De­spite her grim de­ter­mi­na­tion to fo­cus, Cas­sidy couldn’t quite ig­nore the high-pitched screams that con­tin­ued to travel down the shaft. Then even worse sounds joined those aw­ful noises. Cas­sidy’s heart lurched to hear the faint ap­peals of her fel­low as­pi­rants.

  “Please, don’t!”

  “No!”

  “God, help me!”

  I told them to hide. I told them, but they wouldn’t lis­ten! I tried to help them, God. It’s not my fault!

  Just as she yanked the vent cover into place, a ping­ing sound told Cas­sidy her cell’s door lock had been re­leased. An in­stant later, she heard it slide open. Though she’d ex­pected the Kalquo­ri­ans to be able to get into her room, she hadn’t ex­pected them to do so with such ease. With a gasp, she scram­bled away, push­ing past her reader and cache of snacks. She rushed on hands and knees to es­cape the mon­sters who had found the fre­quency to breach her pri­vate cell.

  Ter­ror de­scended over her. Cas­sidy lost all sense in her pan­icked state. She crawled blindly through the dark ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem, her sobs echo­ing off the metal walls. Screams and pleas rose and fell in cy­cles, each surge of au­di­ble ter­ror qui­eter than the last. Deep voices speak­ing in un­in­tel­li­gi­ble stac­cato bursts joined the noises fill­ing her ears. The alien speech seemed to sur­round her, as if the Kalquo­ri­ans them­selves were draw­ing close, ready­ing to spring out of the dark­ness to cap­ture her.

  In the dark, Cas­sidy missed a bend in the shaft. She slammed head­first into the wall. Dull pain thud­ded through her head, and she col­lapsed on the floor with a gasp. She lay still as the sud­den shock broke through the panic that had gripped her.

  She breathed deep and slow, will­ing her fran­tic heart­beat to quiet. Cas­sidy forced calm over her mind so she could con­cen­trate and take stock of her sit­u­a­tion.

  She was safe in the main part of the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem. These shafts were small enough that she couldn’t turn around in their con­fines. Cas­sidy knew from for­ays through the sys­tem that in or­der to turn about, she had to be in one of the larger shafts that opened out into the cells and hall­ways of the build­ing. With it be­ing such a tight squeeze, there was no way the Kalquo­ri­ans could get to her in here. Those mas­sive brutes would never be able to catch her so long as she re­mained in the main shafts.

  Cas­sidy swal­lowed, think­ing of the alien men she’d en­coun­tered out­side. The light had been too dim to pick out many de­tails, but she’d got­ten a good look at the one who’d en­tered the dorm first. His hair had been glossy blue-black and his skin dark brown, much like the men de­picted in The Kama Su­tra. But un­like those slen­der Earth­ers, the Kalquo­rian had been all mus­cle, his tight black out­fit molded to ev­ery bulge in his chest, shoul­ders, arms, and legs. He’d been mag­nif­i­cent … in a de­monic, hellish way, of course.

  Hav­ing lived with her grand­fa­ther for a brief time, Cas­sidy had been around many sol­diers who kept them­selves fit by work­ing out with weights. Their brawn was fur­ther sup­ple­mented with the steroid reg­i­mens dic­tated by the Army. De­spite that, no Earther man she had ever seen had had come close to the be­he­moth who’d in­vaded the dorm.

  Were all Kalquo­rian men mas­sive like that? So big and pow­er­ful and phys­i­cally dom­i­nat­ing? She shiv­ered, won­der­ing how it would feel to be sub­dued by such a beast. Her sex tight­ened.

  What am I think­ing? They kid­nap and rape Earther women. Their mis­sion is to force us to bear their mon­strous chil­dren! How dare I lust for such crea­tures!

  Cas­sidy sobbed in shame. “For­give me, Heav­enly Fa­ther, for be­ing a weak, sin­ful fe­male,” she whis­pered. “Don’t let me fall into de­prav­ity like my mother did.”

