Galendi

Although I have written many erotic stories, I have always wanted to write sci-fi. This is an attempt to combine the two. I would appreciate any feedback from readers and writers. If I get enough encouragement, I will work on the rest of the story.

GALENDI!

Galendi paced back and forth in the tiny cubicle that had been allotted to her. She could feel the droplets of moisture that collected all over her body. Even the one-piece body suit that she wore, one of the new ones that was supposed to compensate for changes in body condition, did not draw off the sweat as fast as it collected. "Sweat!" Such a strange word for what her body did. No one 'sweated' in this day and age. But right now her body was sweating. In fact, she was sweating profusely. And along with the sweat, she began to notice a distinct odor. She sniffed the air trying to figure out where the offensive odor was coming from.

Turning her head, she noticed the odor grew more pungent. Sniffing down at her arms, she drew back in horror. The odor that she smelled was coming from her own body. Or worst yet, the body that she presently wore. With a feeling of horror and revulsion, Galendi began to rip the suit from her body. Made in such a way, the material was impervious. Until she pressed the fastening studs in just the right order, the suit would not open to allow her to discard it. Taking deep breaths to try and calm herself, Galendi stood in the center of the room shaking. She would have shook even more had she known that her movements were being monitored.

"Corinda! I think that Galendi was the wrong choice for a project as important as this. Why didn't you pick a more experienced agent? Surely in your vast experience, you know the probability of a disaster, stemming from her inexperience, is beyond calculating." Corinda sat back in the lounge pod drawing slowly on a 'codic stem. She held the mildly sweet tasting air in her mouth, and then slowly she swallowed and blew out a plume of blue tinted air. Her eyes followed the plume as it dissipated in the breeze of the filtered air that passed thru her cubicle.

Lifting her eyes she gazed at the person speaking to her. The speaker, waiting for and answer to the question he had posed, turned and looked back at Corinda. They held this stance for more than a few heartbeats. This battle of wills had gone on for longer than either of them could remember. Time has no meaning when your job gives you the opportunity to move thru it. Neither of them blinked, nor did they turn their gaze from each other. This war of wills could go on for what passed for hours in their timeframe.

Suddenly Corinda smiled. To anyone else, that smile would have frozen their hearts with fear and their minds with confused thoughts of flight or fight. But Jaccara was not anyone else. He had dealt with Corinda for more lifetimes than most people experience. He was immune to her actions and her threats.

"That is exactly why I insisted that she be made second partner on this mission. When the Emporium handed down their decision that they needed this information on the sexual habits of 20th Century Homosapiens, it was my detachment that was stuck with the job. How many different scenarios have you gone thru only to have your agents killed, discovered or so corrupted that you dare not retrieve them? And just why is this bit of knowledge so vitally important? Tell me, oh great wise one? Could it be that what the doomsayers have been babbling about for the last two centuries is true after all?"

Jacarra made a strange noise in what could only be his throat and turned his head. "Damn her!" He thought. Oh how he would love for some convenient mishap to remove this irritant from his sight. But right now, she was the only hope he had of completing the task given to him by the Emporium. The Emporium! That all mighty power! They governed not only this plane of the Universe but countless Universes along with it.

Even as he thought of some lie to tell her, the thought died in his brain. She would know. In some unlikely way, Corinda always knew. That was one of the things that made her so successful. It also made her very, very dangerous. Jacarra swung around and stared at her. His eyes locked with hers. Then as if he had come to a decision, he nodded and walked over to one of the smooth walls that made up the cube.

Placing his hands in spots only he knew the exact location of, he manipulated his fingers in a combination so quickly that even Corinda could not have memorized it. Corinda felt the fine hair that now covered most of her body begin to tingle. Only the fact that Jacarra would never dare to try eliminating her in her own cubicle kept her smiling at him.

"Corinda, you have sources that so far we have been unable to fathom. But sometimes you skirt the limits of safety even for you. What is said here will never be repeated outside this room. In fact, you never heard it; nor have you even thought of something like this." Jacarra went to another wall and after placing his hands in various spots; a part of it slid back and revealed multicolored cubes.

Taking one of the cubes from the shelf, he held it out to Corinda. She shook her head 'no'. Jacarra shrugged his shoulders and placed one of the cubes in a vessel. The cube quivered, and then liquid flowed from it to fill the vessel. Jacarra took a sip of the liquid and his whole body seemed to quiver for just a second. Then he stood stark still and his nostrils flared. Taking deep breaths, he slowly regained his posture of calm.

This time when he looked at Corinda there was a definite change in his attitude. He was once again in control. The look on his face was one of surety, serenity and determination. Corinda was about to curl her lips in a disgusting sneer. But even she knew better than to tickle the dragon's tail in his own lair. She had heard about the mood altering liquids. In fact, she had banned their use by any of her agents. Their use caused the user to become filled with the feeling of indestructibility and infallibility. In her profession, those attributes made you dead. And most times, put all around you in jeopardy.

The room seemed to grow smaller. Corinda knew that the device that Jacarra had activated would allow no sound or thought to leave the room. It was as if they had been transported to a place and time that didn't exist. In fact they had been shifted in time. They were in null time. The physical room they were in still occupied the same time and space but their bodies would not be there, had someone dared open the door and look in.

