Two on a Rant

Atto Run Free Chapters

Atto Run

The First Level of Hell Book One

Joelle LeGendre
copyright © 2013 Joelle LeGendre
All rights reserved.
Editing by: EJ Geras (ejgeras@gmail.com)
ISBN-13: 978-1494227043
ISBN-10: 1494227045
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922402

purge

The silver orbs, flashes of light, the scent of charred flesh swirled around five young girls huddled together under a scraggly Gyhwun tree. Their village burned in the distance. In their terror, the girls prayed aloud to gods capable of such carnage. “Please… Spare us!”

A figure in a white robe and headdress materialized holding a small pipe, her light gray eyes the only feature visible through a veil. She watched the girls’ lavender eyes click erratically, becoming pinholes, then huge and black, but not rectangular, or worse yet, triangular. Good. These were among the few who would remember and obey. She put away the pipe.

“Do not procreate yourselves out of existence! This is our commandment!” the figure proclaimed.

Their throat knots swelled, mouths toward the sky, the five girls trumpeted a distress call to their mother. Why did she not answer? A few other lavender-eyes crawled out of the wreckage calling for their mothers. Together they stumbled toward a clearing that served as a meeting place for all the tribes within a day’s travel. The young girls stopped at the edge of it, making way for several dozen brown-eyed captives being herded into the center.

A spot of golden light twinkled, drifting down in front of the only remaining Elder for miles before popping into a silver orb. A rectangular light in the shape of a doorway formed a celestial glow around the 6-foot tall figure in white headdress, dragging along with him, a lavender-eye.

“Mama!” one of the girls cried.

“This is the leader of your rebellion!” the white figure shouted. “How will you dispose of this and of her followers?”

“We do not kill our own,” the Elder replied. “Please. Can you help us?”

A gray cigar-shaped freighter landed on the charred remains of what was once a lush forest, crushing the Endler bush stumps, burning Gyhwun trees, mushrooms and tuber grass under its landing gear. A ramp formed at the ship’s center, like a tongue waiting for the feast to enter. The five sisters huddled together, trumpeting their grief to the sky as their mother was marched up the ramp into the first cargo hold, the brown-eyed captives behind her.

The white-robed alien stood at the entrance to his orb and announced, “Once you are capable of controlling your numbers, we will build a spaceport on your planet so that you may trade.”

“This will never happen again,” the Elder said, “no matter what we must do to prevent it.”

Atto Run: First Level Of Hell, coming soon to Amazon and Kindle.

brick

A freighter owner trudged around the outskirts of the spaceport, his red eyes searching for the symbols of the pure gold balls he had traveled so far to purchase. He passed by one of the few small Endler bush poking through the soil next to the 30-foot-high wall that surrounded the spaceport. Taking a kerchief embroidered with the name “Bricweiss” from the pocket of his gray jumpsuit, he sneezed.

“You want buy?” one of the natives eagerly asked, holding a primitive necklace in his face.

“No!” Brick shouted in his own language, pushing away the sniveling vendor. “I want to get off this god-forsaken cesspool of a planet!”

If the damned 5 Dominant Species had any sense, they’d quit protecting the Ri-Attons as an indigenous species and let someone civilized straighten these savages out. He knew the first thing he’d do after enslaving the lot of them — give them pronounceable names. Only, that probably wouldn’t make any difference since they all looked the same except for their clothing. This was actually a useful distinction. Avoid the orange guys. Their stuff is crap. Never make eye contact with a green guy. You’ll never get rid of him until you buy something. Deal with the pale blues. They’ve got the best stuff.

Brick swatted at a glowbug and thought –Just like every other creature on this planet, a harmless nuisance.

This day could’ve gone a whole lot easier if the pale blues had bothered to show up. He was forced to continue wandering around the market, looking for merchandise of a quality similar to that which Dol… Tod… Tor… what’s-his-name, the guy who spoke his language, usually sold him. If you can’t find the pale blue guys, go with the dark blues. But where the hell had they set up shop?

Brick sighed as he thought about the injustice of it all. If it were up to him, he’d just blast the whole damned planet out of existence. But he didn’t really have a choice. His customers demanded the fine gold jewelry and soft cloth only available from Ri-Atton vendors. He’d tried passing off Cretonian gold and Malle cloth as the real Ri-Atton stuff and had ended up with a mob of irate customers threatening to pull the orange scales off his body, one by one, in the most painful fashion imaginable. Although, as a horrible stench reached his nose, he was beginning to consider even evisceration as a relatively pleasant alternative to walking around this market.

