Tales of Jenine, Chapter 2
The Taking of Casablanca… the Purge
Now that the Arion woman had sunk the two gunboats and had silenced the shore batteries, Captain Spurling slowly guided the coastal freighter toward the wharves. He was still nervous though; he had never guided such a large ship into dock without the aid of a Harbor Pilot and a tug. His voice sounded strained as he rapidly called out his commands, his crew sensing his tension as they reacted nervously, but more crisply than normal.Yet their efforts were not enough. He needed men to tend the lines, to tie the ship to the dock, yet there were a hundred soldiers on the quay, most of them shooting their rifles at anyone who became visible on deck. His men tried to return fire, but the soldiers ashore had a lot more firepower. And they had some pretty good cover among the huge ancient stones along the other side of the quay.
Without the help of a tug or any linehandlers, the ship was drifting slowly and dangerously toward the quay, the ebb tide combined with an onsetting breeze causing the bow to fall off to starboard as the rudder lost effectiveness. This was the point where a tug really helped, that and a crew of strong men on the lines who could put some turns around the huge capstans with the ship's eight-inch hawsers. Spurling cursed as he ordered the engines to reverse. This wasn't going to work as the single screw ship backed to port which further aggravated the situation!
Walking across the bridge while keeping himself sheltered against the PINGING of small arms fire, he turned to look at the young woman who stood on the right side of the bridge. Unlike the members of the crew, she stood in full view of the men below, seemingly unconcerned that they were not only shooting at her, but only missing part of the time!
He stared admiringly at her, her olive bronze body so gorgeously fit and so slim, her tiny waist and strong back so dramatic. She was dressed in little more than a borrowed bikini top, a gift one of the sailors had initially bought for his girlfriend. She was also wearing a pair of tight cut-off jeans, another gift from a crew member, one that had been intended for someone else entirely.
Her long raven-black hair was brushed out now, the thick glistening strands flowing down her back almost to her waist. Her legs and feet were bare, the muscular expanse of her upper body barely covered by the string bikini. He couldn't help but admire her strong back once again. He had always had a thing for women with strongly-developed backs. And Jenine was a woman unlike any other on this planet. She was a super girl if there ever was to be one on this Earth. And this young woman also represented his employer. Her people, calling themselves the Arions, had sent her down to assist him in his mission. Maybe they were cousins of Arabs. Yet so far, her assistance against his enemies had been so devastating that he had begun to think of her as his dark avenging angel. But certainly not an angel from heaven. Not unless heaven had declared war on Earth!
Feeling the ship shudder slightly as it moved slowly away from the quay, he suddenly had a few moments for reflection. He thought back to the last few years. To all the strange events, to all the assassinations. Most of the leaders of the western world had been killed under very unusual circumstances during that time. And in their place, a group of men and women who had previously been almost entirely unknown had risen to power. Men and woman who looked a lot like the girl who stood on his bridge. There were a few differences: the others were older and more dignified. And they didn't wear cast-off scraps of clothing like this girl did! However, there did appear to be a distinct racial similarity of a bit more subtlety than simply calling them 'Arabic' or 'African', even though these new leaders seemed to belong to both.
Spurling knew a great deal about his own political movement, a movement he had joined years ago for reasons that had nothing to do with Arabic freedom. He had a grudge to settle with the Israelis, and he was happy that this organization was at war with them. He knew that some people called it a terrorist organization. That was true to a degree, but the interpretation depended on which side you were on. He tended to think of his organization as a group of freedom fighters. As a group of men and woman who could avenge the death of his wife, a death that had occurred at the hands of those same accursed Israelis. She had been born in Syria, and she had been a spy infiltrating the Israeli military. And they had discovered her. The smuggled video tape that one of their agents had stolen from the Israeli secret service, the one that revealed the horror of her torture and death, still haunted his dreams! He had known that it was a sick obsession to see that tape and he had burned it in a fit of rage after viewing it, but it had been too late. The horrible images of his beloved's long and painful death still fueled his passion and still drove his every action so many years later.
Spurling was also one of the few people who knew that the weapon he carried was destined to arrive in Israel in less than a month. The weapon itself was a thermonuclear bomb, the warhead from an obsolete and retired Soviet SS9 ICBM. The weapon had lost some of its power as the Tritium had a decayed. But it was still nearly 500 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that had destroyed Berlin during World War II. The race to defeat the German Nazis after the fall of Japan had very nearly destroyed the world. In fact, the two German bombs that had fallen on New York and Boston had killed millions. And the fallout made those cities uninhabitable even today.
A long Cold War had followed the eventual victory by the allies. And Canada, the major undamaged Western power, had arisen as the superpower that confronted the equally victorious Russians at the end of WW II. Both countries had since built huge arsenals of weapons, spending much of their wealth on such devices. And then, the inevitable occurred as the Soviet Union and Canada had both collapsed under the weight of their military spending budgets.
Since then, the United States and Singapore had arisen to control the world peace and the world's finances respectively. Singapore paid the bills and the US provided the police force. In fact, other than parts of the Middle East and most of the countries in Africa, the US and Singapore were the only places Spurling could think of where Jenine's compatriots were not in power. And if his mission was successful, Israel would no longer be on that list. In fact, it would no longer be on anyone's list. Except for the short list of countries that had sustained a nuclear attack. In their case, sustained but not survived as had Germany and the US. But then, this warhead was 500 times more powerful than the ones that had exploded over those countries. And Israel was so much smaller. Spurling thought it was a pity about the Palestinians, many whom he counted as friends, but then those wanderers had been without a country for so long that they must be getting used to it by now.
Spurling pulled his thoughts back to the situation at hand. He had a ship to dock and he knew that he wasn't going to accomplish that goal by drifting in the water! "Right hard rudder.. Engines ahead one-third," he commanded, attempting to force the stern to starboard while counteracting the natural forces on his bow.
At the same time, he saw the Arion woman walking toward him. He marveled for the hundredth time how she managed to walk that way, her body moving as if she didn't have a bone in it, her body seemingly weightless. Even the bullets pinging through the bridge windows didn't seem to concern her.
