did a couple maintenance chores, had a filling if tasteless dinner from his stocked rations, then went to sleep after a productive day.
John woke from a dreamless slumber to find he was hard enough to break rocks, his cock throbbing and desperate to be satisfied. John was surprised, as this was a tad more intense than his typical morning wood. He muted his alarm and meditated his way back to a calm, unaroused state. By the time he'd made his bed, worked out and showered, John figured it was just a hormonal thing and focused on getting through the chores of the day. He went to sleep after a long day… and woke up in an identical state of extreme horniness.
John willed his erection away once again, then pondered this phenomenon. In over a decade aboard the Fool's Gold, this kind of reaction had never happened except on the rare occasions he'd woken up with a bedmate in the vicinity. After a moment of thought, he came to two possible conclusions. Either Tyrenium was some kind of Progenitor aphrodisiac… or there was a woman onboard and her pheromones were circulating through the air supply.
John sighed, then got dressed and went to his weapons locker. He loaded a clip into his auto-shotgun, perfect for the confines of a spaceship to deal with intruders without risking breaching the hull. He doubted he really needed the firepower, but it was the principle of the thing. Whoever this stowaway was, they were trespassing in his home. He took issue with that.
John went to sweep the ship room by room with the holo-scope and its thermal filter. He got confirmation that someone had snuck aboard at Karron when he reached the door to the cargo bay. There was a distinct scuff mark on a floor that had been gleaming the day before he'd arrived, and John knew he hadn't made it. Checking all the obvious hiding places, John finally arrived at the storage room. The heat detection feature of his auto-shotgun illuminated the edges of a locker in the corner, just big enough for a short person to curl into a ball within, in bright orange.
"I know you're in there. Come out," John stated loud and clear.
No response.
John grit his teeth. "You have 10 seconds to come out before I unload this shotgun and space your corpse," he said, his patience quickly running out.
There was a faint squeak, then the door opened. John knew intellectually it was probably a young woman since he'd never react to male pheromones on the air the way he had, but the figure was very androgynous and made him question that. Short, dirty, in bulky coveralls and a jacket, a ghostly pale face looked up at him under a dog-eared cap. They were obviously a teenager, dangerously young. Bright, cerulean eyes gazed at him with apprehension.
John took a deep breath and counted to 10. "How old are you?" he asked directly. If they were a minor, then he had no choice other than to reverse course to Karron and kick them out. Like hell he'd risk getting done up on 'kidnapping a minor' charges.
"18," they said in a very small, high voice. No male voice could reach that octave after puberty, so if the age wasn't a blatant lie then she was obviously a young woman merely stunted by years of borderline starvation.
"Got any ID to prove that?" John asked, his auto-shotgun still aimed in her general direction. He could handle her without firing a shot and wasn't particularly inclined to hurt her, but it set the tone for who had the power in this scenario.
The waif reached into a pocket and pulled out an ID cover. She hesitantly held it out. John leaned forward and grabbed it before she could try and steal the gun, if she even had the strength. He leaned back out of reach and regarded the ID card. If it was real, and a convincing fake would probably cost more money than he guessed she'd ever had in her life, Alyssa Marant's 18th birthday had been the day John arrived at Karron. By the skin of her teeth, she'd been legal when she snuck aboard the Fool's Gold. Which was still a point of contention, but at least she was an adult.
John turned his attention back on Alyssa. "Miss Marant, congratulations on your recent birthday. That makes you an adult who is breaking and entering rather than a minor, which would be much more troublesome to deal with. I'll be blunt and ask for one good reason why I shouldn't turn around and kick you off my ship back at Karron."
"Please don't take me back!" she said in a rush, eyes wide with true fear. Fear for survival. "I'll work, you can drop me off anywhere, I'll do whatever you want! Just don't go back to Karron, I'm begging you!"
John frowned. He did her the courtesy of powering down the shotgun and putting it in rest position. "Are you in some kind of trouble, Miss Marant?"
She bit her lip and looked down in shame. She took a shuddering breath, just a tad too raw and vulnerable for it to be an act. "One of the Diablos tried to rape me on my birthday. I stuck him with my knife and ran. There's definitely a bounty out for me by now, and whether I just get executed or gang-raped until I die will depend on how their leader feels when they catch me. I'm sorry for sneaking on, but I had no choice. If I go back to Karron, I'm dead meat. That's the truth."
John felt his heart break for the tragic trauma this young woman had endured. He didn't for a minute suspect she was lying, all his instincts screamed that her obvious pain was genuine. Still, having a young woman onboard the Fool's Gold for a prolonged period came with some risks… or opportunities.
