Hanei slipped silently up the wall behind her princess. Out of the corner of her eye she noted that the mercenaries were not moving. It appeared they were giving them the opportunity to get in before they stormed the building. Smart. Above her Akihare paused below a window. Hanei was not able to see what was going on, but noted the increase in light. If not for their ability to camouflage to match the surfaces they were on it was likely they would have been spotted. Instead, they hung there waiting for whomever was in the window to move away. The wait seemed interminable, but was likely less the thirty seconds.

  On the move again, they slipped up the side of the building as easily as though the surface was horizontal. Akihare flicked her tail in warning and Hanei hissed. They were approaching the window they were looking for. It turned out to be the only window on the north side of the building. Akihare slipped higher than the window they were aiming for and leapt. Hanei repeated the action and followed her master through the window.

  Shouts rang out as she climbed in. A couple people reached inside of their coats for hand held pistols and short knives of various lengths. While the other three attempted to fill the Nure-Onna with led. Akihare blended into the surrounding colours to the point of almost disappearing. Hanei ignored Akihare and lunged at the nearest bull of a man. His height and weight were impressive, but palled in comparison to a Nure-Onna’s paralytic poison. Scales across skin made quick work of her target. Around her chaos erupted as bullets continued to fly. Allowing instinct to guide her she roped the best dressed man in her tail and squeezed.

  “Sto-op,” he wheezed out. “We can work something out…” his voice took on a low pitched breathy cadence that was scratchy on the ears.

  “Order your men to surrender,” Akihare purred as her eyes closed slowly.

  “Let me go first.”

  Akihare laughed. “I have been fooled once. It would be a shame to be so easily deceived twice. Let’s just say your survival depends on how quickly the rest of your guests can stretch out on the floor, hands behind their backs.”

  “I don’t know what you are being paid, but I will double it.”

  Hanei remained near the panels, unseen.

  “I’ve heard about how you treat people.” Akihare let her tail squeeze the man tighter.

  “Okay, okay,” he wheezed. “On the ground,” he ordered.

  There were two guards just outside of the door. Hanei made quick work of tying up the thugs on the floor. Tilting her head side to side to crack her neck, she looked at the man caught in her tail. “I don’t believe we need you anymore.”

  “Wai…”

  Akihare snapped his neck. Killing him instantly. “Now we wait?”

  CARVER Striker Company

  Mahoag ran into Rennick at the base of the stairs to the third floor. He was leaning against the wall as relaxed as a Sunday stroll. Ipino stood with an arm resting on his rifle and the other two were squatted down and bored. Reflex had him wanting to ask if the second floor was cleared but the look on Suuta’s face had him holding his tongue. Mahoag headed for the stairs and the four fell in line behind him.

  It was just the one way up and only one hall. There should be very little opposition with twenty-four men stomping down the hall. To his surprise there was no one waiting for them. His team reacted instinctively when the door at the end of the hall open. Fortunately, no one shot the Nure-Oxnna standing with her arms crossed.

  “Took you long enough.”

  With a sigh Mahoag radioed his commander and informed him the target location was secure. Orders came through to head to the second location. A team had been dispatched to assess and allocate resources for both parties as had been agreed on.

  The second shop was impressively bigger. From where Rennick was standing across the street it was clear that going in was going to be a big mess. Next to him Mahoag stood silently waiting for Rennick to decide how best to go about getting in. Rennick was in no hurry. Ipino and Hanei were scouting around the building to see what could be seen from the other side. As it stood, he was thinking of splitting Akihare and Hanei up this time. Having examined the gear that Mahoag and his team had brought along he was confident they could get one of the women on the roof and use the second one to access the locked loading bay.

  With Cranby and Dreycean, a Wendigo, it was possible to boobie trap two of the doors to prevent escape. That left two doors and the loading bay. He was planning on sending Hanei, Ipino and Suutan via the roof. The rest were to be split into three teams of six and one team of three. Each of the six man teams were to take a door. The three man team was to go in the loading bay and access as much data as could be retrieved. Team one would take the third floor and work their way down. Team two and three were to clear the second and main floor and team four were to secure the slaves. He had learned from alpha that too much planning just went to shit. Without better data this was as good as it got.

  When Ipino and Hanei retuned, they presented their information and pointed out the security system that was in place. Satisfied, he sent Cranby and Dreycean to boobie trap the doors, while the rest got into the planned teams.

  “Max might have had a way to work around for the security system.” Ipino pointed out.

  “Can we knock out the power to the shop?” Rennick verified.

  “It’d have to be to the whole grid,” Mahoag replied.

