Daleman's Log - 25 / 04 / 2120

Quillian Daleman - Personal Log
25 / 04 / 2120 F.A.

The highway north-west of the Morgul Vale felt like it ran on forever. Rimmer wasn't the chatty type. We stopped for gas, piss, and coffee, more or less in that order. I saw the squat dark mass of Barad-dûr lit with neon in the night, the dark fortress that had once sent forth armies of Orcs now a string of casinos, brothels, black market medical labs offering illegal augmentations and procedures, pit fights, and strange cults of every stripe.

We left it behind as we moved on toward the mountains. Dawn broke in over the peaks to north and east. Once a wasteland, and parts of it still looked like it, but rain and grass were turning it into steppe. Places I had only read the names of, or seen in the background of movies and stims. No GPS, no tracking device in the car. Just Rimmer's memory as we turned off the worn blacktop onto a smoothly paved new megacorp-laid-down private road. Right up to the gates of the Black Lab, and then through.

"We're here," Rimmer said.

"Stay with the van," I told him.

He raised an eyebrow at that.

"The less you know, the better," I said. He seemed to accept that. I moved to scratch my ear as I got out, and slipped the earpiece in.

"Audio and video check," Lilja whispered into my ear.

That meant the pinhole cameras and microphones worked into the lapels of my coat were broadcasting. The equipment I was wearing was standard police-issue gear for undercover cops and informants. I could feel the battery pack taped to the small of my back, the wires against my skin. I had no idea what the wireless security was like in this facility, but Lilja said she was using some kind of frequency-hopping program she'd picked up from the hacker files. I hoped that would be enough.

I stepped out into a gravel courtyard before a concrete loading dock. There were two groups there to meet me. One looked like Orc gangbangers, all studs and leather—but they surrounded a tall Orc with oddly mottled skin, a mix of black and white patches, bald except for a scalp lock. He smelled...wrong. A cloud of chemicals clung to him, a metallic tang I normally associated with narcotics manufacturing. When our eyes met, I almost flinched. The pale eyes were too-wide, protuberant, and the whites had been dyed black.

The suits, by contrast, were Men. Immaculate corporate dress, labcoats, security in paramilitary uniforms and carrying **** rifles loose at their sides. We all drew closer together. I towered above them all, but numbers weren't on my side. If it came to a fight, it was going to be swift but bloody. The lead suit was a tall woman who didn't even come up to my shoulder, her blonde hair in a ponytail, makeup immaculate; the broad shoulders of her jacket made her look like a rugby player, but the arms were too skinny.

"You are the Lodgemaster's representative?" she said, his Westron crisp, precise, flat and without any identifying accent.

"I'm the errand-girl sent to pick up the package," I said. I turned to look at the lead Orc.

"I am Morgaun Morgain," he rumbled, with a voice like gargling gravel. "A rising darkness. I speak for the White Hands...and the Broken Circle. We are here to ensure the transfer this time."

There wasn't much to say to that, so I gave a little incline of the head. Not a bow, but more than a bow. An acknowledgement. Which seemed to satisfy him.

"If you fail us this time," Morgain said. "I will cut your throat and fuck the bloody hole."

I opted for the diplomatic response.

"I've got a big throat. You might need a couple friends if you expect me to feel anything from your skinny little Orc dicks," I turned to the suit. "Any chance I could use the ladies' room before we get started? It's been a long trip."

The Orcs snickered, though a glance from Morgain silenced them. The blonde was momentarily taken aback, but gestured toward a side door. I stepped forward, and two security goons fell in before and after me. I ducked through the door and they guided me toward a bathroom marked with the familiar hieroglyph of a figure in a dress.

The security was kind enough to stay outside the bathroom. Which is why I was alone when I heard the tinny moans that emerge from one of the stalls for just half a second after I stepped through the door.

One of the benefits of height is being able to loom when necessary. I poked my head over the stall and saw the skinny, dark-skinned woman in office attire squatting on the toilet, a device in one hand, the other between her legs, panties down around her ankles. Her eyes went wide as I smiled down at her.

"Well, hello there," I rumbled, eyes narrowing. "Aren't you a pretty little thing?"

A glance showed that it was a simple mechanical slide. A lift, a jostle. She didn't move as I jingled until the door swung open.

