A World for the Taking Ch. 01

Perhaps this is a surprise to many folks, but I am back after a very long absence. This is a brand new story in the UaSS universe. This one is somewhat different than my previous efforts. First, there are no sex scenes. The story revolves around teenagers and LitErotica does not allow stories where underage people are depicted having sex. More importantly than that rule is the simple fact it would have added nothing to the story and would not have fit the plot. Second, and this is important for continuity, this story begins before the Conglomerated Planets and the jZav`Etch Hegemony make contact. Third, and maybe the most important difference to readers, the story is complete and primary editing is done. That means I will be posting chapters quickly, perhaps every day. I think it will take less than two weeks to finish posting all nine chapters. That, of course, depends on my schedule, but I have great confidence.

Just to be clear for those who do not know, I am not an English major. I work in a construction trade. I am not a trained writer. I will inevitably use the occasional wrong word and my punctuation will not be perfect. If those sorts of mistakes ruin stories for you, perhaps I am not an author you should be reading. One other thing readers need to be aware of is I do not write the longest chapters on this site. Don't waste your time pressuring me to do so. It won't do you any good and will just irritate me.

For an explanation regarding my absence and to read my plans concerning 'Storm World' please go to the forum thread here: http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1346444. There you may also ask questions and I will try to answer in a timely manner.

Please note: All anonymous PMs sent to my email will be deleted without being read. The reason for this is simply that I received multiple harassing messages from a self-entitled troll and I just don't feel like dealing with that sort of nonsense.

With all of that out of the way, dear readers, come with me now across the galaxy to a distant world beyond sight of Earth. A world orbiting alien suns where Humans live peacefully, blissfully ignorant of what will come.

*****

A World for the Taking

Prolog

"This is it?" the little girl asked. She was about ten years old. Maybe a little older. It was impossible to be sure.

"Yeah, Fuzzybutt," the burly man beside her said softly, looking down on the patch of rich, black soil in front of them.

"Papaaaa..." the girl whined in sulky protest. "It's my birthday."

He smiled warmly and said, "Alright. Tammy."

She smiled, pleased to get her way. When she looked at the patch of soil again, though, her smile went away.

"She's under there?" she asked. "My mama? I mean, my real mama."

"Your real mother," Bob, her adoptive father, said.

Tammy stepped forward and placed her hand on the large, unshaped stone that marked the grave. She brushed away some dead leaves and moved a creeping vine aside. The date Bob had scratched into the stone was nearly illegible. He had not had anything like a chisel to do a proper job of making the marks. Instead, he had used his knife and the stone was granite or andesite. Something bluish grey and hard, anyway.

"What was she like?" Tammy asked. Her small fingers traced over the shallow scratches.

"Beautiful," said the man softly. "And brave. And tough. She saved you. Swam to shore with a broken hip, a broken arm and all kinds of internal injuries."

Tammy knelt on the soft ground, spreading her hand over the damp soil.

"Your Uncle Dan and me, we saw it come down, you know." He wrung his hands and shuffled his feet pensively as if still feeling the frustration of that day seven years ago when he and his best friend had been unable to save this little girl's mother. "Rode hell bent for leather for more than an hour. Damned near killed the stock. We found her down there on the shore." He pointed down the steep, vegetation covered hillside at the rock strewn beach. "She was awake. Had a gun in her hand. You were curled up on her chest. She was so weak she could hardly point the thing at us."

"But she didn't shoot," Tammy said, still considering the stone. It was as if she was trying to get it to tell her something.

"No," her father said. "We tried telling her we were friends. She didn't understand our words, but after a minute she laid the gun down. Then she sort of went limp and I... I got her helmet off."

"And she was still alive," Tammy said.

"Yes," he said. "We could see how much she was hurting. She talked. Neither me nor Dan had a clue what she said. I figured what she meant, though."

"What?" the girl asked softly, wanting to hear the story again.

"She had to be asking us to take care of you," he said. Real sadness infused his words. "She scooped you up with her good arm and gave you to me. You were just a skinny little thing, worn out and too tired to wake up. Dan used his emergency kit to see if we could do anything for your mother. Of course, the damned kit had no reference to go by. Never seen one of your people before. We did our best, baby. She was just too far gone for us."

