The Intergalactic Guide to Humans: Volume 1

2: Prepare or fail

MatarI stared at the galaxy map, my tail twitching with nervosity. I wrapped it around my leg to keep it out of the way. The other guys were used to it by now, rarely stepping on it, but I'd been self-conscious of it all my life.

Four planets were blinking fast, giving us our possible destinations. The Intergalactic University had sent us a database of abduction-ready planets this morning and now we were trying to find the perfect one.

"What's the green one?" I asked, pointing at the largest dot.

Xil checked the database entry on his comms. "Laranus. Sparsely inhabited. Females are compatible with us but...oh."

"What?"

"They don't have breasts."

I gaped at him. "No breasts? How do they feed their offspring?"

He scrolled through the information, then started to laugh. "They have tubes extending from their p***y that the younglings feed on for several years. Like straws. I doubt the females would be agreeable to s*x during that time. It might squash the tubes."

I cringed at the thought of plunging into a female while weird fleshy bits were hanging out of her. No thanks. I wasn't speciest, but that was a little too exotic.

"The red planet is Riva Four," Havel muttered, checking his own comms. "They're very underdeveloped. No spaceflight yet. They still use animals for transportation. I suppose it might make it easier to abduct a female from there. They may even see us as gods. Wouldn't that be fun, being worshipped as a deity? Yes, you can suck my godly c**k and receive my holy seed."

I elbowed him. "Don't talk like that. Females don't like vulgar language."

"Who says that?"

"I read it in one of the books," I admitted. "I was bored last night."

"Teacher's pet," Havel snickered. "Did it say anything else that might come in handy?"

I nodded. "Lots. But why would I tell you? I'll use my new knowledge to make our female love me the most."

Havel flashed his fangs at me. Most of our kind had lost them in the process of evolution, but some of us still had the features that told of our predatory heritage. Havel complained about them all the time, saying they got in the way while eating, but he'd refused any offers from dentists to have them filed down. I thought that secretly, he was quite fond of them.

"That one," Xil said and pointed at a blue planet at the very edge of the galaxy. "Peritus, but the natives call it Earth in most of their languages, not sure why. It seems to have several oceans, but maybe they worship the ground they live on? Maybe they're scared of the water."

"Do they have vaginal tubes?" I asked with trepidation.

"Not that I can see. And they have breasts of all sizes. Some are almost udders. Wow. Imagine burying your head between them, like soft pillows."

Havel laughed. "I'd bury something else between them."

"They only have one truly sentient species on their planet called humans. They've discovered spaceflight and are slowly spreading across the galaxy."

I dimly remembered coming across their kind before. It had to have been on some space station, but all I could recall was the name of their species, nothing more.

"Do they have tails?" I asked carefully.

Xil shot me a knowing look. "No, not that I can see. No fangs, either, but they do have beautiful manes." His eyes widened. "And fur in other places. I like it."

I couldn't resist any longer. I opened my own comms and searched for the IGU's database entry on humans. Several images appeared before my eyes. I was the only one of us who had the implant that connected my comms to my optic nerve. It was handy for looking at information that I didn't want anyone else to see. And porn.

I ignored the image of a male and scrolled to one of a female. She had a long, black mane full of curls, dark skin that reminded me of the pap tree beans we had at home, and yes, there was hair under her arms, between her legs and on her lower legs. Beautiful. My mouth watered. I could get used to having one like her around.

I quickly skimmed the section on human biology. They were compatible with us physically, although there was no information on successful breeding between our species. That worried me a little. Had nobody abducted a human before? Unlikely. The planet was part of the university's database, which meant it had been studied by scientists.

Still, I liked the look of these humans. So much so that I didn't even feel the need to explore the fourth blinking planet on the map.

"How long until we get there?" Havel asked. He seemed just as eager as me to get there quickly."

I frowned. "Two galactic weeks, faster if I get the booster engine sorted. We should have enough fuel for a round trip; no need to stop at a space station on the way."

Xil switched off the holomap and sat back in his captain's chair, a smile curving his ochre lips. "That gives us enough time to complete all the other lectures before we reach the planet. Matar, get that engine fixed as soon as possible. Havel and I can complete the next module without you."

"No way," I protested. "I don't want to miss anything. I'll work on the engine later."

The captain sighed but didn't argue. All of a sudden, the IGU course had become less of a pain in the arse. We needed all the help we could get if we wanted to abduct one of those precious humans.

Human. I let my tongue taste the word. Human. It didn't sound too bad. Not quite as pretty as Kardarian, but that didn't matter. Our female would have her own name. Something beautiful, I was sure of it. If not, we'd give her a new name. Maybe we couldn't even pronounce hers.

"We need to get a translator," I said into the silent room. "Or do we have one on board? I'm not sure she'll speak anything but...whatever humans speak."

"They have hundreds of languages on their planet," Havel said without looking up from the text he was reading. "But it seems all of them have been catalogued, so a standard interstellar translating device will work. I think we have a couple of them in the med bay, they came with the Jade. I'll check later."

I nodded and got back to reading the chapter about Earth's geography that I'd just started before I got distracted once again. I didn't think I needed to know any of this. We weren't planning to settle on our abductee's planet. We'd land, find a suitable female, abduct her, and leave. I couldn't care less how many continents they had, but Professor Katila said there would be a test, so it was better to be prepared. Failing wasn't an option.

Four continents. There had been another, but it had disappeared when ocean levels rose. Humans seemed to be a very destructive species. They'd almost torn their planet to pieces before just about managing to turn it around, becoming more aware of the environment they depended on. Still, I understood why they'd started exploring the stars. It didn't look like a planet I'd like to live on. Pollution was ripe. I flicked forward a few pages until I found information about air quality. Thank A'Ta, we'd be able to breathe their air.

