by Enid Titan
“Corrin? Corrin? Wake up!”
Corrin’s eyes fluttered open.
“Sorry,” she whispered, “It’s the drugs. Where was I?”
“Xantha.”
“Oh yes. She’s coming. Her ship should be here soon.”
“And your wife… she can handle the clone master?”
Corrin smiled and replied, “Xantha can handle anything.”
Corrin didn’t want to talk much after that. She slumped over and fell asleep for the rest of the time X-25 had allotted them. Corrin had called him the clone master. And she had answers. Rory was desperate for them but knew better than to push her luck.
As Corrin slept, a loud purring echoed through Rory’s bedroom. X-25 returned to find the Denebolan fast asleep with the human curled up awake in bed, listening to her purring.
“Did you have fun with her?” X-25 wheezed.
“She’s rather rude,” Rory replied honestly.
That wheezing metal laugh escaped his sieve-like mouth again.
“Yes, rather. Without tranquilizers, she’d kill everything in sight. I had problems with her clones. Problems that are fixed thanks to you.”
“Whatever happened to that ship with the uh… intercept course?” Rory asked, hoping that X-25 would say that it was nothing, and there was still hope for this Xantha character Corrin spoke so highly of.
“I destroyed it,” X-25 replied, following up with that harrowed, wheezing laugh.
5
Yes, it did.
The decoy worked. Xantha hadn’t expected it to work at all, but that fanged devil was smarter than she thought. She scowled and turned to look at Ramses.
“Very good. I suppose you’re smarter than you look.”
“I’ve apologized one thousand times for my cousin Baneb. I will keep apologizing until you accept it.”
“Accept it? If it weren’t for your cousin Baneb, Corrin and I would have never been kidnapped! Who’s to say this isn’t just a ploy so you can kidnap me too.”
“I told you,” Ramses growled, scraping his hoof against the floor in frustration, “X-25 has my mate. She wasn't a slave girl.”
“An earthling, so you claim,” Xantha replied unimpressed.
“I believe him,” A voice chimed to their left.
Xantha and Ramses looked over to see who had entered the bridge.
“Pandora, what reason would you have to believe him?”
“His accent. It’s… British. Kind of. Maybe Scottish?”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“If his English sounds British—
“Or Scottish.”
“—Or Scottish to me, maybe it’s for a reason. He claims he was in London when he met her. It adds up.”
“Why you had to go around making friends with the likes of him at the space station bar is beyond me,” Xantha grumbled.
Pandora, a muscular, strong human woman with runner’s legs and braided waist-length black hair folded her arms and spoke calmly, “It’s my nature, Xantha. Damir has been away at the border for the past four months and all the kids are at boarding school the next planet over. I needed to cut loose.”
“So you cut loose by approaching another terrifying Arietan?” Xantha argued.
Ramses thought it best not to interrupt.
“He’s helping us find Corrin! We’ve been trying to track down that damned alloy for months. This is the first we’ve heard his name.”
“He destroyed my ship,” Ramses grumbled, “He killed off my crew and now the insurance company refuses to replace it until I visit Aries myself.”
“You don’t sound too thrilled about that,” Pandora offered.
Another human in space… Ramses never thought he’d see one up close but then he’d seen this one. She was much larger than Rory and had a fierce look in her eye. He later discovered that came from raising fifty reptilian children.
She was a Taurean senator’s mate. Ramses had a feeling there was a story then. After he’d found out who she was married to, Ramses was careful around her then. He didn’t trust most Taureans.
They were sneaky, and lived below ground, wasting the perfectly good heat of their sun in favor of eating bugs and worms. No thank you.
When he’d mentioned X-25 and how that steel beast took Rory away from him, the sapiens’ eyes lit up and she came over dragging this dwarfish brown female Xanflorae with white eyes and white curly hair to match. The Xanflorae had the typical simple-mindedness of her species, but she was friendly enough, and from what Ramses could tell, she was aged. Nearly the end of her lifespan.
This unlikely pair claimed to have something that could disable X-25’s ship, but they had no military strategy and at first, insisted on gunning full speed ahead without a hint of deception. X-25 would destroy them the moment they tried. At first, the aliens hadn’t believed him, but Ramses convinced them to send a decoy.
He’d been right. Messing with AI required a bit more refinement than what they had to offer. Now the ship was destroyed and X-25 had no clue that a tiny ship sat right in his blindspot.
“How did you escape, if you don’t mind me asking?” Xantha asked.
Ramses didn’t mind the question, but he could have skipped the dwarfish woman’s suspicious little sneer.
“I escaped in a pod right before the ship exploded. The others were already dead.”
“And you didn’t kill them for your selfish ends?”
“Xantha!” Pandora chided.
“I’m just checking. I’ve met his kind before and I don’t trust them.”
“I’m sorry,” Pandora apologized on Xantha’s behalf, “She’s a bit testy because of her issues with your cousin. I can see that you’re not the same man.”
“I don’t partake in that miserable institution of his…anymore.”
“Anymore?”
“Let’s just say I’ve had an epiphany.”
