by Kahaula
I stomped across the room and stood under the pergola. “Cool rain,” I commanded the refresher unit. From high above me I could hear the first droplets slide along the leaves and flowers. The soft downpour dappled against my skin. There was no need for soap, though I sometimes indulged in such things for the psychological affect. All the plants in the bath were engineered to give off cleansing chemicals or healthy bacteria. So long as the water touched them first it’d clean every inch of my skin.
I sighed in relaxation. Water was an insane luxury on a desert planet like this. One of the first things I had done when I took over was create a proper water treatment and recycling system. It had blown the minds of the former Sylean slave guards that I would 1. care at all about them or their comfort and 2. invest my own winnings into a system that helped us collectively enjoy a ‘luxury’.
When I had told them that this was just the bare minimum of what I would assure we all had they just stared at me in shock. As we grew they came to accept each new ‘luxury’—like clean air, healthcare, uniforms—with mild hesitation and concerned acceptance. When I had said we would be using water to create green spaces and have trees and plants, they damn near revolted.
I laughed at the memory. Scrubbing my hands along my skin I could already feel the remnants of the memory filled nightmare washing away. I had always been one to accept reality and move on, but even my soul needed to vent into my subconscious from time to time. “Enough,” the rain trickled to a stop.
Stepping down into the bathing pool I let the warm water sooth the aches in my body. I swam to the far end and rested my arms on the edge. The red sands of Ula Nui went on in soft dunes for miles and miles into the distance. I had given this planet a Hawaiian name. ‘Ula’ for red and ‘Nui’ for great. Mel couldn’t stop laughing when I had first translated it.
“Like the gum? You named our planet, Big Red?” She cackled and grabbed her stomach. “Holy shit, Welo! That’s just...” Mel plopped down on the stone floor of the under construction compound we were building.
“Fuck you Mel,” I half laughed and yelled in admonishment, “This planet is big as fuck and it’s covered in blood red sand. My people are practical with geographical locations, you judgy bitch!” She only laughed harder. I plopped down beside her and grinned stupidly. No one was around so I didn’t have to be anything other than myself right now. I tilted my head back letting the red tinted sunlight wash over me.
“Hey,” she said softly, “I also know your people have a big thing for... what did you call it? Cow... Cow-nah?”
“Kaona,” I smiled at her attempt to properly sound out the word.
“So tell me, my sister,” she reached out and lightly touched my arm, her smile open and soft. “What is the Kaona, the hidden meaning of the name you chose?” I blinked and looked away, she always knew how to reach and encourage me.
“The Kaona is...,” I took a deep breath and looked out onto the sands, “well, it’s a lot.” I crossed my legs and ran my thumb back and forth across my ankle. Mel waited patiently for me to come back out of my thoughts. “I barely recognise my own body, Mel. That bastard, Gods curse him, he made me stronger, faster, smarter, and just better is so many ways.” I shook my head to throw off the rage that always came with thinking of the old leader. “I’m still me, my Ha, my soul is still mine. But my body? It’s like a whole new life. A whole new existence.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“I’ve always been a polytheist. Even before it was what all the cool kids were doing,” we laughed at my small joke to break the heavy tension, “We have a particular Goddess—Haumea. She went through something similar. You see, She was firmament itself, so She would get Herself reborn again and again into new bodies but maintain Her memories and sense of self.”
“She was smart.”
“Sort of,” I agreed, “The other Gods eventually caught on to what She was doing and made Her stop living Her reincarnations with Her divine self intact.”
“That kind of seems like a dick move,” Mel huffed.
“I thought so too at the time,” I nodded, “But now I think I get it.”
“What do you mean?”
“The other Gods, They were Her family,” I licked my lips, “They wanted Her to have a real go at the whole mortal thing. But how do you show a cosmic creator, the great Red Ruler Herself that She should try new things wholeheartedly?”
“I get it,” Mel looked over the sands with a bottomless look in her eyes, “Making a new life is frightening when you’re not in control of how it’s being made.”
“I don’t think She was frightened, I think She just couldn’t see it for the opportunity that it was,” I drew petroglyphs of Haumea on my calves with my fingertips, “What we’re building here could all be wiped away in a heartbeat. But worse than that, I think, would be refusing the gift of a new life—even if it’s one I barely recognise.”
“I get it,” Mel smiled approvingly at me, “Great Red, Ula Nui, to honor the Red Ruler.” Mel’s eyes seemed to flicker with some hidden knowledge of its own but I pushed that aside and nodded as we continued to look across the blood red sands to the city being built before our eyes.
Strands of deep black and red floated around me in the bathing pool. I preferred the view of the rolling sands before me to the holoscreens downstairs in my office. Mel had taken all the contracts I had yet to look over so her girls could go through them personally. We were going to need more neuro-enhanced. As far as we could tell the procedure was permanent. Finding volunteers without letting too many know what kind of truly mind boggling tech we had at our disposal was a challenge.
I had a niggling suspicion who we could add to the roster but I wanted to wait until the last possible moment before presenting her with the option. I didn’t want her making a rash decision. “Mel,” I called out. The hidden tech in every inch of the Blood Palace picked up my voice and connected me to her.