He had circled the outskirts of the spaceport to find the dark blues. Why the hell had they set up next to one of the entrances used by the natives? He removed his kerchief to stifle another sneeze. What did they have on the other side of that wall? A primitive waste recycling plant?

He picked out several exquisite pieces of gold and sapphire jewelry along with a few of the more common stones such as diamond and topaz, quickly stepping aside as medics rushed another “real person”, as he thought of his species, to his ship. He couldn’t understand the rich tourists who wanted to “experience the real Ri-Atto.” The fake Ri-Atto was plenty weird enough for him. Usually, real people had enough sense not to go native. This one was probably a rich guy from Paradi who wasn’t forced to come to this hell-hole to save his business. Idiot!

It wasn’t like anyone could step onto Ri-Atto and say, “I think I’ll go outside the gate and eat sewage.” A tourist had to first petition the 5 Dominant Species for permission to go outside the wall. On the very slight chance they were allowed to do something that stupid, their ensuing visit to a medical care facility always included a rather intensive deworming. After hearing that, Brick had quickly shut out the freighter owner who had tried to tell him about the experience.

“Merciful Maker!” Brick yelled, backing away from the scene to avoid breathing in the foul-smelling contents erupting from the victim’s stomach. It was just pouring onto the man’s suit! The man hung his elongated head over the side of the stretcher, expelling more. His reddish-orange skin had faded to a pale pink and his long body heaved as it tried to rid itself of whatever Ri-Atton delicacy he had consumed. His tail was shriveled to a fraction of its former self.

“You want buy?”

Oh no! Why did he have to stop in front of the green guys’ stand? He grabbed a few gold balls, some hunting knives, and a bolt of cloth in exchange for several canteens, thankful they didn’t follow him back to his ship.

Brick had no interest in the fact that the 30-foot barrier had been created to keep the tyrannosaurus-like Rile roaring in the distance from eating the visitors. Nor did he care to know the origin of the trumpeting sounds outside the spaceport. He still remembered the time he was hired by the 5 Dominant Species to carry away a group of exiles from this planet 80 years before, leaving their care in the hands of his crew. It was a mistake he wouldn’t make again. Clean-up was costly.

“Ri-Atto.” he hissed, walking up the ramp of his cigar-shaped freighter. “In another four days, I’m outta here. I pray to the gods that I don’t have to set foot on this planet again for another 80 years.”

Atto Run: First Level Of Hell, coming soon to Amazon and Kindle.

audience

Doqin and Dorquar both stood “at ease” in front of cousins from an older generation who had survived the wrath of the 5 Dominant Species eight decades before. Shoulders broad, arms built for hunting Rile, they waited patiently until the oldest of their leaders spoke.

“You requested an audience, Dorquar?”

“My daughter, Tordren, is the first of our tribe to become fertile,” Dorquar said. “My sister is concerned, as well she should be!”

“Why have you created greater restrictions on Atto use than those imposed by surrounding tribes?” Doqin asked.

“Do you not remember the slaughter of Ri-Attons and their newly born feral children, turned to dust by silver orbs?” the Elder demanded.

“I remember,” Doqin said stiffly.

“You had not yet reached fertility when the Dominants came down upon us like lightening, but we are old enough to remember why there is now only a single Atto Run allowed to each female.”

“That is not the issue!” Doqin exclaimed. “Other tribes have allowed remounting of the beast if an infertile mounts first.”

“A practice that would not be necessary were your daughter not obsessed with the scent of the fertilized Atto, the chase… the lust!” the oldest accused. “It is your duty to restrain Todlen, especially now that her cousin, Tordren, is scheduled for her Atto Run.”

“My daughter is under guard.”

“Your daughter is a brown-eye!”

“I am familiar with the stories. People blamed brown-eye lust for the destruction of millions of Atto, the eradication of several smaller mammals, and the wrath of the 5 Dominant Species brought down upon us,” Doqin said, “but our mother was a lavender-eye as we are and she was exiled along with the other leaders.”

“One of the few who was not a brown-eye,” the Elder said.

“If you would tell my daughter why…”

“Are you questioning the commandments of our Gods?”

