by JA Huss
“How dare I?” I laugh. “You were caught on Lair Station milking boys for sperm!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! They don’t even make sperm until they’re eleven.”
“Oh, excuse me,” I say. Placing my hand over my heart in a feigned apologetic gesture. “Some eleven-year-old Akeelian boy. My bad.”
“You’re insane!”
“I’m insane?”
“We weren’t taking sperm from them. We were collecting hormones produced in the testicular glands that are only produced when the second cock—”
I gufaw so loud she startles. “Collecting hormones? You’re unbelievable, you know that? How do you live with yourself? You might be pretty on the outside, Veila. But I have never, in my entire life, seen a more disgusting person on the inside.”
“You don’t understand. We need that hormone and it’s only produced in boys under the age of twelve—”
“Oh.” I throw up my arms. “Well, since you need it, that makes it all better.”
“You have no idea how much I’ve struggled—”
“I don’t give one fucked sun about your struggle, lady. You’re an evil, maniacal bitch and if you think I can be persuaded over to your side with a couple of heartbeats, well…” I shake my head. “I’ll save you the trouble. It’s not going to work.” I point to her stomach. “I hope they die. I want them to die.”
“You’re sick.”
“I’m sick? I’m not the one breeding boys—”
“I’m not breeding boys!”
“Milking boys—”
“Collecting hormones!”
“Same fucking thing! Don’t you get that? Those aren’t your hormones to take, Veila! You’re stealing bodily fluids from kids!”
“Fine.” She throws up her hands. “Since you refuse to listen to me, then fine. That’s what I’m doing.”
“That is what you’re doing! I saw those kids we rescued from Lair Station. They are damaged because of you. And now you bring me in here, show me live feed of your embryonic twins and fill the room with the sound of heartbeats and what? You think I’ll take your side? Why the fuck would you think that? Like seriously. How have I given you this impression? What about me says, ‘He’s on board with kid-breeding, sperm-milking, and hormone-collecting?’ What? Tell me, please. I’d really like to know how you got this impression of me that I’m a sick fuck like yourself.”
She stares at me, eyes locked in a glare. “You know how I know you’re like me?”
“I’m dying to hear.”
“Because when they made us, they made us the same, Valor. They made you second best. Like me. Always taking a back seat to Luck, right? Oh!” She puts up a hand when I open my mouth to respond. “Oh, yes. I know all about your beginnings. I have your medical records, Valor. And your brother’s records too. I know where you come from. I know who your real parents are. I know what genetic markers have been embedded into your DNA to make you this man who stands before me right now. They made us for each other. You can try to deny that all you want. I know I certainly did. If I had my choice, well”—she huffs—“I wouldn’t choose you, that’s for sure. Tray might’ve been the traitor, but he wasn’t the weakest link. You are. You’re weak, Valor. You’re so weak you’re willing to share that pathetic Brigit mind with Tray. They’re not even people!” She laughs. “So no.” She shakes her head. “No. I would never choose you. Ever. And let me be clear. I’m not choosing you now, either. I’m just stuck with you.”
“You’re stuck with me?” I guffaw again. “Bitch, you picked my ass up. You could’ve left me floating out in space. I’m sure eventually Tray would’ve been back to get me. But no. You brought me here.”
“I brought you home!”
“This?” I say, whirling around in a circle with arms open. “This isn’t my home! You fucked my home up!”
“ALCOR did that when he left the Baby in charge, not me! Tray did that when he told Luck and Nyleena to start this stupid princess rebellion! Crux did that when he shut down the security beacons to save his precious Corla when all that really did is back me into a corner and make things worse! I didn’t do any of those things.”
I force myself to hear all that. Force myself to run it back in my mind. Then I pick out the one piece that matters. “You want Corla, don’t you. No. You need Corla. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it.”
“I’m here for the spin node that leads to Earth and I will get it, no matter what it takes!”
“Yeah,” I say, calm now. “Maybe. But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”
And then the pieces start falling into place.
I’m not the smartest Harem Station brother. I’ve never pretended to be that. But I’ve been all over this fucking galaxy on salvaging missions. I’ve met and talked to women of hundreds—hell, maybe even thousands—of races. I’ve seen shit. I’ve done shit. And I’m not dumb. You don’t have to be a doctor or a fucking astrobiologist to see how all these threads she’s been weaving suddenly become a web.
“Corla has what you need, doesn’t she?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Lies,” I whisper. “So many fucking lies inside you. Corla gave birth. Somehow, some way, she gave birth. And maybe Delphi and Tycho are these monsters you say they are—”
“Maybe?” She huffs.
“—but they lived. And that means Corla’s body has something inside it. Something you can… milk, maybe? Steal for yourself and make these babies come to term. You sick fuck.”
She sighs. Doesn’t deny it.
“That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t really need to go to Earth. That’s just your only option now because Crux shut down the security beacons and now you can’t contact them to spin your web of lies. And you can’t storm them, they’d blow you up if you tried. And if you can’t take what you need from Corla you have to go to Earth and… what? Expose yourself to the air there? So your body will make whatever it is you’re missing?”
