Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I (9 page)

And they would exercise their rights
if he made it too obvious that he considered Emerald a prize. The
only way he could avoid that pitfall was to make it clear that he
wasn’t obsessed with her or even particularly possessive—in short
to make it clear that she was of no particular importance to him at
all beyond her breeding capabilities and the only way to do that
was to make her available to others—or at least one
other.

It was a logical conclusion. He knew
it was. Unfortunately, it was also the only thing about his
decision that had caused him any revulsion.

He didn’t
want
to share his prize.
The sense of possessiveness that twisted sickly in his gut at the
mere thought of sharing
did
disturb him, but it also strengthened his
resolve. He
had
to share to protect his own interests and that being the
case, who better than Koryn, who was almost more like a brother to
him than a friend?

He could trust Koryn not to try to
stab him in the back by trying to win Emerald’s
affections.

He thought.

Except he didn’t trust the fucking
bastard! He just trusted him more than anyone else he could think
of.

He didn’t
need
her affection, he
assured himself, trying to shake the sick feeling that twisted in
his gut every time the thought crossed his mind. He’d claimed her
and he was absolutely determined no one’s seed would prosper in her
belly but his until he was satisfied he’d adequately ensured his
bloodlines. He would also enjoy fucking her any time the notion
struck him, and his claim took precedence. There was no reason to
be particularly disturbed about it even if Koryn did capture her
affection. Her first obligation was to him and always would
be—unless someone of higher rank usurped him and Koryn was the only
hope he had of preventing that unless they found more
purebloods—and quickly!

Emerald might well be the key to
that—which was yet another completely logical reason for him to
consider her of value. When and if her memories returned, she might
be able to tell them what had happened to the others or at least
give them some idea where to search.

A shout on the other side of the
excavation caught his attention. Tariq studied the knot of activity
for a moment and finally made his way quickly to the site to see
what they’d found. When he was close enough to see that the workers
had broken through a wall that appeared to connect to a vast cavern
or perhaps a tunnel system, he felt his stomach go weightless with
anticipation and excitement.

“
Let’s get some light down
there and see if we can find a way down.”

Even as he voiced the order, someone
hurried forward with several flares, activated them, and tossed
them into the darkness beyond the hole. The glow of the artificial
lights illuminated an eerie subterranean cavern that bore all the
marks of having been manmade or at least utilized by them for some
sort of underground transportation. A pair of rails made of what
appeared to be some sort of metal formed a parallel ribbon into the
darkness beyond the reach of the light. Tariq could just make out a
hulking shadow at the far end that appeared to be a machine of some
kind. Closer, a platform had been built several feet above the
rails.

“
Stairs!” one of the men
peering into the cavern announced excitedly.

Tariq surveyed the area until he
spotted them. “Get a scanner and let’s get a reading on that
location.”

Impatience flickered through him when
they’d determined the distance and coordinates and found the
location on the surface. There was a pile of rubble over it that
looked to be at least thirty feet deep. He surveyed it with
disgust, considering options. “Let’s setup a winch and pulley at
the hole we’ve punched through and lower a couple of men to check
it out. If they find anything worth the effort, we can put a group
together to clear away the rubble.”

They had to send men back to the ship
to gather up the tools they needed. Nearly two hours passed before
they had men on the ground inside the manmade cavern. Tariq stared
at the moving lights impatiently for a moment and finally glanced
at the winch operator. “Haul the seat up. I’m going
down.”

The man looked startled, but he
hastened to obey. A few moments later, Tariq stepped through the
opening and began his descent. He hadn’t reached bottom when he
heard a shout from one of the men who’d gone down before him. The
voice echoed around the giant chamber, making it difficult to
pinpoint the direction, but Tariq saw several other men that seemed
to be converging on the same point. Leaping off the crude transport
they’d put together the moment it was low enough, he strode quickly
toward the other men.

His stomach clenched the moment he
drew close enough to see what they’d found.

There was a tangle of six to ten
bodies. It looked as if they’d huddled together in a tight knot
near one of the back walls. At least half of them appeared to be
children.

Thrusting aside his revulsion, he
crouched down and studied the group, looking for anything that
might tell him their story. He discovered it didn’t actually take a
lot of imagination or a very long search. “They suffocated.”
Straightening, he took the portable light he’d brought from his
pocket and scanned the walls nearest the bodies. There appeared to
be a good bit of soot on the upper parts of the walls but he
couldn’t be certain it was enough to indicate a fire had killed
them. If they’d been sheltering in the area for a while, they
would’ve needed some means of cooking. He couldn’t even say for
certain that they were huddled together because they’d known what
was coming and were terrified. They could’ve been crowded together
for warmth or even comfort from misery.

By the time they’d found
the fifth group, Tariq decided, grimly, that he was fairly certain
he could dismiss any possibility beyond the first. They’d died
cowering in the darkness from something they
knew
was coming after them. His
anger threatened to boil over into rage. Had they turned on each
other and fought a war to end all wars? Or had outsiders invaded
with the determination to wipe them out? And if that was the case,
what would’ve provoked them? Or had they not needed provocation
beyond a desire to destroy?

He realized when he’d finally tamped
his anger that they still had nothing to say, positively, that a
war had caused the apparent extinction. The Earth had had time to
recover from any number of things—including various natural
disasters and if something as cataclysmic as an asteroid was
responsible, that would also explain why they’d taken shelter below
ground and cowered in terror.

The area they’d discovered was
virtually undisturbed. This might be their best chance to track
down what had happened.