“What’s up, Welo?” Her voice seemed tighter than usual.
“Report.” She knew it wasn’t a social call if it was this early in the day. Her tired sigh showed I was right in my assessment of her voice.
“More contracts are pouring in,” she paused and I heard soft tapping. The archway before me blinked a mirror of what she was seeing. I took in a sharp breath. “117 new breeding contracts, 17 of which are aimed directly at you.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t like it,” she rumbled. Another few taps and the screen changed, “Our contracts department is overwhelmed.”
“117 in one go is a lot but that’s no more than they can handle,” I said in confusion.
“No, Welo,” another tap and the screen changed. I felt the blood drain from my face. There were thousands of new contracts, and more pouring in every second. “My girls caught 117 contracts, all either tagged from central world proxies or with suspicious phrasing like General L’Ryx’s contract.”
“How many of your girls have you had to requisition for this influx?”
“So far only 1,” Mel’s voice wavered. “Welo... I need another new girl.”
“I know.”
“And we’re going to need to use the facilities to meet the demand,” she added softly.
“Fuck,” I cursed. Only a handful of our most trusted people knew about the medical facilities we had hidden deep below in the shifting sands. “Ramp up demand and tell them we have a limited supply of available breeders due to the demand. Give priority to all contracts prior to this, starting with the lowest of the outlier worlds.”
“And what should I tell our high rolling whales from the central worlds,” she chuckled darkly.
“Tell them we honour our word equally, nothing more and nothing less,” my fangs grazed my lips, “And make sure everyone in the contracts department know that from now on this is the official response to every inquiry. I don’t care if they’re off duty and piss drunk on sex and drugs, nothing comes out of their mouths exce
pt this.”
“Punishment?”
“Tell them that this is how we best defend ourselves against the circling sharks, and if they break ranks,” I growled, “They endanger us all.”
“No pressure,” Mel laughed, “Please stop sugar coating your words so sweetly,” she finished sarcastically.
“We’re standing on a cliff’s edge,” I felt my body harden and my spine stiffen, “None of us can afford to be complacent.”
“I’ll make sure they know you’re pushing them to close ranks and not threatening them,” Mel was good at leading people to where they needed to be, even if they couldn’t see it for themselves.
“And I’ll get you a new girl.”
“Welo...,” she trailed off and I could imagine her running her hands through her hair, like she always did when she was worried.
“I’m going to talk with her and see what she wants to do.”
“You can’t mean—Welo, she’s not ready to make that kind of choice!”
“She’s as ready as she’ll ever be and we both know with your girls is where she should be,” I hissed angrily. I wasn’t angry at Mel, and she wasn’t angry with me. We hated the situation we were in but knew we had to accept this wasn’t a perfect world. Hard choices needed to be made and offered.
“Then do it,” hard finality rang out before the silence. Mel had cut the communication line.
Welo
The conversation with Mel left a heavy weight in my gut and my mind in a sour mood. It was only exacerbated by the memory that I had woken completely alone and soaked in nightmare sweats. I pushed away from my desk. What I was going to have to do later was playing at the edges of my mind.
I tugged the strands of my loose hair back from my face and stared out my window. I had a perfect view of the two temples set halfway between the Blood Palace and the growing city. The yellow star had already begun to peak over the horizon bathing the world in a combined orange light.
I pushed away from the window and nodded my head to myself. I knew what I had to do. Turning on my heel I walked straight to a stretch of seemingly flat stone wall. I placed both palms there and pressed my forehead and nose to the cold stone. Sweet smelling air from my office was drawn up into my nose before I exhaled it out through my nose. A small patch of condensation from my exhale appeared and froze.
Releasing the wall I stepped back as the stone dropped and a blue grey pod opened up. It was large enough to fit a group of people but it always resized to tighten around me when I was alone. As soon as the metal walls wrapped around me entirely, I closed my eyes. I felt us drop like a stone down into the darkness. My feet lifted off the floor as the pod I was in fell and fell deeper to the planet’s core.
I gulped and opened my eyes right before we came to a stop. There were no other ways down. The true secret of the Blood Palace was that it had been built upon the sand lifts to hide its existence. The doors melted away before me and I stepped out into the corridor. Down here everything was blue grey, like the swift waters of a stormy sea.
The old leader had found a subterranean antechamber under where the new arena’s med-suites were built. Specifically, my med-suite. The access to that antechamber of horrors was from another lift similar to the one I had just exited. He tinkered with the hoarded advanced technology in that room and made me into the being I was today.
Looking around me now at the endless empty high ceilinged halls I shuddered with how insane he truly had been. The hubris of the old leader fed into his megalomania. To him, he was a great creator of Life. Finding what was essentially a triage room turned him from a slave master into a mad scientist. It was only his growing paranoia that kept the room and its possibilities quiet. Whatever he did to my body he could explain away as expensive ‘enhancements’ done on the black market to increase my value. I never dispelled that myth after we had taken our freedom.
In some cases I had even created false trails so that if anyone was looking, money transactions would have been seen changing hands for some of my more publicly known abilities.
