In the Penile Colony

By Brantley Thompson Elkins

"It's a remarkable piece of apparatus," Mon'ika remarked.

She admired it for a moment, an admiration of long familiarity.

"And remarkably durable," she added. "I've been enjoying it for more than a year now."

"What did its owner do before his.... metamorphosis?" asked her visitor, whose name was Jol'ana.

"He worked in an insurance office. Before his imprisonment, that is."

"Well, he's in good hands now."

Mon'ika laughed, a full-throated laugh.

"You'll hear no complaints from him, or any of them. Isn't that right, Franz?"

"Yes, goddess."

The man's smile appeared sincere, and yet his voice betrayed a touch of weariness. That weariness did not, obviously, extend to his apparatus.

"And you'll hear none from me," said Mon'ika. "As long as..."

Without further ado, she impaled herself on him. He lay back beneath her in surrender as she rode him, as she pounded him into the ground. Having been enhanced, Franz suffered no harm from this,

Jol'ana was reminded of a pile driver she'd watched at a construction site back in the city, before coming here to the island to visit. She hadn't seen her since Mon'ika had been posted to Turia as Protector. She hadn't even heard from her. But others had heard about her. That was why she was here.

Mon'ika was still going at it, like an anvil playing the role of the hammer, when her wristcom buzzed. She stopped in mid-stroke to answer the call.

"Damn!" she complained after breaking the connection. "They need me in Samsa. Building collapse. You'd think the ERF could handle it."

Jol'ana shrugged.

"That's just how it is on an open world," she said.

"But I mean, really."

Jol'ana tried to look sympathetic. No doubt the Emergency Response Force could handle the situation. But the fact was, she'd been hoping for a break like this. If it hadn't come about by happenstance, she might have tried to arrange something...

Mon'ika saw her look. The look Jol'ana wanted her to see.

"Yeah, the thingness of things."

Only now did she levitate off Franz, who was left lying there with his cock pointed skywards. He looked disappointed, as well he might. Mon'ika saw that look, too -- a look that was at least sincere.

"Hey, could you take over for me?" she asked, hovering in the air as she snapped on her halter and pulled on the briefs that constituted her uniform.

"Sure," said Jol'ana. "What are sisters for?"

"Up, up and away," Mon'ika replied, her tone a tad caustic. "See you soonest. Don't damage the goods."

As if she could, Jol'ana thought. Her sister was good at enhancement, she'd had only one unfortunate accident building up her harem, which now numbered seven. It was illegal, what she was doing, but that wasn't the problem....

***

Mon'ika had vanished into the distance when Jol'ana turned her attention to Franz.

He had been looking at her instead, she saw. He seemed to be puzzled.

Guess he expects me to climb right on, she realized. That wasn't her style. Instead, she gave him the once over. Head to toe, and especially midway between.

"Is something the matter?" he finally asked

"No, I was just looking. You're really beautiful."

Jol'ana gave him a hungry look.

Franz' face flushed. Not from being naked, obviously. He had to be used to that. But this must be new to him. What followed would surely be new to him too.

Jol'ana knelt next to Franz and began stroking him, running her hands up and down his body, concentrating on his arms and chest and legs. She avoided his cock for now, instead roaming northwards, touching his cheeks. Then she leaned down and gave him a peck on the mouth.

That actually startled him. Had Mon'ika truly denied Franz such intimacy? All the pleasures of foreplay that ordinary humans took for granted, that he must surely once have known?

He seemed to get the idea now, though. He pulled her in for a deep kiss, which also gave him the welcome pleasure of feeling her breasts brush against him, her nipples diamond--hard with her own arousal.

Jol'ana slipped her left hand behind his back, lifting him into a prolonged kiss. She took his cock in her right hand, getting the measure of him, alternately squeezing and stroking, finding delight in the thick hardness of the shaft and the softer (But only to a Velorian!) texture of the head. How could Mon'ika call it a mere "apparatus?"

Gasps and moans from Franz rewarded her efforts. She broke their clinch now, but blew him a kiss as she sat up for a moment, then turned her attention to his cock, taking the tip in her mouth, teasing him unmercifully with her tongue. His whole body shuddered as he came; she swallowed his cum and licked the head clean.