  The prayer helped her get con­trol over her un­wanted thoughts. She col­lected her­self and set about get­ting her bear­ings.

  The shaft an­gled left, with no other av­enue for es­cape ex­cept back­wards. Hav­ing thor­oughly ex­plored the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem of the dorm, Cas­sidy knew ex­actly where she was. Fol­low­ing the shaft would take her to from the as­pi­rants’ wing to the nuns’ side of the dorm. She lis­tened for the sounds of the sis­ters, but the screams had ended. All was quiet in the build­ing, save for her own soft breath and the soft moan of the air in­takes.

  Cas­sidy crawled slowly to­wards the nuns’ wing af­ter pulling her skirts up to al­low for eas­ier move­ment. What a racket she must have made in her pan­icked flight through the con­duit! Hope­fully her pas­sage had gone un­no­ticed by the Kalquo­ri­ans, who’d no doubt been deaf­ened by their vic­tims’ screams. She fought off a wave of ter­ror for the other women and girls. There was no telling what those de­viant aliens had done to them.

  Cas­sidy paused at a con­duit that led to the in­fir­mary. No one was presently sick, so there’d be no pa­tients in there. She crawled into that larger shaft and looked any­way.

  As she’d sus­pected, the stark room was empty of life. The dim light showed her the hos­pi­tal beds, ten in all, lined up on op­po­site sides. Cab­i­nets filled with nurs­ing im­ple­ments and sheets for the beds filled one wall, and the phar­macy was on the far end of the room. The phar­macy was dark, and no doubt locked. Cas­sidy moved on, go­ing back to the nar­row main artery of the vent sys­tem.

  The shaft bent left again. She was now in the nuns’ wing. Cas­sidy slowed her progress, be­ing very care­ful to make no noise.

  She took the first pas­sage to lead off the main shaft, dar­ing the wider vent to see what had hap­pened on that side of the dorm. She blinked to see light ahead. She pro­ceeded slowly, let­ting her eyes ad­just to the il­lu­mi­na­tion.

  Cas­sidy ap­proached Sis­ter Kather­ine’s cell. She’d come here of­ten, not to spy on this par­tic­u­lar nun as she did the oth­ers, but to lis­ten to the quiet woman pray in her sooth­ing, sweet voice. When Cas­sidy had a bad day, one in which she thought she’d go mad from the drone of nev­erend­ing bore­dom, she of­ten sought out this very spot to soak in the peace that em­anated from her fa­vorite nun.

  Sis­ter Kather­ine was a beau­ti­ful, del­i­cate-fea­tured woman who wore a kind smile for ev­ery­one. No one was more gen­tle or pro­claimed God’s love and for­give­ness with such de­vo­tion.

  When Cas­sidy heard the deep voice of a male com­ing from the nun’s room, she paused for an in­stant. She lis­tened to the gut­tural alien speech, and a sec­ond man’s voice an­swered it. Dear God, two of the Kalquo­ri­ans were in Sis­ter Kather­ine’s cell! Was she in there with them? What were they do­ing to her?

  Cas­sidy crept to the vent open­ing, ter­ri­fied of what she might see. The cell came into view by care­ful in­cre­ments.

  The room was ev­ery bit as bare as Cas­sidy’s own. On the op­po­site wall, Kather­ine’s habit and wim­ple hung by their hook. Inch­ing for­ward, the next sight that greeted her eyes were the tops of two black-maned Kalquo­rian heads. One man’s hair was wavy, the other’s straight. Their shoul­ders were wider across than Cas­sidy’s am­ple hips. One was much shorter than his co­hort, but he still pos­sessed plenty of mus­cle. No doubt he could break Cas­sidy in half if he wished to.

