Chapter 11
Iopen my eyes to a new day, and for the first time in as long as I can remember—and I definitely can remember now—I’m happy. I’m with my mates, and we’ve escaped the evil that was manipulating me all these years. Life is good, and if I’m not mistaken, I smell…
“Pancakes, pet,” Boss announces. “Come and get them now.”
That’s an order I will not be refusing. I get out of bed, grab the little robe they put next to it, wrap it around me, and pad out to the galley. Which I remember. Because I’ve lived here before. Because this is home.
“I can’t believe you made these for me,” I say.
“You need to eat,” Boss rumbles.
“No, I mean you barely fit in the galley. You’re practically wearing the kitchen,” I point out.
It’s hardly an exaggeration. His bulky, thick, muscular frame really does take up pretty much all of the available space. His chest is over the pan and halfway blocking the extraction fan. He has to back up to turn around, maneuvering in little inches.
Boss smirks and flips a pancake onto my plate. “You’re in a better mood this morning,” he notes.
“It’s my second day of finding out I’m the worst, so I’m getting used to it.”
“You’re not the worst. You couldn’t even begin to compete with the bad, let alone the worst. You’re such a baby.”
“A baby? Me?”
“Yes,” he grins. “Just a little baby.”
“I almost got you all captured!”
He snorts. “Those soldiers never had a chance. If you hadn’t arrived with the parachute, they would have been wiped out anyway.”
“They would have sent more people, though.”
“And we would have dealt with them too. You are only humans. You are small creatures, your technology is limited, and your modes of warfare are overly simplistic.”
“Wow. Roasted,” I grin, starting to eat. “They really thought they had you.”
“They always do,” he says.
“I thought all these years you weren’t actually trying to save humans? You stopped me more than once, and you told me to stop interfering.”
“We were trying to save some humans, from time to time. You were prepared to die for the cause at a moment’s notice. It’s a very different vibe.”
“It is a different vibe,” I agree. “So now what? Where are we going? What are we doing?”
“We are taking you to see the best human pet vet,” Sharp says
“Argh! Don’t tell her that!” Kronos calls out. “She’ll be insufferable!”
“I’m always insufferable,” I shout back. My head thumps as I yell, and I figure I’m going to have to speak at a reasonable volume for a while.
After a moment, I start to complain about the plan.
“I really don’t want to do any more medical things. I held it together to get the chip wrangled out of my head, but this is too much. I just need a nap and some ice cream. You haven’t even tried giving me ice cream yet.”
“The vet is nice,” Kronos says.
“I don’t trust your perception of nice, because you’re kind of a fucking monster.”
“We don’t want to have to sedate you,” Sharp says.
“Sedate me and see what happens when I sober up,” I say. “I will set this whole ship on fire.”
He gives me a raised brow look. “I know you have your memories intact now,” he says. “So I am entirely uncertain why you are risking the consequences of this behavior.”
Just his tone makes me blush furiously.
Some of my memories were all the way back in an instant. Others are trickling in slowly. I have a faint recollection of the vet, but it’s too faint to know if I should be scared, or if I should be terrified. I have enough memory of Sharp to know I should be careful, though.
“I don’t want to be sedated.”
“I understand that, but you will be if you become unmanageable. We can handle you, but the vet can’t be asked to deal with your acting out. You need to behave yourself. No screaming. No cursing. No biting. No hitting. No kicking…”
I smile to myself.
“No elbows, knees, or weapons,” he adds. My smile fades.
We land at a station that looks pretty well appointed. Legit, in other words. I am taken off the ship by all three mates and allowed to explore a little. I know they don’t entirely trust me yet, and I can’t entirely blame them.
There are other humans here, but they seem happy and for the most part, uncontrolled by aliens. A couple of them are on leashes, but they look like they’re enjoying it.
“We could get one of those for our pet,” Kronos muses.
“If you tie me up, I will freak out,” I say when Kronos so much as suggests it.
“If you move more than five feet away from me, I will absolutely leash you,” he says. “This is a busy station, and it is a lawful one. You are expected to be under effective control.”
“My skull is still stuck together with craft glue,” I say. “What do you think I am going to do?”
He extends his hand to me, and I take it, though it’s easier to hold a few of his fingers than his entire hand. I have to trust him, even as I sort through a jumble of memories that effectively took place in completely different timelines.