Franz looked up at her in wonder. Jol'ana reached down and tousled his hair. Only then did he find his voice.

"Are you really her sister?" he asked. "You're not...."

"We have our differences."

***

"You're spoiling him!" Mon'ika exclaimed when she returned.

Jol'ana had moved the action indoors, to the bungalow. She was lying back in the bed as Franz munched contentedly on her clit. Jol'ana herself was more than content, her moans now rising to a crescendo. She didn't hear her sister at first, then pretended not to.

"Hello!" Mon'ika yelled as she drifted up beside them.

Franz suddenly dropped what he was doing, and glanced nervously at Mon'ika. Jol'ana was annoyed by the interruption to their dalliance.

"You did ask me to take over for you," she pointed out. "Anyway, I'd say he's the one who's been spoiling me."

"Did I say to bring him into the house? I never bring them into the house."

"I'm sorry," Jol'ana said, trying to sound contrite.

"Well, don't do it again. Now that you know the rules. Franz, you've been a bad boy. You should have told her."

Franz looked really contrite. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but couldn't think what.

"There, there, my long--cocked baby. You just thought my sister could do as she pleased. Like me. Well, lesson learned."

Franz got up and slunk out of the house.

"Was that really necessary?" Jol'ana asked.

"Jol'ana, Franz and Gregor and the others are officially prisoners, released to my custody. The authorities wouldn't be pleased to learn of them being granted unwarranted privileges."

"Yeah, they've gotten stiff sentences. They're serving hard time."

"I don't appreciate your attempt at levity."

"Do the authorities appreciate that you've enhanced them?"

"What they don't know won't hurt them. Anyway, my boys are perfectly safe here. They'd have to swim 2,000 kloms to get back home, and I'd catch them long before that."

"But when their sentences are up?"

"They won't be. These are lifers."

"Pretty long lifers. If you should happen to be reassigned?"

"I can dispose of them if I have to. They're only B Class equivalent at best. Franz was the only Latent. No match for me."

Jol'ana would have continued to argue, but she pulled herself up short. I'm on the job, she reminded herself. And the job meant she couldn't afford to rub Mon'ika the wrong way. Sisterly spats were one thing, revealing that she actually cared about Franz or the other harem boys was something else entirely.

"And here I was hoping I could take one of them home with me."

That got a laugh from Mon'ika.

"Pretty tricky getting him through a wormhole. Not trained as Messengers. Not nearly as tough, either."

As if Jol'ana would fly a wormhole, rather than taking a passenger ship.

"Guess I'll have to take my pleasures here."

"Well, you can catch up with Franz outside. I think I'm in the mood for Karl. That mission was a total fuckup. Had to dig for hours and only came up with dead bodies. I knew they were dead, but they wanted me to dig them up anyway, and carefully enough so they'd be a bit more presentable at the mortuaries. Total waste of time, and it didn't look good on the newsnets, either."

***

Mon'ika might have been more upset if she'd known how Jol'ana had spent most of her time with Franz on the island while she was away.

Not that it didn't involve sex. Supremis could and did go at it for hours, and Franz had all the stamina she needed. But she was looking for more than stamina. She wanted to seduce him as he'd never been seduced.

When she first mounted him, she reveled in the stretching sensation as his "remarkable piece of apparatus" filled her to the brim. But rather than start pounding him immediately, she simply held him there--savoring the feeling, letting him savor the feeling. She let him feast his eyes on her magnificent breasts, let him watch as her nipples grew even harder, invited him to stroke them with his hands.

She smiled at him as she saw the wonder in his eyes, rewarded him with small gasps as he played with her breasts. She leaned down to let him suck them, to bite her nipples, sending spasms of delight to her cunt. She could feel his cock grow even larger inside her from the stimulation of her inner muscles. She could sense that he was already about to come, which might have disappointed Mon'ika -- but she wasn't Mon'ika.

"Take me in your arms," she said now.

Franz embraced her, holding her tight, and it was then that he came, that she came, that they felt each other's bodies shudder with release.

