Planet of Desire

PLANET OF DESIRE II

THE SPERM WARS

Chapter 25

By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM

"Lights of Destruction"

Ivan looked at the pack they had left him with his clothing. A standard Marine's pack. Would the Connobarans be so ignorant of war that they had left him everything inside it?

He opened it, it had been searched. His knife was gone but that was to be expected. Compass was there, he could identify north, which turned out to be to the right of the window. He had a westerly-facing window, then. He had--could it be?

Yes! The flare-gun! Three flares, too! God, these people knew nothing of war! They had left him anything they didn't understand! The flare-pistol, an open-ended chamber device, was there. They had taken his knife but left him a pistol!

But a flare gun isn't a real weapon. Fired directly into someone, you might burn them to some extent, but even that wasn't likely. The flare would bounce and roll and do no damage.

Except it was perfect for Ivan's purposes.

He loaded the pistol, and commed back Colonel Slayton.

"Slayton here."

"When do you plan to strike, Colonel?"

"Another fifteen minutes, sir."

"Good. I know how to get the Connobaran's attention. I hope. Proceed!"

Ivan leaned out the window and fired the first flare into the air. It rose and burst, shedding a green light over the sleeping town.

Connobar was not a modern town, few lights shone in its streets. The few travelers that may be about would carry their own lights. So it was upon a series of dark streets that this alien light shone.

Ivan waited until almost ten minutes. He saw the lights of torches below him as patrols moved around. He saw a group approaching and carefully let them see him fire the second flare.

"There, sir!" came a faint shout. "It's coming from the Facilitator's Building."

Ivan turned and shouted down at the faces visible in the second flare's light. "Hello, citizens." he said. "Witness the lights of destruction."

"What are you blathering about, Facilitator?" came a familiar voice. The same one who had mocked him through the prior night.

"On this day, Connobar attacked my people's most sacred sight. Tonight we take our revenge upon Connobar. Look to the north, where the eggs that bring your children to life are raised. Look carefully, for tonight is the last night you shall have them." Ivan was trying to scare these men, trying his best to sound like some mad prophet. He hoped he was succeeding.

"Madness!" came the taunting shout. Ivan groaned. This fellow was infuriating in his single-mindedness! "All Facilitators are mad."

"Mad we are, but we shall punish you for invading our valley and taking our men."

"Stepwith gave us your valley!"

"It was not his to give you. Look to the north and see the end of Connobar!"

Time enough. Ivan fired the third flare, which rose to join the second one still hovering.

For a time, almost a minute, nothing more happened. Silence, then a gasp from the men below. Ivan leaned out to crane his neck. He could just see near the edge of the building the shining glow of a flare in the north.

"So it begins!" Ivan shouted. "Watch the death of Connobar's future. Then let me speak to the Council before we destroy your present as well."

That was no madness talking. Their only next step was an attack with their ship on the valley of Connobar. This war had become bloody and only a rapid end would stop the flow of blood. Ivan looked as the flames began to rise from the north, just visible as a line of redness on the horizon between two rows of buildings. A good thing Connobar was perched atop a hill, most of the city, hopefully awake, could see now what was going on.

Ivan watched a bit longer, then went back into his room. He expected the door to open and men to enter his room at any moment, but he was left alone. After an hour, his comm buzzed and he answered it. "Ivan here."

"Burn complete." Colonel Slayton said. "My men held them off until the biggest part of the crop was ablaze, and then we withdrew. There's a pass to a valley to the north of us and we're heading for it. The pass will be easy to defend. Angels will come pick up my men tomorrow after light and carry us to safety."

"Very good." Ivan said. "Good job, Colonel. Have them take you to Marine and augment the forces there. It's the last stronghold we've got. Either the Connobarans talk to me tomorrow, or I'll order your ship to make a bombing run on Connobar the next day. Show of force only, but we'll hit them. If this war must take lives, let it take as few as possible.

"Yes, sir."

Ivan lay down and, with the steel resolve a soldier develops and can call upon the rest of his life, sent himself to sleep.