She turns her back to me.
“Yeah. I got you, bitch. I got you now. I know what you need. But you know what I don’t understand?”
She’s breathing hard, which can’t be easy in that tight-ass bustier. Her shoulders are rising and falling as she stares at the wall.
“Why do you want more monster babies, Veila? If Tycho is as dangerous as you say he is, then why do you want more?”
“He’s damaged. So is Delphi. Corla was missing a crucial step in the process. She was the first, after all. She didn’t know any better. It took them years to figure out what went wrong.” Veila turns to face me. “But they did figure it out. They helped Delphi. A little. Gave her that dragonbee bot that could punish her if she stepped out of line. It worked for a while. But the bee bot took a liking to Delphi and…” She shakes her head.
“And what?” I snap.
“And then her… education was interrupted. She was past the most critical part of the process, so she’s… mostly civil. But she has an evil streak inside her, Valor. She has a monster inside her.”
“And Tycho?”
“The boys are different. They are fine until their year of rage. And then…”
I stop listening. Because I know what the year of rage is like. We all go through it. Every Akeelian male has a period of time when all they want to do is fight, and fuck, and kill things. Kill everything.
We all went through it. But we had ALCOR. And we had space here on the station so we could wander off and be alone. And Serpint and Draden even got to leave and spend the tail end of their year of rage in space.
I’ve heard that zero gravity helps stabilize the hormonal imbalance.
But Tycho… Delphi is nineteen? Twenty? Right around there. So Tycho just came out of it.
“—he’s dangerous,” Veila says. And I realize she’s been talking this whole time. “I told you that.”
“You said he could be triggered.”
“Oh, he can be. Easily triggered. And I don’t k
now if you’ve ever seen the damage a silver princess is capable of. Planets quake when we approach them. Because they know we can blow them into atoms. But let me tell you something right now. That’s nothing compared to what Tycho can do. We’re talking suns, Valor. We’re talking supernovae. We’re talking black holes left behind when it’s over.”
“And you want to make more of these… weapons?”
“I want a freaking baby,” she snarls. “Not a bomb. I am a bomb, you idiot. Why do I need baby bombs? Don’t you get it?”
“You want me to believe that all you want out of this is to be a mother?” I guffaw again. It’s that stupid. “You want power, Veila. That’s all. And having another Tycho is just one more way to get it.”
She sighs. “The boys don’t want to be bombs any more than we do, Valor. And with this crucial bit of information that Corla was lacking when she gave birth—we can fix them.”
“Fucking sun.” I chuckle. “You’re insane. You’re just insane.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why Corla came home?”
“What?”
“You know about that, right? You know she went back to Cygnus System. Her babies were about one standard year old. Why would she do that, Valor? What the ever-loving fuck reason could Princess Corla have to go back? She was free. She had her babies. She—”
“She had a plan.”
We both turn and find Crux standing in the doorway.
“She had a plan,” he says again. “Twenty years. It was going to take at least twenty years to set it up. That’s what she told me.”
“Shut the fuck up, Crux! What the hell, dude? Don’t tell her this.”
“She knows more than I do. Don’t you, Veila?” Crux stares at her.
Veila says nothing. Just crosses her arms and tilts her head up.
“You stole her,” Crux says. “That’s why the two of you were on Cetus Station when Serpint showed up. You were going somewhere and you were taking her with you. Where were you going?”
Veila stays silent.
“I heard what you said,” Crux says, and he’s talking to me. “I think you’re right. I think Corla has something inside her. Her body made something to help her carry the twins to term and Veila needs it for them.”
He points to the still shot of the babies on the screen.
“But I have the same question as Valor,” Crux continues. “Why? Why do you want these babies? And don’t tell me it’s because you want to be a mother. You’re no mother, Veila. You are incapable of that kind of love. That kind of selflessness. So…” He shrugs. “Tell me the truth and maybe I’ll help you. Lie to me and we’ll spend the next hundred and thirty odd years living out this Harem Station nightmare. Because the gates are locked down. No one comes in. No one goes out. Not until the security beacons come back online.”
“Not until you tell them to come back online, you mean,” Veila says.
Crux shakes his head. “I’ve got no pull with them. At this point it’s out of my hands. Only ALCOR can break through that firewall. And he’s dead.”
Veila huffs.
Crux turns to me. “So our only fucking way out of this mess is Luck. Do you understand me, Valor? If he doesn’t take us through that spin node we’re fucked. Because we have no way to keep this station going. Our resources are already stretched to the limit. The goddamned princess rebellion took out a lot of critical infrastructure and no one is working right now. Everyone is preparing to fight. Think about it. OK? They are criminals. The most violent people in this galaxy who had nowhere else to go. They want this war, Valor. This is their dream. This is practically why they’re here. Let’s just say we won’t have to worry about living a hundred and thirty more years. We’re all gonna die of thirst in less than ten spins. So I get it, Valor. You hate her.” He nods his head towards Veila. “We all hate her. But she’s right. We need Luck to open that node and get us the fuck out of here. Because in a few spins, when everyone figures out there’s no more water being made, the people around here? They’re gonna get really unpleasant. This whole station is filled with nothing but murderous criminals who were only kept in line because ALCOR scared the shit out of them. And that Baby?” Crux shakes his head. “He’s no ALCOR.”