Tammy remained silent for a long time and her father let her be. The forest around them made noises. Bird calls and insect sounds came faintly to them. A long, high pitched bugle of a far off elk rang between the trees. It sounded sad and lonesome.

"We buried her here, above the lake," the girl's father said, breaking the silence. "We couldn't take her with us. You were in a bad way and our emergency kit wasn't enough. We had to get you to an auto-doc. Had to do it fast."

"I know," Tammy said with a sigh. "It's okay, Papa. I know."

"I dug the grave while we waited for your ma to bring the flyer. Dan held you the whole time," he went on. He seemed to need to tell it to the end. "I laid her down in there on a bed of leaves. Covered her with stones so nothing would come disturb her. That was the best I could do. When your ma got here, Dan got aboard with you and they flew straight back to our station. I couldn't go. Had to bring the stock back, so I spent a little time making that stone. Always meant to come back and do a better job of it."

Bob went silent, too wracked by emotion to go on. Tammy continued to kneel and run her fingers lightly over the earth of the grave. Finally, she stood, brushed the dirt from the knees of her overalls and took the man's broad hand in her small one.

"What did she look like?"

"A lot like you," he said earnestly. "Her fur was a little more yellow. She had white tips on her ears instead of brown. You have her eyes, though. She was taller than me. That makes me think you're in for a real growth spurt before much longer."

Tammy smiled up at him and squeezed his hand briefly.

"And I think she loved you a lot," he said, squatting down to look the girl in the eyes. "She kept repeating your name and stroking your head the whole time she was awake. Right up until she..."

Tears welled in the little girl's emerald green eyes and she threw her arms around the broad chest of the man who had become her father. She held tight and wept, crying softly against his shoulder. Gently, he returned her hug until her tears abated and she drew away.

"Where's the ship?" she asked, wiping the back of her hand across her eyes.

"It's right out there," he said, pointing out over Big Lake to the west. "About seventy-five or a hundred meters from that rocky outcrop. It wasn't a big ship. More like one of our shuttles."

The little girl's tail lashed and her ears lay back against her head.

"I wish I could see it," she said.

"If the company ever gets around to raising it, you will," her father promised. "I'll make sure of that, Fuzzybutt. I promise."

*****

A World for the Taking

Chapter 1

"Bob, are you there?"

Bob Mackey drew on the reins, bringing his big stud to a halt. He tapped his earpiece and said, "What's up, Deborah?"

"News dispatch just came in," his wife said. She sounded serious and concerned. Deborah rarely sounded like that and never over something like a news dispatch.

"What's happened?" he asked.

"You're going to want to read it yourself," she said, stressing the last word. "How soon can you get back to the station?"

Bob frowned. He was on his normal bi-monthly tour of the valley to check the sensors and the environs of the forest. As warden of the Mid-Valley range, it was his responsibility to make certain the forest was healthy and to mark various unpromising trees for early harvest. He had planned to be out for another two days. There was an old sensor up on the ridge that needed to be replaced soon.

"I'm on the homeward leg already, Deborah," he said. "Can't you just send it to my pad?"

"Bob, you've trusted me for the last eleven years," she said. "Please, just come home quick as you can."

Eleven years? They had been married for nearly fifteen. And then it hit him.

"I'll be there in about six hours," he said, already turning his stud down off the trail onto a new course.

"I'll have supper waiting," Deborah said. "Love you, Honey."

"Love you too, Sweetheart," he said.

The big steelie stud, Temper, picked up his pace when Bob thumped him in the sides with his heels. Steelies, more properly called stiliosaurs, were powerful beasts the size of Earthly horses with large, four clawed, grasping feet and prehensile tails split in a V near the end. The stud made cross country travel look easy, even with Bob's hundred kilos of muscle and bone on his back, never mind the weight of the saddle and tack. Temper did not hesitate to spring over creeks or climb onto deadfall trunks. In fact, he seemed to enjoy this more rugged sort of terrain. On his back Bob grimaced at the jolts to his innards, but kept his seat better than almost anyone else could have hoped to.

