The Ballad of Decer Crane

Hey. Harp here. This one is for Literotica readers, an erotica novel that is complete, sixteen chapters in total. It's yours. It'll stay here forever. Or, until the zombie apocalypse, I guess, mediators willing. For more info and updates, check out my profile. I sometimes have people post questions in the comments I can't answer because rules, and, again, they are answered in my profile. You can also email me. I get back to people quickly. Big thank you to Stephen and EGRI for their editing eyes. It's appreciated. I'm happy to be back. I hope to see some familiar monikers. Please comment so I know the mic is on. Thanks for reading.

All characters are over the age of eighteen

THE BALLAD OF DECKER CRANE

A Sirens of Pedige Novel

PROLOGUE

(Persya)

Persya leaned forward and then ducked back, a quick glance. Her sister, Bryn, was standing beside her. All of the orphans were in a line, in their simple white frock dresses with chunky black shoes. Their clothes were clean even if they weren't new.

"We have a visitor," Miss Ann said to them. "This is Miss Elena Dane. She's staying at the Cromwell estate and was curious to see the work we do here."

All of them knew about the Cromwells. They were a wealthy family who had been here for generations. On Pedige, the small moon on which they lived, the Cromwells had created an orphanage for girls who didn't have anywhere else to go. They were its benefactors.

"These are our girls. Here's Dawine. Yenna," Miss Ann said, gesturing and going down the line. "Lily. Chione. Adya."

Persya peeked again. Miss Dane was elegant, her brown hair upswept. She was wearing a dark gold dress that glittered, all in finery like she was going to a party instead of visiting an orphanage. She was pretty and looked to be older than Persya, who was nineteen.

"This is Grace," Miss Ann said, still going down the line. "And these last two are sisters. Persya is the elder and Bryn the younger."

Miss Dane's eyes flickered over Persya. "What happened to their parents?"

Persya blinked. That was rude. She didn't remember her parents, having been a young child when they left.

"They were explorers," Miss Anne answered. "Persya was waiting in-system at a school. There was an accident. Bryn survived as an infant and joined us when their parents' long-range transport returned to the system. Would you like to view the gardens?"

"No," Miss Dane said, still looking at Persya. "I've seen enough."

#

"Hello there," a voice said.

Persya straightened. She was wearing an apron over her frock and had a pair of small shears in her hand, pruning the house garden. She hated gardening. Her eyes found him, standing on the border of the property by the hedge. A man. She'd never met one before, although she'd seen plenty onscreen. He was older than her and had an angular, defined jaw and deep eyes. His hair was brown and wavy.

His eyes traveling over her. "You're as colorful as the blooms. Your cheeks are pink. Your hair flashes gold in the sunlight."

"Who are you?" she said, backing away. Men weren't allowed at the orphanage, it being a sanctuary for girls.

He bowed. "Beren Cromwell."

Persya felt her cheeks get hot, her hands covered with dirt. He was the Cromwell heir, only his mother still living. "Mr. Cromwell."

"The orphanage gardens are on the boundary of our estate. I was just walking when I saw you. What's your name?"

"I'm Persya, Mr. Cromwell. Excuse me."

His tone was teasing as he called after her. "Are you always such a good girl?"

She stopped. "It's against the rules for me to speak to you."

"I also believe in rules," he said, holding her eyes. "And discipline."

For some reason, she felt a small thrill go through her belly. "Good day, Mr. Cromwell."

#

Persya looking up from the flowerbed next time he came and stood. She'd been given gardening duty when it usually went to Dawine, who enjoyed it. Persya found it boring. Getting dirty, on her knees. It was too warm in the sun and she pulled a strand of hair from her face. She glanced back at the main house.

"If we were to walk over here, they wouldn't be able to see us." He gestured at the small orchard behind himself.

Her chin rose. "I don't want to hide from them."

He laughed. "You're stubborn. Won't you walk with me?"

Shaking her head, Persya left, glancing behind herself.

Dawine was suspicious. "You're always flushed when you come in. You don't even like gardening."

"Gardening isn't so bad," Persya said.

#

"I'll go to Morsten in mid-system at the end of the month," she told him when he came next time, making conversation. "It's a factory planet. They have work there, I've been told. I'll need to make money so I can have my sister with me."

