An unholy yowl sounded in my ear as he fell over and puked on the floor. I went down with him, crushed testicles grinding in my grip. He batted me off with the club swing of his arms and I flew into the Captain’s embrace.
We grappled and rolled and flipped over in a tumble of snarling fur and tearing claws. I screamed my fury into his face and head butted his nose three times. The satisfying crunch of broken bone put a smile on my busted lips. I sunk my hands around his muscular throat and squeezed the life out of him. I could feel gristle and tendons popping in the power of my grip. I was going to take this his head off, like they’d taken the head of my lover.
His claws shredded my shoulders and backside until two other warriors wrestled me off the top of him. They held my arms pinned down against the floor. I kicked at them, but I could hardly move as they settled all their weight on me. A clawed foot came from somewhere and stomped my face into the floor. The hammering impact brought black unconsciousness and ended my struggles.
* * * *
Chapter 5
I woke up in a small cell located off some obscure hallway with no traffic, no Gran, no one to see or hear. As my wounds healed and I slept fitfully on the cold, hard, steel floor, I had plenty of time to think. I missed the men that had made my life worth living, my pseudo father D’Anton, and the lying bastard Carver. They were dead, and I knew this, but still I missed them. The logical part of my mind could not overwrite the emotions coursing through me as I cried for them.
I had no measure for the passing of time, but after what seemed like days, I began to consider that the Gran had simply left me here to waste away and die alone. No food and no water. In his grand experiment to create perfection, D’Anton could not curb starvation or dehydration. The best DNA modifications in all of human science could not eradicate my yawning empty stomach and the horrid desperation of my thirst.
By the time I had considered tearing open my own skin to taste something wet in my mouth, one of the warriors arrived and opened a slot high up in the steel door to stare down on me. As soon as he grunted, I smelled what he carried, some kind of weak broth. My stomach erupted with churning growling sounds.
Nope, not ready to die yet. Maybe after I got some food in me.
The warrior opened another slot at the bottom of my cell door and slid the bowl through. I snatched it from him and slurped the salty liquid down. When it hit my stomach, I almost puked, but I couldn’t afford to lose this fluid. I fought down my reaction and swallowed it all to the very last drop. The warrior stood watching me through the top slot, a smug, snaggletooth look on his face.
I slid the empty bowl back through the door and gave my best shot at growl-speak, “More.”
Surprise flitted over his face. He never expected me to speak his language.
He clicked once, the Gran indication of “No.”
I stood up on my tippy toes to try to see through the top slot. The warrior looked away at something down the hallway. He growled and stepped aside. Captain Cronin came into view, with a jagged pink scar down the right side of his face. Though I hadn’t caused him any real damage, he’d remember me every time he looked in the mirror.
He leaned forward against the slot and let his eyes bore into me, playing the domination game again. I stared right back.
“You are a special human. You will breed and make more like you.”
I shook my head, an incredulous chuckle on my breath. The stupid beast had fought so hard to take me away from my home and loved ones – so he could breed me? Me. A sterile clone.
The Captain was not the smartest Cat in the litter.
I tried to form the growls to make the words I knew he wouldn’t listen to. “I no breed.” I pointed to my stomach. “No make child.”
First he was surprised that I spoke, then, slowly, my words sunk in and his lip came up in a snarl. “You will breed or die.”
I looked at him, knowing I could never give him what he wanted, even if I wanted to, no matter how hard I tried. Every human the Gran possessed was sterile. D’Anton was very clear on that – all clones were made sterile. I had accepted this fact of life, that I would never be capable of procreation.
I shrugged my shoulders and inclined my head at him in the Gran method of acknowledgment. “Okay. I breed.”
He stepped back away from the door and several tones and beeps issued, then the door clicked open. He and the other three warriors standing nearby moved away, as though I should come out and follow. It struck me then, the subtle change in their behavior towards me. They feared me. Maybe not fear, maybe it was respect. I had shown them I was capable of violence. Now they were more careful with me.
