Chapter Two
L ayla paced. Boredom had finally latched onto her after ten days aboard the craft. At least she hoped it had only been ten days. Time seemed slippery in isolation. She was the only human on board, and she wasn’t a passenger. She was cargo . She’d been sold by her no-good-not-even-boyfriend. A one-night stand gone horribly wrong on Sapien-Three, and now she was being sold as permanent help—or worse—to someone in the Felix Orbus Galaxy.
She’d heard rumors that the Leonids ate humans like humans ate the unevolved cows and pigs. She also heard that Leonids were a proud race who despised humans. They didn’t want them around, so maybe they’d be just as happy to let her work off a passage back to Sapien-Three, where she would track down Paul Bermauger and ship him to the other end of the solar system.
“Miss Human?”
Miss Human. At least her captor was polite. And to give him credit, it wasn’t his fault that she was cargo. You could buy hired help legally anywhere in the galaxy, although the beings being bought were supposed to do the negotiating and bartering themselves, like a modern form of indentured servitude.
“Yes, Mr. Lion?”
“Mr. Leonid, please. Miss Human, you are being taken to a human clearinghouse on Lynx-Nineteen. Was that your intention?”
“No. I was hoping for something on Sapien-Three.” She was hoping for anything, anywhere, honestly. A human without an elevated degree or a family had pretty crummy prospects. “Actually, I was hoping not to be on this ship at all, at least not in the cargo bay!”
The old lion-dude crept forward. She could see him now. She usually only heard his voice on the intercom making sure the service droids had delivered adequate food and water. Her “cell” was the size of four bunks pressed together and twice as wide. It had a bed and a minuscule shower/waste removal unit, a sink, and a media viewer. Of course, all the shows were from the Felix Orbus Production company, but still... She was getting into shows like Pride to Pride and Cubs Say the Strangest Things .
She’d seen pictures of Leonids back on Sapien-Three, her home planet. They were huge, usually about seven-feet tall with lashing tails and manes the size of a walk-in closet. This guy reminded her of her hopeless fourth-grade math teacher, who had finally given up on teaching and let them play games on their comms all year. He had the same air of wizened exhaustion to him, even if he did tower over her through the partition.
“Could you clarify, Miss Human?”
“Layla. Miss Layla, Mr. Leonid. I said I’m not supposed to be in your cargo bay.”
“Why not? That is the usual way humans travel aboard off-world ships on long journeys when they haven’t paid a passenger fare. If you only pay cargo rates, this is what you get. You have adequate space to sleep and eat.”
“Yeah, but I’m not supposed to be cargo! I wasn’t even planning to go off-world!”
The shaggy gray brows shot up and got lost in wispy gray fur. “You didn’t negotiate your own contract?”
“No. I’m trafficked. I told you that.”
“You did not! You most certainly did not! Leonids do not hold with slavers. What your owners do with you once you’re paid... that’s their business. But a subject must negotiate their own purchase. Sweet Bastet.” He flapped one paw to his cheek and knocked his own glasses off.
Layla tried to remember the first few days on board the ship. She had been drugged out of her mind and sleeping a lot. That wasn’t their fault, that was Paul-the-Wonder-Slug’s fault. Maybe I dreamed I had a conversation. Or maybe I did have it, but I slurred so badly that I made no sense.
“Miss Human, our craft is not going to Sapien-Three, or even out of the Felix Orbus Galaxy. I can arrange for someone to refund your purchase price to Lynx-Nineteen.”
“Good luck.”
“Yes, well... That’s only one small problem. Here is another. You are cargo on our vessel. You are listed on our manifest. Your passage was paid as part of the contract price. With the contract refunded, you owe us passage fees.”
“Good luck getting that, too. I’m broke. I would negotiate a contract with your captain if he needs someone to cook or clean. I’m good at those things.” Layla leaned against the glass partition between her accommodations and the rest of the ship, hoping Leonids couldn’t smell liars. She could clean just fine. Cooking was a work in progress, but you had to have food and a heat source at the same time to practice.
“I have another proposition for you. It’s much easier work. All you have to do is hold still.”
RU SAT IN HIS QUARTERS . As captain and owner of the ship, his quarters were the biggest and best—but they weren’t much in the way of luxury. Once, he would have gone in for all that finery, but new jade carvings or silk sleep hangings didn’t mean much anymore. One concession to luxury was the bejeweled frame that held Silvia’s picture. It mocked him as he looked at it from his empty bed, and he put it hastily away. He didn’t like to look at those laughing eyes, didn’t want to imagine her bold voice or her flirtatious purr.
He’d missed his shot there. A captain wasn’t supposed to fraternize with his requisitions officer, even if he was King of the pride. He’d planned to ask her about a courtship once her year aboard was officially up for renegotiation.
Well... speaking of shots to take... he could use a shot of Leonid homebrew right now. Or even one of those weak little human cocktails.
Marcus was going to ask the only remaining human in the hold, a female, if she’d like to transfer her contract to the crew of the Comet Stalker .
The crew was currently Marcus and himself. Marcus had already made it clear that he would be having no part in this experiment. He was much older, and he assumed his sperm viability wasn’t the best. That meant this insemination business was up to him.
“But I’m not ready to be a father!”
That wasn’t exactly true. With cubs being in short supply and almost every planet seeming like a motherless wasteland and Queens being all graying or young kits...the idea of family danced through Ru’s dreams on a regular basis.
