Page 10 of Bred

“We don’t take subjects aboard.” My first officer is most disturbed by my decision to keep Lyra.

“Captain’s prerogative, Shank,” I remind him. Shank is a warrior, a gentleman, and the one entity I trust more than anything, but he has a habit of forgetting who is in control.

“Humans are an unpredictable species, sir. They can’t be trusted. Their interactions are characterized by violence and misdirection. For all we know, she intended to be here on this ship.”

“Nothing in her initial presentation suggested she had any idea we were here. She was terrified.”

“Humans lie with every part of their being. Their history is full of acclaimed liars,” he insists. “They are particularly proud of an incident in which one side of a conflict built a large statue of an animal and then hid inside it, sneaking out after it had been brought inside the enemy’s walls, and proceeding to slaughter them.”

He’s been reading the history books again. Human history is fascinating, I will give him that.

“They are intelligent. And intelligence always comes with twisted cruelty.”

“They take some of the young of other species and treat them as if they were their own young. But the young of other, closely related species are eaten. They are dangerous, Captain, entirely unpredictable. Humans do not belong aboard Virility, sir.”

“I decide what does and does not belong here,” I remind him with a deep growl.

He falls silent, but I can feel his concerned displeasure remains. We never take prisoners. Not ever. There has yet to be a voyage upon which we returned with so much as a live sample. But this time is different.

I feel power when I send my ship scudding across galaxies. I feel strength when I defeat my enemies in battle, but I have never felt so completely in control as I did when I took that delicate human woman and made her feel pleasure so intense she nearly lost consciousness. I will not be deprived of this female. She will stay aboard and she will be mine.

“At least put her under controlled supervision. You’ve left her in open quarters. She has free run of this ship! That’s not safe.”

“I want her to explore,” I say. “And I want it to be on her terms. She needs to discover Virility for herself. She needs to come to understand what we do here in her own time.”

“She needs to be locked up,” Shank growls. “She will do damage.”

“We have been through battles, supernovae, and many more dangers besides. One little human female is not going to damage the Virility.”

* * *

Lyra

As soon as I am alone, I start to plot. The sex with him, if that’s what we had, was incredible. I am not even going to try to deny that. But I still have to get back to Earth. I did not work hard all my life to end up being a fuck toy for some arrogant alien male, even if he can breathe through his ears.

I have a plan.

When I was small, my mother would always worry about something happening to me when I went out all the time. I was never at home, and almost never where I was supposed to be. My father used to calm her by saying if anyone took me, they’d just bring me right back, because I was a pain in the ass.

I am about to become the biggest pain in the ass this ship has ever seen. They are keeping me in a small room, but not as small as the one I first appeared in. This one has a few amenities like a bed, access to water, a place to relieve myself. It’s basically luxury. Best of all, I’m not locked in it. The captain seems to be willing to give me free rein of his ship. Not the best idea he ever had, because I am a natural explorer, and even stark naked, I manage to blend in and avoid being seen by too many people. Modesty is something that only matters in a human context, I tell myself as I resist the urge to creep about with my arm over my breasts and my hand tucked between my thighs.

It must be a huge ship. There are endless passages and many of them are entirely empty. Big sections of the place seem to be in a state of repair, or perhaps under construction. That means that there are obvious weak spots for a pain in the ass like me to exploit.

The systems aren’t fully familiar, but that’s alright. There are some things that are inevitably painful and utterly inevitable. Death. Taxes. And unplugging things.

* * *

Talon

“Sir, deck two just lost environmental controls and mains power. Backup generators have stabilized life support, but only to minimal levels.” One of my bridge crew informs me of a fault on board. We are heading away from Earth as quickly as possible, putting lightyears of distance between the planet where I took Lyra and ourselves.

“Source of the error?”

“Unknown, sir.”

“Send a maintenance team.”

I don’t want to leave the helm. We are heading into dangerous, unstable space and I want to be sure I know first if there are any threats that need to be dealt with.

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