“I can hear you,” the Baby says, his voice coming from above us somewhere.
“Good,” Crux says. “Now we’re all on the same page.”
“Are we?” I ask.
He locks eyes with me for a few seconds. And right in that moment I don’t really recognize him.
“What happened?” I ask.
He draws in air and looks at Veila.
I catch something between them, but I’m not sure what it is. Some kind of understanding. “What the hell is going on?”
Crux looks my way but doesn’t meet my gaze. “Ask her,” he says.
Then he spins around and walks away.
CHAPTER FOUR - VALOR
I walk over to the door and watch Crux disappear out of the medical center, then lean against the doorjamb.
“You have no idea what has happened since I got here.”
I’m so not in the mood for fucking Veila. “Obviously,” I say. “Because I was locked up in a cryopod for six weeks.”
“It was safer that way. Trust me.”
“Trust you?” I ask, whirling around. “Trust you? Are you fucking kidding me right now? Who in their right mind would trust you?”
She juts her chin at the door. “He does.”
“He doesn’t.” I laugh. “He wants Corla. That’s all he’s thinking about. And that’s got nothing to do with you.”
“How can you even say that? She and I are connected. He gets that.”
“You know what he gets? I’ll tell you. He gets that you took over our station, fucked it all up, fucked up all our lives, and now we’re here at rock bottom, under your thumb, and he’s got no choice but to hope that somewhere deep inside that filthy soul of yours, there’s one last microscopic particle of decency left over from some prior version of yourself. That’s all he gets, Veila.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Really?”
“You don’t know anything. You and Tray and Brigit and your fantasy life. That’s where you’ve been the last thousand years, Valor. Hiding. Shirking your duties—”
“Shirking my…?” How many times can one person bellow out an incredulous guffaw in one morning? “God, you are really something else.”
“What would you call hiding away in a virtual for four days?”
“Don’t pretend like you know me because you stole some… memory, or data from my mind, or however you got that information. Because you don’t.”
“Really?” she barks back.
“Look, maybe you’ve fooled him, but I’m not buying into this act of yours. I know you far better than you know me. You’re the woman responsible for all of this.”
“Maybe you should go talk to him, hmm? Ask him what happened. Ask him why he’s working with me. Because I promise you, it’s not because I’m making him.”
Then she pushes past me, her long skirts swishing against my legs as she exits the exam room, and leaves me standing there.
I watch her until she disappears. Then shake my head in disbelief.
I don’t go after Crux, but when I leave the medical center Serpint is hanging out in the empty harem room, leaning back into the soft throw cushions of the couches, hands in his lap, one ankle propped up on one knee.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
His jaw is clenched, but other than that there are no other obvious signs that he’s tense.
But I can tell. I’ve known Serpint his whole life. Maybe I didn’t know him well before we came here, but I remember a time when he was so young he could barely talk. That’s how long we’ve been around each other.
“What happened to you and Tray?” he asks. “You were supposed to find ALCOR.”
I walk over to the couch and sit, falling back into the cushions with a long sigh. “We di
dn’t really get that far.”
“Why not?”
It’s funny thinking of little baby Serpint when I look at him now. Because aside from those violet eyes there’s almost nothing about him I recognize these days. “We got sidetracked.”
“Sidetracked? We’re in the middle of the biggest crisis of our lives and you and Tray got sidetracked?”
“Look, I wasn’t in charge, OK? Tray took me to some station and then he was all about working on a ship. He didn’t tell me shit until I forced him.”
“What did he tell you?”
“We were there to save someone else. Some girl called Brigit.”
“Brigit?”
“She was…” I sigh and massage my forehead with two fingers. “She’s an AI. Tray met her inside the Pleasure Prison years and years ago. And he’s been trying to get her out—”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“If you’d shut up you’d know,” I spit back. “She was an AI trapped in the Pleasure Prison by Veila,” I say, my voice going hard with the mention of her name. “And Tray thought she was real and—”
“No.”
“Yeah. And she was in… Look. It’s a long story and I only want to tell it once. So the short version is this. Tray and I went inside this virtual to get this girl, stayed there for four days”—Serpint’s eyes go wide at this—“and then when we got out Veila attacked us, took us prisoner, and then she tortured me, did something to Tray and Brigit, and…” I throw up my hands. “I woke up here. Six weeks later.”
“Where’s Tray now? And this Brigit girl?”
“I don’t know. Dead, maybe? Though Veila says they got away.”
“And ALCOR?”
“We never got that far.”
“So we’re fucked?”
“Booty’s still out there,” I say. “And Asshole. Can’t you guys send a message?”
“There’s no way through the gates,” Serpint snaps.
“We don’t need the gate. We have the…” I look up at the ceiling. But fuck it. The Baby already knows. “We have the spin node.”
“And no coordinates,” Serpint says. “Tray had those.”
I lean forward and prop my hands on my knees. “We all have coordinates. Remember?”