"So Captain. Do I sense that you are showing me your incompetence once again? I assume you have docked your ship successfully before? What is the problem now?"
Spurling was suddenly angry. Damn it, she was behaving just like she had when she had first come on board. Assuming he was incompetent, assuming that all Terrans were stupid. Sometimes she could be such a bitch!
Yet he controlled his voice, he had no desire to make her angry. "I have most certainly docked many ships before, but never in such a port without the aid of a Pilot and a tugboat. Besides, as you may have noticed, I can't exactly send my men onto the quay to help with this. There are men down there that are trying to kill us! I thought it was your job to protect us from them?"
"So, you do need my help again. I figured as much. You know, Captain, it would be a lot easier if you asked for help when you first thought you might need it. I know how your culture regards women, but I am certainly not a woman of the type you have known. So what should I do to help you? Kill all the men on the quay or help dock your ship or both? Maybe I should take command of your ship at the same time."
Spurling said nothing, his stomach churning angrily. If she were an ordinary woman, he would have slapped her into submission for such an insolent comment to a man. But he had already seen what she could do to a human male when she was angry. The splattered remains of the man who had taken an inappropriate liberty in touching her were still splattered over the four walls of a cabin down below. Instead, he decided to accept what help she could offer.
"What you can do is to go over the side with the hawsers, one at each end, and draw the ship tight against the quay. With your muscles, it should be easy."
"How much does your ship displace, Captain?"
"Ten thousand tons."
Jenine nodded. It would not be too heavy for her to manage. Walking over to stand against the railing, she saw the men cowering at each end of the ship holding the huge six-inch thick hawsers. She heard the PING PING of bullets bouncing from the steel bulkhead behind her. They moved gradually closer until one finally struck the side of her neck. The impact pushed her backward to fall against the bulkhead as her hand flew up to cover the bee sting of the impact. She was just starting to get her balance back when two more muted THUMPS sounded from her chest.
Greg was standing behind the cover of a mechanical enclosure as he saw Jenine stagger when the bullets hit her. Her saw the wild ripple of her deep brown skin as each bullet's energy was expended against her invulnerable body. He also saw an angry look growing on her face. He was glad he wasn't the one who was starting to piss her off!
She suddenly stood back up and began to move almost too fast for him to follow with his eyes. Her body blurred as she flashed by him, leaping down two ladders to sprint toward the bow of the ship. Leaping thirty feet up onto focsle in a single bound, she grabbed an armful of the heavy eight-inch hawser and jumped up onto the gunwales. And from there, she leaped more than two hundred feet up into the air, the huge hawser trailing out so fast behind her that it began to smoke from the friction of dragging itself over the railing. As she hurtled through the air, the hawser unfortunately came to an abrupt end, and her body jerked to a stop about twenty feet short of the dock. She fell with a curse and a splash into the dirty water. Water that was suddenly speckled with the little impacts from hundreds of bullets as the soldiers concentrated their aim on her.
Jenine had been surprised when the hawser had come to an end, she had assumed it was longer than that. And she was furious as she felt the stinging impacts all over her upper body as she surfaced and started to swim toward the quay. The ship had fortunately drifted closer in the meantime, so she was barely able to hold the extreme end of the hawser in one hand as she wrapped her other arm around a piling. Flexing her chest strongly, she attempted to pull the huge hulking mass of the ship toward the dock. Correctly assuming that her chest was stronger than the hawser, she slowly built her strength into a long slow pull. It would not do to complicate things by parting the eight-inch hawser!
The bow began to respond to her strong steady pull and began drifting toward her. Turning away from the water, she wrapped the hawser around her upper body and gripped her fingers into the rock quay to begin climbing quickly to the top.
Her arrival at the top was greeted by a tremendous burst of gunfire. Tripping and falling several times as bullets hit her legs, her body began stinging as the men started firing at her from all directions. Gritting her teeth, she ignored the pain and staggered over to one of the huge capstans. The impacts of the bullets made it hard for her to keep her footing as her body was thrown violently from one side to the other. Struggling to ignore the irritating pain, she quickly wrapped the huge hawser around one of the capstans and began to pull on it, her back and shoulders flexing with nearly the full power of an Arion Prime. Putting her left foot up on the capstan, she leaned backward, really throwing her back into the hawser. The force was so great that she saw several of the men on the ship staggering as they reached for a railing to steady themselves. The huge hawser, the length of it weighing several tons on its own, suddenly began vibrating as it stretched out absolutely straight from the capstan to the bow. Cursing, she knew that she had almost parted the huge hawser with her last pull!
Struggling to ignore the pain and concentrate on securing the ship, she quickly wrapped the huge hawser around the capstan and began to pull on it, her back and shoulders flexing with the full power of an Arion Prime. Putting her left foot up on the capstan, she really threw her back into the hawser. The force was so great that it almost knocked the men on the ship off their feet!
With the bow now drawing rapidly closer, she ran at tremendous speed towards the stern to catch a guide rope that one of the men had tossed onto the quay. Her arms blurred as she pulled the rope across until she could grab the end of the hawser and do the same with it as she had at the bow. The huge ship slowly and ponderously pivoted under the strength of her muscles as if it was but a dingy, the sudden force squaring it up against the side of the quay. But it was now moving at nearly two knots directly toward the vertical rock wall of the dock. A mighty crash was only seconds away.
Realizing that her impatience had caused her to use too much strength, Jenine dashed forward to the closest approach of the ship, a point about a third of the way forward from the stern near the starboard quarterdeck. Throwing her body forward, she pressed her hands against the massive hull of the ship as her toes gripped the side of the quay, using her body as a human bumper to slow the ship. Scrunching her fingers into the steel side of the hull, she began to match her strength against the rapid approach of he huge ship, her shoulders and calves flexing most visibly as the muscles of a young woman from the stars contested the mass of a ten thousand ton ship. It was no contest!
