She didn’t want them to
expect
an attack from her, because if she had to fight them surprise was the only thing that was going to give her any sort of advantage.
Covering her face with her hands, she burst into tears--of anger for her stupidity, frustration, and fear for Cory.
Stupid!
She berated herself, wondering just how badly she’d fucked up.
Did they watch all the time? Was there any chance at all they hadn’t caught her running around like a crazy person lobbing missiles at Kole? Hadn’t seen her kick him in the head?
When she finally managed to choke down the tears and mopped her eyes and nose, she saw that Kole had retreated to the far side of the room. Irritation flickered through her. If that wasn’t just like a man! All a woman had to do was burst into tears and they headed for the hills!
Sniffing, she got to her feet and went to wash her face. Towels had miraculously appeared in the bathroom, she discovered, feeling her heart sink. Maybe it was just--like computers that monitored the habitats though? When she’d finished drying her face, she wrapped the towel around her and tucked a corner in at the top to hold it in place.
Ignoring Kole, she settled in the corner furthest from him and stared at her hands in her lap, trying not to think about what might be happening to Cory. Since she also didn’t want to think what the results of her screaming fit might be, she focused on trying to extract what she could remember about the
Sheloni
from her memory.
It wasn’t much. She hadn’t been near one when she wasn’t already drugged so that she hardly knew where she was. A lot of probing finally produced the information that they had always been wearing suits when she’d been with them. Life support, as in space suit? Or hazmat type suit, because they were worried about germs?
The movie War of the Worlds came to mind, but it could
not
be that easy.
Besides, if her germs were harmful it was just as likely it would kill the
Hirachi
as the
Sheloni,
and she didn’t want to kill them. As far as she could see they were victims just the same as she was. They might feel hostile toward her and Consuelo, in which case all bets were off, but she didn’t see the
Hirachi
as enemies.
A jolt went through her as she realized the direction of her thoughts.
When
had she begun to think of the
Sheloni
in terms of killing them, she wondered?
The minute they became a threat to Cory.
Could
she
actually bring herself to kill, though, even supposing she got the chance? She’d never been able to bring herself to kill anything--not anything. She damned near wrecked her car every time something ran out in the road in front of her, and she
knew
she was risking her life to do it. She couldn’t help it. It was pure instinct to break and swerve.
So where did that leave her?
In the position of making herself accept and come to terms with the possibility that she might have to kill to protect herself and Cory.
She could do it, she decided. She might puke afterwards. She might have nightmares for the rest of her life. She might lose her mind completely, but she
could
do it, and she would if it meant protecting Cory.
If those bastards thought they were going to enslave her baby, they had another think coming. She’d poison the sons-of-bitches!
That thought gave her pause. It actually wasn’t a bad idea. Effective, not really messy unless the poison did something horrible.
How to poison them, though?
There was no getting to the bastards on the ship. Aside from the fact that she was caged and watched, somebody had to fly the thing, and she doubted any of the Hirachi would have any more idea how to do that than she did.
Poisoning them after they landed meant accepting that she was home, though, because she wasn’t going to get back to Earth.
She’d worry about that later, she decided--she could
not
handle having to worry about that, too. Top priority was going to have to be getting rid of the
Sheloni.
Maybe, if she could figure out a way to kill all of them, she could figure out a way to run their ship--or somebody could.
There didn’t seem to be that many of the
Sheloni
, now that she thought it over. They used robots for just about everything on the ship, but that might have been because they didn’t want to expose themselves to danger.
It made her wonder why they needed slaves at all, though. They had robots. Why not just use robots if whatever they wanted the slaves for was dangerous? Maybe it was a money thing? Every society had some kind of economy. Maybe it was just cheaper to go capture the
Hirachi
and use them than to build enough robots to do the job?
She wasn’t particularly interested in why, unless it had something to do with a weakness on the part of the
Sheloni
--as in there just weren’t that many of them.
She didn’t believe there were many on the ship. Would there be more once they landed where ever they were going? Or would it only be a small number to watch over the slaves?
She couldn’t know that until they got there, but she didn’t think she would be able to do anything on the ship even if she was willing to risk being stuck afterwards in a ship that had nobody to fly it.
The suits were a weakness. Whether it meant they had to worry about the germs she and the
Hirachi
were carrying, or if it was because the same atmosphere that supported them was poisonous to the
Sheloni,
it was still a weakness that could be exploited. She just had to figure out how.
She wrestled with her recalcitrant memory until she’d given herself a headache, but she felt like she was beginning to have an idea of how many
Sheloni
there were to deal with. There were never the same number in the room with her--the last time there had only been one--but they did not all look alike. One, the one who’d been in the room the last time, was almost always in the room. His nose holes--there was no bridge to their noses--were larger than the others she’d seen, and his face seemed rounder, his forehead more pronounced. He had to be important, she felt certain, if she was right and he was always in the room. Either he was like their head doctor, or science officer, or he was high on the chain of command--maybe the captain.
She doubted that, but it wasn’t impossible, and the more she thought it over the more certain she was that she’d not only recognized him as an individual but he was in a position of importance.
The most she could remember ever being in the room was the first time, and it seemed to her that there’d been five or six of them.
That couldn’t be all that was on the ship! It just didn’t seem possible. There were easily fifty or sixty male
Hirachi
. She didn’t think there were that many females but probably close. To have captured upwards of a hundred or more ….
On the other hand, they’d just knocked her out, beamed her up, and set the robots to taking her car apart. They could’ve done the same with the Hirachi, probably had, and one could have managed that all by himself.