I almost smiled at the thought. The fabric of my world began to realign. I had been biding my time to find a way to kill myself. Yet, if I could teach the Gran to respect me, to see me as an equal, then there might be a way to survive in some capacity beyond a slave laborer.
This was my way in. I had to find an angle to become useful, valued. Then, when they weren’t worried about me anymore, when they weren’t watching my every move, I could grab a jumpship and return to my own solar system. Maybe even visit Earthside.
I had no illusions about where the Gran jumpship was headed. Everyone at the station knew the Gran jumped into deep space, back to their end of the galaxy, thousands of light years away from our solar system.
Captain Cronin gestured to his right, and I walked in front of him, calm, and docile. If they wanted to hurt or kill me, they could have done it by now. I suddenly had hope I could survive and escape these creatures. We walked down the corridor and they directed me to a room that looked suspiciously like a laboratory, with tables and instruments.
A Cat wearing a different kind of clothing from the light armored warriors advanced with a strange metallic ring in his hands. His eyes watched me warily, and he moved slow and cautious. He held the ring up to his neck and lifted his chin in demonstration.
This was my collar.
My instincts screamed not to cooperate, but the warriors at my back started growling in warning. I clicked at the advancing Cat, telling it ‘No.’ He looked to Captain Cronin with an inquiry. The Captain’s hand landed on my shoulder with a clawed grip intended to hold me still. Before I knew what I was doing, my body reacted. I twisted out from under his hand and grabbed his arm with both my hands. A hard jerk, twist and pivot sent Captain Cronin flying past me.
The Captain smashed into a table full of instruments and knocked a bunch of metallic pieces clattering to the floor. I don’t even know how I did it, but my instincts never failed me. My drive for self-preservation was all I had going at the moment. The other two warriors grabbed my arms and tried to hold me still in their muscular embrace. They were stronger than humans, definitely stronger than Carver. No way to break their hold.
But their feet were bare, nothing but furry, clawed toes. I stomped hard on each of their feet and listened to howling-growling curses. Neither of them released me, but they did force me to my knees – almost broke my arms in the process.
I’d never been one to curse, but they brought it out of me as my left arm popped out of socket. After a few seconds of agony, my pain switch flipped and gifted me a wonderful floating euphoria.
I could smile once again.
Down on my bloody knees, bent over, I found a perverse pleasure in the moment. This was the one thing no one could take away from me – the joy of my pain.
Cronin recovered his footing and looked like he’d take my face off with his wicked claws. Poised above me for a deadly blow, he quivered as he gradually regained control over his fury. The Captain had anger management issues.
That could be useful.
D’Anton had preached to me that if you can’t master yourself, someone else will. He always had a parable handy, and I hadn’t paid that much attention when he went into lecture mode, but now I understood what he’d been saying.
The Captain, his poise regained, dropped to one knee to come face to face with m
e. “Fight me again, and I will feed your intestines to my warriors while you watch. There will be opportunities to fight later, but never without my permission.”
The Captain was serious. Looking into the eyes of a creature that would do horrible things to me, I realized I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to be cut open and fed to Cats. Though I had nothing to live for beyond a glimmer of hope, I wanted to live.
I inclined my head and growled. “I understand.”
Without taking his eyes off me, the Captain held out his hand to the Cat holding the steel ring. After an awkward moment, the Cat handed the ring to Cronin and backed away. The Captain activated something on the ring, then tapped a button on the metallic banding bracelet around his wrist. The light from the ring and a light on his wrist blinked once, simultaneously.
He’d synced my collar to his bracelet. An electronic leash.
I fought every instinct in my body to keep from head-butting him or sinking my teeth into his face as he reached around my neck and locked that piece of metal in place. In the pit of my stomach I knew the collar marked a significant hurdle to my hopes of attaining freedom.