"I couldn't possibly let you leave Pedige," he said, smiling. "You belong here with me. Come visit the Cromwell estate at the end of the month and I'll show you."

She shook her head. "I don't think I'm someone your mother would approve of."

"Look at me," he said, close now. "It's my choice, not hers." He bent and kissed her.

Persya went still. She'd thought about him doing this, although she hadn't actually thought he would.

When he pulled away, he stared deeply into her eyes. She avoided his, feeling awkward. She probably shouldn't have done that.

"What is it?" he said, tipping her chin.

She stepped back. He couldn't be unaware of the reason for her reluctance. "You're a wealthy man, Beren Cromwell, having a game. I wouldn't have a place in your world."

"I'm not playing. There's a place there for you, I promise. I can't take you from the orphanage even a day early, so I have to wait and it's difficult. I'll see you tomorrow?"

She kept walking, not answering him. Despite Persya raising the issue of her sister several times, he'd never said anything about any plans to include Bryn. He talked about her being his choice, but had never mentioned getting married, not specifically. She was going to Morsten with her sister anyway.

But she did think of him sometimes, flattered by his attentions. After supper, Persya retreated to her room. It wasn't large. There was her bed and chair. A reading table with a lamp. She lay down, thinking about Beren Cromwell. Her hand slipped down between her legs.

She withdrew her hand and sat straight up when there was a thump and then a huge thunderous noise, the walls shaking. Someone screamed and she scrambled out of bed. It sounded like Bryn. She didn't recognize the deep voices in the hall. There was another explosion and smoke when she opened her door. Coughing, she was dizzy, going down on one knee and trying to get up. Seeing tall legs, her eyes went up, figures in face masks in the smoke far above her.

"Aren't you beautiful," a man's muffled voice said, his arms reaching for her..

CHAPTER ONE

(Decker)

Decker slowed the horse, seeing the shattered fence. His eyes darted. He'd made sure shelters were spaced regularly on all the perimeter fences bordering the briken enclosure. He had a feeling he was about to find out if this particular shelter was close enough.

His nape prickled, looking to his left. Sure enough, Bane was silhouetted against the sky, his tail lashing. That big fucker was out of the enclosure and hunting him. Decker didn't need to urge Cote. The horse scented the huge briken and bolted in the opposite direction, toward the shelter. Decker leaned forward in the stirrups and helped him.

Bane threw himself down the hill, chasing their shadow, on four feet and his thick tail with spikes at the end held high. The briken opened his mouth, sharp teeth and a beard of rough hair extending from his chin to the base of his neck, and screamed. A briken's shoulder was taller than Decker, the animal covered in loose tan skin and flexing muscle with a round belly.

Decker turned to look behind himself. Bane's tiny red eyes were enraged and fixed on him. A row of horns began at the tip of his nose and extended over his forehead to an area between his tiny ear holes. The biggest curving horn was as long as Decker's arm. Each horn did a different kind of damage, from piercing a man to hooking him in order to toss him. After that, a briken would maybe bludgeon him with a swing of that spiked tail before eating him alive.

At the shelter, Decker threw himself from the horse before Cote had bounced to a stop. He yanked the door open. Both he and the horse tried to get inside at the same moment. Decker was big, with broad shoulders, but it was a fight.

They squeezed through together and Decker turned, sliding the door closed and dropping the bar across it just as Bane arrived. Decker had named the leader of the briken herd shortly after they'd met and Bane had tried to murder him.

"You big fucker," Decker yelled, bracing his hands against the door as the briken slammed into it. The building shuddered.

What followed was chaos as Bane worked through his disappointment. The horse was giving short ringing cries of fear, dancing in circles in the small space.

Turning, Decker shoved at his shoulder. "Don't step on me, Cote."

The horse threw his head, the whites of his eyes showing, not interested in listening at the moment. The briken outside was not a grass eater. He was a predator. They might be from different planets, but Decker's horse had no difficulty recognizing that fact.

Decker got his handcom and triggered the remote caller. The caller was a technology that the original colonists on Sur had used. It was a recording of the sound of a female briken in distress, a series of short, urgent grunts. It did get the brikens moving, straight toward the source, no matter how many times they arrived and there was nothing there.

Decker couldn't see anything, but after a time, there was silence.