Xantha didn’t know if she believed him and he could tell that his words had drawn suspicions out of Pandora too. Pandora thankfully had the good sense to change the subject.
“The human woman on that ship, you said her name was Rory?”
“Yes. She’s… We… It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. I thought I could go through with taking her, but I couldn’t.”
“I understand,” Pandora replied, offering a smile.
She didn’t seem afraid of Ramses’ black eyes, his thick horns, or the way his fangs protruded from his mouth when he was lost in thought.
“Baneb, my cousin, was more interested in trade out here. I’ve always been more focused on land than anything else. And fast space ships.”
“Men and their cars,” Pandora replied, rolling her eyes.
Ramses didn’t understand what she meant, but he liked that she was friendly at least.
A loud beeping on their ship snapped Pandora and Ramses out of the conversation.
“It’s time. The probe is ready,” Xantha announced.
“The probe should latch onto the under the ship in X-25’s blind spot. When the Polluxians programmed them, they programmed inherent weaknesses to prevent large scale destruction. Even if they think they’re invincible, they still have them.”
“You know so much about them for a man who lost his ship to them,” Xantha grumbled.
“X-25 took me by surprise. I said I wasn’t meeting him anymore and he took revenge. These AI are very sensitive you know.”
“He’s right,” Xantha sighed, “It’s what happened to Corrin and I. We politely asked him to liberate the clones on his ship, and what does he do? He kidnaps Corrin and leaves me there to die.”
“How did you get away then?” Ramses shot accusatorially.
“I have friends in high places,” Xantha sniffed.
“The Devoran high command gave her a vessel. The telepathic backup system kicked in and alerted the royal family.”
“So you do have friends in high places then,” Ramses chuckled.
“I suppose she does.”
“Can you two stop talking about nothing and help me launch this probe?” Xantha snapped impatiently.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you switched places with Corrin,” Pandora grumbled.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get her reunited with her wife in no time,” Ramses muttered.
He was eager to shed this pair of aliens. The human woman Pandora was sweet enough, but she reminded him of Rory with her sharp tongue and those strange, colored eyes. Arietan eyes were only black, so all these strange human colors caught Ramses’ attention.
Ramses guided the probe, launching it along the path he’d plotted to the underside of X-25’s ship. The probe attached without being fired upon. Good. Ramses shook his hair between his horns and relaxed his shoulders.
“Now what do we do?”
“We wait,” Xantha announced, “The probe will disable the ship and X-25 will be shut down.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Ramses had his doubts, but given that he was a guest on their ship, he felt in little position to argue. With X-25’s ship shut down, they should have been able to pilot theirs beneath it. Xantha piloted the ship. Pandora hung back to speak to Ramses.
“After we get her, where will we be taking you?”
“I have to return to the homeward. I suppose she’ll come with me.”
“Do you think she’ll be safe there?”
Ramses’ jaw clenched. He couldn’t be certain of that now, could he? Most females in his species didn’t live on his home planet, which meant most of the citizens were male — red-blooded, desperate males, ready to mate at a moment’s notice. His eyes blackened at the thought of them.
“I will protect her,” he murmured, “Wherever I go, I’ll keep her safe. I allowed this to happen once, but it won’t happen again.”
Pandora pressed her hand to his shoulder. Ramses shirked away.
“Sorry. Just meant it to comfort you.”
“It’s strange. You’re like her. Not afraid of me. I’m accustomed to other species fear. Like Xantha’s.”
“Xantha’s had a tough past. She got married and then just like that, her wife was taken from her again.”
“She’s very old.”
“Not really. Her race doesn’t live long. She has about six months left.”
“Time is of the essence then.”
“Yes, it is,” Pandora replied solemnly.
The three armed themselves with guns and teleported onto X-25’s vessel. Ramses’ skin tightened at the sight before him. There were hundreds of her everywhere. Well, they were her but… enhanced.
Pandora gasped.
“He’s cloned her,” Xantha whispered.
The clones surrounded them in the hallway, blue and steel eyes fixed on the three intruders.
“I’m 143π. Welcome to our master’s ship,” the Rory-clone said in her London accent before bowing.
“How do we know which one is her?” Pandora asked.
While she hadn’t been too afraid to touch Ramses, her face blanched at the sight of all the copies. Ramses could smell the difference in the clones. X-25 couldn’t help but enhance them with alloy implants to form them closer to his image, so most of them smelled like copper and steel as well as flesh and blood.
“She’s his original, so he would have kept her safe,” Ramses replied.
“This is the man you would do business with,” Xantha hissed, “Just like an Arietan.”
Ramses had no words to reply to her. This was far worse than he thought.
“143π, please direct us to your master,” Ramses asked.
143π stared stupidly at him as if she didn’t understand the question.
“I don’t think they obey your commands,” Pandora whispered.
“143π, show us to your master, or I’ll shoot.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed and then lowered her head, slumping to the ground. Xantha raced over to the fallen clone.
“She’s dead!”
“I didn’t shoot her!” Ramses protested.
“It must be some kind of auto-destruct.”
“Bloody hell…” Ramses murmured, though he couldn’t quite remember where he’d gotten the phrase from.
