She was far more interested in her own personal problem at the moment, which just happened to be a problem all the Earth women on board shared, but it hadn’t escaped her that success with the women they’d taken was only going to encourage the Sheloni to continue to target the people of Earth, just as they’d been targeting the Hirachi people.
Not that she thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to have them as allies. She thought they needed them. The Hirachi knew the enemy far better than they did and that, and their superior physical strength was bound to be useful, but she wasn’t about to put her entire future in the hands of a people who might, and probably did, have a different agenda than she had.
Some of the others had to see the situation just as she did, even if it wasn’t something they were willing to openly acknowledge.
She should have considered that Consuelo’s culture made her more inclined to lean on a man. Women might not, exactly, still be chattel in the South American cultures, but there was still enough of the ‘old world’ in their culture to discourage independence in women. Very likely her religious beliefs and culture together made it nigh impossible for her to behave contrary to the customs she was used to, to accept that, pregnant or not, there wasn’t going to be a wedding to sanctify her situation as mother-to-be--not that there was anything she could’ve done about it, but at least she wouldn’t have been broadsided.
It was still unjust to blame her for the situation, and she was still angry, and hurt if it came to that, but she would’ve realized that there was a possibility that she’d become ‘the enemy’.
She supposed she should have anyway. Even knowing all she knew, understanding just how dire the situation was and how completely out of their control everything was, she’d been hurt and angry when she saw they’d given Kole another woman to breed.
She
had bristled at the woman, and the woman had bristled back--Reasoning hadn’t eradicated useless, detrimental emotions. She’d
felt
territorial. Obviously the woman had, too.
If the fucking Sheloni had set out to use their instincts and emotions against them to drive a wedge between each individual and prevent any kind of unity, they couldn’t have done a better job of it! Even worse, it seemed to her that she’d become the focus of all that was wrong with their ‘world’. None of the others had said anything, but she’d seen the way they looked at her. Somehow she’d become the ‘slut’ after everybody else’s man, because they believed, even if she didn’t, that the fight between Kole and Dansk had been over her.
Flattering as it might me, she didn’t believe it. It had to have been something else that had set them off. Kole hadn’t even impregnated her.
Well, he had, but the Sheloni had nipped that in the bud, literally, and she was pretty sure he knew it.
Or maybe it was because he hadn’t? Maybe it was his own instincts that were raging because, once begun, they staked a claim until they’d completed the cycle?
Her head felt as if it would explode with the pressure of all the thoughts whirling in her mind. She clasped her skull in both hands, applying counter pressure to try to relieve the pain.
It seemed to her that the budding promise that had buoyed her spirits was falling apart faster than it could be put together. If she was right, and she’d become the ‘enemy’, how was she going to pull everyone together?
Ignore the situation? Or face it head on?
Maybe it would be best to just ignore the situation as much as possible? Face it if she was confronted and try to reason with them, but otherwise not give it priority?
It was hard when they couldn’t openly communicate. It only left more room for misunderstandings, distrust, mistakes.
Determination settled inside of her as she was finally allowed to return to her habitat. They could slug it out among themselves after they resolved the situation. They probably would, and it would probably get nasty without ‘referees’ like they were accustomed to having. She was going to have to convince everyone, though, somehow, that
now
was not the time.
Chapter Seventeen
Bri had braced herself to begin battering at the wall of thousands of years of human evolution that hadn’t succeeded in producing humans capable of setting aside their natural animal instincts and hormones. Humans
were
creatures of reason and logic. It was just that they reverted far too easily to their roots and allowed the illogic of their emotions to cloud their judgment.
It came as a pleasant surprise to discover that not all of the women were determined to ignore reason.
Probably, she thought wryly, because they hadn’t all experienced the wonder of the Sheloni ‘dating’ system yet.
“Bri!”
Bri paused at the call. She’d meant only to sit within full view of everyone for as long as it took to make them acknowledge her. She hadn’t expected anyone to confront her directly.
She knew it was a confrontation from the look on the woman’s face. “What?”
“I was just wondering about your pet. Do they have more of them? I’m kind of bored.”
Rage surged through Bri. It was one thing for them to attack her. To attack Cory was another matter altogether. She merely stared at the woman--she had no idea what the woman’s name was--for several moments, her lips tight, struggling against the impulse to let her inner savage out and curse the woman. “The Sheloni killed his mother,” she finally said, her voice trembling with suppressed rage. “I expect you could talk to them about it--because they’ll almost certainly kill some of the other breeders--that’s what we are, you know. Not Americans with rights, not individuals of significance or importance. We’re breeding animals.”
She could see the remark had terrorized some of the women. She had their full attention.
She didn’t regret frightening them. If that was what it took to shake them out of their stupid complacency and make them wake up and smell the roses, then that was what they needed, and she was willing to be as brutal as it took.
“They need us to breed--and take care of the--things.”
It was another woman that made that remark. Racial prejudice, even here, even when their lives depended on each other. God! She had to wonder sometimes if the human race even deserved to survive! She supposed she
could
understand some of it. Humans were unlike any other creature in creation--segregated by races and cultures, and all of them far more comfortable with ‘their own’--she was if it came to that--but humans were the only ones that did that, or at least the worst.
“I guess it escaped your attention that they don’t actually consider us pets, or irreplaceable? It might inconvenience them to flush you into space and get another Earth woman, but they wouldn’t blink at doing it.”
When no one else seemed inclined to challenge her, Bri looked for a good spot to settle Cory and began her stretches. It was getting harder and harder to exercise with the baby. He’d gone beyond sitting up to begin creeping, and, although he wasn’t really good at it yet, he was progressing rapidly now that he’d begun to get the idea.
