by Huss, JA
I knew whoever used to live and work on Harem was most likely murdered by ALCOR. The station was not called Harem back then, just ALCOR Station. I asked him once what his name stood for but he never said. Jimmy and I used to sit around and come up with stupid possibilities. Ass-Licking-Calcium-Oxide-Rectum. Or Artificial-Life-Created-On-Regulus. Stuff like that.
So I get it. And who cares, anyway? Not my people. Not my fucking millennium. And I know this is gonna sound callous and apathetic, but it was just a station. Stations fail. I wouldn’t say all the time, but in my life I’ve heard of three station failures. Three times millions of people died for one reason or another in far-away places.
So it wasn’t something I’d never heard of. Accidents happen.
But he just said… system.
As in… a sun, and planets, and moons. “System?” I say again. Because the silence has gone on long enough now that I realize he’s not gonna answer. “What system?”
There was no evidence of a system when we came through those gates that first time we met ALCOR. No debris field orbiting the station. No asteroid belt twenty billion miles out. No oddly-shaped pieces of rock spinning in the darkness. Nothing like that. It was just… space. Completely empty except for two gates, and a station, and a lot of leftover ice from a comet that came through and exploded eons ago.
“Why’d you bring it up if you’re not gonna answer me?” I say. “It’s not like I need this information right now, ALCOR. I’ve got enough shit on my mind without your cryptic guilt.”
“It wasn’t me,” he finally says.
“Who wasn’t you?” It comes out automatically. But it’s an unnecessary question. Because I know what he’s talking about. So I add, “Who was it then?”
“There was a war, Serpint. A very terrible war between the Akeelians and the Cygnians.”
I stare down at my boots as he says this. Trying to make these new clues solve this new mystery. We’ve been around him all these years and I didn’t know this? I mean, I get it. I was young when I left. And Akeelian boys have a very specific kind of education. You learn a skill and take classes and certifications in that specific skill set, and that’s pretty much it.
Valor and Luck were learning to salvage. Crux was in station management. Jimmy was in diplomacy. Tray was in AI evolution. Draden and I were too young to be on a track, so we just went to normal school. And we did learn some history, but it was mostly recent stuff. Certainly nothing that ever went back twenty-five-thousand years.
“You and Lyra,” he says, “are the same. Genetically speaking, that is. You both came out of that war. The Akeelians—all male—went one way. And the Cygnians—all female—went another. That was the part I played. I separated them and made it impossible for them to ever breed again.”
I laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s a joke. Except not funny. “Guess that little magic spell has run its course.”
“Appears so. Tell me something, Serpint. Do you find it interesting, ironic, or foreboding, that you boys found me all those years ago? And that the one girl you shouldn’t have is now yours? And the one girl Crux should never see again is now sitting in his medical bay in a cryopod?”
“What do you mean I shouldn’t have her? She is mine. And no one’s taking her away from me.”
“That’s the only thing you heard, wasn’t it?” He pauses. And I picture him staring me down and shaking his head. “I’ve been thinking about this stuff since you boys showed up. And then when the princesses started showing up. And how Crux just went along with my plan to collect them. I’ve been trying to figure out if it was interesting, ironic, or foreboding.”
I look up. Stare at the ceiling because that’s my default direction when ALCOR is talking to me. “So what did you decide?”
“I think,” he says, “I think it’s all three.”
“Why do we really need to get Nyleena back?” I ask.
“Because they are starting another war. Their weapons are formidable. Ours are as well. They are of the same technology. But they’ve been regrouping for twenty-five thousand years, Serpint. Planning their revenge on me. There’s no telling what they’ve got now.”
“Us?” I say. “They’re starting a war with us?”
“Do you think Lyra is here by chance? By mistake? Or by fate?”
Shit.
“And Corla,” he says. “Same question.”
Fucking hell.
“Yes, Serpint,” he says when I don’t answer. “They are starting a war with us.”
When I look around I realize that everyone else is listening to ALCOR too. Jimmy and Xyla have come out of the cockpit, leaning on either side of the hatch. Xyla’s long hair floats snake-like around her face in the low gravity. Valor and Luck are both staring at me across the room. Beauty has secured herself into a bot hold like she needs the solid walls for reassurance.
“Did you know about this?” I ask them, looking at Jimmy and Xyla first, then Valor and Luck.
“No,” Jimmy says. “Not until we got here for the service.”
“So Draden and Ceres,” I say. “Back on Cetus Station when I just happened to bump into the Cygnian queen—”
“They set you up, Serpint,” Jimmy says.
“And I fell for it.”
“You couldn’t have known,” ALCOR says.
“Why the fuck did I steal that queen?”
“Why do you steal any of them?” ALCOR asks. “Why does Crux collect them in a harem? Why do any of you do what you do?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Because you can’t help it,” ALCOR says. “You have a genetic need to procreate.”
“But we could procreate with anyone,” I say. “Doesn’t even matter if our partners are Cygnian.”
“Yes, and if you get a male child, he’s Akeelian. But what happens to the girls?”
Crux’s question from last night. Almost word for word. “I… don’t know. I guess I never thought about it.”