The Council sent for him at first light the next day. Ivan cleaned and dressed again under a Connobaran Guard's cold gaze, this time able to shave thanks to his pack, and was escorted politely--warily, in fact, the two Guards escorting him seemed scared of him--to the Council Chamber. Ivan looked to see smoke still rising from the northern valley, smoldering ashes. People were standing in confused clumps, pointing and talking. The entire town held an air of confusion and depression.

Ivan went in. Instead of a crowd of watchers, the Chamber was empty but for the Council and their row of pages. Ivan was taken up to a chair across from them and took his seat.

"You said you would speak to us." the center Councilman said. "You may speak."

"You have seen the destruction we have unleashed upon your valley." Ivan said. "It matches the destruction of our Tree of Children which your allies, the Slan, destroyed yesterday. We now have damaged each other badly. Let us end this now."

"Your people destroyed our egg crop with all its seeds. We now can no longer have children. We have kept this a secret from our people for now, but it cannot last much longer. Why then should we stop at destroying your people."

"Because my men, the ones who destroyed your egg crop, have a supply of the seeds." Ivan said. "Enough to replant and grow them again."

"You will turn over those seeds to us at once." another Councilman declared.

"No." Ivan said.

"No?" The Councilman was genuinely bewildered.

"No. Not until your men are removed from our valley, and the Council pledges never again to send its men in force to seize our citizens. The Facilitator's role in your lives is at an end as of this day. While my people will continue to assist you in having children, it must be on a voluntary basis. If your people want us to help them have a child, they must come to us and they must ask us. One on one."

"You would turn my people into beggars at your doorstep." a Councilman said. A gesture from another Councilman and a page scooted over to dart beneath the table. "Just like this page, you would beckon us and we would have to come running, is that what you want?"

"Do your pages have any choice?" Ivan asked in return. "Let me ask one of your pages." He turned to the row, picked one lad with extraordinarily beautiful features, more pretty than handsome. "You, come here."

The page looked confused, obeyed. "Yes, sir?"

"You have an unusual job here. Do you enjoy it?"

"Sir?"

"Do you enjoy your job of taking care of the Council, including scooting under the table like your friend just did?"

"Well..." The lad hesitated. "It's a part of the job."

"Do you enjoy it?" Ivan pressed him.

"Sometimes more than others." Having taken the plunge, the youth babbled on. "It depends on who you draw. Being selected for this duty is an honor."

"So they say." Ivan said. "You didn't choose this job?"

"Oh, no, sir." the boy pressed on. "I joined the Guard and the Council came to visit us as they do every new unit, and looked us over and chose me."

"I see." Ivan looked at the Council and saw chagrin on their faces. "So you didn't choose to become a page?"

"No, sir." the page hesitated. "Uh, I'm not unhappy here at all. They're all very nice to us."

"But you joined the Guards, to wear the uniform and be with them, yes?"

"Yes, sir. My best friend and I joined together. I had hoped we'd get married one day, but now, well, he found someone else."

"Have you found someone else?"

"No, sir. I was waiting for Galen and now he..."

"That's enough, son." Ivan said. "Go on back to your duties."

"Yes, sir."

Ivan turned back to the Council. "Unless you and I are going to talk as equals, then there is nothing more to discuss."

"Stepwith gave us your valley."

"He didn't speak for us." Ivan said. "He dragged us here against our will for his own reasons, and I guess Connobar is a part of his reason. But we did not agree and we don't accept his authority. Tell Stepwith that we refuse, and we continue to refuse, and we will always refuse. Either Connobar accepts us as equals, with the right to choose or refuse to assist the Connobarans to have children, or the war will continue. And it will get worse. I can promise you that."

"We must discuss this further." the Council said. "If you will excuse us? Hmm, you seem fond of that particular page--Linus? Join our, uh, guest in the side room until we call for you."

"Yes, sir." the beautiful page-boy responded. "This way, sir."

Ivan stood up, then said, "One more thing."

"Yes?"