Shaking his head at the direction his thoughts had turned, John waved the ID. "Let me just scan this to verify it. If it comes back clean, we can discuss the terms of your stay aboard my ship. I'm not without sympathy for your plight, Miss Marant, but I hope you understand how precarious your position is."
"I know," Alyssa said in a small, scared voice.
John led Alyssa to the cockpit and had her sit in the copilot's seat. He unloaded the auto-shotgun and propped it against the wall, on the far side from Alyssa so she couldn't make a grab at it. Keeping half an eye on the teenager at all times, John accessed Galactic-SEC and ran a background check on Alyssa's ID. "Alyssa Marant. Age 18. No outstanding warrants," came the brief summary of her file.
The fact there'd be zero legal ramifications for sheltering her allayed most of John's concerns. He turned to face her. "Let's start over," he proposed. "Hi, I'm John Blake, owner of the Fool's Gold."
"Hi, John. I'm Alyssa," the young woman said, looking very nervous and just a little bemused.
"I'd really rather have preferred you bartered passage with me directly rather than letting yourself in. But that's beside the point. Do you have any money or useful skills you could contribute to justify me allowing you to stay onboard?" John asked, having a good idea of the answer already.
"I'm flat broke, sorry," she admitted reluctantly. "But I'll do anything you want me to do to not go back to Karron." She hesitated, before deliberately licking her lips. "Anything," she repeated, a subtle emphasis on the word making it obvious what she was offering.
John tried very hard to ignore his body's reaction to the very thought of a consenting female. It seemed so obvious, almost written in the stars. She was desperate, her life on the line, utterly at his mercy. He had the power to decide the course of Alyssa Marant's life. How easy it would be, to have her blow him and make her his Matriarch, come into his powers and make her his eternal companion.
But if John didn't have his conscience, he had nothing. He refused to be anything like a typical Progenitor. He couldn't trick or deceive this young woman. If she was going to go down that path, she had to do it with both eyes open and giving informed consent. Which made what John had to do obvious.
"I have in mind two possible arrangements for you, Miss Marant. I'll let you decide which one we go with," John said. "The first is that you essentially keep out of my way. I'll let you stay in the passenger cabin and you won't bother me. I'll give you 3 meals a day, a bathroom, and access to the Holonet to entertain yourself. I'll drop you off at the nearest colony, probably Tasmaris Prime or Carolus III, with nothing but the clothes on your back. And that'd be that, we'd probably never see each other again."
"Okay… and what's the second one?" Alyssa asked warily.
John blew out a low breath. "That requires a very long explanation. Let's start with the basics. I'm not Terran," John said, reaching up to trace his elongated, pointed ear.
Alyssa blinked before tilting your head. "Really? You're not human? You look a lot like one."
"Our species are related, but I'm definitely not Terran. I have triple-helix DNA, for one thing," John patiently explained. "I'm from a rare race of all-male psychics called Progenitors. We were genetically engineered as a master race for a number of slave races called Thralls dotted around the galaxy. My mother was a Xeno-biologist who went on a research mission into deep space. She came across my father, I was conceived, she returned to Terran space and I was born here."
"I've never met an alien before," Alyssa said with wide eyes. "Um, nice to meet you. But what's that got to do with me staying on this ship?"
John looked her in the eye. "If I wasn't misreading you, then you're willing to trade sexual favors for me to not take you back to Karron. Something I would be willing to discuss, except there's some rather permanent consequences to sex with a Progenitor. I'm going to explain all the pros and cons, and then you can decide between going through with starting that kind of relationship with me or being stranded at the nearest spaceport. Are you willing to listen or would you rather go with the first option here and now?"
Alyssa frowned in confusion. "Um… I mean, getting stranded on a planet was honestly one of the best case scenarios I could come up with if I got caught. Still, you've gotten me curious. Exactly how could sex with you change my life?"
"As ludicrous as the following statement is, you have my word that it's the honest truth: Progenitor semen rewrites a woman's DNA," John stated clearly.
Alyssa blinked. "... Okay. How, exactly?" she asked, though she looked rather dubious in the wake of such an absurd declaration.
"There's a template hardwired into my DNA. There's also a special protein in my semen that acts as a genetic scalpel. It responds to psi-waves. In a nutshell, if you drink my cum then I'll subconsciously mold you into my perfect woman. You'll get a new body, your brain will be rewired to alter your personality on many levels, and you'll even get psychic powers of your own. So the second option is to give me oral sex and enter into a lifelong sexual relationship with me which will change you on a fundamental level in body, mind, and soul," John laid out.