“Well let’s find them on our own. I don’t think the clones will attack us.”
“What about their master?” Pandora whispered.
Now that she held a gun, Ramses could see that fierce side of her expressing itself. Managing fifty reptilian children had turned her tough.
“Ramses, you go with Xantha. I’ll go that way,” Pandora commanded.
Ramses didn’t like the idea of someone else taking charge, but Pandora seemed to have a handle on things, and he didn’t care who led their mission as long as he got his arms around Rory in the end.
Xantha didn’t like the idea of being alone with Ramses, so she argued for fifteen or so minutes, attracting a crowd of suspiciously docile clones. Eventually, Pandora and Ramses set off together. Xantha set off alone, in search of Corrin.
“I shouldn’t apologize for her,” Pandora admitted, “But she’s been through a lot. Your cousin… He hurt her.”
“My species has a more violent temperament than most.”
“You seem rather calm.”
“Yes. In our culture, we’d call it soft. I grew up with riches. And while I’ve expanded on them, I’ve never had to tussle with the masses of Arietan males.”
“Lucky man, then.”
“Somewhat. I always wanted to make something of myself, to make my father proud…”
“What happened, then?”
“I met her. The moment I saw her, she changed me. It’s like meeting her, I realized how wrong it is for us to subjugate other creatures. Even if they’re
alien.”
“Change is hard. I never thought I’d be here, living in outer space.”
“How did you get here?”
The two rounded a corner together where three more clones lay slumped over, presumably dead. The hallway was long, and dark, with a doorway at the end.
“It’s a long story,” Pandora said, “But my husband saved my life. He comes from a culture of proud warriors, yet for me, he changed. He gave up everything.”
“I thought he was a senator.”
“That was just a happy coincidence,” Pandora replied.
At the door, Ramses touched his hand to the panel.
ACCESS DENIED.
“Bloody hell,” Ramses muttered.
“Who’s out there?!” Came from behind the door.
“It’s me! It’s Rory! Ramses is that you? There was this surge… He was dying. He led me back here! Open the door!”
Her fists pounded on the door.
“Don’t worry, we’re coming in! I’m going to figure it out…”
“Stand back,” Pandora growled, “I’ve got this.”
“Rory, step away from the door!” Ramses warned.
Pandora’s sharp, flat, New England accent gave her the commanding authority of a WWII general. Ramses stood back and she fired a blast from her weapon.
A hole formed in the door, large enough for someone as small as Rory to fit through. Rory pressed her face up in the hole.
“Bloody hell! Is that an American!”
“Cheers,” Pandora smirked.
“Hold on. I think I can fit through this thing.”
“I’ll help.”
Ramses rushed to the hole in the door and helped Rory through. As he touched her, that surge of warmth she caused in him surged through his chest. He didn’t know if this was how he was supposed to feel. No other female before her made him feel so… warm. Ramses avoided eye contact with her as he pulled her out.
But once she stood before him, he couldn’t help himself. His tough exterior melted and he grabbed her waist, planting a kiss on her lips. He dipped her low and Rory squealed, wrapping her arms around her alien protector’s neck and then running her hands through his long black hair. As
his fangs grazed her lips and drew blood, Rory pressed her tongue into his mouth and locked lips with him in a long, satisfying kiss.
Pandora couldn’t help but smile. The two of them reminded Pandora of herself and her husband.
“Okay, you two. We’ve got to find Xantha and Corrin.”
“Xantha’s here? Her ship wasn’t destroyed?’
“I take it you’ve met Corrin then,” Ramses asked.
“Yes. I have. He’s keeping her in a secret prison. Some sort of holding cell far away from mine.”
The three of them began their journey searching the halls of the ship, and calling Xantha’s name. Ramses hated walking past the clones with Rory in tow. They stared at her as if she were an aberration, not the other way around. Ramses gripped her arm tightly.
“Easy, Ram. What’s wrong?”
“Ram?”
“It’s called a nickname.”
“Oh. My nickname is He Who Stalks In the Night With Rage.”
“Not much of a nickname, innit?”
Pandora chuckled, “It is kind of long.”
“Ram is fine then.”
“Good. Now tell me what’s wrong?” Rory asked.
Ramses forgot how much she could pester him with that naive human look of hers, the same one that drew him to her in the first place. How could he explain what was wrong, precisely? Everything was wrong. These clones. The fact he’d allowed her to be hurt.
“The clones,” he growled.
That was as much as she’d get now. They still had
business to attend too.
“That’s easy, we’ll take them with us!”
“It might not be that easy,” Pandora countered, “A few of them auto destructed.”
“They’re dead?”
“Yes,” Ramses replied.
He could hear the pain in Rory’s voice and he hated that more than anything. It had been four months of skulking about, fighting to get passage to this part of space. Of course, she’d come to care for these creatures. Still, Ramses didn’t like the way they were subtly different, so palpably empty. Rory didn’t deserve to be stripped down to her parts like this and copied…
“We can’t leave them here with him. We’ve got to at least give them a choice. They’re people. They’re… me.”