Spurling felt the ship shuddering as it quickly came to a stop portside against the side of the quay, the steel hull barely touching the huge Yokohama fenders...! Despite the rapid approach, it was a perfect docking, the girl pushing and pulling on his ship as if it was but a small sailboat! Poking his head cautiously over the side, he saw her tightening the hawsers at bow and stern. And then, as soon as the ship was snugged up, she turned to race over toward the soldiers that were hiding behind their vehicles still shooting at her. In a sudden flurry of movement, Spurling saw her arms lifting the vehicles and throwing them around like they were made of Styrofoam! God she was awesome! He was REALLY glad she was on his side!
Hassan was crouched on the deck of the freighter, his mind torn between staying out of the line of fire and watching the woman down below on the dock. Having come from a very conservative and fundamental Islamic culture, the woman had shocked him with her actions. First with the display of her strength as she had carried that heavy box from that spacecraft. Then with the scandalous and blatant way she displayed her body, and then with her incredible power as she had somehow sunk the two gunboats and downed the jet bomber that had tried to prevent their entry to this very harbor. He had been down below at the time, so he wasn't sure just how she had done the last part, sinking the gunboats and downing the jet bomber. But the stories he had heard from those of the crew that had seen it implied that she had done it all with just her bare hands.
Greg also watched Jenine as she went to work on the soldiers below. His body tingled wildly as he saw the woman he was so infatuated with, the woman he had been so intimate with, throwing the armored cars around as if they were toys. He felt himself becoming wildly aroused as he saw her using her marvelous strength, her gorgeous muscles! God she was magnificent.
Meanwhile Jenine was actually struggling to keep fighting the men. Every square inch of her body was now burning from the stinging impacts, and now the soldiers at the ends of the quay were unleashing even heavier weapons. An anti-tank rocket surprised her by striking her lower back with a blinding fury of sparks, the impact throwing her forward so violently that her head made a huge dent in the side of one of the armored cars. She momentarily slumped to the ground, her legs and arms working ineffectually as she saw stars in front of her eyes, her body continually peppered by an ever-increasing barrage of small-arms fire.
Glancing up just in time to see a second rocket streaking toward her, she cried out in obvious pain as the rocket crashed in her lower abdomen, the armored car she was leaning against exploding into white-hot metal fragments even though her body had absorbed much of the impact. She was thrown nearly fifty feet through the air to crumple against the corner of one of the warehouses, the red brick wall partially shattering and collapsing on top of her.
Yet Jenine was nothing if not a warrior! Gritting her teeth against the pain, she was struggling to get back to her feet when the Russian tank at the end of the street finally engaged her, the modern weapon sending a heavy depleted-uranium shell forward at more than three thousand miles per hour to smack into her ribs, the explosion of sparks from the impact nearly blinding the soldiers on the quay. The tank fired again... and then again, three direct hits on the hapless woman from the stars. It was enough. She was down; she was suddenly down and out.
Spurling was horrified to see the Arion woman being defeated by the heavy anti-armor weapons! He had thought she was invulnerable, especially after the way she had wasted those gunboats. But she had clearly underestimated the power of the modern anti-tank weapons that were being used against her. Although it was to her credit that her body had already absorbed enough energy to have destroyed a half dozen main battle tanks. But she still went down, the violent side-effects from the impacts of the Uranium shells killing dozens of soldiers and destroying two armored cars in the process. Yet she did finally collapse. Dead or unconscious… Spurling had no idea!
Suddenly realizing that even a super woman might need his help, Spurling shouted to his men to open fire on the soldiers below, to keep them away from where she lay unconscious. But the soldiers had been ready for that, they now turned both their small arms and anti-armor weapons against the ship, the powerful rounds hammering through the steel walls of his ship. The steel hull and bulkheads of a coastal freighter quickly proved to be more fragile than the girl down on the quay!
Meanwhile, with the terrorists pinned down, four soldiers rushed forward to grab Jenine's prone body and hastily throw her into the back of a truck. Yet more than a dozen men fell to the terrorists' weapons before they managed to drive off with her body. Yet the sheer effect of numbers paid off and they finally succeeded, the truck turning the corner around the end of a warehouse and disappearing into the narrow streets of Casablanca.
The truck drove for ten minutes before entering a walled compound that held the military police headquarters and the local prison. Another group of men grabbed the woman's surprisingly heavy body and threw her on a gurney. The commanding officer, a Colonel, shouted for them to move quickly, to get her into the interrogation chamber so far beneath the prison. At the same time, a dozen men scurried after them, dragging the heaviest and strongest security chains they had been able to find behind them.
Catching up with the woman deep beneath the prison, they entered one of the ancient dungeons, now an interrogation room, and began to wrap the chains around her body again and again, the Colonel urging them to move quickly.
Colonel Bedorsky felt his heart beating frantically as he supervised the binding of the Arion woman. He had flown to Casablanca from Moscow in the back seat of a supersonic fighter as soon as it had been confirmed that an Arion had joined the terrorists. He had earlier been assigned the task of recovering his country's lost warhead. And he was a man that knew a great deal about Arions. He had been working on an exchange program with the American Black Ops anti-alien team for a number of months. And he had met the woman named Bo and he had seen her demonstrate her awesome powers. He knew that even now, that team of Americans was racing toward Casablanca.
He had not dared hope to be successful in stopping the Arion before they arrived, but he had taken a risk and had employed the most powerful anti-tank weaponry in the Russian inventory to engage her. It was late-model Russian weaponry and it had been surprisingly good. And surprisingly powerful. He now had the woman unconscious and in custody, but he knew that situation would not last long for long once she awoke. He had checked her pulse and listened to her slow steady breathing and he knew that she was truly unharmed, her body had truly been invulnerable to any force that his military weapons could deliver. But she had been knocked senseless and that was enough for the moment! Now to see about rendering her harmless for when she awoke!