"My people know that any children conceived through the eggs are our children as well as yours. Did you know that?" Ivan looked at their faces. They did! "I have given Connobarans sons, more than I can count any longer after yesterday. I will be happy to continue to do so. I see the hunger in the eyes of your people for their sons. We are not monsters and we understand your plight, and your need. Come to us as friends and ask us as friends, and you will all have as many children as you want. This does not have to be a disaster for Connobar. The question is, can you see the opportunity here as well as the danger?"

Ivan followed Linus into the "side room" and wasn't in the least surprised to find its main component was a bed.

"How do you want me, sir?" Linus asked as he reached for the fastenings of his tunic top.

Ivan laid a hand on Linus'. "As a friend." Ivan had to admit that his cock still ached and was swinging as loosely as it had in the days before he had landed on Desire. He may actually get through an entire day on this world without having sex!

"Sir, is it true what you said, that the children are part yours?"

"Yes, Linus, that's true." Ivan said, smiling. "I know it for a fact. It only takes two of us to make a child, you know. It just takes two Connobarans to equal one Facilitator. I think if four of your people got together, they could fertilize an egg without the Facilitators."

"So I had three fathers, not two?"

"That's right." Ivan said.

"I wonder who the other one was?"

Ivan looked him over. "I can't think of anyone I know as good-looking as you are, Linus."

Linus smiled, "Thank you, sir. I was just thinking how lucky I was they assigned me to you. I didn't dare say it in the Council, but I hate sucking the Councilmembers' cocks for them. Especially Carl, the one on the left end? His come tastes nasty, really sticky. I have trouble swallowing it and I nearly gag and throw up every time he draws me."

"What do you pages do about your own needs while on duty?"

Linus shrugged. "Well, we can masturbate while we're sucking a Councilmember. Mostly, though, we try to wear ourselves out with each other in the morning before the Council convenes. Then we get the lunchbreak to ourselves, so we hurry through lunch and fuck again, which carries us through to the end of the work day. Today they came and got us too early, though."

"So you didn't get off this morning?"

"No, sir." Linus said. "As I was saying, I was just thinking how lucky I was they assigned me to you. In this room, we can do anything you like. If you are my friend, then can I ask you as a friend to make love to me?"

Ivan groaned inside. Why do you only meet the prettiest ones at a time you couldn't possibly take advantage of them? And why do they always ask you at such times?

Happily, he thought of an alternative. "As your friend, I will be happy to help you out."

Linus smiled and resumed removing his tunic. His shoes, slipper-like things, came off easily, and his skin-tight trousers were quick to follow. Nude, he looked at Ivan, still fully dressed. "Are we going to make love?"

"I'm going to help out my friend." Ivan said. "Lie back on the bed."

Linus did so and his golden body was as a slender cheetah reclining on a rock. Linus' young pud was golden as the rest of his body, a shining scimitar of youthful potency. Ivan knelt down and touched the beautiful prong and felt as if he was a virgin all over again, feeling so timid in the presence of this beautiful young body.

Linus sighed as Ivan's hands wrapped around his cock, and Ivan reached over and tasted his salty virility with the tip of his tongue, a pool of salinity on his taste-buds, and Ivan felt his mouth generate saliva furiously at the thought of tasting more, and Ivan went down over the powerful prick, slathering it as he went. Linus groaned with youthful abandon at the feel of Ivan's mouth and lips and Ivan tasted his cock as it grew hot in his mouth.

There is a difference in the taste of male flesh as it ages. In Linus' cock there was the taste of young flesh, tender and sweet. Even the musky smell any cock generates was less pungent, less insistent and more invitational in the way the smell entered Ivan's nostrils.

