CHAPTER FOUR
She took advantage of his momentary distraction to knee him in the groin, breaking away and running smack into Aydarr, who caught her in his arms and passed her to Mateer in one motion. He went toe to toe with the other alpha, both men displaying their talons and fangs.
“My mate.” Aydarr thumped Jamokan in the center of his chest with one scythe-like claw, drawing a thin line of blood. “Touch her again and die.”
“You can’t take me, and you know it.”
“Brave words—you ready to die today?” Aydarr gestured toward the game space. “Right here is fine. Easy for the guards to clean up the blood and guts when I kill you.”
A guard stuck the barrel of his weapon in between the two. “All right, break it up before we have to activate the bracelets and punish all of you. I will make it hurt.”
The other guards used their weapons and stun sticks to jostle the Badari from the two packs into separate lines. Jill stepped to join Aydarr, happy to have his arm around her, drawing reassurance from him. I probably was lucky that of all the packs, the Khagrish dropped me into his territory.
“We should fight for possession of the woman.” Jamokan rubbed his jaw, giving the guards a speculative glance. “No female jabs me in the nuts and walks away unscathed. I have a score to settle.”
“You deserved more punishment,” Jill said. “I didn’t give you permission to manhandle me and—and sniff my neck, or whatever you were doing. I’m no one’s possession, for your information.”
“Jill is my mate and my partner.” Aydarr expounded on her assertion.
“The Khagrish should have allowed us to contend for such a sweet prize.” Jamokan sounded bitter.
“I said that was enough.” The guard’s voice echoed in the room as he shouted, raising the controller for the bracelets in his free hand and brandishing it in a threatening manner. Pointing it at one guard, he gave an order. “Take Aydarr’s pack to the pool for the water exercises now. I don’t care if we’re off the schedule. Make them do extra laps.” Eyeing Jill’s original guard, he rebuked that underling as well. “Weren’t you supposed to be escorting the woman to see Dr. Sheyall? I could say this is your fault. You’re late. Don’t keep the scientist waiting or you might find yourself a part of the experiment. It’s happened before. Remember Birtom? The Tzibir pack had a lot of fun with him out in the Preserve before tearing him apart and eating him.”
The designated guard gestured emphatically at Jill. She stood on tiptoe to kiss Aydarr’s cheek. “I’ll be fine,” she whispered. “Enjoy the water, boys,” she said cheerfully, waving at the rest of the pack. “See you at dinner.”
The guard escorted her through corridors that became familiar the further she went. Dr. Sheyall had said her office was located close to the staff shower. Her guard knocked and admitted Jill to the scientist’s rooms. “I’ll be right outside, doctor,” he said. “I’ll take her to the cell when you’re done.”
Jill waited inside the door. She calculated the odds of successfully overpowering Sheyall were pretty high, but then would she be able to take the guard? And what would be the next steps? She had no idea where Aydarr and the others would be until the pack returned to the communal cell, no idea how to escape the lab complex.
“Go ahead and sit, I’ll just be a minute.” The scientist gestured to the chair in front of her workstation.
See how far I can push her. Instead of obeying, Jill joined her, peering curiously at the brightly colored creatures crawling in a terrarium. Sheyall had several of the animals undulating like caterpillars on her hand and gently shook them off, the three-inch-long creatures raining onto the leaves in the enclosure, flipping in midair and grabbing at the greenery and branches with a myriad of suckered feet.
“Pretty. What are they?” Jill asked.
“Haruma, from my home planet, not quite insects, not quite animals.” Sheyall got a green and yellow striped one to crawl onto her hand again and offered it to Jill to touch. “They’re harmless.”
With the tip of her finger, Jill stroked the creature’s back. “Soft.”
“I did my research on them when I was in advanced schooling. I was exploring how they learned new things and whether the DNA from an older generation could be spliced to assist a new generation to learn faster, or to assimilate completely new things the species wouldn’t ordinarily do.” Sheyall brushed the last haruma onto the leaves and closed the lid. She moved to the desk. “Would you care for some refreshment?”