It would’ve been helpful if she’d actually seen the ship. She might have some idea of just how big it was and how many people it could house. The habitat level seemed vast, but that didn’t necessarily mean it made up a half or a third. For all she knew there could be a little pod sitting on top or beneath, and this, the habitat area, could be most of the ship--like an oil tanker, or some other ship that was designed mostly to carry goods and didn’t have much of a crew at all.
It was all very interesting but nothing she could either prove or disprove, and she didn’t know what use it actually might be to her beyond keeping her mind occupied with thoughts other than Cory.
Neither of them was allowed out, and, after three days of close proximity with nothing to do but stare at each other or the wall or the floor, Bri was pretty sure Kole was just about ready to blow. She was if it came to that. No matter how hard she tried to get her mind off of the baby, her mind just kept going right back to him and repeating the problem over and over.
She wasn’t going to get pregnant by osmosis, damn it to hell! She was almost tempted to do a rendition of the exorcist and snatch the towel off, stick her pussy in his face, and scream ‘fuck me!’.
It was humiliating! And infuriating!
Three days. She’d heard somewhere that that was as long as sperm could survive, human sperm anyway. If she’d ovulated sometime between now and then, she was good, and the next time they checked her she’d get to go back to Cory.
If she hadn’t, she was screwed--unscrewed. She chuckled a little hysterically at that thought.
Kole, she saw when she glanced his way, was giving her a fulminating glare.
She glared back at him.
Maybe, instead of focusing on the big picture, what she really needed to do was focus on the more immediate problem--get pregnant, get Cory--kill the
Sheloni
later.
Kole was a hurtle--alright a mountain--she was going to have to go over. The question was how best to go about it? Maybe shaking it in his face and screaming ‘fuck me’ wasn’t such a bad idea? She could lay down on the sleeping platform and spread her legs--and cover her face with the towel, because that was a horrifying idea, and she didn’t think she could do it.
Besides, she was the next thing to naked, and he hadn’t had any trouble resisting--because he didn’t want it anyway, and he was just hardheaded enough that he would refuse to spite the
Sheloni
. And if he turned his back on her after she humiliated herself like that she might be tempted to try to choke him in his sleep.
She couldn’t wrestle him to the floor and have her way with him. He was too fucking big!
She massaged her aching eye sockets, trying to summon some movie she’d seen that might help. Images of sexy, sultry femme fatales flitted through her mind, but she discarded them one by one. Those were useless. Aside from the fact that she was no beautiful starlet, all of them had to do with men just champing at the bit to be seduced in the first place.
Kole had seemed interested before, but the little run in with the big robot seemed to have dampened his interest. He hadn’t given her any of
those
looks since. Mostly he just didn’t look at her at all, which was still better than the mean looks he gave when he did.
She hadn’t wanted to let him know the Sheloni had made it possible for her to understand him. She’d been at great pains to keep that to herself in case it turned out to be useful somehow. Maybe now was that time, though? Maybe she could … barter with him or something?
Like what? Pussy? That might be fairly good currency in a lot of situations, but she wasn’t in much of a position to barter with that since
that
was what she was trying to give away and he seemed indifferent.
Giving up on the idea for the moment, she shoved herself to her feet. She was cramped, she discovered, from sitting so long. Groaning at the pain, she hobbled to a clear area and began doing stretches. It helped ease some of the discomfort, and she decided she might as well do a workout. She was so tense she felt in imminent danger of throwing another screaming fit, and she wanted to avoid that at all costs. Besides, she hadn’t been allowed out for exercise in days. She’d grown used to exercising. That was probably one of the reasons she felt so anxious and jittery.
Giving Kole her back, when she’d finished the stretching routine, she began doing strength exercises. There weren’t many she remembered how to do properly since she had never really tried to work on that. Before, she’d concentrated on figure shaping exercises and cardiovascular. The cardiovascular workouts had certainly helped. Before she’d been taken she doubted very seriously that she would’ve been in good enough condition to give Kole a run for his money.
The towel she wore like a sarong sucked as workout clothes she quickly discovered. Every time she inhaled deeply it slipped, and she had to grab and tuck again. It came loose completely when she got down on the floor to do modified push ups, but gravity was working in her favor for a change, and she ignored it until she’d finished doing the reps.
When she couldn’t endure the burn any longer or force her upper body off the floor even one more time, she flattened herself on the floor and rested until she caught her breath. She was so focused on getting up without losing the towel that she didn’t notice Kole had crossed the room to stand over her until he suddenly appeared in her peripheral vision. Startled, she sucked in a sharp breath, flinging up her arms instinctively to ward him off as she fell back a step.
He caught her forearms, pulling her arms out to either side of her and using them to tug her toward him. Surprised by the move, she tipped off balance and fell against his chest before she could get her feet under her. Still breathing a little raggedly, she tipped her head back to look up at him with a mixture of wariness and confusion.
His expression was intent, but she couldn’t guess what was going through his mind. “Why this?”
Bri frowned, trying to figure out what he was talking about, which might have been easier if she hadn’t been plastered against his chest and keenly aware that the towel was loosing its grip--and he was holding her arms. She tugged, trying to free them so she could grab the towel before she lost it completely.
He ignored the tug--just long enough to make it clear he’d released her--and then slowly uncurled his fingers from around her arms. Irritation flickered through her.
As
if
she needed a reminder that he was so much stronger than her, there was no contest! “It’s better than just sitting around with my thumb up my ass!” she said testily.
Confusion flickered over his face. He hadn’t understood, but then she’d counted on that. Otherwise she wouldn’t have spoken so crudely, because as liberating as it was to throw all her old habits and inhibitions out the window, as determined as she was to do it because she felt the need to nurture her inner beast, she still wasn’t really comfortable with it.