Author’s Note: A novelette. At 18,590 words, it's too short to be a full novel but long enough for me to publish it as an e-book. Three scenes are posted here as a teaser: The first two opening scenes, plus a tickle snippet.
Bandi Pandakoon pounded on the escape pod’s tiny control panel and spoke unladylike engineering words. The pod had ejected its transponder, leaving the passenger compartment stuck to the side of the Cocoan star frigate Bravery. As the transponder flew away, it started broadcasting a lie. It told Bandi’s retreating comrades that Bravery was now completely abandoned – that Bandi had made it off too.
The Imperials had ambushed Bravery during an anti-pirate patrol, and the Terran battle cruiser was now sending a boarding party. Imperial humans weren’t actually worse than pirates, Bandi had to admit, but they were just as bad. They were notorious for treating non-human prisoners like animals. They’d put her in a zoo, if they didn’t just shoot her out of hand.
No! There was still something she could try. A minute of work with the panel’s keyboard, and Bandi convinced the pod’s electronics do things they had never been designed to do. A few more minutes prepared the hyperdrive in Bravery’s main engine room to do something absolutely forbidden. Then Bandi hesitated. A blind jump – especially one set up this quickly – was deeply stupid. Even if she survived, she’d likely end up so far away that she’d never be able to return.
“If I escape both the Imperials and the pirates, I’ll be ahead of the game,” Bandi said aloud. “If the local humans treat me like a human being – or like a woman of whatever their species turns out to be – I’ll be ahead of the game. And if I can find work as a wrench wench and live comfortably there, I’ll be way ahead of the game!” Her thumb stabbed the final key.
Bravery made one last jump.
Bandi wasn’t sure if she believed her rescuers. But they weren’t sure if they believed her, either.
She wasn’t surprised to hear that she’d jumped several thousand light years in space. She was surprised to learn that she’d come eight or nine centuries forward in time as well. But that’s what her rescuers told her. The Terran Empire, they carefully explained, was ancient history.
They took her planetside at once. To Iowa, a world inhabited multiple species, all descended from colonists. Iowa, they told her, was one of the Steel Worlds, whatever that meant.
Once down, they stripped her to the fur and gave her a competent, cautious medical check. Despite their multi-species familiarity, they had never seen a Cocoan before, or even anyone cocoanoid.
“Humanoid female,” the human doctor said, recording a verbal description to go with the images he was taking. “Height 163 centimeters. Mass 45.9 kilos. Unidentified Theria subtype, plantigrad with a minimal tail. Notable mammilaries; size B. Five-finger hands; four-toed feet. Extensive orange fur, yellow scalp-hair grown long. Variant Theria-type ears and muzzle; paled muzzle-fur. Magnified eyes with green irises, white sclera.”
“That’s me,” Bandi agreed. Dr. Howatt was unfailingly kindly and cheerful, even when he clamped her head (gently) for an encepho-imaging. In theory, Bandi knew, not all humans were Imperial bastards, but that was theory. Dr. Howatt was completely unlike any human that Bandi had ever heard of, and she found it impossible to remain suspicious of him. She even started answering the nonsense questions he shot at her as the encepho-imager made a video of her brain.
Maybe the Terran Empire really was dead and gone.
Finally Dr. Howatt said, “Done for now. The refresher is through that door. Go wash and brush up. And here,” he handed over her flower-ornament. “The powers that be decided you can keep this.”
Setting the pink flower in her hair, after washing and grooming, made Bandi feel better. That mood broke when she saw the clothing provided. The jammie bottoms were the same color as her overalls but much thinner. Silky. The top was of matching material, and not just thin and silky but sleeveless and abbreviated, forcing her to reveal her midriff. And she missed her sneaks.
“I don’t see any shoes here,” Bandi said carefully as she started to dress.
“No, no shoes,” Dr. Howatt cheerfully agreed.
(Later...)
Bandi mewed as the brushes lapping her soles finally pushed her past the point where she could hold in her giggles. The gag in her mouth held the giggles in for her, keeping her from making a louder noise.
The soft brushes were quite mild in their tease, and Bandi really wasn’t all that ticklish. It had taken more than half of the hour-long session before she had begun to squirm. Not that she could squirm very much. The current configuration of the therapy device held her half-sitting, with lavender strips mummy-wrapping her from ankles to neck. The foot of the device trapped her ankles in a set of stocks, and a set of grav clamps gently held her toes. She couldn’t wiggle her toes, much less clench them, but the immaterial nature of those toe restraints gave full access to the tickle brushes.
Bandi could see the brushes as well as feel them. A holodisplay showed her bare feet and the brushes that teased them. An earbud let her hear recorded giggles from her first session. It was torture, she told herself, and the worst torture was that it wasn’t torture.
As mild as the brushes were, they were also implacable, running in a regular pattern that covered every bit of bare sole-skin. Vorr sat nearby, monitoring both her and the tickle device’s readouts. Every so often he’d make a small adjustment. Not to change the pattern of the brushes, but to tweak the haptic transducers in her anklets and the neural transducer in her collar. He was optimizing the tickle. Even so, it had taken the brushes almost fifty minutes of soft, steady tickling to bring her to the point of giggling.
Bandi mewed again. She tried to hold still. The brushes continued their soft lapping of her soles. She squirmed. The soft tickles didn’t stop. She closed her eyes, shutting out the holodisplay, but she could still feel the brushes doing their work. She opened her eyes to watch, as her toes and arches were lightly tickled. And her heels, and the balls of her feet. All tickled with a quiet insistence.
(If you want the rest, you’ll have to buy the e-book, available at Fiction4All.)