  Cranby raised a hand as he was about to leave. With a nod from Mahoag he spoke up. “I think I can shut down the power to just the shop. It’ll take me three minutes to do it.”

  Mahoag looked at Rennick. “Do it. Here is how the rest of this is going to work,”

  Once the two were gone, Rennick laid it out for everyone.

  Hanei balked as being separated, until she was reminded by Akihare that she was not in charge. Once Hanei relented, he continued to explain the plan. Mahoag looked like he wanted more detail so Rennick explained that there were too many gaps in the known information on the place they were hitting and not enough room to house all the slaves that were expected. Something in his gut said it was a trap or was a decoy. Mahoag grunted. Rennick did not need him to agree. He needed him to do what was needed of him. He had Mahoag divide the twenty one into teams. Once that happened the roof team took off.

  Rennick was working with a Shuupah, who looked like a humanoid spider, named Kirz, and two Renshaw brothers name Napou and Fathan. There was also a Harlan, who looked like a cross between a deer and jack rabbit, named Cass and a Were-Jackal named Haaran. Their job was securing the prisoners so they went in with the three man team.

  When his team reach the loading bay, Rennick found out why it seemed there was so little space. The shop they were at was designed to sort and ship them to different locations based on certain criteria. He ordered his team to disable the landed shuttles and cursed as three air shuttles trundled away. Making quick work of securing the passengers. Rennick contacted Mitah to find out if he was able to track the escaped shuttles. Mitah replied that he was up to trying but unable to make any promises. Rennick cursed not having Max on hand.

  Contacting Mahoag’s tech team he asked if they were able to glean any information on the vehicles that had been there in the last three hours. Marcel, a coupthanie, a breed of wingless dragon, replied that they would locate the information and get back to him. By the time the information was located Mitah actually had to take off to halt two ships from leaving orbit.

  Rennick ignored Mitah knowing that their shuttle was well up to the task of shutting down the ships in time. Instead, he had to focus on a task that had become significantly larger in scope. Kriskoff was running a slave depot. There were four locations on planet and three off planet for a total of three hundred thousand slaves illegally taken. Mahoag contacted his Commander and relayed the update. It was then decided that more teams needed to be sent to secure the slaves at each location. Rennick agreed. And stated that the land deeds were to go to Alpha to decided how to break them up. Chances were she would let the mercenaries have the land, but he was not going to be the one to make the decision.

  Mitah touched base to inform him that he had secured both ships, which were carrying a great many supplies along with the slaves. He also pointed out that there was plenty of room on both ships for more slaves. Since there was now more than Ni’yell had been expecting. Rennick agreed. Since they were illegal slaves, they needed to be sorted and given options that did not include slavey, but that was Ni’yell’s job. It took the rest of the night to clean up the mess and track down the man who had built such depravity. In the end it was Mahoag’s crew that found Kriskoff and put him down like a rabid dog.

  Tromping on to the shuttle, Rennick found a cabin and shut the door. He needed at least three hours of sleep if he was going to play nice with anyone. Once he was rested requested Antrallia take them to the high end slave shops.

  Antrallia

  It was apparent that Antrallia was in her element when they first entered. Rennick slipped Ipino a look of commiseration as they sat and drank tea. Rennick had to admit that this trader knew his business. Havar, the trader, was quick to recommend certain races only after asking endless questions. For the running the business he suggested a small race of rodents that were highly capable of managing the paper work and finances that were known as Little Kin.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Luckily, he just happened to have twenty-five that were trained and ready to serve. When pushed he admitted to having another fifteen, but they were below standard. To prevent an argument, Antrallia convinced Havar that if he was willing to train them, Rennick was willing to purchase them at a discounted price. Havar agreed.

  For the managing of the warehouses, hauling supplies and organization, Havar recommended three races and two species. The three races were the Jotun, the Griffin and the Coupthanie. The species were Amariah, a noncombative species that look like a cross between a jackalope and a bear cub and Wendar were a protected species that looked like legendary duendes from Earth; they stood no more than three feet tall, stood on two feet, but were able to move faster on four, and had hands that were able to manipulate fine motor skills. They were covered in fur, with mostly flat faces and slender tails that were flat at the end. The fur on their main bodies was a mix of metallics and the fur on their faces was often blue, green, brown or white; their ears were leaf shaped and leathery, but almost too big for their heads. although they were considered intelligent, they were not considered a race, which meant abiding all the laws and politics, instead they were a species and protected by the emperor. Not just anyone had access to the clever little people.

  Rennick knew Micha was going to love the little mischief makers on sight. He bought four hundred each of the Amariah and the Wendar. He also purchased four hundred Jotun, three hundred and fifty of the Griffins and five hundred Coupthanie.