  The alien men stood over Sis­ter Kather­ine, who knelt by her bed in her night­gown. The nun’s white hands clasped in prayer. Her head was bent so Cas­sidy couldn’t see her face, and her dark blond hair cas­caded in soft ringlets around her shoul­ders. She mur­mured, her voice a soft ca­dence.

  A fine tremor ran through the nun’s frame, but she didn’t flinch away when one of the Kalquo­ri­ans gen­tly brushed aside her hair to ex­pose the grace­ful col­umn of her neck. The other Kalquo­rian pressed a metal­lic cylin­der to the pale pink-tinged skin, his hand squeez­ing one of her shoul­ders as if to com­fort her.

  Kather­ine’s voice rose for an in­stant, loud enough for Cas­sidy to make out the words. “…and give me strength, O Lord, as you gave Moses as he wan­dered the desert; as you gave Je­sus on the cross; as you gave Mo­hamm—”

  A low hiss cut her words off, and she sagged bone­lessly. The Kalquo­rian hold­ing her hair back moved in a blur, catch­ing her be­fore she could slide to the floor. He lifted her in his arms, and Cas­sidy wept sound­lessly to see her men­tor’s sweet tear-stained face. Her hands clenched in fists. Ev­ery mus­cle in her body felt as if it coiled, ready to spring on the alien brutes.

  The two men stood look­ing at the nun for an in­stant, the ex­pres­sions on their strong fea­tures iden­ti­cal with won­der. Then they left the cell, the larger wavy-haired alien car­ry­ing Kather­ine.

  The mon­sters! How dare they at­tack Sis­ter Kather­ine!

  Cas­sidy had no choice but to back into the main shaft once more. She did so, shak­ing vi­o­lently with anger. She’d wanted to jump out of the vent and pound on those aliens for dar­ing to put their filthy hands on Kather­ine. It would have no doubt ended with her own cap­ture and en­slave­ment, but the urge had nearly been too strong to deny.

  Damn the bas­tards! If only I was strong enough to fight them!

  En­raged at her in­abil­ity to res­cue her men­tor, Cas­sidy crawled to an­other vent open­ing on the op­po­site side of the main shaft. She knew this was where she could see into the hall­way that ran down the mid­dle of the nuns’ wing.

  When Cas­sidy peeked out, she had to bite her lips to­gether to keep from scream­ing in hor­ror. Un­con­scious nuns lined ei­ther side of the cor­ri­dor, placed feet to head as far as Cas­sidy’s lim­ited vi­sion could see. Ev­ery cell door stood open. Hulk­ing Kalquo­ri­ans walked up and down the hall, watch­ing the in­sen­si­ble women and oc­ca­sion­ally mut­ter­ing their in­com­pre­hen­si­ble lan­guage to each other. Some went in and out of the cells, car­ry­ing out blan­kets and cov­er­ing the nuns to their chins.

  Cas­sidy stared at the strange tableau, es­pe­cially at all those mon­strous men tend­ing to the nuns. The aliens looked upon their in­sen­si­ble pris­on­ers with ex­pres­sions of won­der and com­pas­sion. Their hands were ten­der as they tucked the blan­kets about the nuns’ bod­ies.

  If Cas­sidy hadn’t known bet­ter, she’d think the brutes were con­cerned for the Earther women’s wel­fare.

  * * * *

  Tra­nis, Li­don, De­gorsk and the five Nobeks guard­ing Gen­eral Hamil­ton and his shut­tle pi­lot en­tered the dorm. Tra­nis gaped at the sce­nario be­fore his eyes for a mo­ment be­fore re­cov­er­ing his senses.

  On ei­ther side of the hall, Earther women lay in rows to the end of the cor­ri­dor. Tra­nis’ men had cov­ered the tiny bod­ies in blan­kets de­spite the lack of any real chill. Look­ing at the women ly­ing clos­est to him, the cap­tain couldn’t blame them for their con­cern. The fe­males looked so del­i­cate.

