Sue-Eye silenced herself and looked away. Her hands stayed together in her lap after that.

Raven returned to the groundcar and Kane held out the keys for her to take. The engines fired, and his guts unknotted slightly.

“Where are we going?” Raven asked, pulling out onto the highway.

“I don’t know.” Kane scanned the road restlessly, his hand running back and forth over the top of his chemist’s pack. “West, for now.” Nine more vials remained empty. At five humans per vial, more or less, that meant another big hunt or thirty to forty small ones. Thirty to forty more stops. He bared his teeth. The urge to go home grew stronger. “West,” he said again.

He would go back through to the So-Quaal Gate. He’d send out a coded message as soon as he came through and there’d be only a few gigameters of neutral space where he might potentially run into trouble before someone came for him. He could probably trade the prison ship with its pre-programmed Gate codes for passage for him and his females to wherever he wanted to go. The So-Quaal who were building his father’s Gate would take him in long enough for him to sell his Vahst. He’d see somewhere around forty thousand crona for a full load of the concentrate, and then there was Sue-Eye.

Fifty crona, he’d told Raven, and that was just if he sold her to the So-Quaal for dissection. She was too old to interest breeders. A sex-house slaver would take her, but the only way Kane would see a decent price would be if he farmed her out first and let the buyer really feel what she was capable of. He rather doubted she’d be able to hold even her ample enthusiasm for fucking after the first few days.

Kane gave her an assessing eye now, and as always, she sat up a little straighter and looked receptive. He wondered if there were female stimulators out on the market somewhere. He was aware only of those made for males, used by breeders to force them to mate. Since human females didn’t require any special inducements to be bred, he wasn’t sure such a device even existed, but if it did, the Kevrian would know about it. And if it didn’t, the So-Quaal could probably make one, but the expense would far outstrip the profit.

Drugs? Vahst didn’t work on humans except as a mild euphoric. D’Gren oil did work, but it killed them more than half the time, and had a tendency to blind survivors. There was always the painkiller he’d made for Raven, but the first Kevrian she bit would kill that deal. Besides, he’d just cleaned her out. Drugs would only deflate her price.

Kane growled and looked back out the window. Well, fifty crona was still fifty crona, and she was ornamentation anyway. Without her, he’d still have enough to hide out long enough to procure a fast ship with decent cargo space, and some top-line chemist’s gear. A ship like that and the name of E’Var would be enough to lure his pick of the best in his business for a crew. It was all coming together. It was all falling in line. Why was he so damned restless?

“Get off the road,” Kane said suddenly, and then snarled as Raven began to slow and said, “No, don’t. Keep driving. Chok.”

He threw himself back into his seat, furious at himself and his unfocused apprehension. He had the very strong sense that Sue-Eye was, in some bizarre way, responsible for his mood and the urge to slash at her itched all down his killing arm. He thought, forcing himself to reason from his head and not his gut.

“Take me back to the mountains,” he said. “Near to where I found you.”

They’d go on foot once they got there, and he’d harvest every human he came across. If he went home with a few empties, so be it. Being edgy made him impatient, and as old Urak was wont to say, prisons were filled with impatient men. Prisons and graveyards, both. He could afford to go home a little light. A few more trips like this, with Raven to pilot him over Earth’s surface, and he would have the funds necessary to finish his father’s Gate.

After that, he would be the sole supplier of wild-caught humans, the sole source of freshening stock to every breeder, miner, and sex-slaver in the entire universe. The price for his goods would go into fucking orbit around him. He probably wouldn’t need to make a trip to Earth more than every other year to see a god’s own profit. He could farm his captives. With Raven’s help, he was sure he could extend their life expectancy several times over. He could easily see himself operating a fleet of breeding facilities, introducing new blood now and then to keep the stock strong. Perhaps he would specialize, maybe teach the females Raven’s art of the human blowjob and sell them solely to Kevrian sex-houses. Hell, open a few of his own. He could build a second Gate, out in the far reaches where his base of operations would be, and never have to risk a jump through one of the Fleet’s ever again.

‘Slow down, boy,’ he told himself in his father’s voice. ‘First hunt, then home. Everything else will follow in its own time.’

Solid advice, but the ghost-memory of Urak’s growl brought back that strange, crawling dread. He shifted, flexing his claws on Sue-Eye’s thigh, and scowled.

“Talk to me, Raven,” he said curtly. “What’s the first thing you want to do when we get back into deep space?”

“Learn the language,” she said immediately.

Kane smiled faintly, the tension that had seized his heart already beginning to relax. Such a sensible answer. Not in the least surprising coming from his far-thinking Raven.

“Then I’ll learn how to work your computers,” she continued. “And fly a ship.”

A human navigator. Kane found the idea at once absurd and incredibly attractive. No one else he knew of had ever used a human as true crew. There was no way to quantify such a warped situation. But she would be his fuck-mate, and he would be commander, and so the rest of the crew would probably just ignore her. Treat her like a rurr’ga he’d somehow trained to poke at buttons, and give her distance. She’d be invisible to them. They’d…talk in front of her.

Kane could feel himself growling deep in his chest, could feel the smile stretching his lips until his fangs gleamed. He mused on the delightful image of Raven on the bridge of his ship, a listening shadow in his absence, and then turned to Sue-Eye.

“What about you?” he asked. “First thing.”

“Whatever you want me to do,” she said.

“How convenient.” He faced front again. “I’m going to want you to fuck.” He intercepted a piercing look of triumph as it passed from his ichuta’a to Raven, and chuckled to himself, rubbing Sue-Eye’s thigh. “Calm yourself, little bitch. I never said I was going to be the one to fuck you.”

The blonde stiffened and gave him a wary look that could not quite be confusion.

“For a few days,” he mused. His hand slipped up underneath her skirt and continued its rubbing on her smooth mound. “And I want you to be the very best fuck you can be. I want you to make me really proud, ichuta’a.”

Her thighs parted to him, and he obligingly stroked up into her moist folds. She shivered and leaned back into the seat, her head back and her eyes closed.

“And you’re going to make me proud, aren’t you?” he murmured.

She nodded languidly.

“Every last male I send in to you is going to tell me you were the best fuck he ever had. You’re going to cum for them and you’re going to mean it.”

She nodded again. “I’m going to use my whole body,” she said quietly. “I’m going to suck them off and rub my tits all over their cocks and give them my ass and my cunt and my feet if they want it that way. They can tie me up or hang me from the ceiling and I’ll still cum for them. They can hit me and scratch me and hurt me and I’ll cum for them. I’ll make you so proud of me.”

Kane penetrated her with his finger and thrust hard and steady, rewarding her. “It’s going to hurt and you’re going to love it,” he said. “You won’t sleep much and you’ll hate the food, but you’ll still love it. You’ll live for the fucking, won’t you?”