“The captain knows there is nothing more profitable than my support,” the imperious urtok says, his voice dropping to a whisper. His eyes glitter ominously.
Whatever backbone that exists in the guards seems to vanish after this retort. They seem to melt into themselves and permit him to pass.
“You’re not… going to have both, are you, sir?”
“I know you want your profit share. Don’t worry. But if you keep babbling about this, then I will not hesitate to burn the idiocy out of you. Now be quiet.”
The guard, who is the biggest and bulkiest out of the four who sit there, nods and clamps his mouth firmly shut. I smile in spite of myself.
I know I shouldn’t be smiling, because I don’t want to be in this situation in the first place. But I don’t have a choice. I’m bound in two ways. I have no means of communication on me. And my beloved ship is surely junk by now.
That sends an extra dose of fury inside me. I long to feel the controls under my palms, responding to my every touch. To hear the rumble of the engines as they whine away from the ports, and break atmosphere, transitioning from blue skies and clouds to dark space, stars and distant planets. I love that moment. Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the switch occurs, and then you look back, and see the planet slowly getting smaller, and realize you’re released from its gravity. I like that – how gravity changes your perception of the world. That if you didn’t have it, then you’d just drift off the planet and never be seen again – and with it, when you stand upon the surface, you’re somehow always feeling like your orientation is the correct one.
In space, you can shift the orientation to whatever you want. You can fly forward to a planet. Up to a planet. Down to a planet. Four-dimensional space is a place where you have to lose grip of your original notion of orientation in order to be half-decent at flying. Many pilots don’t do this, and just fly in perceived straight lines, adopting the gravity of the place they had left before.
I don’t do that at all.
Anyway, I’m distracting myself, because the new urtok has finished inspecting Theresa, having held a quiet conversation with her. She still looks absolutely terrified, and has hunched to the corner of her cage, as far away from him as possible. I sit firmly in the center as he approaches, kneels before me, and establishes eye contact.
I glare back with as much animosity as possible.
“Hello,” he says, as if talking to a petrified animal. I don’t dignify that with a response. He doesn’t deserve a response.
“You do speak this tongue, yes?”
I now debate my options. If I stay mute, he’ll probably not be interested in me. That’s good, except I also have no idea about the livestock auction, or what will happen to me afterwards. The best thing I can do is to make the most of a terrible situation.
And how do I do that? I talk to the enemy. I try to glean information out of them. And I have to land myself in the best position possible, that may enable me a chance of the impossible.
“I want to know what you plan to do with us if you take us,” I reply. My lips are cracked, and my throat is dry. My palms are shaking, but I stare at him defiantly.
“Straight to demands, are we, livestock?” The urtok lifts an eyebrow.
“I’m not a slave,” I reply. “I’m a sentient creature who was working a job with my friends, before I was shoved into a cage and addressed as livestock. This is demeaning, humiliating, and disgusting.”
The urtok narrows his eyes. “You are in our captivity, so you are now livestock. Your former life does not matter. You will not be going back to it. As for your query, livestock – I require a human. I assume you will ask me why, and I will indulge your impertinence – this once.” He smirks, and it sends a chill up my spine. Those eyes are cold. “I require children. The urtok have a small gene pool, and more and more problems are cropping up with our race every generation. Congenital defects, illnesses with our DNA. We need to mix with DNA that is unrelated to the urtok, but is compatible enough for us to be able to procreate. But don’t worry. It’s not a painful procedure…”
“You want us as breeding mares.”
“In a manner of speaking. You do not have to carry the children to full term, though. We have machines that will do the job. You just need to get pregnant first, and we’ll extract the embryo from you each time. Then your children will be given to allo-parents, who will raise them up in community. Is that clear enough for you? Or perhaps do you want yet more information?”
Well… he certainly didn’t mince words with the explaining. I’ll give him that, at least. But now my brain is swirling, and debating whether it’s appropriate or not to panic. I kind of want to panic. I’ve never even considered having children at some point, and now I’ve been told to my face that I’m going to become a baby farm.