It’s just like paying for a surrogate, Ru tried to reassure himself. Some wealthy Leonids had done that, paying for a female who would enter her first heat in a few years, booking her womb for a litter in the future.
Gods, what desperate times.
Marcus knocked on the sliding hatch to his room, then entered the access code without waiting for a reply.
“I told the girl she would perform a personal service for you. I didn’t specify what. I figured you’d prefer to tailor your explanation to your tastes. By the look on her face, I think she suspects it’s at least a bit sexual in nature.” Marcus gave Ru a guilty nudge.
“But it isn’t. This is medical. Why didn’t you tell her the precise nature of your ‘experiment’? You’ll be the one who collects my contribution— well, not personally,” Ru preferred not to use the anatomical terms at the moment considering his shock, “and sees that it manages to find its way into the correct receptacle. Right?”
“Inject? Oh, goodness. No. You see, humans don’t give off visible signs of heat. Their body temperatures may not even elevate! It happens once a month, in a two-day window, but it can come early or late. Many things can influence it, too. Diet, stress, exercise, weight—”
“Marcus, spare me the lecture. What are you saying?”
“I’m not a doctor of reproductive science. I’m a medical officer with a new hobby, thanks to this terrible disease we’ve lived through. I’ll do my part and research the most expedient method of conception between a human female and a Leonid male. That’s how I can help. If you want to help the Leonid population, you’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. Mate the girl every day for a month, or thereabouts.”
“We’ll be docking in two weeks! We’re picking up a new crew at Leonid-One!”
“It’s a simple enough matter to get word to the crew you’ve hired that they’ll still be paid and they’ll have two weeks initial leave. I can assign them tasks. We have an entire bay that’s unfilled. Set them to acquiring cargo. Besides... if the outbreak aboard that Sirius vessel is a mutation of Queen Fever, all ports except designated survival ports will be closed for a month or two.”
Ru hung his head in frustration, a growling groan echoing in the large, domed captain’s quarters. “That a Leonid should lower himself...”
“Maybe humans aren’t the intellectual planetoids you think they are. I spoke to the cargo today and found her competent.”
“The cargo . The fact that they ship themselves as cargo and not passengers—”
“Because they’re poor, Rupex. Their planets are longer established and more decimated by war and want, yet most stubbornly refuse to even leave Sapien-One, the original Earth.” Marcus’ nose twitched, and his tail did a nervous pit-pat on his ankle.
Marcus had been with Rupex for the last seven years. The grizzled old lion had been the only one to stay with him through the Grounding when all starcraft were only allowed to dock on their original home worlds or their designated survival ports. This wasn’t necessarily by choice—medical officers were in critically short supply and every ship was now required by law to have one or have their ship’s registry rejected. Ru didn’t always enjoy Marcus’ company, and the ship was large enough to allow them to avoid one another on most occasions. Still, Ru knew him well enough to recognize the signs of impending bad news.
“What is it?”
“What’s what?” Marcus avoided his eyes.
“Your tail is fluttering . Don’t tell me. The mutation has been confirmed to be Queen Fever?”
“Oh. No. I haven’t heard one way or the other. It’ll probably be a day before they send a new bulletin. No, it’s about the cargo. The girl.”
“Girl? A cub!”
“No, no. A woman. A young lady named Layla. She wasn’t intending to go to Lynx-Nineteen.”
“I hope not. They’d eat her. That’s an almost entirely primal backwater.”
“She was sold. As in, someone sold her. She didn’t negotiate her contract.”
Ru’s mane bristled out and his claws unsheathed in rage. “What? What !?”
“Calm down.”
“I will not! You volunteered to take over the cargo assignments while I was down with the post-vaccination reaction! I leave you in charge for two days and you take on a trafficked human? Manes and tails, Marcus! We’re going to be permanently grounded for this!”
“I picked the cargo up from a vessel that wasn’t going to the outer reaches of the Felix Orbus. I didn’t know she wasn’t moving of her own volition, Rupex. She was asleep, which is standard for most humans on a galaxy jump. Nothing twigged my suspicions, and I hope you won’t pretend she would have aroused yours, either. You’ve been on autopilot since—”
“Quiet. That’s an order.”
Silence filled the deck. They both knew what Marcus would have said. Rupex had been on autopilot, functioning automatically since he lost his sisters and the Queens of the Comet Stalker . He took on skeleton crews and long haul freights that would keep him on his ship for as long as possible. Planets within the Felix Orbus Galaxy seemed permanently touched by death and sadness, with a dearth of cubs and Queens, and many citizens (especially on the smaller and more distant planets) were claiming they should either remain in isolation or revert to feral states to cope with the new reality.
“The stars feel familiar.” Rupex double-checked the navigation settings and the alerts before stalking away.
“Ru... We’re not going to rebuild without change. Do you want to stay stuck in the past, where we were helpless? Or do something to fix it?”
Rupex had to get away from Marcus before he clawed him. He could feel the dagger-like tips of his claws passing through the soft sheath of his paws. There was no fixing this.
But maybe the older Leonid has a point.
Somehow, someway, he would have to move forward. The Comet Stalker could jump galaxies, but it couldn’t travel back in time.
Do you love monsters as well as aliens? Take a peek at The Orc’s Second Shot at Love