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“No,” Anna whispered. Then in a gut-wrenching wail, “NO!” She fell to her knees and wept bitterly until she embraced an exhausted sleep.

Sleep was no comfort though. Her dreams were filled with her husband and baby’s screams. Several times she woke from her resting place on the floor where her family had perished. Several times she cried herself back to sleep, unable to move from the only place she could feel close to them. She didn’t even have bodies to bury. No way to find closure.

It was only later, when she had managed to move deeper into relatively safe UWA territory, she learned the man who had saved her life was the general in command of the forces trying to conquer what was left of the United States of America and the United World Army. He was General Kahn Mak’un. Also known as Kahn the Merciless.

?* * *

Anna gasped as her body became a heated, sensitized version of itself. She could feel his hands moving over her flesh in the most tender of caresses. As he feathered light touches over her breasts and followed them with a wet lick, she arched into him, offering him whatever he wanted to take. She felt her nipples tighten, harden with the exquisite torture, and she barely held in the whimper that threatened to escape. She didn’t want the pleasure to end. Maybe this time would be different.

He trailed his lips down her body, his hands never forsaking her breasts, until he found the little indention of her navel. There he laved that sensitive spot before starting his downward descent. Her hands speared through his mass of dark hair, trying to hold to the illusion.

Just before he would have delved into the nest of curls at the apex of her thighs, he stopped and looked at her over her outstretched body. “You are mine, as I am yours. Never think I’ll allow you to be lost in this madness my people have started on your world. When I find you I will give you pleasure of the flesh, but I’ll also give back to you some of what you’ve lost.”

He buried his face in her cunt then, finding her clit with the uncanny accuracy she always expected of him. The cry she tried so valiantly to suppress emerged and Anna screamed her pleasure…

And woke herself from yet another dream that left her heavy with an unfulfilled, aching desire that no amount of masturbation could ever possibly ease. She knew. She had tried many times over the last several months.

Every night was the same since she’d first seen Kahn the Merciless. He came to her in dreams and left her more aroused and sexually frustrated than she thought she could bear. In a way, she felt guilty that she should welcome Kahn in her dreams even though many months had passed since she’d lost her family in the Pilot incident. In her heart though, she knew she had to move on. She still grieved, but she had to dwell in the land of the living.

Was she insane to want to give her body to the man who was most likely responsible for everything that had happened on Earth? Was she finally losing her mind? Maybe. All she knew for sure was that she had to find him. Only then would she find the relief she so desperately needed and the answers he so cryptically hinted at.

?* * *

Anna’s dreams intensified each month. Every night, Kahn the Merciless took her to new heights of ecstasy only to leave her hanging there, unfulfilled.

It had been two years since her family was murdered. Two years Anna had spent preparing herself to find the nemesis of her dreams and find answers for all that had happened on Earth. Answers for what had happened to her. She had searched every form of media she’d had access to for anything about Kahn the Merciless. The funny thing was, there were no pictures of him prior to the Pilot incident. After that, he appeared several times but he was never photographed with a weapon in hand. Apparently he did his killing through his army.

As she entered the recruiting office of the Somerset, Kentucky, branch of the United World Army, Anna prepared for the questions to come. Questions there was no way she could answer truthfully.

The sergeant, an African American named Mahoney according to the nameplate in front of him, sat behind a desk that looked too small for his massive frame. He wore camouflage fatigues with the sleeves rolled up to expose burly forearms covered with a myriad of scars and tattoos. His shaven head, also sporting scars, gleamed in the harsh fluorescent lighting of the underground recruiting office. A tattoo of some odd Celtic-looking design covered the majority of his head. Anna wasn’t sure exactly how tall the man was, but she was sure he topped her own five feet six by several inches. She didn’t think she had ever seen a more intimidating human.

“I want to enlist,” Anna said.

“And you are?” he asked, barely looking up from the stack of folders before him.

“Anna Garrett. I’m a registered nurse and I’d like to do all I can as close to the Front as possible.”

She knew that would get his attention. The life expectancy of soldiers fighting on the front lines was less than two tours of duty. That of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit personnel wasn’t much better.

As she expected, the sergeant’s head snapped up and his dark-eyed glare pierced her. It was a few moments before he actually spoke.

“You’re aware the Gothe’maran do not distinguish between medical and combat personnel?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Then why?”

“I believe I can do the most good there. It is where the most people are needed.” The response was, of course, total bullshit, and the sergeant would have to be moronic not to know that, but it was the expected answer to that question. There were only two reasons anyone would ask to be assigned to the Front. One was condoned, the other was not.

He regarded her a moment. “I’ll have to pull up your civilian file. The UWA needs people at the Front too badly for me to dismiss anyone willing to go, but we will not help someone commit suicide.”

“I understand. Would you like me to save you the trouble and tell you my experiences with the Gothe’maran?”

Again, she saw the surprise at her straightforwardness and had to smile inwardly. Humans were nothing if not predictable. It was a wonder they had managed to last this long in the war. All good humor faded with that thought.

Sergeant Mahoney sat back in his chair and regarded her thoughtfully. “Where are you from?”

“It’s called Pueblo, Kentucky, but you will know it as the Pilot.”

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