The men were moving with frantic urgency, wrapping her body with layer upon layer of high-tensile steel chain, a half dozen layers already covering her from her neck to her ankles. They continued to roll her over and over as they built up a dozen layers of one-inch steel chain around her body, a full foot of high-tensile steel. At the same time, the Colonel had a special mask fitted over her eyes, one that was formed on the inside from a highly polished mirror. The mask itself was made of titanium and coated in asbestos, except for the mirrored section. It was a device that he had been given by the American Black-Ops team.
It took less than five minutes to finish wrapping her body in the foot-thick layer of chain. A dozen men then grunted to lift her up and tilt her steel-encased body against the rock wall. Two welders then went to work to secure the ends of the chains and to weld them to the massive rods that were sunk deeply into the wall. And then, as a final touch, two men attached heavy copper bracelets to her exposed ankles, two black insulated power cables as thick as a man's wrist snaking out of the room and down the hallway, eventually leading to a connection that was being hastily rigged to a nearby electrical substation. The Colonel was taking no chances, he wanted to be able to interrogate the woman, and he knew full well how awesome her physical powers were. And he had used electricity as a weapon of torture for so many years, he assumed that it would work on an Arion as well. But instead of his normal practice of applying fifty volts to sensitive parts of a captive's body, he was prepared to hit her with fifty thousand volts and ten thousand amperes, the full power of the nearby electrical substation. She was, after all, some kind of super girl, a dangerously powerful alien, and he wasn't going to take any chances. If the steel chain began to prove inadequate to restrain her, then planned to immobilize her muscles with a powerful surge of electricity.
He was finally satisfied with the preparations as he sat back into a chair that was located twenty feet in front of her, sending all the men except two elite guards from the chamber. There was nothing to do now except wait for her to awake. And then to interrogate her, to find out more about what her people were doing here on Earth. No one had ever captured an Arion before and he was looking forward to conducting the very first interrogation of an alien by anyone on earth. He could already see the General's stars that he knew waited for him in Moscow if he was successful!
Jenine slowly awoke, the blackness gradually replaced by a buzzing feeling, finally by the remaining stings from the impact of the bullets. The stings were subsiding rapidly, her invulnerable body shrugging off such minor annoyances. But her ribs and lower back were sore as hell and she knew that an incredibly powerful weapon had struck her there, one that she had not been told to expect.
But all those sensations were quickly forgotten as she suddenly realized that she couldn't see and she couldn't move!
Shrugging her shoulders while trying to lift her arms, she was surprised to find that she couldn't move even when she exerted herself. Her arms seemed to be strapped to her body. And opening her eyes revealed only a faint glimmering light, one that seemed to come from immediately in front of her eyes. Adjusting the spectrum of her super vision, she was initially unsuccessful in seeing anything. Squinting and adjusting the frequencies of her special vision, she finally found the right frequency, one that let her eyes take advantage of the background radiation that continually penetrated the planet from the depths of space, from a background of dying stars. A radiation that the Terrans had not yet discovered, a radiation that was composed of particles that her eyes were sensitive to. She suddenly saw the room swim into focus around her. She saw the stone walls and she saw the mass of chains that surrounded her. And then she saw the man. He was just just sitting and staring at her. And despite the fact that he was merely a Terran man, he had an insolent smile on his face. Cursing softly, Jenine also knew that he was also about to be a dead man!
Her warrior's instincts allowed her to act without hesitation, as she concentrated on shooting out a burst of violet heat energy from her blue eyes. She intended to first fry the man to a crisp and after that figure out how he had restrained her like this! Opening her eyes wide, she unleashed the violent energies, the power surging upward along a special pathway from inside her brain. Surging up to blaze like the very fire of the sun!
Her loud gasp was audible throughout the huge room as the searing blast of heat was reflected directly back into her eyes, a heat that made her even her eyes burn horribly! The blinding pain shocked her, forcing her to blink her eyes closed. Tears sizzled into steam behind her mask as she began to blink furiously in an attempt to clear her vision. And when she finally was able to view the room again, she saw that the man's grin had grown even broader. He had somehow expected what had just happened! Jenine was suddenly wild with rage as his calm voice carried across the room!
"I hope that you didn't hurt yourself too much, my dear. As you can see, your heat vision is useless, the mirrored mask you wear is designed to reflect it all back into your eyes. And I suggest you don't try to melt it off, it is almost perfectly reflective and is made of a material that can withstand tremendous heat, so you would only succeed in hurting your eyes again. This little toy is from a special collection of the best in material technology that we have here on Earth."
Jenine was barely listening to him as she adjusted the frequency of her heat vision first as high, then as low as possible, then carefully scanned the entire spectrum in between, looking for a weak spot in the reflective surface. There was none, each burst of energy rewarded her with more blinding pain as it reflected back into her pupils and back inside her eyes. And while a Supremis' eyes like hers were an incredibly powerful energy projector, capable of bursts of millions of watts, they were also very sensitive receptors of energy. In fact, focusing a blast of heat vision into a Velorian's or Arion's eyes was one of the few techniques for stunning such beings. It was the weakest link in their otherwise invulnerable bodies. And it was because their sensitive eyes were optimized for seeing in low-energy spectra that no Terran instrument could observe.
A tiny seed of self-doubt began to tickle at her usual confidence as Jenine finally gave up on trying to burn the mask off and decided to work on freeing her arms instead. Clenching her fists, she began to force her arms out to her sides, the full power of an female Arion Prime focused cleanly against the steel, the muscles of her shoulders and back flexing to amazing contours. Yet despite the awesome energies she was expending, her wrists moved outward only a fraction of an inch before they stopped, a incredible force from the chains tightening around her chest as she poured every ounce of strength she had into her arms. And still nothing happened!
She was starting to get a little worried now. First the special mask, then some unusually tight and very powerful restraints. This man, her captor, seemed to know what he was doing! Yet instead of despairing, she began to shake her arms, listening to the high pitched tinkle of steel, steel that she suddenly realized from the sound was coming solely from the chains. And judging by the high-pitched tinkling sound, a sound almost like steel hitting glass, she knew it was a very hard high-tensile steel. It wouldn't compare perhaps to Vendorian steel, but it was the next best thing. And there seemed to be a LOT of it wrapped around her.