“And this is for the rest of my life?”
“Yes. Unless you become important enough to warrant your freedom.” He grins again. “We are not barbaric. We offer our livestock opportunities to prove themselves. Think of it like a point system. You may earn your freedom by obeying your masters, and by pleasing them.”
I consider this for a moment, trying to reign in my panic. I sense he’s intrigued enough in me to select me, or otherwise he wouldn’t be giving me so much information freely. “Right. I’m a slave, but I can earn my freedom. Uh… I’m gonna say I might not be a good slave. I really, really hate being told what to do.”
The urtok smiles. “That stubbornness will be good for the future generation of urtoks. We do not want weak little squalings, unable to separate themselves from their milk after years of growing. I am known as Loren. What name do you go by, livestock?”
I lick my lips. Staring into the eyes of this stranger, this being who has outlined his plans in clear, bright daylight. I notice the guards discreetly leaning in, trying to eavesdrop upon the conversation. Theresa’s still huddled in a fetal position, not wanting to look anywhere.
“I’m called Teena. Is there any chance you can help my friend over there, as well?” I indicate Theresa. “You seem like you have considerable influence, because the guards were practically trying to vanish into the ground when you came here.”
Loren arches his eyebrow. It has fine hair there, the same color as his thick strands. “You want me to take her as well?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.” Loren regards Theresa for a moment. “She is too weak for decent children. And, you know, I’m not used to getting demands from livestock. You are quite the disobedient one, aren’t you?” His fingertips start glowing.
“Really? You’re gonna threaten to melt my face off? Please. We both know you want me alive.”
“Do I?” The fingertips grow brighter. I’m now starting to get seriously scared, but I call his bluff. I stand my ground.
“You don’t want to put my body through any shock or trauma that might cause me to be infertile. And stress makes it harder for us humans to become pregnant. Just thought you should know.”
“You’re lying,” he says, his eyes wide, as if irritated and fascinated at the same time. He bares his teeth, displaying sharp canines, perfect pink gums.
“Actually, this time I’m not. We humans have miscarriages if we’re put under too much stress. It’s a defense mechanism, because the baby takes up a lot of energy when growing.”
This is actually something I do know. I understand that my mother had at least four miscarriages before she had me, after my brother. My dad used to mention this when growing up, saying it was a miracle I was even around. I got curious about how someone could have so many miscarriages. Wondered if there was some genetic problem that caused it.
The answer was yes, genetics does come into it. But equally important is the wellbeing of the mother. If she’s placed under duress, the body itself will sometimes reject the embryo. Sometimes so early on, that women won’t even realize they had a miscarriage. They’ll just feel a dip in their emotions, maybe have more blood than usu
al gush through them, and then carry on their lives as normal.
“I swear to it. My mother had four miscarriages. She worked a stressful job. When she quit the job, I was conceived a few months later, and made it to term.”
Now Loren hisses through his teeth. “A clever livestock…” he at first appears annoyed. Then he smiles again, nodding. “Yes… I will check your information with our database. But I certainly will be having you.” His hands go through the bar for a moment, wrapping around it. I’m tempted to punch the fingers there, and see if I can break them, but I also figure that I shouldn’t be antagonizing him any more than necessary.
If I’m going to be stuck in this Godforsaken place, surrounded by desert and barbarians, I need to hitch myself to a powerful member of their society. I don’t know how powerful Loren is, but he’s certainly powerful enough to be able to whisk through protocol and select one of us directly.
And, well, I don’t like the idea of being pregnant at all. I don’t want children. But the thought that I don’t have to carry the pregnancies to term somehow intrigues me. Sort of like how you observe a space crash in the vacuum. It’s silent, but you imagine the noise all the same. You watch, thinking about how it happened.