We walk through the station, which is as big as a small city. There are businesses and shops and aliens and… it’s almost pedestrian, and not just because we’re walking. It feels wholesome here. I can see low-slung houses all the way down the very far ends.
“Are there suburbs here?”
“Hmm? Yes, I suppose so,” Sharp says. “This is a well-established station. Very law abiding.” He says the last part of the phrase in a sort of pointed way, as if I might not be law abiding, or well-established, for that matter.
The station orbits a sun that emits a kind of liquid warm glow. It feels like I’ve been transported back in time, somehow. It gives me nostalgia for things that never were. It’s like part of my mind that has memories from my species and not just my own memories has been activated.
My mates lead me through the streets, until we come to a place that has pictures of happy smiling humans romping through fields on the windows. This has to be the vet clinic.
I am not the only human here.
There are two others. One is a tall, lanky man with a balding pate. He is wearing a chunky red sweater and blue shorts for reasons I’ll probably never be privy to. He also has a pair of cowboy boots on.
The other is also a man, heavyset, bearded. He has a trucker cap, a top coat with tails, and he’s wearing jeans with sneakers. Both men are barely being held back at the end of harnesses held by gray aliens with six eyes on stalks and a sort of round body with two flappy feet at the bottom.
“Nice hat, asshole,” the bald man says.
“Bro! Come at me, bro! I’ll fucking kill you, bro!” trucker hat shouts back.
“I’m not your bro, bro,” the other guy responds.
“Steve! That’s enough!” One of the aliens snaps the leash, but it doesn’t do much.
“I’m sorry,” the other one says. “He’s a rescue. He was used for breeding. We’re going to get him fixed to try to curb some of this aggression.”
“I’m sorry too,” the first alien says. “My boy just gets so excited when he sees other males. The vet says he’ll calm down if we keep socializing him. He suggested sports, but he’s already put more than one human in the vet hospital.”
“Oh, I know,” the other alien says. “You don’t have to tell me. My human is absolutely feral. I think he could easily kill a man if I let him.”
Meanwhile, the two men are having the equivalent of a slap fight at the ends of their respective leashes.
“What is with the clothing?” I mutter the question.
“Some aliens mix and match from old Earth styles,” Sharp explains.
“If you ever try to dress me up like that…”
“We never would, pet,” Kronos says. “The kind of aliens who keep male humans are… well… not the sort of entities who make good choices, generally speaking.”
“I’m gonna fucking rip your nuts off!”
The fight continues at high volume, but remarkably little damage is done.
“This is why keeping male humans is miserable,” Kronos says to Sharp.
“I never wanted a human male,” Sharp says.
“Why would a man be here?” I ask the question.
“Some males are necessary so their seed can be harvested to impregnate human females. It’s very rare that any owner keeps a male and female human together,” Kronos explains.
“Males tend to take out their aggression on the smaller and more agreeable females. There are illegal fighting rings in some places that channel male aggression for profit, but they are cruel.”
“I’m not an agreeable female,” I say.
“You are very agreeable,” Boss disagrees, ruffling my hair a little. “You know all too well.”
“I’m not. I’m a terrible creature,” I say.
“Girl!”
The males have caught sight of me. They forget about their little slap fight and turn to me with wide eyes.
“Hey, sexy!” balding guy yells in my direction.
“Wanna ride?” trucker cap shrieks, making a suggestive motion with his hips.
“Get those men muzzled,” Kronos growls at his owner. “If your boys say so much as another word to my pet, you’ll have two human hams at the end of those leashes and nothing else.”
Sharp and Boss are backing him up too, silently coming up to stand in a small but massively muscular group around me. An intimidating oxymoron in motion.
“Come on, Steve,” the alien says. “Time to go home, boy.”
“But she’s pretty, and she’s fuckable,” he says. “Look at that pretty face!”
“Steve! Enough!”
Steve is dragged away, as is Lyle, and my mates take me into the vet clinic, where a very nice lady with very sharp teeth behind the counter gives me a piece of chocolate and tells them how cute I am.
“What a cute little human female,” she says. “She looks very healthy. That hair. Those eyes. I love it when they have slightly differently colored eyes.”