Read Online The Commander's Slave by K. S. Augustin - Free Book Online Page A

know what species
you are,” he began. “I asked Doctor Zehnda here so he can run some
tests. Genetic compatibility. Physiological bars to
fertility.”
    “ What are you saying?” she
asked, quelling a small leap in her heart. “You want me to bear
your child?”
    It was all a bit sudden and although
Asha admitted to herself that the thought itself was attractive,
surely he should have discussed it with her first? By the standards
of her species had she even reached sexual maturity yet? And what
kind of future would a child of hers have, on the run from the Lasc
Prein?
    Zehnda laughed. “If my instructions
are correct, it’s not just the commander. Isn’t that right
sir?”
    Both Tangus and Asha stared at each
other in frozen tableau while the doctor, still checking his
instruments, continued talking.
    “ With just one person there
may not be a problem. But with a potential donor pool in the
thousands, the cumulative effects of recessive genes across
interspecies embryo development cannot be
underestimated.”
    “ In the thousands?” Asha
asked through bloodless lips. Her voice was faint.
    A tic worked in Tangus’ jaw. “I’ll
leave you to your work, doctor.” He left, quelling the howl that
rose within as the doors to his quarters slid shut behind
him.
    * * * *
    Tangus’ quarters on the Strike , like all rooms
on the ship, was temperature-controlled, but that didn’t stop
Asha’s shivering.
    The doctor had already left, leaving
Asha’s body whole but splintering her mind into a million pieces.
Not being able to stay in his quarters, to have his scent taunt
her, she slipped back to the smooth decadence of the adjoining
chamber. She would never have believed for a moment that a room
geared to sex would comfort her, but in the entire galaxy, it was
now the place where she felt the greatest security. At another
time, she would have smiled at the irony.
    But now, all she could do was collapse
on the edge of the bed and confront an unpalatable
reality.
    Why had she even entertained the
fantasy of a life together for her and Tangus? He had made it plain
from the beginning that he had purchased her for a reason. At the
time, she had thought that meant possession by only one
man--him.
    But thousands ?
    Doctor Zehnda had been more
forthcoming in that one hour than Tangus in the past several
days.
    He told her that the Seti remnant was all male, the dregs
of a species that would soon die out unless someone came up with a
plan. And the commander had. A bold plan of acquiring female stock
to interbreed with the Seti so the genetic strain wouldn’t
completely die out. Preferably female Fusion stock so
they would always serve as a reminder of the Fusion’s perfidy while
they allowed the Lasc Prein to massacre them into almost total
extinction. She was their first acquisition.
    It made her blood run cold to see how
much she had underestimated Tangus’ ruthlessness, reading
sensitivity instead of callousness, and torment instead of
all-consuming revenge. It had fooled her into thinking he was,
beneath all his actions, an honorable man, and she was going to pay
for such a misjudgment by living out the rest of her life as a Seti
breeding-receptacle.
    But what could she do to escape such a
fate?
    Where before she didn’t see her
amnesia as a negative, now she confronted dead-ends. Who was she
really? Was she someone powerful? Or just a bystander somehow
involved in a spaceship crash? Was her species capable of looking
for her? Did they even care?
    Asha buried her head in her hands.
Only a few hours ago, she was prepared to throw away any thoughts
of her species, but now they loomed large in her future. How fickle
she had been to think that she could ignore everything that
happened in her life up till this point, up to the point when she
found herself betrayed by the man she had fallen in love
with.
    Desperately, she started thinking. What she needed now were
options. Was there anybody on the Strike , for example,
who would