"Look at those breasts," Xil groaned and sent a picture to all our comms.

I sucked in a breath when the naked female appeared in front of my eyes, projected into my optic nerve. She was hot. Scorching hot. Her breasts were full and tempted me to reach out and squeeze them. She had strange rubbery shafts in their centre, probably to let the milk flow into her offspring's mouth. Kardarian breasts didn't have those, they had pores through which the milk diffused into the open. What would it feel like to suck on those fleshy knobs?

"What do you call those...appendages?" Havel asked breathlessly.

"n*****s," Xil answered, his face turning slightly orange. He was aroused. And not just him. My c***s strained against my uniform bottoms. How could an alien female make me feel this turned on? It was just a 3D image, nothing more. This wasn't our abductee and I shouldn't feel this way about a random female.

I pushed the image away together with the boring text about geography. "Let's listen to her lecture," I proposed. "We can continue reading tonight once we've done our other tasks."

Our captain nodded and turned on the main screen, touching his comms until Professor Katila appeared in front of us. Her third eye blinked a couple of times while her other two eyes stayed wide open.

"Welcome to our second lecture," she said with a wide smile. "Today we are talking about how to prepare for an abduction. If you've looked at the recommended reading, you'll see that there's a lot of ground to cover. If you don't prepare, you will fail. Some of you may have already tried your first abduction. If you're taking this course, I assume it didn't go well."

"You could say that," I scoffed. "Not at all."

"Preparation is key. Remember the four Ls. Learn and Locate are far more important than Lure and Leave. Without the first step, you will fail at the subsequent three." She smiled again, some of her seriousness washing away. "If you haven't decided on a planet and species yet, now is the time. Once you have, please watch the next part of this lecture."

She froze for a moment until Xil pressed the play button again and the recording resumed.

"Now that you have decided on a species, it's time to do as much research as you can manage. If you're working as a group, you can split up these topics, but I do recommend that all of you learn the basics. Remember, it is your duty to care for your abductee. They will have to get the right food, the right sleeping arrangements, even medical care."

"I'll do her medical care," Havel interrupted. "And I'll do any necessary probing too."

Xil shushed him so we could continue listening to the professor talking.

"You will also have to know about the planet's defences. Some species don't take kindly to having members of their own abducted, while others may even pay you to take some of their undesirables. Either way, you need to make sure that you won't be shot down or pursued by their military. This is why we often recommend planets with no space-faring capabilities for abduction beginners."

"Too late," I muttered. "We're definitely getting a human."

"A human with breasts," Havel reiterated. "Big ones."

"I will send you all a list of areas to research. Since all of you are likely focusing on a different planet, you don't need to send me your results, but please contact me if you have any questions or can't find enough material about a particular species."

Her lecture was followed by the logo of the IGU, a strange animal that I'd never been able to identify. It had to be from a planet I'd not been to yet.

"Let's split the list in three," Xil said, already sending Havel and me our parts. "Research your topics and then we'll get together tomorrow and share our results. Put anything that everyone should know into a separate document, that way we can compile a guide to our future human."

I scanned the list he'd sent me. Food. Technology. A few other things that aligned with my interests. I shot Xil an appreciative look and left the room, still thinking about breasts.

It turned out that humans ate a lot of strange things. Most of the animals they ate didn't mean anything to me, but it would be hard to replicate those. We had a food replicator, of course, but it needed blueprints and ingredients for anything we wanted it to make. We'd fed it the genetic code of the livestock we were used to from our home planet, but we couldn't exactly probe every single Earth animal just on the off-chance that our female might like their meat. Many of the vegetables humans ate weren't too different from what we were used to, especially the various kinds of roots they grew in the ground. Again, a connection to the earth. I hadn't found any explanation for their planet's strange name yet, but their religions weren't on my list. Maybe one of the others would discover the answer.

They drank something called water, which was the base of most of their drinks. A fairly simple mix of hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen wasn't a common element in this part of the galaxy, but we could easily synthesise it to make that drink for her.

After I read through everything I could find on their various dishes - very confusing since every single tiny village had their own foods, which meant we'd never be able to know what our abductee liked until we knew where she came from - I continued on to exploring Earth's technological advances. They were about five hundred rotations behind Kardar, with their spacefaring technology still in its infancy. Humans seemed excellent at exploiting other species' technology though, which meant they had access to spacecraft that they hadn't developed themselves. Cheeky. They were scavengers, in a way. Not unlike the three of us. We called ourselves traders, but we got a lot of our goods by entering abandoned space stations and crashed ships.

Earth's defences were negligible, at least the tech they'd created on their own. Without knowing whose technology they may have borrowed, we would have to be careful, just in case. If they'd got their hands on Lurian weaponry, we'd never leave the planet in one piece.

I made a note to take enough weapons with us to the surface. We wouldn't use them on our female, of course, but on anyone who would try to stop us. We deserved a female and we would take her no matter how much resistance we had to fight against. All three of us had served in the Kardar military, although as a healer, Havel hadn't been on the front lines. His fighting skills were rudimentary at best, but Xil made up for that. He could have risen high in the military if he hadn't decided to leave with us.

I blinked, tiredness making itself known. I still had to fix that booster engine. I sighed, but then remembered that the faster I fixed it, the quicker we'd get to our female and her voluptuous breasts. I grinned at the thought. Yes, I could get used to seeing a female like that every single day until the end of my life.