That was just the first of a dozen times, as Jol'ana taught him all the secrets of her body and how to worship it -- not just her breasts and her cunt, but her belly, the small of her back, her arms, her legs, her lips. Nearly every part of her was an erogenous zone, sending quivers of delight to her cunt when he played with it, a delight evidenced by the flow of her juices that he drank eagerly--as she had drunk him at the outset and would again.

At last they'd taken a break of sorts; she'd taken him flying over island, held to her only by his swollen cock inside her -- enough to keep her from dropping him. Then they'd gone into the bungalow, where Jol'ana had found a music station on the radio and they had danced naked to a classical Terran waltz.

"Masquerade," the piece was called. It was appropriate in a way that Franz could not yet appreciate. All he knew was that it was like dancing on air as they gave themselves up to the seductive melody and rhythm of a composer from far later in Russian history than the Seeding of Turia..

It was only in the afterglow of the dance, Franz so contentedly eating her, that Mon'lka had found them....

***

"You're not like your sister," Franz said now, after they had made love again.

"It's not as if we're joined at the hip," Jol'ana replied. "Do you have any brothers or sisters? Are they anything like you?"

"I can't talk about them."

"Why not?"

"They told me not to. At the prison. That Brodsky would leave them alone, as long as I didn't talk about them, didn't let them come to see me."

"Brodsky? The interior minister?"

"You know him?"

"No, I just saw his name in the visitors' guide."

Which was true. But she'd heard about him before. That was one of the reasons she was here. But she couldn't let him know that. Not yet.

"What about Mon'ika?" she asked instead.

"She agreed to their conditions. That's what she said. And I might have died there if she hadn't come for me. The guards beat me, and they let the other prisoners rape me."

Appalling. But par for the course in prisons here, she imagined.

"I'm surprised you got over it."

"Enhancement can do that, I guess. I know that none of them could hurt me now. I could squash them like bugs."

Only, Mon'ika could still squash you. Squash all of you, if it were in her interest.

"Do you want to squash them?"

"No... I'd rather fuck," he said flippantly

But then his face took on a more serious expression.

"Anyway, squashing them wouldn't do any good. Even squashing Brodsky. There'd just be another one like him."

"She said you were a lifer."

"I can't talk about that, either."

Jol'ana already knew the story. He'd been accused of treason after he discovered graft and corruption in the government's health and retirement insurance program. He'd blown the whistle to Brodsky, expecting to be rewarded. Instead, he'd been tried in camera and buried in maximum security at Samsa prison.

"But you can talk about.... here."

"It was like I'd died and gone to heaven," he sighed. "To be chosen by a goddess. To be transformed into a demigod. To have a goddess fuck me every day. Only now..."

"What?"

"Don't tell her I said so, but you're so much better."

"Well, she has other responsibilities...."

As if on cue, one of the other "responsibilities" passed by. Karl bore visible bruises. Rough sex, it had to be. Really rough, to do any visible damage to an enhancee.

Karl didn't return their glance. He said nothing.

"She was in a bad mood when she came back from the capital," Jol'ana remarked.

"It's happened before," Franz said. "But he'll be fine tomorrow. We heal fast."

Could Franz ever realize that he'd been had, that he was a victim here, just as he'd been in Samsa Prison? A victim of Mon'ika and the corrupt bureaucracy that she cynically exploited to her own ends?

"Let's spend the night on the beach," Jol'ana suggested.

The beach was of black volcanic sand, facing the setting sun. Before long, there was blackness above and blackness below, broken only by the stars in the sky and the heat of their passion under them.

***

Over the next week, Jol'ana also spent time with Gregor and Karl and Max and Aram and Dmitri and Josef. None of them were political criminals. They'd been in for murder, rape, armed robbery and the like.

The only thing they had in common with Franz was that they were hunks when Mon'ika had chosen them, and were hunkier now. They were impatient with Jol'ana's ministrations; they wanted it fast and dirty. Jol'ana was always glad to return to Franz, and not just because he was the key to her plans. It was because he made her so happy. But she couldn't appear to be playing a favorite.

Because they weren't like Franz, there was little or nothing she could do to improve the others. That suited her plans, although it disturbed her. What was to become of them, after she had accomplished her mission?