Alyssa looked at him askance. "Change me how?" she finally asked.
John accessed the computer and pulled up a holographic model he'd made to showcase the Thrall build. A silhouette of a five-foot-nine goddess with waist-length hair and curves for days appeared in front of Alyssa. "Feed from me for a couple weeks and you'll wind up looking like that," John said.
"I'd get boobs? Seriously?!" Alyssa gaped at the wireframe.
"Yes, but it's not just skin-deep," John continued his explanation. "You'll be enhanced to have peak fitness for a Terran female this size. More importantly, there's behavioral modification built into this template. You, Alyssa Marant, will change as a person if you go through with this, your DNA edited and your mind pushed into a new shape. I need you to really think it through before I'm convinced you can give informed consent."
Alyssa gulped, struck by the enormity of the transformation. "Okay… what kind of changes will you make?"
"You'd be the first woman I've done this with. I've only had one night stands up until now, I've never had a long-term partner who got enough 'exposure' to the protein for the effects to kick in," John told her. "That said, I'm not sure how much of the process is automatic and how much I can consciously control. I just know you'll become my ideal woman. In which case, you'll likely become bisexual, submissive in bed, no jealousy to speak of, positive, kind, confident, and immune to combat fatigue via lack of empathy for enemies. And there's an imprint to ensure undying loyalty to your first sexual partner after the process starts. Everything needed to be both the perfect soldier and the perfect harem girl."
"That's a lot…" Alyssa said softly, appropriately scared at the thought of being changed so much. "But… why is that your perfect girl?"
"That's just how Progenitors are wired," John sighed. "We were literally designed to recruit as many women as possible and turn them into disposable soldiers as well as breeding stock. On top of the DNA modifications, anyone who drinks my cum will get a psychic connection back to me that turns them into a battery for me to use to fuel my own powers. Your average Progenitor literally jerks off into prepared vats which can divide each load into over 10 thousand doses. Every Thrall in his empire becomes a happy baby-making factory for whatever man gets to them first due to the imprint, and if they serve in the Progenitor's military then they'll be able to fight the rest of their lives in bloody campaigns without burning out. I'm going to do my honest best to be a good Progenitor and not abuse that, but that's just what happens to women who drink my cum and join my network."
"Okay… okay, okay. Option one, get stranded at the nearest colony. Option two, become your Thrall and get brainwashed while becoming impossibly beautiful. Is that the choice I have to make?" Alyssa checked, eyes very wide.
"There's more to it than that. But if you've already heard a dealbreaker, then you can go with option 1 before you learn the full nitty-gritty of joining me," John nodded, very aware that this was a hard sell, to abandon everything and be genetically modified by a mysterious alien.
"Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Keep going, finish the sales pitch for becoming your sex slave/soldier," Alyssa prompted, though her tone made it clear she wasn't very tempted to go through with such a course of action.
"If you agree to drink my semen, I will remake you. You'll get a new body in perfect health. And every time you get a 'dose' after the transformation is finished, you'll be reset to factory settings, so to speak. This means you'll never get sick, injuries can be healed overnight, and assuming neither of us dies in combat eternal youth. Progenitors stop aging when they make their first connection, so I'll be a true blue immortal. If you stick close to me, you'll live forever too," John laid out. "Your mind will be altered, and not just the personality tweaks. You'll become smarter, a genius IQ with a photographic memory. And as my first recruit, you won't just be an ordinary Thrall. You'll be my Matriarch. Which means you'll get Telepathy to hear my thoughts and be able to send my commands to every other woman we recruit to help coordinate them in battle. You'll be my second-in-command, my right hand as I build an empire, create an army and fleet, and get ready to defend my territory from other Progenitors," John listed off, giving a comprehensive briefing.
John held up his two open palms, before bringing one higher than the other. "Pros: body of a holo-model in perfect health, enhanced intelligence, psychic powers." He held the other palm up. "Cons: obligated to have sex with me forever, personality rewrites, having to fight in the biggest and bloodiest war in galactic history." John leaned back in his pilot's chair. "Any questions, Miss Marant?"
Alyssa had gotten an odd look on her face. "If I join you… will I be important?" she asked.
John tilted his head. "Very important. I dare say the most important person in my life. You'll be the lynchpin of my psychic network, which alone would give you major strategic value. On a more personal level, I'd do my best to treat you right and be a good partner as we explore our relationship outside just Progenitor and Matriarch. And assuming everything goes to plan, you'll become one of the most powerful women in the galaxy once I come into my birthright and establish my empire. Why do you ask?"