It’s the same with the idea of this pregnancy. What happens? Does he have sex with me, or just inject sperm into me when I ovulate? When I conceive, what then happens to the child? How long does it stay before it’s extracted? How is it extracted? Where is it placed? Do I have contact with it or watch it grow?
Will it be damaging to my body or not?
My mind whirs through the possibilities.
“I look forward to seeing you in my home… Teena.” It’s the first time he’s called me by my name, rather than the tiresome livestock that the urtok seem to be attaching onto everyone.
I watch him depart, and realize that I’ve been frozen in the same position for at least ten minutes – and my muscles are seriously starting to cramp. He’s also offered no promises for Theresa, and has utterly dismissed her.
I adjust myself, rub some life back into my legs and stretch my spine. I don’t know what awaits me or Theresa.
I don’t know if I can exactly be prepared for it. Or if I’m seriously going to regret lumbering myself with him. Suppose I’ll just have to wait and find out.
One thing’s for sure, though. I’m not a slave. I never will be a slave, no matter how I’m treated.
It’s just not me.
Chapter Three
Several things are clear from my interactions on this planet. First off, that they’re pretty big on pirating aliens from other nations. Maybe some of them are here voluntarily, but I know I’m not. I wonder how they’re able to get away with something like this without eventually generating some kind of intergalactical outrage. It escapes my comprehension for now, but I’m certainly not the only human here. And I can’t see Theresa anywhere, not that I expected to. I’ll need to ask Loren about this later, though I’m not expecting a straight answer out of him.
From his perspective, he’s not obliged to answer me on anything. He can choose to skirt over all my questions and play upon the slave/master rule.
Second, the urtok are eyeing me like they all want to just strip me down and ravage me in the street, and fuck that. I wish right now that I had my laser gun on me, because I’d be firing it off in their general direction. Which will probably get me killed, but at least I’d feel good doing it. I’ve honestly thought as well that Matthew and Ronald are dead, but it also occurs to me that if they need women to mate with male urtok, it stands to reason that they’ll need men to mate with females. After all, the problem is in their genes. Presumably from the massive amount of incest they have in their population.
It’s interesting to know that too similar DNA results in more mutations – and not of the positive kind. I always wondered why that is. Diversity is the key to a healthy population. We learned it back on earth. Mixed breed animals tended to be healthier than pure breeds, and it applied to humans as well. If you stay with the same gene pool, you’re gonna end up with a lot of issues in time.
Though I can visualize the logic of the urtok, it doesn’t in any way make me any more inclined to like them. On account of the whole kidnapping thing.
Third, I notice that my chances of escape are disgustingly thin. They insert an electronic nanochip under my skin for a start, and I’m given a boundary. If I’m more than five hundred feet away from Loren, as he kindly demonstrated to me – my muscles lock in place, and I’m unable to bloody well move. And since I can’t just follow Loren around like a dog on a leash, there’s an extra fail safe built in. If I go more than five hundred feet from Loren’s property, the same effect will kick in. It’s designed so that I can be left at home without having my muscles lock up when Loren does whatever it is he does, and will trigger if I go beyond the little street next to the property. As long as I’m near one of them, the other won’t trigger.
Basically, unless I figure out how to remove the tiny chip from my body, I’m utterly fucked in my plans to escape. And even if I somehow circumvent the protection, it seems the urtok have some kind of shitty mystical power that allows them to do crap like melt metal with their fingers, and add invisible shackles on me to stop me moving. If one of the glaring urtok decide they want a piece of me, I’ll be shackled before I know it and shoved away in a basement somewhere. The nanochip proves I belong to someone with the limb locking.
This makes me want to gnash my teeth in rage.