Suddenly very concerned, she tried to lift her fists upward in front of her, her gorgeously powerful biceps flexing to their full glorious size. The high-pitched groan of the steel suddenly grew even louder, the chains humming and vibrating against her body as her femme muscles flexed, as she poured literally millions of pounds of her alien yet feminine power into her arms. The pop and snap of the stretching tendons in her arms were now audible as she threw everything she had into it. And still nothing happened! Once again, she was finally forced to relax her arms, her steely muscles defeated by the sheer volume of Terran steel that surrounded her!
Colonel Bedorsky was thrilled as he watched the powerful young woman struggling, as he saw the chains tensioning and relaxing, the links vibrating loudly enough at times to make his ears hurt. He smiled as he saw the woman finally collapsed after struggling for nearly a minute, after she had failed to shatter the twelve inches of special steel that surrounded her. And all the while, his finger had been on the button that controlled the massive solenoid back in the electrical substation, the one that would send the full power of the Casablanca electrical grid through the woman's body. He had hardly dared to hope to be able to defeat her alien muscles with steel alone, but he now had the proof of what he had always suspected. That these aliens weren't omnipotent. That they had nearly all the limitations of Terran humans, they just were a lot stronger and tougher to injure. Of course, they had some very special powers in their eyes. But he now saw that with the right technology and the right weapons, even that power could be defeated. Their bodies would yield to overwhelming force and they could be restrained just like any other person.
Looking again at all the chains that surrounded the woman, he shook his head in wonder. But what a marvelously powerful young woman she was! He knew that she had very nearly broken those chains with her last burst of strength. Very impressive! He knew it would take more than twenty million pounds of force to reach the lowest estimate he had been given for the strength of a dozen wraps of this type of chain. He was pretty sure, based on the strumming vibrations that the chains had given off, that the woman had easily bested that number! He wondered what the best-case estimate of the chain strength had been.
Jenine was furious now; the skin of her shoulders and arms steaming slightly from the glowing muscles that had flexed beneath. She had just used all her power, all her strength, and nothing had happened! This had NEVER happened to her before. Terran materials like these chains had always yielded to her strength. What was wrong with her? Was she low on energy or something?
She wished that she could reach up to judge the size of her breasts, to know for sure if she was depleted. But she had felt fine on the quay until those rockets and tank shells had begun to hit her. And she knew that none of those impacts had left the slightest mark on her skin, but they had shaken her violently enough to send her into unconsciousness. Something that was usually only a small matter for her; she recovered quickly. But the Terrans had reacted quickly, far too quickly. She suddenly wished that she hadn't come alone on this mission, her very first mission to Earth. Somehow it seemed like these Terrans had been ready for her. And they were learning how to fight!
Her mind raced wildly as she thought of another way out of this. Heat vision was no good and raw strength apparently wasn't going to do it. She also felt something clamped around her ankles but didn't know what that was for.
She suddenly had very un-Arion thought. Maybe she could appeal to her captors. After all, she knew she was very wildly attractive by Terran standards, the reactions, conscious and unconscious, of the men on the ship had shown her that. And these fucking Terran men seemed to be in rut most of the time. Making a decision, her voice was soft and feminine, her French-like accent very pronounced, when she finally spoke.
"Well, Terran, it looks as if you have succeeded in a way I never would have expected. I don't think anyone has ever restrained someone of my race before, at least not on this planet. May I at least be permitted to know who it is that I am addressing?"
Bedorsky felt a surge of excitement rushing through his body as he listened to her soft strange accent, one that seemed to be a mix of French and his native Russian. But not quite, there was a lilt to it that a Russian would never use. He cleared his throat softly.
"My name is Colonel Bedorsky and I am the leader of an elite Russian anti-alien team. I have been preparing for a long time for your arrival, my dear. I am so glad that you agreed to drop in to assist in our little experiment. And what is your name, if I may ask?"
There was silence for a moment. He heard the girl taking a deep breath. "Jenine. My name is Jenine Kidar. And since you are were so prepared for me, Colonel Bedorsky, why don't you tell me what you think you know about me?"
Bedorsky's eyes were gleaming with excitement. "Well, my dear, I know that you call yourself an Arion Prime. You are one of a race of beings that has traveled to our planet with the goal of overpowering us. Yet you are very reluctant to use your powers openly here. I deduce that you have other enemies, ones that are more powerful even than yourselves. I also suspect that you have not personally met many Terrans before this, Jenine. Tell me more about yourself."
Jenine hesitated for a moment, trying to decide what to say or not say. Her initial burst of anger was subsiding now, however, and she felt like talking. She didn't have anything else to do. And was pretty sure now that it wasn't the 'charms' of her muscles that were going to get her out of this situation.
"Well, I'm twenty-one of your Earth years in age, and yes, this is my first time walking on your planet. It's not a very nice place, at least if my greeting in Casablanca is any indication. I am also a ShieldShar in the military forces of my planet. That is perhaps what you would call a Special Operative in your military intelligence service. And on that note, Colonel, you really should release me before any of my companions find out what you have done here. There are many of us on your planet and it is only a matter of time before my progress report will be missed. I fear for the lives of all the inhabitants of your city should they decide to rescue me. And you most of all would not survive that effort, Colonel Bedorsky!"
The Colonel's satisfaction at capturing her was suddenly tempered by that thought. Was it true, did she have to make regular reports? He knew that the new leader of his own country was actually a member of her race. His organization had been forced to go underground and had been operating secretively for some time now. It seemed like anyone who displeased the current Premier had a bad habit of disappearing. And despite his personal alliances with the leaders of nearly every KGB and military organization in Russia, no one seemed to know what happened to the men who displeased their leader. They just seemed to vanish. Bedorsky himself was pretty sure he knew what had happened to them, it was that damned heat vision again. He suspected that the Premier merely vaporized his opponents! It was a rather powerful 'weapon', after all. And one that didn't leave many traces.