Linus' legs rose up to rest on Ivan's back and he hunched at Ivan's mouth in urgent insistence. Ivan grinned as well as he could, given that his mouth was brim-full of Linus' cock, and went to work. Youthful lust is strong and demanding, no finesse but full of intense urgency and passion. Ivan let this young man buck and thrash at his face, even though his nose bumped Linus' abdomen painfully more than once, Ivan let Linus squirm in his grasp while he milked at the strong young pud, feeling the heat in the cock grow by the second, felt the balls almost slap up against the shaft to become twin imbedded stones that brushed Ivan's lower lip, and Linus moaned, gasped in a rapidly rising scale that turned into a roar and he suddenly grabbed Ivan by the ears, twisting them painfully, and buck-fucked up into Ivan's mouth while he squirted his wad into Ivan's mouth and down his throat.

Ivan bore the pain, permitted the force, and Linus ended his climax, released Ivan and fell back gasping onto the bed. Ivan sucked on Linus' diminishing cock, cleaning and drying it as he went until he finally released it to flop onto Linus' belly, moist but drained and flaccid.

Linus gasped a short time longer, then said, "I'm sorry, Ivan."

"It's all right." Ivan crooned as he crawled up to kiss the sweet lips. "You got carried away. Happens to me all the time."

Linus looked at Ivan after Ivan let go of his lips, not fighting the kiss but not helping prolong it either. "You want me to do you now?"

Ivan grinned. "After a day of being punished as a disobedient Facilitator? I can wait a good long time more."

"Oh. Okay." Linus said. He seemed disappointed.

You can get more of my stories and a new series by going to my link on the "Links" section of the Nifty Archives. --Tommyhawk1

"No, no." Ivan said, realizing. "I do want you. I'm just not ready for sex right now. Yesterday took a lot out of me. Literally."

"What do they do to disobedient Facilitators?" Linus asked. Ivan explained and Linus looked angry. "That's not right!"

"It's what Connobar wants to do to my entire valley, all my people. My husband, my sons, my friends. It's why we are fighting."

Ivan felt a buzz at his hip. "Pardon me a moment." he said to Linus. "Would you wait outside for just a moment, please?"

Linus looked puzzled, but said, "Certainly. I'll be right outside the door."

Ivan waited until Linus was away--no telling what the Connobarans would do if they knew he could talk to his people whenever he wanted, and he needed to be available for the war--and then pressed the accept. "Ivan here."

"Colonel Slayton." came the response. "I just arrived in Marine and I have some bad news for you."

"What happened? Has Marine fallen?"

"No, Ivan. You're going to want to be sitting down for this."

"I'm sitting." Ivan said faintly. "What is it?"

"Those newest snakes the Connobarans are using. They used them again in an early-morning raid, just before we got here. Six of them got into the barracks where the children are being kept."

"Yes." Ivan said.

"Those snakes went after the children. Sir, they didn't just latch onto the children's penises. They literally bored inside of them. Sir, all six of the children died. One of them was your son, Mikhail. I'm so sorry, sir."

"I see." Ivan said. The world felt suddenly so far away, like he was sitting on a small rock in the middle of a featureless desert. "Thank you for telling me."

"Your husband is here, he arrived with the egg safely just last night. Says it will hatch in another month's time. Got a Connobaran prisoner to tell him what to do. And we have the seeds, half of them, safely hidden in four separate locations. Just in case, sir."

"Thank you, Colonel."

"How are things going there, sir? Are you talking to the Council?"

"Yes, Colonel, I am." Ivan said. "I'll report when the day's talks are done. Ivan out."

Ivan sat quietly for a long time, while the horrible news slowly drifted deeper into his mind. Mikhy, small, loving, happy Mikhy, was dead in this stupid war. He had thought he'd never fight again when he accepted his life on Desire, and now his son was a casualty of war. This stupid, senseless war. Ivan closed his eyes to the thoughts, and squeezed them tightly, so tightly that his eyes generated lights that flashed in the place of the darkness he had sought. So very like the flares of the night before, these lights inside his eyelids. The lights of destruction.

Tears of sorrow, tears of pain, filled his eyes, and then anger rose in its place, forcing the tears away. Ivan stood up and shouted rage at the world. Three words, separate, shouted at the top of his lungs.

"THIS!"

"STOPS!"

"NOW!!!"

• SERIES TO BE CONCLUDED IN THE NEXT CHAPTER