Corinda hated null space. All the horror stories that she had heard, of beings forced to exist in it, made the skin she wore crawl. If anything went wrong she would be banished here forever. There was no way back to the real time and space she had occupied without the exact combination of coordinates that had placed her here in the first place. And knowing Jacarra, he was using a phase shifter to scramble even those.

Her mind jerked back to the words he was saying to her. "Yes! The doomsayers were correct. There has been so much genetic corrections, so much gene manipulations that the race of Homosapiens as we know it is doomed. Within the next generation or two, the defects will become more and more pronounced. As it is, we are having a hard time keeping all the flaws secret."

Corinda didn't allow her face to show any change of thought or emotion. So the rumors she had been hearing were true. "You and your team of agents", he said the word agents as if it left a bad taste in his mouth, "are being sent back in time to retrieve as much genetic material as possible. This has to be done with the utmost care. No one! And I mean no one must ever guess that you are not exactly what you appear to be!"

Jacarra stood looking at Corinda as if by his will alone, he could make her submit to his will. She stared right back without a flicker of her eyelash, staring him down. "After a careful study of the history of the time, it was determined that by using this disguise, our plan can succeed. That was the reason for the body modifications, the training in sexual practices and the mental implants you were given. Only by posing as the type of women who were known to be promiscuous; known to enjoy as many sexual partners as often as possible, can you hope to collect enough material to make the effort viable. Now does that answer the question you already knew the answer to?"

Corinda would have smiled if she dared. But she was too experienced to give away the information that she had. "Why my team? Surely there is not so much experience needed, that any team couldn't accomplish this for you?" Damn her, Jacarra wanted to shout. But he was stuck. He would have to give her the answers that had almost caused him to be banished in a dimension not unlike the one they were in now. He seemed to deflate in stature. His shoulders slumped and he suddenly looked old. Corinda would have cringed away from him like a person drawing away from a disease if she dared.

"We tried. Four time zones ago we sent in three teams. Their job was to retrieve as much genetic material as they could and return. Something went terribly wrong. When they came back, they were contaminated with defects that we were not equipped to deal with. They had defects of the blood, skin, and body..." Jacarra shivered.

Corinda sat upright in her lounger. The pod immediately changed shape to accommodate her. This was something even she knew nothing about. How could her spies have been so lax as to miss this important information? "How did this happen? And why wasn't I told when the assignment was first given to me?"

Jacarra saw something that in his wildest fantasies he would have never imagined. For the first time that anyone would ever remember, he saw fear in Corinda. But instead of giving him a sense of smugness, it made his own fears grow even greater. If this woman, it was always assumed that she was female, could be afraid then they were in trouble unprecedented.

"Our studies found that all the defects were of a microbial nature. It seems that while they did collect the specimens they were sent to collect, their methods left much to be desired. They were careless and sloppy. They took no precautions against self-contamination. We had to destroy the lot of them along with all the specimens they had brought back."

Jacarra walked back and forth. A bundle of nervous energy, he could not have stood still for anything. "You on the other hand, have a knack. There has never been an assignment that you have not completed. No matter the difficulty, no matter the obstacles, you always come thru. The Emporium feels that no other can do what you can do. That is why you were chosen and that is why you were given such wide latitude in your choices. But tell me Corinda, why Galendi?"

His shift in conversation almost caught her off guard. Her mind was still dwelling on the contamination and she almost blurted out one of the most well kept secrets of her life. "She is one of the quickest and brightest students I have ever encountered. There are no obstacles that I have been able to put in her way that she has not overcome. Her speed and agility is amazing even for one so young and inexperienced. Her scores in training were phenomenal. In some things they were off the chart! Does that answer your question Jacarra? And before you or any of the "Others" get any bright ideas, I'll kill to keep her. And that means that I'll not only kill the persons trying to get her, I'll kill her to keep her out of their clutches."

Coming from anyone else, that would have been an idle threat not to be worth considering. But Corinda's ability was known throughout more time zones than Jacarra could name. Her threat was a real one. Oh well, one could dream. What Corinda almost told him, what his tactic had almost made her blurt out; was that Galendi had been engineered to be one of the most sexually submissive creatures Corinda had ever encountered. And she had been engineered from the genes of Corinda's body. But she was submissive only to Corinda. With her propensity to enjoy this new type of sexual experience and Galendi's submissiveness, she would have more fun than ever.

"Takes us back to real time Jacarra." The feeling of her skin crawling was becoming a distraction. Jacarra would have used this opportunity to toy with her. Except for the fact that her body language implied a threat he was not about to question. She wanted out. And even he knew better than to play with this rouge.

Coming out of time phase was one of the weirdest feelings Corinda had ever felt. Even after all the times she had done it, she still didn't feel comfortable about it. As the room once again materialized, the scene that caught their eyes kept them both still. Galendi had calmed down enough to remove the body suit she wore. As she peeled the suit off, the ebony shine of her body made both watchers gasp in awe.