“Sure, I’ll have whatever you’re having.” No matter what she thought of the scientists here at the lab, Jill judged Sheyall to be the closest thing to a sympathetic ally she had, so she was willing to meet the Khagrish female halfway. If I can get the person in charge of our experiment thinking of me—of us—as people the same as she is, it might help.
Sheyall brought two steaming mugs to the workstation and set one in front of Jill before taking her chair behind the desk. “Yes, I published several papers on the haruma studies before I graduated, which were well received and attracted Dr. Gahzhing’s attention. He offered me the position here, to do ‘similar animal studies’, he as he described the work.” She blew on the mug and took a sip.
“A big jump from those little creatures to the Badari,” Jill said.
“The reality here is…a nightmare.” Sheyall pushed her hair off her forehead, toyed with her cup, then drank a sip of the hot beverage as if to calm herself. “ But I signed a contract, and there’s no way off the planet until my time is done. You and I’ve both been lucky.” Sheyall closed her eyes and rubbed her temples as if to ease a headache. “We arrived during a relatively quiet time. After this next military training exercise the anim—the Badari are going on—is complete, there’ll be experiments on at least a few of them. This DNA testing cycle is nearly complete.”
“What happens then?” Jill tried her drink, finding it mildly chocolate in taste, with odd spices.
“According to what I’ve been told, all kinds of Chimmer-mandated tests on living subjects, things I cannot imagine myself doing, frankly. And then the subjects are put down. And focus shifts to the next iteration. I was told I could leave one or two of the most docile members of Generation Eight alive for now, to serve as mentors to the cadets for a year or two.”
For a moment, Jill couldn’t speak. She could barely force the words out. “So Aydarr and the others will be tortured in the dubious name of science and killed? And then the cadets advance into becoming packs?”
Sheyall refused to meet her gaze. “Normally, yes. But, apparently, this time the Chimmer are pushing for a decision as to which genetic line to continue, to ‘mass produce’, is how the customer expressed it. So your Aydarr might be fine, depending how the mission goes. The highest performers win, based on all the data and this final mission. Nothing’s finalized yet.”
Battered by the information the scientist was sharing, Jill took a deep breath. “Why are you telling me all this?”
Sheyall shook her head slowly and raised her eyebrows, as if she was confused herself. “Oddly enough, I find I have to confide in someone or go mad. Communications offworld are forbidden. I already tried to confer with my mentor at the university, once I reviewed the scope of the ‘experiments’, and not only was I unable to send a message, I received a reprimand. You’re much easier to talk to than my colleagues here.” Sheyall shivered. “Working in this place warps people.”
“Or they were already warped. What about my fellow humans from the Sectors? Are they being experimented on yet?” She dreaded the answer, so Sheyall’s head shake was reassuring under the circumstances.
“The Chimmer haven’t provided experiment parameters yet. I’m not involved in that side of the lab.” The scientist drained the contents of her mug, took a deep breath, and leaned forward. “Enough idle chat. Why aren’t you breeding yet? I’m being pushed by Dr. Gahzhing to achieve results. Are you and Aydarr having problems copulating? You are fertile, according to the bio readouts. He should understand the mechanics involved. I was told the Badari had received sexual training in the past, been supplied with females in highly regulated encounters.”
Jill sat back with a thump. “Wow, doc, just dive right into the personal stuff.”
“You do understand we could have done the procedure necessary to make you pregnant without ever allowing the two of you anywhere near each other? The technology isn’t complicated. The only reason we’re doing all this old fashioned physical-based contact and observation is because the Chimmer was intrigued with the two of you that day, gods know why, and wanted to see what would happen.”
“You try making love to a man you met a few days ago, on a bed in the corner of a common room with ten other men and two boys in earshot,” Jill said, feeling nauseous.
Eyes wide, Sheyall opened her mouth to ask a further question, but the com unit chimed. Holding up a finger, she answered and turned to check a database on her AI. With a murmured curse in Khagrish, the scientist had to activate the unit. Jill watched closely, committing to memory the symbols Sheyall clicked and seeing there was apparently no biodata involved in using the device. The Khagrish certainly had limited AI technology, no matter how advanced their race might be in DNA manipulation and gene splicing.
And I’m not explaining all the biological details of human fertility. The less the Khagrish understood about humans the better.