He switched channels. "Coby," he said into his handcom. He waited, getting mad.

"Yeah, boss," Coby finally answered.

Decker could hear himself breathing. He'd told Coby not to call him that. Three weeks with this guy. It had been an exercise in endurance and promises Decker had made to himself and self-control until he thought his head was going to come off. "Where are you?"

"At the house having lunch."

There was a surprise. "Did you check the fences on the east side of the briken enclosure yesterday like I said?"

"Course I did."

Bullshit. With this kind of damage, Bane had to have been working on it for days. Coby had either missed it or had never been here in the first place. It was a stupid, dangerous, expensive mistake Decker was going to have to pay for. Hell, Bane might have killed him while this guy was stuffing his gut. Decker's heart started to pound, that creeping rage rising in him.

"Why?" Coby said, all innocence. "What happened?"

"The brikens are out of the enclosure. They could be off the ranch by now." The muscles across Decker's back were crawling. This useless space turd.

"You should just poison those things. You take my advice and free range some home-world meat animals like cattle on that land, now, I'm telling you, you wouldn't regret it. It's the smart thing."

Like this guy would know smart if it bit him in the ass. "I'm not a cattleman," Decker replied.

"Sheep, then."

"I'm not that either." He'd listened to this same argument for days. He'd tried. He'd tried to set aside the evil and murderous ways of his thieving past, but this guy. Maybe just one more. Surely the fact that he'd tried so hard mattered. It was progress, at least. He'd start fresh after.

"I'm not saying we get rid of the brikens right away, boss--"

That did it. "Come here to the briken enclosure. Right now."

"What for?"

"To fix the fucking fence, stupid," Decker lied. "Don't make me come get you."

#

Hours later, Decker was on his horse looking into a habitat dome. In the center were two flattened, ripped up and bloody carcasses. The rest of the cattle in the pen were huddled in the corner of the area, their eyes wild. There was a hole in the habitat tent. The brikens were back in their enclosure, a temporary fence up.

Decker sighed, dismounting and tying down the reins. He walked and tipped his hat back and leaned against the fence next to his neighbor, his foot going to the lowest rail.

Tag glanced at him, also leaning. "I'm happy to provide you with occasional cattle to feed the brikens, Deck, since you pay well for them, but I usually prefer to choose cows I have taken a personal dislike to."

Decker grunted.

"The brikens tried to mount one of my heifers before they ate her," Tag said.

Decker looked at him. "How did that work out?"

"I'm not sure it wasn't a crime."

Decker shook his head, making a sound in his throat. "Bane tried to murder me again."

"It's the second time he's dug up your fence and let his herd go create havoc so he could hunt you."

"Third," Decker said. "I'm going to order some idium panels."

"They come dear. You need some help putting them up?"

Decker shook his head. "I appreciate the offer. You got enough to do here. I'll do it."

"I thought you hired Coby Derr on."

"He didn't work out."

"He left?"

"Something like that."

"I'll put the word out, see if anyone else needs permanent work," Tag said.

"I'd appreciate it."

"The brikens still aren't breeding?"

"Nope. Bane's lot are the last of them. They wouldn't mate in captivity. In the wild, on my ranch, they screw, but the females don't get pregnant."

"You could clone them. We do that with the cattle."

"The scientists tried, they said. Something about them is too alien. The babies weren't right."

"I will never understand it. You've got the only ranch with the last unspoiled land on Sur, Deck. I get the wild animals you raise. They're profitable meat animals for rich Prime folks. But brikens? They can't be eaten, or worn, or even hunted for sport, they're so fucking dangerous. They have no function except chaos."

Decker shrugged. "They don't have anywhere else. Besides, it keeps my stock healthy to sometimes be hunted by large predators."

"Wild meat. I never would have thought of such a thing. Do you really hunt the deer with a bow like you tell them?"

"I'd fake it if I could and just shoot the animals with a rifle, but my buyers want the arrow that killed it and they'll match it for verification and then hang it on their wall, the pricks." Unlike Tag, Decker made good money with his free-range meat animals, in part because he had the right kind of land and in part because of rich Prime pricks who didn't have anything else to do besides look for new ways to show off their wealth.

Tag sighed. "You want to come in for a drink?"