  He glanced back at the mute Earther gen­eral. Be­yond of­fer­ing his name and rank, Hamil­ton had re­fused to speak. Maybe sham­ing him would loosen his tongue.

  In Eng­lish Tra­nis taunted, “What kind of man hides among such frail crea­tures? Are all Earth­ers such cow­ards?”

  Hamil­ton kept his eyes trained for­ward. Ex­cept for a mus­cle twitch­ing in his jaw, he gave no re­sponse.

  Osopa ap­peared from a cor­ri­dor half­way down the hall. He hur­ried to­wards his com­mand­ing of­fi­cer. Tra­nis moved to meet him, his group fol­low­ing.

  “Re­port.”

  “One hun­dred sev­enty-seven women se­cured, Cap­tain. Some on the other side of the build­ing are well be­yond child­bear­ing age, but the ma­jor­ity can be clanned.”

  De­gorsk knelt next to one tiny form, the small­est of the fe­males. “This is no adult woman. She has to be a child.”

  Tra­nis bent for a closer look. The girl’s smooth face was a deeper brown than his own skin, a gor­geous ma­hogany shade. Her black hair was a soft, fuzzy cap on her diminu­tive head. A slightly big­ger girl of sim­i­lar col­or­ing, her fea­tures al­most iden­ti­cal, lay nearby. They were no doubt fam­ily, per­haps sis­ters.

  The weapons sub­com­man­der ver­i­fied De­gorsk’s sus­pi­cions. “Yes, Doc­tor. There are a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of im­ma­ture girls in this wing. Pre­lim­i­nary scans sug­gest that with the ex­cep­tion of this one, they are still phys­i­cally ca­pa­ble of breed­ing.” Osopa gri­maced, his ex­pres­sion an in­di­ca­tion of how re­pug­nant he found his own re­port.

  De­gorsk pulled a sim­i­lar face. “Only if you have no con­science. Tra­nis, we can’t claim younglings. Even the Em­pire isn’t that des­per­ate.”

  The doc­tor shud­dered at the idea and cupped his palm around the child’s cheek in a ges­ture usu­ally re­served for a fa­ther and daugh­ter. It was as if he was re­as­sur­ing her that she would not be harmed. Af­ter a mo­ment, he stood and glared at his clan­mates.

  Tra­nis gave him calm eyes. Though De­gorsk was an Imdiko and of­ten acted in clown­ish ways, the man had a vi­cious tem­per. He’d even fight Li­don un­der the right cir­cum­stances. Tra­nis had no doubt this would be one area De­gorsk would draw a line … a line that no good man of con­science would ever cross any­way.

  Li­don had no is­sue with his clan­mate’s po­si­tion on the mat­ter. He snarled, “Of course we won’t claim lit­tle ones. No one can be that wretched.”

  “I’d rather we die out than go that route,” Tra­nis agreed. “The lit­tle ones are off lim­its. Our man­date is no breed­ing with any­one un­der the Earth­ers’ le­gal mar­riage age of eigh­teen. Even if it wasn’t, you know me bet­ter than that, De­gorsk.”

  The Imdiko im­me­di­ately set­tled. “I do. The idea of such, how­ever—” He stopped and shud­dered again. His fists clenched.

  The flash of anger lasted only a mo­ment. An in­stant later, De­gorsk’s ir­re­press­ible hu­mor re­turned. He grinned at Tra­nis and said, “It’s the young Dramoks that I find im­pos­si­ble to re­sist.”

  Tra­nis rolled his eyes at his clan­mate’s teas­ing and pre­tended he didn’t no­tice Li­don’s sup­pressed amuse­ment. With clan­mates sig­nif­i­cantly older than him­self, it was hard to main­tain dis­ci­pline some­times. If De­gorsk didn’t be­have him­self in front of the rest of the crew, Tra­nis would have to wear his ass out.

  Then again, De­gorsk liked that sort of thing. The damned man was al­most im­pos­si­ble to pun­ish.

