The Spawning (23 page)

He’d asked her—no, told her that if she’d take him as a lover
after
the spawning that he would make it good for her. She’d pretty much dismissed what little she’d even absorbed at the time because she’d thought he was still worried that he’d hurt her. She’d also suspected he was worried because he knew she wasn’t a Hirachi woman and he’d thought,
known
, he didn’t know how to please her, undoubtedly suspected that she was so different that the things that pleased the Hirachi women wouldn’t feel good to her.

All of that put together had some really, really unpleasant connotations.

As young as she’d thought he was, as long as he’d undoubtedly been stranded on this world without a woman, Khan was damned experienced as a lover. Granted, she’d been lusting after him long enough it wouldn’t have taken much to light her up, but there hadn’t been any awkward groping. He’d played her like a master—they all had.

It wasn’t that she’d expected them to be virginal—or even wanted that, if she was honest.

But she realized she
had
thought they were the next thing to it.

They had a village! She hadn’t seen it, of course. Considering the time it had taken
them
to build the pathetic hut they were sleeping in, the existence of a village and THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 102

the permanency that implied, suggested they’d been here a very long time—particularly since it seemed they spent so much of their time gathering the
jasumi
for trade with the

Vernamin.

Moreover, they’d been slaves of the Sheloni before that.

Everything pointed to them having been on this planet several years, which meant they would’ve been barely grown when they were taken.

Unless they were actually older than they looked.

It was possible, she supposed, but how likely?

She realized after a little more thought that she didn’t really care. It wasn’t that part that was really nagging at her.

It was the fact that Khan had plain out said he had no intention of coming near her once he entered his spawning cycle.

She didn’t completely understand that business, but it seemed obvious, even to her, that they had a period of fertility and the rest of the time they weren’t.
They
had been brought to the Hirachi specifically because they were nearing that cycle where they would be able to spawn young—would feel a huge drive to do so.

Except the Hirachi considered them inferior stock and they had no intention of breeding with them.

That was the part that hurt.

It was like feeling around a wound until you located the splinter, the real source of pain.

They didn’t mind sharing her because she really didn’t matter that much to them.

“I think they’ve soaked long enough,” Stacy said, breaking in to her unhappy

thoughts.

It was actually a welcome distraction. After staring at her blankly for a moment, Miranda gathered the roots up and took them back to the fire, carefully dropping them into the coals. When she’d shoved them far enough in to cook, she helped Stacy give the meat another turn.

“I see you lucked out at the Christmas party last night,” Stacy murmured.

Miranda looked at the other woman curiously for a moment before she caught the correlation. It had
felt
like Christmas the night before. In the ugly light day ….

She smiled wanly. “I was so thrilled.”

“I think we all got soap,” Stacy muttered. “Not that I didn’t need it, but it isn’t quite like getting bath products back home, is it? It felt a little like a statement.”

“I was trying not to think about that. Anyway, damn it, we’ve been washing

several times a day. We couldn’t stink even if we didn’t have any damned soap!”

Stacy shrugged, glanced around for a place to sit and finally moved far enough away from the fire so that the heat radiating from it wasn’t so uncomfortable. Miranda joined her, staring glumly at the juices dripping from the meat and wondering how she could be so hungry when she was also miserable.

Deborah and Jan joined the two of them after a while. “Guess we won’t be seeing the guys again until after the spawning,” Deborah observed morosely. “Talk about wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am!”

Miranda glanced at her. “You got the old ‘damn you’re fine girl, but I can’t waste my seed on you’ too, huh?”

Jan snorted disgustedly. “You don’t see any of them around, do you?”

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 103

“I think I’ve figured out the choosing thing,” Deborah said medatively. “That is, assuming everybody else did what I did.”

“The kissing?” Miranda guessed.

“Yeah. You think that was it?”

“I sure as hell can’t think of anything else it could’ve been. That’s a hell of a note! Like we had a fucking clue!” Miranda said angrily.

Deborah shrugged. “You’re the one that kept reminding everybody that they

probably had some customs we’d find strange.”

“Yes, but ….” Miranda stopped to think it over. “I can’t think of anything else.

That must have been it. It makes me wonder what would’ve happened if we hadn’t all decided it wouldn’t be polite to kiss one and then ignore the others.”

Jan shuddered. “I’m not sure I want to know.” She was silent for a few moments.

“I’ve never been gang banged before. I’m not sure I know how I feel about it. Not that it wasn’t nice! I must say the guys I was with were really good.”

“I haven’t gotten the impression that any of them were really bad,” Miranda said dryly. “You think they’re older than they look?”

“They could be a hundred years old—or more,” Deborah said. “We still don’t

know a damned thing about them.”

“Oh god!” Stacy exclaimed. “Don’t talk like that! It would be so grossly unfair!”

“As
if
it’s going to make any difference to us!” Jan said. “Did you miss the part where they made it clear they weren’t interested in the house and white picket fence?”

“How often do you think they spawn?” Stacy wondered aloud.

Miranda thought it over. “Since it seemed to me that the Vernamin appeared to have a good bit concern about it disrupting the supply of
jasumi,
that would also seem to indicate they had some idea because they’d seen it. I don’t know. Once a year, maybe?

Don’t most large mammals mate once a year?”

“Most that are around our size,” Deborah said after a little thought. “But that’s usually spring and this doesn’t feel like spring—I hope to
god
this isn’t spring on this planet! Larger mammals—a lot longer because they have really long gestation periods.

I think the elephant takes something like four years.”

Jan, Miranda, and Stacy stared at her in horror. “That can’t be right!” Stacy said finally. “Those poor things are pregnant for
years
?”