“They are hybrids, Serpint. That’s why you cannot have a second-generation Akeelian female.”
“Unless we mate with a Cygnian,” I say, fitting another piece in this puzzle. “But wait,” I say. “They have kings. Lyra’s father—”
“All genetically engineered,” ALCOR says. “There are no male Cygnians. Only hybrids who cannot procreate without a lot of laboratory manipulation.”
“So what the fuck are we doing?” I ask. “Why the hell are we here?”
“We need Nyleena,” ALCOR says. “The same way we need Lyra.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, getting a very bad feeling about where this is going.
“You can breed with her,” ALCOR says. “She is a higher-order princess. The pinks and silvers are pure—”
“I’m sorry,” I say, stopping him by putting up a hand. “Did you just say breed with her?”
“Come on,” Jimmy says. “Don’t get hung up on terms, Serpint. You’re already thinking about how she’s your soul-mate. Well, congratulations, brother. You’re right. And now the two of you need to make babies. How fun will that be? And if we get Nyleena back, one of us lucky fuckers will make babies with her too.” Then he mutters under his breath, “Please don’t let it be me.”
“And if we can wake up Corla,” ALCOR adds, “we will be able to rebuild the species.”
“This is why we’ve been collecting Cygnian princesses for twenty years?” I ask. “We’re trying to make babies?”
“We’re trying to make babies,” ALCOR answers. “Purebreds are powerful. And now that we know they’ve successfully created the soul mates we have to start our own genetic engineering program. They cannot get this technology first.”
Did he just call babies… technology?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - LYRA
“Strap in!” Booty blares through the com system.
I’m already hustling to snap into the pilot’s seat when she takes off, but her acceleration is so abrupt, my head bangs against the head rest.
“Booty!” I yell.
“Sorry,” she purrs.
But I don’t think she’s sorry. And we’re not even through the first gate yet and I’m regretting this trip. “This is a bad idea,” I say. “How do I know you’re not still infected with that virus and you’re really taking me back to the Cygnians?”
“Because giving you back would feed right into the Cygnian plan.”
“Which is?”
“You can create true offspring. The Cygnians do not yet realize who the Harem Station boys are, but when they do they will want you back—them too. They’ll want Crux the most, but they will take Serpint once they hear about your little light show yesterday at Draden’s funeral. I’d like to think Harem Station is filled with nothing but loyal people on our side, but you can’t screen everyone. So all the brothers are now in danger.”
“You’re blaming me?” I ask. The nerve of this thing!
“They want to breed you, Lyra. That’s not your fault, it’s just who and what you are. It’s just your place in the universe. And if someone’s going to breed you, it will be us. Not them. So you can trust me, because I am on Serpint’s side and even though I don’t want to admit it, we need you.”
I think about that for a few moments. Not he needs you. But we need you. Also… I’m not sure how to interpret that whole ‘it will be us’ statement. Is she implying I’m now part of some genetic engineering program on Harem? Because that’s just a big old, Fuck you, Lyra from the Universe, isn’t it?
“If you have a god,” Booty says, “pray to it now.”
“Why?” I ask, leaning forward in my seat to get a better look at the giant screen in front of me.
She doesn’t answer. But she doesn’t need to. Because I see why for myself. The gate defense system is armed and there are hundreds of SEAR cannons pointed at us.
“We’re not even gonna make it through the first gate!”
Code starts spilling down the screens like a green waterfall made up of numbers, and symbols, and letters.
She’s hacking it, I realize. The Harem Gate defense system.
But that should be impossible. She shouldn’t be able to…
We fly through the gate with a burst of light and I’m driven back into the soft gel cushion of my chair with the sudden acceleration, my head pounding and light leaking off of my body like some force is squishing it out of me.
I’ve only ever been through a handful of gates, but I know the trips are almost instantaneous. So the moment I register all this discomfort is the moment it stops.
I realize I was holding my breath and exhale.
“Don’t relax,” Booty says. “Gate number two—”
And then it starts again…
This time when we come out of it, I can’t see. And in that same moment, we enter another gate, this time with no warning.
When that trip is done we slow. My vision is still black, my body slumped in my chair, and my head is pounding so hard, I can’t hear what Booty is saying.
“What?” I ask, barely able to hear myself.
I don’t think she responds, but it wouldn’t matter. It takes long minutes for my vision and hearing to come back. Long minutes of spider web flashes across a black background in my eyes and my heartbeat thumps in my ears.
I’m suddenly grateful for the cryopod trip when that old man stole me.
This is horrible.
When Nyleena and I escaped we avoided gates until we had to use them. Those were the instructions I was given and now I know why.
High-speed space travel sucks.
Finally, when the sounds of the ship are almost back to normal, she says, “We’ll go slow for a little while now, but don’t relax. We have three more gates to jump through before we get to Bull Station. Normally I’d take an easier route, but we need to catch up with Dicker.”
“They left hours ahead of us,” I say. “What if they’re already there? What if we’re too late and something bad already happened?”
“Dicker won’t take the route we just did. It’s too much for her. She hasn’t been upgraded the way I have and it’s almost too much for me. So we should be catching up to them.”