In a world of body sculpturing, gene splicing and DNA manipulation, seeing a body of such color was rare enough to stop one in their tracks. The color of Galendi's body was black. But a black that was so dark and deep, that it shown in the harsh light. The fine sheen of perspiration only added to the shine of it. Jacarra couldn't understand how anyone so obviously lacking in color could be attractive.

Corinda had done the research on beings of that time period. For the work that they had to do, they needed strong genes. The genetic pool was strongest in the people who had suffered the most. During her research, she couldn't believe the things that the so-called "Black" people had endured. Their strength and endurance in the face of constant trials and tribulations shocked her. Her background and training knew the type of fighting force they would have been with only the right type of leaders to lead them.

Corinda had no sooner left the cubicle, than another figure, this one clothed in a material so black as to make his features unrecognizable, stepped into it from another entrance. "You Heard", Jacarra said to the figure? The figure only nodded in affirmation. Not a sound could be heard coming from it. Not even the sound of breathing could be distinguished. "I can't tell you how important this really is or why. But you know what is expected. Corinda must not succeed! No matter what actions you must take."

Jacarra had become so agitated; he was pacing back and forth. No one who had ever dealt with him or his kind before had ever seen them lose composure like this. "A lot has been put into motion and we can only succeed if she fails. And by failure, I mean everyone on her team either dead or incapacitated. And don't use those fools that were used for the last mission. Their bungling almost brought that dreaded disease right back to infect us all. How could you have picked such inept operatives? That team was supposed to die on that planet in that particular time zone. Instead, they returned and opened this whole venture to questions we never wanted asked."

The figure stood stark still. Jacarra had no idea if it even had ears to hear with. But the figure nodded and before Jacarra could say another word, turned and flowed out the room. Jacarra felt the fine hairs at the base of his throat tingle. How he hated dealing with the "Deathlings". But they were the only ones capable of doing away with Corinda and her team. Jacarra smiled as he imagined what the look on Corinda's face would be when she realized that she was dealing with the "Deathlings".

No one was really sure just what the "Deathlings" were. It was known that when they were first encountered, the outcome had been disastrous. The entire compliment of Techterrors that had first become involved with them was sent back in pieces. Only one was alive and he was given the message that no one was ever to return to that particular point in time and space.

If his story was to be believed, the shadows, as they were first called, descended among the Techterrors and immediately began to disassemble them. No! The truth was that the so far invincible Techterrors were torn apart. No one had ever stood against the Techterrors before, so at first this was unbelievable. But after two different attempts, the results were the same.

After many attempts at communication, which resulted in many deaths, a form of communication was established. No one had ever heard them talk. But they understood every word spoken to them. No one knew what he or she looked like. It was not know whether they were male or female. When payment was made for a job that they had undertaken, another race accepted it for them. And any undertaking they accepted was done quickly, efficiently and they had never failed before.

Having received all the information that it needed, the "Deathling" seemed to just dissolve as it returned to its own time and dimension. Jacarra stood looking at the place where the creature had stood. He couldn't help the feeling that his skin was crawling. He had only twice dealt with these creatures. Each time had been born of desperation. But once dispatched, the final outcome was a foregone conclusion. No other race of creatures, no other species known in the different universes or time zones had ever been able to defeat them.

Corinda had specified the measurements that Galendi would assume. When Galendi had first volunteered for this assignment, she was told only that it involved structural body changes. Well that was nothing that was new or foreign to her. After all, she was an Agent of the Inter-Dimensional Forces of Change. It was her job to travel time zones and alter the course of events. They were given the power of life or death for any number of species.

But this body was an abomination! The cubicle she was assigned to had four clean walls. But one wall was of a material that reflected her image back to her. When she first saw her body, she couldn't believe what it was she saw. The color was so dark it almost hurt her eyes. But she had been colored more exotic shades than this before. It was the shape of it that almost made her scream.

Stuck in front of her were twin mounds. They were what seemed like cones of flesh with even darker circles at the top. On the tip of each cone was about a half-inch of puckered skin. She had a smooth stomach, with what seemed like an indented hole in the low center. Between her legs was what could only be described as a healed wound. But it had healed in a deformed manner. The sides of skin were smooth and swollen. And when she reached down to examine it, her hand came away wet.

In a panic, she thought that she was leaking fluid. She screamed then. Screamed and began to bang on the closed door to get someone's attention. Surely the fools in the medical corps had fouled up. How could they miss such a thing? She only hoped that she could get someone to answer her before she had drained all her fluids and died.

Corinda, sitting in her own cubicle, examining the changes that had been done to her own body glanced at the view screen. She also had the tits of a well-endowed woman. Her body was fuller than Galendi's was. Her hips were rounder and more abundant. The biggest difference between the two women was very evident when she looked at herself in the image wall. Between Corinda's thighs there seemed to be a huge lump. She said the word to herself again. "Hermaphrodite!"

When her research Captain had come up with the word she thought it foreign even to a people so primitive. When she learned just what a hermaphrodite was, she stated that there was no way that she would allow her body to be so deformed. But Corinda was a Professional. She did what ever it took to complete her mission. Her record of successes said so. And her record spoke volumes.