John, Hux, and Marbrouk headed down the mainway back towards the portal center in Hub City. Public transportation would’ve gotten them around faster, but it was their first and only time in the capital city of the Peerless. Since they had time to kill, and their pass allowed it, they had decided to do a little exploring.
John wished he didn’t find the architecture of the Peerless so appealing. Their buildings had a much grander aesthetic than those of Earth. All their structures were compelling and beautiful to behold. The aesthetic was both masculine and feminine, strength and power and curves and colorfulness. He couldn’t liken it to anything he ever saw on Earth.
A few hovering vehicles flew by occasionally. A ton of robots cleaned and went about performing various other tasks.
Such a large city being so empty felt wrong to John. He hardly saw any Peerless. He couldn’t feel anyone within most of the buildings around him. He assumed they were deployed off-world. Still, he thought cities should be packed with people.
The city was beautiful and pristine, but lifeless.
There were five continents on Gani, the home world of the Peerless, but John only knew the names of three. Hub, where both Gaan and Hub City were located, Okina, where the city of Kulolo was located, and Palm, where the Peerless defectives called Kahaki were all forced to live.
John and all the other conquered aliens, called Kahaka, subhumans belonging to the Peerless Empire, all lived in a section of Kulolo called the Kahaka District, and the place was teaming with life. He constantly saw strange aliens going about their business there.
John, Hux, and Marbrouk were going to the arena in Kotown, a district of the city of Victor located on a moon of some distant planet the Peerless had conquered. Kotown was a nickname for the Kahako District of Victor, the only place in all the empire that Kahako, subhumans not yet belonging to the Peerless Empire, could live or visit.
This was the first chance John and his two friends had gotten to see more of Gani since they had arrived. And they’d get to use a portal to travel off-planet and see Victor, a major city much larger than any on Gani.
Hux, looking towards his left, loudly exclaimed, “Goddamn, I’d eat a mile of her shit just to see where it came from.”
John turned his head to see what Hux was looking at. It was a large advertisement for a new interview program featuring Amber as the first guest. He groaned internally.
The ad showed Amber from behind. Her head was turned to the side showing her profile. The apex of her nose was painted dark. Her long locks covered her round ears.
The Peerless women, Alii, had dark noses and pointed ears. They also had eight pregnancy-sacs were human women had breasts, and eight cow-like udders in two lines along their lower chest and upper belly.
Hence, most ads featuring Amber highlighted her rear end and avoided showing her from the front, as the ads were targeted at the two male castes of the Peerless dubbed brutes and brains by humans. If she was shown from the front, she usually wore billowy material over her chest.
I just can’t escape this garbage, thought John. Even on a different planet. He didn’t say anything regarding Hux’s comment. He had heard many similar comments regarding Amber from many men, both human and Peerless.
If John defended her honor it would go against the new persona he had adopted – John, the perfect Peerless Kahaka. He wouldn’t do anything to cause his enemies to question him. He had to allow untoward comments about Amber pass unchallenged.
Plus, John wasn’t sure if Amber was even worth defending. Not if she had known what the Peerless would do to the people of Earth and kept that information from him.
It had been almost a year and a half since John lost the Challenge of the Mighty Khaga to the Peerless back on Earth. It had only taken him about a month to completely heal from the ordeal.
The flight to Gani had taken a little over a year. The humans had been on their new world for four months or so now.
The Peerless could’ve made the return trip in two or three weeks by jumping to a special type of beacon called nav points but the terrans aboard the ship were too low-grade and low-tier to safely handle the energies that form of travel would’ve subjected them to.
John had spent most of the flight training. He put a lot of effort into learning a new and popular type of hand-to-hand combat called mixed martial arts, or MMA. He also trained with another friend of his named Naoki, a man that specialized in a similar manner of swordsmanship as Munashi, though Naoki wasn’t half the swordsman as John’s deceased kin.
Hux and Marbrouk were both MMA fighters, and each excelled at different important aspects of that type of fighting.
Neither Hux nor Marbrouk were the best MMA fighters, not even close, but it seemed the Peerless chose which humans would come to their home world based on genetics as much as knowledge and ability.
Marbrouk turned to look at the ad showing Amber. He responded to Hux by saying, “What I would do to have just one night with her. The Peerless are onto something with their system. Their matriarchs are so beautiful and…you know what I mean, discounting the strange torsos. There’s little I wouldn’t do to spend a night with one. Too bad we can’t earn credits like the brutes.”
“We can, mate,” replied Hux after chuckling. “Just haven’t. None of us. Don’t give us much of a chance to earn any, do they? They didn’t even answer if we’d get a human woman or one of theirs neither. I’m picking that one right there. My Amber. Demand her, I will. Just need to figure out how to earn me some credits. And it’s good you ain’t whining about your wife no more, Marbrouk. It is what it is, mate.”