  Havar made one final push. He suggested Rennik purchase several of his criminal slaves. He had ten specific ones in mind. Two were Shawlings, three were Avarian, three were Nure-Onna and the last two were Renshaw; all were labeled criminals because they had defended themselves or someone else and it had resulted in at least one death. The ten had all been trained as body guards. The leap to underdog was not so far. Rennick relented and to Antrallia’s delight he also decide he was done shopping.

  If Alpha wanted more slaves, they were just a shop away.

  AlphaOne Protocol Compound, somewhere in the vicinity of the imperial palace

  It had been six weeks since the new candidate for the AlphaOne protocol arrived. There had had to be some adjustments since the race profile had to be built from scratch. Little was known about the Earthling. The AI started the program at a slower pace and had to adjust the dose per pound. The female was extremely small compared to the other candidates that had been through the program. What was fascinating was the way the female appeared to adapt to the changes being made to her system. The AI almost lost her when the nervous system was upgraded. It had taken several changes to the injection dose to stop the shock to the system.

  Once a balance had been found it became easier to avoid the crisis all together. After the nervous system was the organs. The terran’s entire body was delicate compared to just about everyone that had undergone the same changes. If it was not one thing it was another. The AI was unable to shift its focus for a millisecond or it might lose the candidate.

  In the tank the Earthling struggled as the lungs underwent significant improvements. The ratio of oxygen increased, the amount of blood flow was also improved along with the size of heart and the capacity of the lungs to convert oxygen. Growing the tissue essential to increase the size or function of the heart and lungs was delicate work. Improvements to the digestion system were also made to reduce the amount of waste and increase the nutrients the body received.

  The kidneys were almost written off by the techs until the AI pointed out the duties they provided along with the liver to the consultant at the computer. After that the AI took away the ability to override it and hammed the controls. It suggested the liver and kiney be improved to allow more toxins to be routed out of the system more quickly. Some of the organs did seem to be redundant and were bypassed. The Ai would have removed them but saw them as inconsequential. The programmers running the AI system thought that their removal was essential. To which the AI reassessed and determined that removal was not going to have too major an impact on the running of the program and might increase the overall wellbeing of the candidate. The unnecessary organs were removed.

  The next part of the program was the hardest on the system; the introduction of nano-technology. A platoon of scientists created nano-scopic machines that were programmed to manage a wide variety of specific tasks. Normally the life span of said machine was finite. They accomplished the task given and became inert.

  With the protocol the tiny machines were programmed to keep the body functioning at peak performance . That meant that they needed to be able to determine what that entailed at any given second. While having done so successfully, there was an element of failure with each candidate. This time the AI knew what was missing and re-wrote the code that mandated the task the nanite machines were to perform.

  The Ai created the second sentient machine.

  Ni’yell

  Ni’yell scrubbed his bald head as he attempted to sort the most recent arrival of slaves. Sorting out which ones had been illegally obtained from the rest had not been as difficult as anticipated as Rennick had had to foresight to keep them separate from the start. The emperor had agreed to extend a writ that guaranteed protection within the galaxy that proved they had been freed. That took care of two thirds of the slaves. The issue was in determining the needs of the lot. Most were in some degree of malnourishment. There were lice, scabs, coughs, and infections just to name the more common illnesses. It was overwhelming trying to deal with everyone with so few supplies. So Ni’yell sent out a mayday to the only planet he knew might respond quickly.

  Cheveyo Ohanzee, commander of Keliv III, did not just respond he sent Medic with medical staff and office workers; along with the retired soldiers that had chosen to join Micha. Medic stopped at two planets on the way and gathered in a great number of favors. Those favors came in the way of supplies and more assistance in the way of food stores, temporary housing and storage warehousing being opened. On arrival, Medic put everyone to work.

  Runningwind received new blood to organize files, locate family members, put up medical facilities, plant fields and build walls. The builders originally hired to help dig up the underground facility were put to building permanent residences, wells, office space. Not long after their arrival a second group arrived to assist bringing essential farm animals.

  A larger ship arrived with a buffalo type species known as Gizen. The Gizen were a prolific race that often required being split into smaller groups and hunted to maintain health heard sizes. The impressively intelligent species often recognized when their numbers were too high and were known to automatically divide into smaller herds. Since the planet the compound was on was considered extra-large in circumference, there was plenty of room for them to spread out.

  It was not enough food to serve the needs of the growing populace, but it was a start towards self-sufficiency. Each decision that was made also assisted with that independence. None of which was possible without Micha’s ability to earn loyalty.