"I'm a nobody with nothing. If I leave, I'll still be a nobody with nothing. If I choose you, though, I'll be somebody," Alyssa said, almost to herself. She looked John in the eye. "I'll do it. I'll sell my soul to you, John. What's left of it, anyway."
John frowned. "Are you absolutely sure, Miss Marant? This choice will affect the rest of your life. I want you to be sure that what I'm offering is what you want."
"It is," Alyssa said, not a trace of doubt on her face. She got an amused smirk. "And are you still going to be calling me 'Miss Marant' when I'm sucking on your cock?"
John figured he'd given her enough information to make an informed choice. If he refused at this point, he'd be disrespecting her wishes over his own issues. Accepting that this was really happening, John glanced at Alyssa's dirt-encrusted clothing. "Well, you're not sucking me looking like that. Let's get you a shower."
Double-checking that their route was clear and the long-range scanners were set to give alerts, John led Alyssa to his main cabin. He stowed away his auto-shotgun before locking up the weapons locker. He led Alyssa into the modest bathroom. Alyssa reached up and took off her cap, revealing thin, lifeless blonde hair held in place with clips. She removed those as well, the strands falling to her shoulders. She unzipped and removed herself from the rest of her clothes, until she was standing nude by a pile of filthy fabric. John's eyes raked over her painfully skinny form, scars from numerous scrapes and injuries hinting at a hard life on the streets.
"Your turn," Alyssa prompted when he'd been staring just a little too long at her naked body.
John pulled off his t-shirt and his combat trousers. He paused as he was about to take off his briefs. "It's not just my ears that are different," he warned, before exposing himself.
"You're huge!" Alyssa gasped, more than a little intimidated. "There's no way that will fit!"
"It will. We'll just have to take things slow," John assured her.
Alyssa, moving past her shock at John's burgeoning endowment, noticed another detail. "Your balls! There's four of them!" And each was the size of a ripe orange, at that.
"I cum a lot. I'm talking pints. All to maximize production of psychic slave juice. You'll actually be able to survive on just my loads at breakfast, lunch, and dinner while we're together," John informed her seriously.
"Three square meals of cum a day… that's kinda hot," Alyssa admitted with a delicate blush on her albino pale cheek.
John opened the shower door. "Ladies first," he offered chivalrously.
Alyssa walked into the cubicle, John a step behind her. The sensors detected they were inside and started the temperature-controlled streams of water from overhead. Alyssa gasped at her first hot shower. John observed her luxuriating in the sensations, her expression losing its hard, guarded edge that had been present since they'd first met. John filled his hands with shower gel and lathered them up. "May I wash you, Alyssa?" he asked gently.
Alyssa opened those cerulean eyes that were easily her best feature and looked up at him. She nodded, and John laid his soapy hands on her shoulders. John methodically wiped years of grime and dirt from every inch of Alyssa's body, moving up her neck to get her face and hair, going down her torso and back, massaging each limb down to her fingers and toes. It took several minutes before the water stopped running black when it touched her and she was gleaming like an alabaster sculpture under the lights.
John soaped up himself with brisk efficiency while Alyssa just watched him and enjoyed the shower. After he was done, he opened the door, prompting the water to stop. He led Alyssa to the heated towel locker and dried her off with the soft cotton. When they were both dry, John put the towels back in the locker and led her back into his cabin.
"No joke, I'd have blown you just to get that shower. That was the most sensual experience of my life, John," Alyssa said, her eyes heavy and languid.
John took her hand and led her to his bed. He sat them both down next to each other. "Moment of truth. Sure you haven't changed your mind? Once you go through with this, you'll never be the same again," John gave his final warning at the point of no return.
"I won't miss the old Alyssa. She's done some bad things. I'd like to start over with you," Alyssa said, an undercurrent of pain and self-loathing behind her words.
John wanted to dig into that, but he had just had his hands full of naked female flesh and he was pretty turned on despite his solemn words. His length was hot, hard, and throbbing. "Then you know what to do," he said, giving her his tacit blessing to put her mouth on him.
Alyssa slid to the floor, kneeling between John's spread legs. She snapped a play salute. "Matriarch reporting for duty, Master Progenitor!"
John chuckled, before it became a moan when Alyssa took hold of his massive girth and tilted it down towards her mouth. She opened her lips into a wide oval, before taking his broad head into her mouth. A dollop of his precum spread across her tongue and she reared back in shock. "It's sweet!"