Marbrouk looked down, his face turning red with shame. “It isn’t right. But they won’t tell me when I’m going home. I’m starting to think they won’t let us. My wife’s a very good woman. She’ll wait for me. She’ll die cold and alone. My daughter will never know her father. I couldn’t even say goodbye to them. I haven’t seen them since the first day the Tree returned. And here I am, talking about those matriarchs and coveting Amber instead of my wife. My father would give me the belt if he heard me speak as I did. God, forgive me.”
Hux laughed and put his arm around Marbrouk. “None of that, mate. We’re headed on over to the big show tonight. Win some crystals. Some from the Normalized Unarmed comp on myself, and the rest on our boy John. We don’t have it so bad here, mate. Leave the past in the past. Focus on our future.”
Hux was originally Australian, but moved to the US fifteen years ago when he was eighteen. He excelled in grappling, holds, and mounts, what John had previously considered palé.
Marbrouk was an Algerian that specialized in both striking and boxing.
Both men had taught John a significant amount of what they knew.
Historically, John was always much faster and stronger than everyone he faced. Since he was easily able to overpower his opponents, he had little need to learn much about hand-to-hand. Things had changed, and [Mixed Style Unarmed] was a [Skill] he sorely wanted to improve.
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The Peerless had amazing machines called Trainers that were able to connect the NCS, the Nano Control System, of two or more users and allow them to train together within a virtual environment. Height, weight, reach, and [Stats] could all be made the same within a Trainer, and participants could go all out without worry of injury or expenditure of essence.
Using the Trainer was a huge boon for John as he didn’t have to hold back or put such effort into slowing himself down. Facing opponents on an equal footing allowed him to focus on only what was important. And it was good training for many arena events too.
Though John’s ring, all his crystals within the ring, and all his magical items were taken when he was defeated, the Peerless left him his band of suffering necklace and the black robes with red trim he had worn since stealing them from Diamond Garioch. They were high-tier robes, though they looked low-level.
During the day, John had been earning some crystals working as a blacksmith’s apprentice. An intrinsic part of quality blacksmithing was runecrafting, so he was learning that too. He planned on replacing all his gear with items he crafted himself. When he could afford to.
And in order to afford to, John needed a lot more crystals. The Peerless missed the small bag of crystals John had always kept in his sash. Those crystals were already turned into many times more wealth by fighting in the arena in Kulolo only Kahaka could fight in.
Of all the humans that traveled with John, only Hux and Marbrouk were interested in challenging themselves in the arena. There were many events to compete in, and all of them awarded crystals for wins. But crystals were needed to buy into events too. Some events required a sum of crystals to be put up as collateral against a poor performance.
Better still, fighters were allowed to bet on themselves winning. If it was a team event, they could bet on their own team.
The Kahaka arena was small. Since John always won, the odds favored him too much and betting quickly became a poor way to increase his wealth. He had been asking for permission to travel to another arena under Peerless control, the Kahako arena of Victor. He was finally granted permission that morning. It was a much larger arena. The odds wouldn’t be so skewed against him. Not at first.
This new arena was the chance John needed. All his wealth, his previous winnings, all the money he earned at his day job, he’d bet on himself. He had no idea when he’d be allowed to go back to the Kotown arena, and chances were the odds and payouts would be garbage whenever he did manage to return. This was his only chance. He had to win tonight, and he had to win big.
After seeing the dour look on Marbrouk’s face, Hux softened. “And who knows, mate. Maybe if you save up enough crystals and grease the right palm, you could be on a ship heading back to old mother Earth in a year or two. Nothing’s written in stone, yeah? And when you’re back, give your old lady a right smack on that big pooper of hers and tell her it was from Huxley, the man that swept the Normalized Unarmed comp because her husband’s ground game is complete shit.”
Marbrouk laughed and slapped Hux on the back. “My wife doesn’t have a big butt. Her butt is the perfect size. And I will not smack it for you, my friend. God, I miss her. I am half a man without her.”
Hux laughed too and said, “Listen, mate. When you do get back, it’s important you take care of her right or she’ll think you didn’t miss her. Let me tell you how to make that highly important night just magical for your old lady. A night she’ll never forget.”
“You’re the last man I need to take advice from on how to treat a wife,” said Marbrouk. “But I must hear this. I have a feeling it involves a lot of drugs and prostitutes. Possibly leather outfits and whips, maybe a few firearms and even farm animals.”
“No. Nothing like that, mate. Just good advice on how to finally please your old lady. What you want to do is set up nice smelling candles in the bathroom, fill up a hot bath with all the oils and shit women like, and while she’s bathing and getting nice and clean and smelling real nice, you light candles all over the bedroom. Then you cover the bed in rose petals. Just throw that shit all over. And leave a nice path of them petals from the bathroom leading right to the bed.