And if his own Premier was an Arion, what about the senior people in Morocco? No, he had studied their files, if only briefly. They seemed to be genuinely Terran. Morocco was not important enough yet to demand an Arion leader. Besides, a Nordic-looking Moroccan was a contradiction in terms. Not even members of the other two Arion races, who respectively looked African and Asian Pacific, would fit in here. It would never work.
His thoughts were interrupted when the woman's soft voice spoke again.
"Colonel, do not make the mistake of assuming that I truly cannot break these bonds you have surrounded me with. Perhaps my first attempt failed, but I have more strength than I have used so far. But you have impressed me. As warriors, we Arions are always impressed by cunning and power. You have already done far more than could have been expected of a Terran. If you release me now, I promise that you will not be harmed. I have not made that promise to any other person on this filthy planet of yours, but I will make it you. And I am a woman of honor, a member of the StarStruuken warrior clan. You can trust me."
At the same time that she said those words, Jenine began to silently begin to employ another of her weapons, that of chemical warfare! She began to flood the room with her pheromones. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to think of her boyfriend back on Aria, about how he had sent her off on her long mission. They had made passionate love for days at a time, their intercourse nearly continuous, their soaring pleasures mutual and more numerous than either could recall. Just the thought of that time made her horny now, it made her wet, her inner thighs sliding against each other more and more easily as she shifted her stance slightly. She could almost feel the wonderful sensation of his manhood penetrating her with the power only an Arion Prime male was capable of, of the womanly sensations that he had awakened so deeply within her, of the way her body had responded to him. It had been the most wonderful days of her life! And the mere memory was more than enough to make her body respond once again. Even here, in this dark cold dungeon.
Bedorsky suddenly caught the faint scent of wildflowers. He had no idea where it was coming from, but he suddenly noticed that the parts of the woman's body that he could see, her feet and her lower face, were so very attractive. Her skin was so perfectly tanned, her features so Nordic. Her raven hair was gleaming with health and vitality. He remembered how she had looked before they had wrapped the chains around her, a memory he had been blocking from his mind. A memory of the most gorgeously fit young woman he had ever seen! Her body so curvaceous and so well-endowed.
His pants suddenly felt incredibly tight as his body responded to his thoughts with the full power of his manhood. He was suddenly and instantly aroused, his manhood at its full size, his body tingling wildly. My God, what were his thoughts, what was THIS GIRL doing to him? He suddenly remembered that the Americans had talked about pheromones. They had suspected that the Arions extended their physical powers with a very unique and disabling chemical inducement…they could sexually attract with chemical messengers!
Meanwhile, as Bedorsky struggled with his emotions, Jenine continued to flood the room with her musk, the smell of honey and flowers now mixing with the wonderful scent of a woman who was VERY aroused. She sensitive ears could hear the man's heart beating louder, she could even hear his blood rushing in his veins, she could sense how that blood caused his penis to suddenly strain against his pants. She waited until he had breathed her pheromones for several minutes before she spoke again. Her voice was very soft and sensuous this time.
"So, Colonel, would you like to compete with me in a much different way? Would you like to truly show me your powers as a man? I could bring you pleasures the likes of which you have never imagined. And my promise of protection would remain. I will allow you to be my lover, to take me to your bed. And we could then rule this ancient and decrepit city side-by-side. Your cunning and my power. Together we would be invincible. And my body would be yours for the taking whenever you wished. I have no limits in the arena of lovemaking, so unlike your Terran women!"
She saw the Colonel trembling, his body wanting what his disciplined mind would not allow. She also knew that he clearly didn't trust her, he did not know that as a warrior, that her word truly was her bond. Despite the savageness of her people, there were still a couple of areas where her people had honor, and a warrior's word was the strongest of those. But how could she convince this Terran of that fact? Maybe if she could convince him that she could break out of her bonds if she really tried, but that she would prefer it if he released her. Maybe she could convince him that she had a grudging respect for his knowledge and skill. A respect that she indeed was beginning to feel. It was a funny aspect of the way she had been raised, that of honoring those who could defeat you. It was part of the way of the warrior.
"Colonel, I believe that you have underestimated one part of my body, my legs. While my arms may indeed not be able to break these chains, my legs probably can. And once they are free, I will probably be able to free myself the rest of the way. But I will give you one more chance to save yourself, and to save me from having to struggle so hard. Free me now and you alone of all the men in this compound will live, and you will live by my side, both in waking and in sleeping. I will not offer you this again. And if I succeed in breaking free without your help, you will be the first to die! That I can guarantee!"
Bedorsky was truly trembling now, his body screaming at his mind to release her, to caress her, to make love to her, to use her. But his disciplined mind knew that he could never do that. He had an obligation to all humanity, not just to himself. And these filthy Arions were the enemy of all men! He struggled to speak, his mouth dry as ashes.
"No, you Arion witch, I will not free you. I will soon have reinforcements from the Americans, people who also know how to defeat someone such as you. You are my prisoner, and my prisoner you will remain!" He paused, his anger spent, his mind slowly gaining control even over her pheromones. "Now, while we are waiting for them to arrive, why don't you tell me more about yourself, and why you are here working with the Fatidah. They are the worst kind of scum, why would someone as powerful as you join forces with such a cowardly bunch of terrorists?"
Jenine was past listening to the man. He was stupid and he had just thrown his life away. But it was his life to waste. Instead, she began to gather up her strength, to begin to spread her legs, to increase the force she was applying against the chains. Her long legs were very strong, especially compared to her upper body. She very slowly began to push them outward against the chains, thousands of pounds of pressure becoming tens of thousands, becoming hundreds of thousands... becoming millions! Her thighs began to bulge with the sensuous muscles that defined her race, her hips and ass tightening to hold her legs rigid. She heard the chains screaming again as the links vibrated and slipped about the steely contours of her body. And she was still very turned on, the wonderful power of her flexing legs turning her on even more, her inner thighs suddenly wet halfway down to her knees as she dreamed she was using her powers to spread her legs against the strength of her boyfriend, imagining they were playing their special game once again. A game where he would make glorious love to her if, and only if, she succeeded in overpowering his legs, if she succeeded in spreading her legs and revealing her wetly glistening sex to his eyes, to make her body available to his powers!
