Page 3 of Possessed By the Leonid King

“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?”

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