  Medic took control of the populace. Inoculations for the standard illnesses made their way through the compound that had been divided into four quadrants. He ensured that those that were ill or showed any possible symptoms were in only two of the sections. Ni’yell closed his eyes and thanked the heavens that Micha had shown herself to be a force to work with. Many of the slaves were not going to be in any condition to work for months. Between the healing of sickness, necessary feeding and exercise a great deal of money was going to be syphoned into them. He knew that Micha would do the same thing he was doing. In time they would reap the benefit of their compassion, care, dignity back in greater quantities.

  “It always pays to treat a person with dignity. One it proves that we are not animals and two it earns favor and respect,” Micha shrugged. “There are always instances where we are paid poorly for that behavior, but that is not the norm. remember that everyone is trying to find balanced footing. A little compassion goes a long way.”

  Ni’yell could still see the sad look in her eyes when she had said it. It was as if she was expecting what she had said to have little meaning. He never doubted her even as he knew compassion was looked down on. He believed she was to become the instrument of change the galaxy had been missing.

  It took several weeks to get the chaos under control. A feat he attributed to Medic. Without the strange healer, Ni’yell would have been buried in the madness. Runningwind flagged him down in passing; a huge smile on his face.

  “The construction of both depots is underway. I believe,” Runningwind’s eyes wiggled. “That Alpha will be pleased with the progress of both. As we speak, I am on my way to negotiate for a large asteroid. I already have the gravity units needed and found the right air tanks. I’m still looking for a generator that will fit our needs.”

  Ni’yell nodded; impressed. “I will talk to Commander Ohanzee. He might know where we can get a generator. Once you know the size of the asteroid I will send the message.”

  Runningwind’s smile widened. “Oh, that is wonderful,” turning to face the shawling he skipped a few steps backwards hand interlaced and gave a little bow. “I will have the information to you by the end of the day.”

  Before Ni’yell was able to respond the were-fox was gone. Shaking his head he continued heading for the medical office. It was almost time for their daily assessment. Feeling like there was improvement in the overall workload, he found his steps buoyed. It was a good day. If it stayed that way he might just get some sleep at the end of the day.

  He found Medic in the largest warehouse housing the ill. He was orchestrating his staff with ease when he spotted Ni’yell and motioned him over. In no hurry, he approached with an almost laid back attitude.

  “I was just about to come looking for you,” Medic smiled; his eyes almost disappearing.

  No one seemed to know what race Medic was. He looked humanoid to the naked eye, but Ny’yell doubted he was one of the simple races. At times it was as though his skin refracted the light where it touched his exposed skin. If he was a betting man, he might have laid odds on him being from the ancient races. He stood just under six feet, had eyes of a teal blue, short silver hair and a face women seemed to love. Yet, it was Medic’s ability to understand Micha even before she learned to speak the common tongue that hinted to the ancient races the most. At the end of the day, it was the healer’s loyalty to Micha that mattered.

  “I received word from Rennick. The last of the slaves are on the way. He made mention of Nure-Onna, Avarian, Jotun, Amariah, Wendar, Griffins, Coupthanie, and…Little Kin?”

  Medic took the document from Ni’yell’s hands and scanned it quickly. “Impressive. Rennick works quickly. They will all need to be inoculated to prevent the spred of anything and bolster their systems from the major shock they will be facing. Some of them have delicate constitutions, but overall they will be highly beneficial.”

  The two men discussed the needs of the current slaves and were both pleased at the decrease in sickness and thanks to Micha’s slow and steady exercise regime those on the mend were regaining muscle strength. Medic requested a high protein, high fruit and vegetable diet to bolster the slaves’ systems. Ni’yell agreed. It was a good idea for the soldiers that had agreed to join Micha’s war pack.

  Both avoided discussing what was really on their minds. Ni’yell was unsettled with Micha so far away and Medic seemed just as listless when he was doing nothing.

  “Have you considered joining the pack?”

  Medic looked up to the sky and sighed. “I keep waiting for her to ask, but,” he shook his head. “I am not certain I know what I would say.”

  “I know she wants to develop a solid medical facility. I’ve seen the plans. I can’t think of anyone she’d trust more with the lives of her people. My guess is she wanted to have the building built, because it was on the list of priorities.”

  Medic chuckled. “I think you’re right. We were both making this more complicated than it needed to be. After Renden, everyone hesitates around her and I find myself doing the same. She makes my world better. Where else can I find someone to just be me with?”

  Ni’yell had to agree. “Talk to the master builder and go over the plans for your building. Make sure they suit your needs. Just, be open to what she had on paper.” Ni’yell walked away.

  Things were getting better. Micha’s pack was going to be strong. Strong enough to dominate the other packs if what Runningwind said was true and he had no doubt it was. Well, he was ready; come what may.