* * * *
Chapter 6
Captain Cronin led me through a winding maze of corridors, and I noticed right away the lack of grav-spin fluctuation. The entire ship had a constant rate of gravity throughout. I’d heard of this before – artificial gravity. A memory surfaced of something recent in Earthside media about negotiations with the Gran to acquire their gravity generation technology.
I liked the predictability of constant grav, but I didn’t care for the lightness of it. I estimated it at three quarter gravity. I felt light enough to bounce off the walls and ceilings. D’Anton had preached about this stuff endlessly. Humans were not made for zero G. It causes too many health problems over time. Loss of bone density, circulatory problems, muscle atrophy. On and on he’d complained.
Then he’d brag how it wasn’t a problem for me. D’Anton said I could adapt. My bone density and body tissues automatically compensated for loss of gravity. I was the first human being designed to live in varying fluctuations of gravity, even zero G.
Watching closely to learn my way around, all I had seen so far was hallways. All the doors were sealed, no windows. I got the sense of a utilitarian design, like a freight hauler, or maybe something military. Definitely not a luxury cruiser with a buffet and dance halls. We came to a corridor where I could hear murmurs and smell scents of something familiar – people. A series of barred cells lined each side of the hallway. Bars on three sides of each cell and a steel back wall that stretched all the way across the cell block.
Most of the cages were filled with anywhere between five to ten worker drones I recognized from Nugene Station. The Gran had a full cargo hold. Looked like a hundred plus men. The Captain eyed them appraisingly and growled commands to open two of the cells.
From one cell the warrior pulled a short dark-haired male with olive skin. One of the Asians. From another cell they pulled a taller dark skinned male with hair buzzed off completely. From a third cell they pulled a medium build male with creamy, tanned skin and brown hair.
The lineup represented each of the three different clone stocks produced on Nugene D’Anton had explained that the Gran had been given a series of choices from the races of humanity and these were the genotypes they wanted. The men wore their light blue jumpsuits, similar to the one I wore. Except theirs looked relatively clean. My suit was shredded and covered in blood stains. And I stunk.
Smelling myself, I looked to the facilities inside the cells with envy. They had sinks with running water, toilets, and a shower stall. Very similar to the clone dorms on Nugene, except we had sonic showers instead of water. I wondered if these cell designs came from the Gran, or from humans advising the Gran of our minimum requirements…
Captain Cronin’s claws on my shoulder brought my attention back to the men standing in front of me. “Pick your mate.”
The romance of the moment escaped me.
This was not how I imagined my life. These men were nothing like Carver, D’Anton, and the other doctors on the station. They were programmed worker drones. Docile, simple, unintelligent. I had never seen anyone attempt to hold a conversation with worker drones. D’Anton claimed their mental development was purposely stunted, to avoid … issues.
They were not unattractive men, but when I looked them in the eyes, I could not see the character, personality and intricate individualism the people on the station held in their gazes, posture, and the looks on their faces. These men were shadows of humanity.
I suspected they lacked any real libido.
Fighting against the urge to toss Cronin across the room by the hand he’d clamped on my shoulder, I looked up to him and tried to impart the meaning I could barely communicate in his language. “Clones no make babies. Clones not perform.”
He watched me with what I assumed must be Cat suspicion. I wasn’t accustomed to the nuances of their facial expressions and communication. He wasn’t quite getting the point yet. I moved away from his grasp and stepped up close to the man on the left. Watching him to make sure he didn’t get spooked, I reached out and felt for confirmation.
The guy had a pair, and a bit of cock on him too, but his eyes only registered confusion. No arousal, no cognizance of what my hand was doing there.
I turned back to Cronin. “No good mate.”
The last thing I needed was the Gran forcing me to copulate with a drone that couldn’t get it up.
The Captain growled, seemingly in consideration of my words. He looked to the warrior at his side. “Bring us the Criminal.”
