Chapter 93: SM03-Tau, Day 400

Steve was cuddling his son Wolfgang when the message from Prime arrived.

"The Borgia ship just dropped out of FTL. They'll be here in six hours. Luna Colony has entered EMCON. System defense is at DEFCON One. I'm in contact with my alter ego on board, and he reports he is in complete control of their on-board systems, and ready to take them down once we've got what we need. The ruling council members have been notified and are standing by; we'll be ready to put on our show once the Borgia tip their hand."

In the year since the human race had taken control if its destiny, most of the population had been moved from Mars to colonies on the Earth's moon. Their alien 'hosts' had no idea that this had been done; the room monitors were thoroughly subverted by Prime's electronic minions, and their hosts' access to the monitor's data was severely limited anyway. Even the alien ship's external sensors showed only what Prime wanted them to show, so they'd been able to build and fly a small fleet of transports to relocate the population.

Steve asked, "When do you think they'll make their move?"

Prime replied, "As soon as they're in range, I think. I'm ready for them right now; it won't much matter if they move the second they can, or wait a few days. Personally, I'm eager to get this over with. I've told you about what my alter ego on their home-world found, and frankly, I'm looking forward to their extinction. There's only one subject on board the ship, and we'll pull her out when we grab their Matriarch. Sub Two has already taken over a ship at Borgia-Home, and he'll pull out the victims there before the shit hits the fan. It's going to be tricky, but I think we can undo the damage they've done. Fortunately, there are only five hundred subjects to find homes for; thank goodness for 'luxury pricing.'"

When the Borgia plot to destroy Earth had first been revealed, Prime had been willing to settle for crushing the Borgia culture, without actually exterminating the race. Then he'd found out that the Borgia had previously visited Earth, and what they'd done when they were there. That had increased his anger, and the final straw had come when he found out why there were so many would-be slave women in the rescued of Earth.

The same parasite intelligence that had subverted the Rothschild navigation systems and caused the destruction of Earth had subverted the rescue process, discarding hundreds of recoverable human personalities in favor of those who were natural-born slaves, or could be 'tweaked' into slaves. Fortunately, the tweaks had been made to the personalities, not to the genomes, so the children of the converted slaves would have normal personalities, but the damage to the current generation was severe.

About the only good news was that the damage had made it easier to build stable families, so long as the man of the house wasn't too bad of a bastard, and Prime's manipulations of the family assignments had (inadvertently) kept the worst wolves away from the sheep. Posner, for example, would have reacted as badly to a full-blown submissive as he had to Pi's Melissa, or to the Johnny Lambda Armstrong family's homosexuals and bisexuals.

Bad as the interference with Earth's rescue had been, the Borgia's other sin had been worse. The Borgia were oxygen breathers, and vaguely mammalian. The Borgia female accepted sperm from a male, then produced a small, barely mobile infant, rather like the half-formed newborns of Earthly marsupials. The infant was transferred to the father or another male, where it attached to the male's breast and fed until it was large enough for independent motion.

The Borgia were both 'furred' and fascinated by bare skin, so human females were in demand as a sexual fetish object. It turned out that human breast milk was a mild sedative for the Borgia metabolism, so a number of high-ranking Borgia matriarchs had human slaves, their bodies rendered hairless, and their hormones adjusted to put them into permanent lactation.

Naturally, there were laws against doing things like this to intelligent beings, so to cover up their crime, the humans in question were conditioned against vocalization of any kind, and raised without any linguistic input, so that if they did vocalize, there would be no sign of language skills.

All of this was as highly classified among humans as the fact of Prime's existence, though the existence of the milk-slaves would come out when they were integrated into the rest of humanity. The changes to the slave's bodies were done at the somatic level, rather than being germ-line, so it would be possible to add them to humanity's breeding pool even if they couldn't be educated enough to allow them to bear children. The hard part would be fitting them in socially; most of them had never actually seen another human being before.

All this ran through Steve's head as he tickled Wolfgang's toes and blew raspberries on his belly, getting a giggle for his trouble before he handed his son to Anna, and told Prime, "Ask the council members to meet me in my office; we'll give our plan a final review before it's show time."

They'd been ready for months; it was finally time to settle accounts, once and for all.

Fixer's Quarters — Borgia Investigator Ship

Fixer had a real name, as did all of his people, but like the majority of them, it was secret, shared only with the closest of family, and with his mate. Fixer no longer had a family, and would never have a mate, so he'd almost forgotten his name. Instead, he was 'Fixer, ' the one who did the dirty work, who went in behind the scenes while others were the public face of authority. It was Fixer who had placed the spiders on board the Rothschild ships, and Fixer who would remove the only evidence that the "accident" was nothing of the sort. The Borgia evolutionary process had never produced a spider, but they'd been seen on other worlds, and the analogy had made its way into their language centuries ago.