“When she’s done with the bath, she dresses in the sexy lingerie you laid out for her. She does her hair and face up all nice and pretty. Then she goes and lays in the bed. The next part’s the most important part, mate. You go and open the window up about yea high.” Hux held his hands about a foot apart to show the correct distance.
Marbrouk asked, “And why is that the important part?”
Smiling widely, Hux replied, “So you can stick your head out the window and yell out, ‘Hey, Hux! She’s ready for you, mate!’”
Both Hux and Marbrouk laughed uproariously. John pretended to laugh along with them. He knew they were joking and no harm was meant, but he came from a time when a wife’s honor was defended unto death and her fidelity wasn’t a joking matter.
That’s not really true, thought John. There have always been such jokes, and I used to enjoy them too. I have a hard time finding them funny now considering Lilly, Amber, and my sworn enemies.
Having lived for so long, John had traveled to many places where women were of short supply and had to be shared, but that was always and only out of necessity.
When food was sparse, farmers were forced to make very tough decisions. Sons were able to work harder and for longer, so received more food than daughters. Daughters would often slowly starve to death. Some would be left in the woods or sold.
When it came time for sons to marry, there wouldn’t be enough women. Polyandry wasn’t a practice anyone wanted. It was an evil of desperation. Two or three brothers would marry and share the same woman, and it was always brothers. As soon as times got better, the practice would immediately stop, and all involved were happy to see it end.
Often, if the rulers cared about the plight of their people, other regions or countries would be invaded with the hope of taking their women and avoiding the practice at all.
The Peerless had no husbands or wives. They had no families. They only had the large houses called kauwas. They practiced polyandry out of a want to. They used sex as a reward. Even children were a reward.
John thought it was sick. But that was the least of the sickness that pervaded the society and culture of his sworn enemies.
The Peerless, certain in their way, found no shame in anything they did. Any Peerless asked would admit to what their Kahaka eugenics program entailed. They had no issue admitting to the horrors their program would inflict on humans back on Earth.
First, Earth would be sprayed with a chemical sterilizing all humans. Those judged to be defective or useless, all the weak and crippled that would pose a net cost to society, were to be killed. The defectives that could be of useful service would be allowed to live out the remainder of their lives.
All marriages would be annulled. Men and women would be segregated. All children would be taken from parents and raised together in large groups. Men and women deemed worthy enough would receive injections genetically modifying them. Once that treatment was completed, those that received it would be unsterilized and made breeders.
The first phase of eugenics was all about improving humans rapidly, so the usual Peerless reward system of mating wouldn’t be in effect until later generations. Until then, breeding would be decided by the brain caste based on genetics and animal husbandry. Women would have no say in if and when they were impregnated.
It would take centuries longer for the other Kahaka they ruled to change in a way allowing them to fully integrate their society with Peerless orthodoxy.
The man John worked for, a blacksmith named Gle Ah, was not like humans. His people were an ammonia-based type of life and evolved slower. Their women were much larger and stronger than the men and rarely bred. It was expected to take at least a thousand years for animal husbandry to change their race enough for them to be considered full Peerless.
Humans were expected to be fully integrated in less than a century as Earth measured time. And they’d be the first Kahaka race to be fully integrated with Peerless orthodoxy. They were very excited to have finally found a compatible match for their DNA. Both races were to benefit from mixing genetics. On top of the improvements from genetic modification and eugenics, genetic integration was supposed to increase the grade of each race somehow.
Marbrouk said his daughter had a serious genetic disorder and was considered low functioning.
Marbrouk was a fighter. He was both capable and tough. He wasn’t stupid. Why the man chose to invent stories about going home, or still having a wife and a living daughter if he did manage to get back to Earth, really bothered John.
On a couple occasions, Hux tried explaining his thoughts about it and why he believed it was better to play along with Marbrouk’s fantasy, but none of it made sense to John.
Why Marbrouk accepted such news passively instead of spending his life trying to cause some damage to those that took all he cared about from him, all that truly mattered in life, wasn’t something John could fathom.
To make sense of it all, John reasoned Marbrouk had to be like him. Pretending. Learning. Waiting for the right time to strike and cause real and lasting damage. There was no sense lashing out impotently and doing little or no real harm.
A hovering vehicle with a kauwa banner sped down the mainway. That banner meant an Alii was in the vehicle. The three men of Earth turned to face the street part of the mainway, knelt, and bowed their heads to the vehicle as it went by.
Most of John’s free time and thoughts went towards how he could topple such a vast and mighty empire, and he turned his thoughts inward to do so again.