When Sheyall concluded her conversation with her colleague and directed her attention to Jill again, she said, “I understand what you’ve said about the privacy issues. My colleagues don’t want to deal with the fact the Badari aren’t a pack of animals or sub-sentients who’d rut anywhere, any time, and force you to submit. The pack members are clearly a higher order of sentient, just as you are. Not a popular view here at the labs. I’ll see what I can do. There’s nothing else we need to discuss today, but I do need to perform a physical examination. After we’re through, I’ve arranged for you to have a private shower, if you want one. Consider it a reward for not making a fuss over the exam.”
“A shower and clean clothes would be stellar. Thank you.”
“After we’re finished here, I’ll accompany you there and stand guard.” Sheyall smiled. “Guard you from the guard.”
“There is one other thing. The guys in the pack got tablets with info on them the other day. Could I have one?”
Sheyall frowned, and Jill feared she’d gone too far. “But you won’t be going on the combat mission. You have no need to see the details. You can’t read Khagrish in any event.”
“True.” Jill wasn’t about to admit the cadets had been teaching her. “But there were pretty pictures. It’s mind numbingly boring in our cell when the others are gone.”
Sheyall steepled her fingers. “I see. Yes, boredom would be a problem for a higher level sentient such as yourself. Let me consider the request.”
“Great.” Jill injected enthusiasm into her tone and bounced to her feet as if the request didn’t matter one way or the other. “Let’s get the exam unpleasantness over so I can wash off the grime from today’s activity.”
This time Jill had no desire to weep in the privacy of the shower. She was too focused on their eventual escape from this place, and her efforts to gather intelligence so plans could be made. As she soaped her hair and rinsed, she smiled. Right back into military mode all right.
She dressed in her fresh overalls, resisting the urge to explain to the scientist how the garment was the opposite of appealing and therefore did nothing to further the Chimmer’s reproductive goals for her. After, she took her leave of Sheyall and went with the guard to the cell. She had a wave of déjà vu, as she saw the pack—her pack—waiting for her, while the food sat on the table untouched.
“You were so long, I was worried.” Aydarr came to her, assessing her even as he gave her a hug.
“I had a talk with Dr. Sheyall, a physical exam, then a shower.” Jill fluffed her drying hair. “Tell you about it later. Thanks for getting Jamokan off me earlier.” She moved toward the table.
But when it was time for them to move to their private alcove, she found herself reluctant to broach the subject Dr. Sheyall had wanted to discuss. For the first time, shyness tangled her tongue.
Brow furrowed, Aydarr studied her. “We don’t have to talk about it, if the conversation is going to make you so uncomfortable. Just promise me it had nothing to do with the lives of my men.”
“I can make that promise, as far as what she had to say regarding me personally. It was kind of girl talk actually. I feel sorry for her.”
“You feel sorry for her? I warned you—”
“I know, she’s one of the people in charge of this terrible place, even if she doesn’t want to be. She seems kind of lost, out of her depth.”
He stroked his hand down her arm, his touch bringing a tingle to her skin and a stirring deeper inside. “Had I seen these bruises on you earlier today, Jamokan wouldn’t have escaped without a few of his own. Or blood drawn. The guards wouldn’t have been fast enough to prevent me from taking revenge.”
She turned her arm left and right. “They don’t hurt.”
He gathered her closer. “It doesn’t matter. He was out of line. I’ll make sure he understands the boundaries before the two of you ever meet again.”
She decided to probe into an issue puzzling her. “When Timtur checked my foot today, he used healing energy on me, didn’t he? “
“Do you want him to work on the bruises?” Aydarr scrutinized the blemishes more closely before studying her with narrowed eyes. “Are you lying to me about the pain?”
“No, I really am fine. I’m trying to understand a few things about the Badari. Jamokan said you’d all been talking about me, but you haven’t spent any time with his pack since I arrived, have you?”
His face set in a blank mask, he shook his head.
She walked her fingers up his arm flirtatiously for the benefit of the vids watching the cell, nuzzled his neck and whispered in his ear. “Do the Badari have a form of telepathic communication? Mind to mind?”