I stood puzzled and watched as the warrior strolled to the end of the cell block and opened a cell I had assumed was empty. He roused someone off the floor. The warrior dragged him from the cell. The face of the man who emerged was obscured by a scraggly, reddish-brown beard and shaggy, unkempt, dark brown hair. The warrior pushed the drones aside and brought the man up to face me.
He reeked of sweat, clearly hadn’t bathed in a long time.
He pulled his hair out of his eyes and looked me up and down. “How the fuck did you end up in this shithole?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. My laughter became giggles. The warrior holding the Criminal looked angrier by the second, as if we somehow mocked his authority.
I growled quickly to avoid violence against this funny man. “He smells bad.”
All three Cats broke into laughter, and now the man was staring at me with a squint of distrust.
“You actually speak their language? What are you? Are on the Defense Council? An interpreter?”
I shook my head. I had no explanation for what I was. None that would make sense. “I am a prisoner here, like you.”
His dark brown eyes held my attention. “Well, we may be prisoners here … but you ain’t nothing like me, darlin’.”
He had an accent and speech patterns like those ancient holovids from archives, the ones with gunslingers and horses. He sounded like John Wayne.
I sensed the Captain moving up behind me before his meaty claws landed on my shoulder. I could feel his satisfaction without looking at him. “No more excuses. You will mate with the Criminal.”
When he said it that way, almost sounded like fun.
The man’s eyes narrowed at the Captain’s grip on me. “What the fuck do they want now?”
I sighed. There was no way to sugarcoat it, so I didn’t try. “He wants me to have your child.”
It was the Criminal’s turn to break into full-throated laughter.
* * * *
The Captain locked me in the Criminal’s cell, just the two of us. I sat on the edge of the steel bench that looked like it was intended to serve as a bed. The Criminal leaned against the bars and watched me watching him.
“Well … isn’t this awkward?” He grinned.
I grinned. “Yes.”
The Gran loitered at the barred door of the cell watching me and th
e Criminal as we grinned at each other. In all my days spent in the lab with D’Anton, I had never felt like an experiment. I felt like one now.
The Criminal glanced at Captain Cronin waiting on the other side of the steel bars. “Why don’t you get a camera and some popcorn, make a night of it?” He glanced my way. “Ain’t no hurry.”
I couldn’t help but snicker. This Criminal was funny. Obstinate, obnoxious, and funny. I liked him already. His eyes watched me the way the men on the station watched me. I knew he wanted me, but his stance spoke of indignation. He didn’t want me like this, here, in front of the watching Cats and worker drones.
“They can’t make us … this is ridiculous.” He shook his head and sent a dirty look to Captain Cronin. “They already got a bunch of cookie cutter clones to do all their dirty work, why the hell do they need you to give them babies? There’s no way this is sanctioned by the Defense Council. The DC lets the Gran buy illegal, idiot clones, but nothing more.”
“It’s not their fault. The clones. They were made the way they are. No one gave them a choice.”
He scoffed. “You don’t have to defend them to me. They are unnatural abominations. What Nugene is doing is totally illegal. When Luna and Earthside finally learn the truth…”
I suddenly felt dirty and sick inside. Like my whole existence was flawed. Wrong. I was the unnatural abomination he spoke of. I had never quite fit with anyone, because I was not made to fit, I was not made by any means of nature. Then it occurred to me I hadn’t mentioned Nugene to him.
“What do you know of Nugene? I’ve never seen you there before.”
“There are people who know. The Station isn’t that big of a secret. Let me guess, you were one of the doctors or nurses? Gonna preach your moral justifications for creating these freaks of nature? How does it feel to be the victim of the slavers? Not so good eh?
“I’m not a doctor or a nurse and I don’t work for Nugene! I was kidnapped by the Gran! They killed everyone I loved.” I wanted to hit him he made me so angry. “Mankind living in the vacuum of space is unnatural. Artificial gravity that keeps us standing on this floor is unnatural. Jumpships visiting planets thousands of light years from here are unnatural. Do not speak to me of nature in this place. My life has never touched the nature of Earthside.”