Page 43

ALICE

Forget everything I said before. Rage and hate, the kind I had never felt before, fueled me. I was ready to kill the Ohrurs myself. Single-handedly. I wouldn't have hesitated to execute them. What they had done… it was beyond comprehension.

We freed three hundred forty-nine women from the cages. Half of them were visibly pregnant. We weren't sure about the others yet. Even Luph's ship wasn't big enough to accommodate all of them. We would have to ask the Pandraxians for help, since they seemed our only allies. Plus, a large number of the women were Pandraxian because, as I was later told, they were the strongest, next to Pronex women, and could give birth to the enhanced cells they had been impregnated with. They didn’t use Pronex women as much because they were harder to capture and put up too much of a fight. At least that's what one of the Ohrurs who was willing to talk revealed.

And we hadn't even seen the worst of it yet.

Our first priority was to make these women as comfortable as possible, which wasn't easy. We spread them out over the first and second floors. Sloane grudgingly recalled Vraax and Raasla from their scouting mission, saying we would have to rely on radar for a while. Then it was all hands on deck.

To say the women were in a state of shock was an understatement. They were traumatized. About twenty of them were human, another hundred or so I had no idea what species they belonged to, and the rest were Pandraxian.

We worked hard and set every cleaning drone loose to make each quarter livable and allow the women some privacy. Most had to share a room, but a few who were about to give birth were lucky enough to get their own quarters. Birth to what? We didn't know yet, but we had our suspicions.

It took hours to get them all settled down. Two rooms were still left for us to explore. Zaarek kept watch in the corridor, but nobody peeked out. They were either too weak to open the doors or too frightened.

I set the drones I controlled to the task of restoring power while Nova and Nock broke into the database and shot the forcefield down for good. Tucker watched all the prisoners we had, including Possedion, Moddekdum, and Craygh, in the conference room.

After hours of work, everybody was finally settled enough to explore the remaining two rooms. Zoe and Luph stayed behind to keep an eye on the rescued women, and Nova and Nock worked on contacting any Imperial Forces who might be in the area. Hannah and I decided we wouldn't be left behind while the men and Sloane moved to explore the last two remaining rooms.

"You two stay back until I say it's clear," Sloane caught Hannah and me with an intense stare.

"Yes, ma'am," Hannah replied straight-faced.

"I mean it," Sloane narrowed her eyes.

"Don't worry. We will," I promised. My bladder was throbbing, not because I had to go, but because fear was clawing up its way inside me. Naked, primal fear of what we were about to discover. It would be bad. I could feel it in every cell in my body. My stomach clenched, and my heart beat so hard, I was sure the others could hear it.

Noodar opened the door, and we watched Sloane lead the others inside. Hannah's hand reached for mine.

"I have a bad feeling about this," she whispered.

"So do I," I admitted.

Our fingers interlaced and squeezed. We waited for an eternity until Zaarek poked his head out; looking grim, he waved us in.

Hesitantly, we followed him, never letting go of each other's hands.

Rows and rows of more cylinders filled the room. These weren't standing, though, but lying down. A lot of them were empty, but the ones that weren't were occupied by men who looked like Darlams or Space Guardians.

Their hair was short, and they were all naked. Tiny drones swam with them in the liquid, moving through hoses and cords attached to them. They all looked like they were sleeping.

"Bryrek." I heard Xyrek's voice. It was laced with so much pain that I let go of Hannah's hand and rushed to his side.

"You know him?" I asked, grabbing his waist and holding on to him for dear life.

"He looks like Bryrek," Zaarek said, appearing at our side.

"A clone?" I asked, but even as the words left my mouth, I knew that wasn't what I was seeing.

"Explain!" Sloane's cold voice made us turn to the entryway. She held the Ohrur that had been more than willing to talk to us in her clutches; her blaster was directed straight at his cock. "Who are they?"

"Darlams." The Ohrur said.

Sloane pressed the blaster harder against him.

He swallowed.

"What did you do?"

"We captured them and kept them alive for thousands of years," the Ohrur finally said.

I squeezed Xyrek when I felt a tremor go through his body.

"So let me get this straight. You killed all the females and imprisoned the men?" Sloane's voice was one hard edge.

"Not me. Our ancestors." The Ohrur confirmed with a pleading tone in his voice.

"Then what is all that stuff we saw in the other room? What did you do to the females?"

"There aren't many left," the Ohrur said matter-of-factly, without an ounce of remorse, only fear for his life in his voice. “We were tasked with finding alternative solutions."

"As in cloning Darlams and impregnating women?" Tharaax confirmed.

The Ohrur nodded. "The cloning… posed some problems. The specimens we bred didn’t have the Darlams’ sense of wrong and right. They were… messy."

"Like the ones on Morrakbarr," Vraax said. "I knew there was something off about them."

"They are efficient, but they tend to take pleasure from terminating their targets," the Ohrur said as if it were the most normal thing in the universe to clone other beings and experiment with them. It was as if the Space Guardians were dogs who had failed training.

Xyrek's hold on me tightened, and my heart went out to him. I could hardly imagine what he was going through. I leaned up and kissed him to let him know I was there and that he wasn't alone.