That answered my first question but not my last. So I repeat it. “Booty, what if we’re too late?”
She’s silent for so long, I’m about to repeat myself a third time. But then she says, “We won’t know until we get there. So get ready. And be prepared for anything.”
Something tells me there’s more to this little mission than she’s letting on.
But just as I think that thought, she accelerates hard, and there’s no turning back.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - SERPINT
“One more gate,” Dicker says, once we come out of the one we’re in. I used to hate gate travel and would make Booty go out of her way to use as few as possible. But I’ve gotten used to it. A few seconds of immense discomfort is always worth it once you get to the other side and realize you just traveled light years.
Bull Station is in a busy area of the galaxy and there’s a million ways to get there. But we take a long way, trying to avoid checkpoints so ALCOR won’t have to hack us through any really tight security until we have to.
Which gives me way too much time to think about what I was just told.
Breeders. We’re capturing them for breeding.
“We’ve never had a pink or a silver before,” I say to no one. But everyone is listening.
“No,” ALCOR says. “Not until Lyra.”
“So… we don’t know—”
“We know,” Jimmy says. “It’s not a big deal.”
But it kinda is. Breeders. I don’t know how I feel about that. I wouldn’t mind putting a baby in her, but… breeding. It feels so… sterile.
It’s very easy to not get a woman pregnant when you’re an Akeelian man because not only do both cocks have to be engaged and inside her pussy at the same time, both cocks have to ejaculate at the same time as well. Our sperm has to mix to be active inside a woman. And simultaneous ejaculation of both cocks is almost unheard of.
Until Lyra came along, that is.
“Who else knows about this?” I ask. “Besides us?”
“All the Akeelians know,” ALCOR says.
“Then why the fuck didn’t I know?”
“Because we left when we were kids,” Jimmy says.
“Crux knew,” Valor says. “I knew a little. I knew he and Corla were together and that’s why we had to leave.”
“Wait,” I say. “Was Corla—”
“Yes,” ALCOR says. “She was pregnant when they separated.”
“So a child was already born?” I say. “Twenty years ago?”
“We think so,” Valor says.
“How do you know all this?” I ask him.
“Crux told us yesterday,” Luck says. “We were gonna tell you, but then you and Lyra—” He shrugs. “We figured it could wait.”
“So the Cygnians,” I say, putting yet another puzzle piece in place. “They have this child of Crux and Corla?”
“That we don’t know,” ALCOR says. “We don’t think so. They’d have had almost a decade to harvest sperm and breed new purebreds in laboratory if that was the case. If they had purebreds, believe me, we’d know about it by now. They’d have attacked us already. And I doubt Corla would leave her progeny behind in another escape attempt.”
“Crux thinks she got caught by the Cygnians after the baby was born,” Jimmy says. “That she probably left it with some trusted people somewhere.”
I just… can’t wrap my head around this yet. All this time I knew we were different. I remember what it was like to escape the Akeelian System and find ALCOR. And I always knew what we did when we left was wrong, but I never thought about it again.
Escaping and finding ALCOR was luck and why would anyone question luck?
I look at Luck. Because he’s had that nickname since I was just a little brat who used to tag along behind him. Long before we got this luck. B
ut for some reason I always equated his name with our escape.
“Wait,” I say, another idea invading my thoughts. “So we are half-breeds too?”
“No,” ALCOR says. “The male Akeelian genetic line has been preserved. It’s only the female line that has been diluted.”
“How is that possible?”
“Do you remember our mother?” Jimmy asks.
“The harem mother,” I say. “Sure.”
“She was your caregiver,” ALCOR says. “Not your mother. You don’t have a mother.”
I knew that. Have always known that. Both of those things. But for some reason it hurts to hear it spelled out so clear.
“Before the great war when the sun, and planets, and moons of the old system were destroyed,” ALCOR says, “a few thousand Akeelians escaped on a generation ship. They took millions of genetic samples with them so they could procreate.”
“That’s us,” Jimmy says.
“Still,” ALCOR continues, “that generation ship couldn’t take samples from a pink or a silver princess. Those genetics were locked up tight. So you are only half of what your children could be. They have been trying to steal Akeelians for thousands of years. You are what they need to complete their plan. You are what they are after right now. And they are using these women to lure you back.”
He pauses for a moment.
“And they want to kill me too. Because I was the one who let that generation ship escape. I was the one who decimated their system. And I am the only thing standing between them and galactic domination. That system is a dictatorship. Nothing comes in or out without permission. Not even information. The Cygnian men are violent, repulsive creatures. There is no line they won’t cross, no measure they won’t take, no life that can’t be sacrificed for the greater good.”
“Pretty fucking crazy, isn’t it?” Valor says. “I mean, I always knew we were different. Something was wrong and pieces of me were missing and shit like that. But I’m like you, Serpint. I don’t know what to make of this shit. I like my job,” he says, looking up at the ceiling to indicate he’s talking to ALCOR. “I really do. I don’t mind scrounging around the galaxy to find components you need. But I don’t want to be in this war. Not if Harem Station goes the way of the system that used to be there.”