She shrank back against the toilet, caught and trapped as I plucked the device from her hand. The muted porn was still playing. Big bitches in the armor of an ancient empire spanking helpless women in winnowy gowns. It wasn't a smartphone; some sort of portable workstation.

I could work with that.

"You're looking at this filth at work like some nasty slut?" I said, my face carefully neutral. "You need to be punished. Bend over the toilet. Skirt up. I'm going to give you a spanking."

She was practically hyperventilating as she did as she was ordered. I didn't do much with submission and dominance play; and this was technically sexual harassment. I preferred willing partners, and was happy to pay for it. Needs must, though.

The optical chip slid into the portable terminal. A moment later, my hand came down hard and sharp over her bare buttocks.

Almost immediately, office bitch squealed. I dropped the terminal on her back and clamped my left hand over her mouth. Had to work quick. While I doubted that anyone was going to come in to see if I was suffering gastrointestinal distress, finding me bent over spanking one of the office workers probably wasn't going to go over much better.

So my hand slapped down on her ass with a sharp steady rhythm. I felt her teeth bite into the web of skin on my left hand, her moans and yelps muffled. With each meatly slap, my hand came away wet as she squirted a little. Pain lanced through my hand as she bit hard. Eyes rolling up into her head with mingled pleasure and pain.

"Package is delivered," Lilja said. "Get out of there."

Instead of a slap, two thick fingers squeezed into the tight, unshaved cunt. The office worker's eyes bugged out of her hand as I hammered fast and hard, an unrelenting pounding a bit rougher than I liked...but finally the bitch spasmed on my pistoning fingers, she screamed into my hand...and went limp.

I pulled my wounded hand out of her mouth, grabbed the optical chip out of the terminal, and a wad of toilet paper. The chip and a mass of bloody tissue was flushed down the toilet in the neighboring stall. I washed my hands, wrapped a paper towel around the tooth marks, and returned back to the hallway.

The guards saw me. The wounded fingers. Probably they could smell the pussy. I gave them my perviest smile.

"Friendly folks you have here," I said with a leer. My heart pounded in my chest. Job done. All I had to do now was survive.

We rejoined the others as they opened the loading dock bay door. Moved as an uneasy group into the building. Corporate security in the lead and at the rear. The Orcs clustered together. I moved like I was in my own little bubble of space, too big for anyone to want to get close, so I ended up behind the lead suit and before Morgain. My back itched; I knew the Orcs were sizing up how and where they'd plug me if and when it came to that.

Cameras watched. There were three security checkpoints with increasingly heavy doors as we moved deeper into the complex. Cop instincts took over: it was a solid setup. Some of the security guards looked like they'd been through the academy, others a military background. I noticed passcards, badges, specific people entering number codes. No biometrics, but the cameras moved to follow us. Having eyes on camera cost more than the **** rifles, and spoke to no expense fair.

When the final doors opened, a warm, wet waft of air came through...not the recycled air of the complex, but something that rankled my nostrils. It was a musk I'd never encountered before. Like something from one of the deep caves in the forest hills at home. A reek that immediately had the hair rise all over my body, muscles tensing painfully in an unfamiliar fight-or-flight response.

We filed into a cavernous room with metal scaffolding between us and the high, curved ceiling. I caught an impression of big tubes and tanks, figures suspended in liquid, men and women moving in white labcoats checking read-outs, and feeds. Yet what drew and held my eye was the huge, snake-like reptilian form that lay sprawled atop a pile of treasure at the end of the huge run, like an illustration out of one of Arnorson's ancient tomes. I had never seen a dragon up close before, and as I saw something that could swallow me in one gulp, I never wanted to be somewhere else more than I did right that moment.

Only this slate-colored beast was connected to the scaffolding above by bunches of optical cables plugged into its neck. As it's ribs rose and fell, I could almost feel the hum of the facility shift in response to its breathing. The cameras followed us, and when its eyes opened, glowing from within, I realized who had been watching us since we'd come into the Black Labs complex.

"I am Legere," a voice rumbled in Westron. Not just from its throat, the jaws opening and closing to show ivory fangs, but through the earpiece in my ear. "Which of you has betrayed me?"