  Tra­nis scowled even as his Imdiko’s grin spread wide. The cap­tain turned his back on De­gorsk and fol­lowed Osopa through a con­nect­ing hall to the next wing.

  More fe­males lay un­con­scious there. Tra­nis told Osopa and Li­don, “Keep the young girls with the el­der women. How many ma­ture Mataras ca­pa­ble of child­bear­ing does that leave us?”

  “Al­most 120,” Osopa said, his voice lift­ing with re­strained glee. “There’s a squad of Nobeks still sweep­ing the rest of the com­pound. Their team leader lo­cated the main com­puter con­tain­ing the con­vent records, so we’ll have an ac­count­ing of the pop­u­la­tion shortly.”

  “Ex­cel­lent. Have Records Of­fi­cer Vadef con­firm the age of ev­ery fe­male. I don’t want any­one younger than Earth’s le­gal mar­riage age touched.”

  Tra­nis looked over the nuns, his mind bog­gling at the sight of so many fe­males sim­i­lar to his own species. No won­der it was the­o­rized Earth­ers and Kalquo­ri­ans had com­mon an­ces­try. The size dif­fer­ence aside, the like­ness be­tween their peo­ples as­tounded him.

  He scanned the faces of the women clos­est to him, not see­ing the one he searched for. To Li­don he said, “Let the seven male-com­pleted clans of our ship choose their Mataras in or­der of se­nior­ity.”

  The Nobek’s eyes dark­ened. “They’ll be pleased with that, Cap­tain. What are your or­ders as far as the rest are con­cerned?”

  Tra­nis turned to De­gorsk. “You’re the lead on that, Doc­tor.”

  De­gorsk nod­ded, his gaze wide-eyed as he looked over the women. He seemed stunned to see so many. “The pro­to­cols from the Em­pire’s psy­chi­atric board rec­om­mends pos­i­tive sex­ual im­mer­sion to fight the ef­fects of life­long re­pres­sion. Ap­par­ently, most Earther women re­gard them­selves as evil, not wor­thy of pas­sion­ate re­gard.”

  “Re­ally?” Osopa seemed struck by that news.

  “Re­ally. Earther women have been taught by their gov­ern­ment to loathe their own bod­ies. When en­emy fe­males of breed­ing age are cap­tured, we are to awaken their sex­ual crav­ings and prove to them how de­sir­able we find them. It will sup­pos­edly in­still grat­i­tude and gen­uine con­sid­er­a­tion for our needs. They will re­turn our re­gard and ad­mi­ra­tion, or so I’ve been told.”

  “That shouldn’t be too dif­fi­cult,” Osopa mut­tered. “They are beau­ti­ful.”

  Tra­nis agreed with the sub­com­man­der’s as­sess­ment. The women were im­mensely de­sir­able, though he still didn’t see the par­tic­u­lar one he wanted. “All right. Those women un­claimed by the clans of our crew are to be­gin im­me­di­ate re-ed­u­ca­tion un­der De­gorsk’s di­rec­tion.” He al­lowed him­self to smirk at his Imdiko. “I’m sure you’ll have no lack of vol­un­teers among the un­clanned crew to teach these Mataras what they need to know.”

  “As long as the Nobeks lis­ten to my staff, all are wel­come to wor­ship these lovelies.” De­gorsk’s grin was just as lech­er­ous.

  “They’ll lis­ten and obey you,” Li­don vowed. “If any of them gives you trou­ble, I want to know im­me­di­ately.”

  Tra­nis wan­dered down the hall, still search­ing the women’s faces. “Com­man­der Li­don, get to a long dis­tance com­mu­ni­ca­tions sta­tion. Send a mes­sage to the at­tack fleet con­cern­ing what we’ve found here. We’ll need a trans­port to trans­fer the un­clanned Mataras to Kalquor. And have Gen­eral Hamil­ton placed in con­tain­ment.”

 

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