Her wild sexual fantasy sent a tingling warmth through her entire body, her inhumanly large clit rising up from its tiny sheath to spread the soft petals of her sex, to reach out beyond her body to press against the wildly vibrating steel of the chains that bound her. She gasped loudly as her body nearly exploded in pleasure!
Bedorsky watched in amazement as the chains began to blur, they were vibrating so fast, as a high-pitched screeching sound forced him to put his hands over his ears to protect them. Her ankles were moving slightly apart and the scent of wildflowers was growing stronger. It was all he could do to keep himself from rushing over with the acetylene torch to begin cutting her free. He had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted this woman! But instead, he forced his hand to move across the table, his left arm holding his right wrist; his steely will barely enough to overcome the wild arousal that he felt. Reaching the gray box, he struggled against himself, finally to smash his palm down on the red button!
The woman's chain-bound body suddenly exploded into sparks as huge arcs of blue electricity began to leap outward to strike the walls and floor within ten feet of her! His ears were suddenly assaulted by a very feminine scream of pleasure, a sound that the man in him knew was the cry of a young woman experiencing an overpowering orgasm. It was the sound of an Arion woman as she completely lost control of her body, as a super-orgasm ripped upward through her body. And it was also the sound of a hundred links of reinforced tempered-steel exploding apart! For the Colonel had just done the worst possible thing he could have done. He had energized her body with unbelievable power just as an incredible orgasm was threatening to explode inside her. An orgasm that was already making her so much stronger in typical Arion fashion. An orgasm that suddenly was the most powerful the young woman had ever experienced as her body drank deeply from the power grid of the city of Casablanca.
High tensile steel suddenly exploded through the room like shrapnel as the woman's legs and arms exploded outward to the sides, many hundreds of links exploding apart under her overwhelming strength. Exploding in front of her as she thrust her large chest forward to snap even more of the chains, her very nude and very proud breasts proving the true strength of her body!
Bedorsky dived behind the rock platform of the table to save himself from the flying shrapnel. But the two soldiers standing behind him were not so lucky. Their bodies were torn to shreds as a dozen pieces of steel flew through their soft bodies to impact the rock wall behind them. It was all over in seconds, the wild clamor of ricocheting steel ending as it all clattered to the floor. Even the loud buzz and crackle of electricity was gone, the electrical grid shorted out by the woman's moist body.
Raising his head cautiously above the table, Bedorsky saw the gorgeously nude young woman crumpled into a heap in the middle of a huge pile of smoking and shattered steel chain link. Her body was rocking gently with pleasure. And the special mask was lying on the floor beside her! He was stunned as he saw the beautiful woman stretching with pleasure as she was obviously coming down from experiencing nothing more dramatic than a truly good orgasm! Her back was turned to him, but he was still very familiar with the gentle stretching movements of her body. And with the scent that now permeated the large room.
He hesitated for only a few seconds before he began to walk softly toward the door, hoping to get as far away from her as he could before she stood up and turned around. He almost made it. He was just stepping over the bloody gore of the two guards when he heard a scuffling sound and saw a blur moving toward him, a blur that materialized into the young Arion woman, her back suddenly thrust against the steel door, her chest almost touching his as he came to a sudden stop.
"So Colonel Bedorsky, my good friend. You can't leave me now. Remember, I gave you a choice and I made you a couple of promises. And since you chose the option of dying instead of becoming one of my consorts, you and I have a little unfinished business to conduct. Mainly that of my taking your life!"
Bedorsky was terrified now, his heart beating painfully, his body sweating. But he was also a soldier and he wasn't about to go without a fight. Clenching his fists, he threw everything he had into a flurry of blows that landed on both sides of her face. A flurry of blows that succeeded only in painfully breaking both his wrists and most of his fingers! He stumbled backward and fell into one of the narrow steel interrogation chairs. He looked up to see the woman smiling down at him. He hadn't left a mark on her face!
"I'm impressed," she said softly as she slowly ran her hand over her jaw. "You've got a pretty good punch. If I was a Terran woman, you would have shattered my jaw and my cheekbones. But as you well know, you can't hurt an Arion woman that way! Not an Arion Prime. But I will give you credit for bravery and skill. And for that, I will allow you to die quickly."
She moved forward quickly, spreading her gorgeous bare legs to sit down in his lap, her toes resting on the floor, her lips nearly touching his. Slowly reaching upward, she saw his eyes opening wide as she spread her fingers across both sides of his head. She felt his heart beating so wildly against her breasts as her eyes met his for the last time. And then, before he could say a single word, she flexed her powerful chest, her breasts lifting slightly upward as her pecs expanded with her super strength. And at the same time, the Colonel's skull shattered in a hundred places, the palms of her hands closing to within a few inches of each other. Standing quickly to her feet before he could bleed on her, she let his lifeless body fall to one side. His crumpled head smacked wetly against the floor. And then without another thought for the man she had just killed, she walked over and powerfully twisted the huge steel door from its hinges. Stepping out into the dark corridor, she began the long walk upward from the ancient dungeon and toward the light of day.
Lieutenant Garmant gathered his men at the exit from the underground interrogation area. He had heard the explosion from the lower levels of the building, a sharp metallic explosion followed by a brief electrical outage that reportedly affected this whole quarter of the city. The cloud of blue smoke that even now floated up the tunnel was not a good sign. No, not a good sign at all.
His men were lightly armed, handguns only. The real deterrent to anyone escaping was the massive steel gate that secured this end of the tunnel. The bars were more than two inches thick and were sunk nearly six feet into the rock walls.
He and his men had all heard the rumors of an alien being held below, but like everyone else, they didn't know exactly what this alien looked like, their imaginations filling in the details from a number of Hollywood movies. Garmant wished that he had been able to contact the troops that had fought the alien down on the docks, but the survivors of that battle had all been ordered to stay down by the docks. Apparently they were still fighting a weak force of Arab terrorists.