But she'd have to cross that bridge when she came to it. Or let Higher Authority decide -- although she didn't like to pass the buck. Meanwhile, she had to keep up appearances with Mon'ika, to nod approvingly at her boasts, to sympathize with her complaints, to talk about the men as if they were no more than animated dildos.

She couldn't prolong her stay indefinitely; the story was that she was on leave between assignments in the diplomatic corps, that she'd be chief of staff at the embassy on Abintra -- a posting of some delicacy given the Diaboli influence there.

Could use some Abintran strange luck here, she mused. But all she could do was try out ideas, play it by ear, hope to play it out.

"Have you ever heard about the Prime Directive?" she asked Franz one night.

"You mean, I should complain? If she hadn't violated it, I wouldn't be here."

"One of you didn't make it through enhancement."

"She told us that could happen. We were all willing to take the risk, including Alyosha."

Jol'ana could admire Franz for his sense of loyalty, if not for his sense. Would she be able to turn him in time?

***

It had begun on Velor, where she was a policy wonk at the Enlightenment Affairs Ministry -- there was a separate Foreign Affairs Ministry for nonaligned worlds and, of course, anything to do with Aurea and the Empire came under the Defense Ministry.

As an M--class Vel, Jol'ana Dellery could never have hoped to be a Protector like her older sister. She didn't mind. She was happy with her work for the Ministry, which she considered every bit as important as the war with the Empire. The future of the Enlightenment depended on the morale of allied worlds and the wisdom of Velor's representatives there, not on brute force. Reigel 5 had proved that.

When one of the regional deputy ministers had approached her for a field mission, she had been overjoyed. But when he told her that it involved Turia, she was shocked at his blatant disregard for protocol. Turia wasn't part of her responsibility, couldn't be. She told him so. She told him why, as if he hadn't already known. She told him off.

When she finally calmed down, he got to the point.

"It has to be you. Precisely because it is your sister's Protectorate."

"If it involves my sister, it's the High Council's business."

"The High Council has bucked this one to the Ministry. They're nervous about it."

"What's the problem? She's gotten into bed with the planetary president? Give me a break."

"As a matter of fact, Mon'ika has gotten into bed with him. Among others. But that's not the problem. Not lately, at any rate."

"So what is?"

"She's gotten into bed with them politically. Taken custody of convicts, enhanced them for her own use. Quite blatantly, which is bad enough in itself. But it makes her beholden to the government, which isn't particularly enlightened. Increasingly corrupt and oppressive, truth be told. There've been demonstrations in the capital."

"It's an internal matter. The Prime Directive."

"Exactly. But if Mon'ika is perceived as supporting the government, it could be a disaster. Even create sympathy for the Empire."

"Better the devil you know...."

"That isn't how it works. They don't know anything about the Aurean devil except what we tell them, and if they stop crediting that, if they stop crediting us...."

Could turn into another Reigel 5. Or worse.

"But to investigate my own sister?"

"She'd be suspicious of anyone else coming out to her private island. And, to ease your mind, I have the High Council's assurance that it won't go beyond recalling her and reassigning her to one of the nonhuman worlds. They don't want another public scandal. But the evidence, the testimony, has to come from our end."

"Is there anything else?"

"For you, there's an embassy posting at the end of it. A good one, one of the better worlds."

She always dreamed of going abroad. He could see it in her face.

"And, of course, a farewell orgy."

***

So here she was, with time running out.

Franz was smitten with her, but he still felt beholden to Mon'ika. Jol'ana had to bite the bullet now, and seek outside help.

She hated to involve the embassy, but it seemed there wasn't any choice. Of course, it was the ambassador who had reported the problem in the first place, through diplomatic channels. And she had an excuse to go there that wouldn't alert Mon'ika: something to do with her new posting.

"Frankly, I'd been expecting Velor to send someone with more knowledge and experience," Ambassador Torres Vedras informed her in the hush room. "Are you up to speed on the cultural background of this planet? Mix of Russians, Volga Germans and a few Armenians and other minorities from the 17th Century. Quite unique."

"I've taken deepteach."

"Knowledge without understanding. Not something I approve of."

"The Ministry approved me, and I'm sure you were told why."

"You haven't told me why you're here."

"I was just getting to that."

She told him.