“I said I
thought
,” Deborah said testily. “I’m not sure except that it’s a lot longer than the human gestation period.”

“Well—the Hirachi are big, but I don’t see how that could possibly apply to the Hirachi. The trader
and
the Vernamin said we were compatible. How could we be compatible if there was that much difference in the gestation period?”

“We can’t even assume that it would be once a year, regardless of the length of gestation,” Miranda said pointedly. “They aren’t just not human. They aren’t from Earth at all. None of the rules we know necessarily apply to them.

“The whole discussion is pointless, anyway. To hell with them! Maybe we’re

not as tall and strong and beautiful as their damned women to them, but I’m not going to let them make me feel inferior any damned more! If they can’t appreciate us, the can all kiss my ass!

“It isn’t bad enough we have to put up with this kind shit on Earth? We get

shipped all the way across the universe only to find out the natives here like tall and THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 104

buxom, while the men back there want girls instead of women? We’re too strong and independent to appeal to the men on Earth and not strong enough for the Hirachi men?

“I think we should just focus on trying to find a source of trade goods, gather up anything and everything that we know would be valuable back on Earth and when that bastard trader comes back, we negotiate a deal with him to take us home.

“And when I get back, I’m going to track down the son-of-a-bitch behind selling us off to start with and kill him!”

She was almost surprised to discover that her companions weren’t taken aback by her angry tirade. Instead, they looked as angry as she felt.

“Here! Here!” Deborah agreed. “I like all of it but the last part. Not that I don’t want to, mind you, but I know my limitations. Getting shot trying to gun down some political figure just isn’t my idea of revenge. Now, if you want to go to the news people and do a tell all, I’ll go along with that.”

Miranda sent her a look of disbelief. “They’d just lock us up in a loony bin if we started babbling about alien slavers and alien planets. I doubt we could even convince news people that the government was involved if we tried to say it was a white slave/prostitution ring.”

“Of course we couldn’t!” Jan agreed. “They wouldn’t have a motive for anything like that and we weren’t, so we wouldn’t be able to dig up any evidence.”

Miranda shook it off. “There’s no point in worrying about that now anyway.

Until and unless we find a way back, there certainly isn’t anything we could do about it.

I think we should just focus on trade goods.”

“We can’t even do that until we get the device from Khan,” Deborah said.

“Which brings us back to the spawning. It’s obvious we won’t see them again

until they’ve passed the cycle.”

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 105

Chapter Twelve

Khan had a bad feeling even as the fire began inside of him that he wasn’t far enough, the barricade they had built outside the gates of the compound was not stout enough, and the reinforcements they had built along the sea wall were not strong enough to keep him away from Miranda.

They should’ve built the containment lodges.

They hadn’t seen the need for them when they’d built the village, though. Even if it was true and they could trust that the Sheloni were no longer a threat, they had had no women and it seemed unlikely they would. What need did they have for containment lodges to protect non-existent women from men maddened with the need to breed them during the spawning cycle?—and there had been no time for it after the trader had brought the flower women, as Adar had dubbed them and they had all begun to think of them.

It had seemed appropriate if not particularly flattering to the tiny, spindly

creatures with their strange white/pink skin, curiously colorful pale hair, and even more exotically colored eyes.

And they didn’t just
appear
to be as fragile and easily crushed as the petals of a flower, either. The hot sun wilted and burned them. The wind and sea chafed their delicate skin and, as willingly as many of them labored, they had neither the strength nor the stamina nor any sort of skills that he’d been able to determine to survive the harsh environment of this world.

He’d spent a good deal of time trying to imagine the world they must have come from, but it defeated his imagination. Mayhap, like the Sheloni, their race had advanced to such a weakened state? Mayhap they had reached a point where they relied so heavily upon the technology they had devised that they’d no longer seen the need for physical strength and stamina?

Or mayhap they had bred weakness into their race without awareness of it

because of their technology?

And, mayhap, the Hirachi were more fortunate than they had realized, he thought wryly?

When the Sheloni had helped bring about the destruction of the great civilization they had built for themselves and pitched them backward to a place where they had little or no technology to rely upon, mayhap it had saved them from a similar fate? When they were forced to use their wits, their physical and personal strengths to survive. When nature once again determined their individual suitability for survival and technology could not be relied upon any longer to nurture the weak and unsuitable, it had been harsh.

In many ways, it had been nearly unbearable, and yet the physically and mentally inferior had not lived to breed and pass on their weaknesses. The defective did not survive long enough to burden their society or pass on their weaknesses to a new generation, no matter how strenuously those who cared for them struggled to preserve their lives.

And they had never been able to bring themselves to cease to try even when their THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 106

civilization had crumbled and survival had become a struggle even for the strongest among them.

Inevitably, it was the weak and sick, the injured or defective, old, young, and in between, that was their failing, that resulted most often in their capture and enslavement, those unable to retreat to the sea for protection from Sheloni raids. They couldn’t take them and they couldn’t bring themselves to abandon them, and they couldn’t fight the Sheloni—other tribes of Hirachi bent on raiding them for the things they needed to survive, yes, but not the Sheloni. There was no fighting their technology. A dozen powerful warriors couldn’t bring down one of their machines, and they couldn’t fight at all when the Sheloni simply gassed them and rendered them unconscious and caged them like animals.

Despite all that painfully earned knowledge, he had found himself growing more and more determined to coddle and protect the flower women. What warrior worthy of the title could simply turn his back on the weak, even if they weren’t his people? What was the point of building the strength and learning the skills to fight if not to protect those unable to do so?

That was their purpose before their capture, to stand and fight so that those who couldn’t could flee to safety, aided by the fledging warriors who’d not yet grown into their full strength or learned all the skills they needed.