He returned to the surface and
organized the workers into three groups. The group remaining
topside would focus on clearing enough rubble to give them easier
access to remove the remains. The two going below would divide into
a recovery group and an investigative group.

He looked around for Koryn when he’d
outlined the plan and discovered Koryn wasn’t among the workers.
Trying to convince himself that Koryn was working on extracting the
DNA from the pair they’d found the day before, he headed back to
the ship, but he discovered it was hard to contain the rage
seething just below the surface.

* * * *

Koryn relaxed fractionally when he’d
gone over the latest scanner results on the developing clones.
Everything was testing normal as far as he could see. It was early
days in the development, of course, but he didn’t see any reason
for the alarm that had first smote him when the female’s cells had
begun to divide and then separated. Clearly, she was genetically
predisposed toward that particular trait. Once the cells had split
to form two, they’d begun to generate more cells very rapidly that
had clustered.

Tariq would be pleased, he thought
wryly. It was a shame he couldn’t take credit for it!

Turning his attention to the readings
on the male, he studied those with equal care and was satisfied
with the development of the two clones he’d managed to coax with
the DNA he’d harvested from the male.

He had no idea how desirable the end
result was going to be, but the males seemed to be mongoloid, at
least, which meant they’d managed to harvest representatives of two
races—assuming the cells continued to develop.

The more varied the genes they
collected, the more pleased everyone on Nibiru was likely to be
since genetic diversity was the objective in collecting the
purebloods to start with. With any luck, the clones would be ready
to transplant into the larger pods within twenty four hours, Earth
time.

Not that luck had been particularly
forthcoming in this endeavor!

He hoped to hell they found more soon.
At the rate they were going, they were going to have the council
breathing down their neck any day, demanding to know what the hell
was going on. They should already have made a shipment back to
Nibiru.

He didn’t envy Tariq!

That thought produced an image of
Emerald in his mind, unfortunately, and he abruptly felt a
sickening wave of the emotion he’d just denied. He hadn’t realized
the proprietary interest he felt toward Emerald went beyond either
pride in his achievement, scientific curiosity, or even the general
sense of ownership they all felt toward the purebloods who were,
after all, theirs, since they had developed them.

Without the interference
of the Anunnaki, it seemed likely they would still be little more
than the barely intelligent beasts they’d found when they’d first
discovered Earth. They hadn’t gained much more than a toehold on
intelligence in thousands of years of evolution, after all, and
still looked, and behaved, more like beasts than human. Even
with
their
knowledge, it had taken them generations to produce something
acceptable—not that they’d expected any different. They’d barely
scratched the surface on genetic research in those days. Apart from
the fact that the indigenous humanoids were amazing similar to them
on a genetic level as far as they could tell and perfect for
research and development, what they didn’t know had far exceeded
what they did. They certainly hadn’t cracked the codes to
accelerate cell regeneration. They hadn’t had the ability, then, to
speed things up. They’d had to plod along at a virtual snail’s
pace, waiting for the humanoids to reproduce naturally so that they
could study the results of each attempt at manipulating the
genetics.

He didn’t know how the old ones had
had the patience! The advances they’d made since that time made it
possible to accelerate cell division at a rate that could take them
from first division to a fully matured adult in a matter of weeks
and then simply ‘turn off’ the hyper growth cycle when the clone
reached the target ‘age’. And he’d still been in a near fever of
impatience for Emerald to reach that point long before she had.
Then, off course, they’d had to wait another full week for the
cells to stabilize and fully mature before they dared remove her
from the pod and awaken her.

Right up until he’d
finally managed to drag his attention from Emerald long enough to
notice the look in Tariq’s eyes, he’d thought he was merely giddy
with triumph at having successfully regenerated her from virtually
nothing! True, it
had
crossed his mind, several times, that he finally understood
why the old ones were almost obsessive about the purebloods—on a
sexual level. He’d thought it strange that they would discuss their
defects, their backwardness, and talk about them being the children
of the Anunnaki one moment, and then reminisce with such yearning
about the lovers they’d taken among them. Because, of course, their
life cycles were woefully short and, speaking purely from a
scientific perspective, it hadn’t been desirable to lengthen their
life spans. It was enough of a headache to complete their research
as it was and there’d actually been some debate over shortening
their life spans so that they could get results faster.

Their imperfections should have made
them repulsive, or undesirable at the very least, but he’d realized
as soon as Emerald became recognizable as a being that the
imperfections were not only minute, they were what made the
purebloods so fascinating—at least part of what made them so
fascinating. He hadn’t enjoyed studying the most beautiful Anunnaki
woman he’d ever seen nearly as much. Physical perfection, he’d
realized, could be downright boring, whereas he’d never tired of
studying Emerald because every time he did, he noticed something
different—had begun to realize he never would—just about the time
he realized that his sense of possessiveness went well beyond a
scientist’s love of and territorialism for his pet
project.

He would’ve been better off if he’d
never reached that understanding, he thought with disgust, because
it changed nothing beyond making him furious and
miserable.

Actually, more accurately,
he would have been better off if he could’ve
remained
objective about Emerald.
He’d had as much to gain by taking part in the expedition as
everyone else, but he couldn’t say that he’d been particularly keen
about the necessity. He had, in point of fact, been furious that
they’d been so arrogant as to allow themselves to get to such a
pass—as pissed off with himself as anyone else since it hadn’t
occurred to him what they’d done, either, until they’d had their
noses rubbed in it!