All they really knew was that they had only been told to make sure that no one came up this tunnel without proper escort. And that they had been authorized to use deadly force on anyone else, something that was extremely unusual. It was clear that somebody was very worried about what was going on down in the lower levels!
The Lieutenant stared down the long stone corridor, really more of a tunnel than a hallway. If any threat was to approach his team, that was the only way it could come from. The smoke was starting to thin, but he could really only see about fifty feet down what he knew was a hundred foot long tunnel.
Suddenly a shape started to form, a shape that quickly began to take on the form of a tall thin woman. She had long raven black hair that cascaded over her shoulders, the strands seemingly charged with static electricity the way they curled up at the ends. He also noticed that she was essentially nude, the burned scraps of what looked like some jeans hanging from her waist, her upper body completely nude. Her eyes also seemed to glow with their own light, an eerie electric blue light that made them look as if they were lit from within. Despite having no real data on the alien, he was an intelligent man. And he knew that if anything, this was the creature that had been reported as captured only an hour earlier!
He turned to see his men hesitating, their eyes wide with something other than fear. They were staring up and down the woman's body. Glancing back at the woman, the Lieutenant saw that she was truly beautiful, her body looking like one of those American fitness women that often appeared in the magazines. And she was walking directly toward him.
He turned to his men. "Draw weapons, men. Do not let the woman get past you. No matter how she might look, she is the alien we are here to contain!"
He heard a soft nervous laugh from several of the men, but they did as they were ordered, the soft sound of steel sliding against leather telling him that their weapons had joined his. He turned and held out his left arm as he addressed the 'woman'.
"HALT! This passage is blocked. Stop where you are and turn around, put your hands on against the wall."
Yet the woman did none of those things, she merely smiled at him as she changed her direction to walk directly toward him. She stopped about five feet in front of him, her eyes nearly level with his, her hands on her hips, a supremely confident look on her face. He suddenly felt afraid.
Jenine stared at the soldiers, briefly debating whether she should kill them or ignore them. She finally decided to do the latter, although she didn't care to be shot at anymore.
"Have your men holster their guns" she said, her strong accent very noticeable. I am going to walk out of here through those bars and anything that you do to try to stop me will only result in your death. And the death of your men. Back away now and live, Terran!" At the same time, the woman accented her threat by reaching out to grab one of the paving stones that formed the walls beside her. Ripping it from the wall, she held it up in front of her face and slowly crushed it to powder with her fingers!
The Lieutenant hesitated for only a moment longer before stepping to the side. The tendons of her hand and wrist, not to mention her arm, had looked unbelievably strong as she had crushed that stone. He was an intelligent man and he knew that he didn't stand a chance against that kind of strength!
He froze as she brushed by him, her fingers lightly tracing across his chest as she gave him a surprisingly friendly smile. Her hair swished across her shoulders as she turned and walked directly up to the gate, reaching out to grab the massive vertical bars in her hands. Her back and shoulders flexed so gorgeously as the iron bars that had restrained criminals for nearly two thousand years suddenly groaned and bent. Seemingly without effort, she pulled her hands out to shoulder-width, creating a hole in the bars. Turning to the side, she lithely slipped through the opening and disappeared into the bright sun of noonday Casablanca.
Jenine ran through the crowded bazaars, her speed more than fifty miles per hour. She twisted and turned with an athletic grace, dodging both people and hawker's carts until she saw what she was looking for. An European woman of about her height and build was walking down a street, her arm linked with that of her husband or boyfriend. And she was very well dressed. Darting to the side, she scooped the woman up in her arms and turned to run into an empty alley. She set her down in a darkened corner.
"I want your clothes, take them off now, please!" Jenine's command was simple and direct. Far too direct for the woman who had just arrived from Paris. Her eyes looked back at Jenine like they were going to bug out of her head, the woman suddenly astounded to see a very nude woman standing in front of her, a woman who had just whisked her here in her arms as if she had weighted but a few pounds. Struggling with her breathing, she finally found the power of speech.
"I will most certainly NOT give you my clothes. What kind of stickup is this, anyway? Stealing my clothes? If it's money you want, here, take my purse." Jenine caught it as the woman tossed it to her. She threw it over her shoulder to land in a trashcan.
Jenine was suddenly impatient. "Woman… either give me those clothes the easy way or I'll take them from your crushed and lifeless body. Your choice… I always give Terran's a choice. But only one choice."
Nicole stared in astonishment as she sized up the woman who stood before her. She was not armed and she didn't look particularly strong. Just very slim and very fit, like a model perhaps. But Nicole had been training at her Karate dojo for five years for the day someone assaulted her, although she had always expected that the mugger would be a man. Without thinking, she swung her body around, her leg flashing toward the woman's face.
Jenine's hand flashed up to catch the woman's ankle in mid-kick, her hand twisting hard enough to throw the woman off balance, hard enough for something to tear audibly in her knee. Throwing the woman backwards against a wall, she saw that she was now favoring her right leg, a painful look on her face. A quick glance inside her knee showed that she had torn a number of ligaments loose.
The woman was still grimacing with pain as she launched herself forward. This time her fist connected with Jenine's palm. The Arion woman simply squeezed her hand about the woman's until she heard something crack. The woman collapsed onto the pavement in tears. Her knee torn apart, her wrist and several fingers shattered.
Jenine spoke softly but harshly. "Bother me with your foolish antics one more time, woman, and your life will be forfeit. Now give me your clothes while you yet live."
Jenine waked rapidly toward the docks while enjoying the feel of her new clothes. The black stockings and short pleated miniskirt felt very sexy. Her deeply cut blouse showing off her tanned skin to good effect. She had chosen well, this woman's clothes were a perfect fit. The shoes were a little different; she had never worn shoes like this before. They apparently were not designed for comfort. They elevated her heels about four inches above her toes. Glancing down, she was pleased at the way the shoes further shaped her already shapely calves. Apparently, that was what they were designed for. After about a dozen steps she had regained her balance and gait.
CHAPTER 3