“Kill,” the second head snarled, looking at the little orange captors. “Kill all orange half-men!”
“Watch out!” one of the little orange captors shouted. “They’re free! Who opened their manacles?”
“It wasn’t me, Voone!” one of them shouted.
“You hold the remote, Roone!” another one yelled. “Did you press the lock-release mechanism?”
“Kill all!” roared the Trollox and half jumped, half-fell out of the cart.
As all of their little orange captors rushed forward to stop him, Drace jumped out of the cart himself and rushed one of the guards. He wrestled with the little humanoid—who was surprisingly strong—and finally managed to get his pain prod away from him.
He gave his former captor a nasty jolt with the business end of the prod that made him howl.
“No, breeder—you must not!” he gasped, as he staggered to his feet. “Do you not know that we are attempting to bring you to a paradise where you will live the rest of your days in peace and harmony?”
“Fuck your peace and harmony,” Drace snapped. “I’m going back to my ship and I hope I never see any of you little orange fuckers again!”
By this time, most of the rest of the little orange men were going after the Trollox, who was roaring with rage. Drace decided he’d had enough of this fight. If he’d had a blaster, he might have joined in, but the pain-prod was a short range weapon only and it wasn’t even lethal.
What was lethal were the Trollox’s tusks. The huge two-headed male was in a rage and Drace knew from experience that if you got in the way of an angry Trollox, you had only yourself to blame for the results.
Slowly, he started backing away. He was about to slip into the jungle and make his way back through the trees, when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Not that way, friend,” a deep voice said. “Not unless you have immunity to poisons. Do you? Are you Kindred?”
Drace turned in surprise to see a male who looked a little like a Beast Kindred standing beside him, wearing a tattered red garment.
“No, but I’m Havoc,” he answered.
“Close enough. Help me kill the NeverBreeders—if any escape they’ll alert the Compound.”
“The who? And what did you call them?” Drace asked but the other male only shook his head. “Come on! Not a single one must escape!”
The fight was bloody, brutal, and short. The Trollox did most of the work for them, killing eight of the nine captors the Kindred male had called “NeverBreeders” himself. But before he killed them, they managed to force the two-headed giant into the jungle…the very place Drace had been heading for safety.
Then Drace saw what the other male meant about poisons. Even as the Trollox grabbed a NeverBreeder in each hand and bit off their bald heads with his tusks, he staggered and stumbled to his knees in the middle of the brilliant green and turquoise plants.
“Wha’s wrong?” one head demanded, looking around with bleary red eyes. “Don’ understan’. Feel dizzy…”
Then he toppled over with a thunderous crash like a huge tree falling. He flattened both the last NeverBreeder and the shifty-eyed Turpine merchant, who had been fighting in his shadow.
Abruptly, the fight was over.
Which left only Drace and the male who had warned him about the poisons in the jungle. Well, and also a lovely little full-figured female in a tattered blue garment, who came out from behind a tree on the far side of the road when the dust had settled. Drace wondered how she had immunity to the plant life—she didn’t look Kindred.
“V’rex!” she exclaimed, speaking to the male who looked like a Beast Kindred. “I can’t believe it worked! How did you know the Master Control would release their manacles too?”
“I didn’t.” He shrugged. “But I knew that I used it to remove the non-contact bracelets from my own arms so I figured it was worth a try.”
“That’s brilliant!” the female said, smiling up at him. “But how far are we from the NeverBreeders launching pad?”
“Just a few clicks down the road,” Drace told them, speaking up at last. “I’ll come with you and show you if you don’t mind.” He looked around the jungle, the corpse of the huge Trollox, and the many smaller, NeverBreeder corpses littered around it and shook his head. “Think I’d like to get the Seven Hells out of here.”
Eighty-Three
V was sorry more of the prisoners hadn’t escaped with their lives after he’d used the Master Control to set them free. But he had to admit it was just as well in the case of the Trollox. They were a savage race and he wouldn’t have wanted to travel through the jungle with one, especially with Penelope and her luscious curves on display through the ragged, blue toga which was ripped in places.
In the end, the one who was left was a Havoc—an offshoot of the Kindred family tree with one main difference to the Kindred. They didn’t form a permanent soul-bond with a female and spend their life in a mated pair, preferring instead to roam the galaxy free of emotional encumbrances. But they were still honorable and fierce warriors—good to have at your back.
This one, a fellow named Drace, seemed like a solid ally. Once V’rex explained about the Compound and its practices, he thanked them profusely for setting him free.
“That sounds like a seriously fucked-up place, Brother,” he said to V. “Thank the Goddess you two came along before those little orange bastards could get me there.”
“The Goddess put you in our path as well,” V told him. “Can you lead us back to the NeverBreeder launching pad?”
“With pleasure.” Drace nodded eagerly. “I can also tell you that their ships are only lightly guarded—at least as far as I could tell.”
“Good man.” V nodded shortly. “We’ll take care of them, no problem.”
V had thought to take some of the blasters from the dead NeverBreeders, so he and Penelope and Drace