“No,” Doqin sighed. “I am questioning your interpretation of them. I am questioning the decisions of Elders as drunk with the intoxicants of the fermented Elder bush as my daughter is drunk with the lust for the heavenly consciousness.”

“Doqin! Dorquar! Revered Elders!” a tall Ri-Atton in guards’ clothing yelled out as she ran through the entrance. “Todlen has escaped!”

“I will never understand why the 5 Dominant Species allowed you five girls to live! This audience is ended!” the Elder declared.

Dorquar placed her strong hands on Doqin’s shoulders and threatened, “If Todlen ruins my Tordren’s chance for motherhood, you will live to regret it!”

Atto Run: First Level Of Hell, coming soon to Amazon and Kindle.

todlen

Todlen Eicneo remained downwind leaning tightly against a Gyhwun tree that matched the light beige ripples of her young Ri-Atton body. She blinked at an azure sky as another ship drifted down to the distant travel port.

But that was a distraction, one she could ill afford.

Her body taut to her height of 5’9”, Todlen’s broad shoulders and well-formed muscles were primed, her eyes focused upon the female Atto grazing on the rubbery branches of an Endler bush. A thick beast built to maneuver between the Gyhwun, poison briar and Endler, the Atto’s four legs were exceptionally strong for its advanced age. It was a magnificent specimen, one able to provide nourishment for thirty children!

So many years she’d waited for her favorite sport: beating a Ri-Atton to yet another Atto. It was inconvenient that the intended mother was her cousin, Tordren, but she could still release her eggs with no harm done. The first time she’d stolen an Atto, the intended mother from the pale orange tribe had remounted the beast a second before Todlen had lost consciousness. Yes, it might mean a day of shunning or perhaps solitary for a week, but that moment, that one unspeakably glorious moment, when her eggs surged into the creature… that made it all worth the effort.

Todlen’s rust-brown hair was cropped to mimic the soft floppy fronds of the Gyhwun, indistinguishable from it as strands rustled in the light breeze. She clicked her light brown eyes to increase her visual range, watching… waiting… until the male of her species approached the creature first. Behind him, Tordren readied for her Atto Run.

A faint scent of the Atto and of the Ri-Atton sperm yet to be ejected mingled in the air. Todlen’s inoculation appendage began to stiffen in anticipation, the sac connected to it filling with a half-dozen infertile eggs and the easing fluid. The slender 5’ male of her species, his stomach bulging, moved quietly to the rear of the Atto. Standing ten feet away he spewed sperm from his pencil-thin appendage, his bulging stomach flattening as the emissions were spent. The Atto’s vaginal area was hit with the force of a high-powered fire hose; the creature screamed, then bolted.

Todlen moved swiftly through the trees, leaping over Endler bushes as if they were small rocks along a path. She changed her trajectory to match the Atto’s chaotic course through the brown forest, a vain effort to escape its searing pain. Todlen stopped to listen for a pattern in the Atto’s hopeless race. She jumped to the top of a small Gyhwun, then launched her body at the beast as it passed.

Tordren, too, was in midair, only seconds away from contact!

Tordren’s pupils were formed into triangles, her mating frenzy devouring her conscious mind. There would be no sense of her surroundings, no thought of her past seventy years mentoring Todlen, no awareness of anything except the scent of the fertilized Atto.

Todlen vaulted off the creature’s back, kicking Tordren’s forehead, hard, before she had the chance to touch the Atto. The intended mother now grounded, Todlen twisted around to grab the Atto’s tail, using its buttocks to spring upward.

Direct hit! Straddling the beast, she slid downward, grasping the silky fur. Steadying herself against the Atto’s thighs, Todlen rammed her appendage into the mammal’s newly fertilized birth passage. Each egg passed through tendrils not yet able to descend from the shaft, one wave building upon others creating a frenzy of such overwhelming pleasure, she lost her grip upon the creature. Her energy spent, she fell onto a spongy layer of fungi to experience the heavenly consciousness.

“No! I do not want to go back,” she moaned as awareness circled the edges of her mind. She remembered nothing of the footsteps coming toward her, the battle to save her from the enraged Tordren, nor the shouts of condemnation from those who’d found her first. She fell into sleep as she was carried back to her hut.

Atto Run: First Level Of Hell, coming soon to Amazon and Kindle.