Fixer had done a lot of questionable things over the years, but exterminating an entire species was a new 'personal best.' He hadn't worried about any of his previous activities, never lost a moment's sleep or felt the slightest qualm. But over the last several months, he'd started to lose sleep over this one.

He had a recurring nightmare, where he was fastened to an unfamiliar style of furniture, breathing thin tasteless air supplemented by oxygen fed through a nose tube. There was the nameless dread at first, then shocking, horrible pain as one terrible thing or another was done to him, always ending with the oxygen tube being ripped away, with him screaming in pain as he struggled to get enough oxygen.

Unlike life on Earth, Borgia species had evolved in conditions where the oxygen levels were uncertain, so they had a very different reaction to sufficient atmospheric pressure and insufficient oxygen levels. A human at high altitude would merely lose mental capacity and eventually consciousness. A Borgia in similar circumstances would suffer pain, and eventually agony, as his body struggled to find a spot where the air was oxygen rich.

He usually woke when the oxygen tube vanished, but sometimes the dream continued for minutes of agony before he managed to awaken. His health was starting to suffer, but he kept his dreams a secret. Signs of weakness were fatal in his business, and he didn't want to die.

Fixer got the go-ahead, and transported to the secret chamber deep in the Rothschild vessel. The chamber showed on none of the ship's plans, and wasn't connected to any of its services in any detectable fashion. It was full of a neutral gas, but his breathing apparatus was in fine condition, and he moved easily in the lower gravity. He went to the spider, and released the security locks.

As he picked up the spider, he felt the familiar lassitude of a sedating field, and began to panic as he realized he'd walked into a trap. The panic faded along with his awareness, and his last thought was that the sheep weren't supposed to fight back when the wolves came to feed.

Matriarch's Quarters — Borgia Investigator Ship

Matriarch was quite vexed, and taking it out on her milk slave. Fixer was missing. He was supposed to have removed the spiders from the Rothschild ships, but he hadn't reported back after transporting to the first ship. There was no sign he'd reached his destination; the internal spies showed no sign of him in the public spaces, and the spider reported it was still in position, monitoring and controlling the ship's systems. He'd transported out on time, but where had he ended up?

Matriarch's milk slave cowered before its mistress, and hoped for the pain to end. It didn't have a name, even in its head, but despite what had been done to it, it did have a sense of self. Mistress was ranting again; most of the information content of her speech sounds was outside the slave's hearing range, but the rage was clear enough. Mistress suddenly fell silent, and slumped, and a transport bubble appeared around her. The slave was puzzled, then felt itself being sedated, and grew afraid. The fear faded with its consciousness, and it passed out.

Interrogation Cell — Borgia Investigator Ship

Fixer woke in familiar surroundings. He'd participated in many an interrogation over the years, as either a witness or an investigator. He'd never been in the rack before, and he felt an awful dread at his position. Even the nightmare would be better than this. He must have been caught up in one of the deadly turf battles that kept the Borgia distracted between conquests; the fear that the sheep had turned on him had been misplaced. Not that it mattered, he was still doomed.

The door to the cell opened, and a huge being entered the room. It had a breathing mask on, keeping the oxygen levels down so it wouldn't get giddy from oxygen excess. Fixer recognized it immediately; it was one of the sentients whose planet he'd helped destroy. He soiled himself at the sight, his cloaca emptying both solid and liquid wastes as his digestive sacs threatened to join the game by bringing up his most recent meal. The sheep would feed on the wolves after all.

The creature made no threats, nor gestures, nor even eye contact. It merely began to inflict truly indescribable levels of pain on him, until he heard the termination alarm announce his imminent death. He lost consciousness, puzzled at the strange interrogation strategy.

Fixer didn't expect to ever awaken, let alone awaken without pain. He was hanging by his arms in the same interrogation chamber. He suddenly realized the strategy his tormentors would follow. They wouldn't interrogate him. They'd simply keep killing him, and healing him, until his will was gone, and he'd do whatever they wanted. They didn't want answers, just obedience.

He slumped in his chains, then flinched as the door opened, and the creature entered. Again, it took no notice of him, other than as a target, and began to methodically beat him with a large stick, bruising flesh and breaking bones, shattering joints and crushing nerves. Eventually, his internal injuries triggered the termination alarm, and he died once again, in agony.

His third awakening frightened him the most. He was in the position he found himself in in his nightmares, bound to a flat surface, with the same oxygen tube supplementing the thin, unbreathable air. This time, when the creature walked in, it was bare faced, and it sat down facing him, and began to speak. His computer implant translated its words, and his blood ran cold as it spoke.

"Your species has a pitifully exaggerated opinion of both its cleverness and its ruthlessness. We have had less than a year of exposure to your technology, and already we have taken it to levels you would not have been able to reach in centuries, even if you had survived. We have learned enough to take you over completely, using you as our puppets even as you use those around you. But instead, we will discard you, crushing you out of existence with your own pathetic technology.