Chapter 49
Trove
They were picking up the next delivery on a smaller space station.
It wasn’t like most of the others that they went to.
It wasn’t open to the public. It was for business purposes only.
There was a small repair dock, they did basic refueling for starships and synthesizers, but there weren’t any inns or restaurants or entertainment districts.
There were storage houses, but they were for temporary use as sorting centers, essentially, and really only for larger deliveries that were broken into multiple, smaller pickups.
The exotic fur collection they were transporting today was illegal.
Grace had, apparently, been told that outright by the male who requested the job.
She was the one who set up the jobs, but they were all still approved by Tanin.
And Tanin wasn’t opposed to transporting illegal goods.
At least, not small time ones like that.
He wouldn’t transport anything that he couldn’t claim plausible deniability for.
He wouldn’t transport a crate full of explicitly illegal drugs.
But if the owner wanted to hide it, allowing him to claim he didn’t know it was there if searched, he didn’t care.
These were furs. Illegal furs, sure, but still only furs.
It wasn’t like they were still attached to the animals.
It was too late to undo whatever damage was done by collecting them.
And the few that were illegal were all packed up with ones that were fully legal.
If they weren’t experts, no one would be able to tell the difference.
A group of rugged, uneducated delivery males certainly wouldn’t be expected to know. That was the kind of smuggling that Tanin would allow. Especially since the owner had just admitted it outright instead of trying to hide and lie about it.
It was an easy job.
But it was also a big one.
Trove stepped down the landing ramp of the Vainglory, following after Tanin and Rok.
The crates of furs were in one of the storage houses.
Tanin needed to go to lay eyes on it to confirm that they were all there, they were all inventoried, and that they weren’t missing any or taking something that they weren’t meant to claim.
Rok was going with him to help.
Trove was going because, of the few amenities available here, one was a healing center. For emergencies, for ships that didn’t have their own medirings, or for ships that did but didn’t have a healer with the skills for what they needed.
Goldie was still learning medicine. And she was good enough now to heal most injuries and illnesses, but she had yet to master scar prevention, reversal, or, more specifically, tissue regrowth.
Trove broke off from the other two, promising to come back when he finished his task. It was going to take all of them to move the huge number of crates into their storage bay. But he wanted to get this done first.
It didn’t take long to find the healing center.
It was relatively close to the entrance, down a relatively narrow hallway, but was easily identifiable for emergencies.
He walked into the entrance room and was greeted by a sweet faced female with black skin and five eyes who asked him what he needed.
After explaining his request, then paying for the service, she asked him to wait just a moment and he sat down.
Strangely, it was only after he took a seat in the front room that he found himself getting nervous again. Just like he had every other time he tried to make this appointment.
But it was different this time. There was an excited edge to the nerves that kept him seated when, before, he would have just walked away.
He looked down at his fingers. At the uneven, rough, wrinkled skin that had scarred there after his claws were so ruthlessly ripped away.
It had not been a neat or easy process. He’d been fighting the entire time, but of course he had been too young and weak to beat two fully grown, strong adult females.
They called his struggles pathetic. They called him useless.
But he had been so young when this happened. He’d only just come into his adult claws. That was the entire reason they were ripped out, because he no longer had the soft, pliable nails of younglings. He was therefore useless to them.
He had still been a youngling though, he realized.
Looking at his adult hand, weathered and scarred and calloused, so completely different from the soft, weak hands of a youngling.
He hadn’t been weak or worthless; he’d been helpless and dependent and reliant on a pair of females that had taken advantage of both of those things.
“Trove Enz?” The five eyed female called, turning his gaze up from his hand. She was standing, smiling at him. “Your bed is ready.”
Trove’s hand curled into a tight fist. Holding onto his determination. Fighting back the anger that was suddenly so hot and furious in his throat.
He forced himself to smile as he stood and followed the female back.
The healing chamber here was partially open.
There were six mediring beds, three on each side of the room, four of which had someone on it, their rings all aglow as they worked on various problems. One male had a gaping wound in his side and was fully asleep as it was being slowly healed.
He couldn’t see what was wrong with the other three, including one female, but one of the remaining males kept groaning in pain, holding his stomach.
The healer in charge was a female from a species he had definitely seen before, but not one that he recognized on sight. She had wings, brightly iridescent and large, folding down on her back, pointed to the floor, and was wearing the light green uniform ubiquitously associated with healers.
“Claw restoration?” She said by way of greeting. And when he grunted in confirmation, she held out her hands. “Let me see.”
A twinge of unease twisted in his belly, but Trove forced it down as he offered his hands. This female wasn’t Chee; he didn’t like her touching him. But this wasn’t a sexual touch at all, it was purely clinical as she frowned over his fingers.
