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physical relief without emotion for ninety percent of the Elite caste. Consequently, to

Hael's way of thinking, sex was meaningless.

"Meaningless crap," she said, her voice slightly slurred.

That was why men like Kamerone Cree shunned having female companions. Why buy

the cow when you can have the milk for free? Sex to a Reaper was a strictly impersonal

act without emotion, without true enjoyment, without purpose; something to be done to

relieve the stress in between Transition cycles.

"Meaningless and worthless crap," Hael mumbled.

She closed her eyes and the empty glass in her hand slipped out of her fingers and hit

the floor, rolled along the lush Ionarian carpet.

"We have you, Cree," she whispered. "And I promise you, you will not escape!"

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CREE CAME awake feeling as though he had been pushed rudely from a

nightmare. He sat up and looked about him for whatever had torn him from his sleep. His

heart was pounding, his palms wet as he ran them down his sheet. His groin was tight, his

testicles drawn up as though danger had been right at his bedside. When he found himself

alone in the semi-dark room, he laid back down, trying to understand what had alarmed

him. The silence was threatening, encroaching, and he felt anxious about the stillness

surrounding him. It made him nervous.

"Lights on," he instructed the Vid-Com.

The lights came up slowly and with them, the gentle sound of rain. The rain had been

programmed into the lighting system by one of Cree's Controllers. The soothing sound

was meant to calm him when he was distressed and there must have been something in

his voice that registered that emotion. Closing his eyes, he tried to concentrate on the

rhythm of the rain as he had been taught, knowing there were subliminal messages

hidden beneath the soft patter of the falling water: messages meant to decelerate his

heartbeat and allay his fears.

He ran a hand through his night-tousled hair and looked down at the black edged paper

on his night table. His transportation to Helios Twelve was going to be delayed awhile

due to solar storms in that quadrant. The thought of having to spend time in that hellish

place flickered across his mind and he wondered if perhaps that was not what had

brought on his anxiety.

"Captain Cree?" The Vid-Com's pleasant rain faded into the background as the

computer's female voice intruded softly.

"Aye?" he replied.

"You have a visitor, Sir," the Vid-Com informed him. "Lieutenant Drewe Lona."

A dark frown creased Cree's face. Normally he would not be displeased to have Drewe

come calling, but inexplicably, he felt threatened by Lona's presence at his door this time.

He stared at the Vid-Com, trying to decide if he wanted to send the young man away or

not.

"Captain?" the Vid-Com pressed. "Shall I admit him, Sir?"

Sighing heavily, Cree swung his legs off the bed. "Aye." He went into the toilet area of his suite.

Drewe was standing in the living area when Cree came out a few minutes later. There

was a hesitant, unsure smile on the young man's face. "Are you all right?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" came the snarled reply.

Reapers in general—Cree in particular—did not like to be questioned, especially by

men they considered far beneath them in status. Drewe ducked his head, embarrassed by

his blunder. "Forgive me, Sir, but it's just that you were in the Be-Mod Unit so long I was beginning to worry."

Cree waved aside his second in command's concern. "You hungry?" he asked as he

headed for the food preparation center.

Drewe followed him. "No, Sir. I've already eaten." He looked about him, amazed at the havoc within his superior's food preparation center. There were dirty utensils and dishes

piled everywhere. For such an otherwise ordered and disciplined man, Cree's living

quarters were a disaster.

Shoving a stack of encrusted glass bowls aside, Cree found one that looked reasonably

clean and stuck in under the replicator. "Viragonian mushroom soup," he said, leaning ABC Amber LIT Converter

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against the counter as the replicator prepared his food.

Drewe wondered why his commander was glaring at him and why anyone would want

Viragonian mushroom soup for their morning meal. Or at any time, for that matter. When

the foul-smelling soup was dispensed, Drewe wrinkled his nose and turned away. One

look at the things floating around inside that grayish-green broth would surely bring up

his recent meal.

"I want you," Cree said in between large spoonfuls of the soup, "to get The Revenant ready for a trip to Terra the first thing in the morning. I want to leave no later than sixteen hundred hours tomorrow."

Drewe's eyebrows shot up. "Tomorrow?" His brows came down in confusion. "But

aren't you going to Hell-12?"

Cree slurped down the remaining soup, then stacked the dirty bowl on top of another.

"When we get back," he said, straddling a chair and sitting down, "They've got solar storms in Gamma quad."

Drewe nodded. "That's good, I guess. Is there anything else you want done before we

go?"

Cree looked up. "Aye. I want you to locate a woman in the Be-Mod Unit." He

narrowed his eyes. "Dunne. Bridget Dunne."

"Did she offend you in some way, Sir?"

"Offend me?"

Lona swallowed. "Aye, Sir. Are you going to terminate her? If so, I need to get an

order of extermination from the Ministry of Corrections and..."

"I want you to buy her for me," Cree interrupted.

If Drewe Lona was astonished at that request, to his credit, he hid it well. He carried on

with the conversation without missing a beat. "Are you allowed to do that, Captain?"

A hiss of contempt exploded from Cree. "I am a Reaper, Lona; I can do whatever the

hell I want!"

Drewe knew that was true enough. Even if the man had been severely censured by the

Court of Military Inquiry and faced a month of hard labor at the Helios Twelve penal

colony, his reputation had not been sullied by the stigma of his punishment. If anything, it

had been enhanced.

"What if the Ministry of Science won't sell her to you?" Drewe questioned, doubting that was a possibility though feeling he would be remiss in his duties if he did not

mention it.

Cree waved a dismissive hand at his second in command. "Offer the bastards an

ungodly amount of money, Lona," he snapped with irritation. "They're always bitching about not having a big enough cut of the budget pie."