They were a matched set, Bob and Temper. Both were bigger and tougher than others of their respective breeds. Both seemed bred for this life, though it was factually true only for Temper. Bob had been born on a world nowhere near as wild as this frontier outpost. When he was still a teen he took a liking to the notion of getting away from all the modern conveniences. He had discovered an author from Old Earth, a man dead for many hundreds of years named Louis L'Amour who wrote about frontiersmen and cowboys and adventurers. Bob read everything he could get a hold of and as soon as he was old enough he signed on with Tyne & Harper Incorporated.

The company trained him and sent him here to this planet that had no official name at the time. It was merely a world for the taking. The planet had since been christened Juniper after a particularly tough, tree-like shrub from Old Earth. Juniper was a world long in development, outside the bounds of the Conglomerated Planets with a dearth of colonists. As compensation Bob Mackey had been guaranteed three shares of the profits from the coming harvest of the valley and given a one hundred square kilometer tract of good river valley forest. All he had to do was live long enough to earn it. In the meantime, Bob had to keep the forest healthy and watch over the wildlife and the trees. And one last condition: Bob had to raise a family. A frontier world without settlers was of little value to the investors.

At the end of five hours hard travel Temper was flagging. The eyes on the back of his head seemed to blink accusingly at Bob, but he did not stop. The beast was as stubborn as his rider and if Bob was not ready to quit, Temper would not either. They straggled into the station yard, battered and begrimed by the forest and were met by Bob's son, Mike.

"Where's your ma?" Bob asked wearily as he dismounted.

"In the kitchen with Tammy and Jean, I think," the teenager said. He took Temper's reins and stroked the stud's damp, scaled shoulder. Temper nuzzled Mike's chest and wuffled in greeting. Steelies were social animals and took to Humans readily and with affection.

"I'm done in," Bob told his son, taking his pack from the saddle. "Would you put him away for me? Get him cleaned up and be sure he has feed and water. He'll need rest."

"Sure, Pa," Mike said, smiling. He liked Temper and though he was not as large as his father, he often rode the stud on short excursions with his sisters. "Pa, ma looks worried."

Bob considered that and nodded. He said no more and made for the kitchen door of the station house. It was a large place of prefabricated polymer panels designed to endure under extremes of weather. As time had allowed, Bob and Deborah had added to it, making it look more homey and feel much more comfortable. An extension off the back was built of local stone and sported a tall chimney. The couple had spent a pair of summer months adding an upper story of timber that ran front to back, capped by a cedar shingle roof. From the narrow window above the front door Tammy waved to him, her dark golden fur gleaming in the evening light. Bob smiled warmly at her and returned the wave. His eyes lingered contemplatively on his adopted daughter and concern grew in his heart.

Coming through the kitchen door he found Deborah at the stove, stirring something in a large pot with a wooden spoon. She was beautiful. A tall woman with short cropped black hair, dark brown, nearly flawless skin and a figure that would have been the envy of women ten years her junior, Deborah was the love of his life.

They had met shortly after Bob's arrival planet side. He had gotten into a fist fight with Deborah's brother, Dan, over something none of them could remember. Bob had won the fight, barely. Both young men got arrested for disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace. A night spent in the same cell, nursing their various injuries resulted in friendship and mutual respect. Deborah had hated Bob at first, but when he had asked her to dance at the Mid-Winter Festival a couple of months later, she accepted. A courtship and wedding followed and soon they had a family.

"Thank God!" Deborah said, setting her spoon aside. She crossed the kitchen and threw her arms around his thick neck.

"You're going to get all sweaty," he said, dropping his pack. "I stink. I need a shower."

"I like the way you stink," she said into his ear and kissed him.

"You smell pretty," he said, and kissed her in return.

Deborah's smile faded and she released him. "You need to see the news."

Bob followed her to the living room and his writing desk. She powered up the computer and the screen came to life.

"Read that. I'll be in the kitchen," she said, kissing him again before striding away.

Bob read and frowned. A Conglomerated Planets patrol ship had encountered an alien vessel. They had exchanged greetings and a diplomatic ship had been dispatched to make official overtures of peace. At first the importance of the event escaped him. The discovery of a new spacefaring race was big news, but so what? And then he saw the accompanying stills and video. With a cold feeling in his gut, Bob scrolled through the images. Tall, humanoid, cat-like beings exchanging courtesies with the CP diplomats. Beings with gold or red-gold fur. Beings with long tails and six fingers on each hand. Beings that looked like the little girl he and his brother-in-law had rescued eleven years ago. Bob turned off the computer and went into the kitchen. Deborah looked at him, waiting.