“I thought it was just one, maybe two. And these are old. How long has it been since you… lost them?”
“Hard to say,” he admitted, not even sure how old he was anymore. “I was a youngling though.”
She gave him a look that had a clear question in it that he didn’t answer. He kept his silence – she didn’t need to know how they were lost, just how to regrow them.
“Can you do it?” He asked.
She grunted, releasing his hands. “It will take longer, since they’ve been gone so long. I’ll have to reconstruct the entire-”
Trove waved her words away before she could start. “Whatever you got to do.”
She made a sound and gestured to one of the empty beds. “Lay down.”
He did so, swinging his legs up and onto the bed.
He once again had to fight to keep himself still as the gently glowing ring came down from the top of the bed.
Only one of the three was needed, it hovered around him and the bed, swirling slowly, right at the level of his hands.
The healer went to her control console at the front of the room and began working.
At first, he felt nothing. Then, there was a curious tingling, then heat, in the tips of his fingers. It wasn’t painful, but he was aware of the sensations.
Then, he felt something moving.
Trove clenched his jaw, fighting back the urge to look at his hands. To see what was going on. To rip them away before something bad happened.
Because, of course, nothing bad did happen.
The process was slow, but it wasn’t painful.
The worst part was just how strange it was.
The process was sped up from what would be normal growth.
He could feel his claws regrowing. She had only deadened the pain and ache of healing; she hadn’t cut off sensation entirely.
So, he was aware the entire time as the hardness of his new claws grew out over his fingers.
All told, he think it took the better part of a full mark for the process to complete. He laid there silently, politely declining when she asked if he wanted to watch something while he waited. He just wanted this to be over. He just wanted it to be done. He just…
He didn’t know what he wanted. He wasn’t sure if he was excited or uneasy. The feelings were so similar, twisting up and strangling him from the inside.
So much so, that when the glow of the ring began to dim, he was choked by the force of emotions he couldn’t quite name.
“You’re done,” the healer announced, the ring floating back to its place at the top of his bed. “Go ahead and give them a try. Make sure everything feels right.
It didn’t. It didn’t feel right. His fingers were heavy. They were uncoordinated. They were-
Whole.
Trove sat up, looking at his hands, staring at them like they were strangers. And they might as well have been. He knew every cut and mark and callous on his hands. But the weight of his claws, the sight of them there…
It was odd.
And still somehow right.
Trove clenched and unclenched his hands. He turned them around and back again, staring at his claws like he had never seen their like before.
Because he hadn’t. Trove’s adult claws had just barely begun to emerge on a few of his fingers. They hadn’t fully grown in when they were removed. He’d never seen them completely grown out, fully hardened, and healed.
They were black, in the way of his people.
Thick and pointed, but not sharp. His people’s claws were designed for climbing, not so much for combat.
Though they certainly served a role in that, their real, evolutionary purpose was to haul his body up trees.
To that end, they were thick and sturdy and strong, but not incredibly sharp.
Though, naturally, that didn’t matter so much if you used enough force. Anything would rip if enough pressure was applied, even on those dull points.
His claws…
These were his claws.
Trove couldn’t breathe for a long moment as he stared at his unfamiliar hands. They were so strangely heavy. So unfamiliar, it was like he had claw caps on top of them that he could remove.
But no. These were his. He wasn’t weak. He wasn’t worthless. He wasn’t a sex toy designed for the pleasure of females that considered him otherwise useless.
He was normal again.
And it was a stunning realization. He didn’t even know how to feel about it.
“What do you think?” The healer asked, interrupting his moment.
He looked up at her, then almost immediately down again. He nodded, then remembered that she likely wouldn’t know what that meant, not having been around humans like him.
“They’re perfect,” he said, making a fist. It didn’t form easily or naturally with the claws now in his way.
But his species didn’t attack with their fists.
They attacked with their claws. And when he curled his fingers in but didn’t make a fist, baring them as though to strike, that felt and looked exactly right. “Thank you.”
She hummed, before turning and making her way to the male with a hole in his abdomen. Leaving Trove alone to stand on his own.
Since he’d already paid, there was nothing stopping him from walking out. And the whole way, he just kept looking at his claws. Turning them this way and that. Experimenting with moving them. Trying to figure out their weight. This would make picking things up weird, he just knew it.
He was a fool.
He knew better than to not pay attention to his surroundings.
Too long away from Rik-Vane, out here in Coalition space where things were ‘safe’, he’d let himself get complacent.
He had those thoughts in quick succession, rapidly running through his head, when he felt something prick against the back of his neck.
Before he could have another one, darkness was closing in and the floor was rushing up to meet him…