"Franz still can't see himself as a victim," Jol'ana explained at the end. "He believes that Mon'ika is protecting his family as well as himself, that she is unwillingly bound to terms and conditions set by the government, that any seeming faults of hers are explained by frustration with the government. Extreme measures are necessary to convince him otherwise.

"Velor will hear of this," he protested. But he agreed to her plan. She might not be empowered as a Protector, but she had been empowered to carry out this mission -- and even to command assistance from the embassy if she considered it absolutely necessary.

"It has to be a stealth operation," Vedras reminded her.

"I'm sure your people are more than capable."

Indeed they were. They'd get the job done. She wasn't worried about that. She was worried about Franz. Part of her hated herself for what she had done, was doing, to him.

If only I'd had more time.

But she hadn't.

***

Mon'ika was the first on the island to hear the news, and the least to appreciate it.

Because it involved Franz, she immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion.

"You shit!" she screamed at him. "After all I've done for you!"

Franz was stunned. But he thought he knew what she was talking about. Thought he knew.

"You said it was all right," he protested.

"All right? All right? I never!"

In an explosion of rage, she struck Franz on the face. He went flying, landing on the ground a dozen meters away.

It was time for Jol'ana to put in an appearance.

"What's going on here?" she asked, as if she didn't know.

"He somehow got his relatives smuggled off the planet," Mon'ika yelled. "Brodsky's pissed. They're all going to be pissed."

"That's ridiculous."

"But it's true. It was just on the newsnets."

"About his family? But that's wonderful news. I meant, how could he--"

"He must have figured out the comm keys. I should have remembered he was good with key codes."

"But who's he going to call?"

"Some filthy underground group. Bunch of vshi."

Lice. That was what the government called them.

Franz was hearing everything. He picked himself up, approached the sisters.

"A vosh? That's what I am to you?

"She doesn't mean it," Jol'ana intervened, calculatingly reasonable.

"You admit it?" Mon'ika screamed. "I should have killed you. That's what Brodsky...."

Of a sudden, she had an inkling that she had fucked up.

"Admit what? That we were making love? As if you didn't know? As if----"

Mon'ika looked at him squarely for the first time, in anger and disbelief.

"Is that what you call it?"

"She wasn't just fucking me. She treated me like a man, not some animated dildo."

"And that's why you called the vshi?

"I never called anybody, don't you understand? But I wish I had. That's the only thing that makes me feel like a louse, that I failed them. Well, I'm not going to fail them now. Is it really true, that they got my family out?"

"It must be," said Jol'ana.

She punched a button on her wristcom, but her sister was too angry to notice.

"Do you really think you're getting off this island?" Mon'ika shouted at Franz.

Franz was at a loss for the moment. But Jol'ana wasn't.

Three strange figures now descended onto the verandah. The Messenger was flanked by two officers of the Velorian Security Service in full uniform. None of them spoke at first, but the Messenger thumbed a small projector he was carrying.

An image instantly appeared before the eyes of Jol'ana, Mon'ika and Franz -- an image from Velor, from the Hall of Protectors. Five grave--looking men looked out at them, as if they had been here in the flesh. The man in the center spoke for the others.

"Hear now, Protector Mon'ika Dellery, the message of a plenum of the High Council, lawfully and formally assembled, to wit:

"That you, the Protector Mon'ika Dellery, are recalled from the Protectorate of Turia.

"That your recall is justified by reason of high crimes and misdemeanors, the chief among them being willful violation of the Prime Directive.

"That you are hereby summoned to return immediately to Velor, and to this Hall, to answer for your offenses."

The image blanked out. Only then did the Messenger speak.

"Please signify that you have seen and understood the message," he said.

But Mon'ika wasn't even looking at him. She was looking at Jol'ana.

"You," she said in astonishment and then in hatred. "You!"

Franz looked on, only now understanding what had happened, only now understanding that he had been used again.

***

So it was all over.

There had been massive street demonstrations after word of Brodsky's crimes had made the newsnets. Some of the demonstrators had carried banners reading: "Mwy -- Vshi," with images of giant lice attacking Brodsky and other corrupt ministers.