"We knew she was from somewhere," he said, finally, waving a broad hand through the air.

"She hasn't seen it yet," said Deborah.

"She needs to," he said and pulled out the chair he always sat in.

"She's still our little girl," Deborah said forcefully.

"Of course she is," he replied. "Always will be."

"But they might take her away from us," she said. Fear and uncertainty clouded her beautiful face.

"They can try," growled Bob. "Just let them try. But why would they? We reported the crash when it happened. We reported everything. They never sent any word back. No instructions. No recovery ship. No nothing!"

"This might change all that," said Deborah. "Maybe the company will want her now."

"For what?" he asked. "She's just one girl."

"She's one of them," his wife said, gesturing to the living room with her spoon. "The company is weird sometimes. They have weird policies."

"This is a frontier world, Deborah," Bob said, jabbing the tabletop with his thick finger. "It's not part of the Conglomerated Planets. Not officially. And Tyne & Harper is not obligated to enforce CP laws or regulations out here. We make our own laws. That's part of the contract. It protects them. The company won't care."

"What if they do?" she asked.

"We'll take her where they can't find her," he said. "She's our girl. Yours and mine."

"Not legally," she said. "We never adopted her officially."

"Frontier laws don't cover adoptions," he argued. "Look at Pete and Susan Postlethwaite. When Samantha and Roy Dodge got killed, they took in Roy Jr. and Angel. Raised them as their own and nobody said a damned thing. Nobody has ever had a problem with us raising Tammy, either. Hell, she's got all kinds of friends in town. It isn't like we've kept her a secret around here."

Deborah looked at the kitchen table and was quiet for a minute. Slowly the corner of her mouth quirked into a half smile and her eyebrows lifted.

"I think Roy Jr. is sweet on her," she said and looked at her husband.

"What?" Bob said, surprised.

"I think Roy Jr. is sweet on Tammy," she said, her smile spreading.

"Our Tammy?" he asked, still surprised. The possibility of any boy being sweet on their adopted daughter had never occurred to him.

"The last time we all went swimming in Kitt's Hole, I watched them," his wife said. "Our little girl is growing up, in case you hadn't noticed."

It was true. Fourteen year old Tammy was long legged and developing a figure that in any other girl would turn heads. But she wasn't Human. She wasn't even a Vespan.

"Maybe Tammy needs a new bathing suit," Bob growled uncomfortably.

"Maybe," Deborah chuckled. Her expression fell and she turned back to the stove and gave the pot another stir. In a more somber tone, she asked, "What do we do, Bob?"

"We tell her," he said decisively. "We let her read the news."

"And what if they come to take her away?" she asked.

"I'll stop them," he said levelly.

Deborah turned and looked at him. She saw how serious he was. His big hands were clinched into fists on the table and his normally kind eyes held a fire she had rarely seen.

"Alright," she said. "She's our daughter. They can't have her."

Dinner that night was overshadowed by the news and Tammy was unusually quiet. Her eyes always drifted back to the center of the table, but it was clear she wasn't looking at anything. The rest of the family held their peace, conscious of the emotions the girl must be dealing with.

The following day while Bob was getting ready to head back out to deal with the old sensor he had skipped Tammy came into the barn.

"Morning, Papa," she said.

"Morning, Fuzzybutt," he said affectionately. "How you doing?"

The girl's tail flicked hard and her ears twitched, but she did not lift her eyes to look at him.

"Are you okay?" he asked, leaving go the saddle straps and resting an arm on Temper's flank to let the big stud know he was still there.

"I guess so," Tammy said. Finally, her eyes lifted to meet his. "Mama is scared. She's trying to be happy and upbeat, but she's scared. I can smell it."

That was one of the peculiarities about Tammy. Given her more than human senses it was difficult to fool her.

"We're both scared, Tammy," Bob admitted. "We don't want to lose you."

"Will you?" she asked.

"Your ma and me won't let them come take you," he said. "Not without a fight."

Tammy's eyes snapped up to his again, wide and worried.