"How high do you wish me to go?" Drewe asked and wasn't prepared for the reaction

his innocent question caused.

"Just buy me the gods-be-damned female, Lona!" came the enraged shout. Bowls,

spoons, and glasses flew off the table as Cree's arm swept a pathway across them. "Don't make me have to repeat myself, Sailor!"

Drewe's mouth sagged open and his eyes flared with shock. He flinched as another

thunderous bellow of absolute rage poured from Cree, "I don't give a shit what you have

to pay for her! I want her and I will have her! Do you understand me?"

All the pent-up anger and repressed hostility Cree had always felt had reasserted itself

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just as the Director had predicted it would. Kamerone Cree—a very complex man with a

precise intellect, a personality that denied opposition, and an ironclad will that prohibited any—glared up at his 2/IC with such brutal fierceness of purpose, the young man took a

fearful step back.

"Get the hell out of my sight, Lona, and do as I ordered you! I want her in my quarters

by the end of the day. Is that gods-be-damned clear?"

"Aye-aye, SIR!" Drewe barked, snapping a smart salute into place. "Right away,
Sir!
"

Drewe exited the Captain's quarters with as much dignity as his flaming face would

allow.

Cree stared moodily at the clutter of dishes on the counters of his food preparation

center. "What a gods-be-damned mess!" he grumbled. He hated such mundane,

boring,
female
work as cleaning, and since he was not adapted all that well to doing it and did not trust strangers into his quarters to do it for him, his pigheadedness made it his

personal chore. Dishes and linens would pile up to the ceiling before he finally broke

down and sent them through the sonic cleaners. Everything was allowed to go to rack and

ruin until he could stand it no longer and rolled up his sleeves to tackle the job. If the

chore seemed too vast—as it did at that moment—or he was in a particularly foul mood

—as he was on most days he noticed the mess—he would simply throw out the old and

buy new. Since he couldn't do that with his Ministry of Fleet Operations issued uniforms,

he had to bundle them up and cart them off to the station cleaners so he would have clean

clothing to wear. If he had his way, he thought, spying a pile of rumpled uniforms lying in

the sonic sink, he'd go air-clad as his Chalean ancestors had. The thought of running

around FSK-14 with his manhood swinging free brought a smile to his lips.

"That would certainly scare the hell out of the Resistance." He chuckled.

Sweeping aside a pile of laundry, he flopped down in a chair. He had always thought

that if someone wanted to
really
torture him into giving away Empire secrets, all they had to do was make him do mindless cleaning.

"Torture cleaning," he muttered. How the hell did females endure it? How could they sweep and dust and mop and wash and scrub and scour and fold and stack then start it all

over again day after day after day? The mere thought of that repetitive agony made him

practically tremble with frustration.

"
I have to leave early today. I'm right in the middle of spring cleaning and I want to
get the bookshelves dusted before my new research manuals come."

"Bridget," he whispered, remembering hearing her talking to Tina outside his cell door one afternoon. He would bet a month's credits she liked to clean. Maybe she even thrived

on the organization of doing such repetitious idiocy. Most women did.

"What are you doing right now, Bridget?" he asked, then frowned heavily.

Why hadn't she been there that last day? Had she been reassigned? Handed over to

another warrior whose punishment had just begun? Was she even at that moment giving

another man solace and comfort and the sweetness of her gentle touch on his fevered

flesh? Was another man looking into her beautiful green eyes?

Cree grimaced. He didn't like to think of her smiling eyes looking down on another

man. The thought of her soft voice speaking gently to some other warrior to calm his

anxiety made the Reaper acutely uncomfortable and not a little angry. He squirmed in his

chair.

"Bridget."

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And he sure as hell didn't like the notion of her touching any man other than himself.

"His name is Konnor Rhye. Do you know him?"

"Bridget," he growled and it was more a curse than anything else.

His natural competitiveness asserted itself and he shifted in the chair again, his eyes

narrowed into dangerous slits.

"He doesn't like to be kept waiting."

"Oh, yeah?" Cree growled. The image of Bridget with the faceless man made his lip

curl. That he would put a stop to ASAP!

He pictured her sitting across the room from him and almost smiled, although smiling

was not something he did very often or had ever done well. He was unaware that his right

hand was caressing the chair arm, his thumb moving sensually over the edge, until the

faint sensation started in his groin and he wiggled, trying to ignore it.

"Captain Cree?" the Vid-Com interrupted with a pleasant chime.

Cree's mouth turned vicious. "What?" he barked.

"Shall I send for a surrogate, Sir?"

"What?" he repeated, suddenly realizing what he was doing with his hand. He jerked

his fingers away from the chair arm. "No, I don't want a surrogate! Did I ask for a

surrogate?"

"No, you did not, Captain," the Vid-Com answered in its polite, reasonable tone, "but you appear to be experiencing sexual excitement and Article 26 of the Ministry of

Defense Code of Elite Conduct states..."

"I know what it states!" Cree shouted. He reached out, grabbed a pair of dirty

underwear and threw it at the Vid-Com screen.

"Sir," the Vid-Com stated in a slightly miffed tone, "you seem agitated as well as sexually excited. Perhaps you would like to take an extra injection of triso."

"What I would like is to take you apart and leave you that way!" the Reaper spat,

throwing another piece of dirty laundry at the screen.

"You have neither the authority nor the expertise to do that, Captain," the Vid-Com insulted him. "I suggest you take something to eliminate the uncharacteristic behavior

you are exhibiting; it does not compute." The Vid-Com clicked off with a squelch.

"Compute this, you piece of shit!" he suggested, grabbing his crotch, but there was no answer to his vulgarity.