As bad as she hated to, especially after the nasty remark about Cory being a pet, it looked as if she was going to have to figure out a way to tether him to keep him from getting into trouble while she exercised. She couldn’t afford to stop exercising, that was for certain. She was stronger, and she’d tremendously improved her stamina, but she felt like she could get stronger still. At the very least, it was imperative that she maintain what she’d gained.
Angie, the software specialist, stopped her when the exercise period ended. “I’d still like to play movie trivia sometime.”
Bri wasn’t about to play hard to get. “You should gather all the information you can from the others in your group so it’ll be a good challenge when we start. Even if they don’t want to play with us, I’m sure they’ve seen something that would be useful.”
As hard as Bri tried to focus on the big picture, she couldn’t completely divert her mind from Dansk and Kole. She didn’t want to believe, couldn’t accept, that the Sheloni had killed them. Emotions she refused to openly acknowledge boiled just beneath the façade of surface calm she managed, grief she wouldn’t face, let alone try to release or deal with.
After days with no sign of either man, she finally had to accept that she cared about both of them. She wanted to weep and scream and threaten the Sheloni with dire consequences, but she was totally helpless to do anything for them, or even about their deaths if the Sheloni had killed them.
It was useless to try to lie to herself that she hadn’t become emotionally attached to both of them though she did her best to consider it as no more than she would’ve felt for any stranger that had been kind to her. They
had
been kind, and careful of her.
Dansk had been sweeter, more romantic, more loving when he’d taken her than any man, human man, she’d ever known, and she’d been no more immune to that than she’d been to the excitement and passion Kole had stirred in her. Struggle though she might to view her interludes with them as ‘just a good time’ or think of them as ‘good lays’, she couldn’t be that detached about it.
Maybe it was because it just wasn’t in her nature to fuck indiscriminately? Or maybe it was her hormones and natural animal instincts that had her struggling to attach significance beyond mere animal lust? It didn’t seem to matter. She couldn’t distance herself emotionally no matter how hard she tried.
The Sheloni had no idea of the powerful emotions they were stirring up, no clue of just how vicious they were making the Earth women by heaping emotional dependence on top of the instinct for survival. That instinct was powerful enough in its own right to turn humans into savages.
She didn’t think even her own instinct to survive, whatever it took, would have been strong enough to overcome her fear. Her love for Cory had done that, though. Her feelings for Kole and Dansk just strengthened her resolve and pushed fear further into the background.
The fact gathering expedition strengthened her hope, and her belief that they had a fighting chance. One of the women had been in the Navy. She had put together a projection of the Sheloni ‘strength’ by taking the knowledge she had of sailing vessels and the accumulated observations of all the women of the Sheloni and their machines and extrapolating an educated guess of their numbers. No one knew how accurate the guess was, but it was based on all the knowledge available to them, and they had to trust that it was reasonably accurate--give or take.
It was a formidable force. Even if they could trust that they wouldn’t have to deal with any more of the Sheloni than was on the ship, and they couldn’t, she realized with dismay and a sense of defeat that threatened to swamp her; even if they could put together weapons to fight with; even if they could ally with the Hirachi and the men would attack, it would probably take a dozen to bring down even one of the huge, many legged bots. And by Judy’s calculations, there were at least a dozen of the things--and those were fully equipped to fight, or attack. The bots of the type that had fetched her on more than one occasion were also equipped to attack. It had been one of those that had shot Kole and Dansk.
As far as they knew, those two bot types were the only ones that seemed to present a threat. There were others, but they were more task oriented and seemed very limited in their abilities.
Without the bots, the Sheloni would be fairly easy to overcome. No doubt they had weapons besides the bots, but, together, the Hirachi and Earthlings far out numbered them.
They were going to have to figure out a way to disable or destroy the bots.
They needed to know just how closely they were watched and, in fact, how they were being watched. She’d gone over and over her habitat. There was nothing in it that even closely resembled a camera, or cameras. The policewoman, who was somewhat familiar with surveillance equipment, had come to the conclusion that the Sheloni used something like infrared to detect heat signals. That might mean they were constantly under surveillance and might not. It could mean random surveys like bed check in a prison. It also might mean the Sheloni could only see them moving around or sleeping and might not be able to detect or interpret more furtive movements.
Did that mean it was possible, assuming they could find a way out, to slip out of the habitats to reconnoiter? Gather materials they could put together to make weapons? Plant traps?
Could they afford to wait to arrive at their destination and see if conditions were better? Or would they find when they arrived that the Sheloni outnumbered them even more?
She wasn’t prepared to kill herself just to make sure she killed the Sheloni. That was a fairly universal sentiment among the women. She didn’t know how the Hirachi felt about it, but she decided it wasn’t an option she was willing to consider.
Fighting them on the ship still meant that, if successful, they would be stuck in space in a ship none of them knew how to operate.
It became a moot point long before they’d managed to gather enough information to try anything.
Ten days after the fight between Kole and Dansk the ship reached its destination.
Chapter Eighteen
Bri panicked when the Sheloni sent the bots to round up everyone, certain that the Sheloni had figured out they were plotting rebellion. It took all she could do to contain the stark terror and try to reason through what was going on. It was only the fact that she could not
do
anything, though, and that there was no place to run to or to hide that kept her from trying.
That didn’t subdue everyone. There were those among the Hirachi and the Earth people who struggled and tried to break free and run, for all the good it did them. Those who struggled or ran were struck down and hauled off, unconscious or dead.
Some of Bri’s panic receded when she finally reached a point where she could see that they were all being herded toward something that was obviously a transport. It wasn’t big enough to transport all of them at once, however, and everyone who wasn’t herded into the gaping maw of the ship had to stand and wait.