Decker grunted, tying off the horse and walking with him. He and Tag were roughly the same age, both under thirty. Tag was as tall, more lean, a man with short brown hair and an open, expressive face, although most times he just looked tired. Tag was a good man, although Decker didn't hold it against him. Tag wasn't one of those higher-than-you good men. He wasn't a weak man, either. He was just a man who tended toward the right side of things.

He was a mystery, but after their first meeting, Decker had found, to his surprise, that he didn't dislike Tag. That lack of dislike had somehow, against all reasonable expectations, turned into a camaraderie between them. They visited with one another. It was pleasant.

Two older men were in front working. The shack wasn't impressive. Prime, deep in-system, regulated the crops and meat animals those on the frontier planets raised. On planet after planet, people toiled on small ranches and farms, their sizes capped.

People like Tag survived, never having families because there were no women on the frontier except for whores. Men like Tag got old and died and were buried, a new person coming to work their land to get by. It was simply better than choking in a mine or worn to nothing doing factory work in mid-system, overcrowded and dangerous work with illness taking people so easily. Decker had thought at times that only in Prime could good men live well. Everywhere else, they mostly got eaten alive. Decker was glad to be spared that burden.

The two older hired hands nodded to Decker. He didn't know them. He doubted Tag did, not much. Drifters, they did their rounds, working at different places for enough dakas for synth rations, and to drink, gamble, and whore.

Tag went in, Decker following, the door banging closed behind them. Tag's house was only one room. His whole ranch was this shack, the habitat domes his cattle were in, always mucky with cow shit, and a few storage buildings surrounded by barren and flat ground. It was a great expanse of depressing gray-brownish nothing.

Most of Sur was like that. It had used to be lush and beautiful like Decker's land, but the planet had been mined to death before they'd gotten here. Some farmers still held on, growing whaite in tents, a grain from Cobel that was the main ingredient in synth rations. They all ate synth rations. Most people in mid-system ate synth rations too. Only people in Prime ate real food.

When Tag opened the door, there was an entry with boots and hats there, jackets and lanterns. Face masks for the dust storms and a vacuum nozzle. When the winds came up, with no forests to stop them anymore, they blew like hell. Toxic dust was churned up from the mining that would choke you to death if you breathed too much of it.

The kitchen was a simple table and chairs, along with a synth rations dispenser. Past that was a bed and chest. A tub. Shelves. Some of them read to pass the time, cheap print books traded and hoarded, although most couldn't. Access to anything on the network, administered by Prime, was expensive. There were all sorts of useful items hanging on the walls on hooks. A bathroom past a curtain. Everything was automated, at least, self-cleaning and requiring minimal maintenance.

There were no women at Tag's place. There weren't any women at Decker's place, either. There weren't many women on the frontier planets at all, except for whores. Without safron, an element required by the terraformers that was impossibly rare, the frontier planets were made minimally habitable and left that way. They tended to be dangerous places. Meat animals were raised on synthetic feed in habitat domes and crops were raised in tent farms regardless of the planet's conditions.

The frontier planets fed the people of Prime who lived in-system. Eventually, as Prime expanded, planets that had been inhospitable were made into paradises by in-system terraformers that functioned and new scratch frontier planets were colonized to feed a growing Prime population. Humanity expanded, most of them miserable and a few too comfortable, just as Decker imagined it had always been, probably since the old world.

Tag sat down, filling Decker's glass and then his own.

"You ferment it, right?" Decker said, holding it up and looking at the color, a deep crimson.

"Yep. I want you to try the newest batch."

Tag was the only man in the system for whom Decker would drink anything but frontier whiskey. "You'll poison both of us, probably," Decker muttered, sipping. He nodded, controlling his face. "It's the best yet. You never told me how you got your berries."

Tag shrugged, looking pleased, which was why Decker drank it. "I started because a guy came through who was selling seeds. It was a good year, so I bought a few. I grow them out back in a small tent and clone the plants, rotating them out. You want to stay for supper?"

Supper would be synth rations. They'd be synth rations for Decker as well, back at home.

Decker shook his head. "Another night." He tapped his bracelet, Tag looking around for his and slipping it on, holding it out.

"Three hundred dakas. Fifty for the tent patch," Decker said, making the transfer. "One hundred for each of the cattle and fifty for the trouble they gave you."