"Not Terran, remember?" John managed when all he wanted to do was grab her head and pull her down to take him to the root. He resisted for her sake, refusing to just take his pleasures without regard for his partner.
Alyssa smacked her lips before going back for a second taste. Her tongue swirled around the tip, prompting another spurt of precum from his taut quad of balls. As John anticipated, the light started to dim from her eyes. Even unactivated, John was still a Progenitor, one of the most powerful psychics in the galaxy. The psychic catalyst in his fluids made a bridge between his mind and Alyssa's, and she was overwhelmed, going into a trance. She started to suckle on reflex, moving up and down to steadily take more of his cock. There was a slight pause when he reached her tonsils, and then she took him into the depths of her throat with a swallow.
John laid a gentle hand on her blonde head, softly moving her up and down his length, savoring the sensations of a hot, wet fleshy glove wrapped around his cock. Seeing no point in holding out, he made no effort in fighting his orgasm and soon he was roaring, a mighty climax eked out of his body. Alyssa swallowed all he had to give her, her belly expanding and rounding out as he filled her to the brim and beyond with his rich spunk.
When the last spurt had been ejected and John stopped seeing stars, he slowly eased Alyssa off his softening prick. She panted once he was free, her face a mask of dazed contentment. Her hands went to her convex tummy, caressing the evidence of his potent load in her stomach. John stood up and picked Alyssa up. He tucked her into his bed, her eyes closing as soon as her head touched the pillow and her breathing deepening into slumber.
John sat beside her and ran a finger across her cheek. So young, just barely an adult, and he could already tell she'd had a hard life filled with darkness and loss. He only hoped he could give her a better one at his side. Speaking of which, John closed his eyes. His lone mind-box, the metaphysical representation of his psychic potential, was filled with a glowing image of Alyssa. There was only one power available to him, the Progenitor Connection lying in wait to bind this woman to him for eternity.
With a deep breath and saying goodbye to his ordinary life forever, John reached out to lay an eldritch finger on Alyssa's soul and made the Connection.
It was frightening how simple it was, the rope of runes that spelled out a binding psychic contract snapping into existence in an instant. John gasped as he felt himself come properly alive for the first time in his 40 years. He felt whole sections of his mind that had always been shadowy and indistinct light up like a supernova. He'd always 'known' his genetic memories, but now he understood. He could feel each of the 61 standard Progenitor runes that spelled out psychic powers, and the deeper, secret Kyth'faren runes his father had unwittingly blessed him with.
It was a timeless moment of transformation, when John Blake ascended to his true form of Kyth'vindathys. When his mortal shadow was shed to make way for his divine splendor. And he would burn out the monsters that lurked in the darkness, those slaves of the Devourer, and avenge the first civilization.
Then the moment passed and John found himself sitting next to Alyssa. His mind-box, now joined by several others, still shined with his active link to her body and mind. John was about to start funneling energy across the Connection to start changing her, when he paused. Could he really trust anything that came 'standard' with a Progenitor, even or especially the source of all their power? John snipped the nascent link between him and Alyssa before seizing it with eldritch fingers.
John turned his mental eye on the Connection itself. Strings of runes spelled out individual clauses that twisted and weaved around each other to form threads that tied together into a tapestry mind-boggling in its depth and complexity. John sensed that it would take him months or even years of dedicated effort to read it out line for line, so he broadened his focus to simply get a general feel for each 'section' of the Connection. He got a sense of the tone for each major cord wrapped together to form the finished rope. He felt how there were dependencies linking different parts, how affecting one would disrupt or destroy others unless handled with equal care. The deepest guts of the Connection were so interwoven that he knew better than to even think of editing anything. He focused instead on the fringes, the outermost layers with no dependencies.
John immediately noticed two long, toxic cords of pitch-black runes on the 'top' layer. One spelled out unthinking obedience, the other suicidal grief in the event of the Connection being broken or John's death. John, with deliberation, snipped both cords completely, pruning their corrupt influence from the Connection on every level. That done, and feeling his energy waning, John was about to figure that was good enough for a day one patch job when he paused. Seized by some inner drive, he wove a pure-white cord of runes, using secret Kyth'faren symbols unavailable to any other Progenitor, and inserted it into the Connection. With a final surge of focus and intent, John remade his new and improved Connection with Alyssa.