“It’s good to see you, Welo,” a chorus of happy feminine voices echoed through the lifeless halls.
“Ladies,” I smiled. They giggled. In another life I might have been creeped right the fuck out, but in the one I lived now? Now it just made me warm inside hearing the girls happy.
“You haven’t visited us in forever,” they chided.
“I know. I’m sorry,” I apologised, “Mel already updated you?”
“Yes, we were listening,” I could almost hear their eyes rolling petulantly.
“You know it’s rude to just listen without permission,” I scolded lightly.
“We missed you,” a group of transparent women popped into existence in front of me and shrugged collectively. I knew they might do that so I just shook my head.
“I missed you girls too,” I winked. That got them tittering and giggling again as they looked at each other. “Have you been practicing your autonomy and cohesion?”
“Yes,” one tall and wholly human woman stepped forward from the group. Her soft smile reached her brown eyes that matched her long flowing dark brown hair. “Welo, we’re ok.” I released the tension I didn’t know I had been holding, letting my shoulders sag. I reached out to a nearby wall and caressed the smooth cool metal.
The girls, adult women in truth, sighed in contentment. They were a mix of so many different species. Fifteen in total. They were connected to everything around us, their bodies submerged in protected sarcophagi far deeper than we already were. They once told me the facilities itself had a sleepy kind of sentience prior to their joining after their neuro-enhancement. When I caressed the walls they could feel not just the physical sensation but the emotions behind them.
I frowned after I removed my fingertips. They would never leave here. We had tried it once and Mel had been forever changed by the experience. She had told me that it was like being a drop in the ocean and the ocean itself. Nothing compared. Everything all around me may have looked like beautifully polished lifeless metal but that would be wrong. The facility and its make up were living and organic.
“You’re doing the right thing,” I felt a soft touch on my shoulder and knew it was Ally’s particle projection. They could all make themselves look and feel completely solid but they enjoyed being see through. They said it reminded them of the light and buoyant freedom the facility had given them. “She’ll choose to join us.”
“I know,” I gave Ally a sad look over my shoulder. I could have had this entire conversation from anywhere else but I needed to look them physically in the eye. The others grouped close around me and a mixture of smiles and encouraging nods spread before my eyes. “And everything else?”
“We’ve prepared and filled all the contracts so far,” Ally smiled mischievously.
“What,” I whispered in shock, “How? We’ve had thousands pour in and more on the way!”
“We’ve discovered more since you were here last,” she answered excitedly. A chorus of ‘yes’s and ‘mmhmm’s echoed behind her.
“Tell me everything.”
L’Ryx
I threw down my credit chips to place another bet. This human game of poker suited me. It was a test in how well you could read your opponents and their strategies. I watched as my competitors around the high rollers table each reacted or pointedly didn’t react to my latest bet.
The table we were at was green and soft but the rectangular cards in my hand were a hard but pliant paper. The juxtaposition of such old playing pieces appealed to our sense of luxury since they were obviously made from some form of tree bark derived paper. It was a subtle statement of opulence and wealth on a desert planet. Everything here has a deeper meaning, or even a double or quadruple use. The more I wandered around on my own, killing time until the Battle Queen fetched for me, I saw how brilliant she really was.
The sting of being told to wait until she felt like meeting me lessened with each day that I waited. This lessen
ing of my bruised ego was in direct balance to my increasing fascination with her. She commanded absolute loyalty, even from the Syleans. Syleans! Syleans were cut throats and scumbags that even other pirates avoided at all costs. And yet here they held their tongue when I tried to bribe them for information and sneered at me for my attempts. One had even spit on my boots before he turned his back on me.
Anywhere else, any mission else and I would have beaten him bloody for the insult. No. Here I had stood in shock, watching the guard stalk away. From that day on I was constantly followed. Angry looks were openly thrown my way anytime I caught them looking at me.
I tapped my cards down on the table, lost in thought. High Command had sent me here on the pretense of a breeding contract and I was sticking to my cover story. If the Battle Queen knew why I was really here, no doubt she would have made me and my ship disappear into the ether. I would have spaced myself if I hadn’t seen her beauty firsthand. The sheer insanity of this mission and its goal was beyond anything I had faced in the centuries I had been elevated to one of only four highest ranking Generals.
She’s so young! I chided myself for the thought. Every species maturation rate and estimated lifespan was different. She was in no way a child. Not by the standards of her species and not even by the galactic norms. Welo was a Goddess. They called her Battle Queen Breeder when she first drew blood in the old arena. A mockery of a title.
She proved that she was indeed a Battle Queen, but she had never been used as a breeder by the former Sylean leader. I had heard that human gestation was long so before meeting her I thought that was the reason the old slaver had kept her to the gladiatorial matches. He wanted to maximise her profitability as a fighter.
My eyes cut left and right in a slow perusal of the room and my fellow poker players. There were eyes all around me, and not just the Sylean guards. The dealer watched me, out of the corner of his eyes. The waiters and sex workers passed in consistent patterns around me. Even the janitorial and maintenance staff in the hallways or along the streets seemed to always have one eye or ear near me.