I’m a pilot. I’m meant to travel through space. I didn’t go through all that training just to be put under house arrest. This isn’t how I intend to live my life, and I’m at risk of being driven beyond endurance if I have nothing better to do except sit around and do nothing. My body and mind itch for activity. For something to do. My dad knew that growing up, so he kept me active. He let me help build treehouses and soap box carts. If I came up with any interesting ideas or wants, he found a way to implement it. Like that one time I wanted to play laser tag with my brother but didn’t have the friends or resources for it, he made a cool innovation.
My brother and I needed to hunt around the field for treasures, whilst dad would try to hit us with a bow and rubber arrow. If we got hit two times, we were out, and if we hit him with our rubber arrows, he would freeze for ten seconds.
We had a lot of fun playing rubber tag. My dad was that kind of person. Always improvising on the things we didn’t have. By all accounts, he’s the best person I know.
And now I’m stuck in this stupid fucking place. It’s not an impressive home by any means, I’ve seen grander, but it does have a polished feel to it, and several servants bustling around, helping to keep it tidy. The house is a square shape from the outside, with no garden, opening out into the street, where there’s a row of shops, and one place with a flashing neon sign. I can’t read urtok, but I assume it’s a gambling place or something.
Loren gives a quaint smile, even as I glare at the insides of his house, which has that trailer box feel to it. Each room is perfectly square, containing basic utilities, and there are nine rooms in total. The first of the squares is the entrance hall, where I walk in, which leads to a living room with a dining table on the left, and a study room on the right.
Continuing in this block structure, the living room leads to the kitchen, which leads to a bedroom. The study room leads to a bathroom, and then another bedroom. The last two rooms in the house, leading from the entrance hall are a library and another bathroom. Inside the library is a trapdoor that leads to a basement, which is a pretty fucking creepy place, given that it resembles some kind of teenager’s laboratory. There’s also a huge, bubbling tank of something there, with metal pipes and bendable metal tubes weaving in and out of the glass.
It’s the kind of thing you’d expect some fucked up scientist to preserve a brain in or a body or something, whilst the blue liquid hisses and bubbles around them. Loren greatly enjoys my reactions to each place. He doesn’t
go for much decoration, so I don’t see paintings or much personal belongings. Just a strictly utilitarian one storey house with ample room to do whatever he wants. The floors are all wooden panels, and one of the three servants in the place is vacuuming the floor in the library.
Standing inside the basement, Loren says, “It might surprise you to know that this isn’t where I pickle brains or do highly illegal experiments.”
I lock my jaw, breathing in and out with forced calm to try and keep my rage and fear inside. “So… what exactly is this room, then?” I’m fairly certain I don’t want to know the answer, but Loren intends to supply it anyway. God, he has such an annoying smirk on his lips. His amber eyes seem to glow in the dim light of the basement, giving him an ethereal look. I wonder if it’s another magic of the urtok. The same with the way their faces vary from bold and strong to waspish thin. Loren has an elven structure, the kind you expect to see in some nerd’s basement as they sweat over whatever heroic fantasy character they’re navigating through an imaginary dungeon. It’s a highly imperious look that suits him well, unfortunately.
It’s the type of facial structure and musculature that I’m fairly certain most human females wouldn’t have a problem with. He’s not… toned in the way people who go to the gym are. He just has a good, natural bulk to him, which would likely pop out if he bothered to do some serious exercise, like some of his fellow urtok seem to do. I wonder if it’s simply a habit of stature. Richer citizens use their brains more than their muscles, so they gravitate towards a refined look. Poorer ones rely on their brawn and muscle, either to work or to impress, so they gravitate towards that end of the spectrum.
I’m staring at Loren too long. This isn’t good. It might look like I’m interested in him, when it’s merely just… objectional. Like how you would view a snake, and note all the details of the fucking thing, even as it’s about to clot up the blood in your veins. I have eyes, and he’s different. Unfamiliar. He has spikes all over his back, and amber eyes which hold a coldness that makes my skin shiver. He’s hovering at the borderline between handsome and creepy. And, depending on what I’m thinking about, reflects in my perception of him.
To Love A Hitman Page 55