Aydarr went rigid, then blew out a breath and shook his head. “You’re far too smart. I’m glad the Khagrish are blind to what they’ve given us.”
“Given you?”
“This experiment has been running for a long time, and the bastards have spliced so many things into whatever we started out as, that we’ve developed abilities the Khagrish are aware of—” He allowed his talons to extend briefly before retracting them. “And other things we take great pains to hide. Like Timtur’s healing abilities. Some gifts we all have and others are specific to one individual. A genetic drift or mutation perhaps.”
“I think the Khagrish do sloppy science,” she said. “Maybe the research started out differently but, from what I’ve seen so far, I did more exacting protocols when I was a kid in school doing projects for a grade.”
“Unfortunately, their guards have efficient weapons. And then there are the cuffs.” He tapped one finger on the black band around his wrist.
“Can you and I talk mind to mind?”
He shook his head. “I wish. I’ve tried, but you didn’t appear to hear me.”
“Nothing along those lines runs in my family. The ability sure would have been nice.”
“We have two days of training left then the day after we leave for the combat zone,” he said.
Dismayed, she could barely form the question. “So soon?” She leaned closer. “Sheyall did tell me the Chimmer are pushing to declare the next mission as the last for your generation. One DNA line will be declared the winner and the others are to be killed. She said nothing’s finalized yet but that’s the way the situation is trending. Did you know?”
He linked his fingers with hers. “I knew we were getting to the upper age limit for a generation, yes. I gathered the trainers and Gahzhing were placing unusual emphasis on this next combat assignment. So I guessed some of what she told you for myself. Rebellions have been attempted here in the labs before but the power is all on the Khagrish side. You’ve seen the precautions they take when it comes to us.”
“There have to be alternatives, ways to fight, to rebel.”
“We won’t go meekly, this I promise you. But neither can I raise false hopes. My men and I are prepared but there are always the cubs and cadets to consider. The Khagrish hold them over our heads as bargaining chips. What man wants to buy his own life at the cost of a child’s?” Eyes sorrowful, he shook his head. “I need a solution that frees the entire Badari race, adult and children. And I confess I can see no such answer.”
Jill pondered what he’d shared and wished she knew more about the Khagrish and the lab setup. She gazed out of the alcove to where the rest of the pack sat at the table, playing a card game or studying their handhelds or simply talking. The Badari were her people now too, as much as her own fellow colonists and her heart ached over the fate they were all facing. She prayed to the Lords of Space for help, any slightest break.
“Hey, remember me?” Aydarr gently recaptured her attention. “We still have time to spend together. I’ve talked so much about my grim life here—tell me about your time as a child. Give me something happier to reflect on, to dream of, when we’ve been taken for our next mission.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me of your sisters, of the games you played together as children, what it’s like to have parents.”
She smiled, reflecting on her childhood. “The stories’ll be boring for you. I had a pretty normal family, except both my parents were in the military, so we were stationed at bases all over the Sectors. We didn’t stay in one place too long, as they’d get new assignments. My sisters and I formed a pretty tight unit of our own.”
“Sounds interesting. What was your favorite planet?”
“All worlds have unique aspects but there was one planet where we spent a lot of time at the beach and another where we got to go skiing in the mountains—”
“You like to be active?”
Jill considered. “Yeah, I guess you could say that but I also enjoy puzzles and mental challenges. Taking things apart and reassembling them again, or making them better if I can.”
Aydarr looked around the cell. “Not many possibilities for such pursuits here, I’m afraid.”
She remembered her observation of Sheyall’s computer and how easy it might be to hack. “You could be surprised.”
The lights flickered, signaling time for the prisoners to retire.
Aydarr yawned and stretched. “I’d be delighted if you surprised me in that regard. Do your worst.”
“I think you mean my best,” she said, sliding under the meager covers and making room for him to lie beside her. “Don’t the Badari deserve my most elevated efforts?”
He nuzzled her ear playfully. “Ah, but the Khagrish definitely deserve the worst you can do to them. I’ll dream of happy outcomes tonight.”
“You enjoy those dreams,” she said, punching her thin pillow as she did every night here, in a vain attempt to make it fluffier. I’ll probably be dreaming of you. But he didn’t need to know that secret.