"'We're lice,'" mused Ambassador Vedras. "An odd touch, that. And they also have banners praising Velor. They think Mon'ika has been called home as a reward for helping them."

"Honesty isn't always the best politics," one of his aides remarked.

"Fortunately, there'll be nobody left here to contradict that story. They're letting her take her harem with her to -- what's the name of that world?"

"Unpronounceable to humans. Natives look like slugs. Loyal slugs, though. But there's still Franz Yakovsky. He'll be needed here for testimony, when the dust settles."

“And afterwards?”

“He isn’t a real criminal like the others. We can’t send him to that unpronounceable place.”

"I think we can trust him. We'd better. But can he trust us?"

When the dust settled, there was a new government. There were trials. A new broom swept clean. There was a new Protector. The Turians were happy. The Senate and Ministry and the High Council back on Velor were happy. The Enlightenment was stronger -- here, at least.

***

So it was all over.

Jol'ana was staying at the embassy compound, awaiting transport to Abintra.

Mon'ika had never said a word to her before taking off for Velor flanked by a guard detail of Geheimites who had arrived on Turia with the Messenger but remained discreetly out of sight. Terrans weren't supposed to know about the Geheimites.

She could hardly blame her sister. Mon'ika knew that the High Council's message had been recorded months earlier, when her offenses were mere suspicions. Knew that Jol'ana had known about it all along. She could live with her hatred. But there was another hatred she wasn't sure she could live with.

When Franz appeared at her door one day, she was taken by surprise -- even shock. She'd seen him on the newsnets, talking about Brodsky, talking about graft and corruption. His family was with him now. He talked about them, about how his father had always told him to be just.

"'Be just.' That was my watchword, always," he told the world. "It is today."

There was no mention of her in any of the newscasts.

Yet here he was.

"Are you here to reproach me?" she asked. "I know I deserve that."

"I'm here to be just. You deserve that."

With that, he began tearing her clothes off. They were local make, like his, and shredded like tissue paper. When she was totally naked, he threw her onto the bed, which was Velorian make, and more durable. Velorian beds had to stand up to a lot of punishment.

Franz' cock had torn right through his pants and stood there looking red and angry. Without a word, he threw himself on Jol'ana and buried himself to the hilt inside her. There was no tender foreplay here, there were no endearments -- only the raw need, only the raw elemental thrusting of cock against cunt.

And Jol'ana was loving it.

Her cunt was loving each stroke. Her juices must be wetting the bed; the scent of honey and wildflowers filled the air. Her pheromones drove Franz even madder with lust. His steel-hard cock grew even thicker in her cunt, further teasing the network of pleasure sensors engineered by the Galen into every Velorian woman.

"Forn'tu!" she screamed. "Koodor!"

He must have known the Velorian words, for now he began slamming her into the bed even harder with that remarkable piece of apparatus. He was a Latent before enhancement, she knew; his cock was as invulnerable to her as her cunt was to him. She could squeeze him with the full might of her Velorian muscles and do him no harm. But what they could do...

Franz couldn't stand it any longer. Neither could Jol'ana. As they came together, their screams of ecstasy reverberated through the compound.

Nobody came to investigate. Such things were normal in Velorian residences, although it was considered bad form to keep unluckier Vels up all night with them. But this was the middle of the day.

"Had enough justice?" Franz asked her now.

"Turnabout is fair play," she teased him, as she mounted his still--hard cock, ground herself against him. Her slow tease was as merciless as his fast fuck, and she urged him to show no mercy, either -- to maul her breasts as savagely as he had just ravaged her cunt. In moments, they were in a frenzy of lust, taking wild pleasure together in every way they could imagine -- and some they couldn't, until they discovered them.

It went on like that all afternoon, until as last they fell into a languorous embrace.

"Had enough justice?" he whispered in her ear.

"If this is your idea of justice, I'd love to have it forever."

"It took me a while to understand. It hurt me, what you did. And yet I can see now why you had to. Anyway, my family's safe now. Turia's safe. So I had to pay you back for that."

"Ever have the urge to travel?"

"To Abintra, you mean? I hear they have strange luck there."

"I think I've already found mine here."

"Bet you didn't come here intending to catch a Turian."

"But I'm glad I have."