A relative stream compared to the earlier trickle of energy flowed into him from Alyssa's unconscious body. John gasped as he viscerally felt his personal reserves start to expand with fresh energy that had been emptied while modifying the Connection. Obviously he'd done something right, more energy per member could only be a good thing. Besides, mindless obedience and a compulsion to suicide served no real purpose, not the way John planned to do things.
John made sure Alyssa was comfortable, then checked the time. He blinked when he saw it was past noon, there must have been some time dilation while he was in deep meditation examining the Connection. John went to get lunch. He'd have to stay strong and well-hydrated. He had a hungry mouth to feed now, after all. As he left the room, John still felt his active connection to Alyssa as she slowly digested his full load. John focused and sent some of the energy she was automatically sending him back into her to hasten the process of becoming his Matriarch.
John spent the rest of the day doing maintenance chores. In the interest of conserving energy, he didn't experiment with his newfound psychic abilities… too much. Most of his eldritch mana was being channeled into Alyssa to heal and enhance her. Her body was in a terrible state, having lived on the knife-edge of starvation almost all her life. There were all her scars and some internal injuries that broke his heart since they were consistent with rough, underage sex. It was her mind that was the real challenge, though. John, rather than just erasing all memories or stripping the emotional pathways linking them (both of which would destroy Alyssa's personality), was focusing on injecting positive energy into the hall of Alyssa's memory. It would take days or even weeks, he could sense, but John was determined to make Alyssa strong and bright enough to shine like a star despite her horrific upbringing. It was slower and more complex, but it felt like the best way to 'cure' Alyssa's heaps of mental trauma.
After dinner, John relaxed in the cockpit. As he recalled, most girls slept something like 14 hours straight after their first dose of his cum. He hadn't exactly checked the chronometer before she'd gone down on him, but John was sure Alyssa would wake up sometime before midnight. John passed the time on the Holonet. He detected a theme of growing trouble between the Terran Federation and the neighboring Kintark Empire in the articles on TFNN. John frowned, wondering what had caused hostilities to erupt after centuries of peace.
John got just a little too absorbed into an interview done by Jehanna Elani, a junior reporter who was distractingly pretty on top of being genuinely talented at her job. He heard a knock on the wall behind him and turned to see Alyssa wrapped up in the bedsheet in a makeshift toga. "Thirsty," she said in a hoarse voice.
John got a glass of water from the wall dispenser and carried it to his young Matriarch. He handed it over, their fingers brushing as the glass exchanged hands. Alyssa gulped it down like she was parched. "Another?" John offered when she finished and still seemed unsatisfied.
"Please," she said, her voice a bit less dry.
John went to get a refill, Alyssa going to sit in the copilot's seat as she had that morning. John handed her the second glass before taking the pilot's seat. He watched in silence as Alyssa savored this glass a bit slower before setting it aside. "How do you feel?" he asked, curious and concerned in equal measure.
Alyssa yawned and stretched her arms. "A little awesome, actually," she said as she took stock of her body. "I'm not hungry, like, at all. A lot of my aches and pains are gone. And I just feel… better. Is that all you?"
"I've spent the day sending energy into your body and mind to try and heal everything that's wrong," John readily admitted. "And I have psychic energy now. I've come into my powers, thanks to you. You have my eternal gratitude, Alyssa. You've unlocked my birthright for me. I'll spend the rest of my life thanking you for that."
"Well, it was just a blowjob," Alyssa chuckled. She tilted her head. "Um, exactly what happened? One minute I'm going down on you, then I'm waking up in the middle of the night. What the fuck happened?"
"I'm not sure if it's a chemical in my precum or just psychic shock from our minds touching. But either way, a woman passes out for 14 hours the first time I 'feed' her. I've only done it a second time here and there, and on those occasions she was asleep for only 4 hours. I presume that by the third or fourth exposure, you'll become immune to whatever's happening and stay conscious throughout the act," John revealed.
"Ah. Psychic shock. That's a thing, apparently," Alyssa said with a shrug. "So, what now?"
"Now, I need to get some sleep. You can stay up until you feel tired then join me, or we could just get your second dose out of the way and you'll get a 4 hour nap," John offered.
"I don't really feel like sleeping. I'll let you conk me out to sync us up," Alyssa agreed.
John led Alyssa back to his cabin, unwrapped her to make the bed again, then feeling too tired to care how unromantic it was, John got a second reflexive blowjob from Alyssa. He tucked her disturbingly light form, even heavy with one of his loads, into the bed then joined in next to her. John spooned up behind Alyssa and drifted off to sleep, reflecting it had been an eventful day.